Tag: authors

A Room of One’s Own


Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart;
and his friends could only read the title.
Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever finish the biography of Virginia Woolf I began reading many years ago. I always want to, but other things come along, and it gets pushed lower and lower on the list of things to read.

On this day in 1941, Woolf walked into a river and ended her life at age 59. In the note she left for her husband, she wrote:

I have a feeling I shall go mad. I cannot go on longer in these terrible times. I hear voices and cannot concentrate on my work. I have fought against it but cannot fight any longer. I owe all my happiness to you but cannot go on and spoil your life.

I think very few of us understand despair. We know the word. We may think we’ve felt it. We probably sometimes misidentify depression, sadness, grief, and even anger as despair. But despair is a particular hell that can truly be known only when it’s experienced–and once experienced, one realizes that it’s nothing like any other emotion. Somewhere in every other emotion is a kernel of hope. But when despair takes over, it separates us from those we love and who love us most, because love is the most hopeful of emotions, and despair is hopeless.

Today, I was talking to a friend about how amazingly resilient humans can be. I think it’s the failure of resilience, really, that makes some among us surrender to despair, walk into the river, leaving in our wake anguish for those who’ve known us, and in a case like Woolf’s, dismay among future generations over work unfinished, life unlived.

I am watching, from a distance, someone I don’t know–like Woolf, a writer–make a slow, determined ascent from despair. I have no way to tell her I believe that she–unlike Woolf–will be okay, but I feel that writing it here creates a kind of magical connection. Even if she doesn’t read my words, their energy will travel until it reaches the place where it may be needed–if not by her, by someone. Someday, that someone might even be me.

Button Sunday

If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth,
he need never try to write romances.
Nathaniel Hawthorne,
a quote from The Scarlet Letter

On this day in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter was published. Things that never occurred to Nathaniel Hawthorne:

1. That his book would spawn a mostly dreadful movie starring Demi Moore.

2. That 100 years later, some guy named Clifton Hillegass would find a way to make millions of students happy. Hillegass published what were meant to be study guides to literary classics, but became a way to avoid actually reading books like The Scarlet Letter (CliffsNotes, not Cliff Notes, as so many people say).

3. That he would never be a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. (Well, it’s true. He wouldn’t. But I just tossed that in here to make Tim laugh.)

4. That 158 years later, his book–a bestseller in its time, heralded as an exploration of philosophical and spiritual themes–would be on the banned books list of his own country and would often be censored for being “pornographic and obscene.”

Nathaniel, you’re still aces to me.

Lambda Literary Awards

The Lambda Literary Awards finalists were announced Friday. Some of my favorite people (many of whom I’ve mentioned on my LJ in the past) are on there, though I haven’t read all of these particular titles.

I guess it’s begging for trouble to single anyone out, but I must mention Greg Herren as a finalist for Murder in the Rue Chartres, Mark Doty for Dog Years, Richard Labonte and Lawrence Schimel for First Person Queer, Lawrence Schimel for The Mammoth Book of New Gay Erotica, and Andrew Beierle for First Person Plural.

Congratulations to them and to all the finalists!

Thinking about the process


Nobody has ever measured, not even poets,
how much the heart can hold.
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

Born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1900, Zelda Fitzgerald died on March 10, 1949, when she was trapped by a fire at a mental hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Her creativity stifled, her independent personality punished, and her illnesses misdiagnosed–the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald is probably one of the least understood and most fascinating women of the previous century.

Creative people will create in the face of enormous obstacles, but how wonderful it would be to live in a world–and even in families–where creativity is valued, respected, and nurtured. I marvel at the jealousies, fears, and resentments that led Scott and Zelda to tear each other down rather than nourish each other’s talents.

It was good to sit on the roof of the wonderful Hotel Monteleone, seventeen stories above New Orleans, and ponder writing and relationships with Marika a couple of weeks ago. The hotel is one of only three in the United States that has been designated a literary landmark because it has either housed famous writers or been written about in their works. These writers include Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, Rebecca Wells, Walker Percy, William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, Tennessee Williams, Richard Ford, and Eudora Welty.

The day had been gray and cold, but just before Marika arrived, the sun pushed its way out of the clouds. We were able to enjoy sitting next to the heated pool on the roof for a few hours before the wind finally drove us inside. (Visitors be warned; the plugs on the roof don’t work, so there’s no power source for your laptops.)

I’ve put photos behind the cut–I hope they offer a bit of spring to my snow-weary friends.

where we can see heaven much better

Once and future design

This image in Mark G. Harris’s LJ from one of those thirty-seven Star Wars movies:

made me think of photos I snapped in New Orleans at this restaurant on St. Charles:

When we walked in, there was only one other patron, but others began to arrive after we were seated. The restaurant had a feeling of good will, including smiles bestowed on a young mother when she came in with a baby carriage filled with snoozing infant. The food was nothing spectacular or exotic, just a good meal with excellent service. I had catfish fillets with fries, and Lynne had red beans and rice, which she doused liberally with Louisiana Hot Sauce.

What I most loved was the interior of the restaurant, which is where that Star Wars image comes into play.

Excerpts and covers from novels (particularly those of James Lee Burke) that mention The Pearl were framed and hung throughout the restaurant, which is VERY cool to me.

And this wall near the entrance reminded me of Phillip Godbee sketching on the walls of his New York apartment before he left for Mississippi in Three Fortunes in One Cookie.

I’m happy. You?

I’m still in The City That Care Forgot. I’ve gotten to spend time with people I cherish in a place I love. I have lots to post about–and photos, of course! But I do remember that I like to help y’all get your hump day happy on. So….if you want something from among 14,000 things to be happy about:

please give me a page number from 1 to 612 and another number between 1 and 30. When I get back to the City With the Big Heart tonight, I’ll post your answers. Sometimes delayed happiness is even better.

Misty Monday

It’s not misty here. The weather is amazing and I wish I could capture it in antique Chanel No. 5 bottles and send it to everyone who’s looking with misery at a snowy, icy, rainy, or gray landscape. Speaking of that, I haven’t been checking out the Old Faithful webcam very often, so I was thrilled today to click on it and find these beasts:


Buffalo roaming.

I’m about to embark on my mini-getaway to do some writing, coffee-drinking with Greg, and writer/chick stuff with Marika. Pray to the Internet gods that I have access, or I will be one cranky bitch.

There’s poetry in a kitchen, too

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, on this date in 1892. About writing, she once said:

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down… If it is a good book, nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book, nothing can help him.

Now see, THIS is the moment when I could use a photo of Mark G. Harris dropping trousers when we played 1000 Blank White Cards. Instead, I covered my eyes, because I’m a good girl. Lisa, Lindsey, and Rhonda, however, have no excuse for not grabbing a camera instead of just staring. As for Mark G. Harris, I’ve often said that he’s fearless with his writing, so one day I know he’ll be standing before us all with his pants–at least figuratively–down once again.

Since I don’t have a photo of Mark’s ass, how’d you like to see a photo of:

totally work safe

Something to think about

Several recent e-mails and posts about politics and art made this quote I stumbled across in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way so timely:


Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-groomed, and unaggressive.
Leslie M. McIntyre