Gatsby and Hmm

Gatsby and Hmmm...
       So here is this movie, (The Great) Gatsby -- dandy Leonardo with his crazy-smiley-smooth character-self, who simply dreamed himself out.  Interesting study of making our own dreams come true.  He bumped up against one too many.  Kept thinking he should be the one in the psychiatrist's office.
       The glamour, the costumes, the dancing, the parties, all were spectacular.
       And then there was ... wow.  Her name escapes me.  (guess I was impressed!  Just tip-of-the-tongue syndrome again) And that leading lady played such a lovely fragile part.  So true to life -- she loves two men.  But to whom does she turn when she's in trouble? 
       And Nick, whom I loved most.  But, in truth, I don't understand why Nicky wound up in the asylum.  And if he were going to, wouldn't be on account of all that he caused by his first nod of the head?  I certainly can see him writing his way out.
       Carraway is wordy.  In book and movie.  And I did not get, or want to get, that final stuff about boats against the current and things in the past.  I just wanted him to say The End.
       I did love, and get, the cataclysmic ending, from Plaza Hotel to dead in the pool.  Give a funeral and nobody comes.   Lovely twists.  I'm a great fan of I-didn't-see-that-coming.

New and Approved

It's just come to me that, in addition to writing, reading and movies, I can now list art as a pasttime. Not just others' -- which I love in all medias -- but dabbling in sketchbooks and with colored pencils and markers and charcoal. I take a once-a-month journaling-through-art class with the Silence Foundation, and love it! Teacher Pat Webb has me cutting and pasting and drawing and doodling all over the place. Teaching kids-writing classes, I always urge them to put color on their pages, and I keep fantastic sets of markers available. I love shadow and light. Isn't it nice when we wake up to something we love, or have always loved but dozed through?

From the New York Journal of Books, July 10, 2012

Playing with Matches: A Novel

by Carolyn Wall

Reviewed by Stevie Godson | Released: July 10, 2012
Publisher: Bantam (320 pages)

Lies, lust, and betrayal form the backbone of this Southern story.

More Fried Green Tomatoes than Gone with the Wind, Playing with Matches is, of course, neither. But it is a quintessentially Southern novel populated by quintessentially Southern people who somehow manage to make their “sins”—as universal as they are—seem quintessentially Southern, too. And therein lies much of the book’s magnetism.

When we discover, right at the start, that Miss Jerusha Lovemore, who lives on Potato Shed Road in the Mississippi town of False River, once worked for a chicken circus, the bait—for those of us who love this colorful genre—is already cast.

But of course, it can’t be tied to just any old Southern hook. The writing must flow, the characters must resonate and there must be enough believable quirks and idiosyncrasies to summon up the authentic rhythms of a small town somewhere south of north. It’s something author Carolyn Wall, whose first novel, the equally Southern Sweeping Up Glass won all sorts of accolades and awards, manages masterfully.

By the time, only a few pages on, we learn that the main character, Clea Shine, was born on her mama’s kitchen table “so as not to ruin the sheets upstairs,” we’re already noodling for catfish.

Clea, she tells us herself, only lived in her maternal home for an hour and 10 minutes. It took that long for her mama to get off the table, clean herself up and step into her high heels. “Then she carried me, in a wicker basket, over to Jerusha’s.”

Not that Clea’s mama was too weak and helpless to look after a baby. Fact is, she was so tireless she could drink, dance and laugh all night—and did, mainly with the prison guards from across the way.

That Clea is loved by her stern, black surrogate mother is never in doubt, but the proximity of her “glamorous” white trash birth mother at times puts an almost unbearable strain on her loyalties.

Growing up, “when I felt truly lost—which was most of the time,” says Clea, “I went out to the narrow lot and sat down in the weeds. From there I could observe both houses. After all, I had two eyes, didn’t I? Two nostrils, two arms, two knobbly knees.

“The trouble was, I had only one heart.”

It’s a situation ripe for a tragedy which can only be solved as a grown-up Clea seeks to find her way out of one betrayal too many and back into the life of the one person who truly knows her.

Reviewer Stevie Godson is a columnist for South African newspaper the Daily Dispatch, a copy editor and a former books page editor.

TIMBER!

Two things are on my mind.

Today the cottonwood tree next door is coming down.  It's more than a hundred feet tall and mostly dead.  Storms have threatened to put it on top of our carport or any of a dozen cars, or nearby houes, in the neighborhood.

I remember Sue, who first lived there.  We were eighteen.  Our houses were new -- I was about the have my first son.  We planted a five-foot stick in our front yard.  It was called a fruitless mulberry tree.  Not to be outdone, Sue planted her own stick -- the cottonwood whose funeral we are now attending.  Time does not stop.

The other thing -- I went through the drive-through at Starbucks to get an iced coffee -- love that hazelnut -- and thought about tipping.  A couple of years ago, some Starbucks kept a cup on the outside ledge.  Grateful customers dropped in change or a bill.

I understand that, on windy ways, they could not do that.  They don't set out tip cups at all, anymore.  Why is that?  Did people stop putting money?  Did it fall on the ground and get run over?  Did someone steal the thing?

I rail, regularly, at technology that threatens to obsolete me.  It's come to that.  Just pick up a phone.  Don't bother to get up from your chair.  The world is connected.  I wonder if we can phone in a tip to Starbucks?

Is it possible that, in a few months, the push of a button will bring down a tree?

Publishers Weekly on Playing With Matches

Wow, this today from Publishers Weekly.  A starred review!

Playing with Matches
Carolyn Wall, Bantam, $15 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-345-52569-7
Wall's stunning second novel (after Sweeping Up Glass) tells the heart-wrenching tale of Clea Shine, a precocious girl growing up in the shadow of a northern Mississippi prison in the1980s.  Clea, a white girl, has always lived with her black "aunt" Jerusha and Jerusha's sister in False River, a stone's throw from the house where her mother frequently entertains guards from the prison and other local men.  Though she loves Auntie, Clea's longing for her mother often sends her across Potato Shed Road, where she sees too much and get too little from her mother.  Meanwhile, Clea consorts with colorful characters, including separated conjoined twins born with three arms between them, a boy who lives in a tree, and another boy being held captive under a neighbor's house.  Traumatized and heartsick, 12-year-old Clea flees after she sets fire to her mother's house, with disastrous results, and only returns to False River two decades later when a tropical storm destroys her own house and she discovers that her husband is unfaithful.  Wall's talent and empathy are evident in this story of learning to forgive.  Agent:  Danny Baror (July)

We're off to a great start....

Tip of the Tongue Syndrome

       There’s this awful thing I do when I’m talking – I forget a single word that I’ve used a million times.  It drives me crazy.  At first, I and others like me thought fibromyalgia, in which I live and sometimes wallow, was to blame.  Then we decided it was the meds we take for it. 
       I researched.  Turns out there’s scientifically such a thing as Tip of the Tongue Syndrome, and it’s a side-effect of the way an individual’s brain is formed and mapped.  It gets worse as we get older.
       So far, I haven’t figured out if it’s a responsibility – or lack thereof – belonging to the  brain’s left side or the right.  In a recent class I learned the stunning differences – most of which I remember!-- and I suspect it’s a left-brain thing, this dropping a detail and refusing to search for it.
       All morning I’ve been trying to think of this word:  when you’re hurt or sick, you get a check from Social Security, don’t have to work, and it’s called ______________. 
       Holy jumping up and down – as I drew that underline, I remembered.  Disability.  This morning I tried to call it retirement, pensioned, on and on.  My internal synonym-finder is disabled.  Good thing I drag this big, honking red book around – Synonym Finder by Rodale.  And yes, I could put it on the Kindle, I know.  Don’t even go there.

Hard, Hard Work

            I’m stumped.  Not by a plot problem – although I had a hefty one until yesterday – but boggled by the enormity of the book I’m writing.  By remembering each viewpoint character’s separate and overlapping plotline, not to mention the secrets I want embedded in this book.  Writing in first person was so simple -- this multi-stuff is exhausting.  Then I worry that I don’t have enough importance in my book.  And emotion and loss and fear and happy moments and on and on. 
            I recall the constant, personal urgings of an old teacher, and know that I haven’t pushed parts of this story as far as they will go.  If he were standing, looking over my shoulder, he’d be saying, “Carolyn, Carolyn.  Write bigger.  Write BIGGER!”
           *Sigh*.  My outline feels all over the place – reworked a hundred time, highlighted, stapled, spindled, folded and mutilated.  Today I can blame my not-wanting-to on sore eyes – they’re sensitive to light.  Yesterday, I was busy with a luncheon and teaching.  The day before that….
          A week ago, I can’t tell you the obstacles!
          So here’s what to do.  I guess.  “Self,” I say.  “Go to the chapter you’re working on.  And finish it.  It’s a humdinger, you know it is.  Then listen to where that chapter takes you.  If it’s on the outline map, write it.  If not – does it need to be?”
          One step at a time might save me today.
           I just want all the other writers in this world to know – you’re not alone.