Eleven years ago when memoirs were becoming the literary flavor of the day, A New York Times editor named Neil Genzlinger wrote an essay in the Book Review lamenting the proliferation of the “absurdly bloated genre.” It was entitled The Problem with Memoirs. Yes, the moirs strikethrough was intentional to emphasize the Me in memoir. In his essay Genzlinger raged against the “age of oversharing” arguing that “unremarkable lives” should go “unremarked upon, the way God intended.”
Archive for Writing
Fifty-years ago I wrote a short story about a deceased bachelor lawyer in San Francisco who wrote fiction secretly for 40-years. When his townhouse was cleared following his death, the executor discovered the manuscripts neatly stacked in a closet and contacted a publisher to determine if they had literary worth. He said yes, and when published they were celebrated as a national literary event.
I’ve always been interested in the distinction between the creative process and its end product. My character was reclusive but felt compelled to write. He noted in his journal that with the volume of literature, mostly unread, filling library shelves was overwhelming and he had no interest in adding to it.
I’ve never had a literary agent or an editor, but I developed a deep appreciation for the skill set after hearing Mary Norris, copy editor at the New Yorker, read from her book Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen several years ago. But there’s a film playing in theaters now that has expanded that appreciation exponentially.
Turn Every Page is a documentary that chronicles the fifty-year relationship of Robert Gottlieb, the editor-in-chief at Alfred A. Knopf Inc. and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Caro. The film is the result of a seven year-long project by Lizzie Gottlieb, Robert’s daughter and an accomplished film maker in her own right.
Two days until the end of my Dry January…
On Friday night a friend asked me why I wasn’t drinking at our granddaughter’s birthday celebration. I deflected. The answer is complicated but it’s about gratitude… and grace. Here’s the story.
Marilynn and I have “cocktail hour” almost every night. We’ve set that time aside to be together without an agenda. It’s our little ritual. We continued it during Dry January. M still had her glass of wine but I went dry. I’m looking forward to the taste of my first Rangpur Tanqueray martini on Wednesday (recipe on request), but I chose to observe Dry January as a reminder that alcohol almost killed me once and how grateful I am that it didn’t.
I have not so much emulated the birds that musically sing,
I have abandoned myself to flights, broad circles.
The hawk, the seagull, have far more possess’d me than the canary or mockingbird.
I have not felt to warble and trill however sweetly,
I have felt to soar in freedom and in the fullness of power, joy, volition.
Walt Whitman, Old Age Echoes from Leaves of Grass
At end of each year the winter solstice and family birthdays remind me we’re at the end of something and the beginning of something else – a convergence of old and new – things to celebrate and things to ponder. Time to review the passing year and reset for the what’s coming.
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