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Every Last One-The Illusion of Safety

March 17, 2011

Anna Quindlen’s novel Every Last One explores the moment when safety–the whole illusion of safety–is pulled out from under a family and a community.

In the interview below, Quindlen discusses writing, reading (including her own favorite authors), winning the Pulitzer Prize, how she became a novelist, why she began writing nonfiction first as an Op-Ed columnist, and what happened in the national furor over being uninvited from a university commencement address.

Reading, she remarks here, is transgressive. How, you ask? Take a listen!

And if you’ve read or are reading Every Last One, let us know what you think.

Tell us your favorite passages.

What is this novel teaching you about the craft of storytelling?

And what insights do you learn from Anna Quindlen herself, speaking below….

Object Lessons-Anna Quindlen’s First Novel

March 11, 2011

“You are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on the bus, or in the car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not your bank account, but your soul.”

–Anna Quindlen, from a Short Guide to a Happy Life

Though she’d wanted to be a novelist since childhood, Anna Quindlen, raised by a practical, hard-working Catholic family, needed rent money as a young adult and found a steady paycheck as a journalist. By 1992, she had made her name as an Op-Ed writer, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1992 for her “Public and Private” column in The New York Times. (For a sample of her nonfiction insights rich in historical and political understanding, see Quindlen’s reflection here on Mary Todd Lincoln.) In 1995, she left full-time work as a journalist to become a novelist, the decision partly inspired, she says, by the early death of her mother at age 40. Quindlen was only 19 at the time. That loss significantly shaped who she became, reminding her to live into her dreams, and never to take life for granted.

Next week, I begin teaching a class on The Novels of Anna Quindlen, and it’s been a gift–in that harried, have-to, I-don’t-have-time-for-this way that many genuine gifts in this life arrive–to begin learning more of the author’s life, and reading more of her work. I’m learning so much myself about the craft of writing, and the art of seeing into the human soul. I find both her critique and her celebrations of modern American culture thought-provoking, intelligent and often prophetic.

Whether or not you’re officially taking the Anna Quindlen class through Belmont University’s Liberal Studies program (adult degree primarily with non-traditional hours), know that I’d love to have you join our conversation here on this blog over the next eight weeks.

So let me ask:

Which of Anna Quindlen’s published works, nonfiction and fiction, are your favorites?

If you have a link to a favorite NYT or Newsweek column, by all means share it!

And what do you think of her first novel, Object Lessons?

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

March 8, 2011

Hope and Despair. Transformation and Chaos.

These are the words I’m supposed to be typing into forms describing a writing workshop this summer.

It’s cold and gray outside, still bleak.

Winter appears still to be winning. So does despair.

Why is it, I wonder, that I’ve often found my way back to hope in reading poems that should take me anywhere but back to hope, poems that show a world entirely without hope or direction or purpose?

Having spent more time in the woods and at Friday night football games than with poetry prior to college, I was introduced to T.S. Eliot for the first time by Stanley Crowe, a Romantics specialist in the English Department of Furman. And though Eliot became a person of faith later on in his adult life, my favorite of his poems is his earlier “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” with its haunting insecurity and desperation.

Here’s the beginning. No doubt you’re already familiar with it, but I hope it helps jump-start your own writing or composing or painting or creating today….

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

by T. S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question…

Oh do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap….

Read the rest of the poem here.

And let us know if T. S. Eliot helped spur YOUR creative process….

Hats Off to Songwriters: So Much To Learn From Great Lyrics

March 7, 2011

Ever wondered…

What makes a good song

so incredibly moving

or catchy

or memorable?

“It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.” ~Joan Baez

What is it about the words, for example, of “Bless the Broken Road” (lyrics by Marcus Hummon, Bobby Boyd and Jeff Hanna) that gives us no choice but to pull the car over and have a good sob?

For those of us in Nashville, it’s THE topic of discussion. The guy who serves you your pizza on weekends spends his midnights with his guitar trying to crack the code. The Target cashier who seems a little spaced out has just jotted down on a napkin the lyrics she is sure will be her big break. It’s all around us. The question, that is; the answers…they’re more elusive.

Particularly since moving here six years ago, I’ve been far more aware of what lyrics catch my attention and the All Important WHY–as well as the gifted songwriters behind them, quietly strumming at the Bluebird Cafe while Rascal Flatts and Faith Hill make their words famous.

Unlike those of us (non-song) writers of us who have whole books to fill with our words–a luxury that can lead us into temptation of being long-winded and slow to get rolling–songwriters operate with a tight limit to their number of lines –and must make every word count. Images have to be painted in a handful of words; stories must run their full arc in a matter of three minutes.

Whether you’re a songwriter or song-lover-listener, tell us what you think ALL writers could learn from your favorite lyrics about storytelling or capturing and holding someone’s attention or….

Please feel free to comment with video or audio links to singer/songwriters whose lyrics have something to teach other writers about the craft of a story arc:

Here, for example, is singer/ songwriter Kyle Matthews‘ powerful “Been Through the Water,” put with visuals by an unnamed individual:

And here’s a peek into one of Nashville’s legendary songwriting watering holes, The Bluebird Cafe, with “Let’s Go to Vegas” (lyrics by the funny and always insightful Karen Staley and made famous by Faith Hill) being performed:

For an ongoing discussion of great lyrics (as well as books, food, faith and friends, be sure to see Milton Brasher-Cunningham’s wonderful blog Don’t Eat Alone.

What insights do YOU have?

What can good songwriters teach every writer?

Prodigal

February 27, 2011

A woman–you might know her–had two daughters. There came a time when the younger one said to the mother just what the mother had been expecting (not looking forward to, you understand, but expecting nevertheless) to hear.

“Look,” said the girl, “I need the Visa and the keys to the Volvo. And I’ve been meaning to mention, Mom, it’s time we talked early inheritance. Here’s how it is: I’d like to see this dusty old town in nothing but my long-term memory. Need a place that’s got more to offer on Sunday mornings then Baptist preachers and monster truck pull, a place where banjo’s not the only beat to move to. But I’ve got this cash-flow problem, see, and people say you’ve got more money than god. And I figured if you divided the estate… So what about it, hmm?”

Please find the rest of the story below, from Grit & Grace

To order: Grit and Grace: Portraits of a Woman’s Life (Wheaton Literary Series)

The Chicago Tribune described Grit & Grace: “Written with much heart and wit, this little gem of a book touches on the ordinary and profound experiences that make up a woman’s life . . . a poignant and satisfying collection . . . funny and sad, inspiring and awfully surprising.”