Revanche (a film by Gotz Spielmann)

Revanche, a 2008 film written and directed by Götz Spielmann, is good. Very, very good. It's a film that feels weighted every moment, like something inevitable and awful will happen, despite the characters' best of intentions.  And so it goes: In a seedy area of Vienna, an ex-con man Alex works in a brothel where he meets and falls for Tamara, a Ukranian hooker.  In an attempt to protect Tamara, pay off her debts that keep her tied to the brothel owner, and take her away with him, Alex plans a bank heist.  But Alex's encounter with a rural cop and later the cop's wife leads them all toward a different conclusion, one that uncovers human frailty in the face of love  loyalty, and revenge.

The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2008 and won a number of awards. It was nominated for the 2009 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn) on Sunday

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mckaysavage/ / CC BY 2.0

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn's Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, is a collection of essays about women in extraordinary circumstances that the two journalists met and interviewed. Yet despite the horrors each of these women faced, an inner strength kept them from giving up. The authors describe the despicable conditions and horrid treatment in painful detail. So, the book is hard to read, to realize people can be treated that way, to understand that rising up and out of those circumstances remains so difficult. The culture condones it in some cases. Corrupt police look the other way or take advantage of the situation themselves in other cases.

Take Meena Hainsa, an Indian Muslim. She was kidnapped, trafficked, sold and kept enslaved in a town in Bhihar, near Nepal's border. She like many girls from poor village families in Nepal, India, and Cambodia are taken to town by middlemen with promises that they will work as fruit sellers. Instead, they are sold to brothels. And even if there was a chance to escape--where would they go? Their own family would not even take them back after learning their daughter lost their virginity, was taken by men.

Given the subject matter, I struggled with the brunch I would pair with the book club's discussion of the book. The women, who come from countries in sub-Saharan Africa, from Cambodia, Thailand, and India, are vastly different in terms of language and culture. Yet, all come from economically impoverished backgrounds and so the idea of serving opulent food was at odds with the women being represented in our reading. Playing host for such a book was proving more difficult than I thought.

So as I drove home from a busy morning downtown, I stopped at the new Whole Foods grocery store in Inner Bay in Seattle. Whole Foods, wholesome foods, and then I knew what I would cook. The book is about subsistence, the raw elements of human nature are all we have left when we find ourselves abandoned. And it is their strength of character that makes these women survive when all seem against them.

Subsistence is simple. Subsistence is fresh. Subsistence is to satisfy basic needs. So, I chose the egg. I cooked simple french omelets. Cheese. I shredded a bit of cheese on top, a small luxury: Morbier A.D.C. raw Mile, Les Trois Comtoi. Apparently morbier cheese is known for how it is treated. During the cheese processing, beer, water, or wine is poured over the rind and so the cultured cheese takes on a kind of nutty flavor.

I used salt and pepper to flavor the omelet and a little butter. The very basic of basic seasons. I bought a loaf of fresh bread from Whole Foods as well. Heated in the oven so the crust was flaky. Then despite extra carbohydrates, I fried potatoes as well, adding a little salt and pepper as well as garlic for spice.

On the table I had fresh grapes and strawberries, and a bit of watermelon. I made a pot of Darjeeling tea as well as brewed some coffee.

Bread, egg, potato, fruit. Of course the meal was a luxury far more than many of the women in this book had.

Those of us who read the book know that it was a stroke of luck that we were born here in the US versus in the small villages of Ethiopia, Congo, or Cambodia. But the crux of a book like this is to realize that we have the capacity to help, to change things on a small scale or even a large scale. A book like this opens the world wide to knowing why and how.

Nicholas Kristof's columns in the New York Times

Nicholas Kristof's channel on YouTube

Sunday Brunch Menu

French omelet with Shredded cheese: Morbier A.D.C. raw Mile, Les Trois Comtois
Potatoes seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic
Bread
Butter and French Cantalet cheese
Goat cheese
Strawberries
Red grapes
Watermelon
Coffee
Darjeeling tea

HOW TO INTERVIEW SOURCES FOR NON-FICTION WRITING (and How to Tell When They are Lying) with Charles R. Cross

Tuesday, April 13, 2010 - 7PM

I am thrilled to work in a job where a great deal of my time is spent writing. And in order to write, I have to interview a fair number of people. So, for this reason (as well as to be in the same room as Charles Cross), I went to Charles R. Cross's How To Write Like I Do workshop on interviewing at 826 Seattle.

Charles Cross is author of seven books, including Led Zeppelin: Shadows Taller Than Our Souls and Heavier Than Heaven, his biography of Kurt Cobain. A writer who knows how to interview people to be sure. http://www.charlesrcross.com/

So here are a few of the tidbits I gleaned from two precious hours under his tutelage.

Prepare
1. Write a wish list of interview subjects. (Cross says his list may be 12 people for a magazine article and 300 people for a book)
2. Do informational interviews to find out "who else to talk to."
3. Make up a matrix of who to talk to when, as in at what point in the writing do you need that critical information or after you have some critical information that you need in order to gain valuable perspective from a particular person

Asking for the interview
1. Don't pay them. Offer to buy them lunch.
2. Make them feel like they are essential to the story being told.
3. Be prepared to do the interview when you make the call to ask for the interview. Have the tape recorder ready to go, questions ready, pen and paper at hand.
4. If they're famous or have done other interviews, read and listen to everything the person has said and don't ask the same questions.
5. If don't reach them, record the date of the call and when to call back. Never give up. Never get mad or take it personally if the person doesn't call back.

During the interview
1. Be friendly, but stay professional at all times. In other words, control the interview. Ask the questions you need to ask.
2. Record the interview.
3. Listen attentively. Never underestimate the power of silence.
4. Ask a question repeatedly in different ways until you get the answer you need. But don't get testy, mad, or defensive.
5. Practice the Columbo technique: act dumb but never act like you know as much as you do, as in don't act like you've never heard it before.
6. If anything is controversial, let the person you are interviewing bring it up.

After the interview
1. Transcribe the interview
2. Go back to people when you find out new information.
3. Choose wisely what you use.
4. Capture the essence of someone's voice.

October 5, 2009 Ron and Don of MyNorthwest.com interview Charles R Cross

Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage (Elizabeth Gilbert)

By the best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love, the sequel, Committed takes us with Elizabeth Gilbert as she comes to terms with a life-changing decision. In fact, she's committed to the decision. Committed to a significant other, ring or not. Committed to make marriage vows, like them or not. In this most recent book, Gilbert meditates on her reluctance to marry Felipe, a Brazilian man she had been dating and living with for two years.

He is the same man Gilbert fell in love with at the end of the sojourn she chronicles in Eat, Pray, Love, now being made into a motion picture with Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem.

Gilbert is not alone in her decision not to marry, as it is shared by her significant other. It is that they are forced to make this choice when no other is left available. Felipe is permanently blocked from returning to the US after "overusing" his tourist visa, according to the Homeland Security guard that "deports" him back to Australia, where he has citizenship but no longer a home, and hasn't had a home there in over ten years.

So for nearly a year, the two of them travel from one cheap hotel in Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, or Indonesia to another. All the while, Gilbert researches the history of marriage in the Western world and interviews married women, not all of them Western.  She interviews a Hmong woman in Vietnam as well as her own mother and grandmother to find out  if they were happy to be married and if they were okay with whatever they gave up in getting married.

Gilbert's book interested me, not only because I thoroughly enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love, but because as a single woman Gilbert's own age,  I, too, have thought a great deal about marriage, its benefits and detriments. And in comparison, other kinds of commitment that don't involve an exchange of vows and a signed, witnessed piece of legitimacy. For as Gilbert discovers in her research, and I have read and heard before, studies show marriage benefits men much more than women. Women who marry are more likely to be depressed than their single sisters; they are less healthy in general; and they don't make as much money or go as far in their careers. The inverse of all of these is true for married men. They are richer, healthier, and more successful when compared to their bachelor brothers.

Albeit, I have no statistics or studies to back me up, I'm going to go out on a limb so say that  not all single men are like my good friend Scott who dines out more often than he uses his own kitchen.  And not all single women are akin to the Cosmopolitan-drinking, weekends-on-the-town with Carrie and friends on Sex and the City. Because unlike these women, I like to cook. As do many men I know.  Likely all of us for the same reason.  We like really good food, and food worth eating does not come from a box or a carton that is reconstituted with oil and water or nuked in a microwave.

Here's another tidbit that women reading this may recognize. For a great while, I found myself reluctant to admit I liked to cook, because what often followed was a comment that my liking to cook would make me a good wife (and note here that I know full well that this comment was always meant as a compliment), but it was a comment that I never took lightly.  For what I heard, nice or not, was that my culinary aptitude was akin to a job qualification, or was it a designation?

So, I was relieved that Gilbert was not the chief cook in her book, or was that purposeful? She purposely mentions that it is her boyfriend, Felipe.  I can name a number of men that cook delicious food, but I can also imagine that not a one of them have been told that he would make a good husband, based on his skill in the kitchen.  Because a woman who cooks is akin to a woman that cares for a man and her children. That's how I would interpret the comments I received. A caretaker. Someone who brings comfort as well as sustenance to those she loves. Gilbert has no inclination for children, unwilling as she is to make the sacrifices she sees her own grandmother and mother made in marrying and starting families.

So, if I were to cook or to dine, I would not choose the caviar and champagne moments associated with marriage proposals. For Gilbert, like me, does not take the decision to marry lightly. Rather it is a decision mulled over, journalled about, researched, and talked about endlessly into the night.  And in times of stress and strife, what do we normally turn to? Comfort food would be "it" for me. Mac 'n cheese, of course. Cheesey, creamy bowls of macaroni noodles. Or a bowl of minestrone and a long fresh baguette. A glass of Beaujolais. Food that stirs tastebuds, brings back memories of the cozy kitchens we felt at ease in. Because for all the hesitation I have to be a mother, I loved being mothered. Does this make me "unwomanly or unnatural or selfish," adjectives Gilbert uses to describe the attitude some may have toward women who are not dying to have children or get married? I certainly hope not.

Because the truth is I would readily invite my whole neighborhood over for a Friday night cocktail or a Saturday barbecue of grilled salmon. And my nephew knows he has got me wound around his little finger when it comes to spending time with him. Because I have never for a minute doubted the joy that children bring.

More on Elizabeth Gilbert: http://www.elizabethgilbert.com

826 Seattle: HOW TO INTERVIEW SOURCES FOR NON-FICTION WRITING

Tuesday, April 13, 2010 - 7PM
HOW TO INTERVIEW SOURCES FOR NON-FICTION WRITING
(and How to Tell When They are Lying) with Charles R. Cross
How to Write Like I Do Adult Writing Series at 826 Seattle

One of the most important skills for any writer to learn is how to properly interview sources. Often, aspiring writers put excessive amounts of energy into crafting prose, ignoring the quality of the source material used to create their thesis. For a biography, interviews are usually the foundation upon which a book is built, but they are also vital to journalism, memoir, script writing, and historical fiction. For Charles R. Cross’s 2005 book, Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, he interviewed 325 people—and a dozen of them were liars who could have scuttled the book, and history, without proper interviewing truth-seeking techniques. In this one-night workshop, Cross will address some of the basics of interviewing techniques, but he also will discuss how to determine the validity of subjects—an increasingly important aspect to writing in an era of fabrication and scandal.
BUY TICKETS AT BROWN PAPER TICKETS!

ABOUT CHARLES: Charles R. Cross is the author of seven books, including Led Zeppelin: Shadows Taller Than Our Souls released in October 2009 by It/Harper Collins. Heavier Than Heaven, his biography of Kurt Cobain, won the ASCAP Award for Outstanding Biography in 2002 and is presently being made into a theatrical film. Cross was editor of The Rocket, the Seattle music magazine, from 1986 through 2000. His writing has appeared in numerous magazines including Rolling Stone, Esquire, Playboy, Spin, and Spy. His writing has also appeared in dozens of newspapers including the London Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Seattle Times, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He lectures and teaches at a number of colleges on both journalism and pop culture. He has taught interviewing techniques at a number of writing workshops, and he occasionally is hired by law firms to present this class.

Short Stories Live: A Mother's Tale, Sunday, May 23, 2010, 4 – 6pm

Downstairs at Town Hall, enter on Seneca Street
Your mom deserves more than a day—let’s make May Mother’s month and celebrate with this rich afternoon of classic short stories. On the program: "Eleanor’s Music" by Mary Gordon, a 2007 Best American Short Stories selection; the remarkable allegory "A Mother's Tale" by James Agee; and Cynthia Ozick’s chilling, compact Holocaust story "The Shawl." Program directed by Kurt Beattie. Presented by Town Hall with A Contemporary Theatre.

Advance tickets are $13/$10 Town Hall members, seniors & students, at www.brownpapertickets.com or 800/838-3006. $15/$13 at the door. Late seating is not guaranteed.

LEARN MORE:
www.acttheatre.org

Science: Lee Hood: Genomics 101, Wed, May 5 at 7:30 pm

Science: Lee Hood: Genomics 101
Wednesday, May 5, 2010, 7:30 – 9pm
Town Hall, Great Hall, enter on 8th Avenue

Institute for Systems Biology co-founder Lee Hood and his colleagues recently published a groundbreaking paper detailing the first whole genome sequencing of a family. Expected to boost the power and impact of genetic research, the study offers the first direct estimate of the human intergenerational mutation rate and pushes researchers closer to discovering the role genes play in diseases. Hood will recap the Human Genome Project, tie it into recent research, and discuss where this technology is headed. Presented as part of Seattle Science Lectures, with Pacific Science Center and University Book Store. Series sponsored by Microsoft.

Tickets are $5 at www.brownpapertickets.com or 800/838-3006, and at the door beginning at 6:30 pm. Town Hall members receive priority seating.

LEARN MORE:
www.systemsbiology.org
Read about genome sequencing in The Seattle Times
And in The New York Times

Seattle Poetry Slam, Sun, April 25, 7 – 9:30pm

Sunday, April 25, 2010, 7 – 9:30pm
Town Hall, Great Hall, enter on 8th Avenue

The Seattle Poetry Slam’s biggest show of the year will feature World Poetry Slam Champion Joaquin Zihuatenejo as well as the top eight performance poets in Seattle competing for a spot on the 2010 Seattle National Poetry Slam Team. Each year, more than 500 poets from 50 cities converge at the National Poetry Slam Championships, this year in St. Paul, Minn. Since 2000, Seattle has had a strong presence at this competition, regularly placing among the top 10 teams; last year, Tara Hardy, Karen Finneyfrock, coach Daemond Arrindell, Greg Bee, and Maya Hersh brought home the second-place trophy for the “Group Piece” competition.

Advance tickets $15/$12 earlybird/$10 under 21 at www.brownpapertickets.com or 800/838-3006.

LEARN MORE:
www.seattlepoetryslam.org
On YouTube

David Remnick, Mon Apr 19 at 7:30 pm

When New Yorker editor David Remnick writes a book, he doesn’t shy from big topics, or big subjects. His 1994 book Lenin’s Tomb, about the collapse of the Soviet Union, won the Pulitzer Prize; he’s also the author of King of the World, the story of Muhammad Ali during the civil-rights movement. His latest book, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, charts the president's evolution from a confused young man to an icon of hope. UW Communication Professor David Domke will discuss the book with Remnick. Presented by Seattle Arts & Lectures.

Tickets are $15 general/$30 patron, at www.brownpapertickets.com, 800/838-3006, or at the door. A reception with Remnick for patron ticketholders will be held from for more information.

Black Female Pioneers in the Old West , April 15, 7-9:30 PM

There are some saucy tales to be told as this generation moved from emancipation to madams, mothers, cowgirls, and society ladies. Despite oppressive circumstances, by grit, they thrived.

Northwest African American Museum
2300 S Massachusetts St
Seattle, WA 98144
April 15, 7-9:30 PM
Buy Tickets ($7) @ http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/72065

Hunger, a film (Steve McQueen)

Hunger is a film about the 1981 Irish hunger strike by the Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. Written by Enda Walsh and Steve McQueen, who also directed, it premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, and won the Caméra d'Or award for first-time filmmakers.

The imagery in this film is haunting. The naked, bony bodies of the proud, defiant men. The ugly brutality of the conditions. The visceral pain. The hunger epitomized in the starving body of Bobby Sands. A film that is riveting and difficult to watch.

Writing prompt: Write a scene in which one of the characters is furiously angry and powerless against the forces at work in the scene or other characters.

Hunting and Gathering (Anna Gavalda)

I lucked out big time when I was invited to join this book club. Not only do we talk about intriguing books, but the food we eat to accompany the conversation is worthy of a five-star restaurant. So, henceforth, I will review books from this book club alongside the menu.

March 14, 2010

Perhaps most perfect is the most recent book club read: Hunting and Gathering by Anna Gavalda. I say the "most perfect" as food is central to the gained intimacy of the characters, and an amicable setting for friends to gather and discuss books.

Around our real table, Carol proudly admitted to using Volume 1 of Julia Child's original cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And it sounded like she and her husband spent many hours following the recipes to a tee, complete with all the butter. It wasn't the first time. The book looked well worn, with stains like bookmarks on favorite recipes.

On each of our plates, Carol had placed a menu:

Potage Parmentier (Leek and Potato Soup, blogged about here: http://cookinginpajamas.onsugar.com/Mastering-Art-French-Cooking-Potage-Parmentier-aka-Leek-Potato-Soup-3462687)

Salade avec Sauce Vinaigrette (Salad with French Dressing, the dressing copied here: http://bad-girls-kitchen.blogspot.com/2010/04/sauce-vinaigrette-french-dressing.html)

Quiche a la Tomate, Nicoise (Fresh Tomato Quiche with Anchovies and Olives, and I thought I didn't like anchovies. How wrong I was!)

Quiche aux Champignons (Mushroom Quiche)

The dessert, Carol added, had been too much after cooking the other dishes for most of the day. So, instead, after the meal, she pulled out frozen containers of lemon and raspberry sherbet.

Anna Gavalda

Carol had cooked French food because the book of the month, Hunting and Gathering, had been originally published in French as Ensemble, C'est tout. It was Anna Gavalda's fourth book. It's the story of a oddball group of four characters brought together despite their history, baggage, and circumstances in a timeless apartment where they are all little more than temporary squatters.

Camille Fauque, the central character, is a failed artist. Anorexic thin, we meet her when she has given up all hope and resolved to get by as a cleaning woman at night. Yet, living with Philou and Franck and eventually Franck's grandmother, Paulette, she finds herself wanting to find her way back.

Philou, the endearingly tall, awkward and stuttering fellow that Camille invited over one evening for dinner, becomes the catalyst that eventually brings Camille into the apartment after he finds her deathly ill. He comes from an aristocratic family, but has little affinity for them. His interest lies in by-gone centuries, and he opts to sell postcards on the street.

Franck is a womanizing, seemingly selfish and conceited fellow, who works six days a week as a chef. And yet, he becomes essential to the nourishment Camille needs for her transformation. She requests the food he cooks so that she will "be warmer and more appetizing," she says.

(An interesting idea--that good food can make us more lovable. All the more reason for us to talk about a book around a meal!)

The three, led largely by Camille, kidnap Franck's doddering grandmother, Paulette, from the public home to live with them in the apartment. Paulette is slowly slipping into dementia, but "with it" enough to recognize Camille needs a house as much as a home. She is by far my favorite character, especially after she comes into her own, teaching Camille how to plant and care for a garden.

(Again-food! Subsistence and life force, but thanks to birthplace and privilege, a taste-bud buffet stringed chemically to our feel-good meter.)

But why oh why was the French title translated into "hunting and gathering?" The French, "ensemble, c'est tout," translated imperfectly, is "together, that's everything," a more accurate title, if you ask me. Living together, despite squabbles and irritations, is infinitely better than living alone. And that friends, dear, dear friends, can provide a sense of belonging when family is absent or cancerous.

If my one gripe is that the ending is too predictable, I have to still admit that I kept reading with the same fascination 'til the end. Probably because a skeptic like me expects failures too often. Failed relationships. Failed love. Failed careers. And each one of these characters has failed. Failed in big ways. And still, these characters find solace in each other, making me realize that human compassion, love, and hope survive calamity. So long as there are others and that they stay together. That's everything.

Now a motion picture, starring Audrey Tautou. Trailer for the movie at: http://www.huntingandgathering.com.au/


PS Stay tuned. Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times is up next. And I'm the chef. Any suggestions for menu items?

Writing Prompt with video

An elderly couple walked into the lobby of the Mayo Clinic for a checkup and spotted a piano.  They've been married for 62 years and he'll be 90 this year.  Describe the moment right before they started playing.

Arundhati Roy at Town Hall (March 29, 2010)

Arundhati Roy, small in stature, stood tall, elegant, defiant in a red sari on Monday night before a sold out crowd at Town Hall in Seattle.  She is author of the New York Times best selling and Booker Prize winning The God of Small Things. And a prolific nonfiction writer and outspoken activist and critic of social and political issues in India. She read an essay from her new collection, Field Notes on Democracy, published by Haymarket Books, a project of the Center for Economic Research and Social Change, as well as from a recent essay she published in Outlook called "Walking with the Comrades." http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264738.

In "Democracy's Failing Light" she talked of the failings and shortsightedness of governments bent on spreading democracy, blind to the other kind of evil democracy perpetuates. She writes, "what happens now that democracy and the free market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profits."

In reading her recent article from Outlook, she spoke at length about her experience going into the forest of Chhattisgarh in West Bengal to meet the people that the corporations and government officials in India are calling "terrorists."

An incendiary categorization that Roy cuts down to size.  She explains succinctly by telling this story:

"I arrived at the Ma Danteshwari mandir well in time for my appointment (first day, first show). I had my camera, my small coconut and a powdery red tika on my forehead. I wondered if someone was watching me and having a laugh. Within minutes a young boy approached me. He had a cap and a backpack schoolbag. Chipped red nail-polish on his fingernails. No Hindi Outlook, no bananas. “Are you the one who’s going in?” he asked me. No Namashkar Guruji. I did not know what to say. He took out a soggy note from his pocket and handed it to me. It said, 'Outlook nahin mila (couldn’t find Outlook).'

'And the bananas?'

“'I ate them,' he said, 'I got hungry.'

"He really was a security threat.

"His backpack said Charlie Brown—Not your ordinary blockhead. He said his name was Mangtu. I soon learned that Dandakaranya, the forest I was about to enter, was full of people who had many names and fluid identities. It was like balm to me, that idea. How lovely not to be stuck with yourself, to become someone else for a while."

In the article she describes the real issue as the enormous resources that are at stake in the conflict. To control them, corporations can make enormous profits, at the terrible, fatal expense of the poor they take them from. Stop water far up the stream by a dam, turn it into energy to be sold by the rupee to those who can afford it. Divert the water from the fields of sustenance farmers downstream, and irrigate the large company agricultural holdings or toward multinational companies like Coca Cola. http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100401/FOREIGN/703319884/1103 The corporations say they are bringing the tribal peoples "into the mainstream." Yet, they turn language into an insidious form of power to benefit those who can wield power and influence, leaving the poor isolated and alone. Add government buy-in and media influence, and Roy says the "wall of propaganda" hides the "well of silence" as the voices of those marginalized are not heard.

In the question and answer session that followed her reading, one woman asked her about the fiction Roy writes.  And Roy talked about the merging of fiction and non-fiction in the experience in the forest, about how the people she met took on and shed names and identities to protect themselves and others but also to honor the dead, who have died perhaps in the struggle for liberty and to protect their livelihood.

I see Roy unmasking what one side of the fight calls "fact" as a fictional tale they want to feed the rest of the country and the world.  And by entering the forest and recording the marginalized tribal people's history and their experience, she brings light to the truth of their struggle to survive on their own terms.

A.Word.A.Day's Thought for Today

Bangkok, Thailand 2002

A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg © 2010 Wordsmith.org

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
To write that essential book, a great writer does not need to invent it but merely to translate it, since it already exists in each one of us. The duty and task of a writer are those of translator. -Marcel Proust, novelist (1871-1922)

Where to write

Where do you like to write? My preference changes.  Sometimes I like to write at home. Make myself a cup of tea, prepare a hot toddy like buttered rum, or pour myself a glass of something red, then close the door of the spare room, and  leave it to whatever is up there in my brain and the energy of my fingers to fill up the screen.

Other times, I cannot sit still. Rather, my attention cannot be still.  I need the background noise of a cafe to draw me into myself and the story.  It feels a little like hiding.  You know, alone at a table.  No one to talk to.  It's much easier to drown the dialogue and thoughts in a story, focus attention there.

Today I find myself at the Pig & Whistle in Greenwood.  A hefeweizen with a lemon. Mmmm. I love hefeweizen.  It's noisy and I'm early to meet a friend for dinner.  There's free wi-fi. My laptop computer.  And positive energy yet from a writing session I just left. Perfect.  Just the kind of situation to spin off a paragraph or two.

826 Seattle: How To Use A Tomato To Tell Your Life Story (3.9.2010)

Local food writers  Molly Wizenberg and Matthew Amster-Burton laid out five principals to writing well.
1. Develop your own Voice
2. Tell a Story
3. Do your Homework
4. Avoid Cliches and Catch-all Adjectives
5. Revise

Inventive car and house metaphors to explain each of the above principles, notwithstanding, the two writers provided palatable morsels of how-to's for a packed room of would-be and practicing writers.  For example, Wizenberg used Ira Glass, host and producer of This American Life, to illustrate "voice" in a literal way--how easily we can recognize his voice and rhythm when we hear him and that affects the way we hear the stories he tells. In essence, no one else could tell the same story like he does.

The "tell a story" principle in food was a tall order, I thought. That is, until they served us each a chunk of kimchi and a block of chocolate and asked us to freewrite. One woman wrote about a period of her childhood in Korea and still another described her love-hate relationship with five-star-spicy food. And I remembered I used kimchi to spice up salmon soup I used to make in Japan.  Then it didn't seem so far off that writing about food were stories, too.

As a science writer, there is no article I write that doesn't involve copious research.  It comes with the territory.  But Amster-Burton's challenge to use the telephone hit home with me. He said, "When you bring someone else into your story, it gives the story a ring of truth that it would never have with only you and your paper." "Great writing sounds like truth," he added, and explained that someone said it but he couldn't remember their name.

Writers they recommended: Jonathan Gold, Francis Lam, Tad Friend, MFK Fisher, David Chang and Peter Meehan, Jeffrey Steingarten, and Frank Bruni

The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Muriel Barbery)

I knew that Elegance of the Hedgehog was a best-seller sensation, and like most folks, I'm drawn to books with such a reputation. And don't return the book to the library until I'm finished either, even if it is two weeks overdue. All to savor the sensation itself.

Apparently, the first printing was only 4000 books, and the demand in France soon skyrocketed. But what exactly is the appeal, I ask myself now, having finished every page.

Curious characters, perhaps? Two characters balance the narrative. A French concierge, Madame Renee Michel, who lives in a posh Parisian neighborhood, inconspicuous to the other tenants because she feigns the kind of personality an old, crotchety, not-well-off concierge would have. Her secret, however, is that she is a voracious reader of philosophy, literature, an art, music, and film affectionato, especially Japanese cinema. The other character is as much of an oddball. Paloma Josse is a 12-year old, unhappily living in the same building with her family, whom she regards as shallow. Resigned to this fate, she believes, Josse decides that on her 13th birthday, she will burn the apartment and commit suicide with the sleeping pills she has been sneaking from her mother. What upsets the isolation of these two is the moving in of a wealthy Japanese businessman, Monsieur Kakuro Ozo. He sees right through their disguises.

Or is the allure the drip-dropping of famous Japanese directors, philosophic musings, allusions to Tolstoy--both Michel and Ozo's cats are named after Tolstoy characters? Perhaps not surprising is that the author trained in and then taught philosophy. And that she currently lives in Japan with her husband. Take a look at her own blog: http://muriel.barbery.net/. I adore the pictures and the reflections--short and deep. So perhaps now I am merely in awe of the author, hoping some of her talent rubs off on me.

But why oh why end the book in the way it does? Take away the quills of Michel's porcupine self, which in more ways than one, are the weapons to protect her. For me, the wrap up is too tidy, too neat. And just plain disappointing. That's all I can say, as I cannot be a spoiler, and thus I trust you will read the novel and come to your own conclusions.

A Word A Day

I am subscribed to A Word A Day's listserv, which delivers a single word and its meaning and etymology to my inbox everyday. Check it out for yourself:
http://wordsmith.org/awad/index.html

Writing Prompts

Tonight at my writing group, Leah gave me this prompt: "why here is an apple in my bag." Ay ya yay, is what I thought. That's a tough one. But as my pen started scribbling, I started to write about two teenage girls, their relationship threatened by the loss of a treasured item. How I got that from that prompt is beyond me. But somehow the act of letting words run like a cascade of running water through the cogs of imagination pull out the most unusual narrative routes.

I have this book called "The Writer's Block: 786 Ideas to Jump-Start Your Imagination," which is chock-full of writing prompts.

Here is one I recently used: Pillowtalk.

Try it out for yourself.