Lorrie Moore On Writing

If you'd like to hear Lorrie Moore talk about her novel A Gate At The Stairs, and if you're interested in Moore's writing process, you should download Barbara DeMarco-Barrett's October 2009 audio interview with Moore for Pen on Fire's "Writers on Writing" podcast (if it's no longer available on iTunes, you can listen to Moore online at the Pen On Fire archive). The 56-minute conversation provides insight into Moore's Midwestern inspiration for A Gate At The Stairs, and touches on some of the novel's characters and themes without spoiling the plot. I think this is the best of all the audio interviews recorded with Moore during her promotion of A Gate At The Stairs, and it's far from narrow.  She reads an "autumnal scene" from the end of the novel at Minutes 14-18.  (If you'd like to listen to Lorrie Moore read a complete short story, check out the links to "Paper Losses" on this earlier Litagogo post.)

Insider Literary Thrills
There are plenty of vicarious literary thrills in this Pen on Fire podcast, including some chortling over the time the Moore's transcendent short story collection, Birds of America (a late 20th century classic), defied its amuse-bouche category and spent three weeks on The New York Times bestseller list (Minute 26), plus a tell-all segment on one of the mysteries of the elite literary universe: how chapters from novels become "stories" in The New Yorker (Minute 20).

Writing Tips from the Virtuoso of Voice
DeMarco-Barrett and Moore both teach writing, and Pen on Fire's audience contains many writers, so there's plenty of craft chat about so-called writer's block, first drafts, the revision impulse, simile and metaphor, plotting and surprise, voice (a very interesting segment at Minutes 12-14), finding time to write as a single mom, the MFA or not-to-MFA question, and the immortal novel vs. short story necessarianisms (Minute 27).

Two-Minute MFA
Here is the heart of Lorrie Moore's MFA advice for free: "Talent is not the problem, the problem is getting kids to work very hard and write about the right stuff, to write about something that is really going to catch fire with them," (Minute 36) and "Never write from something that isn't from the very center of your mind" (Minute 53).

FTC Disclosure:  I received a free copy of A Gate At The Stairs from the publisher when I reviewed the novel for IdentityTheory.com.  The Pen on Fire podcast is free.

Alice Munro's Generous Intimacy

Alice Munro is greedy about how much she can fit into a short story. She is not one of those writers who over-favor a single (whiny) protagonist: her perspective is simultaneously singular and generous, which gives an old-world depth to her stories, but she is the opposite of fusty--her frank and intimate narration is entirely modern and shockingly honest. (According to an interview with Eleanor Wachtel, it was a Munro short story that broke the f-word barrier for fiction in the Shawn-era New Yorker, though Jesse Sheidlower's The F-Word credits a Bobbie Ann Mason story.) As has been said many times before, Munro's stories have the scope of novels and the verisimilitude of Chekhov.  She is profligate with time, place, and event. She does not hoard revelations or dole them out in precious morsels. Her best plots deliver more than one punch: they enact a pacey drive toward the main character's impulse or insight, and then follow up with consequences that knock them in another direction.


Fascinating Munro Audio
The technique and structure of Munro's fiction cannot be dissected--it is too holistically constructed, each element radiating from a shared center of artistry--which makes it all the more fascinating to hear Munro speak about her work. The best audio interview I've ever heard with Munro is the Wachtel one mentioned above, recorded at Munro's favorite Goderich lunch spot in October 2004, and rebroadcasted and podcasted by CBC's Writers & Co. on Canada Day (July 1st) 2009, just over a month after Munro added the 2009 Man Booker International Prize to her mountain of awards. The interview lasts about an hour. It encompasses the arc of Munro's life and career, her opinions on adultery and hardship in fiction, her childhood in rural Ontario and how a scholarship launched her into the wider world, her frustration with the heroines of Tolstoy and her intimation of the sex in Austen, the unconscious theme of the stories in Runaway, the differing nature of her relationships with her mother and father, and her exploratory composition method. The audio is available for online use only from the July 2009 Schedule Archive, but it's well worth sitting in front of your computer and listening to it if you're a Munro fan.

Subscribe to Snag Future Downloads
I also recommend subscribing to Wachtel's CBC Writers & Co. podcast feed on iTunes, in hopes that they'll repost this great interview the next time Munro wins an award, and then you can download it for keeps and put it on your iPod for portable listening. Wachtel is one of the best author interviewers around, so it's worth tapping into the Writers & Co. podcast just to see who's up next (she also interviews filmmakers and journalists). Interviews are available for download for four weeks after they're podcasted.


Elizabeth Strout Lauds Alice Munro
Wachtel assembled a panel of Munro devotees (online link to schedule archive--scroll down to fourth item) at the Vancouver International Writers & Readers Festival in October 2009. Joseph Boyden, Amit Chaudhuri, Joan London, Alistair McLeod, and Elizabeth Strout talk about Munro's writing and her effect on their work. Writers & Co. podcasted the panel's tribute to Munro on 11/23/09 (should be available for downloading until Dec. 09).  Strout's 7-minute reading and appreciation begins at Minute 6:30, but the whole 53-minute panel discussion is interesting. If you download it before it expires from iTunes, you can take it for a walk.


Alice Munro and Diana Athill Onstage
The 30th International Festival of Authors, which took place in Toronto in October 2009, featured a first-ever onstage meeting of Alice Munro and legendary editor Diana Athill, hosted by Bill Richardson. The Globe and Mail videotaped the 44-minute chat (unfortunately the Q&A was not captured on the recording). Richardson wisely lets les grandes dames littéraires hold the floor, but I didn't feel that Munro came through as fully as she does in the October 2004 Wachtel audio interview.  You can watch the whole Munro-Athill chat online at the Globe and Mail's "In Other Words" site.

Munro's Long Career in Short

The publication of Munro's latest collection, Too Much Happiness, led to Sam Tanenhaus's interview with Munro for the NYTimes.com Book Review 11/27/09 podcast*. The 7-minute phone conversation begins around 30 seconds in, and includes the author politely repulsing the "ordinary" and "drab" labels often applied to her characters. "None of them seem ordinary to me," Munro says (Minute 2:30). She calls the short form "expansive," talks about her early influences (Minute 5:30: Chekhov, Welty, McCullers, O'Connor, Maxwell), and she's good-natured about the weary question of why there are no Munro novels, revealing that she once cut the beginning of an attempted novel into four stories. There are some intriguing but spoilerish moments when Tanenhaus and Munro talk specifically about two of the new stories in Too Much Happiness, so if you like to approach your Munro with no foreknowledge, listen to the podcast after you read. The podcast is available for download as of this posting on iTunes, and for online listening at the NYTimes.com podcast archive (November 27, 2009: direct mp3 link here).


*Details corrected 12/9/09, thanks to IFOA.

Doris Lessing and the Fem Diss

Publishers Weekly's fem-anemic 100 Best Books of 2009 (no books by women in top ten, only 29 total) goosed the immortal topic of the relative gravitas of women's fiction and its status in the publishing world. I'm no fan of po-co inclusivity, but at a minimum it seems eco-inco for an industry pub to diss the money base of publishing, a base identified in a recent consumer research report that PW helped produce--you know, the loyal, book-buying women who reliably open their pretty little purses to purchase their gendermates' oeuvres in bestselling quantities, as well as books written by guys. Respect, anyone?

Of Prizes and Men

The PW fem-diss has reinvigorated a discussion of the criteria by which books are judged and the utility of "best" lists and prizes. For direct responses, read these wise and punchy essays by Laura Miller at Salon and Lizzie Skurnick at Politics Daily. You can also listen to Random House sales reps Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness provide illuminating modern and historical context on their 11/11/09 Books on the Nightstand podcast (about 22 very interesting minutes, also downloadable from iTunes).

Twitter Rallies for #Fembook

You can also eavesdrop on the ongoing discussion on Twitter by clicking on this #fembook search hashtag, or participate by acquiring your own Twitter @handle if you don't already have one. (Warning Message: Twitter is currently free, often fascinating, and a huge potential time-pecker.) Charlotte Abbott (@charabbott), host of Follow the Reader, and guest Bethanne Patrick (@thebookmaven) of The Book Studio, will conduct a live, open-invitation #fembook #followreader chat on Twitter on 11/13/09 from 4-5 pm EST (scroll down this page for instructions).

WWDLS?

When I first heard about the PW list, I wondered aloud (on Twitter, of course), "What would Doris Lessing say?" Lessing has come out in the past against an oversimplified feminist call-to-arms, but when she hears her own work patronized she can execute a near-castrating boomerang diss. There's a sterling tranche of online audio from a Q & A she did at the Cheltenham (UK) Literary Festival in 2006 (iTunes link to Part Two--may not work) that captures Lessing's skill at demolishing the disser. I've typed in a mini-transcript below because the podcast audio was unavailable online at posting time.

A Jolly Good Slapping

[The anonymous male questioner speaks in plummy-posh voice, with self-satisfied pauses following each multisyllabic word. Doris Lessing speaks in an assertive yet slightly chipmunky octogenarian voice, pausing for breath and her canny punchlines.]

Minute 19:55 of the Times Talks Books Podcast 10/11/06, Doris Lessing Part Two:

Male Questioner: “I speak from enormous ignorance about your work, except that my wife is one of your best fans, but I wanted to ask you, can you think of anything better than music to characterise what might be said to hold all the diverse African peoples together?”

Lessing: “Well I don’t see why music, which is different in every part of Africa, should apply to the whole continent. You know I must say, you say that your wife is a fan--you’ve got no idea how often female writers hear the following: ‘Oh, my wife loves your work!'--You know what you really want to do, I have to tell you, is to give this very conceited male a jolly good slapping. [audience laughter and applause] Right? …These little women with their little minor interests, is what you’re suggesting. Now, about the music…”

Having dispatched the diss, Lessing talks about real and rubbish African sculpture art, then makes the point (at Minute 23:30) that there is no reason the African continent should be any more united culturally than the European or South American continents.

At Minute 25:30 of Part Two a female audience member says she wants “to balance things out” and states that the Doris Lessing books on her shelf were all placed there by her husband. Lessing says, “Really. Oh, that’s good,” and then she takes another swipe at male-centric attitudes:

“I do get letters from men from everywhere, interestingly, often about The Golden Notebook. A letter I get regularly says, ‘I have given The Golden Notebook to my wife, daughter, mistress or whatever, in order to show that women don’t always have to talk about babies and cooking.’" [followed by a Lessing chortle, and more audience appreciation]

So that's what Doris Lessing might say: a verbal slap, a caution against continental lumping, and an assertion that what she wrote is bigger than babies and cooking.

Dan Chaon's Haunting Identities

The scariest ghost stories don't howl and thunder--they stalk and whisper. PRI: Selected Shorts recently posted the audio of Boyd Gaines reading Dan Chaon's "The Bees," a grownup horror story that stalks both the protagonist and the listener. The hour-long podcast, titled "A Tale of Terror," is apparently timed to celebrate our October cavities-and-hooker-costumes holiday, but the story would be equally scary by a midsummer campfire.

Harken to "The Bees"

Chaon avoids foreshadowing of the heavy-stomping school. His most unsettling moments are created with creepily delicate language, like the unforgettable "little wet mandibles" at Minute 50, language which carries you with unwanted beauty through the climax of the story. Once you get to the end of "The Bees," you should go back to the first section to fully appreciate the horrific symmetry of the final image. For relief, the last few minutes of the podcast feature a calm discussion between host Isaiah Sheffer and Dan Chaon on eeriness in the short story (interview audio only). The full-length podcast won't be available for free downloading past mid-November 2009, so hustle your trick-or-treat cursor over to iTunes and get Selected Shorts' "A Tale of Terror" podcast from 10/19/09 before the copyright curfew takes it away.

The B's Have It

The text of the opening paragraphs of "The Bees" can be read on McSweeney's website. The story was commissioned by Michael Chabon for McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales (spooky spelling trivia: take the "bee" out of Chabon and you get Chaon!). In this interview in "The Believer" Chaon talks about his earlier books and reveals that some of his inspiration for "The Bees" came from a song with the same title by Belly.

"The Shepherdess" and The Internet

Chaon's "The Shepherdess" is not a horror tale in flounces, but an interestingly structured short story about the difference between noticing and perceiving. His most recent novel, Await Your Reply, twists identity, geography, and time into a head-spinning recombination. Reviews of Await Your Reply have called it "the first great novel about the Internet" and "mesmerizing." I have yet to find a suitable podcast interview that doesn't hint too much at the novel's ending (I'm spoiler-phobic), so for now if you want to listen to Chaon's fiction you'll have to stick to "The Bees" from PRI: Selected Shorts (but download it soon). Once you've read Await Your Reply, and cannot be despoiled of its surprises, I highly recommend reading these interviews with Chaon at Bookslut and The Millions.

Justine Larbalestier on Liar's True Colors

Last summer the cover photo of a teenage girl on the advance reader copies (ARCs) of the American edition of Justine Larbalestier's Liar caused consternation. The first-person narrator vows to stop lying on page one, and describes herself as biracial in the first ten pages--yet the ARC cover image was of an unambiguously caucasian girl. The extra doubt suggested by the cover threatened to overbalance the delicately pitched reliability of Liar's narrator from the get-go.

Pre-Publication Alarm

Early readers and reviewers cried foul--what possible justification was there for putting a white face on the cover of a book narrated by a biracial teenager? The publisher, Bloomsbury Children's Books, did the right thing and re-shot the image (you can see the white and black covers in this article at Publisher's Weekly). The new cover is both a happy ending for Liar's US edition and the beginning of an important discussion about book marketing and race. The author does a great job of starting this discussion in an audio interview with CBC's Q radio that was recorded shortly after the cover redo, and also on her blog.

Listen to Larbalestier

You can listen to Larbalestier's interview online at CBC's (unchronological!) Q archive page--search for the podcast for August 28, 2009, and if you're not a Dolores O'Riordan of the Cranberries fan, fast forward to Minute 20, or about 25% of the way across audio bar. You can also download the audio of the Cranberries/Liar interview from CBC's Q podcast on iTunes (and kudos to CBC for keeping archived podcasts available for more than a month). Again, the Larbalestier interview begins at Minute 20 and lasts about 20 minutes.

Lorrie Moore's Balsamic Voice

Lorrie Moore's new novel, A Gate At The Stairs, is narrated by Tassie Keltjin, the daughter of a gourmet potato farmer/smuggler, and the central plot sautés around an ambiguously-partnered chef who employs Tassie as a nanny. Much haute-foodie verbiage ensues, so when I recently listened to a podcast of Moore reading her short story, "Paper Losses," the influence of A Gate At The Stairs made me consider Moore's spoken voice in gustatory terms. The flavors suggested are dark cherries and balsamic vinegar. When Moore reads aloud she conveys an end-of-summer sweetness swirled (but not blended) with the balsamic acerbity of a woman who's too smart to miss the aesthetic indignities of her marital dismantling, but who is also too human to deny the emotional cost, or the sweetness of the children the marriage produced. There's also Moore's whisky sibilance, which aerates her voice-vinaigrette with every "s." (I know this is over the top, but this is what happens when you make your fans wait more than a decade for a new book: they get a bad case of imitative-pretentious prose palate.)

You can count on Moore to avenge roguery with humor, and in "Paper Losses" the protagonist's wit is both heartbreaking and triumphant. The story is dry, dry, dry, but also full-bodied, and surprisingly un-depressing, thanks to Moore's complex voice, both on the page and as recorded. You can listen to Lorrie Moore read "Paper Losses" at the Guardian Books archive (about 25 minutes) and come up with your own voice flavors. You can also read the text of "Paper Losses" on the New Yorker's fiction archive.

For a writer so famed for her literary voice, Lorrie Moore's actual voice is rather scarce online. She's done radio snippets to promote A Gate At The Stairs, and the interview she did with Scott Simon for Weekend Edition in early September is one of my favorites (9 minutes). The video of Moore's address to BookExpo America 2009 (18 minutes) is also available online.

I'm still waiting for an in-depth audio interview with Moore about A Gate At The Stairs. Perhaps Tom Ashbrook will interview her for an hour at On Point when she comes to the Boston area to read at Brookline Booksmith, or maybe Michael Silverblatt will caramelize her on Bookworm. If so, I'll post updated links. In the meantime, you can read my review of A Gate At The Stairs for IdentityTheory.com, in which I try to convey the scope of the novel without spoiling the plot.

Labor Day Podcast: Ron Carlson's Classic Tale of Terrycloth and Theoretical Math

Ron Carlson's short story, "Towel Season" (first published in Esquire in 1998) is a modern classic, as much about reconciling vocation and family life, as a portrait of summer in a neighborhood where recursive towels and seemingly fixed-value adults travel from cookout to cookout. The story is narrated by a theoretical mathematician who's grasping after his big discovery, the one that will save him from plain old applied engineering. Innumerates need not fear the subject matter: the process of theoretical math is suggested in visual, accessible language. The story runs more wet than dry, and it's a pleasure to follow the trail of towels to the silver bus at the puzzle-like ending, where the towels are dropped and math and theory get melded with marriage.

PRI: Selected Shorts has reposted the audio of actor James Naughton reading "Towel Season" in their Selected Shorts iTunes podcast just in time for Labor Day 2009. Naughton reads with unassuming comedic timing, and his voice lends a everyman quality to the suburban yet "unsettled" character of Edison. The "Towel Season" audio runs about 35 minutes (long enough to grill some boneless chicken), and it's followed by "A Bad Joke," a short Ha Jin story read by B.D. Wong. The combined podcast, titled "Figuring It Out," will be available for free download for four weeks.

If you must hear "Towel Season" after the weather's cooled and the title has expired from the podcast, you can purchase the Selected Shorts: William Hurt Collection 3-CD compilation from NPR. The Collection includes audio of Hurt reading "Towel Season," as well as stories by Aleksander Hemon, Richard Ford, and Tobias Wolff.

Non-audio news: Carlson's most recent book is the novel The Signal. Carlson talks about his new book, and also his "Towel Season" story, in this profile from The Orange County Register.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Hothouse Career (So Far)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is only in her early thirties but she has already written a lauded coming-of-age début (Purple Hibiscus), won the Orange Broadband Prize for her definitive novel of the Biafran war (Half A Yellow Sun), published a collection of insightful short stories set in Nigeria and the U.S. (The Thing Around Your Neck), completed a Master's in Creative Writing at Johns Hopkins and also a Master's in African Studies from Yale, and in 2008 she received a five-year "genius" fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation. A native of Nigeria, Adichie has spent a significant amount of time in the U.S., and plans to continue her bi-continental residency.

I doubt the MacArthur Foundation panel had to deliberate more than 30 seconds before awarding her a fellowship. Lord knows what she will accomplish now that she is free to write full-time--I myself can't wait to read her next book, but in the meantime, there are several interesting Adichie audio interviews available to while away the anticipation and deepen your understanding of her work.

What you discover listening to the podcasts is that Adichie is a most genial genius. In spite of her many garlands, she is modest about her awards, responds to all questions with an open mind, and sports a very low laugh threshold. Adichie is also serious about difficult topics without being preachy or shrill, and explains her views of the Biafran struggle and current Nigerian politics in a way that is easy to understand whether you are familiar with the history or not. Her interviewers wisely give her plenty of air time, creating podcasts that showcase both Adichie's intelligence and good nature.

An Hour of Family and Power

In June of 2009, close to the publication date of her short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck, Adichie spent nearly an hour with Eleanor Wachtel of CBC's Writers & Co. The podcast provides a survey of Adichie's fast-track career and a comprehensive profile of the artist in her own words. Wachtel's questions cover a lot of Adichie's family background and the process through which the experiences of family members and family friends inspired her to write about a war that ended before she was born. Wachtel also draws Adichie out on women's roles in pre- and post-colonial Nigeria, with anecdotes about Adichie's great-grandmother, who inspired the story "The Headstrong Historian" in the new story collection (Minute 4), and how the lingering effects of Victorian Christianity continue to distort contemporary Nigerian women's attitudes toward work and marriage. The podcast also includes Adichie's perceptive comments on the aspirational culture of America, and the effect that emigration has on couples who move to the U.S. from Nigeria.

The Writers & Co. Adichie audio interview is only available for online listening at the CBC online archive--scroll down the June 2009 schedule listing to the second interview and click on the arrow beneath the photo of Adichie and Wachtel. (Podcasts of more recent Writers & Co. interviews are available on iTunes are available for download; listings expire after four weeks.)

Half A Yellow Sun Burns On

In her interview with Wachtel, Adichie says she wrote Half A Yellow Sun to start a conversation about the Biafran War, and indeed her novel has filled a gap in history, even in Nigeria, where the events of May 1967-1970 are not yet taught in schools and not always discussed, even within families who experienced loss and displacement. There are two podcasts that cover the novel in detail, both of which would be best listened to after reading the novel, as they reveal a fair amount of plot.

A MacArthur Genius At Your Book Club

Imagine Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie attending your book club meeting, answering a bunch of questions, plus reading aloud three excerpts from Half A Yellow Sun. This 52-minute World Book Club podcast on Half A Yellow Sun from the BBC (recorded in June of 2009) can fulfill the fantasy. All that's missing is the wine. Host Harriet Gilbert and the assembled World Book Club studio and email audience do a great job of asking questions about the novel's inspiration, characterization, structure, and politics.

The excerpts that Adichie reads aloud include an early scene when the new flag of Biafra, with its image of half a yellow sun, is unfurled (Minute 4:20), a description of a family reunion at a refugee camp (Minute 23:30), and a near-mythical yet possibly historical train scene that conveys the personal and familial horror of war (Minute 38:10).

This Half A Yellow Sun book club interview is available for downloading from the World Book Club iTunes podcast and also online at the BBC. But I can't emphasize this enough--unlike your real-life book club, you must finish Half A Yellow Sun before you listen, or you will do yourself the disservice of diluting the book's power in advance.

Pre-Genius At Ease

Edward Champion interviewed Adichie back in 2007 for his inimitable Bat Segundo Show (BSS #141) when Half A Yellow Sun was already on the rise. The result is a 36 minutes of frank and provocative chat in a tone of intelligent informality. (Minute 1 contains a bit of funky Bat Segundo audio theatricality which should be skipped if you are offended by off-color Kleenex humor, which Adichie apparently is not). The conversation, which sounds like it was recorded in a coffee shop yet is clearly audible, contains interesting exchanges on the use of point-of-view in war novels, and also some rather unique topics not found in other interviews, including Adichie's literary approach to sex scenes (Minute 13) and the themes of class and body odor (Minute 16), as well as a serious discussion of the effectiveness of using evocative rather than exhaustive detail to depict scenes of violence. The BSS #141 Chimamanda Adichie interview is available for listening online. Other unique author interviews are available from the Bat Segundo Show A-Z Guest List.

A.S. Byatt: Plunder and Possession

Fans of A.S. Byatt who are impatient for the U.S. release of The Children's Book (October 2009) can fill the gap with two podcasts from the Guardian (UK). The first, a 17-minute audio clip from Claire Armitstead's Guardian Book of the Week series, features Byatt reading the first chapter of The Children's Book, followed by some discussion of the characters and Byatt's inspiration. This podcast can be listened to online at the Guardian's Book of the Week archive.

Twaddle-Free Prof Chat

The second podcast is a Guardian Book Club love-wallow of interview and Q & A about Possession, Byatt's 1990 Booker Prize novel (and it's full of spoilers, so read the book first). This is 51 minutes of audio you can download from The Guardian Books iTunes listing (summer of 2009) and listen to on your next ramble (also available on the site archive). John Mullan, Guardian book critic and host of the Book Club, is a repeat Possession reader; he plus the assembled devotees get a lot out of Byatt with swotty-yet-accessible questions. It's like listening in on an extremely amicable fac lounge discussion at University College London (where Byatt used to teach, and where Mullan currently teaches) without having to pursue an advanced degree. Byatt tells Mullan that she agreed to the Guardian Book Club event because Mullan is one of the few critics whose reviews "restore writing to the reader--you write reviews in really good English with no twaddle" (Minute 14:40).

From Browning to Bathrooms

Among the pleasures to be heard in the Guardian Book Club podcast on Possession:

the naming of the 19th century poets that Byatt read as a child (Tennyson and Browning),

Byatt recounting her desire to branch out from the "she felt" narrative construct,

Byatt riffing on George Eliot's and Honoré de Balzac's point-of-view strategies,

Byatt rueing the prevalance of twaddle in literary deconstruction, tempered by a deep bow to Jacques Derrida's "La Mythologie Blanche" (Byatt calls it "La Métaphore Blanche," a logical fusion),

Byatt giving a nod to Terry Pratchett and the consequences of loving one's characters,

Byatt sharing a retroactive glimpse of the Coleridge scholar whose activities in the British Library first inspired the title Possession (and then explaining the layers of meaning the word subsequently generated in Byatt's linguistically hyperactive brain),

Byatt responding to a question about the significance and sourcing of allegorical names in fiction, and

Byatt running with an audience member's mention of the startling frequency of bathrooms in her oeuvre, illuminated by a quote from poet George Herbert (it has more to do with light and reflection than loos).

Allusionpalooza

If you want a condensed sample of Byatt's allusive agility, fast-forward to the allusionpalooza in Minutes 41-44, during which Byatt manages to flit from Charles Dickins, to critic F.R. Leavis, to le nouveau roman, to Byatt quoting Iris Murdoch quoting Sartre on fiction as frame, to the scarring and wildly exciting effect the mirror in Disney's Snow White had on the young Antonia, to the Quakers' attitude toward selfhood and looking at one's reflection, to using a hairdryer to clear the fogginess in hotel bathroom mirrors, to Sylvia Plath's poem "Mirror" which Byatt interprets in this interview as describing a mother's face rising out of the mirror like a terrible fish--all this in three minutes of audio. Phew. But it is quite fun to listen to.

Byatt Answers a "Humdinger" of a Question

When an audience member asks Byatt about whether women can be "possessed" by a relationship and still maintain enough aloofness for intellectual creativity at Minute 45:30, Byatt, mother of four, says "That's a humdinger of a question," and notes that it's probably the first time she's ever used that word. She goes on to give a thoughtful, frank, and good-natured answer, endorsing D.H. Lawrence's ideal of balanced human relationships as attempted in Women in Love, while also noting that regardless of intentions or centuries, the biological reality of raising small children affects a woman's independence. Of course, that's not all: at Minute 48 Byatt adds a quick reference to a neuroscientist's study of medieval romantic love, where the objective is for two to become one, and then die, an idea that Byatt does not endorse.

If you liked Possession, or if you like idea-based lit chattiness, you're bound to enjoy listening to A.S. Byatt and the Guardian Book Club plunder three centuries of literature in this lively discussion of a dual-century book based on academics and poets in love.

Post-Father's Day Poems

First of all, congrats to all the dads who contrived to spend Father's Day with their kids instead of celebrating their mistresses' "magnificent parts"--you have demonstrated that you understand symbolic gesture better than the average polithario. (Couldn't Governor Sanford, a father of four, have picked one of the other 51 weekends in the year to go missing for action?)

I meant to do a Father's Day post to honor the steadfast dads I know (including my favorite soccer dad), and maybe even write a mawkish Father's Day sonnet or two, but my daughter's mid-June surgery and recovery (she's fine now) left no time or energy for such frivolities (and here's a shout-out to my dad for coming back east on short notice to help). Besides, when I turned to recent podcasts on fatherhood, I was not moved. All I could find was a memoirist recounting har-har anecdotes of swim diaper apprenticeship while lamenting the bygone days of hands-off dapper daddying. Fathers should know better.

Poets Raised by Stepfathers and Foster Fathers

Trying to find something more meaningful, I kept thinking of a favorite poem by Ben Jonson, a epitaph titled "On My First Son," first published in 1616. The poem is too sad for Father's Day, but since we are almost in July, I feel I can post it, along with a link to a Poetry Off the Shelf podcast about Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" (1962), a poem that appreciates some of the traditional--even menial--duties that devoted fathers perform without complaint, or mincing after media medals of commendation (scroll down for Hayden audio link).

17th Century Dad Who Loved Too Much

Playwright and poet Ben Jonson (1572-1637) never knew his biological father, but that didn't handicap him from being full of father-feeling toward his own children. His first son, also named Benjamin (which in Hebrew means "child of my right hand"), died of the plague on his seventh birthday. In "On My First Son" Jonson celebrates the boy's life and tries to find faith-based solace in the thought that Benjamin, by dying young, has been spared the harsher aspects of life and longevity. The conceit in the poem is that Jonson's abundant love for his son was the "sin" that provoked God into reclaiming the boy as payback after exactly seven years.

On My First Son

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;

My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy

Seven years thou'wert lent to me, and I thee pay.

Exacted by thy fate, on the just day,

O could I lose all father now! for why

Will man lament the state he should envy,

To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,

And, if no other misery, yet age?

Rest in soft peace, and asked, say "Here doth lie

Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."

For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such

As what he loves may never like too much.

Jonson declares his son "his best piece of poetry," in a nice conflation of love and inspiration, the success of which is proven by the enduring appeal of the poem. He also wrote an epitaph "On My First Daughter" for Mary, who died aged six months.

"Love's austere and lonely offices"

The Poetry Foundation's Poetry Off the Shelf podcasts (also on iTunes) are a reliable delight--producer Curtis Fox usually packs a theme, an interview with a poet, and the reading of a poem or two into no more than 20 minutes (average podcast lasts 10 minutes). Poetry Off the Shelf's "Honor Thy Father's Day" podcast (iTunes link) includes a Library of Congress recording of the late Robert Hayden reading his 1976 poem, "Those Winter Sundays," an eloquent poem of complex emotion expressed in accessible language, and which ends with the beautiful lines, "What did I know, what did I know/of love's austere and lonely offices?" Fox discusses the poem with contemporary poet Terrance Hayes, who reads his own poem "For Robert Hayden" afterward. The Poetry Foundation's site has the text of "Those Winter Sundays" online, and offers bio pages on Hayden and Hayes, with links to more poems. There is also a clickable list of 60 Father's Day poems.