Little boxes of the past

The thing about short stories is that they are themselves little boxes of the past, even if you'd never meant for them to be.

Ann Patchett, These Precious Days

Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett says earlier in her essay "The Nightstand" that she always "wanted to be judged by my best work, the finished product." Flawed early stories and early drafts did not interest her. Yet when one of those early stories is found in an old family nightstand, now owned by someone else, and when her mother presents her with a box of her early stories and other items from her past, the novelist yields and reads her early work. This leads to the line quoted above about stories being "boxes of the past."

Stories may not reveal as much about an author's life as diaries do, but they are close, which is why literary biographers pay so much attention to them. Early stories especially tend to be autobiographical, revealing secrets about authors' lives they may not have even realized they were revealing.

Early drafts of published work can also be revealing "boxes of the past." They show how writing evolved into something grand. In his book The Artful Dickens, John Mullan describes how early drafts of the novels of Charles Dickens show how he experimented with different words, different phrases, different names until he arrived at something that pleased him, which now pleases us in his novels.

Modern writers use computers, making those valuable early drafts nonexistent. Fortunately Ann Patchett began her career with a typewriter.

Who is that masked man?

A 72-year-old woman is the lone survivor of a plane crash in the Bitterroot Mountains, and a younger woman, a park ranger, tries to rescue her. So which woman is the hero? For that matter, which of them is living the better life during those many weeks of search and survival?

Rye Curtis turns expectations upside down in his inventive first novel Kingdomtide (2020).

Cloris Waldrip, a retired school librarian from Texas, is aboard a small plane with her husband when the plane crashes. Both her husband and the pilot die, but she somehow escapes with only minor injuries. She repeats her name a few times into the radio before it dies, then gathers anything she finds that might help — such as her husband's boot to hold drinking water and the pilot's warm jacket — and starts down the mountain.

Meanwhile Debra Lewis, the ranger, hears the name "Cloris" on the radio, but she hears no SOS. After she learns of the plane crash she tries to organize a search, but she finds it difficult to maintain enthusiasm among her fellow searchers. The others assume anyone who might have survived the crash could not long survive on the mountain anyway. So why search? And even Lewis, though believing Cloris Waldrip may still be alive, usually seems more interested in her constant wine consumption than in actually going out into the mountains.

Then she begins an affair with Bloor, one of the other searchers and a man so repulsive readers may wonder why any woman would want to share a bed with him. Yet Lewis's real interest turns out to be Bloor's 17-year-old daughter, who helps with the search

Cloris, in fact, could not survive long in the mountains on her own, but she soon finds that someone is leaving food for her, even starting fires for her. When she finally sees the young man, he is wearing a mask, actually a shirt over his head. Together the two head down the mountain and build an odd relationship that becomes so strong that even when she spots her would-be rescuers she remains hidden in order to remain with her mysterious masked friend a little while longer.

Cloris Waldrip tells her own story, so we know she will survive her ordeal. But what of Debra Lewis?

Making a hero

Westerns seduce us into seeing how mere mortals become heroes, how boys become men.

Nancy Schoenberger, Wayne and Ford

John Wayne and John Ford brought out the best in each other, as Nancy Schoenberger shows in her 2017 book Wayne and Ford: The Films, the Friendship and the Forging of an American Hero.

Schoenberger confesses to having a "John Wayne problem," meaning not just that she is a big John Wayne fan but that she has from girlhood admired the kind of hero John Wayne so often portrays, especially in those many films, mostly westerns, directed by Ford. Such heroes are not universally admired by modern, feminist women, but this author begs to differ. She explains why in her fine book.

Wayne was a college boy when he began working for Ford, mostly moving sets and doing an occasional stunt. Before Ford recognized Wayne's onscreen potential, another director signed him to star in some cheap westerns made for boys. Ford refused to speak to the young actor for a decade, apparently as punishment for what he considered disloyalty, but these years gave Wayne time to mature into the physical presence that helped make him a star in Ford films.

Stagecoach was the first of these, and Schoenberger devotes much attention to this great film in which Wayne plays, as she puts it, "a good bad man." Later she discusses the 7th Cavalry movies and the other films, although surprisingly she has relatively little to say about The Quiet Man, surely one of the pair's best films. But the author's focus falls mostly on the westerns.

The book is as much biography as film study, and she tells us about Ford's drinking problem (between films), his apparent homosexuality and his bullying abuse of his stars (including both Wayne and Maureen O'Hara). Wayne admired Ford too much to be too troubled by the harsh treatment he received, but he had other worries, including his difficult marriages and his money problems. Later came the cancer that would eventually kill him.

Schenberger shows us two flawed, you might even say weak, individuals who nevertheless managed to construct an ideal of what a real hero should look like.

Inspired by bad writing

Eudora Welty can show us what perfection looks like, but twenty thousand pages of bad fiction read over the course of a life can teach you what not to do.

Ann Patchett, These Precious Days

One of Ann Patchett's stepfathers was a successful surgeon, but he wanted to be a writer like his stepdaughter. He produced manuscript after manuscript, and he asked Patchett to read them all. They may have been uniformly bad, as she describes in an essay called "My Three Fathers" in her book These Precious Days, but she does not consider the many hours spent reading those manuscripts wasted time or wasted effort.

"Dialogue, character development, pacing, setting, plot — I had seen every element of the novel run through a meat grinder," she writes. "By burying me in piles of manuscripts throughout my life, Mike made me careful. What a time saver that turned out to be !"

Of course, for bad writing to be instructive, one must first recognize it as bad writing. One does that by also reading good writing, preferably great writing. How are they different? Why does one story zing while another plods? Why does one plot encourage you to keep reading while another makes you want to close the book and do something else?

Bad writing, Patchett suggests, should be read with as much attention as a Eudora Welty short story. Where did the writer go wrong? Why doesn't this work? How can I avoid doing the same thing?

In another essay later in the book, "To the Doghouse," Patchett tells of being inspired by the comic strip character Snoopy as a girl dreaming about becoming a writer. Snoopy may be a dog, but that doesn't deter him from wanting to be a writer, sort of like Mike. And because he begins every story with the words "It was a dark and stormy night," you know, also like Mike, he isn't a very good writer. Yet Patchett tells us in amusing detail all the things she learned about writing from Snoopy.

Snoopy waits by the mailbox eagerly, but then receives nothing but rejection slips. An important lesson for aspiring writers. But he doesn't let rejection slips or bad reviews stop him.

Snoopy has an active, imaginative inner life — turning his doghouse into a Sopwith Camel, for example — and what writer doesn't need an inner life something like that?

Patchett remembers that the first time she ever learned about War and Peace was when Snoopy performs a hand puppet version. Even bad writers can be inspired by great writers, but Ann Patchet shows us how bad writers can inspire us as well.

Missing books

A good mystery does not require a murder, as Eva Jurczyk proves in her 2022 novel The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.

Liesl Weiss is practically counting the days to retirement when her boss in the rare books department at a university library in Toronto has a stroke and she is made acting director. This doesn't seem like a bad way to end one's career until a rare and valuable book supposedly in the office safe turns out not to be there. Then another rare book is found to be a forgery. And to top it off, a member of her staff disappears.

Liesl wants to call the police, but the university president and her library colleagues caution against doing anything that will discourage wealthy donors from contributing more money to purchase more rare books. Thus she herself must play detective.

Readers may beat Liesl to the solution, unless they drink as much as she does, but that doesn't mean the novel fails to entertain.

Jurczyk, as you might expect, is herself a Toronto librarian.

Words in their habitat

One understands a word much better if one has met it alive, in its native habitat. So far as is possible our knowledge should be checked and supplemented, not derived, from the dictionary.

C.S. Lewis, Studies in Words

C.S. Lewis

When scientists want to study the behavior of baboons or zebras, they rarely go to a zoo. Rather they observe an animal's behavior in its natural habitat. In Studies in Words, C.S. Lewis makes the same observation about words. If you want to make a serious study of words — what do they mean? how are they used? — you don't open a dictionary. You observe how they are actually used in sentences in both speech and the written word. That is, in fact, how dictionaries are made.

Studying words in their native habitat is what Lewis does in his book, observing how such words as nature, wit, free and world have been used over the centuries and how they were being used in conversation in his own time.

Words change meaning as time passes, and that is part of the fun. Today we mostly think of wit as referring to a keen, quick and original sense of humor. At one time it suggested intelligence, as in "he still has his wits about him."

Lewis observes that words, like leftovers in the refrigerator, can spoil. That is, they may no longer mean what they used to mean. He mentions liberal, conservative, evangelical, intellectual and temperance as examples. In the years since Lewis wrote his book many other words, such as gay, have been "spoiled" in this way.

Speaking of spoilage, Lewis observes, "Rotten, paradoxically, has become so completely a synonym for '"bad' that we now have to say bad when we mean 'rotten.'"

On camera and off

Who doesn't love Julie Andrews? And who can hear her name without thinking of The Sound of Music? Or Mary Poppins? Or perhaps My Fair Lady, for those old enough to have seen her performance on Broadway?

Yet life, of course, is not all mountaintops, and she reminds us again that she is no exception to the rule in her second memoir Home Work (2019). The first, about her early life, was simply Home.

Her focus this time is her movie career. In addition to the two prominent films already mentioned, she also starred in The Americanization of Emily, Torn Curtain, Thoroughly Modern Millie, 10, S.O.B., Victor/Victoria and a number of other films. The book also covers her television specials, especially those with Carol Burnett, and her concert tours. A second career as the author of children's books is also mentioned.

When not in the spotlight, however, she has lived a life with as many downs as ups, just like the rest of us have. Unlike most of us, she relies heavily on analysis to guide her through life's trials.

Her second marriage to director Blake Edwards, in whose movies she often starred, was mostly happy, despite his chronic hypochondria and occasional bouts of depression. Children from previous marriages were blended with two adopted daughters from from Vietnam, yet their respective work schedules often separated them from their family, as well as from each other.

It didn't help that they often maintained homes in Hollywood, London and Switzerland at the same time, while their children were in different schools here, there and everywhere. Then, too, Blake's former wife was suicidal and Julie's parents and siblings had serious problems that she often had to deal with. So not an easy life. Home did require some work.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Surprise!

What did women do in 1900 when they ran away from their husbands but had no parents to return to? Ellen Cooney explores one possibility in her 2005 novel A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies.

Charlotte has been a submissive wife to Hays, her successful but often absent husband. She has been confined to bed for a long time with an undiagnosed ailment, sometimes described as a "brain disease," but one day she feels well enough to take out a carriage to surprise her husband. Both are surprised, however, when she catches him kissing another woman in a park. Instead of stopping and confronting Hays or returning to their house, she rides on in her carriage, ending up in Boston. 

She remembers that Mrs. Petty, her former cook, now works at The Beechmont Hotel in Boston, so she goes there to find her and seek help. The hotel turns out to be an exclusive residence for women of means, but Charlotte is puzzled by all the young men she finds there.

Meanwhile Hays pursues Charlotte, and she discovers Dickie Lang, an old school friend now a Boston police officer, lurking outside the building. Is he looking for her or does he have some other interest in The Beechmont Hotel?

When this passive woman suddenly takes charge of her life and the men around her, it may not be entirely believable. Yet most readers will enjoy it.

Disposable words

1936 Chevrolet pickup

When I worked for a newspaper an editor challenged my use of the phrase "pickup truck." He changed it to just "pickup" because the "truck" was unnecessary. At one time, of course, the word pickup was an adjective, describing the kind of truck it was. Over time it gained use as a noun, making truck redundant. In the same way a convertible car became just a convertible

Many of the words we use in writing and especially in speaking are unnecessary, or what Patricia T. O'Conner calls disposable in her book Words Fail Me. They just aren't needed. Some of these are redundant, saying something that's already been said. More often they are words that are all but meaningless.

O'Conner lists several such words, very being prominent among them. I overuse very, as I think most of us do. Our intention is to put an exclamation point over the word it modifies. When we say we were "very sick" we mean we had something worse than the common cold or indigestion. When a man is described as "very tall" we mean he is something more than a six-footer.

Yet we seriously overuse the word. O'Conner makes light of this with an imagined Chamber of Commerce speech: "I'm very proud, and very honored, to accept this very distinguished award on behalf of Mr. Dithers, who is very sorry that he could not be here on this very special night." Take out the verys and the speaker would say the same thing in a shorter speech.

Other disposable words include really, somewhat, sort of, kind of, you know, a little and, of course, actually. One of my current pet peeves is the phrase "to be very clear" and all the variations on that phrase. Politicians, officials and TV commentators use such phrases repeatedly, often following them with something that is not clear at all.

Everybody, it seems, needs a good editor.

The queen of 'The African Queen"

More than 35 years after making The African Queen with Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hepburn wrote about the experience in The Making of The African Queen (1987).

The short book, full of photographs (not movie stills), is loaded with charm. In a few, well-chosen words, Hepburn captures the personalities of those involved in making the movie, including director John Huston and producer Sam Spiegel. Her descriptions are often blunt, but never more so than when writing about herself. She calls herself an "old fusspot" at one point and says she "looked like a very freckled female impersonator."

About Bogart she says, "To put it simply: There was no bunk about Bogie. He was a man." As for Lauren Bacall, who does not appear in the film, Hepburn describes how effective she is working behind the scenes. She regards Huston as a genius despite what often seemed to her a lackadaisical attitude about the movie.

The adventure of making the movie in Africa almost rivals the adventure in the movie itself. At one point the African Queen sinks. Army ants stream through the middle of Hepburn's hut. She gets very sick, as do many others who drink the bottled water. Those who stick with alcohol do fine.

"Technical problems galore and no chairs — no dressings rooms — no toilet — hot ginger ale and fruit juice and beer — the problem of sending out lunch for forty people," she writes. Complete sentences are not a high priority for Hepburn.

Anyone who loves this movie would love this book.

Writing and editing

This is a lesson I picked up from my work: writing must be separate from editing, and if you try to do both things at the same time, nothing will get done.

Ann Patchett, These Precious Days

Ann Patchett

Novelist Ann Patchett has a lot to say about writing in These Precious Days, her most recent book of essays, but the essay from which the quotation above comes is not actually about writing. Called "How to Practice," it is mostly about sorting through all the stuff in her house and getting rid of as much of it as she can. Just as she separates writing from editing, she separates decisions about what goes from the decisions about where it goes.

I agree with Patchett, at least about the writing and editing comment, but not entirely. In my own experience, some editing must be done during the writing. This can make the writing better.

My practice when I have been away from my writing for a day or more is to start reading it from the beginning. If were writing a novel, as Patchett does, I would probably start reading from the beginning of the current chapter. While I read, I edit. I almost invariably discover something that needs improving or correcting or I come up with new ideas that need to be included. Often after making a change, I begin reading it again from the beginning, usually making more changes.

Eventually I get to the point where I stopped previously and I can resume writing. This process not only improves whatever I am writing, but it inspires my thoughts when I pick up the writing where I left off. Otherwise I find it difficult to muster up any enthusiasm for what I'm working on.

After I have completed the writing process, I begin the real editing process. Ideally this should happen after the passage of at least a few days to allow me to read it with fresh eyes. This makes it easier to notice typos and other errors, as well as any awkward phrasing that I missed earlier.

Editing, except when done by an actual editor, is part of the writing process. They go together, even if they may be two different tasks done separately.

Life and death

Death "has no interest in essays," Ann Patchett says early in These Precious Days (2021), her latest collection of personal essays. She explains that whenever she's writing a novel, she fears dying before she can finish it. No such fear troubles her mind when she's writing essays, they being short enough to finish before death becomes an issue.

Yet if death has no interest in essays, her essays often show an interest in death, even as focused as they are on the joy of living. The title essay, easily the longest in the book, tells of the close friendship she established with Sooki Raphael, who worked as an assistant for the actor Tom Hanks. She met Hanks while promoting his book Uncommon Type and through him met Sooki.

The two women exchanged emails, but the friendship developed only after Sooki was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Patchett's husband, a physician, suggested Sooki could get the most advanced treatment for her particular cancer in Nashville. Patchett offered her a room in their home near the Nashville hospital. Sooki said she would stay with them for a few days but ended up living with them for months because of two developments: their intense friendship and Covid. These days were precious to both women, in part because they both knew Sooki's disease would likely soon end in death. It did.

In "Three Fathers" she writes about her father and her two stepfathers, all now deceased,  and the influence each of them had on her life. Elsewhere she tells us more about her father, the Los Angeles police detective who arrested Sirhan Sirhan after the Robert F. Kennedy assassination.

The essay "What the American Academy of Arts and Letters Taught Me about Death" tells of her acceptance into the academy, which has no more than 250 members at one time. In other words, one American writer must die before another can be accepted.

Other essays show a lighter touch. "My First Thanksgiving" tells about her being stuck at college one year at Thanksgiving and preparing her first Thanksgiving dinner from recipe books, inviting several other stranded students to share it with her.

"My Year of No Shopping" tells how she abandoned all non-essential shopping for an entire year and how this helped her appreciate what she already had — and allowed her to donate more money for the benefit of others.

"There Are No Children Here" explains her decision not to have children.

In "Sisters" she writes not about her sister, as you might expect, but her mother, who has always looked so youthful that people frequently have asked if she and her daughter were sisters. (My ever-youthful wife was often asked if she and her son were siblings, so I know how this can happen.)

These and the other fine essays in the book confirm the truth of Patchett's title, even if death does lurk in the background, seemingly uninterested.

Read to lead

Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.

Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman

I doubt very much whether President Truman's statement is literally true. Surely there have been illiterate leaders over the years and leaders who could read but didn't. Still I suspect there is a correlation between reading and leading.

Many U.S. presidents gained a reputation for reading. These include Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower (even if he preferred westerns) and John F. Kennedy (even if he preferred James Bond thrillers).

My abiding memory of visiting Harry Truman's Key West "White House" several years ago is the many shelves of books that fill the place. He probably couldn't get away to Key West often during his presidency — it was much more distant than Hyde Park or Camp David — yet even so he filled it with books.

Why would reading benefit leaders? Perhaps because it gives them ideas and inspiration if they read nonfiction. History can guide the present. If they prefer fiction, it can give them empathy. Stories put us into the lives and minds of other people — people of other races, other social classes, other ages, the other sex, other points of view, etc. Leaders should give some thought to the people they are leading. Reading may help them do that.

The semantic halo

In his book Studies in Words (1960), C.S. Lewis writes about what he calls a semantic halo that floats over certain words at certain times in history.

One of his examples is the word gentleman, which at one time was a "designative term" like peasant or nobleman, Lewis writes. Later the term came to refer to men who maintained certain standards. "You are no gentleman," one gentleman might say to another who cheats at cards. The word had gained a halo, which since has been lost.

The word lady also gained a short-lived halo. Eventually people began referring to "cleaning ladies," a sure sign that the halo had been lost. Recently we heard of a man being fired from his job for using the word ladies in reference to female colleagues. No halo there.

Another word Lewis mentions is life. In the 17th century life was famously described as "nasty, brutish and short." The word gained status over the years, thanks perhaps to the phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Life was getting its halo. It became something to be revered, not just human life but all life. Today's political pressures seem determined to strip away that halo, especially pertaining to the phrase "right to life."

In the divided culture we live in today semantic halos seem to come and go depending upon what you believe and which side you take. Transexual has a halo as some use the word. Democracy has been given a halo, especially by those determined to change its definition. Just a few years the two major races in the United States were called black and white. Lately I've been noticing they have changed to Black and white, the capital letter suggesting a halo.