A Book That Defies the Passage of Time (Women's National Book Association Newsletter)

My note for member news in The Bookwoman, the most recent issue of the Women's National Book Association newsletter:

Captured:  The Forgotten Men of Guam
By Roger Mansell
Naval Institute Press, November 2012

A book is a kind of space capsule arrowing through time. It is a complex thought that may travel from hand to hand, place to place, and speak to its readers, whomever and wherever they may be, long into the future. My dad, Roger Mansell, passed away in late 2010, but it felt like he was saying hello when, last fall, I received my copy of his book, Captured: The Forgotten Men of Guam.


He had been working on his book for over a decade, delving into the archives and interviewing survivors of some of the most horrific suffering imaginable during World War II. An Army veteran, though not of that war, my dad had dedicated his retirement years to maintaining a massive website of data on the Allied POWs of the Japanese in WWII. This data base and his diligent emails helped several families locate the remains of loved ones and connect ex-POWs with fellow survivors. 

When he saw the end of his battle with cancer approaching, my dad asked me to take his manuscript to the post office, to ship it to Linda Goetz Holmes, the first Pacific War historian appointed to advise the government Interagency Working Group declassifying documents on World War II crimes.  As a writer myself with several books published, I had imagined that I would be the one to shepherd his book to publication. But Ms. Holmes, the author of  Unjust Enrichment: American POWs Under the Rising Sun, among other works about the POWs, turned out to be the perfect person for the job, and bless her heart that she took it on. 

Oftentimes, we writers and readers can get caught up in the short-term focus on what’s new; what’s for sale by the cash register in the airport; who won this prize or made the most sales— and it’s all so much smoke and ultimately forgettable sparkle. What a profound thing it is to be able to pick up a book and hear the voice of a person, whether my dad or one of the POWs—anyone for that matter—who is no longer living. A book, after all, and whether in paper or digital format, is a wondrous little package, a vessel for stories; and stories, including such painful ones as my dad’s book recounts, allow us to explore what it means to be human.  

— C.M. Mayo

For more about Roger Mansell’s life, work, and book, Captured: The Forgotten Men of Guam, visit www.rogermansell.com

Guest-blogger Christina Baker Kline: 5 Quotes that Influenced the Writing of a Novel

What fun it was to run into my fellow VCCA resident, novelist Christina Baker Kline, at the recent Women's National Book Association Reading Group panel in New York City. Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University and the author of several novels, she has just published the intriguing Bird in Hand, which opens with a horrifying accident and then delves into the intricacies of betrayal. Read on!

Five Quotes that Influenced the Writing of a Novel

When I’m working on a novel I become obsessed with its themes, and look for inspiration anywhere I can find it. Paintings, photographs, films, poems, essays, novels – everything I take in is filtered through the lens of my current obsession. (I’ve written about some of the visual inspiration for my new novel, Bird in Hand, here and here.)

Recently I opened a file I kept while working on Bird in Hand. It’s filled with newspaper clippings, handwritten and typed pages, poems torn out of magazines, Post-it notes in soft yellow and acid green. One 2”x2” fragment – the bottom of a “To Do” list – has only this, in my handwriting: Don’t worry about starting. Just begin. No story is too large to tell. (Did I write these words, or was I quoting someone? Either way, I must have found them inspiring.)

Leafing through this file, I can trace the genesis of my ideas. The scrap of paper, for example, with phone numbers on one side and Four danger signs for a marriage: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, emotional withdrawal scrawled in black pen on the other. Below this I wrote, “Is [Bird in Hand] a love story or a tale of betrayal? Is it about finding your soul mate, or losing everything you hold sacred? How can the two stories be the same?”

Below are some passages I found in the file that shaped my novel-in-progress –- and why:

1) “I used to think if you fell from grace it was more likely than not the result of one stupendous error, or at least an unfortunate accident. I hadn’t learned that it can happen so gradually you don’t lose your stomach or hurt yourself in the landing. You don’t necessarily sense the motion. I’ve found it takes at least two and generally three things to alter the course of a life: You slip around the truth once, and then again, and one more time, and there you are, feeling, for a moment, that it was sudden, your arrival at the bottom of the heap.” -- Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

This novel-– which, like Bird in Hand, is about the accidental death of a child that sets in motion a series of events that changes the lives of the main characters-– had a huge impact on me. My own opening paragraph, I later realized, echoes the beginning of Hamilton’s powerful book.

2) “Those of us who claim exclusivity in love do so with a liar’s courage: there are a hundred opportunities, thousands over the years, for a sense of falsehood to seep in, for all that we imagine as inevitable to become arbitrary, for our history together to reveal itself only as a matter of chance and happenstance, nothing irrepeatable, or irreplaceable, the circumstantial mingling of just one of the so many million with just one more.” -- Alice McDermott, Charming Billy

Bird in Hand is about four people, two of whom betray their spouses. I was interested in writing about moral ambiguity, which McDermott so brilliantly parses in this novel. If you truly believe that your spouse is not your soulmate, and that your own happiness is vitally important, what do you do?

3) “Close to the body of things, there can be heard a stir that makes us and destroys us.”-- D. H. Lawrence, Study of Thomas Hardy

That people’s deepest feelings cannot be constrained by social norms or boundaries is an idea I wanted to explore in this book (and an idea that preoccupied Lawrence). Though two of my characters disrupt - and arguably destroy - other lives in their quest to be together, they are oblivious to all but their own happiness.

4) “It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can’t people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing.” -- Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier

My four characters are constantly at odds. Their preoccupations, passions, and dreams are often in conflict. In developing this story, I wanted to give equal weight to each perspective. I was fascinated by the complexity of The Good Soldier, and at how skillfully Ford got to the core of his characters' motivations.

5) In truth, I did not read Chekhov’s short story “The Lady with the Dog” until after Bird in Hand was published. But this quote (from the Norton edition) is uncanny in its precise application to my story – down to the reference to birds:

“It seemed to them that fate had intended them for one another, and they could not understand why she should have a husband, and he a wife. They were like two migrating birds, the male and the female, who had been caught and put in separate cages. They forgave one another all that they were ashamed of in the past and in the present, and felt that this love of theirs had changed them both.”

At the end of the story, as at the end of Bird in Hand, the characters are on a precipice. Chekhov writes:

“And it seemed to them that they were within an inch of arriving at a decision, and that then a new, beautiful life would begin. And they both realized that the end was still far, far away, and that the hardest, the most complicated part was only just beginning.”

--- Christina Baker Kline

P.S. Baker Kline also hosts a blog, A Writing Life, for which Yours Truly recently provided this guest-blog post. Among Baker Kline's most popular posts: "My 10 Year Overnight Success."

---> For the archive of Madam Mayo guestblog posts, click here.

Reading Groups: A Panel Discussion for the Womens National Book Association NY October 21 New York City

October 21, 2009, New York City
6 - 9 pm.
A Panel Discussion in Celebration of National Reading Group Month
Women’s National Book Association, NYC ChapterWNBA–NYC at the Mint Theater
311 W. 43rd Street, Suite 307, New York NY
Moderators:
Rosalind Reisner (Read On . . . Life Stories and Jewish American Literature, Libraries Unlimited)
Miriam Tuliao (Assistant Director, Central Collection Development at New York Public Library)

Authors
Eva Hoffman (Appassionata, Other Press)
C.M. Mayo (The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, Unbridled Books)
Julie Metz (Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal, Hyperion/Voice)
Anne Roiphe (Epilogue, Harper Perennial)
Roxana Robinson (Cost, Picador)

Members and friends welcome! Admission free for paid-up members; $20 for nonmembers. RSVP required to programs@wnba-nyc.org

Blogging Basics - Womens National Book Association, Washington DC

Join the wiki-wacky-web 2.0 fray! Here's an announcement from the Washington DC chapter of the Womens National Book Association:

Blogging Basics - Feb 11, 6:30 - 9pm at Sumner School, 1201 17th St., NW in DC (snow date Feb 18th, same time & place) check in, network & light refreshments 6:30 - 7, program 7 - 8:45, cleanup. Presenters: Jo Golden, Joy Butler, Kristen King, Karren Alenier; Moderator Jada Bradley - come do some creative warm-ups and learn about legal & copyright issues, how to promote your blog, and blogging for fiction writers. FREE to WNBA members, $10 for non-members. RSVP to
wnbaeventsdc (at) gmail.com by Feb 9.

P.S. Several WNBA members have blogs worth checking out. Among them, Leslie Pietrzyk's excellent Work-in-Progress. Also, if you're interested in the subject of blogging, check out Writers' Blogs: Best (& Worst) Practices, my notes from a talk for the 2008 Maryland Writers Association Conference.

Mary Quattlebaum on Hello Ocean and the 5 Senses Game

My DC writing amiga and fellow WNBA member, childrens's writer Mary Quattlebaum, has just started blogging for the National Wildlife Federations' Green Hour. Here's her latest, a review of Pam Munoz Ryan's Hello Ocean:

The ocean: playful, powerful, mysterious. What kid isn't intrigued by its crashing waves and salty tang? Hello Ocean is a sense-tingling read-aloud, whether your family is anticipating a trip to the beach or simply re-visiting memories. In poetic language, author Pam Munoz Ryan explores an ocean setting through each of the five senses. The little-girl narrator sees "amber seaweed," "speckled sand," and "bubbly waves," hears the "screak of gulls," smells "reeky fish" and "musty shells." READ MORE

More anon.

Lauren Cerand Tonight Washington DC

Lauren Cerand, a terrific book publicist I've worked with on my audio CD, is speaking tonight at the Womens National Book Association in Washington DC. If you're a writer, poet or publisher in the area--- and men, take note, you are very welcome to join the WNBA--- check this out. I very highly recommend it.