Foul weather friends

The other day I visited a friend who has just completed the first draft of a book length work. It's her first manuscript, and she's excited about it, but also disappointed at a lack of enthusiasm, encouragement and praise from some of her friends.

I said, in effect: "Join the club." I have been writing for publication and pay over the past thirty-odd years (some of them very odd) and can count on the fingers of one hand my women "friends" who have respected my chosen work. (Two elderly father-figures used to, but they're dead now.)

Mulling over the matter, I remembered something Naomi Wolf wrote quite a few years ago in Fight Fire With Fire.

"Sisterhood is problematic," Wolf wrote. Girls bond as intimate friends who share thoughts and feelings, rather than as members of a team. The sisterhood model, she contends, "gives women little practice in accepting the notion that someone has legitimately won a leadership postion through her own merits and that the prize is open to all. Men's organizations, Wolf wrote, are not necessarily "relentless, one-on-one competitions" but can be very "collaborative and supportive", while women's groups can be "rife with veiled aggression and competitiveness."

Now, neither my writing amigo nor I would claim to be in "leadership" positions as writers or anything else. We're just pleased at having created something.

Recently I read the novel, Le Divorce, by Diane Johnson, in which one of the women characters sympathizes with our gender because she understands our "historical circumstances...centuries of oppression." It's hard to be openhearted and generous when you've been brought up in circumstances of scarcity - especially scarcity of opportunity.

Both my writing pal and I are women of a certain age. I'm hoping that younger women are free from envy and rejoice in each other's achievements.

There is no thrill...

Many years ago, in one of my classes on how to write your memoirs, an elderly man,who wrote for his community paper, explained to other class members why he sought publication. "Next to sex," he said, "there is no thrill like seeing your work in print." His response amused the other participants.

Among my circle of friends back then was an older woman poet. When I told her this incident, she said, "Yes, and in my experience, getting published is sometimes more thrilling."

This week, I had the thrill of seeing two items of mind in print. My usual Book Report column appears in FYI:Forever Young, and this month I review Roseanne Cash's recent memoir, Composed. As well, the online magazine Canadian Materials published my review of a young adult novel, Broken Trail. My reviews appear in CM on an average of once a month.

As for other thrills? No comment.

I found Cash's memoir much more than the typical celebrity autobiography. I frequently review memoirs in my Book Report column if I feel they have a special spark.

I used to teach courses in "Writing Your Memoirs" through Continuing Ed with Ottawa area school boards, but at some point declined to teach this course any more, and offered courses on fiction. Writing fiction was my real area of interest. When I started teaching "Writing your Memoirs" I was far too young to even think of writing about my own short uneventful life. I was interested in the memoir as a genre in relation to historical writing. It seemed to be regarded by historians as a shady poor relation. I found that personal experience accounts were often more vivid than official history, and brought to light ordinary people's feelings and experiences that were important in a full understanding of an event or epoch.


Teaching classes on memoir writing to the general public was fun at first but eventually became less rewarding. Mind, you, I got good results from some participants. While writing this blog I am aware of two old friends who have excellent memoirs on the verge of being published. Many in my classes wrote book length works, not for publication, but for family and friends.

But the classes became a drain. In each one there was someone who thought we were doing "show and tell" as in kindergarten. Too many participants were just there to brag, not write. I attracted a number of retired public servants who had come to Ottawa to do good, had stayed to do well, and wanted to tell the world about it. I also encountered people who didn't care about the skills involved in writing, but merely wanted to slap their story onto the page "any which way they can." Try as I might to persuade aspiring memoirists to hit the highlights; that is, to identify their most important experiences and write about those, rather than bogging the reader in trivia, too many people were sure that every little thing that had ever happened to them would be of interest to posterity.

The real reason I quit memoir-teaching, though, was that I was becoming type-cast. I shivered when as a guest speaker at a writers' group I was introduced as the "Mistress of the Memoir". People tended to assume that all my fiction was autobiographical. Since I was teaching memoir-writing, how could I possibly create anything out of my imagination? I dropped out of a local writers' organization partly because the program convener kept nagging me to appear as a speaker on memoir-writing at a time when I was trying to publicize one of my novels.

Other writers in Ottawa are teaching courses on memoir writing these days, and I wish them joy in it.

I was interested in the article by Neil Genzlinger, "The Problem with Memoirs", which appeared in the New York Times on January 28, 2011.

Reviewing four memoirs published by major companies, Genzlinger begins his article by saying, "There was a time when you had to earn the right to draft a memoir, by accomplishing something noteworthy or having an extremely unusual experience or being such a brilliant writer that you could turn relatively ordinary occurrences into a snapshot of a broader historical moment."

These says, says Genzlinger, we are in a "age of oversharing", and, in his view, the flood of memoirs has to stop. "We don't have that many trees left."

I maintain that it's good for anyone and everyone to practise the art and skill of writing. Sometimes a beginner turns out to be a brilliant writer. I approve of older adults writing life-based works for friends, family and descendants. Stories that bored me when I heard them in class may very well delight grandchildren. If I did not believe in everyday people expressing themselves, I wouldn't be writing this blog.

Still, Genzlinger provides food for thought.

Two poems

The poem below is an homage (not a parody) to "Pied Beauty", a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, which begins, "Glory be to God for dappled things." I have had "Tried Beauty" published somewhere - can't remember which periodical, now - and am posting it here today in honour of all my elderly friends, particularly one who is seriously ill,

TRIED BEAUTY
by Ruth Latta

Glory be to God for dappled friends,
whose hands show age spots like a Holstein cow.
Praise wrinkled faces, salt and pepper hair,
and shaky voices saying, "It depends",
their words of insight that can show me how
to face life's challenges without despair.

Fragmented memories, half-forgotten dreams -
those bits of information aid me now.
Among the jumbled paste I find a gem.
Like autumn leaves, friends fall so fast, it seems,
Praise them.
(c) Ruth Latta, 2011

The poem below is a parody, written in fun. Many of us know the Emily Dickinson poem that begins, "There is no frigate like a book...." I wrote "There is no Torture" for a friend who tended to be oppressive in recommending books to me. Education is a lifelong process, but one of the pleasures of being out of school is that you can choose your own reading material. It is always fun to imitate a style as distinctive as Dickinson's:



THERE IS NO TORTURE
by Ruth Latta

There is no torture like a book
that we're required to read.
I'd rather skip a second look
but credits - I'm in need.

O'er many a turgid work I'd pore
to pass a tough exam.
I studied classics I abhor -
for marks. I gave a damn.

I never cared for Faulkner's work;
his style - my enemy.
In spite of that, I didn't shirk.
I wanted my degree.

Oh, Riverrun in Finnigan,
go run where e'er you please.
No honours must I win again.
These days I take my ease.

I've grappled with the experts' views
and sampled from the best,
and now - pulp fiction if I choose,
for it's my time to rest.

(c) Ruth Latta, 2011

a quote from George Eliot

I came upon this quote from an 1970 letter by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) to a woman friend. It is quoted in A.S. Byatt's Passions of the Mind:Selected Essays (NY, Random, 1992)

"We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections, and although our affections are perhaps the best gift we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life - some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of sweet women when their affections have been disappointed, because all their teaching has been that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this sort of defence against passionate affectation even more than men."

Eliot then quoted Margaret Fuller on the "petty power" of the "ignorance and childish vanity" of uneducated women.

What not to say.

Here we are more than halfway through February and I haven't had time to blog. Work (writing projects of my own and for others) have kept me busy. As well, a dear friend and mentor is receiving palliative care. Naturally I feel very sad. Emotion is tiring. Also, I like to visit her as often as possible.

Evidently in our society we're not supposed to say that we feel sad at the prospect of parting from someone, even a person who has played a huge role for good in our lives. Apparently we are expected to get on with things and to maintain a cheerful exterior.

Recently when I was extricating myself from a commitment, and mentioned this friend's situation, someone informed me that "Death is a part of life." This isn't the first time I've heard that pearl of wisdom. Hearing it made me feel the way I did when my mother died and someone told me that I "had to let her go."

What do these cliches mean? That I am not supposed to grieve? That I shouldn't take any time out for myself to come to terms with what's happening, but should keep busy dancing to someone else's tune?

Of course death is a part of life. Someone my age knows that. It doesn't make it any easier.

I have other good friends, and hope to make more in years to come, but none of them will every take the place of this one. She is unique.

"Death is a part of life" and "You have to let her go" are unhelpful remarks. They should go on the list of "things not to say" at a time of death.

a review of The Angira Legacy and the Catalyst, a new book by Ottawa author Kevin Dooley

INTERNATIONAL MACHINATIONS

a review of Keven Dooley's novels, The Angira Legacy and the Catalyst.

by Ruth Latta

Too often, the public assumes that older writers cannot draw upon their imaginations, but can write memoirs only. That stereotype is dispelled by Ottawa author Kevin Dooley's latest work of fiction. The Irish-born author, formerly a machinist and marine engineer, has just published The Angira Legacy and The Catalyst (Ottawa, Baico, 2010, $22.95, ISBN 978-1-926596-80-8) These novellas, published in one book, are the last two parts of his Angira Trilogy. These are works of speculative fiction reminiscent of the Da Vinci Code in that they show international machinations affecting the lives of ordinary individuals.

Dooley's first work of fiction was By the Hob (2005). The Other Man (2007), the first book in the Angira Trilogy, centred on two main characters. Colm Dunne, a returned soldier in rehabilitation for a head injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, attends a military dinner and notices a picture on the wall of a man who looks like him. This man was Marteen Reade, an Irish-Canadian veteran of North American frontier wars, the Boer War, and the First World War. The manuscript Reade left behind recounted his experiences and his knowledge of the larger elements at the root of these wars.

Many of us watch the news and speculate as to which countries and economic systems will rise to world power. In The Angira Legacy, Dooley depicts a future world in which the United States of America has lost its supremacy. The ascendant power is the USE, the "United States of Europe", a political as well as economic union in which the former imperial power, "Britannia", plays a key role. "Kanata", a northern country in North America acts as go-between with regard to the USA and the USE. The USE needs a new safe banking haven and a secret military base/strategic centre.

As The Angira Legacy begins, a Montrealer, Patrick McKee, newly back from the Caribbean, inherits a legacy from his great grandmother on the completion of his Ph.D. in Psychology, specializing in post traumatic stress disorder. The late Rosaleen McKee, a business woman who came of age during the Great War, left a letter asking the descendant who fulfilled the terms of her will to erect a memorial to her and to Patrick and Marteen Reade on Angira, an island off the coast of "Hibernia."

Angira, rich in mineral resources, has underground tunnels. Most of its inhabitants adhere to a woman-centred secret earth religion. Its distinctive culture and gene pool have earned it the status of a world heritage site. In a novel full of troubled, driven, duplicitous characters, the people who are easiest to warm to are the inhabitants of Angira. But a fabulously wealthy man from "Britannia", who travels around in his own ship with secret rooms, is bent on getting Angira's heritage status removed and using the island for his own purposes.

Colm Dunne, drawn to "Hibernia" in the hope of reuniting with his wife and children, unites with Patrick McKee and others in the struggle to control Angira's future. In the process he learns the connection between Marteen Reade and himself. Early on, readers may think that McKee was in the Caribbean for a holiday, and that Reuben, whom he met there, is just a friend, but it is not that simple.

The Catalyst, the third part of this futuristic volume, is a first person narrative which flows well. A ship's purser working for a "Britannia" based shipping line takes us to South Africa during the apartheid era and eventually links with the Angira plot.

Kevin Dooley's biography should inspire budding writers of any age. His formal education ended at age 15. His career as a marine engineer, while it took him all over the world and provided him with a wealth of experience, was nevertheless technical in nature, quite different from the craft of writing. Dooley's personal story shows that extensive reading, a gift for language, and determination can produce a writer.

Ice Block - a poem

WRITER'S ICE BLOCK
by Ruth Latta

This week's the coldest that we've had so far.
The chill seeps in past doors and windowsills
and knots my muscles, keeps us where we are,
curled up in heavy clothes against the chills.

The brilliant days turn sunset; then comes dark
and evening brings the question, "What got done?"
The basics, only. Each electric spark
was static, did not fuel creative fun.

A waste of life, these hibernation days!
Where are the calories to push my pen?
My mind's suspended, in exhaust-fume haze.
I ought to write, for, if not now, then when?

This creaking engine takes a while to warm,
but when it does, some crystal thoughts may form.

(c) Ruth Latta, January 2011