Ann Hostetler (r) with Mennonite author Elaine Sommers Rich (l) at Mennonite/s Writing conference, Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Virginia.

At the Mennonite/s Writing VI conference March 30-April 1, 2012, the theme of “the self” recurred often. Poet and scholar Ann Hostetler drew attention to this theme in her talk: “The Self in Mennonite Garb, or, Where Does the Writing Come From?”

Hostetler has been thinking about the lyric voice ever since she put together an anthology A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry (U of Iowa 2003). She acknowledged the significance of the writing community in her tribute to Elaine Sommers Rich, whose autobiographical children’s novel, Hannah Elizabeth, was important to Hostetler as a child. Hostetler recognized Rich’s ability to enlarge the place for self inside community through the telling of a trickster-like story.

“Is having a self a good thing or a bad thing?” You may find this question ridiculous, but not if you are Mennonite who’s been well-instructed about the dangers of individualism and the benefits of counter-cultural community. Before writing a memoir one needs to have an answer to the vexing question of the self.

Maybe it’s because I am living here in Brooklyn where Whitman’s barbaric yawp still hovers. But my answer is “yes!” to the self. With some caveats.

The question took me to the famous dialogue poem by W. B. Yeats.

William Butler Yeats

A Dialogue Of Self and Soul

By William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair;

Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,

Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,

Upon the breathless starlit air,

“Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;

Fix every wandering thought upon

That quarter where all thought is done:

Who can distinguish darkness from the soul

My Self.  The consecrated blade upon my knees
Is Sato’s ancient blade, still as it was,
Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass
Unspotted by the centuries;
That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn
From some court-lady’s dress and round
The wodden scabbard bound and wound
Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn

My Soul. Why should the imagination of a man
Long past his prime remember things that are
Emblematical of love and war?
Think of ancestral night that can,
If but imagination scorn the earth
And interllect is wandering
To this and that and t’other thing,
Deliver from the crime of death and birth.

My Self. Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it
Five hundred years ago, about it lie
Flowers from I know not what embroidery -
Heart’s purple – and all these I set
For emblems of the day against the tower
Emblematical of the night,
And claim as by a soldier’s right
A charter to commit the crime once more.

My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows
And falls into the basin of the mind
That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind,
For intellect no longer knows
Is from the Ought, or knower from the Known - 
That is to say, ascends to Heaven;
Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue’s a stone.

II

My Self. A living man is blind and drinks his drop.
What matter if the ditches are impure?
What matter if I live it all once more?
Endure that toil of growing up;
The ignominy of boyhood; the distress
Of boyhood changing into man;
The unfinished man and his pain
Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;

The finished man among his enemies? -
How in the name of Heaven can he escape
That defiling and disfigured shape
The mirror of malicious eyes
Casts upon his eyes until at last
He thinks that shape must be his shape?
And what’s the good of an escape
If honour find him in the wintry blast?

I am content to live it all again
And yet again, if it be life to pitch
Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch,
A blind man battering blind men;
Or into that most fecund ditch of all,
The folly that man does
Or must suffer, if he woos
A proud woman not kindred of his soul.

I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.

Written about 1929 and included in The Winding Stair (1933)

Critics have argued endlessly over the meaning of the symbolism of the soul in Part I, but most readers love this poem for Part II, where the language suddenly becomes concrete and joyous. The last stanza has stayed with me ever since I first read it as an undergraduate. I’ve come back to it often, finding encouragement there to embrace the largest possible self.

I knew there had to be a way in which the self was not the enemy of the soul and not the enemy of community. The fully acknowledged self is actually a gift to a larger whole. I’ve called this an ubuntu philosophy of memoir.

Today’s meditative reading from Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See offered me an insight I had not thought of before. Rohr draws a strong distinction between the ego and the genuine self: “Ego is just another word for blindness. The ego self is by my definition the unobserved self, because once you see it, the game is over” (90).

So, not only can memoir have a social function (thank you, Desmund Tutu, for sharing the ubuntu concept), but the process of writing a memoir can also open the eyes of the soul to truly see the ego, which makes it possible to forgive it and to celebrate the real self (Yeats). It can take us on a journey of conversion from blind slavery to the ego to transparent discovery of the self through the path of careful observation.

I return to the writing of Chapter Nine of my memoir. I’m standing in the wings watching a character I call Rosy Cheeks as she cheekily stands up to the bishop at age 17. She’s afraid, yet bold; she’s driven by forces she doesn’t completely understand. I see her at her grey Olympia typewriter, writing a letter that will result in a “pastoral” visit.

I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.

Yeats and Rohr both suggest that the perspective is key to embracing the self without embracing the blindness of the ego. Do you agree? If you do, how do you find that perspective?

This Story Corps Booth is close to City Hall in Manhattan

While I draft memoir chapters about growing up Mennonite, I am also writing to you, the friends of this blog, and to others on my facebook page and twitter feed. Is it worth it to spend my time this way? Sometimes I wonder.

A few weeks ago, I was asked by a friend of this blog, Loretta, to  describe how I try to balance two very different kinds of writing. I’m working on chapter nine of my Mennonite memoir (recalling a childhood without television, the storytelling revolution of the 1950′s) while also being active as a blogger, and user of Facebook and Twitter, the current storytelling media.

I was initially encouraged to blog as a way to build a “platform.” I despise that word. But I love the idea of a community of writers and readers. I want my story to resemble ubuntu, helping others to become better selves as I seek to do the same. Ideally, the work done to build relationships online also helps to focus on long-form memoir writing.

Ideally.

It takes discipline and deadlines to maintain momentum toward the goal of completing the draft of the memoir.And that kind of contemplative writing must have first priority.

That’s why I decided to put a ticker on the home page of my blog. It sends a shiver through me to see the numbers go from where it was when I started the new website, 300 days, to where it is now: 209 days. It also, connects all of my writing to my mission in life: “to prepare for the hour of my death. One good day at a time. And to help others do the same.”

The ticker asks me not only am I on track with my schedule, but have each one of those 90 days, now gone forever, been good days?

And what is a good day when it comes to writing, anyway? Well, let me try to describe my ideal day.

1. Start with a good night’s sleep.

2. Greet the new day at sunrise. Enjoy breakfast and conversation with Stuart,who leaves at 8 to care for Owen.

3. Alone in the apartment, begin with spiritual reading (right now, I am reading through the book of Proverbs and use two daybooks — one of Thomas Merton’s journals and one of Mark Nepo’s writings).

4. Meditation. I use an iPhone app that gives me nature sounds, monastery, and ambient music choices and has a timer. I set it for 20 minutes.

5. Get to draft writing as soon as possible after meditation, calling up the pools of memory from out of the silence. On a good day, I can write 1,000 words. I leave holes in the writing when I don’t remember a name, a year, a color, etc., make notes to call relatives, look up info in certain books, check in with former colleagues, etc. Writing a memoir, I find, requires multiple perspectives to jog your own memory. I have spent hours combing through old photos and documents gleaned from my mother’s basement and will spend a whole week in August doing more of the same. Actual writing is often secondary to all these other memory joggers. I look forward to the next phase of revision, hoping I can focus more on language and structure and less on recall.

6. Sometime between noon and 1 p.m., I leave the computer and walk to Owen’s house, have lunch with him and Stuart, and spend the rest of the afternoon playing, strolling, and feeding Owen. While he naps, usually for no more than an hour and possibly as little as 30 minutes, I can catch up on facebook, twitter, and think about the two blogs I am writing; this one and granny nanny diaries. I like to have a new blog post in mind when I finish my current one. I find that when the idea for the post has cooked on the back burner, it flows more easily when it is time to hit “publish.” I like to post this one on Mondays, send out Magical Memoir Moments to subscribers on Tuesdays, and post to granny nanny diaries on Fridays.

7. After dinner, I have another 3-4 hours for whatever seems most pressing. If I am getting close to my memoir draft deadline and need to work on that, I do so. If I have time to play with social media, I do that. Over time I have increased my focus to being writing and memoir related across all social media platforms. Sometimes we go to the theater or meet friends in town.

8. A good day always includes exercise, hugs, and conversations. These occur throughout the day, while taking care of Owen and sometimes with Stuart. We enjoy walking the Brooklyn Promenade at sunset and at night and have done that often at the end of a good day. The last three words before sleep: “I love you.”

Another friend, Jim, asked me at the Mennonite/s Writing Conference if it isn’t a distraction to be engaged with an audience via social media at the same time I am doing “real” writing? How do I avoid writing only what others want to hear rather than what is in my own heart and mind? It’s a great question. All I can say is that I trust my knowledge of my own heart, and I know that my perspective is limited. As others share their stories, either here or on my facebook page, new facets of my own story emerge.

In the “good old days,” goes one myth, writers wrote poems, short stories, novels, or (to a lesser extent) memoirs. They worked as solitaries. In ateliers, like visual artists. They shunned the rest of the world as they wrote. If their work was brilliant, it found an equally brilliant editor and prescient publisher, and they moved from being writers to being authors. Only a few were called to this monastic life, and fewer yet were published. Some who were never knew fame. Their brilliance was only discovered after their deaths.

I’m not that kind of writer. I’m glad I’m living in the age of memoir — a world where everyone has a story, and many people are sharing their thoughts, insights, and cute little cat videos in French with each other. If I sit and watch cat videos all day, it’s not a good day.

But my memoir has benefited often with a small but very vocal group of people who are rooting for me and want to help me cross the finish line of publishing.

Here’s a story about just one of the many benefits of being on social media while writing memoir.

‎I call it the extended mind. I first saw it when my facebook friend, award-winning novelist and former writing coach, Bonnie Jo Campbell, asked her friends questions about her current work.

Mother holding me, 1948

As I was writing about wearing a prayer covering (such as my mother is wearing in this picture), I felt limited. So, last week, I asked mine this question and got these answers:

“Soup strainer,” “crash helmet, “doily.” What else have they been called?

A longer dialogue followed the snippet above, and it has enlarged my thinking. I would not have recalled the sobriquet “sin sifter,” for example, if I had sat alone in my atelier for five hours. But on facebook, within 15 minutes, a former student living in Minneapolis could trigger a rush of feelings and new memories. And the number of people from all parts of the country who commented told me that this particular vein of memory was worth mining.

As the Story Corps booth sign (above) says, “tell your story pass it on.” Notice that they dispense with punctuation in this sign. I choose to think that’s because the act of telling the story and the act of passing it on are inextricably linked. Do you agree? Obviously, I have painted the positive picture here (“Rosy Cheeks” will always do this). I could talk about the other side of the dilemma also. What do YOU want to talk about?

I wasn’t going to write any more reviews in this blog — except by offering this space to guest reviewers whose writing I know and trust. I have vowed to keep the chapter drafts of my own memoir my first priority for my precious writing time. Reading and reviewing a new book can take one or two weeks of time. I just don’t have it.

Awaiting the arrival of the authors.

That is, I didn’t have the time until I saw that sign in the Barnes & Noble on Union Square that said Anne Lamott had a new book out. And that she and her son Sam were both going to appear in person right there on March 20 the very first day the book was available in stores.

So, of course, I bought the book, appeared early so as to get a good seat, took pictures, and tweeted about my excitement.

By the time the clock struck 7 p.m., the announced beginning of the reading, all the chairs were full and most people were clutching brand new copies of Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son’s First Son.

Having enjoyed three of Anne Lamott’s previous books, I couldn’t believe my good luck that she has written this new one about an experience I myself am in the middle of — enjoying the first year of my son’s son’s life — while trying to write my own childhood memoir.

What follows is a stream-of-consciousness report on how the public reading led to my private reading and to my reflections about both.

Before I left for Barnes & Noble at Union Square, I asked advice from followers on my facebook writers page (to join, please “like” the page here) One of them, Melissa Shirk Jantz, gave me a suggestion for the Q & A period. Those who hesitate in New York are lost. Thanks to Melissa, I was armed and ready.

But first, there was the appearance and introduction of both Anne and Sam, who have lots of friends in NYC, so greetings and hubbub ensued. The mostly female audience drew in their collective breaths when they saw Sam for the first time. You met him as a baby and young child if you read Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year. Most people can’t believe it when they hear he himself is now a father.

Sam and Anne Lamott, March 20, 2012, Union Square, NYC

But there he was in all his ruddy-cheeked, slightly shy, glory. And there was Anne Lamott, mother and grandmother, standing beside him. Watching the two of them observe each other read was a great pleasure. Love and struggle have etched themselves in their hearts and on their faces.

I loved them both.

During the Q & A time, my hand shot up right away. “What have you learned by becoming a grandmother?” I asked, knowing the question was deceptively simple.

Anne was ready for me, having thought about this all during the memoir writing time. Immediately, she said, “It’s the gift of giving unconditional love without the toxic obsession of parenthood.”

That kind of nugget is Anne Lamott at her best. Short, passionate, tinged with the suggestion of past pain overcome by grace.

Now to Some Assembly Required, the book.

Grandson Owen, inspired by Anne Lamott's book about Jax, her grandson, takes up the pen himself

The first book you read by Anne Lamott, especially if you are a person of both faith and doubt, feels like the mighty wind of spiritual housecleaning. She’s written 13 books. I suppose if I had read them all instead of only her three most famous, (Traveling Mercies, Bird by Bird, and Operating Instructions) I might eventually tire of her recurring themes — the search for God, searing self-doubt, soaring epiphanies, moments of grace, self-deprecating humor, spiritual devotion co-mingled with salty language and sarcasm. She’s an unapologetic Christian who nevertheless despises Republican policies. (In an Easter Sunday tweet, however, she imagines herself able to wash feet with Dick Cheney!)

She speaks for a group not well represented in our era of political and spiritual stereotyping and lack of nuance in the media: a seeker who finds Jesus and St. Andrew Church a refuge from the storms of life. Her prayers, “Help!” and “Thanks!” have moved many others to seek similar refuge.

When reading a new Anne Lamott book, a fan hopes for both the familiar voice encountered in previous books and for new high and low notes sung by her ever-evolving writing self.

In Some Assembly Required, I found both old and new. The plot revolves around the surprise that comes when 19-year-old Sam announces to his mother in 2009 that he will become a father. With an understandable mixture of emotions, Anne moves from shock to awe and ends with a hard-won acceptance of her new place in the universe as grandma, mother, “mother-in-law,” and solitary writer.

Anne is the primary writer of the journal-style book that includes emails from Sam and interviews with both Sam and Amy, (his girlfriend, and the mother of baby Jax, the center of all their attentions). The book is dedicated to Amy. From a Goodreads interview with the author I learned three things of interest: (1) that Amy and Sam are now separated (something one almost expects given their youth and volatile relationship) and are now sharing childcare with each other and extended family, (2) that Anne Lamott herself had to be convinced by her editor, and then her son, that writing this book was a good idea, and (3) Anne gave Amy and her parents the right to remove material they did not want in the book. All three of these facts present writerly challenges, and my hat’s off to Anne for having written a good book despite them.

Many sentences ring with the quintessential Lamott voice (Sam’s voice bears some resemblance to his mother’s, not too surprisingly). Here’s a section from the beginning of the book:

While Amy struggles valiantly to deliver the baby without the aid of drugs, the family suffers with her. Anne describes her relief when a doctor who “looked a lot like Ethel Kennedy, scrappy and beautiful” bounds into the delivery room, squinting. Just at the moment of peak dramatic tension, Anne thinks, “Oh my God, she’s a blind gynecologist. Affirmative action has gone too far this time.”  This was the first of many laugh out loud moments for me in the book.

But the description of “Dr. Ethel” continues in a way that few writers can match, with King James English in the background and American pop culture in the foreground: “She squinted off to one side, way in the distance, as if to the hills whence help comes, like Mr. Magoo in Pharaoh’s Egypt, and I realized she was not seeing with her eyes, but with her hand and her mind.”

Dr. Ethel’s abilities forecast the new skills need by this family of wayward saints. They are ready to receive the gift of a child, but first they must practice distrusting old ways of being in the world (seeing with the eyes alone) and learn a new tactile, spiritual and intellectual language. The change will be revolutionary for all of them. Old walls will be torn down, new ones built. They will in fact be like a blind gynecologist transformed into an agent of healing and hope.

One of the things I admire most about Anne Lamott is her brutal honesty. She admits to terrible thoughts, like being glad to have Jax, just in case anything ever happens to Sam (an “heir and a spare” jokes a friend); trying to manipulate Amy and her parents into letting her be the primary grandparent and making California Jax’s permanent home; acknowledging her anxieties about writing; her jealousy of her own son, who has so much more support in parenting than she had twenty years earlier when she wrote Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year.

These admissions will make her books seem narcissistic to some readers. But because she both makes herself “the goat” more often than other characters (Mary Karr’s advice), she gets to tell the truth as she sees it. Any writer who gives intimates veto power over what goes in and what stays in her book is not self-obsessed. Any writer who brays at God one day and praises extravagantly the next is following in the steps of the Psalmist. Her definition of heaven? Those moments when we forget ourselves.

A few caveats. The travel sections of the book were good but did not feel thoroughly integrated into the family story. And the picture of the baby foot on the cover is too pink and white. Jax’s father is dark, his mother is Hispanic, and he himself is “tawny.” This is probably a comment to the publisher more than the author.

I expected to see this book reviewed in The New York Times and to hear Anne and Sam Lamott on NPR. I’m surprised that they so far have not been. So I say, grandmas, unite. Support this book and its authors. And share your enthusiasm in person and on line. You will find your own deepest feelings for your grandchildren expressed through Anne Lamott’s gift for language. If you don’t believe me, I offer you this passage:

Babies’ smells set off chemical reactions through us that make us want to love and nurture them. This is such an unfair advantage, and it is truly how they get you. What if al-Qaeda could weaponize this? . . .

Sam can see now what beauty he sprang from, and how pathetically I loved him as a baby. . . .

And babies’ needs are achievable for the time being. They know they want something in their tummies; there’s a lot of pleasure for them in fullness, in contact with warm skin, in the sweet circuit with the mother and father.

I identified with Grandma Lamott in ways that make this review far from objective. But I am not alone. In Poetry Month, we need to expand our definition of the lyric poem to a work like this one. Lamott herself concludes as she reviews Jax’s first year:

“He’s grown from a helpless newborn to an accomplished and complex human being who is days away from walking. He’s grown me, too; grandchildren grow you. With your own child, you’re fixated on the foreground, trying to keep the child safe and alive. But with a grandchild, you can be in softer focus, you can see beyond the anxious foreground.

In other words, if you squint, you can see the hills from whence cometh our help. If you stretch out your hands and your mind, you can feel the groaning of creation.

Now I’ll turn Anne Lamott’s question over to you. What have you learned about life by being a parent or grandparent? If you are neither, what have you learned from children in general?

Allegheny Mountains, Shenandoah Valley, VA

Most of you know that my memoir-in-progress is about growing up Mennonite in Lancaster County, PA, in the ’50′s and ’60′s. So what a treat it was to attend a conference at Eastern Mennonite University called Mennonite/s Writing VI: Solos and Harmonies. The organizers Kirsten Beachy of Eastern Mennonite University and poet Julia Kasdorf of Penn State University did an outstanding job of packing multiple genres, music, criticism, performance, and worship into one conference.

As a bonus, Stuart and I got to see the mountains and the valley again in springtime. We love living in Brooklyn and we also love our home in Virginia with the view depicted here. Right now we have both feet planted in Brooklyn again. In our minds, however, we are preparing to go back “home.” While in Virginia, I experienced the conference through the lens of both places. Doing so, helped make it possible to stretch my imagination from defiance to acceptance to celebration — different stances taken by artists in relationship to the Mennonite Church both in the U.S. and in Canada.

I enjoyed and learned from every session I attended. However, the one that helped me the most as prospective memoirist was Gregory Orr’s talk on Aesthetics and Ethics. Orr is not a Mennonite, but, like Wendell Berry, Jane Kenyon, Mary Oliver, and William Stafford, he resonates with many Mennonite writers.

Even though Orr’s talk was about poetry, I can apply it to memoir. He made a strong case for the social value of the individual voice. This is the case I have tried to make also, less cogently, in posts like this one on Ubuntu as a philosophy of memoir. Orr explained how aesthetics becomes ethics when the voice of the poet calls attention to the other as beautiful and invites readers to sympathetic identity with the beloved, often an outsider. The subjective consciousness, often accused of narcissism, only deserves that epithet when locked in an introspection of one self or an exclusive dyad of two selves.

As I moved from session to session at the conference, I tried to summarize the experience in a series of tweets. If you start at the bottom of the list below, you can take a chronological stroll through the conference

Daisy A. Hickman

There’s an art to interviews. First of all, it helps to be a great observer and listener and to know something about the person and subject under inspection. Most of all, it helps to care. Daisy Hickman fits that bill perfectly. Last week she placed her questions and my answers on her great blog Sunny Room Studio. I hope you’ll test my hypothesis about Daisy and her skills by reading her post “A Voice That Sings” and by asking whether Daisy’s questions elicited good responses from me. I was honored to be her subject.

And now, at my request, Daisy has turned her hand to a new project. She’s not usually a book reviewer, but she kindly responded to my invitation to review a memoir she enjoyed by Jonathan Franzen, The Discomfort Zone. Franzen, of course, is one of the most famous writers of fiction and nonfiction living today. Unlike Toni Morrison, who has decided not to write a memoir, Franzen has dipped into memoir more than once, often by writing essays in The New Yorker and then publishing collections. Guest blogger Lanie Tankard referred to The Discomfort Zone in her excellent two-part review of Franzen’s latest novel, Freedom. If you have read Freedom, you might think about Lanie’s thesis that Franzen’s memoir and novel are intricately related to each other.

Here’s Daisy’s review titled “Franzen’s Long Summer.”

The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History by Jonathan Franzen (Picador, 2006)

 Rarely, do I read a book just as it’s released.  I may buy it then, but almost always, the book will spend a few months, or even years, on my bookshelf: in waiting.  Such is the case with Franzen’s memoir.  I’m simply more inclined to pick up a memoir by another woman, for one thing.  More broadly speaking, I read whatever seems “compelling” in the moment, given my interests, projects, and personal journey.

 But, at long last, Franzen’s book came into focus for me.  And then Shirley was kind enough to ask about writing a review for her outstanding blog.  Since Franzen is releasing another book of essays, Farther Away, in mid-April, it might be a good time to share a few impressions of his memoir (a New York Times notable book of the year in 2007) that included several spot-on political and cultural observations.  They ring as true today, as when he wrote the book.

 There are some 34 reviews posted on Amazon, and let’s just say, it’s a mixed bag.  Not uncommon in the world of publishing.  What is “good” for one, is “bad” for the next.  But after reading Discomfort, I could  see why someone might love, hate, or feel indifferently about Franzen’s memoir.

I can’t say that I loved the book, but I definitely liked it.  Found it worthwhile and relevant.

For one thing, there was an underlying warmth to the personal history Franzen shares, as he covers some 45 years of life experience in 195 pages (paperback edition).  And I loved the title, because it captured a number of key life situations when Franzen felt out of place.  Uncomfortable.  In fact, near the close of the book, he admits to loving (the best) human beings who don’t fit in.

To explore these feelings of “not fitting in,” he covers his adolescent years in detail, as though trying to discover something about them that still perplexes him.  But I think he’s also quite fond of the youthful Franzen who was a touch rebellious.  He was definitely the kind of student who loved to question authority and what it should stand for in all-American places like Webster Groves, Missouri.

 I also lived in St. Louis for a time, but in a different suburb and maybe a year or two after Franzen had completed his last trip home to visit his mother.  So I appreciated many of the landmarks he wrote about.  The Arch, in particular.  (His friends took him there blindfolded for his birthday.)

But, of much greater importance, is the way in which Franzen weaves together an intriguing personal profile – the evolution of his personality, interests, and life themes.  There is enough detail to create a realistic portrait, yet moments of insight give the book cohesion and depth.

 I sensed the yearning for “truth” that many of us share and his appreciation for the complexity of most relationships.  Born when his mother was 38, the third of three boys, Franzen seemed intent on growing well beyond the constraints of childhood in as many ways as possible:  professionally, personally, and permanently.  He writes about how his 17-year-old self still shows up on a regular basis, however.

 My guess is that he will write another memoir one day and title it: Short Lives and Long Summers.  This was an interesting phrase that he used toward the end of Discomfort to describe the lives of birds.  In a chapter called, “My Bird Problem,” he writes: “Birds were like dinosaurs’ better selves.  They had short lives and long summers.  We all should be so lucky as to leave behind such heirs.”       

In a second memoir, Franzen can write about his life as an author and his literary accomplishments.  Clearly, he wanted to become a serious and significant writer from a young age, so, in many ways, he has already enjoyed a life of long summers.  But when the last sentence is written, the last book published, it may still feel as though it was all too short — a dream never quite captured in the way imagined – one that couldn’t stop time or make death go away.

 I recommend this book because Franzen is an author worth reading.  And even though he seemed to be working a bit too hard at his prose in some passages—preferring the perfect sentence to the sentiment he was hoping to convey—I am more than willing to overlook this.  It gives his memoir an artistic flair, an air of “hard work” in action.

But I forgot to mention how much he loved the work of Charles Schultz as a boy, spending many pages in the book discussing Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus and Lucy.  It was most endearing.  And it effectively revealed the heart of a young boy groping to understand the world around him through comic relief.

Daisy A. Hickman is the founder of SunnyRoomStudio – a sunny, creative space for kindred spirits.  Her blog appears there each week.  She’s also an author and a published poet, currently at work on a memoir and a poetry collection.

 http://SunnyRoomStudio.com

daisy@daisyhickman.com

@dhwrites or @dazydaywriter (via twitter) @SunnyRoomStudio (facebook)

Have you read Franzen, either his fiction or nonfiction? What new thoughts did you have about him based on this review? Do you want to know him better? Do you find “misfits” interesting? Do you identify as a “misfit” yourself?