Endless Knots

Merullo: "Letting in light on a disease of darkness"

Roland Merullo's op-ed in today's Boston Globe is required reading for anyone with depression as well as their family and friends, i.e. everyone on earth. He mentions "William Styron’s 'Darkness Visible' and Andrew Solomon’s 'The Noonday Demon.'’’ Having read Styron's brave memoir of his struggle with this illness, I can agree with Roland's assessment that the "popularity of books" like these is indicative of how pervasive the problem truly is. Anyone struggling with depression wants to shake off the demon; any writer willing to put words together deserves our thanks. So, again, Roland, thanks for tromping into such difficult waters.

Merullo on Hemingway

Four years ago this summer, I had the good luck to land in Roland Merullo's workshop on the novel at Solstice Summer Writers' Conference. With an opinion or two of my own about writing, I listened to what he said with a critic's ear. To my astonishment, I agreed with nearly everything--about writing, about workshopping, about raising kids. (Then there was his obsession with golf. Oh, well.)

Thus, Roland became my writing teacher--except for my editor when I was a young reporter, the only such instructor I've had--and, just when I think I have nothing more to learn, he pops up again, always without announcement, with another thoughtful approach to someone or something.

Today's Boston Globe brings  "The life Hemingway made," his op-ed honoring Hemingway's 110th birthday tomorrow, where he talks simply about the writer's life, Hemingway the writer, and his own as writer. Here's the kind of phrasing that has made me read every one of Roland's books (except the golf one): "...these were the notes of a song sung to the deepest part of me." Not forced, not complicated, but ... what notes of which "song" have reached the deepest parts of you?

This post also gives me the excuse to include mention of Roland's latest, his memoir of eating and, yes, golf, The Italian Summer, which I'm reading now. Guaranteed to make you hungry and to provoke a tendency to rent a villa, book a flight, and do what he, Amanda, and their two daughters, Alexandra and Juliana, did a couple of years ago: spend five weeks in heaven, excuse me, Lake Como. I also love this cover. Check out the golfer.

Let's help Alexandra cure cystic fibrosis

You know that I'm a great fan (and luckily a friend) of Roland Merullo, the fine writer whose novels, essays, columns, and nonfiction books are endless delights and causes for profound thinking. As per below, Roland and Amanda have a personal need to cure cystic fibrosis, as their talented daughter, Alexandra, has CF. One of Roland's finest novels, A Little Love Story, is about a young man who falls in love with a young woman with CF. I had the chance to meet Alexandra and her sister, Juliana, just a few weeks ago, and was impressed with both girls' poise, warmth, friendliness, and sense of humor. Read on and I won't have to convince you further to make a contribution to the CF Foundation's annual walk: Checks made out to Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and mailed to Merullo, Box 111, Williamsburg MA 01096.

Dear Friends,

Every two years Amanda and I send this letter to all of you, asking for donations to help find a cure for cystic fibrosis.  As most of you know, our older daughter, Alexandra, has CF.

She is 11 and staying very healthy, partly because she has been so diligent in keeping to her routine of therapy.  Every night for the past eight years she has done at least half an hour of chest physical therapy—one of her parents drumming on her back and sides to loosen the mucus in her lungs.  Recently she has switched to a pneumatic vest that shakes her pretty hard, but takes less time: fifteen minutes a day when she is healthy, twice that when she has a cold.

She has at least four annual visits to the CF clinic in Springfield, MA, blood tests, CT scans, throat cultures; a simple cold can turn into an infection requiring a month or more of antibiotics.  The disease affects her in other, more minor ways:  she can't be around anyone else who has CF, can't go in a hot tub or have a wood stove in the house; she suffers from occasional stomach and muscle pain and gets dehydrated very easily on hot days.

And she is one of the lucky ones.  Many kids her age and younger have already been hospitalized several times with lung infections or digestive problems.  Some don't grow normally, some have a three-times-a-day regimen of chest PT and inhalants, and have to take ten or twelve different medications.  Those with the most severe mutations of the CF gene sometimes require a double lung transplant before they reach high school.

Tremendous steps toward a cure have been made just since our last letter, in 2007.  There are new drugs going into human trials that promise, if not a comprehensive cure, then at least a significant extension of life expectancy—which is currently 37 years.

Even though the disease is rare (affecting only about 30,000 people in the US), which means that drug companies don't stand to make a huge profit from finding a cure, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has come up with ingenious ways of persuading them to do work that benefits cystic fibrosis patients.  The Foundation has been cited by the Wall St. Journal for its efficiency:  90% of your donation goes to actually paying for medical research, only 10% to administrative costs.

On May 17th we will participate in the annual CF walk here in Northampton, MA.  Each family or person who walks is part of a team, and each team collects donations that are passed on to the Foundation.  We are the Alexandra and Juliana team.  We do not like to ask our friends for money, and we know that many of you already have other important charities in your life, and that you have given generously to CF in the past—through our walks and in other ways.  Some of you give through work, or just send in a check independently of the walk; one friend donated his car.

We also know that this isn't the best time in the country's economic history, and that for some of you any extra expenditure is difficult.  But for the sake of our daughter and the tens of thousands of other individuals and families struggling with cystic fibrosis, we ask you to consider sending a check to help us find a cure.  Two years ago, through your incredible generosity, we raised over $11,000.

If you are able to contribute, please know that any amount is welcome and appreciated.  Checks should be made out to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and sent to us at:

Merullo
Box 111
Williamsburg MA 01096

If you can join us in the Northampton walk on May 17th, or the walk at Revere Beach on May 9th, we'd love to have you. When we hand over our envelope of donations we always tell the people at CFF not to put our contributors on a mailing list, and they have always respected our wishes.

With sincere thanks,

Roland, Amanda, Alexandra and Juliana Merullo

Roland at the Fiction Book Club

In the pocket of secrets that fill our lives, threads fray. While most sew them right up,  an unusual few take certain strands and pull them in just the right way that they make what is normally private more public.

Such was the great luck of the Fiction Book Club yesterday when Roland Merullo visited us. That we were fortunate enough to have a few moments with Amanda, wife of, and Alexandra and Juliana, daughters of, was its own gift.

In preparation for our special Saturday session, we read Breakfast with Buddha, the novel of Roland's that's been nominated for the Dublin International Literary Award (and which he's discussing today as the book chosen for its first "Wayland Reads" program). As a bonus book, we also agreed to read his latest, Fidel's Last Days, which most in the group also read and loved.

We asked a lot of questions: Why did he write the book? How did he write it? Does he plot out his novels in advance? Why did the characters do this or that? When did he start writing? What did he do before he wrote and/or when he was waiting for his books to be published? What is he working on now? What in Buddha is real, what imagined?

While I could do a very long post now, jotting down all that Roland said, commenting on it and suchnot, instead I'm just going to report what everyone agreed:

"This is the best book club we've ever had."

And how the two-and-a-half hours with Roland affected us:

It was another four hours before everyone left, during which time we had perhaps our most profound conversation as a group about where we are in our lives and where we're thinking of going.

I doubt that was Roland's intention as he is hardly a person who tries to get others to do things or influence them in ways that seem right to him.

What caused this to happen, I think, is his openness, his "straightforward" way, as one book club member said.

I count myself as extremely fortunate to have met Roland when I did, at a point in my writing career when I needed someone to stand behind me and point in different directions, which is precisely what he's done. Unexpected has been his unstinting generosity, which I've been the beneficiary of in so many ways, including his taking time yesterday to sit with our book club and open us further to possibilities.

A rave for Roland on "Fidel's Last Days"

These are the reviews writers live for: "In "Fidel's Last Days," Roland Merullo takes readers on a fictional thrill ride filled with so much danger and drama that they won't want it to end."

Thank you, Chuck Leddy, reviewer for the Boston Globe ("A thrilling ride in Castro plot"):

In his 11th book, "Fidel's Last Days," local [he lives in Western Massachusetts] author Roland Merullo has penned a fast-paced and highly satisfying spy thriller about a conspiracy to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro. Merullo seamlessly switches the action from Miami, where a secret organization of Cuban expatriates is plotting to kill Castro, to Havana, where we see Castro's dictatorship in action and watch an internal assassination plot develop among Castro's own advisers.

Eleventh book. Think about that. How many writers can pump out so many, in such different genres (this and another are both thrillers, love stories, coming-of-age, memoir, technique (golf), an uproarious and cheeky trilogy about spirituality, politics, and the hereafter...)? This is talent.

Our Fiction Book Club is reading Roland's Dublin International Prize-nominated Breakfast with Buddha for our March book, which, not so incidentally also is the community read for the nearby Town of Wayland that month; Fidel's Last Days is our bonus book for our meeting and, lucky us, he's gracing us with his presence. We hope he'll talk about both. I promise to post some pictures.

A thriller from Roland Merullo: "Fidel's Last Days"

Mr. Prolific, aka Roland Merullo, has another one popping out of the publication machine on Dec 30, Fidel's Last Days: A Novel. Haven't seen it yet but advance press is oh-so-good, as per this rave from Publishers Weekly:

After two [three actually, also Golfing with God] light comedies with spiritual overtones, American Savior (2008) and Breakfast with Buddha (2007), Merullo mines far darker material to construct a powerful tale of modern-day, devastated Cuba and its all but indestructible dictator, Fidel Castro. Ex-CIA agent Carolina Anzar Perez, niece of Roberto Anzar, one of Miami's Cuban-born, anti-Castro expatriates, works for the White Orchid, a secret organization that has masterminded a complex assassination plot aimed at the ever-canny Fidel. In Cuba, Carlos Gutierrez, the minister of health, disaffected from his government, has become a major conspirator in the upcoming attempt. Guarding Fidel is the evil Col. Felix Olochon Marlos (aka the Dentist), head of the dreaded D-7 secret police. The suspense is as thick as an authentic café cubano, and the labyrinthine plot appears to point to a successful conclusion, until Merullo jams the knife in one last time and gives this timely thriller a final, chilling twist.

Roland's on the 2009 Dublin Int'l Literary Award long list

Great news: Roland Merullo's Breakfast with Buddha has put him among the nominees for the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, announced on Nov 10 by Eibhlin Byrne, Lord Mayor of Dublin. With its 100,000 euro prize, it's "the world's most valuable annual literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English and is a Dublin City Council initiative, in partnership with IMPAC." (IMPAC, an international productivity implementation firm sponsors a number of literary awards - go, IMPAC!):

...Dublin City Council will announce the shortlist on 2nd April 2009 and the winning novel will be revealed by the Lord Mayor on 11th June 2009.

Also on the list are Doris Lessing for The Cleft; Junot Diaz for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; and Mario Vargars Llosa for The Bad Girl.

The 156 authors hail from 41 countries.  The books span 18 languages, 29 of which are translated from languages such as Arabic, Japanese, Russian, Slovenian and Hebrew. 19 of them are first novels. "These are books that might not otherwise come to the attention of Irish readers”, says Deirdre Ellis-King, Dublin City Librarian.  “The spread of languages and the number of books in translation continues to grow”. 

It's lovely to learn that nominations come from "157 libraries in 117 cities," in Roland's case, one situated in South Carolina. What an honor! And what a book. It's wonderful. And extremely funny. And deep. Roland-ish. Great gift, by the way. I couldn't resist snipping the portion of the nominee list where Roland's name appears along with these great literary lights:

Roland on Roland: "The love children bring out in us"

Juliana, Roland, and Alexandra Merullo, photo by Amanda Merullo

Roland Merullo has his own category here on Endless Knots because of my deep regard for his work and his talent. Author of ten books, with two more on the way, his range is astonishing--from his earliest Leaving Losapas about a dejected Vietnam Vet who takes shelter on a Micronesian island only to be haunted by his life back home in a working-class Boston suburb to The Italian Summer, coming next Spring, about time he spent in 2007 with his three loves--golf, food, and family--at Lake Como.

I've read and savored (speaking of food) all of Roland's books, the only author other than Edna O'Brien for whom this is true. Why? Because his writing is inventive and interesting, his understanding of human nature unusually enlightened, and he's very, very funny. I was lucky to land in a novel-writing class of Roland's nearly four years ago, which led to getting to know him and to being beneficiary of his counsel. I'd say I wish the same for every writer but I don't because then we wouldn't have Roland's prolific output.

Just out is American Savior: A Novel of Divine Politics, a daring book about a US presidential election. Why daring? Because Jesus runs for the highest office--on the Divinity ticket--recruiting a bit of a ragtag team to promote him, while he surfboards, disappears from time to time, and chooses his Native American mother as his running mate. It's impossible to read this book and not think about our impending election as the crucial issues blast out of every page--religion (obviously), authenticity, duplicity, honesty, trust, cynicism, and, need I say, the role of the media. But, as you'll see in this interview, Roland also plays with some deeper issues around belief.

Rather than write yet another review, which, after all, would be just one woman's opinion, I decided to fire off some questions to Roland. Here are his responses. If this prompts any questions from you, I'll send those to him as well.


Q: American Savior is the third in a series [following Golfing with God, whereby a pro golfer finds himself dead, in heaven, and recruited by God to teach him--or her--it's hard to say, golf, and Breakfast with Buddha, whereby an agnostic New York food critic finds himself on a cross-country (and pan-spiritual journey of enlightenment) with something/one akin to Buddha--maybe or not quite]. Did you conceive of all three originally or did one evolve from the previous?

A: No, I definitely did not conceive of them as a group.  I started with Golfing with God, which had a strange history.  Originally it was a non-fiction account of a trip we took to get out of the worst winter of our lives (debt, cold, snow, and one of our daughters diagnosed with cystic fibrosis).  But it did not work as non-fiction, and so I turned it, after a few years, into a novel.  My editor at Algonquin, the wonderful Chuck Adams [excellent interview with Chuck by Jofie Ferrari-Adler in this month's Poets & Writers], said he wanted another book that was along the same lines--funny, "spiritual"--and I had always wanted to see North Dakota, and I love driving, so that's how Breakfast with Buddha came about. American Savior grew out of my twin fascinations--politics and religion--and my fairly obsessive following of developments very early in the presidential campaign.

Q: You've now made main characters of God, Buddha, and Jesus. Is Mohammed next? Or have the various literary dust-ups around portrayals of him precluded that?

A: I have been specifically warned away from writing about Mohammed, which I think is a shame. The truth is, though, that I don't have much knowledge about Mohammed, or any particular interest. I have a detailed proposal written for a next book along the same lines, but I don't want to say any more about it. For me, writing is a way of working out the things I think about anyway, and I have pondered our existential predicament endlessly every since I was a little guy. These books feel like a natural extension of all those thoughts.

Q: Your early books - Leaving Losapas, A Russian Requiem, and the trio, Revere Beach Boulevard, Revere Beach Elegy, and In Revere, In Those Days, were all quite serious but these recent ones are hilarious. What happened to you as a writer to release your inner comedian?

A: That's a good observation.  I think there was a way that I had to take myself seriously at first.  It was a kind of defense against some imagined criticism.  And, like a lot of young writers, or aspiring writers, part of my motivation came from wanting to be like the famous writers I idolized, to have a life like their lives, to be spoken about that way, and they were all serious types, at least on the page. I have grown out of or away from most of that.  Having children helped. There is a way in which the love a child gives you--and the love children bring out in us--can make you not have to prove things to yourself or others.  Maybe a better way of saying it is that having children--which Amanda and I did at a later time than most people--had a great healing effect on me. I was always goofy-funny in person, especially after a couple of drinks. Somehow, after the girls were born, I let myself be that way in print.

Q: This book, American Savior, is biting satire, sending up everyone from Larry King to George Stephanopolous to the whole political process. Have you gotten any hate mail for this or for portraying Jesus as almost human?

A: Strangely, no. I did a radio interview recently that had people calling in. This was in Alabama. And a Baptist pastor called in and I thought, "Here we go; the guy is going to hate me." But that was my own prejudice talking. He understood the book in exactly the way I meant it to be understood, as a very reverent, if slightly offbeat look at the way we behave in America now, especially in big campaigns. I tried not to be too unkind in the depictions of well known commentators. I poked fun. There are a couple of them whom I felt really had it coming, so I tried to give it to them. The heart and soul of the book is the different ways different people react to a holy being. It's more about that than about Jesus.  I have seen a few online reviews in which people take some mild offense, but I don't pay a lot of attention to reviews, on line or otherwise. There are always going to be people who dislike a book.  No writer pleases everybody, and it is a mistake to try.

Q: American Savior is also prophetic. A "good" candidate who seems committed to kindness and helping everyone - a "transformational figure," as a certain current "one" has been called, runs for office and throws the others off their games. Was there a moment while writing this when you realized that you might be writing an allegory?

A: Late in the game, yes, when people started making Obama into a larger than life figure.  But I started the book before I or almost anybody else knew who he was. And, while I admire him, I think there is still a fair distance between him and Jesus and I really did not write scenes in the book to correspond to his ideas or personality.

Q: What surprised you in writing this book, if anything?

A: The realization that the people around Jesus in the Bible were really pretty troubled and ordinary.  I had always seen them as special, and in a way, of course, they were.  But they were disloyal, competitive, vain, whiny, full of doubt and fear and confusion, and out for themselves in a lot of ways. Like the rest of us.  Writing the book helped me understand that better. The other thing was that Jesus has become a figure a lot of people don't want anything to do with. They have had Jesus crammed down their throat, and they are tired of hearing about him from glassy-eyed, smiling, know it all types. Which is a shame, but perfectly understandable. Others don't want him messed with. They know exactly who he is, and how he would behave, and God forbid you challenge their idea of him.  It would be funny if it didn't cause so much trouble. I talked to several of my Jewish friends, too, because I wanted to know how they thought of Jesus.  What surprised me about that was that they all seemed to say he was not a big deal in their lives. No negative feelings, not many positive feeling, just not an issue.

Q: I understand that you don't outline your books. Do scenes come to you as the story unfolds or do scenes come whenever and then you find  where they fit?

A: I outline a little bit, but usually only after I get going, and I change the outline about as often as I change shirts. It just doesn't work for me to set things out. It deadens the book, takes the surprise out of it for me. Scenes come to me as I go. I'm a good Virgo, and pretty orderly in some ways, so I simply can't write in anything other than a chronological order. Chapter four comes after chapter three. I just start with an imagined scene and sometimes a very general idea of where things might go, then I try to figure out what the characters would do next in real life, and to have those actions make sense, and give the book some kind of tension.

Thanks, Roland. As they say in the biz, moretocome, moretocome, moretocome...

Roland on "issueists"

I owe it to all of you to review Roland Merullo's newest send-up of the world around, American Savior, as astute a commentary on the political process as I've seen. And prescient. In short, a certain revered religious figure whose name is bandied about like a shield by certain politicians runs for president on the Divinity Party. It's funny, very, and sad, terribly, when you think about what a candidate like this means/faces/mirrors in our political process. But, as I said, I owe the book a proper review and I can't do it now. Just buy it and then we can actually discuss it.

Meanwhile, Roland has an op-ed in today's Boston Globe, "How not to vote for president." In my view, he is unparalleled in producing the great opening, particularly in his novels, which vacuum you (or to be precise, me) right in. Great work, Roland, once again:

IN THE MIDST of this remarkable campaign for the presidency, it continues to amaze me that some people still want to talk about issues. By now, all but the most naive first-time voter must realize that what's important is not where the candidates stand on healthcare or job creation, but whether or not they would be fun to have a beer with. I mean, do you really think Al Gore or John Kerry would have made a better president than the affable fellow we have in there now? Would you seriously want to have Gore over to your house for dinner and Monday night football? Are you really saying you'd want to sit down in front of "American Idol" with JK instead of GWB?

Solstice MFA Reading Series July 11-18, 2008

Enjoy hearing great writers in an intimate setting? This reading series from the Solstice MFA program is always terrific. Some of my fave writers, again, including Roland Merullo reading from his newest, American Savior. I was able to get my hands on an Advance Reading Copy and - how do I put into words the gesture where you put your fingers to your lips, kiss, and whip that smooch into the universe with a wave of the arm? I promise to post about the book itself - it's canny, timely, and very funny. I do hope the NY Times Book Review catches this one. Here's the press release from program director, Meg Kearney, who's also reading and, worth noting, a supremely good reader herself:

THE SOLSTICE MFA OF PINE MANOR COLLEGE ANNOUNCES ITS JULY READING SERIES

[Chestnut Hill, MA, July 1, 2008]  The Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program of Pine Manor College announces its July Reading Series. The following writers will read from their work at 7:30 p.m. (unless otherwise noted) in the Founder’s Room of Pine Manor College, located at 400 Heath Street in Chestnut Hill. All readings are free and open to the public; copies of the authors’ books will be available for sale and signing before and after the readings. Plenty of free parking!

Friday, July 11: Fiction & nonfiction writer Randall Kenan (The Fire This Time, Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Century, and Let the Dead Bury Their Dead), & novelist Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Shutter Island, and the forthcoming The Given Day).

Saturday, July 12: Graduating MFA student Kirsten Blocker, poet Kathleen Aguero (Daughter Of, The Real Weather, and Thirsty Day), & novelist Sterling Watson (Sweet Dream, Baby; The Calling; and Weep No More, My Brother).

Sunday, July 13: Graduating MFA student Adam Eisenson, Program Administrator and fiction writer Tanya Whiton (published in Crazyhorse and Northwest Review), plus novelist & young people’s writer Laban Carrick Hill (America Dreaming: How Youth Changed America in the 60s, A Brush With Napoleon, and Casa Azul).

Monday, July 14 at 4:30 p.m.: MFA student readings.

Tuesday, July 15: Graduating MFA student Maryann Jacob, MFA Program Director and poet Meg Kearney (An Unkindness of Ravens, The Secret of Me, and the forthcoming Home By Now), and poet, essayist, & short-story writer Ray Gonzalez (The Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande, The Underground Heart: A Return to a Hidden Landscape, and the forthcoming Faith Run: Lyrical Poems and Cool Auditor: Prose Poems).

Wednesday, July 16: Graduating MFA student John Theo, Jr., YA novelist Laura Williams McCaffrey (Alia Waking and Water Shaper), and special guest novelist & nonfiction writer Roland Merullo (In Revere, In Those Days; Golfing With God; A Little Love Story; and the forthcoming American Savior).

Thursday, July 17 at 4:30 p.m.: MFA student readings

Thursday, July 17: Poet & fiction writer Steven Huff (A Pig In Paris, The Water We Came From, and More Daring Escapes), fiction & nonfiction writer Joy Castro (The Truth Book), & novelist Helen Elaine Lee (Water Marked, The Serpent’s Gift, and the forthcoming Life Without).

Friday, July 18: poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar (A New Hunger, Small Gods of Grief, and The Hour Between Dog and Wolf), YA novelist An Na (The Fold, A Step From Heaven, and Wait for Me), and essayist & memoirist Michael Steinberg (editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction; author of Still Pitching).

Directions to Pine Manor College, complete bios of our authors, and more information about the Solstice MFA Program can be found at www.pmc.edu/mfa.