Endless Knots

This American Ira #thisamericanlife

 

 

Photo via Paramount Theatre site with thanks

Of Vermont's many attributes, its theaters are venues for first-rate performers. So it was that on Saturday night we impulsively signed up for "AN EVENING WITH IRA GLASS" at the Paramount, Rutland's premier venue (we saw Joan Baez there last summer; Melissa Etheridge and Ziggy Marley are coming soon, but not together :).

I'm not a regular listener to "This American Life" but I hear it often enough to remember stories and to think that it's an interesting show, one that I learn from. Plus I worry about Ira's dog, Piney. Others do too, apparently, as when he opened the show up for questions, the first was about whether the little canine is still eating kangaroo meat. (No, they've run the gamut of mammal meat and are back to pork. For those who don't know, Piney develops allergies to his carnivorous offerings after a time. We won't talk about the bunnies.)

Ira Glass photo from TAL site (grazie, again)

It was a good show but, don't hate me, Ira, not the best he's capable of. A very clever opening. Ira enters in the dark, carrying an iPad, kitted out to look like a radio in the dark (at least that's what we can see from the balcony), and speaks about the power of radio, the power of voice, the power of just words.

After a few minutes the lights go up and there he is taller, older, and more slender than his voice would imply. And in a suit and tie. If one were to do a suit-and-tie survey of Vermont and compare it with other states, it would place near the bottom, I'd wager. Perhaps this is explained by Vermont having recently topped the charts for the state with the highest number of hippie indicators and, for the third year running, is number 1 in the Strolling of the Heifers Index, which measures a state on the locavore scale--number of CSAs, food coops, and the like. Not too many hippie heifers strolling around in suit and tie in the greenest of states (it means "green mountain," thanks to explorer Samual Champlain who so named it).

Still he looked good in it. And he did a nice job of weaving in appalling stories (one about a thirteen-year-old who'd been bitten by a shark and suffered not surprisingly dire consequences, another about a fourteen-year-old who had become a pedophile, which was horrifying not just because he was one but because the psychologist whom he saw said that she had no idea how or where to have him treated). So the tidbits, including a scatological one featuring David Sedaris (shocking, I know), were alternately funny and thought-shaking-upping.

The centerpiece was for me, finally as in I've been waiting to understand it for years, a decent explanation of semiotics. Perhaps you're different from me and, when you hear about something that sounds very sophisticated, you don't assume that the rest of the world knows about it and that you're the village dunce. Or that references to those associated with it (in this case Roland Barthes) are familiar to these hypothetical in-the-know other people and that they all probably studied with him. Or roomed with him.

Me, I had no idea what semiotics really was (or is as it still exists) until Ira explained it. He majored in it at Brown, in fact, a defeat for his parents who were hoping for a career with a more predictable revenue stream, viz. why the hell didn't he become a doctor? OK, semioticians, I leave it to you to explain properly but what I understood is that this field is more about meaning than style, more about meta-messages of text than whether the writer uses good analogies, so, out on a limb I climb, it's more about the undercurrents, the deep raison d'être of a piece, than its genre or literary/philosophical category. PS: I'm certain I have this wrong as proved by this definition:

 

From Merriam-Webster 

 

But it helped me to understand a bit more about how Ira and Co. put their stories together, about which he offered the following formula: action-action-action, idea; action-action-action, idea. Listen to the program and see if you can make out the pattern. First this happens, then that, then that, then they throw in some kind of overarching statement explaining what they're talking about. 

Ira is funny, self-effacing, and mumbles just a bit, which had my dear companion, who has perfect hearing so far as I can tell (he seems to know what I'm doing from a room or two away), asking, "What did he say?" several times. I didn't always know.

Ira's wrap focused around a clever theme, which I wish he'd used for the whole show. Having just listened to some tapes of the incomparable Studs Terkel interviewing Zero Mostel (as he said, you have to be of an age to get these references), Ira contrasted what he was doing with a genre that Mostel eschewed, what he called "mishpuchah" stories. Mostel disliked yarns about families (mishpuchah, in Yiddish means the WHOLE family, friends, hangers-on, you know, your network) where the same problems happen to the same kinds of people with the same kinds of outcomes. The example, if I remember correctly, was daughter gets pregnant, parents get upset, etc and so on.

Ira thrives on mishpuchah (although he pronounces it mishpAchah, which means he's from a different Yiddish background from mine, mine being right naturally). His stories are all mishpu-ah-chah and they reel us right in.

That to me is his theme and that could be his hook, line, and sinker, speaking of reeling us in. Who am I to tell Ira Glass how to tell a story? But if he asked, here's what I would say: Start with Zero, throw out your counter-intuitive hypothesis that challenges one of the greatest performers of all time, illustrate with a bunch of shark/pedophile/Piney stories, and then end with a clip from a show, going out with music, leaving the last words unsaid.

Still I loved it: We rated the show to each other: my he, the trained engineer, gave it a 6, I, untrained critic, gave it an 8, and I'm busily integrating what I learned even as I type. Thanks, Mr. Glass.

Real PS: The question about his use of music was perfectly illustrated. The iPad is his guitar, piano, and harmonica all in one, and he demonstrated how they use music in the show to show progression, how they fade to make points, and how they go silent to stun the audience with the big reveal. 

Entrained, entranced in Castleton, VT

I may secretly be a three-year-old boy. I love trains. Keen readers may recall my history of meeting people on trains, people being writers, that is. Writers are great (very great, she says modestly) but so far nothing beats the train station I left recently in Castleton (pop. 4717), VT, headed for Penn Station in New York.

Yes, there's a train from tiny Castleton to NYC and back every day -- the Ethan Allen. (In case your American history is as rusty as mine, Wikipedia tells us: In May 1775 Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys met in Castleton with Benedict Arnold to plan their next day's attack on Fort Ticonderoga, 30 miles (48 km) west, on the New York side of Lake Champlain.)

And so the train named in the patriot's honor makes its way through peak foliage, along the Hudson, and even has a club car with Kashi cereal. But words can only do so much in a situation like this.

First passenger to arrive, I opened the door to this waiting room.

Next I notice the honor-system coffee bar.

And the Rutland Herald waiting on the bench.

A collection of things we used to use...

A quilt of old trains...

And the station door...

At which point, the stationmaster, Mary Ann Jakubowski, showed up to tell the story of this little jewel.

Short version: First used as a train station in 1850, the last passengers  came through in the mid-1940s; freight continued to pass through until the mid-'50s. In 1966, Jakubowski's parents bought the building and her father, Cecil Ducharme, opened a honky-tonk piano store there. After her parents died, Jakubowski and her husband, Val, decided to rehab the building -- and appeal to Amtrak to reinstitute service in Castleton. Their campaign worked; they transformed the building to its current quaintness; and service was restored in January, 2010. Today the Ethan Allen leaves for Penn Station around 8 AM and returns back to Castleton around 8:30 at night.

And then...I, and about a dozen others, go to the platform and watch the train come in:

Very sweet. And for the record, I didn't meet any writers on this train. Instead I met a museum curator... and on the return trip, two friends. Take the train.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Lunch with Buddha" – Here goes!

It's happening. The e-dition of Roland Merullo's newest, Lunch with Buddha, is out and the launch for the print edition is coming right up, next Thursday, Nov 15, 7 PM, at my hometown bookstore, Newtonville Books. This sequel to Breakfast with Buddha, the laugh-out-loud send-up-with-a-serious-undertone about spiritual practice, has its own think-about-it strain, a grieving husband. Even after reading so many of Roland's books, I'm still not sure how he does it: his clever way of doing analogies without constantly using the words "like" and "as if," his ability to hit the emotional notes with precisely the right pressure, his humor-without-insult. The story of how the book has been published is its own brave tale of friendship, dedication, and good business hunches. Here, the press release.

Roland Merullo’s funny roadtrip novel, Breakfast with Buddha (2007), is in its 13th printing, has sold over 130,000 copies, been optioned for film and translated into Korean and Croatian, and was nominated for the prestigious Dublin IMPAC Literary Prize — a success by any measure. However, for the sequel, Lunch with Buddha, Merullo turned down a six-figure advance and chose a very small publishing house owned by a good friend, instead of going with one of the larger houses that have published his novels to wide acclaim since 1991.

Merullo, 59, and publisher Peter Sarno, 58, grew up within a mile and a half of each other in the working-class city of Revere, Massachusetts. They played, at the same time, in different divisions of the city Little League. Their fathers knew each other well. Peter’s mother and Roland’s aunt were best friends, and their acquaintances overlapped in scores of places, but the two men didn’t meet until 2006 when each had moved far from Revere and each other.

During that period, Sarno had returned to graduate school at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. As part of a course requirement for George Garrett Award winning author and AGNI magazine founder, Askold Melnyczuk, Sarno conducted a craft interview with Merullo based on one of the assigned texts: Revere Beach Elegy, winner of the 2000 Massachusetts Book Award for non fiction. Sarno would later go on to teach literature and writing classes at UMASS. Before the 2011 Spring semester began, he discovered that Elegy, (which had now become one of his own course staples), was no longer available. He contacted Merullo, asking if he could find a way to get it back into print. From that conversation, PFP Publications was born. Sarno proceeded to publish not only five books from Merullo’s backlist, but titles by such notable authors as the aforementioned Melnyczuk, Elizabeth Searle, Craig Nova, Sterling Watson and others.
On November 13th, PFP’s imprint, AJAR Contemporaries, will publish Lunch with Buddha.

The two former Revere kids are doing everything themselves — raising money through an inventive IPO program (more than a dozen investors will each receive a one-time 10% return on their money once the book sells its 10,000th copy) and the on-line crowdfunder Kickstarter, hiring a designer and copyeditor (both of whom are nationally known and happen to live within a few miles of each other and the author on Merullo’s country road), finding printers, putting together a book tour, attending conferences, meeting with booksellers and reaching out to reviewers as well as long time supporters of Merullo’s work.

“We’re determined,” the author says, “not merely to do everything the big publishers do, but to do it better and faster and at a lower cost. Peter and I have been working from breakfast until midnight every day for months now. Our skills complement each other well: Peter’s a detail person, and I’m out in space half the time. He knows the world of computers inside and out, and I can barely send an email. He and his small staff are as devoted to this novel as I am, and after 22 years of putting out books with the publishing giants, I find that immensely refreshing.”

Lunch with Buddha has some refreshing twists, too. There’s an interview (conducted by the noted author Matthew Quick of The Silver Linings Playbook fame) and a reader’s guide between the covers, as well has several hand-edited pages from Merullo’s working drafts, a recommended reading list, and a list of web sites where photos linked to the text can be seen. In addition to the usual hardcover and paperback editions (published simultaneously), AJAR will put out an eBook that will include embedded photos, taken by Merullo’s professional-photographer wife Amanda, from the Seattle-to-North Dakota road trip on which the story is based, and a signed, numbered, limited-edition hardcover with a slightly different design.

“I’ve actually gained a lot more respect for the larger and established publishers during this process,” Sarno says. “It’s not easy reaching an individual author’s fan base, his or her supporters. Or establishing and discovering a new reader-ship in this digital and online world. You’d think it would be. But folks are bombarded with so much info these days that it can be difficult to capture their attention. We’ve employed as many of the new social media tools as we can, and the eBook format has so much potential. Yet, we’ve also gone back to what some would consider the ‘old fashioned’ ways of snail mail, returned telephone calls and cups of coffee with independent bookstore owners, librarians and booksellers as a means of connecting with Roland’s readers.”

The business partners have already contacted many of the book groups that chose Breakfast with Buddha, put together an extensive book tour, including stops in eastern Massachusetts, Maine, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and New York State, and in the works are radio and print interviews, as well as catalogue and on-line advertising via publishing organizations, Book Buzz, Goodreads, and other reader-centric sites.

“I wrote this novel in such a way that those who’ve never read Breakfast will be perfectly at ease, and those who have read it will continue their American road trip and spiritual search with the eccentric monk, Volya Rinpoche, and the other characters they came to know, “ Merullo says. “This is my 15th publication, and I have to say I’ve never worked as hard or enjoyed anything nearly as much.”

Print books are already available for pre order from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and several independent bookstores. eBook versions will be available in Kindle, Nook, Apple iBook and Kobo formats. Merullo plans to create an audio version in the Boston accent he and Sarno have never lost. Join them for the celebratory launch reading at Newtonville Books in Newton, MA, on November 15th, or elsewhere along the road in November, December, and January (For a list of appearances, visit LunchWithBuddha.com, or RolandMerullo.com, or the Facebook pages of Roland Merullo or Lunch with Buddha.)

Roland Merullo and Peter Sarno thank you in advance for any review attention or off-page coverage you can give to this new adventure, Lunch with Buddha.

Merullo is "Pick of the Week!"

Boston Globe runs a weekly pick in the book review section which I wish I could link to so I'm just going to have to steal the whole thing (can't find it after numerous searches...something must be going on with the digital department now that the Globe has switched over to its sleek new look). As keen readers of Endless Knots know, rarely does a Roland Merullo plaudit go unmentioned. Even nicer that this mentioner is a great writer (and friend):

Ellen Meeropol of Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley recommends "The Talk-Funny Girl" by Roland Merullo (Crown). The rural southwesterm Vermont setting in Merullo's new novel is rich with details about a way of life that is both out of the mainstream and worlds away from the popular cliches of rural poverty. Combined with the particular darkness of young Marjorie's family and her resilience and strength, this makes for a provocative, layered, and powerful read.

 

 

Bradley Farm, Irene, and the best meal I've ever had...

 
© Etienne Frossard - David Bouley speaking after the meal (read on)

This is one of those posts that I've been meaning to write for nearly two weeks but life trumped every attempt and now I'm in the position of having heard that the hurricane has caused flooding and...

What am I talking about?

Earlier this summer, Farmer Extraordinaire Ray Bradley of Bradley Farm in New Paltz, NY, started hosting Farm-to-Table dinners in his barn. My daughter and son-in-law went to the first, raved about it, and invited me along to the third, which took place on August 21.

Ray sells his wares at the Grand Army Plaza Farmers Market in Brooklyn, which I've blogged about many times. It is indeed a grand farmers market and the Bradley Farm stand is a de rigeur stop for us...which is how my family knew about these extraordinary dinners.

The August 21 meal was one apart - incredibly, David Bouley, chef of great renown (viz. Bouley, brushstroke, Bouley Test Kitchen, etc), who's known Ray  since they were 14 and growing up together near Storrs, CT, collaborated on this event. David was the chef, Ray was in the kitchen, Iris Kimberg was the producer...along with a very large staff, including many volunteers, and the result was pure wonder. When I properly blog this event, the post will be called "Carrot dust and heaven in a barn."

But alas, I've learned just a few hours ago via Etienne Frossard, who took the pictures on the Bradley Farm site, and who has sent me a bunch to share here, including the one at the top of this post, that Bradley Farm was flooded by Hurricane Irene and that Ray finally was able to reach his precious land - by canoe.

We wonder who really gets touched by this wild weather. A number of people I know have lost power; a friend couldn't drive from Vermont to Boston today due to roads being washed out. And now we know that there's so much water at Bradley Farm that Ray is moving around in a canoe.

I'll still do the post about the best meal I've ever had but tonight there is only this report and the hope that the animals are OK and that the harvest is not lost. Thinking of you, Ray and Iris.

Something I didn't know about Bucky

An article in the Berkshire Eagle (just seeing the name of the paper makes me want to move to Western Massachusetts) profiling Frederick H. Burkhardt, the former Bennington College president "who died earlier this week at 95," mentions his devotion to the faculty. Among those he recruited to the small Vermont institution were the extraordinary management thinker "Peter Drucker, influential psychoanalyst Eric Fromm and former United States Poet Laureate Howard Nemerov...In his years there, Martha Graham was also running her modern dance workshop at the college and Buckminister Fuller built a prototype of his Dymaxion house, an energy efficient structure."

Is your toilet running?

Do inanimate objects have lives of their own? When we first started buying cars, ours were Saabs, one after another, this when they were still made in Sweden. Shortly after we bought our first one, sight unseen from a used car leader in Vermont (a friend called to say that he'd found the perfect car for us and we said, go for it, but not really, as that wasn't an expression then), we noticed a ding in the driver's door. Dings happen. Then we noticed that our friend, a Swede, by the way, had a ding in his Saab's driver door. Well, the rest of this paragraph is predictable. See a Saab, we noticed the same ding in the same spot.

So...what does this have to do with toilets? We have a very old house (even by European standards, it competes). And a couple of old toilets. A few weeks ago, one of the toilets started to run (it's doing so right now, for the record). You know the fix: jiggle the handle and hope it's happy. Then, last week, while visiting daughter #2, she said, "Be sure to jiggle." Next, a visit to daughter #1, where, of course, all talk was of jiggling.

Tell me. Is this just a family-wide phenom or are you jiggling too?

Grace Paley (1922-2007): "Art is too long, life is too short"

Almost ten summers ago, I attended Richard McCann's autobiography-to-fiction workshop at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts (USA). Many times since, I've heard Richard in my head, quoting Grace Paley: Write in the language of your block. Grace died of breast cancer at 84 yesterday in Thetford, Vermont.

Die in the Internet age and much info about you comes together so quickly. Thus it's easy to find Grace's writing, what others think of her work, what she said about herself, even listen to her read. Several focus on her output, not commensurate with her power, they imply. About this, she says in one of the NPR interviews, "I tend to think of my life as one thing. I'm a writer, a teacher, a political activist, a family person, and I hang out a lot and all take time. I probably short-change all of them. I don't write enough, teach enough, hang out with my family enough."

Maybe not enough but eternal.

Heard her phrasing of what Richard described: "Write in the language of your streets and the ordinary language of your time." IMHO, fine advc 4 2day's wrtrs.

A deep NY Times obit from Margalit Fox (who also wrote Carolyn Goodman's and Liam Rector's).

She thought well of gossip, a form of story-telling in her view, commending same in men: "A good male gossip is a good person."

Paris Review interview here.

NY Times review of one of her books from 2004 here.

PEN interview here.

Very good pieces at NPR with quotes from Robert Pinsky (who once helped me change a tire) and an interview with Susan Stamberg.

"My Father Addresses Me with the Facts of Old Age," short story, New Yorker, June 17, 2002.

"A Walk in March," poem, New Yorker, May 28, 2007.