Endicott Redux

Harry Potter meets The New Yorker

In the Better Late Than Never Department, I only just discovered Gwenda Bond's article "Fantasy Goes Literary," which appeared in Publishers Weekly way back in March. (Where was I??? I've only been waiting years for PW to publish something like this.) "Novels featuring prominent fantasy or supernatural elements have found an eager new audience in the literary world," Gwenda notes, then goes on to discuss writers such as Alice Sebold, Audrey Niffenegger, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, Susanna Clarke, Lydia Millet, Kevin Brockmeier, Kelly Link and many others who regularly cross (or simply ignore) the mainstream-fiction/genre-fiction divide. She mentions the role played by The New Yorker Magazine in creating a more-favorable publishing climate and readership for literary fantasy through its publication of fantastical works by Brockmeier, Chabon, George Saunders, Stephen King, and others. (I'm inclined to thing that 20 years worth of dedicated genre-crossing in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror volumes might have had some small influence too.) It's an excellent, timely article -- even for those of us whose idea of timely is running four months late...

Midori and I also highly recommend Gwenda's blog, Shaken and Stirred (for book reviews and more), and Say..., the delightful small press magazine she co-edits with Christopher Rowe.

The Sunday Poem

Our poem this Sunday is "Why We Tell Stories" -- one of my very favorite poems by the German-American poet Lisel Mueller. Mueller draws upon folklore and fairy tale themes in a number of her poems, published in Alive Together (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), The Need to Hold Still (winner of the National Book Award) and many other volumes. "Why We Tell Stories" is a lyrical exploration of...well, of precisely what the title says: why we tell these magical old stories over and over again. I was first introduced to Mueller's work some years ago by another fine poet, Jane Yolen. So this morning we also have a second poem for you, Jane's "'Once Upon a Time,' She Said"(from our own Endicott Coffeehouse), which also explores the imagistic power of fairy tales and the art of storytelling.

The Pre-Raphaelites in Pennsylvania

For those of you in or near Pittsburg, the Frick Art & Historical Centre presents Waking Dreams, an exhibition of works by artists of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. "The exhibition is drawn from the Delaware Art Museum, which houses the most significant collection of Pre-Raphaelite art outside of the United Kingdom. The exhibition will be on view at The Frick Art Museum through October 8, 2006. Including close to 130 examples of oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, ceramics, jewelry, and furniture, Waking Dreams: The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites from the Delaware Art Museum explores the Pre-Raphaelite movement as practiced by its most important members. The collection spans most of the Victorian period, opening with the young Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s (1828–1882) 1848 practice work as a student of Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893) and extending to several paintings completed by Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898) just before his death in 1898." The exhibition runs from today, July 29, through October 8.

A Literary Era Passing

I've long been fascinated by the life and writings of Anais Nin, who packed more living into her span of years that any ten other people put together. Like her most famous lover, Henry Miller, she was a complex mixture of admirable qualities and regrettable ones, all chronicled for posterity in her famous diaries. She spent the last stretch of her life as a bigamist, marrying a handsome, much-younger man named Rupert Pole in California while still married to her life-long partner Hugh Guilier in New York City. (She went back and forth between them every few weeks, and for many years neither man knew about the other.) Rupert, the last surviving member of the trio, and the executor of Nin's literary estate, died recently in the same California home he shared for many years with Anais. Other Nin fans out there may be interested in this obituary, published in the L.A. Times.    

Author Interview

John Scalzi has posted an interesting interview with Ellen Kushner, discussing writing, radio, interstitial arts, and her new book The Privilege of the Sword. You'll find the interview here. 

The Sunday Poem

Our Sunday Poem this week, like last week, features an acclaimed Scottish poet reading from her own work. "What the Pool Said, on Midsummer's Day" by Liz Lochhead is a perfect poem for these hot summer days, particularly for those of us living in the countryside . . . and for urbanites and suburbanites who occasionally long for dark woodlands, deep pools, and green hills. You can hear Lochhead read her poem (along with three others) on the British Art Council's Poetry Quartets website.   

Liz Lochhead attended the Glasgow School of Art (famed for its association with Charles Rennie & Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh, Jessie M. King, and other important artists from the Scottish Arts & Crafts movement), and taught art In England and Scotland before becoming an award-winning poet, playwright, performer, and occasional theatre director. Her plays include Blood and Ice, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, and Dracula; and she has been Writer in Residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the University of Edinburgh. As a poet, her work has been widely published in magazines and anthologies in the U.K. and abroad, and collected in a number of volumes including The Colour of Black and White and True Confessions and New Cliches. Of particular interest to mythic arts readers is Lochhead's Dreaming Frankenstein & Collected Poems, containing wonderful works based on traditional fairy tales and the Scottish folk ballad Tam Lin. She also collaborated on a song, "The Baker," with Scottish harpist Savourna Stevenson for a terrific CD featuring Stevenson, the great June Tabor, and Danny Thompson. You can hear a sample track from the song here. 

Biographies and Memoirs

       

I have a real weakness for biographies, autobiographies, diaries, and collected letters of writers, artists, and composers, particularly the ones who lived life richly then alchemized that experience into art. I ought to be delighted then that memoirs have become so fashionable in the publishing industry -- yet many modern memoirs I've come across have proved to be disappointing fare, ranging from navel-gazingly whiny to tiresomely ironic. (Oh how I long for a Post Irony movement in arts & letters. Not that there's anything wrong with true irony, mind you -- that wry way of looking at life that certain cultures, Yorkshiremen and Navajos for instance, do so well; I mean that peculiarly adolescent kind of ironical pose that too often passes for hip these days. But I digress.) There are some good memoirs out there, however, by writers who have thoroughly immersed themselves in life and who truly bring their experiences alive on the printed page. I've recently re-read two old favorites: About this Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory, a very inspiring collection of autobiographical essays by naturalist and mythologist Barry Lopez, and Memories of My Ghost Brother, a gorgeous, folklore-infused narrative about the Korean childhood of Endicott writer Heinz Insu Fenkl. Then just last night I was kept up far too late finishing a a terrific memoir set in the American West, post-World War II: The Boy Who Invented Skiing by Swain Wolfe. I have Charles de Lint to thank for introducing me to Wolfe's work. I loved Wolfe's magical-realist Western novels Lake Dreams and The Parrot Trainer (both of which I highly recommend), and it's fascinating to learn that the life lived by the man behind the novels is every bit as engrossing as his fiction. The Boy Who Invented Skiing is both a coming-of-age tale about a boy's survival in a colorful, unusual, occasionally brutal childhood, and a paean to the spirited landscape, people, and regional culture of Montana. It's also an examination of how a writer grows into his craft and finds his voice. The book has a wonderful cast of characters: miners, loggers, ranchers, cowboys, iconoclastic intellectuals and those free spirits particular to the American West. Below the surface of the tale, as in all Wolfe's work, is a subtle strain of what one reviewer dubbed "cowboy metaphysics" -- i.e. a deep appreciation for the poetry and mystery in the land below our feet.

Adrienne Segur

Some time ago I was in Lyon, France with Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, on our way to a dinner party at the home of writer and publisher Andre-Francois Ruaud. As we were prowling around the back streets of Lyon, Ellen excitedly pulled me into an antiquarian bookshop where she had unearthed a treasure: a whole shelf full of old French fairy tale volumes illustrated by Adrienne Segur. Two fairy tale books illustrated by Segur had been published in English-language editions by Golden Press in the 1950s, and I'd grown up with one of them: The Golden Book of Fairy Tales. It had been a precious, influential, talismanic book for me...a fact that Ellen knew well. I was practically in tears as I pulled out volume after volume of old French fairy tale publications containing Segur illustrations that I'd never, ever seen before. Needless to say, those books came home with me, where they now have pride of place on the bookshelves of my little Devon cottage. I know there are many other Segur fans in the Endicott community, so we'd like to share some of her lesser-known French fairy tale art with you. Please visit the Adrienne Segur Tribute Page in the Endicott Gallery, which Midori has just re-designed to include a number of new illustrations. You'll also find Segur's work illustrating my essay "Transformations" (originally published in Kate Bernheimer's marvellous collection Mirror, Mirror on the Wall), and extensively reproduced on Christine Norstrand's Art Passions site. There are also a couple of Segur images (with poetry by Ellen Steiber and Holly Black) on our Endicott poetry postcards page. Enjoy!

The Art of Storytelling

Here's a "Call for Entries" from the Delaware Art Museum:

"In order to encourage and celebrate children's appreciation of the visual arts, the Delaware Art Museum and Night Kitchen Interactive present The Art of Storytelling: Bringing Visual Art to Life through Stories. The Project aims to inspire children's interest in visual art through an audio series of narrated stories. These stories will be heard in a gallery-based educational activity as an accompaniment to the works of art.

"The Art of Storytelling series will feature participating writers, artists, and dramatists telling stories about the visual art works. Stories will be gathered via this Call for Entries. Through an open juried exhibition process, stories will be reviewed and selected for use in the project. Stories are to be 250–500 words (2–3 minutes) in length, written for an audience of primarily 8- to 12-year-old children. Each of the 20 selected stories will be recorded in the voice (potentially with sound effects, music, and more) of the original artist, or by professional voiceover talent. Selected storytellers will receive a $250 stipend and recognition on the Delaware Art Museum website."

That word count seems mighty short to me, but maybe some of you writers & storytellers out there are up to the challenge. Deadline for entries: August 3, 2006. More information can be found here and here.

The image pictured above is Rosamond the Fair, or Fate Spinning the Thread of Time by Mary Lizzie Macomber (1915), from the Delaware Museum of Arts' permanant collection. Macomber was a Boston painter who worked in the Pre-Raphaelite style. The museum has a fine collection of Pre-Raphaelite and American Arts-&-Crafts art and illustration. It's worth a trip.

The Sunday Poem

Each week we spotlight a poem and poet from among the many offerings on the web. This week: "The Chance to Love Everything," a gorgeous poem by Mary Oliver.  Oliver was born in Maple Heights, Ohio in 1935, and now lives in Bennington, Vermont (where she holds the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College) and Provincetown, Massachusetts. She has published numerous collections of poetry, each of them well worth seeking out -- including American Primitive, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984.