Hello, dear friends and fellow foodies. I have a recipe to share but I thought I'd throw in some writing updates and a few book recommendations while I'm here.* I hope you are all doing well and that your locale's experience of climate change and your community's presentation of sociopolitical polarization are not unmanageable. In Minnesota, we had a snowless winter (boring and brown) and have endured record-setting, event-ruining rains since spring. But our governor is running for vice president! And in my (liberal) circles, we're all pride and enthusiasm about that, with perhaps a thimble's worth of itchy misgivings. In my humble (liberal) opinion, Gov. Walz is compassionate and communicative, he's both a pragmatist and a consistently progressive, decisive leader, and he'd serve as a compassionate, communicative, pragmatic, progressive, and decisive VP. But man, national politics are ugly, and I wish we could just skip the next eighty-odd days.
Well, now we've got that out of the way. ;)
On Writing: In the spring, I was lucky enough to attend a three-day writing retreat overlooking a glacial Lake Superior. Surrounded by naked birch trees braving North Shore gales, and dodging displaced earthworms as we navigated the grounds, we discussed, fittingly, fallow periods: those stretches characterized by what we used to call “writer’s block,” a phrase lately out of fashion amongst legit writerly folks. I appreciate the shift. The concept of writer’s block sounds more like a failure, by definition owned by the writer themself, no solution in sight. The fallow slant is more forgiving. Extrinsic. For me, the concept hearkens a mindful acceptance of the realities and responsibilities of adulthood, which are very often not conducive to nurturing one’s creative intuition or refilling the well. The fallow times in my life seem to be times of fullness, buckets and calendars overflowing with real urgent demands: laundry and lists and laundry lists and logistics and breakfasts and lunches and dinners, even elevensies on no-school days, along with bloody noses and strep throats and molting toes and Epipen refills and new insurance terms and practices and races and meets and games (and did I mention that I trained for (liberal) and completed a sprint triathlon in July, without dying?). Without generous pours of intention and discipline, real life – even when you quit your day job! two years and two months ago! – does not afford much space for writing to get better at writing. A frantic pace militates against a noticing mind and open heart. In my more dire moments, I fear I’ve been most creative when there’s been emptiness or brokenness – miscarriages, family dysfunction, emergency rooms, PTSD. I see it in others whose writing I follow, too. Craft tends to level up with the stakes, so writers get really good when they’re undergoing chemo or fighting over the custody terms in the divorce decree they didn't want. And so, short on cancer diagnoses and handcuffed to this pesky intact family, what’s a writer to do? … I’m trying to re-shift my focus to the glorious present. There is plenty to reckon with in even a non-tragic life. There is plenty to notice and memorialize in the mundane. To that end, I've posted some poems on my Substack, about love and mothering - the pillars of my own glorious present. And I keep plugging away at the bigger goals, erratically, inefficiently. Floundering as ever, but with some wins: I think my baseline ramblings have improved in quality and color; and I received my first acceptance letter (!!!!) for publication of a poem of mine in a small-press journal. (I then panicked and withdrew it. Some poems come with controversy.)
On Reading: This has been the summer of White women novels. And they were all worth reading, even if they do kind of blur. I finally read American Wife, by my hero Curtis Sittenfeld. It's a fictitious examination of the life of Laura Bush. Excellent, of course, couldn't put it down. I also read We All Want Impossible Things, by Catherine Newman, to tide me over until I can get my hands on a library copy of her newer book, Sandwich, which is getting a lot of hype. I liked it - it was quick, funny, character-driven, full of evocative five-sense food descriptions and focusing on that epic fraught incomparable love affair some of us are lucky enough to have with our childhood best friend (me!! I'm looking at you, Nic!). There was an emotional detachment to the writing that was arguably essential to balancing the story's tone with its subject matter (cancer, dying, palliative care, loss, grief). Nevertheless, I found it sort of alienating. I still recommend the book without reservation - it is solid writing, modern and pithy with glimmers of very relatable dynamics and Gilmore Girls-ish dialogue. I preferred the dying friend over the protagonist - staunchly moral, impatient and exacting in her expectations of others - like me! I also read Hello Beautiful - amazing first chapter and then... meh? And a few others! But the standouts of the summer so far are these:
I loved the book
Fleishman Is in Trouble (have not watched show yet) and so had high expectations of
Long Island Compromise (release date: July 9, 2024 - I'm so trendy). It did NOT disappoint. It's sweeping and unhinged, brimming with softball social commentary and riddled with crass, clever
lazzis; it revolves around characters you simultaneously despise and adore and despise adoring (they are drastic distortions of our own worst privileged selves and that comes with a bite!); decades-old mysteries unfold and unlived lives fall apart (or do they?) and the whole unwieldy story is told with impeccable rhythm and precision and control, and it is HILARIOUS. Plus, the ending is
just tidy enough with every tangent appropriately capped - no small feat, I can say with authority and by authority I mean experience trying and failing at such despite grueling efforts. It reminded me of a lot of some old favorites: Jonathan Tropper's
This is Where I Leave You, Jess Walter's
Beautiful Ruins (all the heart emojis), Ann Patchett's
Commonwealth, anything by Jonathan Franzen minus the misogyny. It is SO GOOD.
And then...
The Bee Sting. Holy cannoli!! I'm not even finished with the book but I can't stop thinking about this disorienting, grim gambol tracking a well-off Irish family's experience of the economic downturn of 2008 and hurling full steam ahead to an uncanny dystopian existential far-off climate-changed cliff-fall of a future. It's 617 pages you can't stop turning... daunting to the masses, you'd think, and yet I waited nearly a year for my library copy. There are tons of thorough, smart reviews of it online, including a
free one on Slate. Check them out! You'll know whether it's your thing. It's for sure mine, even though I am generally suspect of any book longer than 350 pages.
* I said I had a recipe but this got VERY LONG! Stay tuned for fiber aplenty and capers too!
