The Redwood Coast

Volume 16, Number 2 Review Spring 2014 A Publication of Friends of Coast Community Library in Cooperation with the Independent Coast Observer

Hampl herself takes as her starting personal history point for the discussion of the memoir St. Augustine (340-430 ad), whose Confes- sions, written to describe his conversion to Christianity, is credited with inaugurat- Marcel ing the memoir genre. I have taped this statement of Augustine’s to my desk while working on my memoir: In the immense court of my memory . . . I come to meet and Me myself. This is still the best definition I know for the work this form does. Most Barry Fruchter memoirs concern childhood, where our families and the adults who raised us appear indeed larger than life, the kings n the spring and summer of my and queens of our young age. Augustine’s sixteenth year I began to read Proust. words also point to the fact that memory IOr rather I began to read C. K. Scott is malleable and thus can be manipulated Moncrieff’s curious Victorian translation for political purposes, that every truth of Proust’s 1912 novel Swann’s Way (Du the memoirist tells is influenced by those Coté de Chez Swann). I do not recall courtiers milling around his head. “I come how it all started, only that gray quality to meet myself”: The memoirist writes to that caught me up in the opening pages of meet the parts of himself he cannot other- “Ouverture,” in which the narrator/par- wise see, to sort out the disparate threads ticipant remembers the time when he used of his personality, and to fashion that into to go to bed early and the way in which art. The memoirist must be unrelentingly objects in the room, images of his mother, and unflatteringly honest while still em- episodes of medieval history all imprinted ploying all the technical skills that a good themselves on his brain and found their novelist wields. way into his childhood dreams. Within a aigne (1602-1674) few weeks I was caught in the processes hat’s in it for the reader then? If of Marcel’s memory and the morphing of Wmemoirs are an act of imagination his childhood desires into the full-blown as much as memory, why not just read a passion for young Gilberte Swann, daugh- good novel? While the typical novel por- ter of Odette de Crecy, a former prostitute, Phili pp e de Cham p trays a society, an age, a situation through and of Charles Swann, a wealthy Jewish Saint Augustine, author of Confessions the prism of relations between a family gentleman who has seemingly “lowered or other small group, a good memoir himself” through his obsession with the portrays a person at a moment of stress, much-used Odette. change, or growth; the society is second- So, at age sixteen, I too tasted the Lone Survivor ary, and is portrayed mainly to support petite madeleine dipped in the spoonful of the growth of that soul. If you find that Tante Leonie’s tisane, her lime-blossom self-involved or narcissistic, beware: good medicinal tea, and I too drifted back into Self-making and the memoir memoirs skate on the edge of narcissism; the memory of passion and its question- not-so-good ones fall in. The memorable able origins, I too encouraged by Marcel Roberta Werdinger ones are saved only by the memoirist’s to reconstruct the elaborate network of honest amazement at the new self that he personal and family history that was does meet, a being as vibrant as any in a making me the person I then was: restless, n the summer of 2010 I lay dying, the author’s humdrum or grand existence, novel. Good memoirists make good char- journalistic, given to pursuing the exotic, or at least I was convinced it was even as those facts can be (and often are) acters out of themselves, and this can only needing to “rise above” in a way I would so. It turned out to be nothing more called into question. Memoirist and essay- be done by achieving a merciful distance, only learn imperfectly later, with a new than a digestive ailment which my ist Patricia Hampl states, “There may be a psychological space (that “immense Marxist consciousness, could be identified mind, tending toward hypochondria no more pressing intellectual need in our court”) wherein they can function in many as “petit bourgeois,” and above all fixated Ithen aided and abetted by the dubious culture than for people to become sophis- dimensions, cast a shadow, and engage on the beauty, exoticism, and poignancy modern advantage afforded by Googling ticated about the function of memory.” in a hopeful upward trajectory. (Or, if the of women—including my cousins and one’s symptoms, worked into terminal “Memoir” itself derives from the trajectory is not hopeful or upward, it can especially the exotic redhead I briefly colon cancer. In those few moments when French word memoire, meaning “mem- offer a cautionary tale to the reader, a kind danced with in my seventeenth year and to the reality of mortality penetrated my ory.” Although people have written of modern Pilgrim’s Progress.) whom now, fifty years later, I am married. recalcitrant brain, I didn’t feel much regret memoirs since the early Christian era, it Augustine was writing at the dawn of Inchoately or perhaps self-consciously nor sadness, just the emergence of this is only in the last twenty years or so that the Christian era; more than a millennium I was drawn to Marcel because he was, resolution: “I have to write about what it has generated enough critical and com- later, more worldly concerns would come like me, a participant-observer who never happened.” mercial interest to be regarded seriously into play. “I mean to lay open to my fel- dropped the “observer” part—a Jew who I knew it was a memoir I needed to as a genre in its own right, spawning a low-mortals a man just as nature wrought never identified as such and who rejected write, specifically, even though I was in new category in writing programs and him; and this man is myself,” trumpets the acquisitiveness, the imitativeness, the the middle of preparing a manuscript of conferences. What is behind our current Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), politics, the clannishness of Jews in his poetry. I knew I needed to write about fascination with memories, our own and whose own Confessions brought the (my) country. how brief and lovely it had been to be those of strangers? memoir into the modern age. Relentlessly In the fall of 1963—that fatal autumn here. I wanted to press the quietest and ambitious and brilliant, Rousseau signaled that changed our country and the world truest moments of my life between the a new preoccupation with the promotion forever and helped construct a culture pages of a book so that its scent would Writing a memoir of the individual self that was a hallmark that would last, one way or another, until waft out to the reader when he or she is already an act of of the Age of Reason. Rousseau’s ego and the other fatal autumn, 2001—I began opened it. sense of self-importance can be off-put- my studies at Hunter College. Though I When it comes to crafting a memoir, taboo-breaking, of ting. “I am not made like anyone I have stayed there only one year, transferring to I have discovered that it is obnoxious to seen; I dare believe I am not made like Bard College after that and leaving New write about yourself, and dishonest not silence-smashing. anyone existing,” he proclaims. Perhaps York City forever, it was a significant to. Since I had specifically undertaken It means you leave this shows that the impulse to use memoir year on a multitude of levels. Typically I to write a spiritual autobiography, how as a cri de coeur, to carp, to justify, is not walked to school through a side street, the could I use words to describe an experi- your tribe by mark- just a symptom of our hyper-therapized, one which held my fifty-family apartment ence that is undergone in silence? The navel-gazing age. While traditional folk building but which in one block became sense of breakthrough a memoirist can get ing—no, by writing— songs and stories as well as many forms a neighborhood of small attached homes from putting words to taboo experiences of poetry and prose tell the story of a (now known as townhouses), with a huge is so intense that she may forget about her a line in the sand: tribe, Rousseau wants to separate himself castle, the Kingsbridge Armory, looming audience. This happened. If from his founding conditions in order to ahead at the end of the street. At Kings- Writing a memoir is already an act celebrate his individuality. In describing bridge Road, facing the castle, I would of taboo-breaking, of silence-smashing. others remember a moment of emergence from the mass of turn left one block to the traffic light to It means you leave your tribe by mark- conscious and unconscious assumptions cross to Reservoir Avenue, which started ing—no, by writing—a line in the sand: it differently, then that make up the family, the tribe, and the on the castle’s left flank and went on past This happened. If others remember it your memory can native culture, the stage for the memoir’s a series of schools: PS 86, Walton High differently, then your memory can serve drama is set. School, and finally Hunter College. But as a manifesto of separation, an aria of serve as a manifesto The language Richard Wright uses before the light, halfway up the block, was adulthood. to describe the poverty and humiliation, a small, crowded, dusty bookstore pre- What do I remember? How do we of separation, an the threatened and actual violence of his sided over by a slight, bearded irascible remember things that are too shocking aria of adulthood. childhood in his groundbreaking memoir older man, and it was there that I acquired or secret for the mind to handle? If no Black Boy is so succinct and fresh that the remaining volumes of Remembrance one remembers anything, what survives? it’s hard to believe it was published in These questions haunt the memoir, creat- See MARCEL page 4 ing narratives that delineate the facts of See SURVIVOR page 10 Page 2 The Redwood Coast Review Spring 2014 editor’s note Hahaha: Wanda Coleman’s Last Laugh

Stephen Kessler

anda Coleman was a big was one of her employers, she told me; he woman. Physically, for loved Lewana’s macaroni and cheese) and I sure—she was built like a had been raised by such women from South linebacker, and she liked LA who worked for my family in the 1950s to fight. But far larger while my folks were out building their busi- Wthan her imposing physical presence was her ness, and these polar opposite upbringings prodigious accomplishment as a poet and on different sides of town created a curious performer. Wanda, a good friend of mine bond between us, as we were also almost for thirty-five years who died last November exactly the same age (she was two months 22 after a series of serious health problems, older). Although we were born in different was for my money one of the major voices, hospitals, she died at Cedars–Sinai, like my in any language, of our generation. A dad, in her case of a pulmonary embolism frequently featured guest at international po- after a series of ailments exacerbated by etry festivals, winner of various prestigious years of economic insecurity, anxiety and national awards, prolific author of verse stress. Somehow despite our radically and prose who traveled widely for readings, different backgrounds we had an effortless she was first of all a Los Angeles writer connection, perhaps in part because we both who reigned as Queen of Poets in that city, so valued honesty in personal relations. She a Watts-born native who stuck around to wasn’t afraid to tell you anything if that’s claim her turf as a vast resource for imagi- what she really thought, and this is such native transformation. Her writing was both an unusual (and dangerous) trait that I was intensely personal and explicitly political, refreshed (if sometimes exasperated) by her and LA was her ruthless yet generous muse. candor. She was hypersensitive and easily Wanda Coleman, 1946-2013 At a packed memorial reading in January passion. Her alternately and sometimes si- provoked, but you always knew where you at the downtown branch of the LA Public multaneously ferocious and tender, enraged stood. Library, a diverse assortment of poets, most and erotic, frightening and funny readings Wanda often confided in and consulted of them residents of Southern California, She overshadowed made a huge impression on anyone who with me about her problems—domestic, praised and thanked Wanda for inspiring witnessed them. She overshadowed practi- professional, economic, medical, automo- them and for demonstrating by example that practically anyone cally anyone else on any stage where she tive—in long letters or phone calls punc- even such a seemingly antipoetic environ- appeared, not because she was a scenery- tuated by black humor and parenthetical ment can offer great riches of resonant else on any stage chewer but because the natural force of her laughter at her own expense. That unforget- material to a writer with the presence of where she appeared, personality and the authenticity of her art table laugh—a high cackle, a crazed wail, a mind and the stamina to pay sustained at- just blew them out of the picture. wild howl just this side of sobs—was, I’m tention. In this she had much in common not because she was Because of her constant struggles to certain, one of the things that kept her alive with Charles Bukowski, the other, older, survive and to raise three kids mostly as for sixty-seven years despite the hardships LA monster poet with whom she hated to a scenery-chewer but a single mom in her twenties and thirties perpetually besetting her. She had a strong be compared. But both were published because the natural (before she met her third husband, the artist sense of the pathos and absurdity of her by John Martin’s pioneering independent and poet Austin Straus, to whom she was situation combined with pride that noth- Black Sparrow Press, in beautiful editions force of her personal- married for more than thirty years), the fact ing could stop her, and the tension between designed by Barbara Martin, and each of her tremendous literary production was those attitudes seemed to trigger a wickedly unleashed a different kind of LA-inflected ity and the authen- even more remarkable. Working various ironic wit. A glance at her sweeping signa- American vernacular that took the Walt ticity of her art just jobs—as a men’s magazine editor, a soap ture at the end of a letter revealed a forceful, Whitman–William Carlos Williams–Frank opera writer (she won an Emmy for Days of confident personality; the big W in the shape O’Hara legacy of common, conversational blew them out of the Our Lives), a medical secretary, a journal- of an inverted heart was a graphic represen- yet lyrical speech in liberating new direc- ist, a university professor (a job she was tation of her bravura. tions. picture. doomed to lose because she was fearlessly Wanda was of course both black and fe- herself in all she did and took no shit from hree years ago she wrote to me, in the male, as well as much angrier than Bukows- anyone, whether student, faculty or admin- Tmiddle of a litany of her latest troubles, ki. At her best she synthesized the most of the blues and the snappy hooks of pop istrator)—she somehow found the time and “I’m counting on you to write my obitu- diverse traditions, from the ancient Greeks music, with the rhythms of freeway traf- strength to take care of her kids, read tons of ary (hahaha).” That wasn’t necessary, as it and Shakespeare to the funky earthiness fic, colloquial black English, an advanced books, listen to a vast range of music, watch turned out, because the Los Angeles Times, modernist poetics and a highly sophisticated countless movies and remember them, stay on the front page of its Sunday paper of personal prosody that made optimum use conversant with old and new art, maintain a November 24, 2013, published a long obit of space on the page as a musical score for voluminous correspondence, and still write celebrating her as one of that city’s premier The Redwood Coast her carefully wrought “free” verse. Her more and better poems than pretty much writers, its “unofficial poet laureate,” a formal control is extraordinary in the way anyone else I know. fallen hero of local culture, an artistic war- she is able to combine what sounds like With her huge dangling earrings, her rior and a star whose light still shines. And Review natural speech with extremely subtle poetic fingers decked out in big rings, her colorful as if to confirm her own certainty that the technique to deliver her scorching torch wardrobe inspired by and often composed of triple-whammy of being black, female and Stephen Kessler songs and hair-curling narratives of life and African fabrics, her big natural ’do or corn- from LA had relegated her to the margins Editor death in a very tough cityscape of racial rows or dreadlocks meticulously groomed, of mainstream literary respectability, The and class conflict, sexual clashes, economic her enthusiastic enjoyment of every sensory New York Times, which routinely publishes Daniel Barth struggle and automotive aggravation, all in pleasure from food and sex (it’s in her an obit for the most obscure TV actor, zARA rAAb an atmosphere of sweet-smelling semitropi- writing) to watching tennis on television or completely blacked out, so to speak, any Jonah Raskin cal menace laced with intoxicating traces of sharing a joint with a friend, she relished news of her death. It was the kind of insult- Rebecca Taksel noxious smog. life’s fleeting delights like someone who by-omission she would have understood, Contributing Editors knew her days were numbered. She had and perhaps predicted (a scathing review she wrote of Maya Angelou some years ago Linda Bennett ’ve lost a lot of writer friends in recent a swagger and a chip on her shoulder—a persona as the baddest bitch in the hood, had even gotten her blackballed by much Production Director Iyears, but none has left as large a hole in my personal universe as Wanda Coleman. someone not to be messed with—yet also an of the African-American literary establish- ment), but it still astonishes me that the The Redwood Coast Review is published Her nonexistence seems impossible. It enormous warmth. quarterly (January, April, July and October) wasn’t just her physical size and the scale of Wanda’s mother had worked as a house- most literate newspaper in the country could by Friends of Coast Community Library in her personality but the magnitude of her ge- keeper on the Westside (Ronald Reagan be so myopic as to ignore such an important cooperation with the Independent Coast nius and her furious determination to make writer. Observer. The opinions expressed in these her mark with maximum ambition that set I am confident that in the years ahead, as pages are those of the individual writers and her apart from most of her contemporaries. Some Books by her absence is felt in the cultural landscape do not necessarily reflect the views of FoCCL, Wanda’s enormous energy and talent were and her books take their place in the histori- the ICO or the advertisers. Contents copyright deployed not only (as with so many writers) Wanda Coleman cal record as the huge contributions they © 2014 The Redwood Coast Review. All rights are to the literature of our time (the African revert to authors and artists on publication. in the service of her own ego—though that, Mad Dog Black Lady (1979) too—but as a defiant refusal to be defeated American Review, a journal published by We welcome your submissions. Please Imagoes (1983) send essays, reviews, fiction, poetry and letters by circumstance and as a model of cre- Johns Hopkins University, dedicated its Heavy Daughter Blues: Poems & Sto- to the Editor, The Redwood Coast Review, c/o ICO, ative resistance. Even in the most intimate recent issue to “Wanda Coleman and Nelson PO Box 1200, Gualala, CA 95445. Manuscripts expressions of personal experience she felt ries 1968-1986 (1987) Mandela,” in that order, which gives some should be typed, double-spaced, with the herself representative of an oppressed mi- A War of Eyes and Other Stories (1988) idea of her stature), Wanda will be remem- author’s name, address, phone, email and nority determined to overcome its disadvan- African Sleeping Sickness: Stories & bered with awe and gratitude for generations word count at the top of the first page. Postal tages. While the hardness of her life surely Poems (1990) to come. Even now, on YouTube, you can mail only. A self-addressed, stamped envelope contributed to the health crises that finally Hand Dance (1993) see evidence of her enduring afterlife, and is required for our reply. her works in print will surely outlast those On the Web: stephenkessler.com/rcr.html felled her, her work is a powerfully impres- Native in a Strange Land: Trials & Subscription information: See page 9. sive record of artistic victory and spiritual Tremors (1996) of most other contemporaries. Like Man- Friends of Coast Community Library is a transcendence. Bathwater Wine (1998) dela, Wanda Coleman is one for the ages, and she will have the last laugh. nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. That’s why so many other writers, in LA Mercurochrome (2001) Tax-deductible donations may be sent to and beyond, regarded her with such admira- Coast Community Library, PO Box 808, Point Ostinato Vamps (2003) tion and found her to be such an encour- The Riot Inside Me: More Trials & Arena, CA 95468. The library is located at aging, if sometimes intimidating, figure. 225 Main Street in Point Arena. Telephone Tremors (2005) Her live performances were incomparable An earlier version of this essay first ap- 707.882.3114. Jazz and Twelve O’Clock Tales (2008) Thank you for your support! (“electrifying” was the adjective most peared online in Poetry Flash (poetryflash. often used to describe them) in the way she The World Falls Away (2011) org). dramatized her poems with virtuoso operatic Spring 2014 The Redwood Coast Review Page 3 Writers & Writing As the Eel Curves The life and writings of Zara Raab Rebecca Lawton

he Eel River is flowing at a summer low, shaped creature that is not an eel) formerly so plentiful in its and spawn each year.” One feels the very sediment-filled transformed by dry days to a bed of cobbles and waters. Zara’s poetry takes us back to a time when not only waters all around and the beings sharing the river. boulders. Camping beside the streambank, I’ve lamprey were abundant, but also Chinook salmon, Coho set up my kitchen on the forest duff beneath a salmon, steelhead trout, cutthroat trout, and other aquatic From “Billy Gawain” canopy of redwoods. As I usually do when trav- species. Her words spring from a day when the idea of Teling, I’ve brought books to read, but this time I carry only diverting Eel River water to the Russian River to pipelines His hands seemed to take back what he’d done, two instead of the customary pile of at least a half dozen. On serving 500,000 users in Marin and Sonoma Counties hadn’t they at least had wanted life, clawing, this trip I’m reading just Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook yet entered people’s minds, engineering drawings, or even frantic to unknot the fraying jute, and Zara Raab’s Swimming the Eel. The Oliver is with me their dreams. his thick, blackened nails cut and bloodied. to study and reflect back on the Raab as I savor it. It’s Zara’s . . . poetry I seek to unravel and comprehend while following this river north. He had no kin, so he was buried Having heard Zara read for the first time when we were with our own, the only name he bore both presenting at the respected North Coast Redwoods the name we gave him and had chiseled Writing Conference at Crescent City’s College of the on his headstone at the spring solstice. Redwoods, I was taken by her authentic voice and calm “Billy Gawain, A Stranger to Us.” presence. Without fanfare, she began her reading simply by opening Eel and diving into poems of place, family, loss, In her reading of “Billy Gawain,” Zara’s calm voice and transformation. No big queue-up. No explanation of couldn’t disguise the terror and loneliness contained in what she would be reading. She moved into the pages of the these words: “clawing / frantic to unknot the fraying jute”; book as if plumbing the depths of a big river. “the only name he bore / the name we gave him.” And the She shared words about pioneering relatives, the Eel redemption and generosity of the last lines—the sharing of River watershed, her childhood growing up in Northern the family land—balances the subject’s desperation. California, her family’s dispersal, and her interpretations of what it all means: views of a changed river, exploration of From “Gwen” (prose poem) the land and relationships, struggle to comprehend connec- tion, and the inevitable acceptance of loss. Nellie’s daughter Gwen was wooed by a lumberjack and Swimming the Eel reads as part family history, part ran away with him when she was still a teenager, never memoir, part testimony to place. Zara learned about the Eel to return. Yet in running away, she seemed to leave more mostly from her mother’s stories. “Northern California is my of herself behind, like silt from a flash flood emptying the mother’s territory,” she says. “She grew up in the Jackson creek’s waters willy-nilly into the sea. Valley between Westport and Laytonville. In fact, she grew up a few feet from the Eel River. Before the Second World The river as metaphor works especially well in the home- War, my grandmother built a few small cabins along the leaving in “Gwen,” in the silt that never goes away and the river, and city people would stay in them during the sum- pushing out to the larger waters of the sea. It’s universal, the feeling that even as we depart a place we leave pieces of our

mer.” wto n a selves behind.

Even though it’s the Eel that names her collection, Zara’s a L sense of watersheds came from days, weeks, months, and When I asked Zara how she approaches linebreaks and other puzzles of poetry, she replied, “What Mary Oliver

years in and alongside several rivers in northern California. R e b cc “Other rivers in the region as well as the Eel played a big describes in her book are the strategies of the free verse part in my childhood. I grew up in Willits, but many sum- poet; in that particular work she doesn’t take on the whole ara’s Swimming the Eel, published in 2011, and the body of poetry preceding and coexisting with free verse–– Zequally impressive Fracas & Asylum, published in rhymed and metered poetry. Annie Finch’s The Body of “My mother’s people were 2013, were released by David Robert Books in Cincinnati. Poetry or John Hollander’s Rhyme’s Reason explain much Her connection to that press began in 2009, when she was of what I do, particularly in ‘Billy Gawain.’ In that sonnet, storytellers, and the stories looking for a publisher and happened on WordTech. David the rhyming line end coincides with a natural break in the are mythic. Although I left Robert Books is an imprint of WordTech, and Zara, pleased syntax, a natural pause in the flow of words. As Hollander with their work, has stayed with the press. notes, many poets of the twentieth century built their careers the rural counties when I Finding David Robert Books was part of a long writing around the kind of free verse Mary Oliver is describing. journey Zara had been on since childhood. She wrote poetry But, like Hollander, I have come to believe that often there was fourteen, and have lived as a youth, into her high school years, and through university may not be much difference between the enjambed lines of most of my life in cities and life at the venerable Mills College in Oakland. She earned many contemporary poems and—well, prose. Since Hol- her Bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy there. lander wrote about formal verse, of course, poets have been suburbs, in writing Eel, my “The poems I loved and memorized as a girl and young discovering very innovative and original ways of creating woman were the Romantic poems of Keats and passages the free verse poetic line––through diction, colloquialisms, memory guided me through from Shakespeare,” says Zara. “At Mills in my first year, a found speech, and dialogue. So the distinction between free an earlier time.” visiting instructor introduced me to Robert Creeley, Robert and formal verse is dissolving.” Duncan, and Charles Olson—the Black Mountain poets. Besides Swimming the Eel and Fracas & Asylum, Zara’s The Book of Gretel Later, I got involved with the Walrus magazine, the Mills body of work also consists of and Rum- mers I went camping with family and friends on the Trinity College journal; I admired the evocative poems of another, plestiltskin: What’s In a Name? (both from Finishing Line Rumplestiltskin River in Trinity County. And every Fourth of July, my older student, Jeanette Jones. And I won the Henry Prize for Press; was a finalist for the Dana Award). parents took us to the Russian River near Del Rio where my poetry—twice! Mills was a lively place for poetry.” Zara Now Zara is working on a new group of poems that will grandparents had a summer house. As a teenager, I canoed continued writing and publishing through her twenties, not become another book. She will continue writing reviews, down the Russian River.” Her poems in part grew out of a only poems but also book reviews of novels and poetry. reading, and instructing at literary conferences and festivals. familiarity with those rivers of an earlier day. With parenting and further study came the maturation of “The poet’s journey is like Gwen’s in the prose poem,” she Pieces from Zara’s Eel were included in the 2013 New her writing. “Raising a family had a tremendous effect on says. “Some of me remains in the place I grew up, but a California Writing (Heyday). It’s no wonder that her haunt- my work, as did taking time for myself, later. Those phases much bigger part of me is going ahead.” ing words were chosen to help portray this dry and divided of my life began when I came to the East Bay. My energetic state. Many of her unsettling or beautiful images stayed with studies through Stanley Keleman’s group in Berkeley have oday I’m breaking camp and going ahead down the Eel me long after the reading in Crescent City. They include been pivotal in my development as a writer. Through that TRiver. The forests flow to the water’s edge as I travel. glimpses of exploring watersheds with her family; remi- work, I learned to have greater patience with the psychologi- Pools that Zara must have known to be deeper and wider in nisces of her brother swimming the Eel with native friends; cal and emotional material that informs the writing.” her youth are in need of rains. The river’s low flow is clear discoveries of Zara’s patience and creativity with the material shows up, and transparent, just as life’s lows and highs are shown so death and despair in part, in her approach to linebreaks—the physical ends of eloquently in Zara’s work. Although she spends little time on in the details of text where the poet “turns the line.” In A Poetry Handbook, the Eel now, it’s clear its memory remains strong and shines childhood memo- my recent companion reading to Zara’s Swimming the Eel, through in her words. “My mother’s people were storytell- ries; and authentic, Mary Oliver describes linebreaks as serving many possible ers, and the stories are mythic. Although I left the rural gritty observations functions: they can speed or slow a reader’s eye, act as full counties when I was fourteen, and have lived most of my life of life during set- containers for thoughts, and sometimes annoy the reader if in cities and suburbs, in writing Eel, my memory guided me tler’s times in wild they impose division that feels artificial. In Eel, Zara’s use of through an earlier time.” lands. enjambment (continuing without pause through a linebreak) It’s a time I contemplate as I drive along the Eel down Nearly 200 flows beautifully, like her observations of the natural world. from its headwaters, past road turnoffs to remnant groves of miles long, the Eel first-growth redwood and tributary watersheds. I think of the River in the Coast From “Swimming the Eel” river when it harbored greater numbers of salmon and steel- Ranges drains al- head, those ocean-traveling fish that still return to spawn in most 3,700 square With the Wailaki, he swam the Eel, rimmed their home waters. In Zara’s poetry are contained the literary miles of watershed, by fir, the waters bleached by clay bubbling roots of this place, much as the place retains roots of the the third largest from cold below—my brother, the white boy. wildness she knew, not forgotten as I continue north. entirely in Califor- Stripped, they swam the waters our ancestors nia. Discharging the fish still swim and spawn each year, into its estuary and they swam, the limbs splashing, Rebecca Lawton is a writer, scientist and former Colorado the Pacific Ocean their ribs like fingers gripping cargoes of air. River guide. Her books include Reading Water: Lessons near Fortuna, the from the River; the novel Junction, Utah; Sacrament: Hom- Eel is named for In the title poem, Zara’s images fix the river in our age to a River (with photographer Geoff Fricker); and the the Pacific lamprey senses: “cargoes of air”; “bleached by clay bubbling / from story collection Steelies and Other Endangered Species, due (a parasitic, eel- cold below”; “the waters our ancestors / the fish still swim this year. She lives in Vineburg, and this is her first appear- Zara Raab ance in the RCR. Page 4 The Redwood Coast Review Spring 2014 MUSIC Master of the Miniature

Marc Hofstadter

nton Webern (1883-1945) was Webern’s works re- pated also by Webern in probably the most unusual of his pieces composed in the great composers of classi- semble wildflowers or the early 1920s, consists cal music. He was a master of in basing a work on a the miniature, a little like the snowflakes in their particular ordering of Aidiosyncratic painter Paul Klee: most of his a twelve-tone “row,” small size, coldness works last no longer than ten minutes and an arrangement of the are scored for just a handful of instruments. and perfection. twelve tones of the He makes no grand gesture. All his effects chromatic scale chosen are subtle, minimal, barely stated. His However, Mahler and Schoenberg specifically for that pieces are like the mountain wildflowers and went about as far as one could go in that work. While Schoen- snowflakes he loved: small, symmetrical, direction. You couldn’t have more titanic berg used tone rows to perfect. As a person, he was reserved, color- strangeness and emotionalism in music than compose pieces full of less, polite. And yet the period in classical Mahler produced in his Sixth Symphony or passion, activity and at music from about 1950 to about 1975 is Schoenberg in his Pierrot Lunaire. There times hysteria, Webern often called the Age of Webern. This quiet was bound to be a reaction to this kind of employed them to man’s experiments became the model for music. The surprising thing is that the reac- create works that were many of the young composers of that time. tion came in the person of Schoenberg’s symmetrical, tight and greatest pupil and friend, Anton Webern. emotionally controlled. How did this come to be so? Anton Webern Much music between 1900 and 1950 Webern began as a “traditional” Expression- As a matter of fact, was “Expressionist.” It emphasized the ist. His early works Im Sommerwind, the Webern was the first composer to organize Webern’s works resemble wildflowers “serial” music in which not only the tones ex-pression—the pushing out—of extremes Langsamer Satz for string quartet, and the or snowflakes in their small size, cold- of emotion from the unconscious as well as Passcaglia are steeped in deep and conflict- but also the rhythms and dynamics were ness and perfection. (Incidentally, Webern carefully organized according to schemas conscious self. A period of turmoil in politi- ed emotion, somewhat like the early works was an accomplished mountain climber cal life, this age saw the creation of many of Schoenberg (who was nine years older determined before a work was created. who reveled in Alpine wildflowers and This was the most important quality of works of art that swirled with violence and than Webern and his primary mentor). snow-capped peaks.) His longest work, the suffering: Kirchner’s and Munch’s frighten- But somewhere around 1909, while still Webern’s music adopted by Stockhausen, Cantata Number 2, is only sixteen min- Boulez and the others. Their music, unlike ing faces, Picasso’s contorted faces and bod- studying with Schoenberg, Webern began to utes long. His Concerto is written for just ies, Stravinsky’s shocking Rite of Spring, siphon the extremes of emotion out of his that of Schoenberg’s generation, tended nine instruments. Many of the individual to be unemotional and intellectual. From Bartok’s barbaric Piano Sonata. Perhaps the music, compress it in length and textural movements of his pieces last less than a greatest Expressionists in music were Gus- thickness, and reduce it to a few very brief, 1950 to 1975 many if not most of the major minute. Webern’s gestures give a feeling of composers in the world were creating works tav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg, com- subtle gestures. Why it was Webern, among strangeness, of cold lyricism, of impeccable posers of works that explored the extremes all composers, who took this step is difficult which aspired toward “total serialization.” craftsmanship. Rejecting the “Romantic” style of Schoen- of human emotion and experience. to say. I think it has to do with his innate Take his great Variations for Piano. But Mahler and Schoenberg were not modesty and impassiveness. Using the Ex- berg, they adopted the cool, clear manner The first movement, 3 minutes long, is in of Webern. Webern had bequeathed his only Expressionists. They also were inheri- pressionist atonal methods of Schoenberg, traditional sonata form: it makes a state- tors of the great tradition of German music and soon the rigid twelve-tone method of controlled personality to the whole world of ment, develops it, then recapitulates it. The classical music. from Bach to Wagner, a tradition that prided the master, Webern nevertheless struck out statement unfolds a theme which doubles itself on the creation of massive, orderly on a new path: the expression of extremes back upon itself, the last note the same as ebern lived an uneventful life. Born musical structures. Whether composing of emotion in fractured, minimal gestures. the first, the second-to-last the same as the fugues (Bach), sonatas (Haydn, Mozart), Webern never left Expressionism behind. Win Austria, he married his first cousin second, and so forth. This theme is then and had four children. He lived all over symphonies (Beethoven, Brahms, Bruck- His music was always to be inhabited by expanded upon in two passages similar in ner), string quartets (Beethoven, Schubert), angst, the absurd, the eerie. But he created a Austria, Germany and Switzerland, making shape, then is repeated with only slightly a living by conducting operas and oper- or operas based on grand myths (Wagner), new Classicism that, unlike the Classicism different notes. (Almost all of the statement these German composers all created works of Mahler and Schoenberg, was rational, etta, teaching, and lecturing. His work was is played piano, softly.) The development known during his lifetime, but never as well that embodied symmetry, order and rational ordered, quiet: a sort of Mozart-ization of then takes on the material of the statement form. non-tonal music. It took place still within known as after his death. His death was both and comments on it. The recapitulation then absurd and tragic: he was shot in a Swiss By the early years of the twentieth the tradition of German music, but turned it nearly repeats the statement: backward-turn- century music threatened to break apart on its head. town by an American soldier because he ing theme, then several articulations with went outside to smoke a cigar after curfew. into fragmentation, even chaos under the similar shapes. The theme of the movement pressure of the extreme feelings of the time. his new kind of music was enormously Webern can be considered the greatest itself is cold, clipped, curious. It consists composer of twelve-tone music following But Mahler and Schoenberg succeeded in Tinfluential on the composers of the of so few notes that it gives the feeling of shaping these tortured emotions into ordered generation after Schoenberg and Webern: Schoenberg and preceding Stockhausen and being understated. The second movement of Boulez. He is the key link between the first forms that borrowed from, and extended, the Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Lu- the Variations is very different from the first. great structures of traditional German mu- ciano Berio, Henri Pousseur, Gyorgy Ligeti, generation of twentieth-century compos- It consists of staccato notes that are placed ers and the generation that lived into the sic. Mahler and Schoenberg were not only Milton Babbitt and many others, including all over the keyboard. Their theme jumps Expressionists, they were also Classicists. the conductor of this boxed set of Webern’s twenty-first century. His work is idiosyn- from high to low to medium to low to high. cratic yet rationally ordered. He is one of They fused Expressionism and Classicism complete works, the great composer and It, too, sounds mysterious, violent. The last in monumental works that summed up what conductor Pierre Boulez. These composers the great eccentrics, yet absolutely central movement is in free form, but consists of to modern music. The Age of Webern has German music could mean in the twentieth were looking for some alternative to what themes and harmonies that are cold and century. they saw as the grandiosity and inauthentic- passed, but the time to appreciate his music eerie. The piece as a whole displays a sym- has just begun. ity of the Mahler/Schoenberg generation. metry, crystalline quality and oddness that When Schoenberg died in 1951, Boulez are typical of Webern. wrote a high-profile article exulting that Webern employed the serial or twelve- Anton Webern: Complete Works “Schoenberg is Dead.” Such composers tone technique in composing his works be- Marc Hofstadter is a poet and critic liv- conducted by Pierre Boulez turned to Webern for an objectivity, impas- ginning with “Three Traditional Rhymes,” Deutsche Grammophon, 6 CDs siveness and understatement that made them ing in Walnut Creek, and a frequent RCR Opus 17, in 1924. This method, fully con- contributor. different from Schoenberg. The Age of ceived of by Schoenberg in 1921, but antici- Webern had begun.

marcel from page 1 democracy,” was and forbidden, my redhaired cousin, my aristocracy and the landscape of fear; and gone forever. We Albertine. When we danced a czardas I put Cities of the Plain (Sodome et Gomorrhe) were entering a new my arm around her waist and I can still feel with its frank exploration of male and fe- world—politically, the trembling nearly fifty years later—as I male homosexuality and the polymorphous personally, econom- held her newly womanly body close to my perverse. Long since, I had moved beyond ically, culturally. slight boyish one, in the very upheaval, the my encounter with the rather literally The Beatles with very earthquake of love, whose tsunami still schoolmarmish woman who talked with my their strange neo- floods the globe of my consciousness half a mother every day and whose frowsy book- medieval harmonies century later. ish daughter was rejected, after one date, by and their revisiting my older brother—a Jewish bourgeoise who of the African- ut very soon, amid the crises of my warned me solemnly one day on the subway American roots of Bearly life, fights with father, sadness against reading Proust as “inappropriate”— rock were gods on- over lost girls, fear of the rising war against the first of thousands of times I was treated stage and off. The the Vietnamese and the accompanying rise to that word like a waving finger in my national arena was of lying propaganda, the murder of civil face; but I had argued with her and gone on suddenly crowded rights activists including friends of our proudly waving Guermantes like a flag all with upstart Right- friends in the murderous summer of 1964 in that year and into the next. ists who made the Mississippi—in sync with all this I lurched The reading of Proust—including his Marcel Proust “liberal” president forward in Proust’s narrative: Within a early novel Jean Santeuil, much more na- of Things Past (A La Recherche de Temps Lyndon Johnson look good by contrast. Budding Grove (A l’Ombre des Jeunes kedly autobiographical and dwelling on his Perdu). By the spring of 64, after the world And in my life, I wandered onto a large Filles en Fleur), the book that introduces animus against the Jewish-dominated scene had exploded with the assassination of 22 field filled with the bodies of young girls, Albertine, the boy-girl of the seaside with at Deauville on the Breton coast—stretched November 63, I and all I knew had been amorphous and ambiguous, again uncon- her bicycle and her gang—she who liked across all my college years. I was twenty transformed, and the rather studious, “goody sciously echoing Marcel. And for me as for to wrestle; The Guermantes Way (Le Coté years old, lonely and isolated, wandering two shoes” world of the JFK days, when his character, all these gradually resolved de Guermantes) with its bourgeoisie aping even the Left was prating of “participatory themselves into one, but problematical the life of the stolid, cutting, anti-Semitic See marcel page 8 Spring 2014 The Redwood Coast Review Page 5 memoir An Invitation to Beauty Rummage sales and the repurposing of the past Rebecca Taksel

f the cans are blue and the truck is one of those clev- things he gathered were remanufactured into paper and china elegant proportions, the enchantment of possession by old er divided ones, he’s the recycling man. He didn’t and who knows what else. things and old places was complete. exist when I was growing up in post–World War II The new term “repurposing” seems to be intermediate Living in Loudoun County marked us for life. Long after America, but my parents remembered him well. They between reusing and more radical recycling. We didn’t save the trends of the 1960s had faded, we clung to what we had knew him as the rag-and-bone man. He pushed his the bedjackets we bought at the rummage sale for bed—we learned, or rather absorbed, from buildings designed at a Icart through the streets of our town, calling “Any rags, any could hardly imagine a life in which a lace-trimmed silk high point in the history of domestic architecture and from bones, any bottles today?” That was a long time ago, but my crepe or quilted satin jacket might be worn to receive visi- clothing manufactured in Europe and the United States to mother used to imitate the singsong call of the rag-and-bone tors in your bedroom—we wore them in the street, over the very strictest standards. man long after he became obsolete, replaced by the garbage skimpy camisoles, changing their place in the cycle of day We left Loudoun after only a few years; but Martha man who took everything to the landfill. and night. eventually became an interior designer, and our love for Then, in the 1960s, the word “ecology” came to stand Still, I think we felt that we were doing no less than recy- old houses and beautiful old things never faded. Together not only for a scientific concept but for a way of life and cling things in a grand way, moving them through different or apart we sought out the great venues of reuse. In Ohio it a movement. Young people rediscovered what our parents universes, changing their very natures. We took the crepe wasn’t rummage sales but farm auctions—sad, if I let myself and our grandparents had always known, that the practice of dinner dresses and veiled hats and silver platform shoes out remember that there were too many of them, too many small restraint, of reuse, of recycling, is economical in the same of their context, so that they no longer signified what they farmers giving up during the 70s and 80s. On Chicago’s way a mathematical proof is economical, or a Greek temple: had been made to signify but were pulled into the new class- North Shore it was rummage sales at the posh churches, It is elegant in its spareness and rightness. less society of Youth. spectacular sales complete with French Rooms, where the For my sister Martha and me, the moment of discovery clothing deemed best by the sale committee commanded of this once-again fashionable esthetic came at the Loudoun artha and I, in our rural paradise, were half-consciously higher prices. And everywhere, in ever city and town we County, Virginia, rummage sale, a sale so large and so splen- Mfollowing a trend that was already well underway in lived in or visted, there were thrift stores. did it required an entire county fairgrounds. places like San Francisco and London. Janice Joplin wore We still and always bought clothes at the sales and auc- Loudoun County, in northern Virginia, wasn’t yet a a feather boa on her album cover. Young men in England tions and Goodwill stores, but we were drawn more and bedroom for Washington DC in the 1960s. It was rural and found really old clothes in trunks and attics, and the streets more to hand-embroidered and hand-trimmed linens. We essentially feudal. Vast tracts of lovely rolling hills and of London were once more graced with dandies in ruffled had seen a few very early coverlets in Loudoun, and maybe white-rail-fenced fields were owned by people who were not shirts and embroidered waistcoats. What we all sensed was a sampler or two. But now drawers and chests were being merely rich but indisputably the rich: Protestant, very old families; a very old hunt club; houses that were large but not showy, some dating from the eighteenth century. Loud- oun was not quite as old-money as neighboring Fauquier County—maybe that’s why the Ladies’ Board of its hospital wasn’t above holding a rummage sale—but it was posh enough and very beautiful. The poverty was hidden, the sharecroppers’ shacks out of the way. We arrived at the sale early in the morning of a foggy but already warm fall day. Although there were exhibit build- ings and barns and paddocks filled with every kind of house- hold and farm goods, we went straight for the clothes. There were racks of them, tables piled with them. Right away we found a beautiful slouchy black-and-white tweed coat with a Bergdorf Goodman label. A little later we found one of the signature two-tone purple Bergdorf’s boxes. The coat went into the box, a present for our mother. We found a silk and woolen robe with silk-tasseled sash firmly attached, for our dad. We knew our parents would be delighted. Although they no longer lived as they had in the Great Depression, when scraps of lemon peel were saved to flavor tea and desserts, they wouldn’t have forgotten and would never disparage hand-me-downs, especially not hand- me-downs like these. The morning brightened. We found cashmere sweaters and delicate sheer linen blouses with pleats and tucks done in stitches so tiny they were almost invisible, and leather gloves with little triangular gussets set in at the base of each finger. We found piles of silk scarves, some of a satin so fine that the threads caught on the skin of our fingertips. We found crystal perfume bottles that still carried scents of Bradner Kay gardenia and tuberose. As we gathered a prodigious pile of clothing and acces- that we could rebel against the present by seeking out and emptied of Victorian and early-twentieth-century quilts, and sories, we weren’t at all curious about the men and women transforming pieces of the past. Utopias are featureless embroidered and trimmed sheets and pillowcases, and lace who had owned and worn them. If we gave them a thought places, after all. They cry out for an esthetic, they must be tablecloths, and enormous damask napkins and dainty linen in passing it was a mildly contemptuous one. We had clothed. Once upon a time stands in nicely for once will be towels. The quality of work decreased with the decades, and transformation and revolution and rock music on our minds, a time. the handwork ended altogether in the 1950s with a few sad not social privilege and the codes of class. We loved these Some people were beginning to get the idea that there examples of coarse crochet. I believe this was at least partly things for themselves and only for themselves: the textured was a market developing in all of this. Right in Loudoun due to the enshrining of the nuclear family in suburbs, where silk kimono, and the pink satin slips with their soft lace County a couple of women we knew had begun to buy up no grandmother or aunt or older sister was around to teach trims—nothing like the scratchy nylon lace we’d known in the suitcases and duffle bags abandoned by men returning the needle arts to younger girls. the fifties—and silk charmeuse bedjackets and blouses, and from military service in Vietnam. Apparently these service- The linens from the turn of the century through the complicated little hats, one of them with a black veil you 1930s, though, ranged from competent to superb. The were meant to pull down over your face, all the way over fabrics themselves were excellent, and I don’t believe your red-lipsticked mouth. If you had asked us that that such fabrics are available anywhere today: the heavy We did have wearers of the clothing and hats and gloves day, we would have insisted smooth white percale of the pillowcases, the “huck” linen of in our minds, but they were imaginary, ethereal beings who the towels. And the quilts! The quilts have finally been ac- emerged at the ends of our fingers as we touched the beauti- we were the future. But in cepted as fine art. To go to a show of old American quilts is ful materials. It was as if our hands were disappearing into a humbling experience. As for the needlework pieces, most one of those ripples in time so dear to science-fiction movie- fact we were being caught in of them weren’t just handmade, they were made at home by makers. We were the handmaidens of these unseen creatures, ripples of time, we were fall- the women whose families would use them. members of an elect. I will go further. I think that what we experienced in ing under an enchantment of n the 1990s I finally became a dealer in antiques, mostly those damp fields in that morning sunshine was an epiphany Itextiles. Antiques shows were still popular, and my booth in the old true sense, a vision of the divine. If you had asked the past that would claim us was filled with every imaginable kind of handwork: Ap- us that day, we would have insisted we were the vanguard, again and again. penzell lace and embroidery; white eyelet embroidery and the future. But in fact we were being caught in those ripples color embroidery with its French knots and satin stitching; of time, we were falling under an enchantment of the past bobbin lace and needle lace, filet lace and the tape laces like that would claim us again and again. men deliberately left the bags with their uniforms unclaimed Battenberg; crochet and Irish lace, which is really a form We weren’t exactly recycling at the Loudoun rummage in the cargo holds of the Greyhounds, wanting nothing more of crochet; cutwork and Italian cutwork; and drawn thread that day. We were reusing, which is actually a little higher to do with any of it. The bags of the Navy men were par- work that makes an elaborate spiderweb out of a solid piece on the scale of sustainability. That triple mantra of reduce- ticularly prized, yielding bell bottom jeans, blue chambray of linen. One customer at a show said to me, “I never cease reuse-recycle is one of descending value. First, reduce, buy shirts, and pea coats, all of superb quality. to be amazed at what a woman can create out of a straight less. Just like the Hippocratic oath, the first law tells us not Unlike many of our compatriots in the cities, Martha length of thread.” to do something. It’s the hardest to obey, especially because and I could add further layers to the enchantment of the Inevitably I added some vintage clothing to my displays. it’s in direct conflict with the first principle of consumer past in Loudoun County. There were superb eighteenth- “Vintage” had replaced “used” and “castoff” thanks to the capitalism: Buy, buy as if your life depended on it. Without and nineteenth-century houses of mellow handmade brick people like Martha and me who had worn those beauti- the fuel of spending, we’re told, the fire goes out, we all die. everywhere around us, some of them preserved within ful things and worn them beautifully. Vintage and antique Both donors and buyers at the Loudoun County rummage families, some reclaimed, some still derelict. We could walk clothing became chic, vintage haute couture pieces began to sale were certainly returning things to the cycle of buy-and- right into the vacant ones and find hand-carved paneling and command huge prices. sell rather than condemning them to death in the landfill. It wide plank flooring intact. In those empty rooms with their wasn’t as drastic as what the rag-and-bone man did: The See beauty page 6 Page 6 The Redwood Coast Review Spring 2014 beauty from page 5

I found piles and piles of late nineteenth- stone brooch.. Another even more elegant and early-twentieth-century women’s white young woman made a pile of linen damask lingerie and haberdashery in Pittsburgh We loved these things tablecloths and napkins, and quietly wrote a attics and basements, especially in the big check for the full amount shown on the tags, old houses of formerly prosperous city for themselves and a rare practice at antiques shows. neighborhoods. I laundered the garments only for themselves: Although Leesburg and most of Loudoun and dipped them in hot starch water, and were now home to thousands of commuters, my mother ironed them for me. Her old, the textured silk ki- the feel of the place was just as I’d remem- arthritic hands were still expert, and the bered. I told Martha all about it and told her ruffles and tucks and gathers of the petti- mono, and the pink too how sad I’d been that she wasn’t there coats and dresses and blouses and camisoles with me. magically sat up, filled out. satin slips with their I retired from the antiques business These clothes were often small, very nar- soft lace trims, and shortly after the millennium. I miss it, but I row through the ribcage. These days they don’t miss lifting heavy boxes to set up and fit those teenaged girls whose bones are not silk charmeuse bed- break down the shows. Besides, the internet yet quite fully set, girls whose figures are has replaced the majority of live shows. so perfectly described as “willowy.” One jackets and blouses, In my personal collection of linens I have mother brought her young flaxen-haired and complicated little a little stack of huck towels for my kitchen, daughter to the antique show and had her and I use them. I have an Appenzell em- slip on a low-waisted white batiste dress. hats. broidered towel, too, which I do not use. I She was a vision, a wraith, a fairy. have a little box full of handkerchiefs that There were disappointments in my search I give as gifts to young brides—something for linens and clothing. I found a pair of of the Oatlands mansion, one of the great old—or to friends. Most are white, delicate 1920s lounging pajamas in pink and black, eighteenth-century houses, now open to the things, with drawn thread or embroidery or exactly the sort of thing a beautiful, sexy public. It was, unsurprisingly, a beautiful a lace trim added by someone who owned flapper would have worn. When I dipped Bradner Kay show, with many garden antiques, some the hanky years and years ago. But some them into cold water, they came apart in are bold and bright with flowers or clever northern Italy. We marveled together at the furniture and china and glass, and a couple my hands—dry rot. The black bits looked of booths like mine, mostly white with linen scenes, and some of those are signed by the burned by the water. I was inordinately heavy, very slightly rough fabric. artists. I have gossamer lace doilies and I sold a set of these extraordinary trea- but with spots of color—evening bags and disappointed. It was as if those ripples in a few dresses, and little stands for scarves large bold Battenberg ones; I have heavy time were operating in reverse, making the sures to a woman at a show in the Wash- Irish linen tablecloths and a round tablecloth ington area. She returned them next day, and jewelry and hats. It was risky to have past dissolve, severing my connection with an outdoor booth with my delicate mer- with a deep border of lace figures. the jazz-filled party where I’d imagined my telling me her husband was skeptical about I don’t have a lot, I’m not really a the provenance: How could you grow flax chandise; but I was determined to go to that flapper. show, and the weather held. collector. My possessions are few and Another disappointment, one that except in a very warm climate? I tried to choice. They are sufficient to remind me tell her that flax was not like cotton, that it The first day of the sale was perfect, showed me how strong an advocate I had warm and a little damp and misty just like that I have been lucky to have lived in the become for the unknown hands that made grew easily in cool damp places, but I took ever-deepening knowledge that the mantra the things back without argument. I stood the Virginia mornings I remembered from the beautiful things I sold. One of the many so long ago. I went to my booth and fussed of restraint and reuse and transformation is women of Italian descent who had saved her there, my face burning with anger, not on not an injunction to virtue but an invitation my behalf but for the unknown Italian girl over a few things that had become damp mother’s or grandmother’s or great-aunt’s during the night. I didn’t disturb the few to beauty. If the garbage man comes, I have handwork called me. Would I like to buy who had made these lovely things for her nothing for him. But for the rag-and-bone marriage. daddy-long-legs who had taken up residence these things? They were languishing in the in the folds of my table covers. man—everything. attic. Together we opened the big boxes of The gates opened. I moved among my sheets and pillowcases, all trimmed with the ost of the shows were happy affairs, though; and I learned a lot about my delicate, beautiful wares more like a hostess magnificent deep, heavy crochet particular M at a party than a merchant at a show; the set- to the Italians. These linens, she explained, stock from my customers. Many of them, ting in Oatlands’ garden had that effect. An RCR contributing editor Rebecca Taksel were not only hand trimmed but hand unlike me, were needlewomen themselves. elegant young woman bought a black crepe lives in Pittsburgh. She has recently com- woven and hand spun, from local flax in Finally, I went back to Loudoun to do an outdoor show in the manicured grounds dress from the 1930s with its own rhine- pleted a novel. Spring 2014 The Redwood Coast Review Page 7 President’s desk B i b l i o t e c a Library Lines A Lot Is News and Reviews from Friends of Coast Community Library Looking for I had never read any Raymond Chandler, even though I’m fond of the detective novel, Happening so recently I checked out a collection of his Libraries work from the public library and sat down to compare print and celluloid. Alix Levine The movie starts as does the novel, in Ukraine with Marlowe walking into the spacious he Board of the Friends of Coast Sternwood home in the wealthy hills of Los Community Library (FoCCL ) is Angeles to do a small investigative job for Laura Schatzberg Tbusy this spring with plans to keep the dying Sternwood patriarch. After just a improving our library. few scenes, the film begins to drift in and s there a neighborhood library?” We are continuing our efforts to expand out of and away from the book, mostly in I asked at a stationery store and services for children. Building on the obeisance to the Hays Code, which censored “Ia bookstore (maybe not the most popularity of the AWE Learning Station for Hollywood productions for four decades, tactful place to ask this question). “No, not two- to eight-year-olds, we expect to add and also because the novel’s plot is so that I know of,” “No, I don’t think so,” they a new After School Edge computer station convoluted that neither the director, Howard answered. I was puzzled. Here in Ukraine, for elementary-aged kids to do homework Hawks, nor the script writers, nor Chandler part of the former Soviet Union where or experience learning fun in the Children’s himself knew who murdered one of the bod- people circulated banned literature under- Room. ies littering the landscape—or cared enough ground, wrote “for the drawer” (writing that The FoCCL board is looking into the Raymond Chandler to tie up that loose end. It’s downhill from could not safely be published) and self-pub- possibilities for creating a homework center there. Also, to capitalize on her romance lished for years when censorship was rife. for teens in the main library. This would with Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall was Now, an independent, democratic country, require new furniture and computers, and cast as the older sister, an unsympathetic at least nominally, and no public libraries. rearrangement of space to make room, so Marinated character in the book. The film redid her What could have happened? I kept asking planning and financing will not happen entirely as a love interest. and finally, from my students I got, “Of overnight. Of course, we solicit input from On the Sternwood case, Marlowe first course there are. I often take my children. teens as to what they need and want from drops by a rare-book store. In the movie I study there.” But I never found a local the library. We have already started SAT Tough Guy we never learn that the store specializes library or saw a building that said bibliotek. training classes each year for high school in hardcore pornography that it loans out I did finally find the main, Gorky Library students after Garrett Gunheim, the youth Jane Merryman only to favored customers. The Hays office named after the famed Russian writer. representative on our board, identified the would have nixed that, so we just perceive It was not far from my school. I walked need for us. that something secretive is going on there. in one day. High ceilings in the lobby but don’t know how many times I’ve New furniture will be ordered to replace Learning nothing useful, our PI crosses the no books in sight. Staff people sat at what seen The Big Sleep on the Turner the tired old couches and overstuffed chairs street to another small book store hoping seemed to be the information desk so I Classic Movies channel. A lot. I by the magazine area. Expect comfy and to dig up a clue or two, and we now have a asked meekly, in my halting Russian, if they anticipate practically all the lines. I attractive new chairs to brighten up the delightful scene that’s not in the book, but is had books in English. No, they said, but don’t get bored knowing them. It’s reading area there. one of my favorites in all moviedom. one woman stood up and indicated that I Ione of those noir low-budget jobs, black- Marlowe pulls on a pair of clunky Since the library building is owned by should follow her. She led me outside and and-white, made long before wide-screen FoCCL, repairs and maintenance are the spectacles and tweaks his fedora, pretend- through a black metal gate to an adjacent technology. The old-fashioned Friday night responsibility of FoCCL, which now faces ing to be a book collector, a hopeless nerd, building. Beyond a short corridor, there movie, part of a double feature. You got in the need for repairs to the facade of the although that term was not in use in those was a small room on the left, which was a for fifty cents. building, still being researched, but likely days. The shop’s female clerk, there alone lending library, and on the right a bigger Humphrey Bogart plays Philip Mar- to cost a pretty penny. The board is looking on a rainy afternoon, provides some helpful room with bookshelves and a big table in lowe, the hard-boiled private investigator. into fundraising possibilities for that and information that causes Marlowe to drop the center and some computers against one According to Webster’s dictionary, hard- other needs. Creative ideas from you all out his pose. The girl takes off her glasses, lets wall. She gestured to the woman there that boiled means tough and unsentimental, with there are welcomed. It would be great if down her hair, and puts a closed sign on the now I was in her care and I thanked her. a matter-of-fact attitude toward violence. an experienced grant writer would join our door of the shop. That woman is Natalia Dyba, the librar- Since the story is told to us by Marlowe as volunteer cadre. Cut. ian of Window on America, a project of the first-person narrator, this attitude perme- Speaking of volunteers, which I do Every woman in the novel and the film the US Cultural Center. There are such ates the time, place, and ambience of Los mention often in this column, I encourage makes a play for Marlowe. A smile, a nod, centers in most countries where there is Angeles and its environs in the 1930s and you to consider giving some time to the a gam. They all offer the opportunity for a a US embassy. Natalia sees that this one 1940s. library. We could use more folks helping Hays code deletion. He doesn’t fall for any is very active. She gave me a very warm Marlowe’s creator, short-story and novel out. It could be shelving, covering books, of it, although he is thoroughly appreciative. welcome and when I said I was an English writer Raymond Chandler, gave this type helping with the book sales, baking cookies There is no Chandler female who is what teacher she indicated that if I wanted to lead of crime story a certain cachet, which sired for events, doing publicity, helping with she pretends to be, who hasn’t got an agenda some kind of activity, that would please her the dark frames of subsequent film noir. maintenance of our building and grounds, that is never fully explained. No male char- enormously. Dime Detective and Black Mask were the helping with the Scrabble tournaments, and acter either. Even Marlowe’s LAPD contacts There were already two well-established ten-cents-a-copy magazines where his many more. We will train you for library jobs for seem to be holding something back. This activities: an evening discussion group and short stories showed up on a regular basis in free! was all everyday stuff in pulp fiction. a Saturday film club. I became a regular at the 1930s. A late bloomer, Chandler didn’t New members will be joining the Friends the film club but because of my schedule start writing until middle age and not until board soon, replacing Peggy Berryhill, who ulp fiction originated in the early de- I could only rarely attend the discussions. he had become a has-been, after he had recently resigned, needing to devote more cades of the twentieth century. It got its These events were held in English at a very been dismissed from a highly paid, respect- P of her time to her work at KGUA, and Greg name from the cheap paper these magazines high level and both were facilitated by able job. It was all about his alcoholism, Jirak, who resigned a few months ago. We were printed on. The insides may have been Americans, one of whom was a Peace Corps absenteeism, and promiscuity with female are grateful for all that their presences added clichéd gray trash featuring hard-boiled de- volunteer. Later a documentary film group employees. His life appears to have been to our board of directors. tectives and weird science-fiction creatures, and a game group started, also in English, noir in itself. I have been appointed to the Library but the covers were technicolor lurid, featur- There was also a branch of Toastmasters, a The Big Sleep was his first novel, pub- Advisory Board (LAB) by the Point Arena ing half-clad females in need of rescue. Ten public speaking group that was conducted in lished in 1939. In 1946 it was made into a City Council, and will be replacing longtime cents a copy. Toss it when you’re finished. Ukrainian and Russian. All of the activities movie, with William Faulkner listed on the incumbent Lori Hubbart, who thankfully Edgar Rice Burroughs, Max Brand, are well-attended and ongoing. The room is writing team. Yes, that William Faulkner, remains on the FoCCL board, on which she H. P. Lovecraft, Dashiell Hammett, and regularly used by students, many studying the Nobel Prize winner. A fair number of the is the longest serving member. The LAB Ray Bradbury got their start writing for medicine, from around the world. Computer icons of American literature did a stint as is a County-appointed group which exists this type of publication and in the process use and wifi are free as is attendance at all hacks in Hollywood. to advise the Board of Supervisors on the defined their genres for decades to come. the groups. Mendocino County Library system as a Raymond Chandler joined their ranks in the Later I offered my students graded Eng- whole. I feel there is a benefit to having early thirties when he lost his job as an oil lish readers and saw how eager they were to some representatives from Friends groups A late bloomer, company executive and decided to become a delve into them. I also saw many book- who have a real nuts-and-bolts awareness of detective-fiction writer, as if it’s something stores, stalls and kiosks selling newspapers the inner workings of the libraries and I am Chandler didn’t start you take up like badminton or beachcomb- and magazines. In Odessa there are also a excited to join in a countywide group dedi- writing until middle ing. Chandler supposedly studied the few bookstores with English study books. cated to the welfare of all our libraries. Perry Mason story formula of Erle Stanley Many of my students were great readers so I age and not until he Gardner—where we are in on the crime as it have no worries about the future of reading is committed and then watch the lawyer or in Ukraine. There are other things to worry had become a has- detective uncover the culprit and bring him about in Ukraine. By the time this is pub- to justice—but he did not write like that. His lished, I hope the violence will have ended Library Hours been, after he had first-person narrator is the PI—we readers and sanity returned to deal with the many been dismissed from know only what he knows or is able to glean problems that do exist. Monday 12 noon - 6 pm from a host of iffy informants. Tuesday 10am - 6 pm a highly paid, re- Philip Marlowe is the detective in Chandler’s three best novels, The Big Sleep; Wednesday 10am - 8 pm spectable job. It was Farewell, My Lovely; and The Long Good- Laura Schatzberg is a CCL volunteer Thursday 12 noon - 8 pm all about his alcohol- bye. All were made into films.Farewell, My who has recently returned from a year in Friday 12 noon - 6 pm Lovely actually formed the basis for three Ukraine. She lives in Point Arena. Saturday 12 noon - 3 pm ism, absenteeism, movies, including Murder My Sweet with and promiscuity with Dick Powell as Marlowe. I prefer Humphrey Coast Community Library Bogart’s portrayal of the world-weary, seen- it-all but honest cynic. For this, Powell is is located at female employees. too pretty. Bogart has the wracked face and Volunteer 225 Main Street the deadpan delivery that suits Chandler’s at Coast Community Library Point Arena dialogue. (707) 882.3114 707.882.3114 See tough page 9 Page 8 The Redwood Coast Review Spring 2014

readers’ letters marcel from page 4 the streets of Paris, Basel, and London, on a Don’t explain High standards summer trip in 1967, when I reached the fi- nal, poignant pages of The Past Recaptured Mike Tuggle’s piece “My Father’s Vision” I loved your article about liberal arts educa- corrections (Le Temps Retrouvé). I had read the scene (Winter 2014) is astonishing. His father’s tion. Now everyone tweets, blogs and can’t Images of two paintings by Richard of Baron Charlus muttering to himself “Duc report isn’t explained, isn’t speculated manage to read a book. The latest thing is Diebenkorn in our Winter issue were de Guermantes . . . dead . . . Charles Swann about. It simply is. I wonder if an effect blogging about illness. I’ve written a book incompletely identified. The paint- . . . dead . . . all . . .dead” and read, too, the like this could be achieved in fiction. In about living with illness some years ago and extraordinary moment in which the adult fiction, it would, be a “ghost story” requir- am donating a copy to Coast Community ings should have been identified as Marcel, visiting Venice, strikes his heel ing a resolution, a payoff of some kind, but Library, which The Redwood Coast Review follows: (Page 1) Cityscape #1, 1963, against the paves of the Piazza San Marco even if so constructed it is hard to imagine supports. Maybe, just maybe, someone will oil on canvas, 60 ¼ x 50 ½ in. Estate and makes contact with a tremendous cable a fictional version having the stark impact find time to read. I also loved the article by #1374. (Page 10) Knife in a Glass, of memory—beyond anything in Tante of Tuggle’s account, which the reader (me, Zara Raab. I have all of Osip Mandelstam’s 1963, oil on hardboard, 14 5/8 x Leonie’s tisane and the madeleine—his anyway) accepts as true. Also, of course, it books. The RCR is wonderful! Thank you equivalent to Dante’s entry into the mystic is very well written, perfect language and for maintaining such high standards in the 10 ¾ in. Estate #1386. Our apolo- Rose at the end of the Divine Comedy, in timing. I’m clipping and saving it, ponder- arts. gies for the omissions, and thanks which “all things, substance and accident,” ing it, learning from it. again to The Richard Diebenkorn and endings and beginnings, are joined in Marguerite Bouvard Foundation for permission to print one—a passage which in college seemed to Tom Fuchs Wellesley, Massachusetts these images. presage the future of my own life. West Hollywood On the airplane flight from Orly to New In “Deaf to the Land Beneath Us” York on the way to the newly-named JFK airport, I finished the final pages of the (Winter 2014, Page 3), Zara Raab’s Skewed priorities and Give Boito credit Recherche. In a nearby seat, a French pas- essay on Osip Mandelstam, the senger’s copy of Le Monde was opened to Stray Dog Café was in St. Petersburg clueless politicians Though I am accustomed to the erasure of a full-page spread which asked rhetorically, librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte from what are (not Moscow), and the translator of in French, “Has Civil War Begun in the Your editorial in the latest RCR (“No App: called the greatest “Mozart operas,” it seems Nadezhda Mandelstam’s memoirs is United States?” over photos of tanks in the How useless is a liberal arts education,” streets of Newark, Detroit, and other cities. that it was Arrigo Boito (who went on to Max Hayward (not Howard). Winter 2014) left me feeling both sad and write the libretto and the music of one of my There was such tension that when the plane pissed off. At today’s college price tag, a favorite operas, Mefistofele), not Giuseppe touched down hard in New York and after We regret the errors. purely liberal arts degree that doesn’t pre- Verdi, who made the opera Otello tighter a rough taxi came to rest on US soil, there pare one for a job is a luxury most students plotted than Shakespeare’s play Othello, was loud applause and cheering. can’t afford. Certainly my grandchildren contrary to Jane Merryman’s assign- But I couldn’t hear the cheering. I was can’t and that makes me very sad. Even ment of credit (“Better than Shakespeare,” already half-way down the road, the road community colleges are far from free. The Winter 2014). Earlier, in Macbeth, Verdi not taken, to my past, to recover the pre- skewed priorities of government spending used a libretto by a lesser writer than Boito cious moments of time that led back to it are the real pisser. Politicians seem uninter- (Francesco Maria Piave, who also supplied WRITE TO US all—to conflict, to desire, to the forbidden, ested in addressing the staggering amount of Verdi libretti for Attila, Rigoletto, and Simon to Americanness, to Frenchness, to Jewish- student debt. Just another scandalous black ness, to sexuality, to love. My own research Bocanegro), but, even for that, both the re- The RCR welcomes your letters. mark against them. quirements for compression of the medium into lost time had begun. (opera) and the provision of a libretto were Write to the Editor, RCR c/o Kate Todd foundations for the musical superstructure ICO, P.O. Box 1200, Gualala, Point Arena Verdi added. CA 95445 or by email to Barry Fruchter is a writer and teacher liv- ing in East Setauket, New York. Stephen O. Murray [email protected]. San Francisco

Buz Bezore, 1945-2014

“The best of the mediocre minds” Cemetery in the City Stephen Kessler Behind the wrought iron gates between the walls, Just black ground, no trees or even grass, ne morning early in 1981 the the turbulent evolution of Santa Cruz in the With wooden benches where a few old men telephone rang at my home in the early 80s from a conservative low-budget Are sitting quietly in the afternoon. OSoquel hills. On the line was a fa- out-of-the-way resort to a cauldron of artis- There are houses all around, stores close by, miliar voice. “Hi, it’s Buz,” the voice said. tic activity and progressive politics. Streets where children are playing, and the trains “Wanna play newspaper?” Buz’s genius as an editor, apart from his Go by not far from the graves. It’s a poor neighborhood. Buz Bezore, who died March 6 in Santa wit as a headline writer and surgical skill Cruz at age 68 (see Wallace Baine’s obitu- as a fine-tuner of other people’s prose, was Like patches on the gray facades, ary in the March 12 Santa Cruz Sentinel, to identify good writers, cajole them into Rain dampened rags hang in windows. santacruzsentinel.com), had been the arts working for next to nothing, and turn them The inscriptions on the gravestones editor of the Santa Cruz Independent when I loose to exercise their expertise (whether in Of two centuries of the dead are worn away, submitted a book review in 1976, and before politics, ecology, art, movies, health, dining, With no friends to forget them, unknowable long he had me writing a weekly literary books, satire or investigative reporting) Dead. But when the sun comes out, column; when he became editor-in-chief he and their imaginations, and the results were Because the sun does shine for a few days around June, gave me a column at the front of the paper often breathtaking. The old bones underground should be able to feel something. and instructed me to write about anything I once complimented Buz on a particu- I pleased. His only guideline: “Keep it larly brilliant issue, and he looked at me Not a leaf, not a bird. Nothing but stone. Earth. breezy.” from behind his desk, Miller High Life in Is this what hell is like? Pain that never ends, So Buz was to blame for turning me into one hand and ever-present unfiltered Lucky Noise, misery, endless hopeless cold. a journalist, just one of many young writers Strike in the other, and said, “I’m the best of Here the silent sleep of death whose talent he recognized and nurtured in the mediocre minds.” Does not exist, because life is still those unruly times before “the alternative At first I was shocked at this exceedingly Shivering among the graves, the way a prostitute press,” for business reasons, became more modest self-assessment, and I disagreed Carries on with her business under the frozen night. formulaic. The Independent sank in 1979. because he was the most creative editor I’d On March 4, 1981, the Santa Cruz Express ever known, but later I came to understand When darkness falls through the overcast was launched with Bezore at the helm and a what he meant: his gift was the ability to And the smoke from the factories settles spirited crew on board, and for the next five recruit and cultivate talent greater than his Into a gray dust, voices come out of the pub, years we published the most compellingly own and coordinate their working together And then a passing train readable and unpredictable newspaper that to create a product superior to the sum of its Shakes out long echoes like an angry horn. city has ever seen. parts—a chorus of distinctively individual It’s not yet Judgment Day, nameless dead ones. In those pre-digital days the free weekly voices combined to powerful, informative Try to relax, sleep; sleep if you can. paper was where the community turned to and entertaining effect. It could be God has also forgotten you. discover itself. The mixture of arts and But “playing newspaper” is not the same politics, food and entertainment, cultural as running a business. The wreck of the and intellectual life covered and cultivated Express in 1986—one of the most dramatic — Luis Cernuda by Buz and the Express was so unusual— episodes of my personal history—is a tale and so much fun to read—that people for another memoir, or perhaps a novel, looked forward to Thursday when they with Buz Bezore as its central character of could pick up a copy and be surprised, and Melvillean dimensions and Dostoyevskian often amazed, at what they would find in its complexity. Luis Cernuda (1902-1963), one of Spain’s leading modern poets, spent pages. He set an example, for better and worse, half his life in exile in Great Britain, the United States and Mexico; in the The surprise might be delightful, dis- from which I am still learning. early 1960s he taught at UCLA and San Francisco State. This poem was tressing, hilarious, infuriating or exasper- translated by Stephen Kessler. ating, but the writing and graphics and attitude—an intoxicating blend of intel- Stephen Kessler is the editor of the RCR. A ligence and irreverence—would seldom fail slightly different version of this piece first ap- to engage the reader, and faithfully reflected peared in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Spring 2014 The Redwood Coast Review Page 9

Books Three decades after it was first published, tough from page 7 Landscape with Traveler reads like an artifact of the late 1970s, when “straight” And the quotable dialogue lines are the plot. The film is better than the book— men wrote experimental novels using the practically endless. Screenwriters really had it’s much shorter. personae of women and gay men, and when it made when they were hired to adapt a academics propounded elaborate theories Chandler novel. handler worked with Billy Wilder to to explain the wave of gender-bending From the first paragraph of The Big Ccraft the screenplay of Double Indem- fiction. In a new Introduction, Gifford tries Sleep: nity, another film I never tire of watching hard to persuade readers that while he’s not I was neat, clean, shaved and sober and I mainly because of the snappy exchanges homosexual himself, he knows the terri- didn’t care who knew it. between Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stan- tory he writes about. Perhaps he does. Yet Later on in the first chapter: wyck. He is also credited for the screen- Landscape, his first book, has the feel of “Tall aren’t you?” she said. play of Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, a a novel by an author learning the craft of “I didn’t mean to be.” tightly written script, but with none of the fiction. Redeeming moments are few and far To another woman Marlowe says: Chandler brand. between. At the end of the chapter entitled “I don’t mind your showing me your legs. What makes this sorry mess of a Depres- “When I Was a Child,” Reeves’s father asks They’re very swell legs and it’s a pleasure to sion throwaway pick up the pieces and him which parent he loves the most. “I don’t make their acquaintance. I don’t mind if you invent a whole new life? My guess is he is know,” he says, and breaks into tears. Look- don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. really Philip Marlowe all along, but tries ing back at the incident, the adult Reeves I grieve over them during the long winter to hide behind a neatly pressed suit and a explains that from that moment on he be- nights.” mahogany desk. Tries to hide the man who came “less open, more guarded.” He adds, Also from The Big Sleep: doesn’t mean to be tall. Perhaps after a night “It was a satori of sorts, and without realiz- As honest as you can expect a man to be laboring over the typewriter, Chandler, like Barry Gifford ing it at the time, I saw a great deal of what in a world where it’s going out of style. his PI, returns to his solitary room, pours there is to see about people.” Landscape It seemed like a nice neighborhood to himself a stiff one, and gazes out over the needs more moments of self-awareness. have bad habits in. lights of the sprawling city where “the In The Long Goodbye, Chandler comes streets were dark with something more than Pulp Satori uriously, The Roy Stories, though up with night” as they retreat toward the looming Cthey’re set in the past, don’t feel out- I was as hollow and empty as the spaces menace of the Tehachapis. Jonah Raskin dated. Roy, Gifford’s main character, grows between stars. The streets were dark with something up in the 1940s and 1950s, a time the author And: more than night. Brilliant. I have to hand it knows well from his own adolescence and The French have a phrase for it. The to the guy. But after spending only a couple Landscape with Traveler: that he recreates with gritty passion and bastards have a phrase for everything and of weeks immersed in pulp fiction and film The Pillow Book of Francis Reeves verbal precision. In a new Preface, Gifford they are always right. noir, I too want to pour myself a hefty shot by Barry Gifford boasts that his narrative “constitutes not Farewell, My Lovely contains some of bourbon and brood as my life retreats Seven Stories (2013), 159 pages just one person’s story” but “a history” of doozies. The one I like best is: toward a lonely, looming menace. I need America from the late 1940s to the early I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life sunshine. I need trees. I need the scent of a The Roy Stories 1960s. Moreover, he says that the stories re- insurance, I needed a vacation. I needed a sea breeze. What I have is a coat, a hat, and by Barry Gifford cord “the language of that period.” Indeed, home in the country. What I had was a coat, . . . hiking boots. Seven Stories (2013), 432 pages they do. The Roy Stories are simple and a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out Goodbye. I’m out the door. yet captivating. The narratives hurl readers of the room. arry Gifford wrote fiction for along, while Gifford’s wordplay provokes The rhythm. The mood. The economy. more than a decade before Jane Merryman lives in Petaluma and con- reflection. In “The Age of Fable,” the play- Chandler’s style is what got The Big Sleep David Lynch (the director of the tributes often to the RCR. ful word is “virago.” In “Unspoken,” it’s included on the list of the 100 best English- psychological TV thriller Twin “brothel” which Roy’s grandfather, Pops, language novels published since 1923 (the Peaks) turned his novel Wild at defines as a place “where men pay women debut of Time magazine, which evidently BHeart (1989) into a movie fueled by sex and made the list). W. H. Auden, Evelyn Waugh, to have sex with them.” violence. Staring Nicholas Cage and Laura The stories are two or three pages long and Ian Fleming all openly admired Chan- Dern, the picture won the Palme d’or at with brief sketches of the characters and dler’s writing. Albert Camus, the French Cannes, seduced film noir buffs and boosted lean dialogue that lead to a series of poetic Nobel Prize winner for literature, confessed Gifford’s career as a fledgling fiction writer. crescendos. The Holocaust and the Cold that he attempted in The Stranger to emulate Before Wild at Heart went celluloid, Gifford War haunt Roy and his uncles. Rock ’n’ roll Chandler’s spare prose. The critics didn’t had published three novels. After Lynch’s transforms him and his peers. His virago- like him, but what does that matter if other 1990 picture, he published, in rapid succes- like mother, who calls him “Baby,” nudges writers did? If publishers and the book- sion, fifteen novels, many of them featuring him from innocence toward knowledge of buying public did? his two best-known characters, Sailor and For me, the novel works at the begin- Lula, who are addicted to each other and to ning, but the endless conversations that go love itself. To say the least, the movies have Roy and his friend nowhere while sliding around ambiguities been good for Gifford and he’s been good Magic Frank clean grow tiresome fast. I get the feeling that the for the movie industry, too, writing fiction writer doesn’t know what to do next, where ready-made for the screen in the manner the Tip Top Burlesque to go, who to bump off, and is playing for of Dashiell Hammett. With Lynch, he also time and space to fill up a decent-sized co-wrote the screenplay for Lost Highway House on a cold Christ- novel. The film is the same way—wander- (1997). mas in Chicago. May ing through the dark, rain-splashed streets of A native of Chicago—the son of a Jewish LA; the alleys, the bourbon-soaked bars and father and an Irish Catholic mother—Gif- Flowers, an aging strip- cheap walkup apartments; the violent and Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe ford settled long ago in what’s arguably the sexy encounters that do nothing to advance in The Big Sleep noir literary capital of the United States, the tease artist, calls Roy San Francisco Bay Area. He’s never stood out in the crowd of local authors, however, a “good egg” and asks perhaps because he’s linked to lowbrow him to find the “cigs” pulp fiction and not to the variety of high- brow novels touted by the literati. Still, in her purse. “Pull one Gifford was and still is connected to the S U B S C R I B E Bay Area’s bohemian scene. He dedicated and torch it, honey,” one of his books to his friends and kindred she says. If you live beyond the Redwood Coast and don’t get the Independent Coast spirits Jerry Rosen and David Bromige— Observer, now you can subscribe to The Redwood Coast Review and not miss “still around here somewhere,” he writes sex and death. In the retro-noir story, “Sad affectionately. an issue of our award-winning mix of essays, reviews, poetry, fiction and Stories of the Death of Kings,” the language Not surprisingly, there’s more to Gif- and the quirky characters both come alive. graphic art. For $24 a year you will be guaranteed quarterly first-class de- ford than noir, pulp fiction and the movies. Roy and his friend Magic Frank clean the livery of the RCR and at the same time support Coast Community Library The co-author, with Lawrence Lee, of a Tip Top Burlesque House on a cold Christ- biography of William Saroyan, he and Lee in its ongoing operating expenses. Please use this coupon to subscribe mas in Chicago. May Flowers, an aging also co-edited Jack’s Book (1978), an oral striptease artist, calls Roy a “good egg” or renew now. You won’t be disappointed. biography of Kerouac that’s packed with and asks him to find the “cigs” in her purse. interviews that are still fresh. Gifford’s road “Pull one and torch it, honey,” she says. epics—with their quirky characters, youth- She adds, “Just stick it in.” Sex and sexual Yes, I want to subscribe [renew] to The Redwood Coast Review. I am ful exuberance and sharp dialogue—owe a innuendo stalk Roy in stories with literary debt to Saroyan, Kerouac and to Zen Bud- enclosing a check for $24 to Coast Community Library. titles, such as “War and Peace” and “Crime dhism, too. Mix those elements together, and Punishment.” along with the ambiance of the dark movies The Roy Stories resurrects the lost I am making an additional donation to the library in the from the 1940s, and the result is a literary vocabulary of strip joints, seedy bars and cocktail that might well be called pulp fic- amount of $______. mean streets in an America that no longer tion with a satori twist. Whatever his influ- exists, except perhaps in movies. Nostal- ences, Gifford speaks with his own voice, gia tugs at Gifford’s characters; romance Total enclosed $______writes in his own style, and carves out his envelops them as they try to turn vulgarity own landscape. into poetry. With Roy between covers again, Last fall, Seven Stories, a small New Name ______readers can travel with him and his mother, York publishing house, reissued two out-of- her boyfriends and lovers, as well as with print Gifford books. The Roy Stories depict memorable characters such as Magic Frank, Address ______a young boy who grows awkwardly into ear- May Flowers and Pops, the father figure ly manhood. Landscape with Traveler: The who provides a map that leads from adoles- Pillow Book of Francis Reeves portrays an cence to adulthood. City, State, ZiP ______American vagabond who roams the world in search of sex. Reeves seduces and marries women and has male lovers, too. He might Jonah Raskin is a contributing editor at be called bisexual, though for some reason Copy or clip this coupon and send, with check or money order, to Coast RCR and the author of American Scream: Gifford describes him as homosexual. Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and the Making of Community Library, PO Box 808, Point Arena, CA 95468. Thank You! the Beat Generation, among other books. Page 10 The Redwood Coast Review Spring 2014

SURVIVOR from page 1

1937, over seventy-five years ago. Surrounded by harried sympathetically enter into the wish-fulfillment of a young adults who can barely keep themselves alive, the young girl whose drab everyday life and preoccupied family can’t Wright pokes his head out into the larger world only to have respond to her imaginative reach. Like Black Boy, The it forcefully beaten down. As Wright tells it, leaving his Woman Warrior is not only the record of a life but a bold childhood home in Mississippi to lead the writer’s life in assertion that another mode of life is possible. Chicago was not just the journey that many aspiring artists Southern Gothic style meets Riot Grrl in Mary Karr’s make, but necessary in order to save himself from lynch- saucy 1995 memoir, The Liars’ Club. These lurid and ing. For the very qualities that made Wright the writer he expressive styles are the perfect launching point for her tale was—perceptiveness, sensitivity, ability to tell hard truths— of a childhood at the hands of two alcoholic parents, one were unacceptable qualities for a black man in the brutal of whom (the mother) seems compelled to try and murder power structure of the Jim Crow South. Black Boy succeeds her children from time to time. Karr’s ear for Texas lingo because Wright doesn’t tell us what to think: he shows us is dead-on, steering the book away from sentimentality and what he went through, and then analyzes how it worked toward a kind of gritty, in-your-face survivalism that allows through his psyche. He becomes a microcosm for the study her to realistically describe various parental outrages along of racism, and in the process of confronting that racism he with two separate sexual molestations while she only grows also becomes himself. stronger. The jaunty narrative voice seems to be created out Frank McCourt’s 1996 memoir Angela’s Ashes doesn’t of the need to survive with humor and flair in the midst of reflect or poeticize as Wright’s memoir does at times, instead trauma, rather than be trounced by it. plunging us into a blow-by-blow account of a child trying to Karr begins the book with her most gut-wrenching survive extreme poverty during the Depression. McCourt’s memory (her mother pulls a knife on her and her sister after parents make the unfortunate decision to return to their rampaging through the house and burning their possessions native Ireland after one of their children dies in New York in the backyard) without comment in the present tense. She City, only to encounter even grimmer conditions, which lead then pulls the picture frame back, switching to past tense to the death of more of their children (and the near-death of and inserting parenthetical comments from her sister Lecia, Frank himself). Both Angela’s Ashes and Black Boy show us children subsisting on tea and bread, martyred mothers, ab- We come to memoir partly sent fathers, and emotionally stunted and bigoted elders who rarely command respect. Yet Angela’s Ashes doesn’t lead the to read an honest testimony reader to despair, because McCourt beautifully conveys the joy and utter tenacity that enables his family to survive, even of how someone survived her Richard Wright in debased form. There are countless acts of kindness, as life. Revealing stories that neighbors and storekeepers in New York, Dublin and Limer- ick hand them pieces of food that get them through another have previously been hidden is fair to begrudge Gilbert (a sunny-natured and deeply capable day. Mostly, there’s a joy in language itself, the transmis- writer) her good fortune, her memoir can’t help but read like sion of an indomitable spirit which McCourt keeps alive by the cutting-edge work of any some kind of one-two-three success story: do a little explor- presenting verses of the songs his drunken father sang as he culture. ing, spend some time at an ashram improving your soul, and came rolling home after another night drinking up the day’s you’ll be rewarded with the lover of your dreams. The mem- wages. oir began in the early Christian era in the West as a confes- sion, an attempt to cleanse one’s soul; in our goal-oriented ince the memoir is an effective record of individuation, times, we want something to show for our travails. Sthe recent predominance of memoirs by women is no surprise. Many of these memoirs focus on a certain experi- he trajectory of Bay Area author and educator Lucille ence—sexual molestation and other forms of abuse, eating TLang Day’s love life has not been so neat and clear, yet Married at Fourteen disorders, mental illness—which have previously been si- she begins her recent memoir, , with lenced in our culture’s public discourse. A common criticism an unforgettable image of a keepsake: “I own a switchblade is that these memoirs create a culture of victimhood, but I knife. It has a black plastic handle with two brass buttons. believe this paints too broad a picture and fails to recognize One button is the lock . . . When you slide the lock button a valuable human impulse. In fact we come to memoir partly all the way down, then press on the larger brass button in to read an honest testimony of how someone survived her the middle of the handle, the blade pops out with a click . . . life. Revealing stories that have previously been hidden is making a clean 180-degree arc.” the cutting-edge work of any culture; without it, a society This arresting passage shredded my own assumption that ossifies and dies. I was reading the survival story of some poor child married Good memoirs are crafted, and display an author’s aware- against her will. (That switchblade knife is wielded by the ness that she knows she is telling a story. Forgettable mem- pubescent narrator against an older boy who challenges her oirs are ones we swallow dutifully as records of a person’s a few sentences later.) We are not in the hands of a hapless personal and/or political oppression; as such, they can be of victim of the patriarchy here, but in those of a girl with re- practical use to those dealing with the same oppressions. But markable agency who unabashedly seizes the circumstances that nudges the memoir towards the self-help manual section of her humdrum life and remolds it to her will. The only of the book world, and away from its promise as a liter- child of doting yet oddly inconsistent parents, Day decides ary form. We may feel manipulated into feeling sorry for a at the age of twelve that the best way to get away from her memoirist simply because of what she survived, not because mother’s carping is to start her own household. Since she of her skill as a writer, even though she is employing the me- unabashedly likes men and likes sex, she is off to a good dium of words to communicate with us about it. As a result, start. Of course the early marriage that gives the book its we may feel an undercurrent of boredom or resentment title doesn’t last, though Lang Day does give birth to the without knowing why. first of her two children the next year. The details of her One notable exception is Maxine Hong Kingston’s 1975 divorce, remarriage to the same man, and subsequent affairs, marriages and divorces, are detailed in a flat and breathless cross-genre contribution The Woman Warrior: A Memoir Maxine Hong Kingston of My Childhood Among Ghosts. In the middle of a realistic prose which replicates how the experiences felt to her. Pho- recounting of growing up in San Francisco’s Chinatown, who either (here and there throughout the book) confirms the tos sprinkled throughout the book show Lang Day with her Kingston shrugs off the requirements of category by creat- memory or tells a slightly different story. This has the effect hair piled high on top of her head in the early-1960s style, ing a longish section of a fantasy adventure, where a young of removing us from the action and reminding that memoir adding inches to her height and giving her the appearance of woman disguises herself as a man and fights bravely in a is an act of memory and writing an act of consciousness. By a predatory jungle cat. The author neatly takes the familiar battle, winning honor for her country and enrichment for writing her memoir so artfully, Karr has reversed her child- victimization memoir and turns it on its head, employing the herself. The section works as memoir because we get to hood position of hapless victim and repositioned herself as a tools she had available as a young teen to her own advan- sophisticated creator and re-creator of a life narrative. We all tage. belong to the Liars’ Club, the text suggests, just by being a The memoir works because Lang Day creates a memora- human being who captures impressions in the butterfly net of ble character—herself. She never tries to resolve her contra- the brain and releases them as variously-colored memories. dictions or to reflect very hard on her actions, but she does If the memoir achieved literary respectability with The succeed in portraying a person who is always vibrantly alive. Liar’s Club, it reached blockbuster status with the 2006 Reading Day, Karr, Wright and others affirms my faith release of Eat Pray Love. Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir is a in the vitality of the memoir genre, if the memoirist can witty, engaging, and heartfelt record of a year of travel she succeed in creating a coherent and pleasing structure for his embarked on after a devastating divorce and subsequent or her memories that does not also wrap their human messi- depression. Her plan to spend four months in Italy explor- ness into too neat a package. For it is not only the content ing sensuality and food, four months in India at an ashram of a memoir that reveals one’s every scar and stain, but the exploring her spirituality, and four months in Bali encounter- structure as well. The new field of narrative therapy (and the ing love creates a neat three-fold structure upon which the old field of storytelling) has shown that people’s emotions concerns of a memoir can play out. A reader can’t help but and orientation toward life are shaped by the stories they tell cheer Gilbert on as she disengages from a dead-end life and about themselves; for better or worse, and in the absence strikes out on her adventure, her shakiness and recurrent of the strong narrative framework that fiction writing can depression alleviated by the colorful friends she makes along provide, I realized my memoir must reflect my inner sensi- the way. In India, a moment of genuine insight that would be bility. Like many memoir writers, I started with the urge to the beginning of a long period of training for many seekers confess and ended up confessing to something else: that I am (Thomas Merton’s memoir of conversion, The Seven-Storey in charge of my personal myth and story. I employ the same Mountain, ends with entry into a Trappist monastery) is techniques as a fiction writer; that is startling and unsettling, enough to satisfy Gilbert and send her to her next country, also deeply funny and ultimately freeing. I started out telling Indonesia, where she consorts with a local shaman and a my story, and I ended up finding the storyteller—rising out struggling single mother, and soon falls in love with an older of the gutter, rolling out from under the bed, and bouncing Brazilian man who declares that he wants nothing more than back from innumerable almost-misses to proclaim: “I alone to love her. survived to tell this tale.” Thus the memoir has sojourned from the great enemy of Eros, St. Augustine, to the carnal ecstasies of Eat Pray Love, which culminates in the narrator’s passionate love affair in Bali, complete with multiple orgasms. The narrator’s only Roberta Werdinger is a writer and editor living near Ukiah, problem at the end is that she’s developed a urinary tract and a regular RCR contributor. Frank McCourt infection from all her vigorous fucking. While it’s a little un-