Thoughts from an inch-sized heart

.

.

Maybe it's travel fatigue, or maybe it's my advancing age  . . .  or perhaps it's a malaise many writers are dealing with now (and indeed, most everyone): the sense that things were more happening before. The sense that the peak of success is now in the past. 

Wandering in and out of airport bookstores, knowing my books will not be there, telling myself not to even bother looking (and then glancing), and then wandering out, trying not to feel disappointment, admonishing myself for even thinking it possible.

Why do I even put myself though this? Because, in truth, I long to be that best-seller on the exclusive airport bookstore shelves and I feel, now, that my time is past, my chance at the gold ring.

But what kind of goal is that? The truth is that once I'm back at work again, once I'm engaged with the challenge of crafting a story, I won't give this a thought. The only goal that matters is to write.

On the ride home from the airport, through the beautiful Mexican towns, the dark desert hills, I listened to a podcast "Writers on Writing" interview of Louis Alterto Urrea. I love this author – love his and his wife's tweets on Twitter (@Urrealism) — and consider his novel The Hummingbird's Daughter one of the best historical fiction novels of all time. The interviewer concluded the talk by asking for his advice to writers.

"What I try to always bring across to the students is that they should surrender to the process of it. There is an ancient Chinese writing text called Wen Fu, and Wen Fu actually means "Writing Fu" — as in Kung Fu.  . . .  I am just trying to give them the sense that you are actually doing this writing not to be famous, not to be rich, or even to get groupies — as lovely as that might be — but to practice. You're doing a spiritual and physical practice in the world which will effect your response to this place we are living in."

Exactly.

Wen Fu was written around 300 A.D. Read it: it's beautiful:

Writing is in itself a joy,

Yet saints and sages have long since held it in awe.

For it is being, created from a void;

It is sound rung out of profound silence.

In a sheet of paper is contained the infinite,

And, evolved from an inch-sized heart, an endless panorama.

I love that: an inch-sized heart. 

*****

Website: http://www.sandragulland.com/
Blog: http://sandragulland.blogspot.com/
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/3xzbgv
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Sandra_Gulland

More on Mantel

.

.

My blog posts here get automatically posted to my Facebook home page (but not, BTW, to my "fan" page, as I would like, for reasons I've yet to sort out). Typically, on Facebook, there can evolve quite a discussion, which is what happened to my post a week ago Friday, "Weeping over History." Margaret Donsbach, Katherine Mary Govier and I got into quite an interesting discussion about the POV Mantel used in her brilliant novel, Wolf Hall. Govier has now written an excellent review of that novel for the Canadian National Post, "Why I love Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall," in which she mentions some of what was discussed.

Meanwhile, I'm still under the spell of that brilliant novel. I'll be adding it to my Great Historical Novels lists. Few can compare.

On giving readings

.

.

Since arriving in San Miguel de Allende — in addition to catching up with friends and getting resettled — I prepared for a talk/reading.

I had planned to give the same reading I had given in Toronto in the spring, but realized that I really needed to revise it, make it current.

Of course this meant endless revisions and print-outs in addition to talking it out, timing it, and then, ultimately, practicing it in front of a mirror.

As a rule of thumb, I try to talk it through three times on the day of the event, the last one as close to the event as possible. Consequently, my voice was hoarse!

I like very much my new system of printing out the talk -- every word, including the selections from the book -- on 8.5 x 11 paper. I print it out in big, bold type that is easy to read, giving each sentence its own paragraph. I make sure to dog-ear the pages so that they are easy to turn. I use an elegant black binder to read from.

The talk went exceptionally well — so many people! The one thing I learned from it, however, is to make sure that the mike is working well for the audience. Some mikes you talk into — others you talk over. This was a talk-over kind, and sometimes — on a "t" sound, for example — I later learned that it spit the sound out at the audience. (I've seen one author who travels with her own mike, and I can understand why.)

The second reader of the evening — Barbara Levine, author of the amazing book Finding Frida Kahlo — had trouble with the low lighting. It was hard for her to see the text of her book. It occurred to me that a clip-on night-reader might be a handy thing to have on hand.

(Photo: the jardin at night in San Miguel de Allende. This is such a beautiful, vibrant and peaceful town, it pains me that visitors have been frightened away by the press north of the border.)


**********
Website: http://www.sandragulland.com/
Blog: http://sandragulland.blogspot.com/
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/3xzbgv
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Sandra_Gulland

Weeping over history

.

.

I highly recommend this wonderful article by Hilary Mantel, on researching Wolf Hall. I admire this writer more and more. (I had something to say about her writing in my previous post.)

"How It Must Have Been" is an insightful review of Wolf Hall by Stephen Greenblatt in the New York Review of Books. He has a lot of interesting things to say about Cromwell and the nature of historical fiction.

Greenblatt asks: What is historical fiction? His definition is more narrow than I would have it, focusing on known characters and events:

At issue then is not merely the setting in an era different from the present of the novelist, the interest in significant historical events, and the representation of identifiable, documented historical actors, though all of these are important in establishing the parameters of the form.

The emphasis's in the quote are my own: for me, historical fiction does not have to touch on "significant" events or people. For me, historical fiction need only take me back in time, and Greenblatt expresses this quality well:

Historical novels have a further characteristic. They generate a sense in the reader best summed up in exclamations like "Yes, this is the way it must have been"; "This is how they must have sounded"; "This is what it must have felt like."

And further: "The historical novel then is always an act of conjuring." (As is true of all fiction.)

The historical novel ... offers the dream of full access, access to what went on behind closed doors, off the record, in private, when no one was listening or recording.

Greenblatt and other reviewers have noted Mantel's unique point-of-view in this novel.

Mantel contrives a telling effect by often referring to Cromwell as "he" without further identification, so that in many sentences the reader must figure out where, in a welter of "he's" and "him's," Cromwell is

Here is an example of the sometimes disorientating use of "he":

"Master Cromwell," he says lightly, "either my calculations are wrong, or the universe is not as we think it."

He says, "Why are comets bad signs?..."

The first speaker is the king's astronomer, and normally, the second "he" would refer back to him. Not in this novel. The second he — "He says" — is Cromwell speaking ... always Cromwell. It's effective, but it takes a little getting used to.

I have a theory about this, a hunch. I suspect it possible that the novel was first written in the first person voice and then changed to the close third. There are a few instances of the first person voice remaining. For example:

Very well. I dry my tears, those tears from All Hallows day. I sit with the cardinal, by the fire at Esher in a room with a smoking chimney. (page 162, Canadian edition)

This passage stands out. It is a rare use of the first person voice. This passage would normally have read: Very well. He dries his tears, those tears from All Hallows day. He sits with the cardinal, by the fire at Esher in a room with a smoking chimney. 

But as I said: just a hunch.

I'm in the middle of the novel now, and I'm having a little difficulty with the transition. Wolsey, wonderful Wolsey, has died, and Cromwell now serves King Henry VIII. There isn't the same emotional connection. Cromwell has lost his bearings, and so have I. I'm confident, however, that we will make it through.


*****
Image above: portrait of Thomas Cromwell by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1532-3.