Marking my boundaries (from Two Buttons)

At Two Buttons, the Frenchtown, NJ, store that Elizabeth Gilbert currently owns with her book-and-movie famous husband (the store is now up for sale), my husband was one determined shopper. The place is several thousand square feet and what feels like millions of on-sale items large, but he was looking for one thing.

Boundary Markers, he called them. I'm not leaving until we have one for you.

My husband had already arranged my exquisite birthday retreat. He'd already taken me to lunch at Lovin' Oven, where they put kale, apple juice, and lemon into a glass and you finally understand the word elixir. He'd already given me a respite from the enormous pressures of this spring and bought me two fine editions of high-gloss Doc Martens.

But a Boundary Marker was a gift absolute, he said. He found the cutest one.

So that's my new Boundary de-limiter, please don't keep treating me like a second class citizen buffer, please don't think I didn't notice what you just said (or didn't say) rebut-er, please be apprised that I'm fully aware that life is too short guy sitting there, right at the edge of my computer, where I need him most. Here is the official store description. I have a feeling that it was penned by Elizabeth Gilbert herself:

Boundaries and Boundary-Markers are very important in the Indonesian life and culture. Often used to literally mark land boundaries, these statues are also used to protect one's emotional boundaries as well. Carved out of lava rock from the island of Sulawasi, these wonderful individually unique statues help to support and protect your boundaries. Haven't we all had times when our boundaries needed a little help?

(Typing, I think again: Elizabeth Gilbert must be the voice behind this merchandise.)

This is the year, my friend Kelly and I keep saying, that we turn it all around. This is the year. I'm starting by respecting myself a little bit more. And hoping that such a bold new stance will be noticed.

(and adopted by my many friends who are in need of their own boundary markers)

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above all else, these things I seek

I went away to celebrate my birthday—up the Delaware River, on the New Jersey side, in the town made famous by Elizabeth Gilbert. I wore funky boots and worried about nothing and bought the coolest felt coat for close to nothing, gifts for a friend, a brass feather for my hair. Walking and walking beside my husband, who had surprised me with Frenchtown, who understood my deep need to be elsewhere.

These few things, while I was gone:

One Thing Stolen was named an April Editor's Pick by Amazon and a Top 14 YA April book by Bustle. I am grateful and humbled.

Galleys for Love: A Philadelphia Affair arrived. This book becoming a real thing, then. More gratitude.

The German edition of You Are My Only showed up in a white box. It is always deeply interesting to see a story remade in another language, announced to the world with a new image. I'm grateful for Hanser's faith in the novel.

I had many thoughts while I was away about what really matters, what makes me happiest. Family. Friendship. Time. Peace. These things I seek, above all else. You can make something special without spending lots of money. You can say love without wrapping it in a bow. You can look ahead and worry less. I keep getting better at that. Family. Friendship. Time. Peace.

Familyfriendshiptime.

Peace.

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Reviewing Elizabeth Gilbert and The Signature of All Things in the Chicago Tribune

Readers of this blog have no doubt noticed that my reflections on books here have lately been few and far between. I promise to ease away from that deficiency as soon as client and literary deadlines lift.

But in the meantime, I'm privileged to share today my review of Elizabeth Gilbert's breathtaking, fiercely alive historical novel, The Signature of All Things, which I read on behalf of the Chicago Tribune. The review starts like this, below, and carries forward here.

The photo above is of The Woodlands, a slice of land upon which much of the action in this novel takes place.

Success is a glory, a phenomenon, a sly intoxication. It is also a haunting, a probable curse. For how is one to dream beyond the answered dream? How might one recalibrate the very idea of ambition? Write again with urgency? Success is binding and so, too, is historical fiction. All those facts to get right. All those anachronisms to guard against. All that information. Writers of historical novels must be endlessly curious, and fierce. They must engage the reader on every page and win the battle against asphyxiating doubt. If Elizabeth Gilbert, known until now for her mega-memoir “Eat Pray Love,” was ever haunted by any of these questions, her raucously ingenious new novel, “The Signature of All Things,” has shoved any doubt in the closet and bolted the door. “Signature” is not just an historical novel that spans two centuries and many geographies. It's a 500-page novel of ideas — a book about universal biological theory, the study of moss, the cultivation of quinine, the painting of orchids and the people who do these things with passion.

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See Buzz Bissinger Talk about Fatherhood and the Art of the Rave, and support the Spells Writing Lab in the process

Readers of this blog know just how much I adored Buzz Bissinger's forthcoming memoir Father's Day.  I wrote about it here not once, but twice.  I read passages out loud to my students.  I told a seatmate on a train.  I just kinda—well, did my thing.

There goes Miss Crazy Effusive again.

Philadelphia-area readers and thinkers and hearts (that's all of us, right?) now have a chance not just to meet Buzz and hear him talk about the making of the memoir, the glories and heartbreak of fatherhood, and the art of the rave (don't you want to hear Buzz talk about the art of the rave?), but to support a really important cause—the Spells Writing Lab, a literacy-focused organization that offers after-school tutoring, weekend writing workshops, in-school assistance with student publications, and professional development opportunities for teachers.  If that's not enough to persuade you, consider the composition of its advisory board, which is rocked by Stephen Fried, Elizabeth Gilbert, Carol Saline, Lisa Scottoline, Lori Tharps, and Caroline Tiger, among others.

The event is taking place at the Loews Hotel on 1200 Market Street, Philadelphia, on May 10, 2012. It begins at 6:15, and Anyone Who is Anyone will be there.  (I hope to make it, too.)  More information can be found right here.

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Hookless and Committed

I've now read at least a half dozen reviews of Elizabeth Gilbert's new mega-memoir, Committed, including the Curtis Sittenfeld version that appears on this weekend's cover of the New York Times Book Review. I've watched her talk. I've read the interviews. And it occurs to me that, were I to read this book, I probably wouldn't know much more about Gilbert's travails or voice or happy ending than I already do. There's a remarkable sameness in the press, in the reviews. There is little variation in how Gilbert's story is summarized (she never wanted to get remarried, but she was forced to), in which telling anecdotes are brought forward (her grandmother's marriage story, the marriage stories of Hmong grandmothers), in how Gilbert herself is portrayed (chatty, entertaining, self-knowing bordering on self-absorbed). Were Gilbert running for office no one would be left confused about the party line. There is no murk in the margins. No room, it seems, for the unexpected retelling or interpretation.

A dozen years ago, when I was just starting out in this book life, I was encouraged to think about the "one line or two" that summarized my books. The hook that would broadcast their intentions, content, style. I failed for the first book. I failed for the next. I pretty much gave up by the time I'd written a book called Flow, the autobiography of a river. Say what? most editors said, after listening to me talk in a circle about it. Is it history? Is it poetry? Is it fiction? Even my novels have refused to fit inside the lines of what might be easily parlayed; I end up writing most summaries or jacket flap copy with a sense of familiar defeatism. I need more sentences than there's room to print. Again and again, I come up hookless.

I should probably work on that, but frankly, I don't know how to. That's not a boast; it's a confession. It's the reason why I need to write most of my books all the way through before I can try to sell them, for I never fully know, until I'm done too many drafts to count, what my books are all about. Even then, I need some room to explain them. Even then, they will be summarized, reviewed, and interpreted in ways that I often don't see coming.

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