my wide-ranging conversation with Buzz Bissinger, at Kelly Writers House

On Homecoming Saturday, in the Kelly Writers House on the Penn campus, I spent 75 minutes in conversation with Buzz Bissinger. It was a dialogue of many dimensions and much quiet—and authentic—self reflection.

That conversation can now be watched in its entirety here.

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cures for literary heartbreak

Look for me behind stacks of books. That's where I'm living lately.

Assembling the content for a traveling multi-day memoir workshop. Preparing to teach the personal essay during a morning/afternoon at a Frenchtown high school. Knitting together ideas for a four-hour Sunday memoir workshop, next weekend, at the Rat (also in Frenchtown; places still available). Conjuring poem-engendering exercises for the fourth and fifth graders of North Philly. Building the syllabus for my next semester of teaching at Penn. Putting more touches onto the Beltran Family Teaching Award event at Penn next spring (featuring Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Margo Rabb, and A.S. King). Re-reading Buzz Bissinger so that I can introduce and then publicly converse with him at the Kelly Writers House this Saturday, for Penn's Homecoming. Talking to Jennie Nash about an online memoir workshop. Writing the talk I'll give this evening to kick off the LOVE event (featuring film students and Philadelphians) at the Ambler theater.

My writing (my novels) sit in a corner over there, where they have sat for most of this year. I'm sunk deep into the pages of other people's work. Their stories, their sentences, their churn: a thrilling habitation.

Every time I feel frustrated by a sense of career stall or perpetual overlook, I remember this: There are writers—truly great writers—who have gone before me, who have written more wisely, who have seen more clearly. I may want to be noticed, I may hope to be seen, I may wish to be important, a priority, first on a list, but honestly? Why waste time worrying all that when there is so much to be learned—about literature, about life—from the writers who have gone before—and ahead—of me.

James Agee. Annie Dillard. Eudora Welty. We could stop right there. Read all they've written. Make the study of them the year we live and it would be enough. It would be time well spent, time spent growing, time during which we learn again that aspiration must, in the end, be contextual. We can't hope to stand on a mountain's top if we don't acknowledge all the boulders and the trees and the ascent and the views that rumble beneath the peak.

My cure for my own sometimes literary heartbreak: Sink deep inside the work of others. Recall what greatness is.

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Big Apple, Bryn Mawr, Jersey City, Hoboken, Buzz, El Salvador, Berlin: Where I've A-Been Running To

The snow would not defeat me. I've been flying. Through crusty white landscapes and down the slushed streets of the Big Apple (on Friday). Into the quiet calm of Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, where I spoke about memories and memoir after Nicole Duran gave her powerful sermon on turning the other cheek. (That is my father, that is me, that is the Reverend Charles Grant, who extended the invitation and introduced me.) Up to Jersey City, then along the Hudson into Hoboken, to spend an evening and then a morning with our son (he showed us where Eli Manning is rumored to live; he showed us where Justin Timberlake recently collected a crowd (my son among them)).

Then a dash back to my home, so that I could interview two corporate clients and then set off running again—to the train station and into my own city and up through the campus of Penn, toward Kelly Writers House, where Buzz Bissinger, one of three 2014 KWH fellows, gave the best reading of his life before both students and friends who have known him for a very long time. Buzz was powerful. He was honest. He was among those who deeply respect his talent and heart. (There is Buzz, above, with the great Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the fabulous famous author/editor Stephen Fried, and myself). After that a meal hosted by Al Filreis (who runs the hugely popular KWH fellows program) and another dash to the station. This time I missed the train, but it didn't matter that much; I had my students' papers with me and plenty to do.

Now I am moments away from heading back down to Penn to greet a classroom full of students whose expectation essays filled me up with joy and wonder. That's what my students—year in and year out—do. I think some angel up there is plucking strings.

In between everything, Serena Agusto-Cox found a book I'd written long ago—my memoir about marriage to a Salvadoran man (Still Love in Strange Places)—and wrote beautifully of it. Thank you, Serena. Finally, a dear book/life friend wrote to me about Going Over, that Berlin novel due out in a few weeks. She wrote with words that bolstered me.

My red shoes are at the door. I lace them up. I go running.

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Buzz Bissinger on HANDLING THE TRUTH

Among the many memoirs nested into Handling the Truth is Buzz Bissinger's own extraordinary fatherhood story, Father's Day. I wrote about it because I love it. I teach it because it matters.

Buzz's kindness to me through the years has been remarkable—his support of my work, his faith in my small books, his encouragement about my sentences. Buzz wrote the beautiful words on the jacket of Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River. And today he has these words for Handling the Truth:

Beth Kephart has done something extraordinary with this huge and messy thing called memoir—roping it into submission with her typically beautifully writing. There is authority here, scholarship, challenge. In this well-organized book, every example is a precious stone to turn over and to learn from, particularly in terms of crafting a voice and finding one's way in. Too many students think memoir just happens. Nothing ever just happens. Memoir is an academic field. This should become the seminal text.

Buzz Bissinger, author of Father's Day, A Prayer for the City, and Friday Night Lights

For more about Handling the Truth, please visit this page.

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Join us next Saturday at Penn: talking memoir with Buzz Bissinger, Cynthia Kaplan, James Martin, and John Prendergast

Next Saturday afternoon I will have the pleasure of returning to my alma mater (and my second-semester employer), the University of Pennsylvania, for a homecoming conversation about memoir. John Prendergast will moderate.  Buzz Bissinger, Cynthia Kaplan, and James Martin will participate.  We hope to see you there.

Here are the facts, as presented on the Kelly Writers web:

Alumni Authors Series: Memoir Writing 
Buzz Bissinger, Cynthia Kaplan, Beth Kephart, and James Martin
4:30 PM, October 27, 2012 in the Arts Cafe
co-sponsored by: the Penn Gazette

moderated by: John Prendergast

Join alumni authors at Kelly Writers House as they read from and talk about their work in memoir. Panelists include Pulitzer Prize-winner Buzz Bissinger (C'76), whose latest book is Father's Day: A Journey Into the Mind and Heart of My Extraordinary Son; essayist and performer Cynthia Kaplan (C'85), whose "true stories" are collected in Why I'm Like This and Leave the Building Quickly; Beth Kephart C'82, author of multiple memoirs and young-adult novels, and of the forthcoming Handling the Truth; and James Martin (W'82), author of In Good Company, which tells the story of his conversion from GE executive to Jesuit priest, and eight other books. Pennsylvania Gazette Editor John Prendergast (C'80) will moderate the discussion.

H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger is among the nation's most honored and distinguished writers. A native of New York City, Buzz is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Livingston Award, the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award and the National Headliners Award, among others. He also was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He is the author of four highly acclaimed nonfiction books: Friday Night Lights, A Prayer for the City, Three Nights in August, and his newest, Father's Day, his memoir about his twin sons. Born 13 weeks premature in 1983 and weighing less than two pounds, Bissinger's sons have lived diametrically opposed lives. After obtaining his master's in education from the University of Pennsylvania, Gerry is now a public school teacher while Zach, because of oxygen deprivation at birth, suffered trace brain damage and struggles every day with enormous learning disabilities.

Cynthia Kaplan is the author of two collections of humorous essays, "Why I'm Like This: True Stories" and "Leave the Building Quickly." Her humor pieces have appeared in many newspapers, magazines and anthologies. She is the the co-host, with CBS Sunday Morning's Nancy Giles, of the comedy anthology series The New Jack Paar Show and has appeared in comedy and rock clubs throughout the country. She has written for film and television and recently released a comedy album, Fangry. She has never appeared on Law & Order.

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of fourteen books—five memoirs, a book of history and prose poetry, a corporate fable, and seven young adult novels. Three more books are set for release in 2013, including Handling the Truth (Gotham), a book about the making of memoir, and its consequences. Kephart teaches creative nonfiction at Penn during the spring semesters, is the strategic writing partner in a boutique communications firm, and reviews widely. Her book blog, beth-kephart.blogspot.com, has twice been named a top author blog by the BBAW. Her essays are widely anthologized. Kepharts most recent book, Small Damages, a novel set in southern Spain, was released this past summer by Philomel to starred reviews.

James Martin, SJ, is a Jesuit priest, contributing editor at America, the national Catholic magazine, and author of several books, including The New York Times bestseller The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, and My Life with the Saints and Between Heaven and Mirth, both named by Publishers Weekly as "Best Books" of the Year. He is a frequent commentator in the media on matters of religion and spirituality, and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He has appeared in venues as diverse as NPR's "Fresh Air with Terry Gross," PBS's "Newshour with Jim Lehrer" and Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report." Before entering the Jesuits in 1988, Father Martin graduated from Penn's Wharton School of Business and worked for six years in corporate finance. During his Jesuit training he worked at a hospice for the sick and dying in Jamaica run by Mother Teresa's sisters, with street-gang members in the housing projects of Chicago, and for two years in Nairobi, Kenya, helping East African refugees start small businesses.

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city love, Main Line Media News, and a memoir panel at Penn

Late yesterday afternoon, I took a quick dance lesson then hurried to the train to see my kid, city side.  I have been down there untold times of late—checking out apartments, moving boxes in, arriving, breathless, to help with something, and of course, this young man (not a kid) needs no help at all.  I'm just drumming up excuses to spend an hour here or there with him.

So that I have seen the city under sun and the city swollen with rain, the city just after dawn, the city late at night.  And I have felt more energized and alive than I have felt for a long time.  Philadelphia does that to me.  And so do snatches of conversation with my guy.

This morning a text comes in, six a.m.ish.  I'm working on my story, it said.  Because my son shares this with me, this love of words.  This pleasure taken in filling the silent hours with vivid fictions.  By now, he's off to work, first day.  And my happiness for him is giant.

Meanwhile, Ryan Richards of Main Line Media News interviewed me yesterday morning at 8:15 a.m. (not-ish) and, 13 hours later, this Springsteen-infused story (which is also about the making of Small Damages for Philomel) had been posted.  Tuesday is day-before-pub day there at Main Line Media News and Ryan plays a central role in getting all stories out and prettied up for show.  I have no idea, therefore, how he wrote such a nice story in the midst of all that, but I thank him.  I hope he got some sleep last night.

Finally, tucked into the day was this formal announcement from Penn about the Homecoming Weekend Panel I'll be sharing with my friends Buzz Bissinger, John Prendergast, and Cynthia Kaplan, as well as James Martin, whom I am eager to meet.  Join us if you can.

October 27, 2012/Saturday 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM  

  
Memoir: Methods and Meanings
 Kelly Writers House
Arts Cafe
 3805 Locust Walk
 
Join alumni authors at Kelly Writers House as they read from and talk about their work in memoir.  Panelists include Pulitzer Prize-winner Buzz Bissinger C'76, whose latest book is Father's Day: A Journey Into the Mind and Heart of My Extraordinary Son; essayist and performer Cynthia Kaplan C'85, whose 'true stories' are collected in Why I'm Like This and Leave the Building Quickly; Beth Kephart C'82, author of multiple memoirs and young-adult novels, and of the forthcoming Handling the Truth; and James Martin W'82, author of In Good Company, which tells the story of his conversion from GE executive to Jesuit priest, and eight other books. Pennsylvania Gazette Editor John Prendergast C'80 will moderate the discussion. Advance registration is not required, but seating is limited. RSVP to whhomecoming@writing.upenn.edu or call (215) 746-POEM.  

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Central Park: An Anthology, A Poem, A Hot Day's Celebration

At the close of a warm day I discover this news in The New York Times—Andrew Blauner has edited an anthology on Central Park (called Central Park: An Anthology) featuring reflections and celebrations from Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, Jonathan Safran Foer, Susan Cheever, Mark Helprin...and my friends Brooks Hansen and Buzz Bissinger, among others.  You can read the whole Michiko Kakutani review here, but if you have time for just three paragraphs, I share these, about and from the Bissinger essay: 

In Buzz Bissinger’s case, the view from his childhood apartment on Central Park West provided a window on a changing New York City. Just as he loved the boyhood ritual of going to the park with his parents on Sundays, so he later loved the ritual of sitting with his dad in front of the living room window overlooking the park. 

Mr. Bissinger’s father died in 2001, his mother four months later, and when the rent zoomed from $2,700 a month to $7,000 to $10,000, he and his sister were forced to let go of their treasured home. Looking back now, he says he realized he never felt closer to his family than when they were sitting in the living room, looking out the picture window at the panorama of those 843 acres below.

“I thought we would last forever,” he writes. “In a way I cannot quite explain, I felt a sense of immortality because Central Park was immortal, that everything would always stay the same.”

Reading all this takes me back to a Central Park day I shared with my friend Rahna Reiko Rizzuto.  In celebration of the book, then, in celebration of Andrew, Buzz, Brooks, and Reiko, and in celebration of warm summer days, I share (again) that poem here.

Unassailable

From where we stood, on the castle rock

Of Central Park, Harlem was as near as

Twenty years ago.  Everything

Between then and us was green.

The pond turtles were stacked up like stones

On stones.  The trees were a day away

From shucking their own shells.

The red wing of a black bird was like a hand

That had been dealt, and we were the splendor

Sight we had given ourselves.

Afterward, it was Amsterdam to Broadway,

Columbus Circle down to the sweet

Remembered squalor of Times Square,

And on every corner:  Song.

The high hollows of the Peruvians,

The mesquite of a jazz trombone,

The Mennonites in hairnets and black sneakers.

I wondered later whether we had become

The engine of concatenation,

Two women made radical
With unappeasable want,

The unassailable desire to remember.

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The sun sets on Philadelphia

Last Thursday evening, I hopped a train and made my way to Philadelphia's 12th and Market Streets, then rode the elevator all the way up to the top floor of what was once known as The PSFS Building.  (I will always think of this building that way.)  We were there to celebrate Buzz Bissinger's new book, Father's Day (I wrote about how much I loved this book here), and to support the Spells Writing Lab, a non-profit organization that (in its words) "develops the creative and expository writing abilities of school-age children through free, fun, and imaginative writing programs and teacher development opportunities."

It was good to see Buzz after too many years, to at long last meet his big-hearted son, Zach, and to make a new friend in a young social media whiz named Staci Bender, who created Slice Communications. It was good, too, to watch the sun set over the city I love. To the east, the Delaware River and New Jersey.  To the west, William Penn and the Schuylkill River. These photographs were taken through the bend of window glass just a minute apart.  How full of character the skies were.  How lovely the occasion.

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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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when good things happen to good people: congratulations to Alyson Hagy, Lilian Nattel, Alex Kotlowitz, Laura Geringer, Buzz Bissinger

This morning I take a moment to honor my friends whose work is gaining the attention it most assuredly deserves.

Alex Kotlowitz, a supremely talented writer and journalist who recently transitioned into film, won a Spirit Award for his documentary, "The Interrupters," made with Steve James for Kartemquin Films.  It's an extraordinary recognition, and I'm so happy for him.

Alyson Hagy, one of my dearest friends and one of the great Renaissance ladies of our times (not just a writer and a teacher, but a university leader and an athlete), received a starred review from Publishers Weekly for her most-magnificent Boleto, which will appear in stores in May.  It's the first of many accolades for Alyson, who was cited by PW as "fast becoming a recognizable author of the American West."  I have no words.  Her time has come.

Lilian Nattel, meanwhile, is enjoying a rush of deeply deserved attention for her groundbreaking novel, Web of Angels, a book I recently reviewed here.  She's on the radio, she's in the papers, and her book is selling.  After many years of work on this book, she emerges with a winner.

Laura Geringer, who first invited me to write for teens however many years ago, will, like the rest of us, be watching the Oscars this evening.  But Laura will have a very special connection, for an animated short in which she played a key role, "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore," is up for one of those shiny figurines.  It's a short dedicated to a great man in books, Bill Morris—a man Jennifer Brown, featured last week in Publishing Perspectives, refers to as her unforgettable mentor.  Many bibliophiles are cheering this short on. 

Lots of people, finally, are talking about Buzz Bissinger's remarkable memoir, Father's Day, also due out in May.  Buzz broke my heart with this book, as I wrote here.  He's about to break the hearts of many.  If things go as planned, Buzz will be joining my classroom this Tuesday, talking about how this book got made.  We will be lucky to have him.

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Father's Day/Buzz Bissinger: reflections on a most remarkable book

Every morning, minus the nights I never went to sleep in the first place, I do the same thing, robotic and dull:  Open the door to my office (the temperature there the same as the temperature outside), slump toward my desk, fold into my chair, ping the computer, shiver or sweat (according to the season), and await my email.  It's the wearisome habit of the perennially self-employed.  I take care of my clients first.  And then, if there's room left over, I make room for the day.

I didn't do that this Sunday morning.  The thought (and this, I swear, is historic) never occurred.  Because I had gone to sleep reading Buzz Bissinger's Father's Day, and, on waking, I was so wild in my want to finish the book that habit had no power over me.  Subtitled A Journey Into the Mind & Heart of My Extraordinary Son, Buzz's book is a memoir about fatherhood and about a trip he took with his adult son, a second-born twin named Zach.  Read the flap copy and you'll know why the story—about not wanting and getting, about bewilderment and exhilaration, about doing wrong and being wronged and loving hard and forever—should be important.  Read the book to find out why it (absolutely, you-can't-deny-me-this) is. 

"What is most irreducibly true about you?" I asked my memoir class at Penn last Tuesday.  Memoirs fail, I told the kids, emphatic, when they lack compassion for both the subject and the self.  Take risks, I told them.  Be original; it's your one life. Care about language, go raw and interesting, don't be afraid to get it wrong, because if you do, you have a crack at getting it right. Be unafraid and perhaps, I meant to say if I didn't say, you'll write the true impossible mess of life.

I should have had Buzz's book in hand while I gave my talk.  I would have read my beautiful students every word of this most moving, most meaningful, most wrenching, most clear, most important memoir, Father's Day.  I am proudly Buzz's friend, and I know he struggled with this book, but on every page is proof of how an honest struggle, a desperate wrestling down, can at times yield a book that will be read for ages by all ages—not just for the story and for the wisdoms (which are many, accruing, and right), not just for the language (which is gorgeous as it both lances and limns), not just for the perfectly constructed asides that teach us the history of premature babies and savants, but also, if you want to get technical about it, for the structure. Father's Day is a perfectly structured book.  And it's funny and it's sad and it moves you and it's honest.  Maybe Buzz thinks the world is going to remember him for Friday Night Lights, and of course the world will.  But Buzz Bissinger, I have news for you:  You have just written your most transcendent book.  You had all the words you ever needed.  They were always waiting for you.

Buzz isn't the easiest guy in the world.  Hell.  He knows that.  Indeed, Buzz uses his own trenchant bitterness, his temper, his neediness, his incompleteness to explore his relationship to his son Zach, who is a map-obsessed, calendaring-gifted, birthday-remembering, tender-hearted man who is loved by many but stymied in the land of The Normals, as Buzz puts it, by a low IQ thanks to a difficult, oxygen-deprived birth. Time and time again as Buzz and Zach weave their way across the country remembering the past together, Buzz is wrong and Zach is right.  And Buzz is the kind of father who, after nursing his wounds, relishes that fact.  Buzz is a bestselling Pulitzer Prize winner; sure he is.  But what we love about Buzz after reading Father's Day, is who he is as a dad. Fallible, funny, trying, hurt, and loving the hell out of his sons.

I want to quote the entire book.  I can't.  I want to choose a single passage.  I find, for the first time ever on this blog, that I can't do that either.  If I choose Buzz writing landscape, then I ignore Buzz flailing in a motel room.  If I choose Buzz at an amusement park with Zach, then I lose the scene in Las Vegas.  If I quote Zach, then I don't get to quote Gerry, the twin who was born three minutes ahead and who is, Buzz writes, Buzz's very soul.

I can't choose, and so I won't.  Buy the book when it comes out in May.

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Father's Day: The Buzz Bissinger Memoir

My friend Buzz Bissinger has been at work on an important book for a long time.  It's a memoir called Father's Day: A Journey Into the Mind & Heart of My Extraordinary Son.  It will appear in mid-May from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and for Buzz—the Pulitzer Prize winner, the New York Times bestseller, the Friday Night Lights guy, the Vanity Fair contributing editor, the man so often in the spotlight—it's more than a book.  It's a reckoning.

My galley copy just arrived.  I'm eager to settle in.  Between now and the time I report back to you, I share this flap copy with you. 

This story, I think, argues to be read.

Buzz Bissinger's twin sons were born three and a half months premature in 1983. Gerry weighed one pound and fourteen ounces, Zachary one pound and eleven ounces. They were the youngest male twins ever to survive at that time at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, the nation's oldest. They were a medical miracle, but there are no medical miracles without eternal scars.

They entered life three minutes--and a world--apart. Gerry, the older one, is a graduate student at Penn, preparing to become a teacher. His brother Zach has spent his life attending special schools and self-contained classrooms. He is able to work menial jobs such as stocking supplies. But he'll never drive a car, or kiss a girl, or live by himself. He is a savant, challenged by serious intellectual deficits but also blessed with rare talents: an astonishing memory, a dazzling knack for navigation, and a reflexive honesty which can make him both socially awkward and surprisingly wise.

One summer night, Buzz and Zach hit the road to revisit all the places they have lived together during Zach's 24 years. Zach revels in his memories, and Buzz hopes this journey into their shared past will bring them closer and reveal to him the mysterious workings of his son's mind and heart. He also hopes it will help him to better come to grips with the radical differences in his beloved twin boys, inverted mirrors of one another when defined by the usual barometers of what we think it means to be successful.

As father and son follow a pinball's path from Philadelphia to LA, they see the best and worst of America and each other. Ultimately, their trip bestows a new and uplifting wisdom on Buzz, as he comes to realize that Zach's worldview, as exotic as it is, has a sturdy logic of its own, a logic that deserves the greatest respect. And with the help of Zach's twin, Gerry, Buzz learns an even more vital lesson about Zach: character transcends intellect. We come to see Zach as he truly is—patient, fearless, perceptive, kind, a sixth sense for sincerity. It takes 3,500 miles, but Buzz learns the most valuable lesson he has ever learned.

His son Zach is not a man-child as he so often thought, but the man he admires most in his life.

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The Pennsylvania Gazette Feature/Dangerous Neighbors Excerpt

The University of Pennsylvania has been extraordinarily good to me—inviting me to contribute to the pages of The Pennsylvania Gazette and Peregrine; trusting me to teach a small class of brilliant undergrads; putting me at the helm of an online book group; asking me to read with Alice Elliott Dark, or to sit on panels with Buzz Bissinger, or to join David Remnick for a Kelly Writers House dinner; and to come to know, even better, the likes of fellow teachers Jay Kirk and Karen Rile. 

Earlier this summer, John Prendergast, the editor of The Pennsylvania Gazette, wrote to say that he'd read Dangerous Neighbors and that he looked forward to having a conversation.  We had that conversation on a sunny day sitting on a row of skinny benches while a tennis match played out before us.  I was my breathless, enthused, and sleep-starved self (as you'll read) and John was the thoughtful man he is.  Several weeks later, the photographer Chris Crisman and his team met me at Memorial Hall and put up with me long enough to take my picture.

It is a generous story, accompanied by one of my favorite scenes from the book.  It will always be cherished.  And Chris, thanks for pulling your camera lens back.  You know what that means to me.

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Buzz Bissinger (at heart)

Probably no one who knows me and knows Buzz Bissinger would imagine us to be friends.  I worry, obsessively, over unintended hurts, small provocations, unfinished thoughts.  I dance because movement is mostly granted immunity and words (often) are not.  I defer when I can, step back when I should, am intimate with shadows.  In the books I write, I lean hard on language when many of my critics wonder why I cannot figure out how to lean just as hard on conflict.

Buzz Bissinger isn't like that.  He's famous for many things—Friday Night Lights, A Prayer for the City, Three Nights in August, Vanity Fair epics, his reliably enraged Philadelphia Inquirer column, his being vivid in each and every moment.  You never lose Buzz in a room; you wouldn't want to.

We're both Penn alum.  We've sat together on a panel.  He chose an essay I wrote for a Best American Sports Writing, as if I actually know anything about sports writing (this was clearly my special lucky break).  We're both parents who care a lot about our kids. We both wonder what's next; we both hope for a better next; we take solace in gardens and cameras; we love our city; we disagree on the power and role of blogs.  Some of the best e-mails I've ever received have come from Buzz—the most honest, and the most searing.

I'm saying all this right now, today, because I just finished reading the Buzz Bissinger profile in this month's issue of Philadelphia magazine, a piece penned by staff writer Sandy Hingston.  I'm guessing there are parts of this story Buzz likes, parts he might hope off the page, parts that ring truer to him than to others.  But reading a profile like this puts Buzz, in large part, back in perspective—as a hugely busy guy with a celebrity agenda who still takes time to be friends with the quiet lit girl.  I think that says something about who Buzz is at heart.  Something that is true, that matters.

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Me in Person

It was my friend Buzz Bissinger who got me onto Facebook—a series of notes from him that could not be read unless I went ahead and plugged myself in. I'm not what anyone would call Facebook adept; I still can't figure out which notes are private, which are public, what the world sees and what gets sent to just one friend. And don't even ask me about that wall, and to be honest: the photos that I've posted are just the ones that have stuck; who knows where the rest of them have gone to.

Still and nonetheless (and yet!): Facebook has brought me back into touch with former high school track teamers (Donna and Donna) and with a Bread Loaf alum (Leslie Pietrzyk). It has introduced me to editors and readers. It has kept me up-to-date with the infamous personalities of the ballroom dance world (the famous ones, too), and it has presented me with a number, an actual number, of friends. Counted them up for me on the off-chance that I need to quantify my life. (According to the stats, I have far fewer "friends" than the average Facebooker.)

This week, I received a message, and then a brief series of notes, from a writer named Kathy Briccetti. Ultimately I received from her an attachment. It was an essay she'd written for an anthology called A Cup of Comfort for Writers. The piece is called "The Drowning Girl." It recounts a moment several years ago in the Tiburon bookstore, Book Passages, where I'd gone to read from my Chanticleer memoir, Ghosts in the Garden, and where I talked about the writing life. Kathy had been in the audience that night. She captured that moment in time.

I am no celebrity writer. I rarely read from my own books. I've only ever once been invited to the BEA, and this is what happened then: They put my signing "line" directly beside Jodi Picoult's signing line. Guess which line was longest (by about ten miles)? And so it touched me more deeply than I can say to read Kathy's account of an evening four years ago, to realize that I'd been listened to that carefully, that I'd been transcribed onto another's page. I don't believe I've ever read another's account of me; it's one thing to be interviewed and it's another to be described. My wild hair is there. My deep set eyes, lost entirely to shadow. My way of speaking, pausing, thinking.

What is the punch line? What is there to say? Nothing, but that I found myself in tears by the essay's end. That was me then. I existed.

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Living on the Margins, Writing Alone

Sometimes things just hit you—obvious aspects of yourself, known territories, that suddenly swoon large in your own self-opinion. Last night, watching the crowd gather at the bookstore, watching that community of authors engender and inspire that community of listeners, I was smacked about inside my head with this commonplace observation: I really am an outsider. I really do live on margins. The center of things eludes me.

Genetics? Circumstance? I do not know. I know only that my life as a writer is fueled almost entirely by correspondence (the essential literary back and forth with Jay Kirk, Buzz Bissinger, Reiko Rizzuto, Ivy Goodman, Kate Moses, Anna Lefler, Alyson Hagy) and the very rare phone call, not by gathering. That I write my books alone, extraordinarily so. That I miss the trends because I haven't been out among those trading news about them. That the few times that I have been out in person doing book-related things over these past many years is primarily because of one person, Elizabeth Mosier, who made it possible for me to join Patricia Hampl (one of my favorite memoirists) for dinner one evening, who drove me to Swarthmore to see Elizabeth Strout (another heroine), and who was the reason I ventured out last night to see writers who were very much worth the effort.

I have squeezed this writing life into the dark. I have made certain that it didn't interfere with the family dinner hour or the client expectation. I have gone off writing these books in my head without stopping to consider: Will they sell? Are they of the now? Will they find their readers? I have bludgeoned out this path for books, but it's a small path—whacked away and narrow.

Is that the way? Is this the way? Last night I had my doubts.

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On Blurbing

Rachel Donadio (New York Times Book Review) has done it again—written a back-page essay that demands to be read first. This time her piece is called "He Blurbed, She Blurbed," and the opening graf contains the strange but apparently true tidbit that a new enterprise called Blurbings LLC has emerged. In this case, the name does say it all: By surrendering a mere $19.95 or up, clients (those would be the book-writing sorts, the ones who hope to someday capture some fraction of the book-buying market) can buy themselves a whopping ten book blurbs.

Oh. My.

Let me just say for the record that hoping for blurbs, which can sometimes mean scrounging for them, is one of the least attractive aspects of an author's entire existence. It's just not a situation most of us want to find ourselves in. When you ask another for a blurb, you are asking for their time, you are trading on their reputation, you are putting the ineffable at risk.

It isn't pretty.

But let me also say this, for this blogging record. Some of my most treasured friendships emerged from, or were succored by, that timid request for a blurb, when truly good souls like Katrina Kenison or Jennie Nash or Susan Straight or Kate Moses or Robb Forman Dew or Lauren Winner reached out and gave me the words—the hope—that I as a writer needed just then. Jayne Anne Phillips and Rosellen Brown, my first two teachers, gave me words to live on. Buzz Bissinger, a fellow Penn alum and extremely good all-around sort (don't let his sometimes-growl fool you—not ever), lent his ear and his thoughts to FLOW, and in that way made that book eternally alive for me.

We don't want to broker for blurbs, as authors, but we do care what our heroes and heroines in books think of the stories we have deigned to tell. Sometimes a blurb is the yield one writer passes on to another. The light turned on at the end of a long and harrowing process.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/books/review/Donadio-t.html?ref=books

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Crash

All season long the birds have seemed exuberantly confused. The first smack of sun barely tears away at night, and they're out there racketeering, calling to each other from the limbs of the dogwood and maple, the gutter underneath the eave. The conversation is immeasurable and therefore private, but it's the early-morning flight that's got me worried for their sake—the way the birds crash into my windows, fall to the ground and stagger about like drunks until they regain their wits.

Sometimes it's the newly hatched chicks. Sometimes it's an old blackbird with a slight bald spot; the beast should know better, should have some shame. And then there's the male cardinal, that flash of arrogant, impossible red, discernible even in the low dawn light.

I have friends who sleep like I do, which is hardly at all. They write of standing at their windows, too—worrying bird flight and song.

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