Lilian Nattel Makes My Day

The older I get the less (certainly) I know and the less I also remember.  (Indeed, I am at work on a memoir now, but for this one, I've taken notes all along the way—proof, I tell myself. Evidence.)  But I do remember (I will swear on this) the first time I ever encountered Lilian Nattel's blog.  She had written about that northern lights phenomenon, aurora borealis.  She had posted (as she will) an extraordinary photograph.  I'd spent a few months in northern Alberta as a kid, fascinated by those night skies, and so I was enthralled by Lilian's post.  We're going to get each other, I thought.

And so we have.  We read with equal fervency.  We opine on the things we see.  We take our cameras out for walks.  We threaten to go ice skating together.  She's a Canadian and I'm a Pennsylvanian.  But there is much that we share.  When I read her novel The River Midnight, I knew we'd be friends for a long time.  When I follow her journey toward publication of her new book, Web of Angels, I feel as though I am preparing for a launch of a book of my own.

And so, Lilian, I am so very grateful to you for your beautiful and loving read of You Are My Only—for settling in with it so quickly, for sharing it with your daughter, for ushering in my yesterday with an early morning tease on Facebook.  The next time I cross the Canadian border, I'm strapping on a pair of skates, heating up my thermos of tea, and looking for you.

(The photograph above was taken at the Philadelphia Art Museum, this past Sunday.)

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Elif Batuman and Lilian Natel: Up Next

After reading this Dwight Garner-penned description of Elif Batuman's "The Possessed" in the New York Times today, who would not want this book? I want this book. I'm going to get it.

Elif Batuman’s odd and oddly profound study of her favorite Russian authors is also an exploration of the question: How do we bring our lives closer to our favorite books?

However: I am going to read Lilian Natel's The River Midnight first. She's an impeccable blogger/thinker/writer. I've been waiting a long time to curl up with her book.

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Urgency

Words remain the great urgency.
Or story, in whatever manner that it's told.

(there is a feather in his hat)

Today I am grateful for many things.
I am, for one thing, grateful for Lilian Natel. Grateful that this writer and blogger and mother and wife is finally beginning to feel better after a much-too long illness, and that she found time, in the midst of everything, to read and think out loud about Nothing but Ghosts.

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A Novel Response and a Question (to blog readers)

In a comment question yesterday, the wonderful Lilian Natel asked (among other things) whether I approach adult novels differently than, say, the novels I've written for young adults. The answer is no. I give as much, I ache as much, I confuse myself as much, I nearly walk away as much from any genre with which I choose to torment myself. I work the opening 50 pages countless times, for it is in those pages that many of the most important decisions are being made. Voice and mood, for example, which are established within the first lines. Conflict and backstory. Recurrencies and themes. Trajectory. The spaces I wish to leave blank, the spaces that will be flooded out with light.

The book I am writing at the moment is being carried by two very different characters, two moods, two tenses, and the suspense of inevitable intersection. The book entails enormous research, causing me to stop every line or two to find something else out. My frustration of late concerned a misfired motivation. To fix it, I had to fix just about everything else. One small novel particle, wavering at a novel's start, disallows progression, I find. Until I fix it, I won't move on.

Now for my question, to all of you. I blog every day, as you know, and sometimes twice a day. But would it be kinder to my readers (which are you), to pull back a bit from all of this? It's something I've been pondering. I know what BH thinks. I wonder about you.

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