Since there was so much discussion about "voice" and "point of view" in our INCREDIBLY FANTASTIC WORKSHOPS, I had promised somebody that I would follow up with information about a particular essay on voice.
Richard Russo has a very understandable essay on omniscient narrators in Bringing The Devil To His Knees. I haven't read every essay in this book, but those that I've read have been entertaining and helpful. It starts off with a recap of his lessons in learning to drive a stick shift, and goes on from there.
Monday morning, bright and early, (well not really, it's 10:20 am) I just settled in to White Rock Coffee shop, aka my office while Jack is in school, getting down to writing again. I have pages spread all over the place, the novel, some essays, even an old play I dug up that I have always wanted to finish and never imagined I could-- and have yet to even get my latte (has Italy ruined anyone else for coffee or is it just me?). Although the conference was filled with every emotion from elation right on through despair for me personally regarding the pursuit of writing, what I feel right now is almost as breathtaking as the Amalfi Coast. Dani spoke of "scaffolding" and I didn't quite get it, but right now, instead of understanding it, I actually feel it. This conference provided scaffolding--a framework--some wood to carve my name in, poles to swing from to get to the top and back down, something solid to return to that makes me feel a little more brave about exploring places I haven't been. I know I won't always feel sure or certain or right, but the fact that I do right now is really all I can ask for. Okay, so to work. Now I just have to figure out where to start.
I arrived back in Boston yesterday to more snow, and despite being so tired from my travels, it made me long for Positano. It’s hard to believe we were only there for a week, given all that happened and how many friendships were made. I hope that everyone will continue to use this blog space to discuss how their work is coming along, and bring up larger questions of the writing process and publishing that we can roundtable. Thank you so much for all that you contributed.
This is the link to the web album from the conference.
You can subscribe to the web album so you'll get an email every time a new photo is added.
You can add your comments to the photos for everyone to read. And I think that you can also get an email notification every time someone adds a comment, but I'm not sure about that.
You can also subscribe to to this blog, so you get the posts and comments emailed to you.
Dani, Jacob, and I just arrived home, tired and happy from the trip. Before crashing, I wanted to post this to thank all of you for making the first Sirenland conference the success that it was. We've already begun planning next year's conference and are counting on seeing some of you back there. In the meantime I've started to post photos on a Picasa site, and each of you will receive in the next day or so an invitation to log on and download the photos you want. I hope that all of you who took photos will email them to me for posting as well. Alright, I'm going to bed.
I'm not generally big on ruins. From Egypt to Athens to Rome, I've visited them more out of duty than genuine curiosity. Pompeii is different. The streets lined with homes, shops, temples and other public places really send you back in time. You're not looking at monuments, but at the streets and structures people built for themselves.
A taxi from Le Sirenuse costs €40 and must be hired for a minimum of four hours. (The concierge made the arrangements, it is very possible that there is a cheaper car service in Positano.) The drive to Pompeii is about an hour, so that leaves two hours to spend in Pompeii, which is enough for a casual visit, though I could have spent a lot more time there. And there was enough on the ticker left over to make a quick detour to Sorrento for a slice of pizza. Seeing Sorrento, with it's grand old hotels overlooking the port made me think that I'd like to find a way to spend at least a night there next year. The streets were lined with orange trees, which our driver informed us had been injected with chemicals to render them inedible so people wouldn't steal them, thus keeping the street beautiful. You gotta love that kind of attention to appearances.
I caught this just as the rain and hail stopped this afternoon -- and right before it started again. (click on the image to see it in a larger format.)
Dani, Jacob and I arrived at le Sirenuse after a very long day: flight from Prague to Rome, train to Naples, and the ride to Positano. Le Sirenuse was a welcome and magnificent site. The place is amazing. The rooms are the height of luxury. We had a fabulous dinner and spent the evening talking with Antionio and Carla Sersale, and Antonio's father Franco. Everyone is excited for your arrival. For me, coming here was like seeing a movie that's gotten great reviews and that all your friends have been raving about. You're just setting your self up for a disappointment. Nothing of the sort here.
Bring your iPods. Every room has a Bose iPod dock.
It's been warm here, but things may cool off a bit this week. But the pool is heated.
Are there any last minute questions?
P.S. Some of you have posted comments to the blog that haven't registered until I "approved" them. If you want to post without my needing to filter them, you just have to register.
A friend of mine came into the office with this trade paperback by Robert Harris in hand the other day. It's a quick read, a page-turner. It is also a fascinating historical rendering of the days just before Vesuvius exploded in August of 79 AD. (I really would like to visit the site one afternoon, if anyone else is interested.) Appropriate reading for the week to come.
He also pressed some mysteries based in ancient Italy upon me. I'm not a mystery reader so I'm not sure I'll take him up on that, but may bring them along for those who are.
I'm writing this because Michael gently suggested I not be shy about actually mentioning the actual name of my forthcoming novel in stories, THE BEST PLACE TO BE (Simon & Schuster, April 2007). So there it is, and as I begin to get dressed for a morning meeting with my publicist (!), a project (getting dressed) that could last straight through to afternoon if I'm not careful, I'm thinking about this "shameless" word and its opposite, "shameful." Which is to say, that move from one's very much undressed raw work, to the polished finish, and then the exposure (oh, how we hope) to the world, with all its attendant exhiliration and fear (shame?). We work so privately, sitting there transferring blood from our veins onto the page, with the occasional getting up to stare blankly at ourselves in a mirror or read another page of Virginia Woolf's diary or Alice Munro's fiction or Gawker. How does one go from that solitary act to the egotistical shout out that petitions the world: Here it is. Take it. Love it. Etc. We are ambitious and lonely, compelled to do what we do yet sometimes shy about admitting our desire and ambition, and the ratio of private to public is so very very skewed. Okay, now my getting dressed time is really dwindling. If I got out more, I''d probably have it down, I'm sure. And speaking more globally, I say to self, Yeah, right. Positano, here I come.
Posted by Lesley Dormen at 6:26 AM 0 comments
Friday, March 2, 2007
Lesley Dormen Yikes. I have no idea if I've done this properly--joined the existing blog or created the sound of one hand clapping--but since talking to myself is what I do all day anyway, here goes this virgin blogger. I'm SO impressed with the swanky package Sirenland put together for us, and I too couldn't wait to jump into everyone's story, for at least a quick preliminary look. What a great time we're going to have, just from the snacking I've done so far on these stories. I'm obsessing about what to pack and whether the dog will miss me. But right now the sun is shining propitiously, I received the first hot off the press copy of my very first about to be published novel, and Positano is exactly where I want to be, among like-minded souls. It's going to be the perfect antidote to my impulse to hide under my bed. So here goes...
Posted by Lesley Dormen at 1:19 PM 0 comments
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▼ 2007 (2) ▼ March (2) Dept. of Shameless Self-promotion Lesley Dormen
Some of you have asked about internet access at Le Sirenuse. I've contacted the hotel, and there is wireless internet in all of the rooms. Also, there are two computers with internet connections, located in the fitness center, for anyone to use (just in case you decide not to lug your laptop).
We've arrived in Rome. The weather is beautiful; the upper 70s today, cooling off at night. We spent the day with friends, walking, eating, looking at some hidden art treasures. And we can't wait for Positano.
As I get ready to leave, it occurs to me that perhaps I should say a few things about the workshop itself, and what people can do to prepare. All of you are in possession of the bound book of manuscripts -- which contains within it eleven stories, novel excerpts, or memoir excerpts. Before arriving in Positano, everyone should have carefully read each piece, scribbled all over the margins, and come to the first class (Monday morning) prepared to discuss. I'm sure you all know this, but as the compulsive novelist that I am, I just want to underline it. Sunday night we will all have a (fantastically yummy) welcome dinner. After falling asleep to the distant sound of the lapping waves, we will awake--jet lag miraculously washed away--and come to the workshop ready to roll up our sleeves. Each morning we'll discuss three students' work. Just so you know, we won't necessarily go in order of the stories that are in the bound book.
Okay, I think that's all the news from this front. Bon Voyage! I look forward very much to working with you all.
It might be silly, but I am trying to reconcile the obvious hiking opportunities with the resort's ambiance. Is the standard of dress at Le Sirenuse as elegant as its furnishings? I am a chronically skimpy packer, because I hate carrying anything, so packing advice is welcome.
To get ready, I bought my first digital camera. I feel as if I am cheating on my old SLR, but that's what happens in middle age. The young, hip, thin model looks far more seductive than the old, fat one.
To practice, I took photos of the new cushions in the basement which my daughter (above left, with ex-boyfriend) says make it look like Elvis' bedroom (the fabric kind of matches her dress). I am emailing them to my son (looking left), so he can join her in lambasting my bad taste.
I also bought new hiking boots, though the red-headed kite artist who moonlights at the camping store pityingly said that two weeks isn't enough time to break them in. So I'm wearing these REEFs to walk the dog, shower, etc. They are very classy with a wool suit. Plus, I made a special trip to the Aveda store to stock up on forming gel, and they say that after 20 years of using their products I still don't have enough 'points' to get a facial in Peoria, let alone Positano. (Yet, the girls behind the counter were very excited about my trip.)
The current issue of Departures (you know, the mag for Amex Platinum card holders) contains an article about le Sirenuse and our host Antonio Sersale and his family. I can't remember exactly how much of the article I'm allowed to quote and still fall under fair use protection, but I'll take my chances:
[E]clecticism permeates Le Sirenuse, the Sersales’ resplendent hotel in Positano. Sure, the place is extravagantly turned out with fine antique furniture and Murano candelabra; even the carpet in the elevator is changed daily to tell you the day of the week. There’s a complete lack of stuff-iness here, a feeling that we have stepped into the house of some very posh, very tasteful bachelor uncle who knows how to have a good time.
And literally, we have. The Sersales—a noble Neapolitan family of ancient origins—have always lived The Life. The house that later became Le Sirenuse originally belonged to Great-Uncle Antonino, the black sheep of the family. "He was considered a bit of a libertine," Antonio explains, "which is probably why he lived in Positano, away from the others." This didn’t stop Antonio’s grandfather from moving the whole family in with Uncle Antonino when Naples was bombed during World War II.
The house became Le Sirenuse in 1951. For nearly 40 years the next generation of Sersales—Paolo, Aldo, and Anna—ran the hotel, while another sibling, Antonio’s father, Franco, pursued his career as a chemical engineer. Franco’s work took him for extensive stays in London (where Antonio was born in 1961), Milan, and Iran. This international upbringing gave Antonio an excellent grasp of English, a taste for the luxury-nomad lifestyle, a love for beautiful things, and an easy adaptability to different customs and outlooks, which would serve him well when he took over the reins of Le Sirenuse in 1990.
Antonio and Carla met when they were at school in Milan, never dreaming they would end up married to each other. As for their flair for stylish living, they freely credit the Sersale patriarch, Franco, as a major influence. It was he, after all, who brought home the sumptuously embroidered Suzani wall hangings from Central Asia that he had discovered during his years in Tehran, Iran. "He has great taste and," Carla adds, "he’s always right." An untiringly curious traveler at the age of 79, Franco had departed for Mongolia just a few days earlier. "Why Mongolia?" I had to ask. "Because," replies Carla, with the slightest shrug, "he’s never been."
Antonio and Carla spend most of their summers at Le Sirenuse. Though they have their own spacious house nearby, the couple tend to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the hotel. They entertain friends, meet for drinks in the bar, and take to the rocky coast for a quick spin in the hotel’s seventies Riva Aquarama speedboat.
In love with life almost as much as they seem to be with each other, the two epitomize the original dolce vita—as depicted by Fellini—which was as much about surface as substance. The nonchalant cool of Mastroianni was an act of defiance against the rigors of life in postwar Rome, proof that Italians, too, could fare l’americano, in the words of a popular song. But the blasé façade masked an insecurity still lurking in the Italian mind-set. It’s not just aspiring provincials who suffer nagging doubts that they are not contenders; dyed-in-the-wool marchesi and conti can display the same symptoms as well.
This quote is probably too long. I'll edit it down later. Or not.
I have no idea if I've done this properly--joined the existing blog or created the sound of one hand clapping--but since talking to myself is what I do all day anyway, here goes this virgin blogger. Grazie, Dani and Michael for setting this up. I'm SO impressed with the swanky package Sirenland put together for us; I too couldn't wait to jump into each story, for at least a quick look. What a great time we're going to have, just from the snacking I've done so far. I'm obsessing about what to pack and whether the dog (currently sprawled across my feet) will miss me and where my electrical converters are and if I even own any. But right now the sun is shining, this afternoon I received the first hot off the press copy of my very first about to be published novel, and (next to hiding under my bed) Positano is exactly where I want to be, swanning around that gorgeous hotel among all you like-minded souls. Naturally I'm trying to figure out what to bring to read (aside from the hundred-pound collection of us) and think I've settled on the latest Alice Munro. Right now I'm reading the Annie Proulx collection Close Range, for teaching next week, and Katherine Mansfield for my own pleasure, and I might as well admit, The Other Boleyn Girl, for the kind of guilty reading pleasure I thought I'd lost my taste for. Finished Dana Goodyear's poetry collection Honey and Junk and highly recommend it for fiction writers. Oh, and the Rose Tremain story John-Jin, which I recently taught. She and it were a revelation. Okay, if I am talking to myself, finito.
Before I head out the door into the snow globe that is Chicago, I thought I'd test out my link-posting instructions from Michael and respond to Dani as well. Recent reading: a number of novels by Dani Shapiro, and Hannah Tinti's collection Animal Crackers. Excellent. For the perfect intersection of interests, read Dani's One Story The Six Poisons - a great argument for NOT shying away from coincidence in fiction.
(Since there seem to be some yoga practitioners among you, I am also going to link to my cousin's website -- yoga art)
I just read a great short story in a recent New Yorker by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (can't remember the name of the story). Recently waded through Kiran Desai's novel The Inheritance of Loss and sped through some short stories by Bonnie Jo Campbell (Women and Other Animals). Campbell's stories are raw and smart.
With any luck, these links will take you to the right sites, and not to any pictures of Michael or Allison pole-dancing.
I'm new to this blogging business. I never thought I'd do it, but recently I started a blog on my own website because...well, because everyone in publishing told me it was a good idea so I thought I'd give it a whirl. What has surprised me is that I enjoy it. I had imagined blogs were basically glorified diaries, full of minutia interesting only to the person doing the blogging. What's the difference between a blog and a diary? I've thought a lot about diaries over the years. Why does it seem that some writers (Cheever, Woolf) wrote diaries that were meant to be read? While others (me, for instance) have boxes and boxes of diaries piled high on a shelf in my office closet that flash through my mind every once in a while, accompanied by the impulsive, mad desire to burn them because if anything ever happened to me I would not want them read much less made public?
If I was going to blog, I decided that (for me) it couldn't feel like a diary, but I didn't want it to feel careful and crafted like my "real" writing either, because that seemed too exhausting and perhaps even counter-productive. So I've been trying to find a middle ground. Not quite a diary, not quite a crafted work, but somewhere in between. If you Sirenland writers feel inspired to blog, don't be intimidated or feel like it has to be perfect -- just try it and see. Or don't, if you don't want to. But I pushed past my own self-consciousness, my resistance to blogging and now, when someone writes me to say they love my blog, I find myself surprisingly pleased.
Hi. I think I created a blog that people can read........to put my expertise with technology in perspective, I got an ipod this Christmas and spent an embarrassing amount of time figuring out how to work it--so please someone post so I'll know I did it right! I am looking forward to meeting everyone in Italy.
For anyone who wants to learn or brush up on their Italian before leaving, I recommend the My Daily Phrase podcasts. They're available for free on their website or through iTunes. They're definitely worth the price. The teacher, Mark, also has a nice, lilting Scottish accent.
We've been working on a logo for the conference. It was a late-breaking inspiration, so we had to do it quickly. The idea was a bookish, "downtown" mermaid, more Uma Thurman or Christina Ricci than Daryl Hannah. We've done her hair a number of times. We gave her glasses, but decided she looked better with contact lenses. We dressed her in a tank top, but she didn't seem comfortable. We performed numerous adjustments on the dimensions of her natiche. We wanted her to be in harmony with, but apart from, the mermaids that symbolize le Sirenuse. You'll notice that she's shaped like an 'S' for Sirenland. T-shirts, hats, mugs, and other accessories are in her future.
She remains a work in progress, so suggestions are welcome.
Though I've corresponded with most of you at one time or another I'll take advantage of this blog to introduce myself. I'm Michael Maren, aka Dani's husband. Though I won't be at the workshops -- Jacob and I have a lot of plans -- I'll be part of the community for the week and available to help out in any way I can. I hope that everyone will take advantage of this blog. Bring your digital cameras and post pictures. Or post pictures now before you leave. Write about what you've been reading, or post your favorite links. And definitely link to your own web sites. If anyone has any technical problems -- problems linking or uploading -- I'll do my best to solve them.
I look forward to meeting all of you, and will post at greater length shortly.
