The Next Big Thing

 

The Next Big Thing is a blog-tag of writers answering ten questions about their next book/writing project. Thanks to poet Ren Powell for tagging me this week for my novel, The Book of Twelve. Her imaginative autobiography in formal and free verse, An Elastic State of Mind, was published in Norway in December 2012.

What is the title of your book?

The Book of Twelve.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A bright idea by Hermes sparks the twelve Greek gods and goddesses to leave Mount Olympus for Mount Tamalpais where (drawn by the exuberant Dionysian energy of the late ‘60s) they feast on ambrosia and compete to see which of them can tell the best story about the individual members of a Berkeley commune—friends, artists and lovers—whose lives become wildly intertwined.

What genre does your book fall under?

Fiction: interlinked stories.

Where did the idea for the book come from? 

From Hermes, the god of bright ideas. My two great passions are fiction and myth, especially Greek myth. I keep looking for a novel that captures the wildness, exuberance and creativity of that tumultuous, transformative time in American cultural history, Berkeley in the '60s, and haven’t found it yet. So I set out to write the story I want to read. I also did a vision quest for thirty years and later discovered that my deconstruction and healing of my own psyche had a deep and surprising link to Greek myth. Could I capture, in one novel, the characters I knew, the outrageous performance art we created, and the nature of that vision? I finished what I thought was a final draft several years ago, and laid it aside. Now, having learned more craft (thanks to an MFA in creative writing at Antioch University, Los Angeles, and extensive study and reading of great novels and epic poems), I’m rewriting it one last time.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Too long. And exactly as long as was needed.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My muse.

Who will publish your book?

A publisher who loves wild characters, performance art, the counterculture, spiritual quest, love stories, and Greek myth.

What other works would you compare this book to within your genre?

I wouldn’t compare my novel to any, but my models for various aspects of the book are:

1)      Homer’s The Odyssey for the characters of the Greek gods and goddesses, as alive in that work as the human characters are.

2)      Dante’s The Divine Comedy for the unifying vision that informs the structure of the work.

3)      Boccaccio’s The Decameron, for the frame of many (ten) characters telling linked stories.

4)      Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, for the linked stories told by various pilgrims, which focus on character, in the vernacular language of the time.

5)      and 6) two modern examples of linked stories, Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son and Junot Diaz’s Drown, about characters in their 20s, lost and found.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

This novel would make a great film or TV series. I imagine the same actors playing dual roles, both the gods and goddesses and the characters whose story they choose to tell. I’d pick young actors and actresses with the energy of:

Aphrodite/Ingrid: Penelope Cruz

Hermes/Ariadne: Nicole Kidman

Daedalus/Daniel: Javier Bardem

Artemis/June: Meryl Streep

Apollo/Cheyenne: Jennifer Lopez

Demeter/Camille: Naomi Watts

Athena/Didi: Kate Winslet              

Dionysus/Angela: Maggie Gyllenhaal

Zeus/Fox: Joaquin Phoenix

Pan/Ring: Jim Carrey or Chris Rock

Poseidon/Lawrence: Willem Dafoe

Ares/Jesse: Russell Crowe

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The writing, let’s hope. And the cover would include a photograph by my husband, Richard Beban.

***

Thanks, again, Ren, for tagging me. And here are my tags for Wednesday, February 20: 

·      Jennifer Genest (whose novel The Mending Wall is the story of small-town hero John Young, a stone mason whose sterling reputation is compromised after he finds the lifeless body of his teenage daughter's best friend in the woods.)

·      Susan Griffin (whose novel The Ice Dancer's Tale follows the artistic journey of an ice skater from childhood through a shamanic dance that shifts the energy of the planet.)

·      Tara Ison (whose novel Rockaway is coming June 2012 from Counterpoint Press--an artist exiles herself to a house in Rockaway, NY, for a summer that includes: a bizarre relationship with an older musician, emotional demons rearing their heads, an existential crisis spinning out of control. Beach fun!)

·      Cassandra Lane (whose memoir, After the Tree, examines the psychological, emotional and spiritual impact that a 1904 lynching has upon four generations of marriages.)

·      Eric Schafer (whose The Wind Took It Away - Stories of Viet Nam is a 15-story collection that examines contemporary Viet Nam as it struggles to enter the 21st century whilst clinging to traditions that are thousands of years old.)

·      Tori Warner (whose SantaFe, USA is an eye-opening novel about a buried treasure and a Hispanic land-grant family's struggle against America's aggressive take-over in the fervor of 'Manifest Destiny'.)

So Begins a Trés Bell Year

Our neighborhood cathedral turns eight hundred and fifty this year.

Here on the fifth floor, with our windows open, we often listen to the bells of Notre Dame (Our Lady) from four blocks away, and had thought them lovely each time.

But what do we know? 

Not being experts, we didn't know they were out of tune. After all, the last time the ten big bells were "replaced" was during the French Revolution of 1789, when they were destroyed as part of the wave of secular sentiment. Their eventual nineteenth century replacements were four chimes, which everyone except us knew were discordant.

So, to celebrate Our Lady's birthday, the church hierarchy commissioned nine new bronze bells, celebrated this last weekend amid much pomp, incense, music, and ceremony, including an appearance by Paris Archbishop Andre Armand Vingt-Trois.

Many masses were held, at which the gargantuan bells were displayed in the nave of the immense gothic cathedral. Between masses, the devout and the merely curious mingled together, inspecting, touching, and admiring the huge bronze bells, including the six-and-a-half ton bourdon (great bell) bell named for Marie, the mother of Jesus of Nazareth.

Marie will be hoisted to the gothic south tower by herself, and the other eight, Jean-Marie, Maurice, Benoit-Joseph, Steven, Marcel, Denis, Anne-Genevieve and Gabriel, will be mounted in the north tower, joining another bourdon, Emmanuel, which has been there since the seventeenth century. 

The installation is expected to be finished by March 23, when they will ring together for the first time just before Palm Sunday, the beginning of what Christians call Holy Week. Palm Sunday commemorates the arrival of Jesus into Jerusalem, where, in the following week, he was tried, sentenced, put to death on a cross on Good Friday, and then, the story continues, resurrected on Easter, in the manner of previous fertility gods like the Greek Dionysus, the Mesopotamian Tammuz, or the Egyptian Amun.

 

Notre Dame itself stands on ground sacred long before the Christian Era began. The Cathedral sits at what Pulitzer Prize-winning architect Allan Temko called "the organic heart of Paris." And, "the eastern end of the island [Ile de la Cite] has been a repository of idealisms since men first built a tabernacle there of branches and reeds. From the floor of the Seine upward, there must be scores of buried pre-Christian shrines: first the fragile Gallic sanctuaries of wood, and then a whole series of Roman temples in stone. Finally, high on the accumulated mound, so close to the surface that they seem incredibly recent, is a collection of Christian edifices, resting directly behind and all around Notre-Dame." (Temko, Allan, Notre-Dame of Paris.  A Time Incorporated book, New York, 1962, page 11.) 

It's a powerful spot. Witness last Saturday, the day the celebratory masses began, which was blustery, with intermittent hail showers. Not quite cold enough to snow, but definitely some bitter winds. Then, as if to signify that somebody up there liked what was going on in the cathedral, the sun came out just long enough to help send this message to the assembled worshipers at the exact moment the afternoon service began.

Happy New Year!

 

Joyeuses fêtes!

 

 

Open Minds

I was full of inspiration after the evening panel discussion by French, British and American literary magazine editors at Shakespeare and Company Books. I wanted to get home quickly to open my new books (Giovanni’s Room! The Stockholm Octavo! The Tenants of The Hôtel Biron! Londoners! Tin House’s issue on Beauty!). But I was hungry. I took a short detour down one of those twisty golden Paris streets to a little Italian trattoria with phenomenally tasty pizza.

The small black-haired Italian girl behind the counter was talking with the older Italian customer just as if the scene were frozen since the last and only time Richard and I had stopped there.

The Italian man asked where Richard and I lived. Paris, now. And where did you live before? said the girl. Playa del Rey, a beach town in Los Angeles, I said. The Italian girl wanted to know why we’d rather live in Paris. The older man laughed. He knew. He moved to Paris from Bari some thirty years ago.

My pizza was ready. There was a booth at the back, near two women who were belting down red wine.

I opened my book, The Tenants of The Hôtel Biron. It’s a fictional account of the years when the house that is now the Musée Rodin was inhabited by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, Camille Claudel, Vaslav Nijinsky, Eric Satie and Jean Cocteau. I know, you want to read it, too, right? I read with special relish because the author, Laura Marello, had passed the manuscript to me about ten years ago when we knew each other in Los Angeles. I’d been knocked out by the story and the writing, felt it was publication-worthy then, and now, ten years later it had found its publisher, Guernica Editions. Do you have any idea how happy it makes me when a writer finally breaks through?

So I’m savoring the pizza, devouring the book, and the two women speaking Spanish behind me are growing boisterous with gaiety. One taps me on the shoulder and asks in French if I have a cigarette.

Non, je suis désolé, je ne fume pas.

She gets up to ask the only other diner, a man who looks like Serge Gainsbourg, for a smoke. He hesitates, gives her one, and she puts it in her mouth as if she’s lighting up.

You know it’s not legal to smoke in restaurants? I ask.

Street art (mask) by Gregos, additional artist unknown

She scurries over to the edge of my booth and leans in and makes a face at me. Then walks outside to smoke.

Her friend behind me says, Forgive her. She doesn’t understand that you have to respect the cultural customs of the country in which you live. She has a problem with depression.

It’s okay, I say. For me it’s just a matter of health. I’m so relieved that France changed its laws about smoking in restaurants.

The woman and I banter in French. She tells me she talks to her friend about her surly attitude.

Street art by PopEye

The smoker returns. She sits down, her back to my back but turns to look at me as I talk with her friend. She is drunk, with a sweetly cow-like expression on her face, melancholy eyes, and a sprinkling of freckles. Like her friend, she has very short hair.

We ask questions of each other. Discover we are from the same continent, only they are from South America.

It’s the continent of the heart, I say.

South America, maybe, says the older woman.

North America too, I say. It’s all one heart.

Then an odd conversation begins. The older woman begins to talk about her friend as if she isn’t there. She is too closed, she says. She stays at home and is depressed. She doesn’t have any confidence in herself.

The younger woman nods, That’s right.

The older woman says, We’re out tonight trying to cheer her up. Getting her out of her apartment. Having a little wine.

There are four empty bottles on the table.

We talk about living in Paris. I notice that the younger woman’s fluency in French, her accent too, is excellent, and ask her about it. She was educated in Paris.

The older woman is originally Basque—we have rebellion in our veins, she says. Her family emigrated to South America before she moved to Paris. She never wants to leave.

The younger woman asks me if I’ve read Stefan Zweig.

No, I say. Is he good?

Very good, she says.

Do you like Proust? I ask.

The two women shake their heads. There are certain moral problems it seems with Proust. (Do they mean that he was gay?)

Street art by PopEye

He was Jewish, wasn’t he? the older woman asks.

Half Jewish, half Catholic, I say. He was raised as a Catholic, but really identified more with his mother who was Jewish.

I can see in their faces that there’s some difficulty in the way they regard this fact.

But you can’t be two religions, says the older woman.

Well, God, gods, spirits—what difference does it make?

They look at each other meaningfully. (Unspoken: a huge difference.)

You are Catholic? I ask.

Anti-Israel/-American street art in the Marais, artist unknown

They both nod as if to say, Exactly. And then the older woman, her lips red with wine, begins to talk about Jews. How grasping they are. How they try to take over the banks.

No, no, no, I say.

How Hitler tried to save his country from the Jews.

Hitler was a monster! I say.

No, he was trying to save his country.

The Jews were not responsible for the wretched state of Germany after World War I, I say. Germany was economically ruined and Hitler offered a scapegoat, someone to blame. He was a failed artist, a maniac.

I suddenly see that a visor-like armor has fallen over their faces. There is no further place to go in conversation with these two. Closed minds. Time to go. I pack up my book bag and say goodbye.

And the Italian man who still stands talking to the girl behind the counter, says, Dites bonjour à votre mari. Say hello to your husband.

Merci. Et bonne nuit à vous.

Buona notte, says the girl with a big smile. California, she sighs.

I walk home thinking about bigotry and hatred. How an atheist Jewish friend of mine used to talk about Catholics, and mock my spirit helpers, who appear to me in the form of gods and goddesses. She is someone I love, but it cost the friendship. No one wants to have to defend his or her own spiritual beliefs, nor should any of us have to.

I think about how a recent online discussion of a well-known Native-American poet’s reading in Tel Aviv elicited a furor on Facebook. There were those who, objecting to Israeli bullying of Palestinians, said, Don’t cross the picket line. There were those who defended Israel at any cost. There were those who sent her love and blessings on her performance there in the role of poet and musician.

I identified, in some way, with all of them.

It’s so obvious. Peace and love are not clichés. They’re the answer. But when you encounter scapegoating and bullying, where do you draw the line?