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For complete posts and a blog archive, see Mary's full blog The Writer and the Wanderer.
A journey to Turino
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Perhaps it is the recent Olympics that have reminded me of about a journey I made many years ago to Torino. I haven't given this trip much thought in a very long time, but lately it has come back into my mind.
It was the spring of 1972. I was young and engaged to a Frenchman I met while doing my graduate studies at Harvard. Marc was a business student at MIT. Brilliant, dashing, and destructive, but I didn't see that at the time. I was in love with language and words (which I still am) and Marc shared with me the Alexandria Quartet. I was impressionable. "You are Justine," he told me.
At this time in my life I was embarking upon my graduate career in Romance languages. My goal was to teach a few college courses and have two children. That spring Marc and I went to Paris, then we traveled south to visit his family near Lyons. <...
THE JOURNEY OF MY BOOK: Or why retracing is not backtracking...
Friday, February 26, 2010
A number of you have been asking...You're waiting for the other shoe to fall. Or for the book to show up as the case may be. Well, it turns out that my book which is in itself a saga now has a saga of its own. And after all why can't inanimate objects have experiences. Two years ago when I traveled to Europe with a wheelchair, which I named Duncan, I felt as if Duncan, as he headed off into the cargo hold or hung out by the sea, was having his adventures too. Why not my beloved book?
So I shall begin almost at the beginning...
In 1981 while heading to Greece I picked up a copy of THE COLOSSUS OF MAROUSSI. I read it in Corfu and essentially have been reading it and annotating it ever since. Until I read this book, I didn't know what passion one could bring to writing. It is a kind of bible to ...
Writing as a Crime of Passion
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Usually my posts aren't exactly chatty, but I've been rereading the amazing COLOSSUS OF MAROUSI by Henry Miller. And so I feel like talking. Just yesterday I was reading it on the subway and the train to work. I told my students that it was incredible for me to reread this book. On the title page I'd written my name and below it "Corfu, 1981" which was the first time I read it.
Miller had died the previous year. It was there on Corfu that I not only discovered Greece via Miller, but I also discovered what it meant to really be in a place and absorb it and what it means to be a writer in the world. I can't think of any book that has made such a difference in my writing life. There are passages in this book that stop me dead in my tracks and I read them over and over again.
One of the things that Miller inspires ...
- Anita Shreve"I loved it. The writing is superb, and the tension Morris creates between Andrea and Loretta keeps the reader anxious - a beautiful example of the thread of literary suspense."
- Jodi Picoult"The River Queen is my new favorite book. I wish I'd been the one to write something so flawless, so honest and so resonant."
author of
My Sister's Keeper