Author, Editor of Memoir & Narrative Nonfiction
April 14, 2010 Saw the Caravaggio exhibit today (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, 1571 – 1610) at the Scuderie del Quirinale. Big crowds. Great exhibit! Only about twenty-five paintings, but they were perfectly representative of what the exhibit terms the three phases of his life and…
April 13, 2010 I am in a sea of sound, the elegance of Italian, the gutteral punctuations of German, the fluidity of French. I am in heaven listening and listening and not talking. All around me the pulse of Rome is padded by voices like…
April 10, 2010
I made it to Rome. Plane was late leaving America. I’ve been up for for about 32 hours. I fall asleep at the keyboard, and my head tumbles forward, if I pause to think, so I keep my fingers moving . . .
I wonder what it was like for my Mom and Dad when they docked in Southhampton and rolled their bikes down the gangplank and had to ride on a hard, narrow seat just to get to the first bed. I took a train from Leonardo di Vinci airport to Termini Station.
My parents began their European adventure at the northern end of the territory covered. I’m starting at the southern end. Somewhere in the middle our stories will converge—in so many ways, I am sure.
This evening I watched what I call the peacock parade on Via del Corso: The boys walk in front of the girls, be they girlfriends, sisters, or mothers. Erect and wearing suits, or suitcoats and jeans, leather coats and jeans, they strut fully conscious of the cut of their clothing, the tightness of their pants, the style of their eyewear, watches, haircuts. They are beautiful.
I regard memoir as a very important part of literature, so it is disheartening to have a string of commercially-successful memoirs exposed as untrue. Also discouraging is trying to explain to my students – who range from college students to professionals in other fields who…
How long does a good story last? With the profusion of blogging—where, at last count, one-and-a-half-million writers post stories every day—the answer may be minutes, maybe a day. Are all these stories good? Of course not. Even bestselling books, popular movies, and catchy songs are…
Click here to read my latest blog post about Owning Your Story.
What I learned when the last of my family died . . .