October in Alabama: A Love Story

As a teen, I never cared for love stories.  While other girls were sighing and crying over the latest sugary "boy-meets-girl", I jumped into the classics, swearing romance book writers conspired to create Cinderella pap to weaken women's minds.  (Mom said I was foolish but she kept a soft spot for Barbara Cartland.) Not that I didn't believe in love!  I was just felt very awkward and self-conscious reading about it.  I knew that if/when I fell in love, I'd never write tell the world about it.

Then I saw the South in October.

Yes, I know people aren't supposed to fall in love with places.  And if any part of the states is known for autumn scenes, it's New England, not Alabama.  But I did and the beauty of Autumn in Dixie was then a fairly well kept secret. So I had no idea, when I crossed the Mississippi River, that I was stepping into a place of transcendent beauty.  I spent that first visit walking with my mouth half-open, about the Technicolor foliage that appeared around every bend. I found the South and Southerners fascinating and loved their complex, stubborn relationship with this place but more than anything, I fell for the faraway hills covered in crazy quilts of color underneath sapphire skies. 

What can I say?  I began to fall in love.

I began to discover why an essential element of Southern literature is its exquisite sense of place, as if the things that happen here, couldn't occur that way anywhere else. I'm not sure, but is there anyplace else where natural beauty is spilled out so generously, where "trash trees" transform themselves into moving sculptures of butterscotch, crimson and yellow every Autumn?   On the branches, the leaves are breathtaking. When they fall, they become an impressionist's fantasy. Stand outside when the leaves are coming down and it's as if fat flakes of cadmium yellow sailed off some artist's palate and start floating down to the earth,  It's a treat for the senses but that's getting ahead of my story.

Fall is a festive season here, maybe because of the return of football games and maybe to mark our turn toward the holidays of December but I think it's due to the changing weather. The blue of the sky begins to deepen or it just shows more of a contrast against the variegated trees. Then, the massive heat waves finally break and it's fun to go back outdoors. People turn out for fairs, tailgating, fun runs and visits to the pumpkin patch. Music starts playing, scents of food fill the air and everyone seems happy to be part of the world. This is a great time for festivals but my favorite trip takes us up a secret bluff.

Can you believe this is where my husband and his friends hid out when they played hooky in high school?  It's a beautiful, hidden place, about a mile's hike off the public road and the view from the top goes on for miles. In spring, wild magnolia trees on the forest floor bloom and, if you stand on the edge of the bluff, you can touch the flowers at the tips of their branches. It's even better in fall when a hike through the leaves gives you an appetite for harvest soups and barbecue.  That level of beauty is everywhere and it only heightens as the season wears on.  By the time we return to the bluff, I am besotted with the joy of life and this wonderful world full of color.

Sometime between Halloween and Veterans Day, the deciduous trees hit their zenith of color and for a few days the sun rises on hills that already seem like they're aflame.  This is the grand finale of autumn and, regrettably, it doesn't last long.  The winds decide to change or a front comes through and the trees that were covered in vermilion and bronze before, now stretch nude limbs to the sky.  The beautiful leaves, now sodden, cover the ground at least until the the leaf-blowers get going and my infatuation with autumn will be finished again for a year.

So, yes, I've become a romantic fool, a fool for the South every October.  If our romance is short-lived, at least it's beautiful while it lasts and I always have next fall to anticipate.  And I am willing to wait. So maybe this is more than an autumn romance.  Maybe this is true love.

From Myth to Man: Hamilton

It was hard telling the Founding Fathers apart when I was in Elementary School.  Every fall another teacher would try to impress the achievements of the frock-coated/ American Revolutionaries into our malleable brains with similar results.  In a group portrait of patriots, we could all pick out Franklin (rotund, bald and smiling) and probably Washington by his unsmiling mouth clamped around a set of dentures but the rest were identifiable only to those who had studied.  To the rest of us, they were a group of middle-aged, white males with funny clothes and powdered hair.   If you had asked me then who Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and Benedict Arnold were, I'd probably have said: "One was a traitor, another was shot and the third one fired the pistol."  I doubt if I could have said more.

And that's why we need writer-historians like Ron Chernow.  His lauded volume Alexander Hamilton not only rescued the memory of a brilliant man from obscurity and (with the genius of Lin-Manuel Miranda) brought new respect to this patriot's memory; it illuminates the character of Hamilton so well that the man and his peers become people we can recognize and relate to.

Almost everyone went to school with someone like Hamilton; I know I did.  Look back in your memory to the bunch of outsiders in your class whose clothes don't match the current fashion and whose family weren't considered pillars of the community. Despite knowing they aren't part of the "in-crowd" most of them have some friendships and function as regular students not this kid. Outsider he may be, but that doesn't seem to register with him. Instead he wears his intelligence and self-confidence like armor and attacks each subject like it's a competition to be won.  This is the classmate whose hand is always up, who argues with the teachers like he is their peer and who has scholarships, a major and 10-year plan lined up while the rest of us are still looking at colleges. The kid's self-confidence often comes across as arrogance which means he/she isn't well liked but everyone recognizes the student's intellect and drive. Actually, "drive" doesn't begin to describe this kid's laser-like focus. This is an adolescent with the will, and brain of an adult.  But what is making this Sammy run?

Chernow believes Hamilton's insecurities as a child formed the needs that drove him as an adult. Abandoned by his father and functionally orphaned at 13, the illegitimate Alexander wanted the social and financial security he saw in other lives and missed in his own. Using his thirst for knowledge and a gift for writing, Alexander maximized ever chance fortune threw his way, first in the Carribean and then in the American Colonies where marriage and revolution gave him the opportunity to rise in a fledgling meritocracy. Unfortunately, his talents and aspirations also carried the seeds of his undoing.

Like many geniuses, Hamilton worked well on his own but lacked the insight and diplomatic give-and-take necessary to function well in a government of other accomplished, ambitious officials, all with their own agendas. (Among other things, Chernow's Hamilton traces the beginnings of America's two-party system and verifies that politics has long been a blood sport in this country.)  A compulsive and prolific political writer, Alexander was so used to gaining support through published essays that he expected public\exoneration after writing of his involvement in a sex scandal.  That action ruined his political future and his belief in the code duello as the way upper-class gentlemen settled disputes led to the deaths of himself and his first-born son.  Hamilton's tragedy is not a life of unrealized promise (much of his initial work is still apparent in this country's financial structure) but that his underlying insecurities kept him from seeing his life's work come to fruition.

By all means, catch a performance of the musical Hamilton if you are lucky enough to get tickets.  By all accounts, it's an amazing show.  But while you are learning the lyrics and melodies of this revolutionary musical, read the biography they sprang from.  As rich as the theatrical production is, this book is the mother-lode.

Elegy for an Honest Marriage

It's October, one of my favorite months for stories, even though most October stories have a tie to the supernatural.   So it only seems right to start off with a story by one of the writers most associated with scary stories: Stephen King.

At its essence, marriage is a closed corporation.  It's a private entity with its own personality and the principals own all the stock.  Sure, often children are born to a marriage and spouses share parts of their lives with others but these people are beneficiaries, not stockholders; if children leave and friends fall away, the corporation continues unless death or divorce intervene, keeping secrets known only to the principals. At least that's the premise of Lisey's Story.  And those untold secrets are what makes a marriage powerful, even when one of the principals dies.

Lisey Landon is still learning about the strength of her marriage years after her husband, Scott, died. Scott was a successful novelist and the public face of their marriage.  His passing left her with a sizable amount of cash, a barn full of books, and some very insensitive academic types that believe their knowledge of Scott Landon's work gives them superior rights to and understanding of Scott, the man.  Only Lisey knows how wrong they are.

Scott's commitment to his wife is a suggestion why some marriages go the distance, even when one of the principals is famous.  Landon treats his fans with kindness and respect but recognizes their view of him is grounded in their response to his stories.  In his words, Lisey sees him as himself, a person of both weakness and strength, that is totally separate from his work. Before the world fell in love with Scott's creations, Lisey fell in love with Scott, not his work, making her one of the few trustworthy souls in his world.  And trust her he does with his deepest secrets, the ones where King's imagination runs dark.

If parents and siblings knew us when we were children, then spouses see how we live with the effects of that childhood . Lisey's learns of her husband's fearful background and the genuine affection that can thread through knots of abuse.  She also discovers the genetic dynamite her husband carries and the extraordinary abilities and terrors he keeps private.  In exchange, Scott gains access to Lisey's quiet, incredible sense and strength and insight into her long-term dance in a gaggle of sisters. To the public, Scott and Lisey Landon look like an uneven couple but they are a strong, symbiotic team, unaffected by fame or money. The marriage is based on mutual trust they've learned to rely on, knowing each will not only keep the other's secrets but the secrets they hide from themselves.  

King fans will find the humor and gruesome scenes in Lisey's Story that fill many of their favorite author's books and literary fans will be enchanted by the pool at Boo'ya Moon, the place Scott says all storytellers drink from to find the words and ideas that keep them writing and us reading.  But make no mistake, Lisey's Story is primarily a love song, a hymn for a long, loving marriage.  Listen well because songs are all outsiders are allowed to hear.  The best of any good marriage remains a privileged secret.

Learning in the Worst of Times

I've been thinking about pinch points lately, those intervals in a story when you realize how difficult the hero's task is.  They occur (optimally) at the 3/8th and 5/8th point in a story and structurally, they serve a two-fold purpose: to show how vulnerable the hero(ine) is and what will happen if he/she loses.  But structure never interests me as much as character and pinch points teach and clarify these better than anything else. The same thing is true about people. Pinch points are what we learn in the worst of times.

The axiom says failure teaches more than success and the essence of a pinch point is failure.  For example, the first pinch point of LOTR's The Fellowship of the Ring happens at Weathertop, when Frodo succumbs to temptation and puts on the Ring.  He becomes vulnerable to Sauron's most powerful agents, the Nazgul, and the resulting injury nearly destroys our hero.  Frodo never fully recovers from the experience but both the reader and he learn from it. Frodo shows a resilience and physical fortitude after the injury that most other beings don't possess. And his character is strengthened after the failure. Strong as they are, the Nazgul never successfully distract Frodo from his destiny again. None of this is apparent until Frodo fails and his failure at the first Pinch Point strengthens him for the second, when his company loses their leader, Gandalf. Grieved as they are, Frodo and his companions continue with their journey knowing their likelihood of success fell with Gandalf into the abyss.  Their reliance on each other increases and the remaining story turns on both those redoubled and fractured alliances.

Frodo at Weathertop in Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring

The fact is people, like books, have pinch points, but ours aren't conveniently scheduled at the 3/8th and 5/8th points of our lives.  Instead we face instances when we're overwhelmed by pain and events. That's how I felt eleven years ago when my father died.

Losing a parent, for many of us, isn't just overwhelming emotional grief, it's an existential crisis.  No longer are we junior citizens in some family corporation; in an instant, we become senior members, the next in line to go, and the sole custodian of some childhood memories.  That's an incredible amount to assimilate all at once and more than most people can handle. Luckily, as Frodo found, catastrophes can be met, especially if we don't meet them alone.

The Fall of Gandalf - same film

Led by my incredible sister, people who loved my Dad pulled together through the despair that followed his passing.  They listened to us, laughed and cried with us, fed and boarded us, fetched, carried, and above all, showed us we were still loved even if we'd lost the man who'd loved us first. I learned a lot about the strength and love of old friends eleven years ago.

I also learned a lot about my sis and myself in those days. Her strength of will has been apparent since infancy; seldom has a more focused person walked this earth.  But dad's death taught me more about the nature and limits of my sibling's strength, that it can become over-stressed, and when she can use my help. I found out I could help her.  In my own way, I dealt with disaster and found I could tolerate pain and help others with theirs. I found out many things I feared were worse in anticipation than reality. Sis and I both learned a lot in that time and that knowledge served us well when Mom's death followed Dad's. If their passing turned us irrevocably into grownups, those events also made us into something new: a team.

That's the nature of learning in the worst of times.  We're under so much stress, we don't even know we're learning, much less learning what really matters.  Only afterwards, will we recognize it as a pinch point.  And we're better beings for surviving its lessons.

The Evolution of a Name

I like to believe that somewhere out there, someone reads what I write. (To quote one of my favorite plays, In a world where carpenters get resurrections, anything's possible)  If so, they've seen alterations in the name of this place, patiently reading while I tried to find the phrase captures the idea and atmosphere I'm trying to create here.  The search hasn't been easy.

Initial Title: A good start but not yet there.

I started out with "The Stories that Follow You Home" a phrase I love because I believe some stories do just that.  While trends change and popular poems, books and plays appear and vanish like popular music recordings, some stories put down roots in your soul and imagination. They stick with you, like a good friend, and when you re-read them, you find gifts you didn't see before. I love those rewarding tales and the people who feel the same way. I love people fascinated by the structure and function, and power of story. But, what are those people called?  Is there a term for a lover of stories?

We all know what lovers of books are called: bibliophiles.  It comes from two old Greek words, biblion (meaning books) and philos meaning loving.  But the stories that follow you home come from more places than books.  Some of my followers came from plays and quite of few came from poems. Some come from oral tradition, news reports or the earth itself. So I searched and searched through lists of "philes" for a one-word term meaning "lover of story".  And I found exactly nothing.

Better and Worse: I've got the Atmosphere right but this isn't about me, it's about the people who love STORIES!

This amazes me.  How can there recognized terms for the love of poetry (Metrophilia), plays (Theatrophilia), even myths (Mythophelia), without a name for the underlying element that pulls them altogether?  The idea is ridiculous. Finally, I did what everyone does when proper terms don't exist: I invented a one that does.

According to Google and Wikipedia, the ancient Greek word for story is Istoria (ἱστορία) and it means "learning through research", which is exactly what we do when we read.  So, someone who loves the function and power of "Story" would be an Istoriaphile, right?  And since I want this to be a comfortable place where lovers of story are free to relax and talk, I've turned it into the coziest spot in my library.  

Now, that's more like it!

So, here we are, after almost two years, in the Istoriaphile's corner.  If you've been reading awhile, thanks for your patience.  And if you've just found it,Welcome Home.

Taking a Walk

It's no secret that I love stories: reading, writing, or telling them.  Reading stories is easiest for me to do; all I need are the words and my glasses. Once I find the narrator's voice, we're off and all I have to look for is when to take a breath. Telling a story is scary and a whole lot of fun, especially if there's an appreciative audience. When I'm telling stories, the hardest thing for me to know is when to shut up.  (I'll admit it, I'm a natural-born ham.)  Writing stories is a different cat altogether; in fact, writing is a cat with claws. As soon as my fingers hit the keys and letters show up on the screen, my inner critic emerges and starts pointing out the obvious flaws. At that point, the tale that was bubbling and aching to get out locks itself behind a gate in my brain. So, what do I do? I've learned to take a walk.

Taking a walk is something Stephen King mentioned in his wonderful book, On Writing.  (Seriously, I've read a stack-load of books on the craft of putting down prose and this one makes me believe I can do that.  That means it's either a great book for unlocking the would-be writer or Mr. King is a terrific snake-oil salesman.  Your choice.)  When he's unable to see the way to move his plot forward, the man takes long walks. Of course, it was during one of these walks that he got hit by a van but, so far, that hasn't happened to me.  When I walk, two things happen.

First, I get away from the problem.  I know this sounds a little like run-away-Leslie but when the screen is white and the words aren't coming, away is where I need to be.  Once my mind is focused on something else, the pressure is off.  And when that happens the words come back.  Maybe an idea, a scene,  or just a sentence or two, but enough to move the tale a bit further.  Do that often enough and you can walk your way out of trouble.  Or you'll start losing weight.  All it takes is getting away from the page.  Well, it takes one other thing.

Hit the Trail!

My sister once told me of an early exercise she saw that helped a small boy with autism. A counselor sat the kid in a swing and tried to interact with him.  No dice. Kid seemed like he had turned to stone sitting there on the seat.  The counselor started pushing the swing so the kid's form was in motion.  The little boy began to talk, laugh, and react.  It took the motion of the swing to unlock the kid's communication center.  I think that's what happens when people walk.  The legs get moving, the arms start swinging, and the frozen communication center cracks open. All you have to do is remember what the unblocked brain released and stay away from the traffic.

Does that mean the secret to great writing is a treadmill desks? Perish the thought.  Creating is just the first part of the task; honing and revising sentences until the paragraphs begin to sing requires long-term focused, not creative thought.  But if you need to write something and it feels like your brain's  in concrete, don't panic.  Just grab your walking stick, your sneakers and music and hit the trail.  It's amazing what you'll see during a walk.

The Harbingers of Change

When the stores said fall was upon us, I didn't believe them.  Stores put out their "Back-to-School" signage before the summer is half way through.  On the other hand, the calendar's decree of fall's arrival comes far too late.  By that time, classes are well-started and my old school has won at least three football games.  No, you can't predict the seasons by anything man-made.  The long, slow slide away from summer started about 3 weeks ago, according to my early warning portents.  I know when the year starts to turn by the leaves, the nuts and the spiders.

A 2 day haul of acorns and pecans.
Anyone want to pick up the rest?

Some people say they see the signs of fall.  Me, I hear about it first from the trees.  When the leaves are still green and the thermometer hovers above 90, trees signal the change of season with a series of small bombing raids generally known as the falling of nuts.  Phooey.  These nuts don't fall.  From the sound of them hitting our roof, they are hurled and God help what they hit when they land.  The impacts and ricochets sound like gunfire and the noise initially scares the hell out of me and the cats. Now, we are so inured to the occasional bangs and rattles that I doubt we'll even notice when they cease. At least then, I'll be able to rake the leaves without fear of a concussion.

The trees begin their annual strip routine about two weeks after the nuts start falling.  The whole business takes about three months so these are early days.  But in the meantime, I sweep the leaves off the deck in the morning...

...and sweep more of them away at noon.

I keep telling myself that sweeping is good, low-impact, exercise and this is just the first of the season.  So I re-clear the deck and rearrange the modular seats for good measure.  (If reincarnation exists, I'm probably the idiot who shifted Titanic's deckchairs around while the liner foundered.) Sweeping leaves at this stage is no more useful than reshuffling the chairs but it gets me outside. And there are guests waiting to meet me.

Thanks to E. B. White and Charlotte's Web, I know something of the life-cycle of spiders.  Late summer/fall is their time to start new lives before their own are complete.  So dense webs and egg sacs are starting to appear in all of our corners and eaves.  Now, my husband deals with cat-hunting dogs, varmints, and rattlesnakes without ever turning a hair, but when it comes to spiders, I'm in charge. Arachnids trigger an atavistic terror in him that no therapy can assuage.  So I capture and remove the disoriented spiders that bungle their way inside and I clear away their errant webs.  This time of year, they keep me busy.  Sometimes I want to apologize for knocking down these complex, silken edifices.  An exhausted, furious arthropod probably crouches in some a corner and curses my name while I tear down all of her hard work.  If someone demolished the nursery I'd just built for 3,000 soon-to-arrive babies, I'd be boiling mad.  I wish I could tell her my intent wasn't malevolent.  She just constructed in the pathway to our house and I hold the right of eminent domain.

We're still a long way from the technicolor of fall and the parade of plaids that lead to Thanksgiving.  But it's definitely on the way.  The Heralds of Autumn have spoken.

The difference between reading Books and Plays

In my first iteration as a college student, I had trouble choosing between English and Theatre as a major.  (We theatre geeks spell the subject with the British "re" instead of "er".  It shows our snobbish devotion to British plays.) During every semester, almost every week, I'd wrestle with the issue: was my primary devotion to the stage or to books?  It turns out I lack the temperament necessary for a theatrical life.  I like regular hours, daylight, and sleeping at home instead of a green room.  What I do like is reading plays.

In their dormant form, plays look the like every other book; reading them takes a slightly different set of skills.  With the publication of  Rowling/Tiffany/Thorne play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, those differences have become apparent to a wider audience. Just remember, novels and plays are different ways of seeing a story.

In a novel, the author controls the story world and lyrically shows the reader what he/she needs to see. The description may be confined to a few, sparse details (like Hemmingway's) or may roll into long, lush paragraphs. These parts are where the narrator's voice soars before dropping back to the dialogue of the book.  Dialogue is dynamic device but only one part of the story.

Smash cut to reading plays where Dialogue is King.  Dialogue is the structure everything in the play hangs on, from the first moment to final curtain. (The only exceptions are musicals since music halves that work with the words.) When dialogue is well-written, you can hear it in your brain, pauses and all, as if an actor was already speaking it.  There is no narrative voice.  It's the job of the actors and crew to create the atmosphere a novelist outlines with that voice and their only aids are the dialogue and a few stage directions.  

Stage directions can throw novice readers of plays because they look a little like description.  But instead of filling out your perspective of the story while moving the plot slowly along, these are directives from the playwright to the cast and crew, not written for a reader's enjoyment.  Look at Platform 9 3/4 as an example.

Rowling takes more than a page in Sorcerer's Stone to describe the famous railway platform and, like Diagon Alley, it's an overwhelming site for the senses.  Smoke is billowing from the engine to the platform, owls are hooting, cats are everywhere, large trunks are stacked up in piles and the entire place is covered in wizards.  Young ones are already on the train, waving from the windows to their families.  Families or friends make up knots of people on the platform, and everyone is chattering in a hundred different conversations.  Now compare all that with the stage direction for the same place:

Which is covered in thick white steam pouring from the HOGWARTS EXPRESS.  And which is also busy - but instead of people in sharp suits going about their day - it's wizards and witches in robes mostly trying to work out how to say good-bye to their beloved progeny.

Harry Potter & the Cursed Child, Act One, Scene Two

The novel's description sounds like a tour, the play's stage direction tells the stage manager what the set needs to look like and the actors how to play the scene. By the way, stage directions have become more detailed through the years.  Shakespeare's directions are limited to things like, "King Enters"; "Queen Exits"; "They fight" and "Hamlet dies."  The modern and contemporary playwrights sometimes write stage directions with extensive detail but the purpose of both is the same: to get the actors to perform the piece as the playwright envisions it.  Directions aren't printed to entertain the audience; they're there to instruct the players.

This doesn't mean reading plays isn't fun.  Plays can be wonderful things to read and, I must admit, the climax of  HP & the Cursed Child  evoked a visceral reaction from me, just like JKR's series did years ago.  The story keeps her great themes of love and sacrifice, and it doesn't shy away from what scares you.  Instead, it uncovers what frightens you most, and lets it stride free into the audience. That's more immediacy than I might be able to handle.

So, if you want, take a crack at a play.  Choose a good one, if this is the first play you've read.  It will be a slightly different journey than reading a book but both vehicles try to tell you a story. The difference is perspective.  When you read a novel, you get just a touch of emotional distance since you see it from the author's eye-view. When you watch a movie, you see it from your seat.  When you read a play, you're part of the performance; a performance acted out in your head.

Surviving a late Southern Summer

No one does the end of summer quite like the South.  The prairie states may be wilting under the furnace-blast of the sun, California may actually be on fire, (It seems to burn up every year) but for the last word in late summer misery, look below the Mason-Dixon line.  Here, the outdoors is a cauldron of heat and humidity sufficient to make snakes seek the comfort of air conditioning and lacquer the porch with mold.  It's impossible to sleep when the air-conditioning fails, and HVAC repairmen are worth their weight in gold (a rate reflected in their bills). But the thing is, Southerners don't complain about the heat.  In an interesting way, they relish it. It's one of the things that makes this place so distinctive and it certainly fuels our art.  The endless, draining summers stew the atmosphere  of Southern literature so tragedies and harsh truths emerge.  Before August ends, pick up at one or two more tales about the South and enjoy the benefits of an omnipresent, overwhelming Summer.

Always In August was one of my mother's books and the title says it all.  There's the usual " 'ole Southern family" with the "ole family place" (a house that has its own name) a nice-but-overwhelmed woman who's trying to keep her family together and  a mad, bad, beautiful one who's a slave to her own passions.  The cover says it's reminiscent of Rebecca and I suppose it is, if you can image the first Mrs. DeWinter returning to Manderly from exile instead of from the grave. The story is as dated as a Perry Como record but  it captures the lush, steamy, world of the low-country (the author, Ann Head, was a long-time resident of Beaufort, South Carolina) and the oppressive feelings the heat of summer generates. Ever since this book I've believed (like the narrator) that disasters go hand-in-hand with August.

When Other Voices Other Rooms introduced Truman Capote to the world, a a
lot of the world ran for the hills.  Yes, it's well-written and as Southern as shrimp-and-grits, but because it was the story of a rather effeminate boy written by an openly gay man, it was considered controversial material when it was published.  What OVOR is, is Southern Gothic to the nth degree.  The setting is a tired, little town, isolated from the rest of the world. The decadent, closed-in atmosphere of the place steams right up off of the pages and some of the characters are down-right strange.  The feeling of secrets and the possibility of meeting something grotesque or violent seems to permeate the book, like the August heat.  Lyrical prose, compelling intrigue and little bit strange: what else would you expect from Truman Capote?

I doubt if many people feel bad for Winston Groom but I have some sympathy for the man.  Ever since his fourth book, Forrest Gump, was adapted into a film, people forget he's written anything else.  Now I like Forrest as much as the next reader (the novel reminds me of Voltaire's Candide) but if I had to pick a favorite, it would be As Summers Die.

ASD is set in the fictional port city of Bienville, a dead ringer for Mobile, and the central character is Willie Croft, the kind of street lawyer John Grisham celebrates. As a child of working class parents, Willie understands who holds the power in his small southern town and it isn't him.  Power is wielded by the well-settled, well-monied families and these folks don't like to share.  When one of the poorest, least-powerful people around comes to Willie for advice, our street lawyer finds himself in a no-holds-barred fight that could change the future for everyone.   ASD begins and ends in the autumn but the big fight happens (of course) in August, when heat, humidity and tensions run high.  Some of the outdoor scenes are so evocative, I find myself slapping imaginary bugs away while I speed through the pages.  This story always makes me want to run to the coast.

By all means, go ahead and celebrate the upcoming change of season, if you want. Pull out your plaids and buy new school supplies.  Every season has great things to offer.  But before you take off the shorts and start raking the leaves, enjoy what you have right now.  It's August, it's hot and it's extreme.  Kick back with a cool drink and a Southern story.  It's one of the things we do best.

Confronting My Inner Aunt Petunia

Petunia as played by Fiona Shaw

I do not like to keep house. While other girls grabbed 4H badges for their sewing and cooking skills, I got Ds in Home Economics. When I realized my husband wasn't looking for a wife with a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, I was overjoyed.  But after 30 years of loathing laundry and hiding the dirty dishes, I've developed something worse than a bout of HouseFrau tidiness.  I have a latent streak of Aunt Petunia.

For anyone who's spent the last 20 years under a rock, Aunt Petunia is a minor villain in the Harry Potter series. She's an unpleasant woman who devotes a lot of energy to forcing her narrow worldview down everyone's throat.  She scrubs her house so thoroughly, all sense of "home" is rubbed right out.

In my own defense, I'm not a complete Aunt Petunia. I adore my sister and nephews; I think they're some of the greatest people ever made.  I believe in tolerance and diversity.  But I've joined Petunia's obsession and quest to keep some surfaces squeaky-clean.

Oh God, is that a scratch?

At one time, oven surfaces heated things and tables held cooler ones. Spills were regrettable, removable things. A clean surface was acceptable. In those days, I attributed Petunia's cleaning mania to a compulsion for order or fear of wizarding germs. Now, I own glass-topped furniture and I'm beginning to reconsider.

Glass surfaces must be more than clean; to look good, they must shine. Streaks make a glass surface looks mucky. Scorch marks look even worse.  So I spend lots of time and energy these days cleaning and re-cleaning the glass. I deploy an arsenal of products in the task, as well as non-scratching cloth, and a pack of razor blades to scrape away scorch marks. Nevertheless, they never stay clean.  Glass shows every mark and dust particle and I'm starting to lose my patience. I rarely cook because it might leave marks. I wipe down surfaces before bed every night.  Cat paw prints are now grounds for temporary banishment.  In other words, I'm behaving like Aunt Petunia

No one can keep this table clean!

Well, recognizable characters are essential to a good story. That recognition makes the story seem real. And there's no guarantee we'll always identify with the hero. Sometimes, we resemble someone else. Seeing ourselves in a character we dislike may tell us what we need
to change. As long as it's restricted to a cleaning issue, I can accept being a little like Aunt Petunia. All Wizard-nephews and house-elves are welcome in my home.  Just keep their hands off the glass!