So I was reading Nancy Nall’s blog this morning — and you should, too — and ready to chime in that the interest rate in 1979/80 reached 18 percent. Or did it? I grabbed the notebook in which I had all my research, referenced in the previous blog post and there was the solution to a problem that has been dogging me all week, a quote from someone not particularly famous in the world-at-large (Dr. John Money) about the “pro-incest” movement that was, according to Time, briefly in vogue, a trend story that seemed to be supported by one organization and one Bertolucci film.
But it gave me what I needed for this particular character as he ambles up to Lexington Market, trying not to think about what he can’t stop thinking about.
Such coincidences are part of the writing life and part of life in general. Yet we beat up (most) novelists who avail themselves. (Dickens and Shakespeare are completely exempt from this.) An old topic around here, but it will never cease to fascinate me.
Anyone have an amazing coincidence they’d like to share?
If not exactly a coincidence, I found it amazingly against the odds that a few years ago you did a talk/book signing at a bookstore in Edwards, CO, (pop. @3,000), exactly 4 minutes from my house in the middle of nothing but Colorado mountains.
I’d been wanting to hear you talk and get a book signed and couldn’t get anywhere and then you came to Edwards.
There’s a broadway composer that I admire and I’d call him an acquiantance. There was a time that we “talked” through the internet and email. I knew that he was always looking for new source material to musicalize. (Every musical has to begin with a strong foundation of a good story.) I saw a lovely little indie film and I knew with certainty that it would be a perfect vehicle for him to adapt into a musical. I posted to him about it saying that it would convert to a musical easily and I knew that he could do a great job with it. I didn’t get a response for a while and I may have written to him again about it. Someone else then wrote me to say that the movie was written by a woman (who also acted in it) that was a good friend of the composer’s and that she had been brutally murdered after completing the film. The composer had been so heartbroken about it that he couldn’t bring himself to see the movie. He couldn’t begin to think about touching the original material and changing something that she had created and that was her artistic legacy.
I think it was a coincidence that of all the movies, books, newspaper features, etc. in the world, I was sure that this one would “speak” to him. And, because of the tragedy, it is probably the one story that he couldn’t bring himself to work on without a huge amount of pain and sorrow.
It’s an interesting world. Find your joys where you can and savor them.
–Marjorie of CT
Marjorie of CT – Adrienne Shelly? Waitress was simply beautiful, a love letter to her daughter (also in the film). The world feels a little smaller without Adrienne Shelly in it.
Heather, yes. You’re right. It is “Waitress” that I was talking about. What a lovely legacy for Ms. Shelly to have left, although I am sure that her loved ones would prefer to have her here with them. And I should have mentioned that she also directed the movie.
–Marjorie of CT
I think it was Anthony Powell who said his work was so full of coincidences because life was so full of them. But it’s true, we do have to limit them in our work, simply because they’ve been so overused by others.
As for coincidences in my own life – they’re so common that I’m often left wondering if I’m part of some elaborate cosmic joke.
K
My wife took her car to the local Sears Auto Shop to have some work done, including tire rotation. Sears called and said that the tires couldn’t be rotated because they couldn’t find the key for the wheel locks. A couple days later, I was doing volunteer work at the Archives and introduced myself to a gentleman sitting at the table with me. I had heard the prior week that he worked two jobs. So I asked him where he worked. One place he worked was a Sears Auto Shop. I said which one? He said the one at White Oak. I said my wife had just taken her car there on Sunday. He said, “Oh. I work on Sundays. What kind of car was it?” I said “a Hyundai. And there were wheel lock problems.” Turns out that he was the person who worked on her car. And luckily my wife found the key in the glove compartment.
Nothing on coincidences, but in reference to your question on interest rates, an often used record is the Federal Reserve H 15 report. The peak for short term rates appeared to be in March and April 1980 when the bank prime rate was between 18 and 20%.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/data/Monthly/H15_PRIME_NA.txt
Hope this helps!
I was invited to a dinner party in Paris two weeks ago, and found myself next to a total stranger — friend of a friend — and somehow we discovered that he was married to a woman who went to overnight camp with my husband in Vermont 50 years ago. This was the same women who, coincidentally, was the daughter of the obstetrician who delivered me in New York in 1955.
John Money was the monster doctor who ruined lives doing “reassigned gender” surgeries.
Katharine,
I assume you’ve read NOT AS GOD MADE HIM by John Colapinto? Years ago, I tried to work a subplot into a novel about a child who had been “sexually reassigned” at birth, or whatever the term was. It was too much to be woven into the book in question, but it’s a subject that fascinates me.
Well, not much of a co-inky-dink, as these things go, but many many years ago (presumeably on a Sunday), my dad and my brothers and I were all piled into the car, and the thing wasn’t wanting to start.
Dad cranked and cranked the thing, and pushed on the gas pedal, and even cursed a bit (I think he called the car an accursed piece of copulating feces, in so many words, but we digress!) – and then the car started!
Then he popped on the radio, and apparently an evangelist was right at the climax of his sermon, because a deep baritone voice boomed out “JEEEEEE ZUS Cha-RIIIIST!!” – at which time my dad immediately snapped off the radio back off, and said something like “don’t gimme that shit” -
and I don’t think my brothers and I ever laughed more than we did then
While working on edits for my novel Pocket-47, I ran across a news article about a Christian militia group called the Hutaree. Their leader was named Stone.
In my book, there’s a Christian militia group called the Harvest Angels. Their leader’s name? You guessed it.
Of course I changed my guy’s name. If I hadn’t run across that article when I did…
Here is a coincidence that seems appropriate for Halloween.
I had been working my way through a compilation of the best travel writing of some year � guest edited by Susan Orlean. She used a broad definition of travel; a well-written account of a trip to the mailbox might have made the cut. It was a very entertaining book, but there was one story I had been squeamishly avoiding � an account a plane crash in the Andes and the resulting cannibalism. I always read after going to bed, so one night I was bored and decided to give it a try. Ick!
The next morning, my housemate told me that the night before he had watched this unpleasant movie about this plane crash in the Andes and� So, at the exact time I was reading this article, he was in the next room watching a movie about the same incident. Neither of us had any idea what the other was doing. I love it. My experience of synchronicity, ESP, coincidence, or whatever? Cannibalism in the Andes!
To post or not to post. If I don’t do it now, I never will…painfully aware as I am of the clumsiness of my effort.
Anyway, here goes:
A memorable anti-coincidence:
He�d taken part in the intimate outdoor morning ceremony. Had I actually joined hands with him in the new-age circle we�d been asked to form, or merely inhaled the pheromones that announced his proximity? Taller than me. Creamy tailored linen draping deeply black skin.
My ties to the bride were tenuous. Her groom was a base player from Trinidad, or Grenada, or another one of the West Indian enclaves from which Taj Majal had recently been culling musicians�hence, the wedding party was suffused with unfamiliar Caribbean flavors. At the casually lavish reception, held in a pleasing sprawl of a bungalow perched atop of one of the canyon�s steep twisting roads; I drifted from room to room, keeping to the periphery, trawling for nooks from which to observe the sundry tropical birds that had flocked to this mating ritual. Yet, no matter where my gaze landed, there he was, saturating my sightline; the perfect orb of an unpeeled orange nestling in his hand as the centerpiece of a fresh tableau vivant.
Then there was his contra-bassoon of a voice caressing the nape of my neck from the back seat of a vintage Oldsmobile, parked under a drooping pepper tree, to which I had ventured upon the whispered invitation from one of the guests. He had followed. There were high-grade drugs being shared. Maybe I partook. Maybe I didn�t. Soon the others decamped for the cutting of the cake, while I remained, transfixed, in the surprisingly plush front seat. There he was�not just talking directly to me�but speaking of the �Tonal� and the �Nagual�. How could this stranger know that my Midwestern scorn for the rampant flakiness of California spirituality was seriously undermined by an obsession with Carlos Casteneda, Don Juan and the Yaqui way of knowledge? There were fifty or so glossy thick braids sprouting from his head, each one with a wooden bead at the end of it.
Had he leaned forward and reached over the seat back, or joined me in the front, or briefly stood close outside the car? I only remember the sensation of his fingers, neither cool nor warm, as they slipped inside my barely-there frock to fleetingly touch my teacup breast. �Oh, your nipples�, he said, �dey are perfect for a baby�s lips�.
My guess is that he was probably the only attendee, other than me, suitably shod for the ensuing five-mile hike I was impetuously stirred to lead him on; he in sturdy leather sandles, me in custom-fit cowhide laced to my knees. Topanga State Park was a kiss away. At the entrance, he gently thrust his hand through a swarm of buzzing bees and plucked a ripe lemon. �Oh, dis is like my country,� he said. The cane he wielded was carved�too smooth and broken-in, I was willing to suppose, to be a blatant affectation.
If lemon trees were bearing, it had to have been spring. Besides the pungent silver-green sagebrush, forever clinging to the exposed backbone of sandstone upon which we trod; a carpet of waist-high mustard would have been in full bloom; the oyster-white petal tips of the wild flowering buckwheat wouldn�t yet have turned a rusty bloodred; rattlers and kingsnakes would�ve been on the move through the teeming chaparral; and the heat might have bitten, but not devoured.
Our trail was a firebreak road along a crest of the Santa Monica mountains, wide enough for us to pace each other stride-by-stride, hip-by-hip; taking each other�s measure by the length and vigor of our mutual gait.
On his island of Jamaica, he told me, he �dive for de black eel�, and he �kill de wild boar�. Interrupting our forward momentum, he planted his feet wide, crouching slightly with knees bent, walking stick held like a spear at the ready. �You mus �old your stance and let de boar attack you,� he instructed. �Aim for de t�roat between de tusks.�
At one point, he laid a hand on my head that seemed so huge, so enveloping, I inwardly giggled at the rare frisson of actually feeling petite. �You belong,� he intoned, as if from on high.
If we had gone the other direction, he would have been treated to glimpses of the Pacific, but I headed us inland, over my stomping grounds; so that, as we began to descend into the belly of the canyon, I could wave toward a cliffside in the hazy distance, the dun color of my moccasins, and tell him, �Over there is my cave. That�s where I live.�
Maybe he believed me. Maybe he didn�t. No matter. By the time we had made full circle, back to the dwindling festivities, our arrival was greeted with a collective scowl from the assembled sistren, directed at me, not him; their ornamental headties askew or undone in seeming solidarity. It wasn�t just jungle fever they were protesting, (although I�d unwittingly added fuel to that fire by blowing through one of my outposts and making a quick costume change, no striptease, on the return leg); but the conduct that so thoroughly exemplified all the self-involved entitlement they had come to bitterly expect from females of my ilk. It was justifed. I had simply failed to notice that the man who had held me in his thrall all day, was a man who had come to the party from out-of-town with another woman.
I turned him down when he asked me what I was doing later.
And then, after many months had passed, I went looking for him. Somehow, I wrangled the funds for a plane ticket to the Bay Area. I had friends to stay with in Berkeley, but made the nail-biting call from a phone booth near a Bart station in downtown San Francisco. The voice that answered the number he�d given me turned out to belong to an exotic whale of a Jamaican named Coffee�the owner of that classic Olds we had dallied in�dubbed �Old Paint�, I happened to learn during the following enjoyable consolation weekend�because…
�Jamai is not �ere,� Coffee told me. ��e �as gone to de �ills.�
Of course, you will have guessed. The hills he…Jamai, my quintessential mystery man…had gone to, as I found out upon my return to them, were the ones I had just left.
Letter to Laura
A daily dose of Nancy Nall is highly addictive, and a fitting �au currant� foil to The Memory Project. (You know, ever since I asked you in Memphis, at your book signing, what exactly is a �roman a clef��and you didn’t have an answer because you don�t speak French�I�ve been noticing all the Frenchisms that keep cropping up in my rapidly diminishing repertoire of expressions; even though I can only claim a smattering of high-school-level Mexican-accented not-quite-adequate-for-Cuban-Miami Spanish, myself.) Back to Nancy’s site, I have to say, one poster seems to dominate the Commentary with an oilspill of incoherent outrage, including personal attacks on public figures so full of spittle they verge on the obscene. What�s disturbing is that the rest of the regulars seem to find this steady diet of vicious rantings digestible. In the short time I�ve been visiting over there, only Brian, who posts here as well, has had the cojones to make any objection or defend some undeserving targets against the verbal abuse. Anyway, there are enough gems to be mined from that fray�government cheese, Sparky Anderson, Coozle-snark�to make it worth going beyond the Nancy-Nall-take-on-the-world du jour and see what the Greek chorus has to say.
Over here, on the other hand�ahhh�such a sanctuary for someone like me. In love with words. At a stage of life where the cultivation of memory is something of a lifeline.
Realizing that anything done excessively calls for an antidote, I find I need to write in order to counterbalance the vast amount of reading I�ve done all my life. Not just exude waste product from what I�ve consumed, though�but experiment with a little Strunk and White�play around with this voice or that�exercise the scrawny muscles of my imagination�learn some techniques of the craft.
I confess that in the one creative writing class I took years and years ago�let�s see�it must�ve been in the late 80�s, an extension course at UCLA called �Autobiography Into Fiction��my desire for approval made me so self-conscious that everything I attempted was horribly stilted and contrived.
You said in Memphis that you had to stop teaching because you couldn�t, in good conscience, continue to commit enough time and attention to your students. And yet I came home to discover that here, in seven years� worth of The Memory Project, there is a generous banquet of writing instruction spread out for any acolyte desiring to feast at your table. It�s perfect. No syllabus or critique or feedback is necessary. You are providing…just by doing what you�re doing to please yourself. While I, as supplicant and devotee, can amble along at my own pace, with no Sam-Nissan-minimum-speed-limit, doin my LLLAPs (Laura Lippman Learning Activity Packets).
Here are the snippets I�ve gleaned so far that I�ll relish putting into practice going forward:
��take an experience and write about it as concretely as possible and see what happens. Does memory beget memory? Can tangible details convey emotion?�
��if the thread doesn’t bring up something almost forgotten (my parents’ special crab mallets), or a sharp, almost physical sensation, then it’s not working.� (2004-04-12 �Project� Indeed)
�I hope more and more people will use this site to:
a) noodle a vague memory toward specifics and
b) have fun with writing.�
� The working model here is Nicholson Baker’s “U and I,” one of my favorite books. Baker chose an unorthodox method, writing about Updike and his work from memory, then correcting himself via footnote. With the web handy, it’s tempting to double-check one’s memories, but I urge you to try and dredge these facts up without relying on any references. � (2004-02-02 IPO)
Respect due,
Della
Della – You should jump right in over at Nancy’s site; the water is fine. The oil-spill guy is harmless enough. To be honest, I agree that his chaff/wheat ratio IS pretty heavily weighted toward chaff. Excessive profanity puts me off; restraint has a power all its own.
I admire writers like Nancy Nall and Laura Lippman very much. Print journalism seems to have instilled (or cultivated) a crisp incisiveness in them; they have an appealing clarity and style. Plus – you gotta love any journalist with an alliterative name (Lois Lane, Clark Kent, and Peter Parker all leap to mind!)
I think the writer I most admire is Abraham Lincoln; certainly he’s the most consequential American thinker and writer. The more one reads about him, the more intriguing he is; clearly, he achieved a genuine, powerfully clear and evocative grasp of language – and it was never easy.
One tidbit – that I suppose any real writer would identify with – was that he was always, always revising his writing. For example, there are five known hand written (by AL) copies of the Gettysburg Address, and each has small differences one from the other. (Worth remembering, as the anniversary of that speech approaches on November 19)
By way of saying – I’m not a writer at all; but as a reader, I have come to appreciate good writing when I read it. It is tempting to say that LL and NN “have the magic”, but that almost seems to denigrate the immense amount of work that they must do. (I suspect I could work really hard on a writing assignment, and the end result would be a labored bit of writing; whereas someone with ability could work as hard or harder, and the result would be sparkling and sublime)
Greetings Brian,
Funny you should mention Lincoln and drafts. I could shoehorn that into a minor co-inky-dink…because Laura got onto the subject of drafts during her appearance with Tom Franklin at tacked-on-the-end-of-the-BOOB-tour-Memphis…to which I dashed madly from Nashville, risking life and limb…having just finished ‘i’d know you anywhere’ in the wee hours of the morning.
I thought I’d soaked up everything Laura and Tom talked about, but now realize I’ve forgotten that my short-term memory is shot to hell. Wish I’d taken notes. But who knew those two accessible authors could turn an intimate book signing event into an impromtu class?
Laura was very specific about her draft process, yet my powers of recollection are too feeble to reiterate what she said there, here…on HER site of all things…although I guess she could tell me if I passed the quiz. Anyway, you get the jist of it…Lincoln, Laura, Tom, Nancy and all other world-class writers putting in their due diligence. Maybe Kerouac got a bypass…with his typewriter and unending roll of butcher paper. Maybe that’s pure myth.
There are more responses I’d like to make to your post, Brian, but every avenue of thought takes such a gulping long time to compose into something I’m satisfied conveys adequate nuance. I’m 60-years-old…words don’t flow easily through my head anymore. That’s the main reason I won’t be jumping in very often over at NN…the repartee is too fast and furious.
I’ve no doubt our conversation will continue. Now my Sunday beckons…an Irish stew to be concocted (lamb slow-cooked in Winter Ale, Yukon Golds, carrots and pearl onions)…an elderly mother to be called…a few international email chess moves to be made (one to a Hungarian biologist who’s probably going to tear my ass up for the second time, but who adores my side messages in ‘Native American’, inspiring more time-consuming composition, on top of a desperate search for tactics to hold my own on the battlefield)…a walk in the ‘hood to be taken…an Open Source language (Python) to be studied…a hand-sewn project to add stitches to…laundry and household chores to be attended to…a 10-hour Monday work shift to be ramped up toward…
I’m not even going to 2nd draft this post…
Maybe just a little editing…
Coincident to things Iranian in the next thread on 1979…
In 1972, when I was twelve, my family lived in Shiraz, Iran for three months (2000 km S. of Tehran), while my father was on sabbatical from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
Fast forward to 1984, where I was a graduate student in Minneapolis, MN, taking operating systems (long story), but acting as the teaching assistant, writing up the homework problems and their solutions for the professor (who was from Tehran).
One day, an Iranian student named Rose was chatting with the professor about swimming in the Caspian Sea, and diving to 90+’ underwater. My immediate comment, “Bagh Eram [a swimming pool built for the 1964 olympics in Shiraz] is only 6 meters deep, and it’s a looong way to the bottom”, elicited a “When were you in Iran!?” from Rose.
Turns out that she also spent the summer of 1972 (and no others) in Shiraz, where we both spent most of the summer playing at the swimming pool in the Nemazee hospital compound (not! Bagh Eram). I didn’t remember her and she didn’t remember me, but we each remembered the other’s best friend. Both of us remembered the bright orange-and-purple dyed goat that was tied up wherever the foliage needed to be trimmed back, and many other details.
Alas, most of the people we knew from that era left the country in the following two years (basic competence took a backseat to religious correctness). Most of those that did not wound up in prison after the revolution and/or fled the country afterwards.
eyesoars,
Thanks for sharing that. It’s the detail of the dyed goat that especially amazes me!
Feste,
I’ll not forget the goat anytime soon. I especially remember it because one day it was tied up by a wall not too far from the pool, on a day my mother was sitting by the pool.
She’d been there for an hour or two reading when she jumped up and screamed, “It moved! It moved!” while pointing over at the goat. This elicited substantial puzzlement from all of us kids (who of course knew what it was) and couldn’t understand her panic.
That it was a goat had never apparently registered with my mother, who simply saw it as a very shaggy, violently purple-and-orange furry mound, and was quite shocked to discover it was alive.
(I always presumed that it was dyed that way so that nobody would steal it.)
eyesoars,
Ha! Your poor mother. She probably scared the goat as much as it scared her.
Thanks for that additional goat story.