<a href=”http://www.lauralippman.com”_blank”>Website’s</a> updated.
Is there a story behind the story?
Yup.
Does it involve a stalker?
Nope. (Although I did find a reader wandering near my home a few weeks ago. A harmless fellow. I think.)
Could it affect things here?
I hope not. I’ve done a careful inventory of the archives here and there, and I think I’ve been pretty consistent in not trading on my adult private life for material. But I’ll probably be censoring myself more and more. And I might not blog about touring again. No great loss.
When all else fails, we can always talk about books. I’ve just finished SATURDAY’S CHILD (spectacular) and I’ve been re-reading A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN. As many times as I’ve read this book, which I feel is up there with TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, I didn’t remember some of the nuances in the conversation between Katie and her mother just after Francie’s birth. I remember, of course, how she told Katie to read Shakespeare and the Bible to her children, but I had forgotten their argument over Santa Claus. Katie says she doesn’t want to teach her daughter lies; her mother insists that she must.
Mary Rommely says: “[T]he child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were.”
Katie objects and says her daughter will know she has lied. But Mary thinks that’s a good thing as well, as it will teach her disappointment at an early age. She also believes that it’s good to suffer; I’d say it’s inevitable and possibly essential, but I don’t know if I can go along with “good.” I guess ideas about child-rearing change a lot in a hundred years.
About your webpage update..
Since you removed the bio link there and refer those still interested to wikipedia, thought you’d be interested to know (if you’d not noticed)that the photo used there is one of mine. I gave permission to the wikipage creator to use it. Was taken in Milw, and originally it was on my flickr site in color, but b/w made it more flattering…
As to the changes you’re making to your posts here on your blog, well it’s your blog. I can’t even imagine what you’ve been going through that would bring you to this feeling. I’m very sorry that anyone from here may have given you grief!
About the teaching thing, I agree that it’s probably a good idea to prepare children for what’s coming rather than try to sugar coat things that even a generous coating can never be palatable. What’s up with the smack you in face without a warning type of teaching all about anyway? I’m all for preparation, tell children about some of the pitfalls ahead. No one can teach a child everything but jeeeeez no one can protect them forever either, shrug just my opinion.
I’m reading the second Kelley Armstrong book, Stolen. I loved the first book Bitten and I hope there are more after this one. Great writing and a different way of looking at the werewolf thing. (as a rule I don’t really like werewolf stories but I accidently fell into Bitten and loved it)
Sly
As a Southern Catholic of Irish descent, I can’t remember not knowing that some things are true even if they never really happened.
I still believe in Santa Claus — and not in a “Spirit of Christmas” way, but as something more tangible, though I couldn’t explain it properly without sounding like a lunatic. (Whoops, too late.)
I am so sorry you have to pull back on the personal stuff. Hope you are OK. When I want to know more about an author, I find their books, not walk by their house. It is flattery in a way that readers seek you out. Maybe you could do a stalker short story?!?!?
This week in the library I discovered Baltimore Blues and Charm City on audio!!!! I read those books when they first came out and now I get to enjoy them all over again while someone reads to me.
Anyway I am thinking that since I have read all of your books (the last one was the best) I can now listen to them and see how many of the details I remember.
I had forgotten how dedicated Tess was to rowing. As she followed the girlfriend through downtown I knew where she was, could picture each place and tried to identify them as real places like the Galleria, the Harbor, Fells Point. Federal Hill threw me because I only know the hill.
If you don’t blog, we will miss you.
I’m sorry if someone used this great forum for evil-that stinks. I myself have had someone use my blog to stalk a friend so I know how stomach turningly invasive it can be.
It seems A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is viewed as old fashioned and without something to say in this age(at least in my neck of the woods) which is, as we know, total hooey. I remember when I first read it I was shocked at how different other people’s lives were-it was one of those books that really drove that point home to me.
I suppose it’s too late to announce that “Laura Lippman” has been a pseudonym all along.
Or maybe just the right time, Clair.
And to complicate things, there are three Laura Lippmans who write.
Or are there?
Without suffering, there is no true joy at the end of the valley, so in some perverted way it’s “good” to suffer. That valley can just go on awfully damn long sometimes. I think that’s the hardest lesson of all to impart to a child in today’s “if it feels good, do it” culture.
I’m going to have to read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Never did read it but if you like it as much as Mockingbird, which is one of my all-time favorites (it may even be #1), I’ll check it out.
I’m sorry you’re dealing with a “story.” Please take care. When all else fails, sing show tunes?
Thanks for the nice wishes, folks. I think this forum has stayed relatively true to its mission and that there is a way to write about memories, even personal and vivid ones, without making one’s entire life an open book.
Scott Timberg (a former colleague) recently wrote an article for the LA Times on reclusive authors. It was interesting, as always; Scott is doing an amazing job with the book beat. But what struck me was the seeming sentiment, expressed by the people interviewed, that it’s all-or-nothing, Evanovich versus Salinger, if you will.
I think that’s a false dichotomy. In fact, to pick apart my own words, I’m not sure that Janet Evanovich has really divulged that much about her personal life, although I have some haunting memory of her saying she could barely afford underwear at one point in her life.
At any rate, I fall into the middle camp. For one thing, I chose a popular genre and for a writer in a popular genre to disdain the public — now that seems hypocritical to me. I make public appearances, go to conferences and conventions, give interviews. I would prefer, always, to talk about the work. The work sometimes intersects the personal.
However — the aspect of my personal life that seems to generate the most interest has almost nothing to do with my work. It just doesn’t. I understand why people think it does, but . . . they’re wrong.
And not to be too cryptic, but this is only going to get murkier next year, when I’m promoting ANOTHER THING TO FALL.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn!!! One of my alltime favorite books-not necessarily because of any sense of its literary merit but because it was the first “grown up” book I ever read. I used to have to spend the night at an aunt’s when my uncle would have to travel (no, I have no clue what making a kid stay overnight was supposed to do) and there were no more than 5 books in the house. I read/reread A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Cluny Brown every time that I was there.
This particular “Memory Project” exercise has definitlely hit a chord, hard. Now I’m remembering my uncle, who used to take me for butterscotch sundaes at Read’s (a long gone local drug store) and mini-lemon meringue pies at a local bakery. I can remember their dog, the smells of their house, the odd feeling of being the kid and trying to be adult.
“Is there a story behind the story?
Yup.”
We don’t need to know the story, or even that there is a story. You are caught at the awkward crossroads of, for lack of a better phrase, the dawn of the Web 2.0 age. To blog or not to blog? How to harness this intriguing technology and make it work for you but not abuse you?
I read mysteries and am a fan but I read lots and lots of other mystery authors without even knowing or caring whether they blog. For me, it’s for the glimpses of the Baltimore that I miss so that I read your blog (not today’s Baltimore but the Baltimore of MY Memory Project). I feel awkward and vaguely guilty to discover that some aspects of this endeavor cause you discomfort.
I guess I don’t know what I really want to say–just that I wish you well in both a private life and a public life and wish you a true understanding of where you want the dividing line to be. Thank you for the gift of a trip to Baltimore that your books have always given me.
Oooooooooo, a mystery!
I have taught TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD many times in Grade 10 English classes and it is the one book that seems to garner many fans every year. It is a privilege to teach such a fine book. I’m not sure if anyone has read THE WAY THE CROW FLIES by Anne Marie MacDonald, but her narrator is a young girl who reminds me of Scout. I’d recommend it without reservation, although not all my friends have liked it as much as I do.
You know, I own the MacDonald book and have yet to read it. This may be the nudge I need. Just finished Bill Bryson’s A WALK IN THE WOODS last night, which I really admired and am a chapter into Laura Moriarity’s THE REST OF HER LIFE, which is so up my alley it’s kind of eerie. I would have thought that reading someone whose work, emotionally, falls into the same territory I’ve been trying to explore in the stand-alones, would make me more critical and detached. Instead, I find myself drawn in as if it were nonfiction and nodding my head at her incredible sagacity/insights into human nature.
<i>there are three Laura Lippmans who write</i>
Wait–which one is this?
At last year’s Bouchercon, Don Winslow (CALIFORNIA FIRE AND LIFE) revealed that he was, in fact, the second published Don Winslow. The other one, unfortunately, writes dominance-and-submission novels with titles like KATERINA IN CHARGE.
What do the other Laura Lippmans write about….?
Congratulations on the Quill, Laura!
One writes about poverty and the school system, and the other does Monarch notes on Shakespeare.
And I think there’s yet another, who does PR.
Mazel Tov on the Quill!
So was the Laura Lippman I met at the LOC book fair two years ago you or your body double?
There’s another David Montgomery who writes for the Washington Post, which makes it look like my byline is quite more popular than it really is. (Part of the reason I started using the middle initial.)
There’s also a David Montgomery who’s an eminent labor historian at Yale. Unfortunately, nobody confused me with him when I was applying for jobs as a history prof.
There’s a Keith Snyder who paid his students to mow his lawn topless, and then killed himself when charges were brought.
Do I really need a punchline?