Family History Mania Update

I just put in the mail the family history I threw together over five intense days; sent it to my Mom for her birthday. Now I feel like I finished exams, even more so than I do when finishing the draft of a book.

I worked on this little 30 page item like a madwoman. It's the story of my mother's father's family. It's no dissertation; I used mainly secondary sources and included stories that have been handed down, and a file of old clippings and notes that others had amassed, and internet sources, such as websites done by other people chasing Tuckers and Woffords, and ancestry archives.

I did write one email to someone who'd done a Tucker site, asking him a question about a man named John Tucker who was in Virginia or Maryland in about 1750. Turned out the wife of the man at that website is my second cousin. Astounding to all concerned! She and I are both descended from the son of a Civil War captain who died at the Battle of Second Manassas at the time that his son, our most recent ancestor, was two years old.

The impact of this frenzied chronology exercise on me is that I learned in a gut way how hard life used to be, how hard it was until fairly recent decades. I knew intellectually, of course. But now I feel it. I think it burned up more boldness just to live daily life not so very long ago.

For one thing, I discovered that my generation is the first in this side of my family not to go to war. For hundreds of years on end, the men fought and the women usually had six or nine babies. A lot of those babies died. And the men so often died early, leaving the women with all those kids.

This is such old news. But it feels new whenever it strikes emotionally.

I'm glad I get to use my store of courage for edgy writing and such, not, as one of my foremothers did, by driving a covered wagon across three states with six small daughters in tow after her husband disappeared. This sort of thing can easily put problems that occur at a desk into perspective.










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Chasing Updike

My one meeting, some years ago, with my hero John Updike involved a very small bit of boldness, which turned out well in its modest way. It took place not long after my first novel Revelation had come out. I wrote about the incident at the time for a Research Triangle newspaper. I'm "the local novelist" of the story. Here it is, in memory of an extraordinary writer who died last week:


Author Mobbed, Politely

The afternoon book signing had been underway for twenty-five minutes, and the line was now stretched, more than two hundred strong, from the deep recesses of Duke's Gothic Bookshop across the wide traffic area inside the Bryan Student Center.

Seated in the back of the store was the focus of this throng, John Updike, signing copies of his books.

As the line moved slowly into the store, a local novelist, proud author of one published book, arrived to take her place in the waiting crowd. Ten minutes passed before the line appeared to move at all.

People waited quietly, many of them reading. The line inched forward as Updike fans continued to arrive, some with big sacks of his books. The local novelist carried in her stack a copy of her own book to give to her longtime hero. She and Updike were inextricably linked, she knew: Her own writing had been compared with his in many of her book's reviews.

An hour passed. People began to check their watches more often. The glass doors of the store were still several feet away.

A store official came out and warned: He probably won't get to you. More than one hundred remained, politely refusing to hear any such thing.

The local novelist did make it through the doors. Updike was in clear view now, his famous beak of a nose and his great pile of silver hair. Then, as those nearest watched, Updike stood up and left, vanished out the back door.

The local novelist turned to find that behind her was an equally disappointed local poet who had brought a volume of his own to offer as a gift.

The crowd broke for dinner, then reassembled later in front of Page Auditorium, to wait an hour to get good seats for the reading.

Updike read and talked to a crowded house. He was witty, hyperintelligent, genuine--everything that the assembled body had come to hear. Then he finished and left the stage. Again the chance to meet him had passed--until one student raced up onto the stage and back into the wings and was quickly followed by dozens more.

Good-humoredly, Updike started signing books again. Again the line moved slowly. Finally the local novelist stood before the long-awaited Updike--just as a student official interrupted, saying, "I'm sorry. We have to clear the stage."

The local novelist, about to miss out the second time, was suddenly wild-eyed. She shoved her book at the surprised Updike with both hands. "Here," she said. "This is a present. I wrote this."

Updike stared for a moment and blinked. "Follow me," he said.

"Keep your place in line," he called out to the whole crowd, "and follow me."

Single file then, Pied Piper-style, he led several dozen people in a circuitous route, out through the wings, down the flight of steps, out of the auditorium, across a stretch of campus, back into the student center. The line followed him faithfully as he searched for a place to sit.

Then the line waited again. Updike signed more books. He accepted the book, finally, from the local novelist, who forgot to mention their intertwined fates. He accepted the volume of verse from the poet. At 10 p.m. the crowd dispersed for the last time, six hours after it had begun to form. Fans of a different sort might have rioted. But for these New Yorker-reading groupies, gathered to honor a novelist of marriage, manners, and morals, a ruckus like that never would have done.





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Erotica Writer and Brazen Careerist

Two bold individuals:

Penelope Trunk of The Brazen Careerist:

Her target audience is predominantly youngish people starting their careers in organizations, but an aged freelancer can also make good use of her wisdom. Her advice is goal-oriented, irreverent, free-thinking, and way cheeky. Even her more outrageous ideas I find useful in making me question my thinking. Basically she overturns a lot of assumptions. In today's blog she begins: "The idea that we somehow have a certain amount of potential that we must live up to is a complete crock." What a liberating idea!


Susie Bright, eroticist: Among other credits, she's editor of Simon & Schuster's bestselling Best American Erotica series. With a pile of books on the subject and columns in various major magazines, she has almost made sex mainstream. She's also quite forthcoming about her own life and an activist politically. Rolling Stone says that she "could not be accused of shutting up." Today's subject: "Sex Addiction: The Big Con".

I find that having a look at what someone else is doing makes it easier for me to venture out more in my own way for my own causes. Once when I was writing a scary part of my current novel, I'd stop every few minutes and read an extremely revealing memoir by a friend of mine and think: well, if she can do this, I can certainly write one more paragraph of gritty fiction.



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