Carol Bergman

Note: There are spoilers in this post.

My cousin wrote me a text during her vacation week asking me to read “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt so we could talk about it. She’s not a writer, she’s a visual artist, so she was drawn to the image of the famous painting on the cover of the book. Or maybe her daughter, an avid reader, recommended it But why was it so long? And why wasn’t she enjoying it? And why did it win The Pulitzer? It was ruining her vacation reading plans. At 775 pages, there wouldn’t be time for anything else. Should she finish it, or put it down? Is it compelling or manipulative?

Then a friend put up a post on FB: I just finished reading “The Goldfinch” and feel like I have to go into rehab.

Is this book a “turkey,” as some reviews have said, or a “masterpiece,” or a “flawed masterpiece?” Or, possibly, all three?

So let’s just say, for starters, that it’s a masterpiece. Surely, the Pulitzer committee can’t be wrong, right? The action sequence of the bomb blast in the museum is incredible—full of harrowing and sensory detail—and such a sequence is very difficult to write. It’s executed with precision in the American realist tradition. What’s more, the sentences are gorgeous, even memorable, as they often are throughout the book:

"I missed my mother. I missed her so much I wanted to die; a hard, physical longing like a craving for air underwater."

"It was a stillness I knew; this was how a house closed in on itself when someone had died."

"Often at night, when I was overwhelmed with the strangeness of where I was, I lulled myself to sleep by thinking of his workshop, rich smells of beeswax and rosewood shavings, and then the narrow stairs up to the parlor, where dusty sunbeams shone on oriental carpets."

"Because, here’s the truth, life is catastrophe."

But are gorgeous sentences enough when those sentences don’t lead us anywhere, or when they take us into detours so dark and cruel and nihilistic—all of life a catastrophe, really?—that it’s an insult to the curious, earnest reader trying to get to the end of the book to find out what happens to this boy? And do we believe his epiphany in the presence of his mother’s ghost? It’s difficult.

Is it a turkey? Yes, often. Like Holden Caulfield, Theo Decker is a very smart boy, but is he a reliable/credible narrator? Not exactly. Theo descends into serious addiction and alcoholism. He’s blotto or hallucinating much of the time and though the descriptions of these states are—again—gorgeous, how are we to believe anything he tells us? We can’t. From time to time Tartt reminds us that Theo is a high functioning addict. I don’t buy it. I don’t buy that he’s high functioning, or high functioning enough to tell this story to its sorry, impossible conclusion.

Is the book a flawed—sometimes—masterpiece ? Yes, definitely. It’s a page turner much of the time, but the fault lines in the plot are legion, the characters are well drawn or shallow (Hobie, for example), the descriptions vivid and beautifully written, but they go on and on and on until they become boring, or, dare I say, addictive.

Was the author addicted to her own masterpiece? Could she not put it down or let it go? She has been compared to Dickens and was a devoted reader of Dickens when she was young, but she is nothing like Dickens. He wrote quickly for serial publication—Tartt took a decade to write this book—and he had a social conscience, transforming his traumatic childhood into compassion for his characters and social activism. Sentimental at times, a hypocrite in his personal life, but he never manipulated his readers or left them on a limb wondering if they should jump, or not.

Though I am admiring of Tartt’s skill and perseverance, if I hadn’t promised two people I’d read this book, I might have pulped it. Fortunately, it is only on my Kindle where it will soon be transported into The Cloud.  Read More 

I worked for BBC radio in England as a reporter for several years where every story was assigned a producer who framed the story and wrote the script. This producer, it was assumed without embarrassment, had a point of view, or an emerging point of view, as the story was reported. There were no restraints on anyone.

Re-entry into the American commercial media marketplace was a culture shock. Do we, in fact, have a free press when the advertisers signal their preferences to the editorial department for placement within a story—electronic or print? Once there was a firewall between the business/advertising departments and editorial; no longer.

I think of this conundrum at the beginning of every term especially if I have a Chinese student in my class, which is often these days. As I teach literary nonfiction, not fiction, I make a little speech about the writer/reporter’s mandate to develop a full-throated voice, to find the story and report it as thoroughly as possible, and to remain a transparent, credible narrator. I ask the Chinese students directly if they will be able to do this. They always say yes and then run into problems.

Such was the case with my thoughtful Chinese student last term. She wrote a story about an earthquake she experienced, but couldn’t tackle the government cover-up of the casualties. She side-stepped most of the story by keeping it very personal without straying too far from the dorm room where she had been living when the quake hit.

And so the discussion of her piece was interesting and a lesson for the American-born students, as well. How transparent are we? How credible? How do the constraints of the commercial marketplace determine what we write here in America? What gets published in the mainstream press and what doesn’t? We can’t be self-righteous about our so-called freedoms, we all decided, because we are not entirely claiming them. And we certainly have understanding for the Chinese students studying here and what they have to face—with a heightened awareness—when they return home.

But then the class was over and it was time for official evaluations which, sadly, are anonymous. I can’t remember when these evaluations started exactly, or why, but they are certainly being scrutinized now because they allow disappointed, truant, or cruel students to slam the professor without consequence. It’s as egregious as denouncements in a police state, though I am sure that was not the initial intention. Still, evaluations have been abused. Shockingly, a prominent Columbia University professor friend was denounced anonymously after 9/11 and followed by the FBI for two years, as was her son. She is originally an Israeli Arab but has been an American citizen for decades.

A couple of the evaluations I received from students at the end of the term felt like denouncements. I had used the class as a platform for my issues, one said, meaning what? My political point of view? I had been too harsh on the students causing one or two to drop out, said another.

Because only six of the fourteen students filled in the form, and only two were disgruntled, I should have ignored what they had to say. What use were such comments to me? None at all. But I was upset by them because the students hadn’t come forward during the course of the term to talk to me. They were not transparent, they were furtive. So I had to remind myself that, mostly, it had been a good term, the end of term self- assessment letters were wonderful. Everyone who had worked hard developed at least two stories, a writer’s group had formed, strong, well researched stories written. And each one had potential and a credible, transparent POV, including the revised manuscript from my Chinese student who returns to China this month. I plan to keep in touch with her via email and hope that our correspondence will not be censored. Read More 

My husband tells me that the tea green non-slip mat I bought for the capacious bathtub in our new 1940’s apartment reminds him of 1940’s Esther Williams movies. She was my idol when I was a kid because I loved to swim and create water ballets à la Esther Williams and her collaborator, Busby Berkeley. Busby was not a swimmer so Esther visualized and scripted most of her water ballets. Films such as "Easy to Wed," "Neptune’s Daughter," and "Dangerous When Wet" followed a formula: romance, music, comedy, a skeletal plot and, most importantly, Esther in the water. The publicity men at the studio dreamed up those hot titles.

In my Esther Williams look-alike, be-alike days, I was always the choreographer—legs in the air, arms outstretched to create a flower, dips and twirls, handstands, water up the nose. And because I was the boss and the eldest, I insisted that my team—my cousin, Peggy, my friends—nag their mothers for Esther Williams swim caps, heavy with faux rubber flowers in pastel shades, and sexy swimsuits designed especially for pre-pubescent girls à la Esther Williams. They were expensive and baby-sitting money had to be saved.

And then one day, miracle of miracles, my step-dad took me to see the Aquacade starring my very own personal Aqua Star, Esther Williams. It was in a outdoor stadium somewhere on Long Island and it took hours to get there. And though we were sitting very far away and I could hardly see anything at all except the water, and Esther Williams was very old and might not even have been in the show anymore, I was completely happy. Swimmers were dames who looked sexy and strong all the time even when wet (or especially when wet), and they were imaginative and innovative because they wrote their own scripts to their synchronized swimming routines. However improbable, the scripts were original and a bit wacky, and so was I.

Esther Williams was a disciplined athlete who worked every day at her craft. She was scheduled to swim in the 1940 Olympic games in Tokyo until the war intervened. Seamlessly, like flipping in the lane, she segued to movies, a modelling career and business. She married—more than once—and had three children. And she kept on swimming. Though she died in 2013, the line of Esther Williams swimwear still exists, as does her website. I’m still a fan of her movies and she is still an inspiration: a free-spirited, hard-working, creative woman. My cousin Peggy and I still swim laps together. Peggy became an artist and I became a writer, but our first artistry—with an audience in mind—was in the water.  Read More 

I participated in the arcane world of poetry and poetry readings for a while and now only occasionally will I write poetry (they surface unexpectedly) and attend a reading, usually when a writer friend is reading. Even when I took two classes—and enjoyed them—and shifted my narrative brain into thinking in images, I always drifted back to narrative and wrote mostly prose poems. I wrote a slew when I was working on “Another Day in Paradise; International Humanitarian Workers Tell Their Stories,” and they were—to a word—dark and surreal. No surprise that I needed this outlet to keep going on the project for two years. War games at the Geneva Headquarters of the International Red Cross: not fun. I published a few of these dark and surreal “poems,” but I never considered myself a poet. And I am always bored at poetry readings. In fact, I have strong opinions about readings in general. For starters, we know that they don’t sell books; their purpose is purely celebratory. Secondly, they go on too long, well beyond the ½ hour tolerance of most listeners who are present to get a look at the writer, ask embarrassing questions during the Q&A, and purchase a signed copy of the book which they can then sell as a collectible. Thirdly, most writers are incapable of reading their work well, thus the boredom factor intensifies. So when I was invited to read a poem at an Actors Helping Actors Equity Fund Raiser, I was hesitant but also flattered. (Aye, there’s the rub—the writer’s vanity.) So I agreed, and pulled out a poem with an animal or two in it as that was the theme of the evening: The Animal Kingdom.

To my chagrin, the roster was alphabetical. I am a B!!! The first reader, I suddenly realized, was an uninhibited ACTOR. She read a poem by Pablo Neruda and it was marvelous. I wasn’t familiar with it, but I was riveted. Every word was clear, the cadences perfect, the expression on the actor’s face pitch perfect to the subject matter. It was a performance as much as a reading, a reading performance.

Then it was my turn. Up I went. Dear Reader, I did my best. Fortunately, the poem wasn’t very long.

And the evening continued in this vein: actors reading poetry with expression and nuance and practiced, rich voices. Most of them didn’t even need the microphone. By the end of this delightful evening in which I heard well known poems as if for the first time, I had made a decision: I am going to invite actor friends to read my work at my next book launch party. I’ll sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.  Read More 

I went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral to hear a friend’s ten-year-old daughter sing sacred music in a choir. The cathedral is loaded with scaffolding inside and out, a $175 million restoration, but it is still impressive and cool on a hot New York summer day. There were a lot of tourists and security, hard wooden pews, and pulpits the height of redwoods. The young choir was dwarfed by the scale of the cathedral and their voices did not reverberate or echo; the choirmaster struggled for a bigger sound swooping his arms up and down in pointless gestures. After the congratulations and the thanks, the long blue gowns with sedate white collars were discarded, and the choir disbanded on the steps of the cathedral. In the distance: Atlas holding the world and a Jeff Koons topiary extravaganza called “Split Rock,” two monumental sculptures.

What does all this bigness—The Cathedral, Atlas at the entrance to The Rock, Split Rock—mean or portend? Is it designed to entertain, subdue, reassure? Are we awed in the shadow of these very big works? Do we long to escape to small spaces?

The Cathedral is a mid-nineteenth century edifice, its construction, like Central Park, interrupted by the Civil War, the seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York. Rockefeller Center went up in the midst of the Great Depression (another monumental historic event) and the Koons is a satiric display of commercial derring-do. At least that is how I read it. Here is an artist who can command the dollars to strut his work—anywhere. Is he laughing at us? Are we laughing at him? Is the work ridiculous or sublime? Can we even grasp a work this big?

And where can we go for respite in the midst of all this mid-town New York bigness? “Let’s cross the street,” my friend said. “There’s something you have to see: a department store for dolls.” Cars, pets, baby siblings, a hair salon ($20 per appointment per doll), a photo studio, a restaurant, bathroom stalls where there are doll “holders,” story books for every ethnically correct diorama, and all of it human scale and mesmerizing. Except for the $110 price tag on the dolls themselves.  Read More 

We were waiting for the ferry to Seattle in Victoria, BC. The weather was not cooperating and the ferry was delayed. Plans disrupted, family waiting, we were frustrated and annoyed. But what could we do about the weather? Nothing. I was traveling, in part, to promote a memoir I’d written about my mother’s family. It was a genocide story and not an easy one. My nerves were on edge and I needed my husband close by to calm me. I’d also had a series of counseling sessions before leaving New York.

Across the street from the harbor was the Grand Pacific Hotel, a Victorian hotel on a grand scale with gargoyles around its perimeter and dining rooms the size of cathedrals. We treated ourselves to an Indian buffet lunch which we savored until the weather cleared and the maître d’ announced that the ferry was running again. But the ugly gargoyles on the perimeter were a reminder that life takes unexpected turns and not all of them are pleasant. Some, in fact, can be difficult, even traumatic. Shall we write about them, or not?

Every term I have someone in my workshop who has had a particularly difficult or traumatic experience and is burning to write about it. I have had students who lost a dear one 9/11, or have been raped, or have witnessed atrocities in war zones. These unwanted, distorting experiences provide the passionate internal energy needed to begin work, but they also can re-trigger the trauma or, even worse, PTSD. All artists have heightened sensitivity and awareness. But we don’t want to become gargoyles.

As a writing mentor, I have to recognize demons when they surface and encourage their expression in an artful, disciplined form. I also have to protect the writer from more trauma by insisting s/he has psychological support as s/he works.

There is also another hazard: traumatic stories may obliterate all other stories within the writer and, sometimes, within the workshop. Those who have less dramatic narratives begin to wonder if they have anything worth telling. Of course they do.


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I needed a break from packing—we are moving next week—an iced coffee, and a breeze off the river to revive me. My husband wasn’t feeling well and we had to cancel a dinner plan which I had been looking forward to as an escape from boxes. “I can’t stay in this apartment another minute,” I said, and off I went, my backpack loaded with iPad, journal, a pen. No student papers yet as the summer term has just started, so I would be able to read for myself, a treat.

It’s foolish to anticipate solitude in New York City with its vibrant, verbal population. Settle down anywhere—even the subway—and stories pour out. On the #1 train the other day, a woman admired my bracelets and that was the beginning of her life story: she’s studying to be a vet tech, there is only one school in New York—La Guardia—that has this course, she doesn’t like children but loves animals. And so on. The iPad got closed and stored away. I am 300 pages in to Chernow’s biography of George Washington and the New Yorker for the week has already been read, so enough reading, I said to myself.

Storytelling. There’s no way to shut it down. We are hard wired to speak and to share our stories, the mortar that holds together our human family. That all said, I was looking forward to the ice coffee, the breeze, and a quiet read. Ah, benches.

I knew I’d seen some near Cafe Buunni—wonderful Ethiopian coffee—and there they were. And there was Rusty with his dog Angel, Nina (daughter at NYU) and the woman she is caring for (Parkinson’s), two women from Nyack recovering from their walk in Fort Tryon Park and various children, parents and dogs stopping to say hello. No one knew anyone else, introductions all round, neighborhood gossip, no reading to be done, especially when I learned that Rusty—short for Orestes—had been born in Turkey of Greek parents and has lived in the neighborhood—in the same building—since he was nine-years-old and was, unofficially, a neighborhood historian. Any subject that came up and he took off, any question I asked, he answered. “You know this street used to be Northern Blvd. and in the 70’s all the cars parked near the park were stripped very night,” he said, “and there were police everywhere, sirens and gunshots, but it was better than the pogroms against Greeks and Armenians in Turkey.”

“What about this little plot of city wonder where we are sitting right now?” I asked. “It’s like a village green, a magnet for people to sit safely and talk.”

“The tree and the benches are just six years old,” he said. “We got a grant from Greenstreets—there’s the sign.” And he pointed to a sign behind us. “It’s a citywide program that converts paved, vacant traffic islands and medians into green spaces filled with trees and shrubs. It’s administered by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. I used to work for the city, you know.”

“No, I didn’t.”

The crowd on the benches thinned, and Rusty’s dog Angel was restless. It was time to buy some ice cream for my ailing husband and head home.

“To be continued,” Rusty said.

“Until next time,” I said.
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The internet is clicking with the announcement of Maya Angelou’s passing, a communal wave of mourning and tribute. A passing, not a death. Somehow, there’s a difference. We are forced to stop our daily activities and ponder her life, her contribution.

Like Pete Seeger, whose memorial I attended last week, her quotes are quotable, and she will be remembered for her pithy no-nonsense sentences, her courage, and her commanding presence. I saw her read once from one of her six volumes of autobiography and was mesmerized by the performance: a resonant voice unspooled rich prose poetry until it was alive in the air, a gift to the audience. Charisma.

Maya Angelou—and we can only say her full name, so iconic did she become in her lifetime—used the context of her personal life struggle within a rapidly de-segregating America as her subject. Is the work memoir? Not exactly. Autobiography? Not exactly. American history? Not exactly. Perhaps all three, and more.

On the question of courage, she never wavered. Courage and sweetness both. Write from the heart and the head, she suggested. Allow the memories to effloresce and transform into writing. Like the honeysuckle on the path, let the sweetness transform the harsh memory into writing. Let everything—the pain and the joy—become your Proustian madeleine.  Read More 

It was a shock to read the New York Times article yesterday about the harsh conditions the construction workers endured at the new NYU campus in Abu Dhabi. To turn away and say that we, the professors who work at the NYU campus in New York, did not know about the harsh conditions is no excuse. Because now that we do know, what do we think about it? How should we respond? The university has already responded with a long memo to its faculty, quoted in the New York Times today. They will pursue the allegations “vigorously.” Their record of labor conditions on the campus itself thus far has been a good one. The workers were hired by sub-contract companies. Oversight was negligent. And so on.

Though I am a mere adjunct professor, I consider NYU one of my employers; I have been working there since 1997. With the advent of educational globalization, conversation with administration has become fraught and challenging. Realization of major shifts in emphasis and expenditure dawned when the first Chinese students turned up in my creative nonfiction writing workshop. More than one still was having difficulty expressing herself in English. More than one had achieved a BA degree at an American university without any deep acquisition of the English language or, more importantly, a fundamental appreciation of unfettered discourse. Of course, I understand that overseas students will never be able to go back into a constrained and censored classroom, and that this is a good thing. But when I ask questions of other professors, I am sometimes told, more or less, not to ask questions--as in China, paradoxically-- and am politely reminded that there is ESL support at the university, the tuition of these international students is welcome, and so on. But mine is a writing class, I say. What are the other students to think?

Is globalized education a good thing? Should we be pleased? Or worried? If there is a campus in a country where there is no freedom of speech, how are we to proceed? NYU also has a new campus in Shanghai. What about that?

I am brought back to the dilemma of apartheid—boycott or engage?—and the dilemma writers face when one of our books is purchased in China, for example. My book about humanitarian relief workers, “Another Day in Paradise,” is about to be published in China for a second time using the simple alphabet. What if passages have been excised? Or rewritten? I would never know. Is it better to publish to keep the lines of communication open, or not? In the case of this book, I decided to publish. And I am, of course, delighted to have students from overseas in my classes and to afford our American students the opportunity of higher education anywhere in the world. But not at the expense of freedom, fairness, and the international conventions on forced labor—no better than indentured servitude in Abu Dhabi—and human rights.  Read More 

I recently completed a three-week writing workshop for college bound students at the Fresh Air Fund. Since 1877, The Fresh Air Fund, a not-for-profit agency, has provided free summer experiences in the country to more than 1.8 million New York City children from low-income communities. That’s their mission statement. But they are much, much more. Not exactly in loco parentis, but in parentis amplified, an extended family and a second home.

All told there were six smart and beautiful young women (no boys for some reason) who expressed interest—Lissette, Tia, Kashanda, Jalilah, Tia, and Diana. I want to name them here because their intelligence, poise, and determination are noteworthy, and I want to encourage them as much as possible. Obligation and weekend jobs—we met on Saturday afternoons in the Fund’s offices—interrupted attendance to some extent, but with email, text and FB friendship, we somehow made up the difference. I thought of them throughout our time together with great pleasure and admiration because these smart girls—and I will say it over and over again—don’t come from the same privilege as my NYU graduate students. Yet, they are privileged in other ways, first and foremost their connection to the Fresh Air Fund itself.

“Why are fanatics so terrified of a girls’ education,” asks Nicholas Kristof in his article in this week’s New York Times Sunday Review. And his answer: “Because there is no force more powerful to transform a society.”

Kristof is discussing the kidnapping of the smart girls in Nigeria, but the issues he raises are pertinent to every girl’s education, even in the United States. Girls often still have more domestic responsibilities than boys, and may not be expected to continue their education. It’s the glass ceiling at the microcosmic family level. The Fresh Air Fund college-bound mentoring program re-establishes the balance between family expectation, potential, and realistic aspiration.

I returned home from a Mother’s Day weekend with my smart daughter to find a package waiting for me. The smart girls had written me eloquent thank you notes and sent me a Fresh Air Fund mug. The mug is great, of course--useful and elegant-- but the well written messages were sensational. Any teacher knows how it feels to be thanked for inspiring her students and teaching them well. But our students also become our teachers. My heart is full of gratitude for what these smart girls have taught me, and in such a short time.  Read More