Carol Bergman

Misplacing my iphone is not the best way to start the day. The ringer was silenced, that I knew, so no way to call and track it, and I had no memory of turning off the phone entirely after a last check of email, the weather, a last round of electronic Scrabble, or putting it back into my purse. Encased in purple plastic, it is camouflaged in a variety of locations in my apartment. I have misplaced it before—who hasn’t—and called it, heard it vibrate, and still couldn’t find it. Finally, I understood why so many people have zinger covers—zebra patterns, neon. I’ll have to think about this.

The phone was gone, for more than an hour. The sense of loss was complete. In fact, I was so distraught I could not write in my journal, or read, or plan the rest of my day, or eat breakfast, or get to work. It occurred to me that I have become co-dependent with my very smart phone which, as we all know, is a mini-computer. Is this a good or a bad thing? Both, I’d say, not the co-dependent part—not that—but the practicality of the phone, the use we make of it as a tool. It really is a splendid invention.

Here are the free apps particularly valuable for writers:

1. Dictionaries, including a translation dictionary from any language you can imagine into and out of English. I gave away all my hard cover dictionaries. If the system ever crashes—in an emergency say—I’ll have to head to the library.

2. The Kindle app. Best use, a movie theater during the endless commercials before the show begins.

3. Notes. Writers write anywhere on any—thing all day long.

4. Safari and Chrome. Writers can find out anything, anywhere, at any time.

And these are just four. Please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments. And if you still have a flip phone, I commiserate.  Read More 

Walking into the station every day was making me ill. The paint was peeling off the deco facade and the waiting area by the elevators smelled like a pissoir. No one else seemed to mind, on the way from here to there, rushing, eager to get onto the air conditioned train, what did it matter? But I minded—a lot. I wasn’t in Paris and the odor wasn’t charming because of the Parisian pissoir flavor. And, in Paris, the deco Metro signs and facades are protected works of art.

Something is very wrong in a city—a country—where whatever historic landmarks we have are left to decay. At the very least, why doesn’t the community get together to find a makeshift solution, I thought. Budget restraints? Please.

Maybe it was because I was new to the neighborhood and the move had been a hard one. A filthy, neglected station entry: not to be tolerated. So I asked around: Anyone doing anything about this? It’s a friendly neighborhood and easy to talk to people on the corners, in the stores, in the park. A renovation was scheduled for the platforms sometime around 2016, I learned. As for the entrance, nobody knew anything. Smell bother you? Hadn’t noticed.

So I went online to find out who was in charge and wrote a letter cc’ing it to this person and that, as well as the Mayor and the Straphangers Campaign. The Mayor is a wealthy fellow who collects art-the city is a work of art, or can be, no?-and he rides the subway.

Such letters—of complaint and concern—are not easy for me to write. I get twisted up trying to remain polite, respectful, and positive. Years ago I studied mediation and conflict resolution and have never written an insulting word to a civil servant since. So I began with thank yous for keeping the trains running well, for all the repairs, for working underground when the sun is shining, and for speaking clearly into the microphones. A pleasant by-product of post 9/11 surveillance has been improved audio systems on the trains and in the stations. I thanked the MTA and the Mayor for that. And then I got down to business: Anything you can do about the peeling paint and smell of urine at my station? I know it’s just one station, and I am just one traveler, and so on.

Dear Reader, I received a phone call from the station manager two days later. And we had a very personable chat. And a week after that, the peeling paint and smell of urine were gone.

A local friend said: “That must have been some letter.” I didn’t think so. No, it was a polite, quite ordinary letter. I just had taken the time to write it. Read More 

I went into a Barnes & Noble yesterday for the first time in a while searching for a new copy of “The Great Gatsby,” which I re-read every summer. My copy—an old Penguin—has disintegrated into brittle brown dust. Of course, I have Gatsby on my Kindle, but as I have explained already several times in this blog, I started to miss the sensory experience of holding a paper book and flipping its pages. And, of course, while I was in the store, I looked around. The smell of the books was delicious; it’s a candy store. And, I noticed, that many novels are now a different, longer shape. I liked the look and feel of that. But I left without buying anything. I’m going to be traveling in a week and the Kindle will have to do.

As for my report on the re-reading project I began after my recent move, it is coming along well. It’s instructive to return to books long stored on the shelf that seemed brilliant at the time, keepers, never to be abandoned. Some are and some aren’t. The Maxwells have stood the test well though I’ll only keep “They Came Like Swallows.” Every sentence in that book is a gem. But Paul Bowles’ “Up Above the World” is dated and the sentences are overwritten. I wonder, of course, how my work will be judged in one hundred years, if it is at all. But I know it’s best not to think about posterity when one is writing. I learn as I go and try to get better with every effort. It’s the effort that is important, and the practice. Some writing hits the zone, some doesn’t.

I think it was Stanley Kunitz who said that as he evolved as a writer, he chose simplicity and rigor over excess in the language he used in his poetry. I find myself doing the same. I remember the first writer’s group I belonged to: three poets and three prose writers. My goal was to impress everyone with my vocabulary and erudition. I didn’t succeed and I didn’t publish anything until I stopped trying to impress everyone with my vocabulary and erudition. My vocabulary has grown since then, I hope, but I am not trying to use it to wow anyone. Words are tools for precision and insight, or for precision of insight. And that’s my criteria for the books I am re-reading: What do they have to say? Are they saying it well?  Read More 

I traveled upstate last Monday hoping for a respite from the city heat. I planned to finish the final revision of my new novel, “What Returns to Us,” and had a meeting scheduled with my book designer. The book is finished, the cover design was discussed, thankfully, but most of my plans for the week were abandoned. It was hot. Very hot. So hot, in fact, that it was hard to breathe much less think. AC was never a thought before so far into the mountains, but climate change is serious, it is real and, it seems, even the mountains will not be spared. I had been there during Hurricane Irene. Ulster County was hit hard and it is very far inland, a big surprise to everyone, including scientists.

I don’t think writers, or anyone else, can be insouciant about these changes, how they effect our lives, and what adaptations we have to make. Will we have to forgo fresh air upstate as well as in the city? Stay indoors in AC on the worst days? This has never been true before and I dread the prospect of being stuck inside for days and weeks at a time. Walking loosens my imagination and I couldn’t walk outside—safely—all week. In fact, I tried to take a walk early yesterday morning and returned to the house with heat prostration. I was unable to move off the couch all day. At least I got some reading done, but I felt so lousy I could hardly concentrate.

How do the Chinese do it? They live in choked, polluted cities. There was an item on the news the other night about a mother of a newborn who monitors the air from her apartment before she ventures outside. What has become of them? Of us?

I think, for starters, if we haven’t gone green and sustainable already, now is the time to start. This very instant, right now. And if we have gone green, we have to proselytize like crazy, as I am attempting to do here.

I traveled back to the city early this morning and enjoyed the ride in my fully air conditioned car. 99 degrees in the city with a heat index of 110 degrees, hot enough to melt rubber tires and gold, the radio announcer said with a giggle. I wasn’t laughing. Luckily, I found a parking spot close to my apartment building. That’s because everyone—with means and/or a place to go—has fled the city.  Read More 

After packing, moving, and unpacking (nearly done), I vowed to myself not to buy another book, but I went to the exhibition of Hopper’s drawings at the Whitney yesterday and was so taken with his process—observing, sketching, drafting—and the beautiful paintings, that I bought a HUGE HARDBACK EDITION of Gail Levin’s biography of Hopper. It was only $15 and should have been $50. How could I resist? Fortunately, I had my backpack on wheels filled with swimming gear and a pack lunch, plenty of space for the TOME. And I love tomes. Lugging the bag up and down the subway stairs was a challenge—I carried the tome in my arms—but the book is safely home now and I’ve started it: well-written and deliciously thick, with vivid plates of Hopper’s work. (The postcards were all washed out.) When I’m done, the book will be donated to a reference shelf upstate where my artist-daughter lives and where I can always find it.

Books that have been packed, unpacked and now remain on my shelves are another matter. I had thought I’d given many away—donated, gifted, pulped—but there are still so many. So I’ve made another promise to myself: to reread every book I have carried with me. I’ve started with two slim volumes by William Maxwell who was the New Yorker fiction editor for forty years and a fine writer himself. I’d forgotten how fine, in fact. Now I am reminded. What a pleasurable experience that is.

As for the books on my Kindle, they are carried, too, of course--always and forever-- and there is a TBR list there also, but it will have to wait.  Read More 

I moved into a new neighborhood which feels like a community, not a city. The realtors now call it Hudson Heights though—in the day—it was simply Washington Heights. George hung out here during the Revolutionary War, the highest point on Manhattan Island; it was a fortress. The footprints of that war are in the names of many streets. Now “The (Lower) Heights” and the (Upper) Heights, known as Inwood, are largely Dominican and Hudson Heights—artists, young families—is squeezed between them, contiguous peaceful neighborhoods. And because all the streets are narrow and there are no high rises, the hood has a human-sized village feel. It reminds me of London and, with its hilly terrain and a view of the GW bridge at night, San Francisco.

Still unpacking boxes and boxes of books and belongings, I took a break on Sunday morning to walk the neighborhood and pick up a few groceries. A hot humid summer morning, dog walkers, runners, and Kelly Evans Ruby in the “Children’s Garden” at Bennett Park working the soil. City gardening has been a favorite antidote to the sedentary writing life. I chatted to Kelly for a while, told her about my experience with the Central Park Conservancy and Riverside Park Fund, and volunteered.

At the west entrance to the small park, a structure that looked like a bird house was painted artfully with portraits of community dogs by local artist Gareth Hinds. The post was donated and constructed by Kevin Orzechowski, also a local resident. The Little Library even has a Local Little Librarian: Oshrat Silberbusch. A community project indeed. Inside the Little Library: books for adults and children. This was a book exchange, a national initiative known as “The Little Free Library.” It’s adorable: http://www.littlefreelibrary.org/ and anyone can do it! This is their mission statement: "To promote literacy and the love of reading by building free book exchanges worldwide. To build a sense of community as we share skills, creativity and wisdom across generations."


That’s impressive.  Read More 

I have finally finished the 500 plus page 5th Jack Reacher novel. I can’t say I understand this character much better than I did at the beginning. Why does he roam around with only one change of clothes, for example? Why does he get attached to people, help them through the worst crisis of their lives, and then disappear? How can he intuit the way a criminal is thinking and suddenly resolve all the clues and mysteries in the last twenty pages of his story—after a gun battle in the dark and a damsel in distress rescue. Much of the unraveling of the plot is, in fact, preposterous. Action, action, action, interspersed with literary descriptions of the Texas landscape—lightening storms, the horizon, the vegetation. I waited for those sequences but they faded quickly into action sequences; a sentence or two and there we were in the car again chasing around, or being chased. I get bored easily so why wasn’t I bored? Because the writing was strong, it has force. And speaking of force, there were guns—lots of them and lots of detail about them. I know where Reacher learned about guns—the military—and why he likes them so much—they destroy the bad guys. Vigilante justice. Not exactly my cuppa either. So why did I persevere to the very last word? Because I was curious, because I knew he’d save Ellie, a six-year-old girl, and her mother, Carmen. Because Jack Reacher is a superhero.  Read More 

“Summers are for reading,” my parents told me and my sister as soon as we could read on our own. Cultured and educated, my refugee parents insisted on providing a list of “important” books to finish before the start of school in the fall. (This was before schools assigned summer reading.) I usually managed about one a week in between day camp, a round of soft ball after dinner, and a bit of television. My parents were strict and they wanted a report when I was done with each book. And it was summer; all I wanted to do was have fun. Dickens wasn’t fun. A biography of Albert Einstein wasn’t fun. A discussion about the definitions of words I didn’t understand wasn’t fun. I was expected to be serious, astute at a young age, and to excel in every subject.

I was serious but I was also an athlete, good at hitting the ball as hard as the boys and riding my bike down a steep hill as fast as the boys. None of the boys I hung out with had to read important books during the summer, nor did the girls for that matter, and I never let on that in private, late at night in bed or early in the morning, I was reading. That wouldn’t have been cool.

So I grew up with highbrow tastes and a judging distaste for low class genre fiction and for idleness and games, unless they were educational. But my mother was holding a secret: she liked murder mysteries, a fact she only admitted to me later in her life. They had to be Agatha Christie, Ruth Rendell, or P.D. James. Only the British knew how to write murder mysteries, she explained. Only their language was expressive enough. She took them out of the library but was never seen reading them anywhere, not even on the beach where every woman was lying on her stomach lathered with oil and reading fat, pulpy, sentimental paperback books, trashy books, according to my mother. What did my mother bring to the beach? The New York Times. If it was too windy to flip the pages, she folded it down and tackled the crossword puzzle, thus differentiating herself, her nose upturned, from the hoi polloi.

And then, one day, far beyond my childhood summers, I decided to try writing a murder mystery—an effort I have written about here—and it seemed to make sense to try reading one or two. Which is what I did. And to my great surprise, most were very well written as well as entertaining. And I liked the detectives, especially if they were women, because, on the sly, like so many girls of my generation, I had read Nancy Drew murder mysteries, and adored them, adored her. But when I was done, my agent said a very strange thing to me: “You haven’t written a murder mystery, you have written a thriller. And there aren’t many women thriller writers so how are we going to market this?”

“They can only be written by men?”

“No, of course not. But will men read your book if they know a woman has written it? That’s the question.”

Interesting. I’d written a suspense novel, a thriller. So I decided to read one or two to understand what I’d done. And because there are so many to choose from, I decided to move backwards from movies I’ve liked to the books they are based on: Jack Reacher for example. It surprised me what a good script that was, and how much I had enjoyed the story and liked—actually liked—the vigilante protagonist. The movie, starring Tom Cruise, is based on a book by Lee Child, a pseudonym for Jim Grant, a former British television director. The books have tinsel covers, embossed with evocative images. My parents would have called them tacky. They would have said they were beach books. They would have said that anything available on a drug store rack can’t be any good. And they would have been wrong. Jim Grant aka Lee Child, classically educated and a trained lawyer, can write:

“She looked preoccupied and a little confused. But she showed a measure of vitality, too. A measure of authority. There as still vigor there. She looked like the part of Texas she owned, rangy and powerful, but temporarily laid low, with most of her good days behind her.”

Simple evocative prose by a master of genre fiction.  Read More 

The copy-edit stage of book production is the hardest for me, and many authors, apparently. It’s the moment when the fever of writing stops and the malaise sets in. What have I created? Will it sell? If so, who will want to read it? What’s next? I never have any problem with this last question: my projects are lined up like an airplane on a runway. In fact, I begin to resent what I have just completed—the time it is takes to enter all the copy edits and then get the book into production—and can’t wait to get started on something new. That “in the moment” blissful sensation may be the reason writer’s always answer similarly when they are asked: “And what has been your favorite book/article to date?”

“The one I am working on right now. I’m just crazy about it. I think it’s the best I’ve ever done.” And so on.

Of course, we are usually wrong; we have no perspective. And, of course, we can’t really jump into a new project instantaneously; we need rest periods, breaks, a time to refuel.

What do writers do when they are not writing, someone once asked me. The answer is: the laundry. Even if there are maids and nannies to do housework, I am sure you get my drift. I think it was Margaret Atwood who once said: I always clean my own toilets. I, too, clean my own toilet, shop, do the laundry, and I also try to get outdoors into the fresh air as much as possible, no matter the season. And having finished a draft of my new book—“What Returns to Us”—I took my laptop and headed to upstate New York to visit my daughter and son-in-law who are homesteading there.

Day 1, Thursday: I sat for five hours in their kitchen nook, watched the mountains and the sunset, entered all the copy edits and sent it off to my agent. Finito, for now.

Day 2, Friday: I was awakened at 5 a.m. by the rooster. It was still dark. Was he confused? I read and drifted back to sleep. The blinds were up and I could see the white birches and the ornamental cherry tree causing everyone sneezing problems. Before he left for work, I asked my son-in-law to put me to work at some hard, physical labor. I had already walked with the dog on the road; it wasn’t enough. So he pulled out bales of hay and asked me to spread it over some fresh seeding for a pasture he’s creating. I did that for nearly two hours.

Day 3 , Saturday: It was raining. I read, wrote in my journal—the journal never stops—did some email, made a couple of phone calls, and worked with my daughter and son-in-law creating a bed for a blueberry patch. First the rocks had to be pulled out—wonderfully hard work—then roots of the felled trees pulled and cut, sawdust from the felled trees sawn into planks (all recycled) scooped onto the bed, then the loamy peat on top of that, and wood chips on top of that. Hours of work in the soft, misty rain. The dog stayed near us the whole time, sniffed and romped. The cat came out to have a look. They were in Heaven and so was I. We were all wet and muddy. It didn’t matter.

Day 4, Sunday: Mother’s Day which I have renamed “Nurturing Day,” and a communal brunch with friends and neighbors: French Toast, fruit salad, bacon (for those who eat meat), fresh home-grown maple syrup, and fresh-laid eggs. Then, reluctantly, a journey back to the city.

As I write, it is Monday, and I am at my computer full of energy for a new project which I will begin this week. I’m already feeling feverish about it.  Read More 

I recently began playing online Scrabble with a couple of friends. One of my opponents is an old high school friend. We live in the same city and have maintained our friendship over these many years—our kids even went to the same nursery school—and we get together for dinner and Scrabble regularly, alternating from one apartment to the other in a cycle of deepening friendship. Our online Scrabble is of the “normal” variety and a relaxing supplement to our three-dimensional games.

My second opponent—and a short-lived one as you will see—is the grown daughter of a good friend of mine, raised in Britain, who is now living in Italy. I have always found her so adorable and interesting that I thought it would be fun to reconnect via online Scrabble. So I invited her to play. Suddenly I found myself in a competitive game for points using filler words I had never heard of, nor could I find them in any dictionaries. The only pleasurable aspect of this game were the surprising British words—such as fairings—which, as an Anglophile who lived in England for a decade, I appreciated. American English seems attenuated by comparison and I cherish all words in the English speaking world, far and wide.
I spoke to my husband—who I can rarely beat at 3-D Scrabble—about my observations. Was my young friend using a tool to create words to get this kind of a score, close to 400 each game? “Most definitely,” he said.

Well, how did I feel about this? And, if true, is it cheating? I went online again, this time to see if anyone had written about the phenomena of “enhanced” electronic Scrabble. Many had. My favorite was this commentary: http://www.musingsat85.com/myblog/?p=5832

I wrote to my young friend to ask her if she used electronic “teachers” and “tools” and she admitted that she did. I understood that this new way of playing Scrabble is entirely normal to her, that it’s okay, it’ s not cheating. And, perhaps, if she had told me in advance, I would have felt differently, I’m not sure. At one point, I commented on the imbalance in our scores and was told, with an icon smile, that I wasn’t trying hard enough. In any event, I decided to say goodbye to my young friend on the electronic Scrabble board and to wish her well. Our two games were not fun for me. And Scrabble should be fun.

I remembered when my parents purchased their first game, the simplicity of its rules, the board, the wooden tiles, the invitations to friends and family every weekend to play a game, the breaks for food and conversation, the egg timer. As children, we were allowed to participate as helpers and later we were allowed to play with our own racks and tiles. Our parents were not native English speakers and finding words in English was a test in itself. The dictionary was only used as a final “authority,” and no one was allowed to crack it until a word had gone down and was challenged.  Read More