Carol Bergman

Last Sunday, I went to the Neue Galerie with a Dutch friend and his sister. Tobias Tak is a tap dancer and graphic novelist : http://www.tobicomix.co.uk/. His sister, Elise Tak, is a digital artist who creates her own movie stars and narratives—movies within movies: http://www.elisetak.com/.

It’s a talented family. Tobias lives in London and works all over the EU; Elise lives in New York where she has been grounded for many years in the artists’ community in Brooklyn.

Walking around a gallery with artists is a unique and illuminating experience. As a writer, I am always searching for narrative and asking myself: Where’s the story? What is this about? Visual artists study the physicality of the work—shape color, line, composition—and often disregard the content in the first instance. It is only later that they become interested in the artist’s life, for example. I am interested in it from the beginning.

Standing in the dim gallery in front of a Klimt gesture drawing, I was struck by the erotic pose which almost fell off the page with abandon. And because I have researched Klimt’s life for my novella, “Sitting for Klimt,” I wondered who the model was. Tobias hadn’t noticed the pose or the model. Instead, he pointed to the decorative touches in the dress, swirling shapes resembling flowers. And because these swirling shapes were layered, he could tell that Klimt was searching for the right form. The first layer wasn’t quite right, so he kept going. It was all practice. He was searching.  Read More 

Back in the 1920’s, the “it” girl was magnetically and irresistibly attractive. She had arrived, mostly in the person of Clara Bow as designated by the public relations and advertising copy writers. It wasn’t a new concept; even the mystic Sufis knew what “it” was back in the 13th century. And Vincent Van Gogh, a mystic for all of his short troubled life, used the concept of “it” (het in Dutch) to describe the sensation when a painting had “arrived.” Any visual artist, writer, or performer will understand what this means and how it feels. It’s a kind of ecstasy, a bliss.

Most of the time we are just working, slogging along some would say, day by day. Many drafts, sketches, journal entries, more drafts, a final polish. We get published, or don’t. But even the work that is published may be mediocre compared to our vision, our intention. It’s okay, it works, or it’s good enough.

And then, one day, we hit the “it.” The passage we have written, the words chosen, the whole work has transcended our usual effort. How this has happened, we cannot be sure. A confluence of forces and gifts more than likely.

And so it was with my story, “Will Wonders Never Cease,” about an imaginary encounter between Houdini and Freud. I knew as I was writing that I had hit the “it.” It’s a long story and I didn’t try to place it in any literary magazines. Instead, I ran it as the last story in my new collection of novellas, “Water Baby.” But as the summer waned, I looked at it again and thought that it was very good and that I should publish it in London where it is set. My ties to the UK are long and deep; I lived there for ten years. So I sent it off to The London Magazine, founded in 1732, prestigious. Why not try for the best? And so, dear reader, I sent it off by SNAIL. It arrived in two days and two days later I had an email from the editor to say they’d like to run it in their April/May issue. I was chuffed.

Years of practice. What is certain is that we cannot get to the transcendent “it” manuscript unless we have practiced.  Read More 

I took a walk up Broadway yesterday and stopped in at “Book Culture,” an independent bookstore, one of three in the Columbia University neighborhood. The official Columbia University Bookstore is now a Barnes & Noble. I guess they struck a deal. But that’s another story. My story today is about three-dimensional books, buying them, holding them, and reading them, and how that experience is different from buying and reading books on an e-reader. Please note that I’ve eliminated the word “holding."

I know I’ve written about this on my blog before but, as time has passed and I am now nearly four years into owning my handy Kindle, the feeling of sensory deprivation, particularly when I am reading fiction, has intensified. That said, when I am reading a biography of an artist, which I do at least once a year, I feel the same way—deprived. I don’t have a tablet—maybe, in fairness, that would make a difference—so I can’t experience color plates. But it’s more than that.

I remember what it was like to be immersed in a book, not in reading, but the book itself, when I was a teen and my mother had to wrench me out of story reverie to come into dinner and I put the book down on the table carefully bookmarked and that object, that world, awaited my return, constant and predictable, partially because it was an object. Who needed dinner? I had been devouring the pages of that book and was nourished enough.

My mother’s father was a traveling salesman and every time he returned home to Vienna, he brought my mother a book. She built a library which she had to leave behind when she fled to Paris and then to America. Every time she moved after that, her books where unpacked before her clothes or her cutlery. Even when her sight dimmed, I could never persuade her to try an e-reader. She held a book and flipped the pages as I read to her.

That is a visceral connection. E-readers are flat and, in more ways than one, the words they store are elusive. We can still lose ourselves, sink into the story, but it somehow feels different on an e-reader, for a while anyway, until the story takes over.

So, every couple of months, I treat myself to a three-dimensional book at an independent bookstore. And I walk away relieved and satisfied to have made such a purchase. And this "relief" and "satisfaction" are sensory, not cerebral, because I haven't read the book as yet. I am, simply, possessing it physically. The book has heft, weight, and gravitas. I can feel it and know that it is mine.  Read More 

I went to see “Django,” over the holiday at an old movie theater on Grand Street in Oakland, California, just blocks away from some of the highest crime streets in the USA. Given the recent gun-toting events in Newtown and elsewhere, it seems a travesty to applaud this movie as well-made, well-acted, and well-written. So I won’t.

One of many 2013 resolutions: boycott all gun-toting violent movies. Let them be well-made, well-acted and well-written, I will not go.

Sitting around a well-appointed dinner table on New Year’s Eve in the self-same city where I saw “Django” and once upon a time taught high school English and American History in a ghetto school, our hostess asked: “What do you wish for in 2013 that is realistic?” I liked the caveat: realistic.

The wine flowed, the food was divine, answers were thoughtful. We were in a safe haven, unthreatened by war or robbery or famine or guns. With my book “Another Day in Paradise; International Humanitarian Workers Tell Their Stories,” about to be published for a second time in China using the “simple” alphabet, I wished for the Chinese to develop a social conscience.

But what about our own politicians, what about corporations, what about gun owners? everyone asked.

I had met a young Chinese entrepreneur on the airplane on the flight out and was struck by his drive; he was reading a book about success and said that if he couldn’t be a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, he wouldn’t be a success. It reminded me of the market-driven entertainment industry. What is a movie’s measure of success: the millions it pulls in on opening weekend. By that standard, “Django” will do just fine.

When I asked my young Chinese friend if his life was in balance—an Eastern concept lost in the throes of the communist/freemarket revolution—he hesitated. “I’m a rock climber,” he said,” but I don’t have a girlfriend.” I told him about the article I was reading in The New Yorker of December 24 &31, “Polar Express” by Keith Gessen and the already evident competition between our two nations—and others—to take advantage of the melting polar ice cap. “We could have a shooting war,” he said. “And that wouldn’t be a good thing.”  Read More 

I write this in the wake of the tragedy in Newtown; the first funeral took place yesterday, I believe, though I don’t know for certain as it has been so painful to read and watch the news. I overheard a man talking on his cell on a street corner : “When I watch the news, I don’t even feel sad, I feel sick.” Once again, a communal grief. President Obama’s well-crafted speech gave some solace. He’s a good writer and/ or his speechwriters are good writers. Still, I wonder how Abe Lincoln might have seized the moment with his well-honed oratory. In those days, according to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, “Team of Rivals,” words—written words—could make or break a candidate. A speech was delivered to a crowd and then printed in the local and national press. Few people, after all, could hear it when it was delivered.

What have we come away with here, what greater awareness? That we can do better, that we must do better—in every sphere of our American lives. At a party the other night, I met two young women, both studying opera and musical theater, who have given up on the idea of a well-rounded conservatory education—the path that most performers have taken in the past—because they couldn’t afford a loan with the prospect of no decent job at the end of it, albeit they are performers not scientists, or so I thought. One, in fact, was a scientist and had wanted to study chemistry, but because she knows so many who have wandered the country in search of work with doctorates in their pockets, she decided to wing it, study theater, and scramble for part-time jobs. She now has four—none of them satisfying—and had to leave the party early to work in a bar.

The next day I went upstate for a conversation with a Dean at SUNY New Paltz, one of New York State’s University campuses. Two years ago, I had been called in to discuss the possibility of a summer writing institute but there was no money to fund it, none at all. The Chairs and Deans were completely frustrated: they could no longer try anything new unless they proved in advance that the class had an audience. Nonetheless, they wanted to talk about it; they are educators, not marketers. Maybe one day, maybe one day soon, they all said. Well, nothing has changed, and won’t in the foreseeable future. Yet they still wanted to talk. Did I have any marketing ideas? Well, I am not a marketing person, I said, but I am pleased to be part of the continuing conversation about the changes in higher education, its greater reliance on virtual platforms, and so on.

Sad to say, both public and private universities are so desperate these days that they are competing with each other for students, many of whom have given up the idea of higher education—as my two young friends at the party the other night—or are attending two-year community colleges, which are cheaper. I wonder how will they expand their intellectual/cognitive abilities without more schooling? Will they become autodidacts? And will we continue to fall behind the EU and China in our educational and entrepreneurial accomplishments? I have had half a dozen Chinese students in my workshop these past two years, recruited by the university, and the Dean I spoke with last week has been to China twice this year on that same mission. Meanwhile, our home-grown students languish, and the excitement of a future in higher education has dimmed. Unless, of course, we are born into privilege or take the opposite route: study abroad, and stay there, as two PhD friends of mine were forced to do—one is working in Saigon, the other in Singapore. In a transnational universe this is not necessarily a bad thing so long as there is equal development and opportunity within our borders.  Read More 

Privileged with a press pass, I roamed around MOMA yesterday afternoon, avoiding the thick crowd in the painting galleries. What would I find? First, a “fragile” series by the bold feminist artist, Louise Bourgeois. The display of these 8 x 10 drawings of spiders upside down, long-legged and short-legged, women with big boobs and multiple boobs, falling over from boob weight or standing upright full frontal and totally naked made me laugh out loud. Other guests sauntered on by but I just stood there laughing. I was so satisfied by this upending experience that I almost headed out of the museum not wanting to spoil the sensation of this artist’s work with anything else. There’s an earnestness about museums. Curator’s notes and artists’ statements next to the works in a museum are often portentous so I don’t read them. No extensive labeling next to the Bourgeois drawings, though. I was relieved that they were just there to be enjoyed.

I meandered a bit more into the main drawing gallery where I found 24 charcoal sketches by Willem De Kooning, one of my favorite painters, as light-hearted as Bourgeois in many ways. In fact, they knew each other, both of them founding members of “The New York School.” I had never seen these charcoal sketches before. Known as “closed eye drawings,” or “blind drawings,” De Kooning experimented with the feeling inside his own body which he then “pushed” onto the page. Holding the sketch pad horizontal, he kept his eyes completely closed as he drew. The drawings are displayed vertically in order to be “read.”

How did he do this? And what would the analogy be in writing? Or music?

Those difficult questions led me to thinking about a student concert at the Mannes School of Music the other night. The second half of the program was Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, all four of them. When the teacher/director introduced the segment she explained that the students had taken an improvisation workshop. Improvisation? Vivaldi? Isn’t that a “classical” piece of music? Doesn’t it have rules and boundaries? Don’t the musicians have to stick to the notes? Apparently not. Every composer includes a “cadenza,” usually at the end of the work. This is a bit of space which allows the solo musician to strut her stuff, or the ensemble of musicians to strut their stuff. And strut they did at the end of each “season.”

Are writers able to take such liberties? Or do we stick to formulas and trodden paths rather than innovate and experiment? And what about fiction and poetry? When we evoke images, characters, a setting, a story, are we, in fact, “writing blind?” What if I were to close my eyes and write? How would that work? There is a game—exquisite corpse—the surrealists played using either words or drawings. One person begins, the page is folded, the next person continues the drawing or writes a new sentence, not knowing what came before. Does the finished drawing or story make sense? Sometimes, sometimes not. So this isn’t exactly the same as what De Kooning did because he had a strong sense of what he was making.

So here’s another question: How can I push the images and ideas inside my head/body onto the page? Even when I am writing nonfiction, this may be possible, no? Let’s say I conduct an interview, transcribe it, and then read it over. What if I put my notes away and then recreate the experience of the person—his or her essence—without relying on literal quotes? How would that work?  Read More 

I was in the shower at the gym when I thought of a new first line of a novel I am planning to revise. I had originally written the novel about five years ago and sent it out to readers, including my agent. It wasn’t working and there was nothing else I seemed to be able to do at the time to make it work. I put it into the filing cabinet to rest, somewhat uncomfortably, next to two other failed novels. I was discouraged and exhausted. Novels are commitments—a year or more—and I hadn’t been writing much else. Then one of my well-meaning writer friends had the audacity to suggest that I might not be a novelist after all. Why do most writers assume that they can write a novel or should write a novel? she asked. Isn’t three failed novels enough? Hadn’t I better stick to the novella form—which was my strength—articles, and long form nonfiction? Those were her rhetorical questions. She had never written a novel or even attempted a novel.

The difference between writers who get published and those who don’t is obvious: they persevere. The work has to stand on its merits, of course, and it doesn’t hurt to have a connection or two in the business, alas, but perseverance and the psychic fortitude to begin again—like London after the blitz I’ve always thought—is key. Up out of the rubble, it’s a new day.  Read More 

At the beginning of term, I had told my students not to expect replies to emails late on Sunday nights when they are often working on their assignments and I am watching Homeland. Throughout the first season of this compelling drama, my husband and I were riveted. We had friends over to participate, sharing a meal that had to be over long before the 10 p.m. show time. We set the TV to the channel in advance so we wouldn’t miss an instant of the logo or the first scene.

And, then, during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, we met with some Arab-American friends for a coffee and talked about the show. They were deeply concerned that the educated elite in the United States, including our re-elected President, were so hooked on it. It is, after all, an adaptation of a successful Israeli series. Transposing the venue from Israel to the United States has changed the show in many ways, but the shadow of the Israeli scripts is still there and they have a clear and troublesome political agenda. And, now, the escalation of violence in Gaza, a great and continuing tragedy for everyone.

As writers, what are we to think of a show that is so well written and so engaging, yet so offensive to our Arab-American citizens? What is our responsibility? Does anything we say or think about the show matter? If we agree with the assertion that there is something morally wrong with the portrait of Arabs in the show, shall we boycott? Write letters to the producers? To the White House?

As writers, we are the custodians of language. Language matters. How do we speak about “the other,” whoever that other may be? How do we define ourselves in relation to that other? When do we become the other ourselves?  Read More 

After long silence, I begin again.
—William Cowper to William Unwin, 3 July 1786

A student this term is reading history—Erik Larson, David McCullough—and is struck by the eloquence of the primary source material that has informed their work—letters and diaries. But, alas, her admiration segues into a lament as, feeling intimidated rather than inspired, she reflects, dear reader, on her own attenuated correspondence.

What has changed since Abigail and Henry Adams wrote to one another during their long periods of separation?

It’s an interesting question and a big one. The answer, in part, is embedded in the question: In the digital age, when do we ever suffer long periods of separation from anyone? We may be physically separated, of course, but we remain—always and constantly—virtually connected. And rather than settling by the fireplace late at night to record our thoughts in a journal or to write a letter to a dear friend in ceremonial reply to one that has been received—the ceremony being a promise of reply—we flag an email and reply quickly when we have time.

So that’s one answer—a predictable one—given the imperatives of our digital age. More importantly for a writer, however, is the ease with which we have given up long form formal letter writing and the challenge of retrieving the practice of it. But first, questions: Is it necessary? Is it possible? And, if it is necessary, is it possible?

When I left England some years ago to live in the U.S. again, I promised more than one person that I would correspond regularly, that each letter would be answered in kind. We could talk on the phone but, as writers, a continuing dialogue in writing seemed important. And I was active: I wrote a lot, I went to the post office a lot. Until email. Once that was installed it didn’t take long for the ink to dry out in my italic-nibbed pens.

And I miss the languor of those days. Even as I write rapidly on this computer, I long for them. An opportunity to discourse in words with friends, to catch up on their lives and my own in a slow way, and then to save the correspondence, to return to it, or to bequeath it to an historian as many writers have done. Indeed, high profile contemporary writers donate their papers to libraries or sell their letters and journals to libraries. The fact that they have written these letters and diaries, and saved them, is of great importance. And I know one or two who still cherish their fountain pens, and use them. I wonder what I’ve done with mine?


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I went to see “Lincoln,” last night—screenplay by Steven Spielberg, script by Tony Kushner, Lincoln played by Daniel Day Lewis, Mary Todd by Sally Field—an all-star line-up to which we’d have to include imminent Oscar nominations for make-up artist and cinematography, costume designer, and much more. As it is Spielberg, there is more than one tear rending moment, none gratuitous, and no distortions of text as in the musical finale of “The Color Purple.” It is Kushner’s script that shines, an adaptation of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s, “Team of Rivals,” one of our re-elected President’s favorites. I have not read that book yet but I ordered it for my Kindle as soon as I got home and began a biography of Mary Todd Lincoln which has been on my to-be-read Kindle stack for a while. Mary Todd's reputation has been restored, the accusations of insanity mostly expunged. She was, we now learn, an intelligent Victorian First Lady constricted by the expectations of her time: she didn’t have a submissive personality, she wept grandly after the loss of three children, she sat in the balcony watching the proceedings on the floor of the House of Representatives where, of course, there were no women politicians present, she had strong opinions which she expressed vociferously. Strange to think that it wasn’t so long ago that women journalists were relegated to that selfsame balcony. See Nan Robertson’s book about those girl journalists. It’s an eye opener:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Girls-Balcony-Women-Times/dp/039458452X

It is at times like these—inspired by a well-made script and a well-made movie—that I miss a now defunct website called readerville.com, a gathering of readers and writers. One of the threads was about immersion reading. Certainly Spielberg and Kushner must have read all there is to read about Lincoln as they developed this project. The film has so much exposition, in fact, that one could call it scholarly. Yet the dramatic tension in every scene, relieved by Lincoln’s stories and the softness of his personality as rendered by a fine actor, keep the story moving to its denouement—the passage of the 13th Amendment and Lincoln’s assassination. Though we know the ending before the first frame has passed, it doesn’t matter.  Read More