Carol Bergman

A Time Warner Man came to the house yesterday to tackle what has been an intractable problem: fade to black, voice signal disrupted. This was the fourth visit—all by different service people. You know the story. But this guy—Sherif—was different. He made himself comfortable on the couch and picked up the remote. Within seconds, he had found the problem—a setting wasn’t right—and so we started to chat about the various historical offerings on television—miniseries, documentaries—as he continued to test the cable and the box. “I also read a lot of books,” he said. “I approve of reading,” I said, and he laughed.

I don’t why I find it particularly touching when an ordinary, working, blue collar person likes to read. That shows my academic/class bias, and it makes me uncomfortable as I admit it here. I know from years of journalism how interesting, complex and compelling most people are. That all said, I still find it touching when someone from a less privileged background than mine becomes an autodidact, becomes smart through life experience, and books. Reading, talking, telling stories—all of it makes us smarter. Sherif is a clear thinker; he problem solved our problem when no one else could.

But that wasn’t the end of his story/history. “I go down to DC often and I always spend a few hours in the Library of Congress reading history books or historical documents," he said. I have a Library of Congress Library Card. What’s great is that all electronic devices are left at the door and you can’t take out any books. So I just sit and read, and read.”

Now, this is news to me. I had no idea such a card existed, and that it is free to every citizen of the United States: http://www.loc.gov/rr/readerregistration.html

“What do you do when you can’t get down to DC?” I asked.

“I go to the Morgan Library here in town,” he said. “Or to another library. We’ve got lots of libraries.”  Read More 

The stepdaughter of a good friend of mine has become a sexpert. She received her doctoral credentials in “sexology” via a mail-order college, written a breezy book, and set herself up in business with high-paying clients. Because she is also telegenic and articulate, she’s done well on radio and television. As for her personal life, it’s a mess, she hasn’t a clue. She’s neglecting her kids, her husband—she’s on the verge of divorce—and her dog. She’s going out to fancy restaurants every night, buying fashionable clothes, meeting the rich and famous, and accumulating debt. But, in American terms, she’s a success. Visibility, acclaim, admiration, money, without much effort. For now, anyway.

Though I am sure a lot of people have found the sexpert’s advice helpful and have enjoyed her breezy book, I've often wondered if she ever thinks about what she’s done or who she is. In academic terms, she’s “commodified herself,” though I’m probably misspelling and/or misunderstanding the concept. But what I think it means is this: she’s selling herself. And so it was no surprise when my friend called to say that this very successful, entrepreneurial American woman suddenly realized that she—this commodified, inauthentic someone—has a short shelf life and that she has absolutely no idea what she’ll do next apart from botoxing the lines in her face.

“You don’t have to be on radio or TV. You can stay home with the kids a bit and write another book,” my friend suggested.

“And what did she say?” I asked.

“She said she’d think about it.”

“Thinking’s good,” I said. “All my students are thinking a lot. They’re becoming good writers.”

And I thought of them with pleasure. How hard they are working and how the writing, reading, and thinking has deepened them.

We are now entering the 7th week of class at NYU and, despite life’s pressures, everyone in the workshop is making great effort to maintain the discipline of their writing lives. Without apology, I ask them to do a lot, and I have high expectations because I know—from great experience—that their effort will be rewarded. Real effort is always rewarded, not monetarily perhaps, but in more important ways. In fact, the rewards are already evident in the writing itself which is starting to fly, and the risks the students are taking to find an authentic voice and subject. This was not true at the beginning of term. The voices, then, were reined in, timid, or polemical. No longer.

I’d like to invite the floundering sexpert into my class. Sexpert, you are invited. I’ve already had a lot of other survivors in my workshop, men and women forced to change careers because of down-sizing or lay-offs. The entrepreneurial spirit of Wall Street goes only so far, as we all well know.
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It is two weeks since the calamitous events in Japan wiped Libya off the front page of the New York Times. If I had been in the midst of a work of fiction, I probably would have needed to take a long, solitary walk into the mountains to reassure myself that the ground beneath my feet—the title of a novel by Salman Rushdie—was still steady, or steady enough to return to my desk and work. But I am in the midst of the teaching term, researching my next project, so I stayed in New York and connected with former students and friends who have friends and relatives in Japan.

I developed an interest and abiding connection with Japan some years ago when I took a part-time job in a Japanese language school that caters to Japanese businessmen and their families. I needed extra money to support “Another Day in Paradise; International Humanitarian Workers Tell Their Stories,” because the publisher could only afford a small advance and I knew it would take me at least a year to gather the stories and then several more months to get them into shape for publication. I mentored the contributors long distance or in person at various locations—some out of the country—which meant I also needed money to travel. It was one of those projects that, once started, I could not in good conscience abandon. I did not write anything else for two years and when I was done I had trouble writing insipid articles for the women’s magazines. Botox didn’t seem to matter anymore. That said, I have learned a lot from aid workers about relaxation. They work hard and play hard, too. Many are avid readers and writers. They keep journals. Which is why so many wanted to tell their stories when I sent out my first query email. I was inundated.

Thankfully, the book has had legs and is still doing well at an on-demand reprint house in Oregon. And it’s still in print with the original publisher in the UK/EU. I continue to get queries from aid workers and I am in touch with most of the contributors some of whom have become friends.

But I have already digressed from the calamity in Japan, which is not difficult to do. How can we linger on the unimaginable and be of use? And what, in particular, can a writer do? I suppose the answer is obvious: we can write about it and into it. By this I mean that we can put ourselves—literally or imaginatively—into the minds and hearts of those who are suffering. This is what I tried to do when I wrote to Mayumi, one of my former students. We had been in email correspondence over the years and sent each other holiday greetings. She is a film buff and much of our correspondence has been about American and Japanese film but I also know a lot about her life because, when she landed in America, she was recovering from chemotherapy. She was very young to be diagnosed with breast cancer and the diagnosis hit her and her family hard. It happened at the moment her husband was about to begin his posting in New York and the company he worked for would not allow him to delay his departure and keep his job. So he left for New York while Mayumi stayed on in Japan until she was strong enough to travel. When she arrived, she still had a scarf on her head and had to have regular follow-up appointments at Memorial Sloan Kettering. But she was happy to be in New York and eager to improve her English which was already quite viable.

At the school, teachers and students rotated depending on schedule and the notes, intended to provide continuity, were often playful. Mayumi’s were odd. The teachers seemed frustrated by her reticence which seemed more intense than most of the other students. It had been bandied about that Japanese men and women don’t really want to learn English. The long American occupation—1945-1952—had created resentment and defiance. Not learning English was an act of defiance, some said. But no one went so far as to suggest this with Mayumi. They said she was shy, could hardly read and write English, and that she came into class with a strange scarf on her head. Someone had drawn an insulting picture of her with a scarf and the caption, “So what’s with the scarf?” I couldn’t think of anything more awful. It angered me to read these notes and I am sure they would have shamed Mayumi if she had seen them. Obviously, none of the other teachers had gotten to know her or asked her any questions about her life. True, the director of the school didn’t encourage any personal connection which was considered to be unprofessional and intrusive. The younger teachers towed the line because they didn’t want to lose their jobs. I didn’t care as much—my stay was only temporary—and even if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to abide the director’s insistence on monitoring what went on in my classroom.

So I asked Mayumi some gentle questions about her scarf. It wasn’t difficult to see that she had no hair underneath. Rather than being offended, she was relieved, and began to cry. After that, she always asked to see me. When this didn’t work out, she asked if we could work privately.

Her English improved exponentially and, when she left for Japan after her husband’s tour was over two years later, we promised to stay in touch. Naturally, I thought of her immediately when the quake hit and popped off a quick email: “Are you okay?” I knew that she lived south of Tokyo but I had a recollection of some family living north of Tokyo and a grandfather in Hokkaido. She was always traveling to see him. I hoped she hadn’t been on one of the pulverized trains.

An email came back almost immediately, not from her regular address, but from a special address attached to her mobile phone. It was short but well written. All is well with us and we remain hopeful, she said. Not much electricity which is why she was writing to me on her phone instead of her PC. “We cannot stop thinking about the nuclear terror,” she said. I replied immediately asking what, if anything, I could send her on email that might be consoling or helpful. “It’s enough to hear from you. I am so grateful that you are thinking of me,” she wrote.

So that’s what I’m doing: I’m writing to Mayumi, she is writing back to me, and I am honoring her courage, and that of the Japanese people during this disaster, by writing this blog. Read More 

Though I am an indigenous New Yorker, I had never visited the Algonquin Hotel until I returned to the city after a ten-year sojourn in Europe. By then I was a writer searching for quiet spaces in which to read, write, and converse with friends. I wasn’t necessarily looking for a venue to have business meetings because I needed a place to relax away from my home office. But I have since had a business meeting or two in the Algonquin lobby. I always get there early, find a comfortable chair near a dim light, and read for a while before my guest arrives. Indeed, I feel that the lobby is my lobby and that I am entertaining guests there, so homey is it to me. I carry a portable light with me-- especially helpful when I open my Kindle—and settle into deep reading. The waiter may or may not come over. When he does, he’ll be gentle so as not to interrupt my reading too harshly. I order a pot of hot green tea, one of the cheaper items on the revamped more upscale menu. And I sip from that pot all night. Sometimes I even ask for more hot water. The waiters get it—I don’t want to spend a lot of money, I’m a writer—and they leave me alone. Usually, my guest orders a drink or two which subsidizes the writers on the premises. Unless my guest is also a writer.

The tradition of extended conversation in a quiet club was embedded in me during my years in London. It’s a genteel tradition, not one in which I was raised, but I took to it quickly. I’m not an elitist, far from it, and always defied the locked squares in London’s tonier neighborhoods (we have one or two in New York also), by pretending I’d forgotten my key. I figured I looked as though I could belong. I knew that the polite Brits would rarely confront an interloper and when they discovered I was a class-less American they would simply laugh. This happened more than once. I had acquaintances who were Lords and Ladies and friends who were members of clubs and they always enjoyed a good American tease about their class pretensions. When they invited me to their clubs, and I didn’t decline, they were equally amused. I soon understood the purpose of them: luxury is very seductive. In London, it was an oasis from the hardscrabble neighborhoods I had to visit as a journalist or, in my early days there, when I taught in the still Dickensian schools on the periphery of the city. In the clubs, I could let my body and my mind relax for a while and refuel.

And that’s how I feel when I sit in the Algonquin lobby—relaxed in mind and body. And although I don’t want a thousand people to read about it in this blog, I’m delighted to be able to share this New York Literary and Historic Landmark with my students and writer friends. There’s no membership fee or hazing. Anyone can join because there is nothing to join. Walk in, sit down, enjoy. If you have a book club of ten or more, you can even reserve space in advance. I did this once with a new book club I had started. We weren’t ten so we couldn’t book in advance but, as soon as we arrived, Doomy, the gatekeeper of the lobby, found us a small round table at the back, very close to the Algonquin Round Table. I was thrilled. As we were leaving that day, Doomy came over to ask us how the discussion had gone and if we’d been comfortable. His family is from Haiti, he told us, he is at college when he is not working at the Algonquin, and he loves to read. My recollection is that we had been discussing Naipaul’s “Bend in the River,” and that Doomy was very interested in this book which is about colonialism in Africa. I gave him my copy.

Doomy is still at the Algonquin and has progressed from under-graduate to graduate studies. Every time I enter and he is there, I smile. We embrace and he helps me find a comfortable location. He might stop a moment or two to ask how I’m doing, and to tell me how he is doing. This week, he was reading “The Great Gatsby,” and when I told him that I read it once a year, we began to talk about why it is a classic. His copy is filled with marginalia. I approve. We could have talked all night but Doomy is a professional and I am not the only regular. The lobby was getting busy again and he had to get back to work. We said good-bye just as my guest walked through the door.  Read More 

I got a Kindle for my birthday a couple of years ago and have been enjoying it and worrying about it all at the same time. Not the device itself—that is more than fine—but what its purchase signified—Amazon’s initial monopoly on e-books, and the danger to local booksellers. Then, sometime last year, it was announced that more e-books were being sold than hardcover books. And, in January of this year, the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble closed. Borders at the Time Warner building will soon follow, if it hasn’t already. I began to miss these stores almost immediately. I went into them to browse, have a coffee, sit and read, make lists of books I want to read, some available on Kindle, some not.

In the midst of all these very rapid changes, the Authors Guild (which hosts this site) was paying deep attention and getting involved-legally-in the fray. If you are a writer reading this blog, you’ll want to understand this gripping legal saga which includes Amazon’s blackout of Macmillan books, how the launch of the iPad changed everything, and the acceptance of the “agency model,” as follows:

http://blog.authorsguild.org/2011/02/02/how-apple-saved/

Yesterday, an email arrived from the Guild announcing Random House’s acceptance of the agency model: "Book retailers have faced extraordinary challenges in recent years a double whammy of recession and a shift to digital books that had cut many stores out. For anyone who loves bookstores, this is the best news out of the publishing industry in a long time. Random House's move may prove to be a lifeline for some bookstores."

With this news, I began to wonder if the book-seller landscape will change again. Maybe, as the mega chains fold-up, the small, independent bookstore will rise again. I can see it now: shelves of book covers with ISBN numbers and a cash desk where we can order either print-on-demand copies or e-books.  Read More 

I went to the Center for Fiction last night for a Philip Roth evening. The event was advertised as a “celebration,” of him, as opposed to his work. Are they one and the same? I don’t think so. And I know Philip Roth doesn’t either. There is a long quote by Roth in the program from a speech he gave in 1988 when he accepted an award for “The Counterlife” in which he says, “You begin with the raw material, the facts…One by one you turn them over in your mind…The imagination gets to work… Eventually there is a novel. Readers appear. Among them are those who detest the severity of the mind and the violence of the imagination…These readers are happy only with the facts…”

The National Book Critics Circle was a co-sponsor and a panel of its members had been invited to discuss Roth’s work. The metaphoric red carpet had been laid out but the audience was not standing on it. We were on line in the small lobby of the Center, which is in the Mercantile Library on 47th Street just off Fifth Avenue. I was squashed between two plain, ordinary disgruntled writers. Though I have had my five minutes of fame in the UK and the USA (well, maybe ten minutes all together), I am mostly a plain and ordinary writer, though I am not disgruntled. The woman writer behind me, in fact, was more than disgruntled, she was distraught. “I’m rattled,’ she said. “I’ve been in alone all day inside my own head and all these people are making me nervous. Can’t they just let us upstairs at the same time as the celebrities.” And the man in front of me said, “I wrote my senior thesis on the Zuckerman persona and, when Roth was in Minnesota for a reading, I presented it to him for his autograph, and when I told him what it was about, he shoved it back at me.” Why this should have been surprising, I do not know.

Finally, we were let upstairs into the narrow room where all the seats within visual distance of the stage were reserved for the special guests—agents, publishers, other celebrity writers, the invited panel, and their agents and publishers.

The facts were beginning to add up. Roth had been invited but he was not going to appear in the most fulsome sense of that word. He was going to stay in the background where every writer, especially a celebrity writer, must remain most of the time if he is to continue writing. At least, that has been my impression over the years. Writers, unless they are performers, are ambivalent about publicity tours and readings. They/We would prefer to have a quiet evening with friends or to stay home and read and write. So any ambivalence on the part of the writer is understandable. And so it was announced that the panel would begin the evening by discussing Roth’s work, in his presence, which I thought strange, and then he would read from his memoir, “Patrimony.” There would be no Q&A. After a half-hour delayed start, the evening would remain short and Roth would be able to return home to read and write.

One of Philip Roth’s recent books is called “The Humbling.” It is a story of a man of the author’s age, an actor, who loses the ability to act. He cannot remember his lines or why he should say them, or what they mean. He retreats to his home in the woods and contemplates suicide. Unlike some of Roth’s earlier work, it is not at all funny. It’s about an artist who has lost himself and his audience. And in that long, narrow, stuffy room, Roth had unknowingly lost his audience, an audience of equally ambivalent and retiring fellow writers. He, or his publicity machine, had mistaken us for ordinary readers and we were not; we were fellow writers. Not celebrity writers but ordinary, plain, hard-working writers. We would have been interested in the challenges of an aging writer if Roth could have been persuaded to speak to this subject, among others. Whatever he chose to say, we would have listened. We would have been rapt. But Roth allowed himself to be handled in the way that politicians are handled, spun and, ultimately, silenced. It was a terrible shame and I was sorry for him, and for us. He's written a gorgeous new book--"Nemesis"-- and even that had been obliterated from the evening. Read More 

Every once in a while, I Google myself to find out if a person or institution has stolen my work. And every once in a while, I have to report a theft of my intellectual and creative property to the legal department at the Author’s Guild who are tireless in their pursuit of the perpetrators. Given the inter-stellar reach of the internet, however, such theft is not that common or obvious—at least to me. I might find more violations of copyright if I probed deeper into the depths of Google, but I don’t because, in many respects, I’m happy that Google scans my work. Even some blog entries are scanned. And why shouldn’t I be pleased that my blog has readers? I am pleased; I just don’t want my entries to be stolen.

I am always astounded at how fast a piece of published writing goes up onto Google and also how many other women with my name exist, have died, or have a lubricious past. This morning I found a Ziegfeld Follies girl with my name—how dare she—who danced and posed “all wet” in the 1920s. Here’s the link: http://ohshitbacon.tumblr.com/ “Why are you all wet, baby?” the caption reads.

I know that my students Google Me before they decide to take my class though they rarely confess to their sleuthing. Occasionally they let slip a fact—my age, experience, or aching back for example—which they could not have known unless they’d Googled Me, read my blog, or have a friend who has taken my class. I don’t mind any of this, mostly because I can’t do anything about it, and because, as a University Adjunct Associate Professor listed on the University Website hyper-linked to Google, I am a public person. Not famous, but public. In fact, we all are these days—public persons I mean. To what extent we can maintain our privacy remains the challenging issue in the 21st century electronic world, along with copyright, theft, and our sense of humor when we are exposed as “all wet.”

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It’s been a month since I wrote a blog because I have been very busy at the computer every day working on the revision of my book. I had a routine: three to four hours of work in the morning, exercise, or physical therapy, or the chiropractor mid-day, check my email one more time, then shut down the computer for the day. In that way, I was not tempted to sit again for long periods. Even with this half-time schedule, I finished the book.

Now, it’s done, I am waiting for a reply, and refueling. I don’t know yet what my next big project will be and it doesn’t matter. I’m tidying my files, catching up with friends & family, taking long walks, swimming, continuing to heal my back, going to museums, reading a lot, and getting to know my new students. When the editorial notes come in on my draft, I will have a new project going—probably a short one—and I’ll be rested enough to get back to work on the book.

I have a cousin, an artist, who disappears when she is immersed in a project. She doesn’t answer the phone or emails, she doesn’t socialize. She hunkers down and works. Then she surfaces again and reconnects with the material world around her. She works in spurts; the rest of the time she is mulching, storing up ideas, collecting images, traveling and spoiling her grandchildren.

Every artist and writer finds his or her own rhythm and sometimes, because of circumstance, this rhythm may change—because it has to. Some writers who live in the country work in their garden or go for a swim every day. Some work six days a week throughout the year, others only in the mornings. It doesn’t matter how we organize our creative lives so long as we persevere.

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I had nightmares two nights ago after nearly finishing “Zeitoun” by Dave Eggers: http://store.mcsweeneys.net/index.cfm/fuseaction/catalog.detail/object_id/73d53fd3-b86f-42e7-b8d4-7dd6e3a71d78/Zeitoun.cfm. My extremely elderly mother was reading it for her book club the last time I went up to see her. Because she was so upset, I downloaded the book onto my Kindle at her kitchen table and told her I would read it right away. If I’d ordered it from the McSweeney store, the Zeitoun Foundation would have received more of the proceeds. No matter, at least part of the payment to Amazon will go to the Zeitoun Foundation and be distributed to reputable NGO’s working to rebuild New Orleans.

"Zeitoun" is a masterful work of collaborative nonfiction writing, the subjects and the reporter working together to create an accurate narrative. The narrator/reporter, Dave Eggers, is entirely invisible and the prose is under-stated. It is reminiscent of John Hersey’s “Hiroshima” and just as compelling. “Hiroshima” was published in The New Yorker magazine in August 1946, a year after World War II ended. The article was based on Hersey’s interviews with atomic bomb survivors. Hersey recorded oral histories from the victims and shaped them into readable prose. He gave the victims a voice. Eggers has done the same with a New Orleans family who survived the Katrina disaster. The story of how Eggers found the family and the three-year process of creating the book can be read here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/07/dave-eggers-zeitoun-hurricane-katrina.

I suggest you read the interview with Eggers—or others available on the internet—after you have finished the book as the dramatic tension does not abate until the last section. The reader lives the story with the Zeitouns in real-time as the events unfold again in the telling.

Over the years, Dave Eggers has become a writer of conscience whose work has a socially useful purpose. Such writing can often become simplistic, over-written, stereotyped, or polemical. But the masters of the form--Hersey, Eggers, Norman Mailer, Dillard and many others, avoid these pitfalls with a carefully constructed narrative persona, a reporter who remains in the background yet, ironically, is felt keenly by the reader as an empathic presence.

I remember talking once to Jonathan Kwitny, a Wall Street Journal reporter who wrote a book I was reviewing called "Endless Enemies: Americas Worldwide War Against Its Own Best Interests." Kwitny had served in the Peace Corps in Africa and he returned there as a mature reporter. I asked him why the horrific stories he was telling felt so understated and his reply was—and I paraphrase here—that he wanted to give the reader a chance to breathe and to feel his own emotions. Dave Eggers has done the same.  Read More 

Sometimes, when I have a piece published—fiction or nonfiction or poetry—my first instinct is to send everyone I know a link and to sit back and hope they’ll reply instantaneously and acknowledge the brilliance of the prose (or poetry), to acknowledge that I am a wonderful writer (and person), and that there is no other writer they would rather read in the midst of their busy lives, or that what I have written resonated so deeply with their own experience that they are immensely grateful I have written it. I am still surprised when friends and family comment on what I have published in a negative way. Often, they will ask if I mind if they say something—a rhetorical question—though what this something is may be hurtful, insensitive or intrusive. Or they will praise the piece beyond its worth insincerely and then offer an interpretation of the deep subconscious meaning of the story based on what they know of my struggles and biography. This, I find, many people do with relish. Indeed, I do it myself with authors I read and don’t know because I love to read biographies of writers. But I don’t do it with writer friends I know. I leave that analysis to the pundits of future generations.

Recently, when I had a mildly autobiographical short story published in a worthy online magazine, I sent it round to friends and family and sat back and waited for the adoration and adulation I deserve. A few people said they enjoyed the story and that it was well written. Of course, I already knew that; it had been accepted for publication. One or two mentioned a typo or two or a more serious punctuation snafu. These comments were nitpicky and unhelpful. No writer requires correction after a piece has been published. What are people trying to say to me with these nitpicky comments? I am not sure but I think, in some way, I have made them uneasy and the nitpicky comments are a cover. If they have more courage, they will make comments about the underlying unconscious treasure trove from which the story was surely born. Even the literary nonfiction and journalism I write invites such comments. All this, after publication. I never show friends and family a draft in development. Their unfettered editorial voices might stop me cold.

I am always a bit stunned when a student begins a sentence with, “I read this draft to my boyfriend on the phone last night,” or “I showed it to my mother.” Albeit, there are many writing couples who share their work and are able to critique one another’s work—Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer come to mind—but that kind of relationship is rare.

It’s not that the people close to us, people in our lives, can’t be supportive, encouraging and nurturing of our efforts. It’s that they are too close, they are usually not writers, and they cannot help us develop the potential in our work. Or they may be writers but cannot see the work—your work—as separate from your biography. That is why every writer requires readers and, later, editors. And these readers have to be other writers or readers who are not familiar with our biography. The work has to stand on its own so that we can study it and revise it well on our own.

So, when a piece is done and I’ve sent it round, what do I want from my close circle of family friends? What is fair to expect? Truly, I don’t know. Yet, I keep sending my published work to family and friends most of the time. And then sometimes I don’t, for all the reasons iterated above.

I am reminded of an anecdote about Georgia O’Keeffe. Tired of the barrage of analysis about her paintings of flowers—they were often compared to vaginas—she shifted to skulls.  Read More