Carol Bergman

My Kindle just celebrated her first birthday. She’s all grown up with nearly a hundred books in her library, several read and stacked away in the archive. Oh how she loves books. I downloaded three in one night as a present for her. She was pleased and so was I.

We have established a solid relationship, close to a symbiotic tie, I’d say. In fact, so coupled are we, that I sometimes need “space.” Much to her dismay, I’ll read a book from my still over-tall 3D TBR stack. Then I’ll return to her. She never berates or judges, complains that she has missed me, or that I have neglected her. How fortunate I am. And how guilty I feel when I shut her out for a few days. I didn’t tell her, for example, about the sensory deprivation I’ve been feeling of late or my trip to Barnes & Noble last week. It was her birthday; I didn’t want her to be upset. I felt guilty and disloyal. I wandered the store without a clear purpose. No, not true. I did have a purpose. One of the birthday presents I’d downloaded was Marilynne Robinson’s “Home.” The prose is poetic so I wanted to slow down. This is a bit hard for me to do on my Kindle. I don’t know why.

And I missed the paper, the smell of the paper, the artwork on the cover, the turn of the page. I rushed to Barnes & Noble like an addict to her dealer, an alcoholic to her bar. I picked up the book and bought it. Ecstasy.

So now I have the book in two places: on the Kindle and in my hand. Please, Kindle, forgive me. And Happy Birthday.


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I ran into a former student at the gym yesterday. I asked him about his trip, remembering he was going to London when the class was over last term. But he corrected me and said he had had two trips: one to London, one to the Galapagos. He’s taking a memoir class this term because he likes to try different teachers, but he wanted me to know, “nothing personal, you were good.” Much as I appreciated the compliment, I knew it wasn’t personal and didn’t take it personally. Then I had a strange thought, more like a flash of observation: “He’s 80 if he’s a day and he has all the time in the world.”

Most of the students who take my workshops are young, a few are middle-aged, a few are what we call “seniors.” The mix is important for many reasons: the youngsters provide energy and drive, the oldsters unhurried wisdom and wry humor. It’s the unhurried part I’m thinking about after my encounter at the gym yesterday as so many of my (younger) students are in a hurry to get unfinished, underdeveloped copy into the marketplace. I include myself, not that I am younger, but I am a professional trying to make a living, in a hurry to get projects moving. To make the writing better, stronger and deeper, however, I know that I have to slow down. For me, that means getting off the computer and working in long hand or spending a few thoughtful days refueling and not writing much at all except in my journals and notebooks. All with pen in hand, slowly, slowly.

I remember working on a revision of a story in a hotel room in Ann Arbor, Michigan some years ago. My business there was finished—I was taking my daughter on the college tour. I had wanted to get back to New York before the weekend, but I couldn’t change our flight without a steep penalty, so we decided to stay. My daughter had homework to do and I had the manuscript of a short story in development. I didn’t have a laptop with me, just the manuscript, so I hunkered down, took walks, sat in cafes, walked again, roamed in bookstores, walked with my daughter, had long talks with my daughter. It was almost like a retreat. We were both completely slowed down and so relaxed we got a lot done.

The story, “My Ellipsis,” was one of the shortest and best I’ve ever written, every word, every sentence considered. It got published quickly. Read More 

A sequence of severe storms has hit the Atlantic seaboard this week and this morning, as I write, there are power outages in several counties in upstate New York. The city was a mess yesterday, with lakes at every crossing, but it was still possible to get around. New Yorkers are known for their "can do” approach to life. We make do as best we can and press on.

And so I should not be surprised to find the most unusual people with seemingly desperate disabilities working out at the gym and/or swimming in the pool. I was in the fast lane the other day when I noticed a woman bobbing about in the slow lane next to me. Then she walked up the steps and I saw that she had only one arm, amputated well into the shoulder socket. Later, I met her in the locker room; we shared the same bench. I felt terrible because I could not stop staring at her as she struggled to get dressed and I wanted to say something about her bravery and fortitude. But all I said was, “I hope you had a good swim,” which is all I should have said anyway. She was shy, said she’d had a good swim, and that was the end of the conversation. Then I remembered that the previous week I had met another woman in the locker room who seemed to be struggling as she got dressed. She was more talkative and I had no idea she was blind until she pulled out her white cane. Two women, both with disabilities, both swimmers, one more talkative than the other, both living their lives to the full in the city.

So I suppose this is a moral tale, or a fable with an embedded moral. We all have wounds of one sort our another. Some are visible to others, some are not Some are more disabling than others. Most of us heal our wounds as best we can, and then carry on regardless. Writers have to do the same, and then some. We have to use our wounds as energy to write and we have to press on past our vulnerabilities. It takes a certain courage to do this—I’ve written about courage in this blog before—and it takes time.

My workshop at NYU has just started and, during the first class, students are often furtive about why they want to take a writing workshop. They’ve battened down their hatches against the winds surging inside them. They don’t feel safe in a room of strangers—who would?—and don’t understand the workshop method as yet. This timidity usually continues past the first submission and into the third week of class. After that, it dissipates.
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I’ve started reading Tony Judt’s “Postwar” and am impressed with his use of statistics in the first chapter. It reminds me of Harper’s Index with its cumulative power except that Judt embeds the statistics in a narrative and has a strong narrative persona and point of view.

Though the writing of history has changed a great deal in recent years—like all nonfiction, it’s much less omniscient—I wasn’t surprised to learn that Judt is British. He has a point of view and, as the diplomats say, he’s transparent about it.

I lived in Britain for a decade and worked as a journalist there. Though by reputation, it’s a more reticent culture, it is, in fact, a more open society in many respects. My observations and opinions, as an American outsider, were valued and sought. I learned to express them courageously. The producers and editors I worked with all had a strong point of view. It’s not that they worked deductively from a hypothesis, but that they interpreted and contextualized the facts. I was always told that it’s not enough to say something happened; we have to report on the meaning and importance of what happened.

Any facts we choose to include in a story are, by definition, skewed to our own perception and point of view. There’s no other way to frame a story because we are writing it. It’s much more honest—and the writing is better—if we disclaim our point of view in some way. Judt does this with the intensity of the phraseology he uses and his word choices. He’s a fine writer.

When I returned to the US, I had to shift my reporting into a strange, anodyne neutrality. It’s a lie, it doesn’t exist. The pressures of a market driven broadcast and print media creates this unreality. Personally, I think it’s a great danger in a democracy where it’s essential to remain informed and have informed opinions. The internet is an antidote and, though corroboration is a problem there, and anyone can sound off in a blog, there are also many responsible sites and online magazines.
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I began memorizing poems last spring and have, to date, memorized eight poems, most of them short, one quite long (“Daffodils” by William Wordsworth), all of them chosen for their linguistic beauty. I find it easiest to tackle two lines at a time though sometimes I work on the entire verse if that makes more sense to me. I let my brain decide. I carry a hard copy of the poem around with me while I am working on it and, when I think I’ve got it down, I paste the poem into my Common Book ( a book of quotations).

It’s a very pleasurable exercise for several reasons: 1./ Like meditation, it keeps me firmly in the moment. If I let my mind drift ahead, I forget the line I’m reciting. 2./ I feel close to the poet’s process. I’ve memorized two of Emily Dickinson’s poems, for example. I remember well being asked in junior high school to read some of her poems. I didn’t understand a word of them and, in college, thought them trite and simple. Not true. I now understand her genius. I’ve traced the lines she encoded with my mind and it’s as though I am encoding them with her. I suppose this is similar to an art student re-creating a masterpiece as an exercise. And 3./ Poems slow me down and insist on attention to detail in a small space. This is good discipline for a prose writer. (For the record, I do write poetry myself , and have even had some published but, for some reason, do not consider myself a poet.)

Which leads me to visual vs. auditory streams. In my experience, most poets “think” in images and hold words and lines in their heads with ease as they declaim them. I have memorized poems by writing them out numerous times, and then trying to recite them. Though I assume I have learned the poem, I stumble. That’s because I need the visual cue to continue. If I write the line and then say it, I’m okay. But if I have no paper and pen to hand, I don’t do as well.

I asked a neuroscientist friend about this and she said that my auditory stream is weak and that, if I want to strengthen it, I have to memorize the poem by ear, not by sight.

I thought about this for a while and wondered if it makes any difference to me. It doesn’t. Any way I commit the poems to memory is fine with me. Very fine indeed. Read More 

I do not usually blow hard in my blog but blow I must this morning. A Haitian-American student of mine lost her niece and her best friend. And that’s all she knows right now and she is just one person. Two relief worker friends are on their way to Haiti—both contributors to my book, “Another Day in Paradise.” They were packing suitcases last night and getting their affairs in order, saying goodbye to loved ones, as we were all watching the Golden Globes. The real world—not ersatz reality shows—is drama enough.

I had watched “The Hurt Locker” yesterday afternoon and then turned on the Golden Globes for relaxation but it was so insipid I could not relax. However, I do have to thank Nicole Kidman. When she appeared, she immediately pointed to her Haiti ribbon and said a few words about donation and George Clooney’s telethon. The MC—name soon lost into oblivion—had not even mentioned Haiti and was drinking beer. George Clooney did decide to come despite overwhelming preparations for his telethon, someone said. Alec Baldwin was not there; he was at a charity event in Canada. Thank you.

It was a sparkly, gazillion dollar affair, nearly pornographic in its disregard of the human suffering just south of our borders.

I had not made my money contribution as yet. My relief worker friends had suggested Doctors Without Borders or the American Red Cross. Both organizations are solid and well established in Haiti. So many people do want to help that the situation on the ground can be very chaotic with so many NGO’s turning up. So, best to go with the established organizations.

I donated to Internews this morning: http://www.internews.org/ I had heard their CEO on NPR talking about the media infrastructure in Haiti—there are/were about 40 radio stations in that small spit of land—and citizens rely on them for accurate information. Knowledge is power in such a catastrophe and helps to sustain civil society which is fast collapsing in an already collapsed, impoverished country.

If I could pray I would pray for the survivors in Haiti. At the very least, I wish them all courage and fortitude as they rebuild their country.

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It’s not unusual for biographers to take ten years to research and write a book. They are patient and meticulous people who, in my experience, have smaller egos than the writers they are studying. Yet, the books they write often become seminal and long lasting, referred to, with thanks, by subsequent biographers, and glued to the shelves in every literary scholar’s library for as long as the shelves remain standing.

I’ve just finished reading Carol Sklenicka’s outstanding biography of Raymond Carver and went to hear her speak at a Barnes & Noble in New York on January 4th. She began the project ten years ago when she was teaching freshman composition at Marquette University. She liked Carver’s stories and searched for a biography of him, but there was none. And so she got to work. She interviewed everyone still alive who knew him, read all the archival material, and all the extant drafts of the stories and poems.

In a way, it is a miracle that Raymond Carver created a body of work that is so memorable and so important in the history of the American short story. He was very ill with alcohol for much of his writing life and, when he got sober in 1977, he kept himself medicated with marijuana. But he was also driven and disciplined, more so, of course, when he got sober and then met the poet, Tess Gallagher, who became his second wife. They were a productive writing couple to the end of Carver’s too-short life. She now controls his literary estate.

As for the biographer herself, she’s a very good writer. The book is a page turner and reads like a novel. All the sordid details—pernicious alcoholism, abandonment of Carver’s first wife and children in his will, the “usurpation” of Carver’s early stories by his Esquire editor, Gordon Lish—are in the book, as well as a clear analysis of the stories themselves. Was he a minimalist? A dirty realist? No, Sklenicka says, a better word would be “precisionist.”

The collected stories have now been re-issued on acid free paper in a Modern Library edition. I’ve bought it for my “physical” library. Many are the original worked versions of the stories before Gordon Lish appropriated them. I’m reading one a day and savoring their genius. Carol Sklenicka’s book is also by my side, in my Kindle.


http://www.amazon.com/Raymond-Carver-Writers-Carol-Sklenicka/dp/074326245X

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As predicted, it was snowing in New York this morning, but it was not cold and the snow soon turned to slush. I took the subway to Times Square and walked east past the neon signs and the tourists towards Bryant Park, and around the corner onto Fifth Avenue. The demonstration on the steps of the New York Public Library was set to begin at 11 a.m. and I was a few minutes late. American PEN had already set up a small white, protective canopy, chairs, a microphone, and speakers. A small PEN audience, bundled in winter gear, listened attentively as Edward Albee, Dan Delillo, E.L. Doctorow, Jessica Hagedorn, and Honor Moore, among others, read excerpts from Liu Xiaobo’s poetry, the text of Charter 08: “We should end the practice of viewing words as crimes,” and the indictment by the court that sentenced Liu Xiaobo to eleven years in prison.

It was more like a vigil than a demonstration. We held signs with words from Charter 08. We held signs with the words: “Free Liu Xiaobo.” The press recorded the event--the speakers and the audience holding signs. When it was over, a mere thirty minutes later, a delegation walked to the Chinese Mission to hand in a letter.



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I’m interrupting the Happy Holidays to write a blog entry about Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s most prominent writers and a past president and member of the Independent Chinese PEN center. After a show trial, he’s been sentenced to eleven years in prison for co-authoring Charter O8, a petition calling for political and human rights reforms in China, and for seven sentences in five articles he published on the internet that are critical of Chinese authorities.

He was sentenced on Christmas day. Maybe the powers-that-be in China thought that the Western World would not be watching. They were mistaken.

I’m trying to imagine what it must be like for a writer who has done nothing wrong—other than to write what is in his heart and mind—to be incarcerated in a Chinese prison. But I can’t imagine it, not really. It’s a bitterly cold day as I write but I’m warm, sitting at my desk, my computer humming. Access to the internet is instantaneous and unfettered. No one is trying to shut me down. No one is trying to shut this website down. I’m not a dissident, I’m a writer. In China, almost by definition, writers are dissidents.

It’s not a pretty picture.

A few years ago, a book I complied and edited, “Another Day in Paradise; International Humanitarian Workers Tell Their Stories,” was published in China. When my agent first told me the news, I thought it was good news. But then I got worried. What if the book is censored or gets someone into trouble and they end up in jail? I asked. My agent reassured me that this would not happen. How could she know for sure? When it was suggested that I might like to travel to China to publicize the book, I refused. In fact, I won’t set foot on Chinese soil until all writers and other dissidents are released from jail. The Chinese government needs to shape up. Their actions are unconscionable.

Thursday is New Year’s Eve Day and American PEN is celebrating by organizing a vigil for Liu Xiaobo somewhere in midtown Manhattan. Snow is forecast but it makes no difference. I'll be there.

For more information about Liu Xiaobo:

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/December2009/24/c5709.html

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It's the end of the year and the one year "anniversary" of this blog. I'm in the midst of editing my murder mystery, "Say Nothing," which I hope to have finished before the new term begins in early February. It's hard work but also enjoyable. I went through the manuscript top to bottom last week and now have started another round of close, line by line editing. Working from my editor's notes and suggestions, I am trying to complete one chapter a day, at least. I'm elaborating description, trying to make some structural changes, and correcting grammatical and punctuation errors. Much to my surprise, many of my sentences in the first drafts were fragments. I think this is because I was trying to write very colloquial dialogue, closer to clipped, telegraphic speech. Or, maybe, I had the noir novels in mind, those tough characters who mumble tough, telegraphic sentences. But I am also certain that I am unconsciously influenced by the sound-byte literary culture we live in. I don't text but I do email a lot. I wish I had time for long, discursive, narrative emails all the time, but I don't. And the speed and dexterity of the email medium is corrosive. I have known this for a long time and talk about it to my workshop all the time. But I didn't think fragmentary communication had affected me at all. I was wrong. It has. And I've got a lot of work to do on the novel to make it sing rather than lurch along. Wish me bon chance and have a good holiday.  Read More