Ponder Review submitted my piece “David’s Crossing,” about my father emigrating from Poland to America as a boy, to the nominating committee for the Pushcart Prize in creative nonfiction. Read more in MEMOIR.
Pushcart Prize Nomination
Month: November 2019
Reality and Authenticity in the Arts
In his profile of director Todd Haynes, critic John Lahr writes “When Haynes was in eleventh grade, his film teacher, Chris Adams, told him ‘that films shouldn’t be judged on how they conveyed reality, that films were not about reality.’ Cinema was a trick, almost like Renaissance perspective: a two-dimensional event that represented three-dimensionality; it created the sense of direct, unmediated life, whereas, in fact, everything in it was mediated. The notion, Haynes said, was ‘a revelation to me.’ He began to interrogate our ‘endless presumptions about reality and authenticity.’” (“The Director’s Cut: How Todd Haynes rewrites the Hollywood playbook” by John Lahr, The New Yorker, 11/11/19, p. 57). I think this observation also applies to writing fiction. The author’s challenge is to make readers experience a highly mediated story as a direct and real event. As a writer, I bend reality to my “narrative will” so that fact and fiction are equally plausible and hence achieve authenticity. For more of my thoughts about writing, see REFLECTIONS.
Learn History Through Fiction: Wages Not Rosy for Rosie the Riveter
As men went off to fight in WWII, women were hired to replace them in the defense industry. Although the iconic poster of “Rosie the Riveter” is fixed in our minds, she was one of many women in manufacturing jobs. Rosie and her peers accounted for as much as 80% of the labor force in some factories. As valuable as they were, however, women were paid far less than men: $31.50 versus $54.65 per week on average. After the war, women were expected to return home and resume their roles as housewives. Read more about Detroit’s Rosie the Riveter and WWII in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve., a fictional biography of the actor who played the Munchkin Coroner in The Wizard of Oz (see NOVELS).
The Minnesota Review to Publish “Poppies Journal”
My short story “Poppies Journal” has been accepted for publication in The Minnesota Review (November 2020, Issue 95). Here is the log line: In “Poppies Journal,” a preschool teacher observes children at play. Is the troubling behavior she records in the classroom notes an indication of their disturbed minds, or hers? Read more in SHORT STORIES.
Learn History Through Fiction: Small, Strange, Animals
By 1900, the majority of men in Manhattan over 21 were foreign-born. Those coming ashore at Ellis Island were no longer from Northern Europe, but Eastern and Southern Europe and the Russian Empire. Nor were they Protestants, but Jews, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox. Nativist Americans, alarmed by the influx, favored mass deportations. Novelist Henry James, reflecting public sentiment, wrote of his disgust with “swarming” Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side, who reminded him of “small, strange animals … snakes or worms.” Read more about anti-immigrant sentiment a century ago in On the Shore (see NOVELS).
Learn History Through Fiction: Shortage of Coffins After Historic Factory Fire
After the 1911 Triangle Waist Company fire, which killed 146 workers, police asked the morgue for 75 to 100 coffins but only 65 were available. A steamship traveled from the Bronx to Manhattan’s East River to pick up 200 coffins from the carpentry shop of Metropolitan Hospital on Blackwell Island and delivered them to the morgue. Read more grisly details about the aftermath of the fire in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
What I’m Reading: Five Days Gone by Laura Cumming
My Amazon and Goodreads review of Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother’s Disappearance as a Child (Rating 3) – A Wordy Book About a Taciturn Town. In Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother’s Disappearance as a Child, Laura Cumming sets out to solve the intriguing mystery of her mother’s brief abduction at age three. Her mother did not learn of the incident for decades. Nor was she told she was adopted until ten years after her disappearance. About both instances, her parents were close-mouthed, as was the entire village. Cumming seeks to uncover the facts of the kidnapping, and more challenging, to learn why the townsfolk remained so taciturn. She therefore goes into great detail about the rural English landscape and historical setting, details which interest Cumming as she investigates her roots, but won’t engage readers because they fail to explain the silence. We are also introduced to many characters, who are hard to keep straight because many don’t come to life on the page. As a fiction writer who extensively researches my books (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I’ve learned to only include information that furthers character and plot development. Cumming is too self-absorbed to pare down her narrative. Because her mother (and father) were artists, she draws analogies between famous paintings or photos and people and scenes in her search. Some succeed; too many are forced. Most disappointing, while Cumming paints a loving and sympathetic portrait of her mother, readers don’t emerge with any deep insights into why, decades hence, the community still refuses to talk.
Learn History Through Fiction: Searching for Graves After the Armistice
Six months after the Armistice that ended World War I on November 11, 1919, when travel restrictions to former conflict zones were finally lifted, 60,000 people, most of them women, journeyed to find where their loved ones were buried. For many of the 8.5 million soldiers who died, the place and date of death remain unknown to this day. One British woman, who found her husband’s grave in the Somme said, “I have tried to think of it, and of him in it, and of what hell looks like. But I never imagined such loneliness and dreadfulness and sadness.” Read more about WWI and the women left behind in On the Shore (see NOVELS).
Learn History Through Fiction: 800-Year-Old “Stitchcraft”
In Assisi embroidery, a beautiful old Italian needlework tradition, the background is stitched while the main motifs are only outlined. Outlines are black or brown, while red, blue, green, or gold thread is used for the background. Motifs feature symmetrical pairs of animals and birds surrounded by ornate filigree borders. The style dates to the 13th and 14th century, fell into disuse in the 18th and 19th century, and was revived at the turn of 20th century. A modern version of Assisi embroidery has been evolving in the 21st century, using many different colors, patterns, and motifs. However, the revived traditional version is still carried on in the town of Assisi where one can see local women sitting in front of their houses and stitching items for the local co-operative embroidery shop. Read how an Italian immigrant learned the technique from her grandmother (“nonna”) over a century ago in the historical novel Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
A BRAIN. A HEART. THE NERVE. Praise and Editors’ Choice Award from Historical Novel Review
The Historical Novel Review of A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve., which HNR selected as an Editors’ Choice, is now online. The magazine, a quarterly publication of the Historical Novel Society, typically reviews 250-300 books per issue, so I’m thrilled to be singled out for this recognition. The review concludes, “Epstein’s ability to create such a believable story demonstrates her skill as a novelist. Highly recommended.” Here’s the link to the full HNR review and you can read more about A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. in NOVELS.