The New LITTLE WOMEN movie: 8 Quibbles & 14 Rejoicings

My first copy. (Circa we-won't-say,
but see that price in the corner?)

All Very Much in My Own Passionate, if Not Terribly Professional, Opinion

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I had to bust the Wuthering Yankee blog open again, because I've been watching the new movie version of Little Women, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, and find I have a lot to say.

Since I was 9 and devoured my first copy of Little Women -- an abbreviated paperback version that my parents, with excellent foresight and intuition, bought for me at an elementary school book fair -- I've been obsessed with the novel and, in turn, with the movies that get made of it. 

Here's what I thought of Gerwig's 2019 version.

Quibbles:

1. Marmee's hair: Come on. She's (at the very least) in her mid 40s by the second half of the story, and still her hair is completely, vividly blond. 

AND she wears it down in long lush ringlets over her shoulders. I don't care how much one wants to update the Little Women story (more on this later), Marmee should NOT look like Little Bo Beep.

2. Jo's hair. (Yes, I know: I'm also somewhat obsessed with hair.) I have a subset of quibbles. 

First, Jo has to have dark eyes and hair. She just does. Her darkness is part of her character. It's also part of what makes her a foil for Amy (blond and blue-eyed, more conventionally pretty). 

Pre-Raphaelite hair

Second, I don't buy the whole pre-Raphaelite look for Jo in her mid-20s. No self-respecting middle-class 25-year-old raised by Marmee would run around town with her hair hanging down to her butt. It looks beautiful -- Saoirse Ronan looks beautiful -- but that wild free hair for a young adult is not in keeping with one of the novel's themes: that of growing up and in some ways having to conform to society's expectations. (There's a whole narrative line in the novel about how Jo resents having to wear her hair up once she leaves girlhood behind.)

3. On that note: I don't buy Jo going to a beer hall on her own, much less dancing at it with a bunch of men she doesn't know, as she does in one of the early Mr. Bhaer scenes. I think what Gerwig was trying to do here was use a shortcut to show Jo's relationship to Mr. Bhaer -- look, Jo DOES have fun with him sometimes, even though he's usually such a stick in the mud! -- but again, I don't buy it for this character, in this time and place. (See: self-respecting young women raised by Marmee, above.)

4. Much has already been made of how hot THIS Mr. Bhaer is. And while I as much as anyone enjoyed glimpsing him when he flashed across the screen (Louis Garrel IS freaking hot), this guy is so different from the middle-aged, rather ill-kempt German professor of the novel, Gerwig's casting of Garrel seems like a joke. And maybe it WAS a joke. In one interview, Gerwig has said, "How is this different from all those movies where the supposedly unattractive or nerdy girl is really a bombshell wearing glasses?" (I paraphrase.) I take Gerwig's point, but still: Mr. Bhaer's hotness and general metrosexual sophistication in this version kept distracting me, so different was he from the novel. 

I mean, come ON.

Also, if Bhaer is supposed to be a deliberately DIFFERENT choice of partner for Jo than Laurie is -- if Bhaer is supposed to have a gravitas and world-weariness that Laurie lacks (which, in the novel, IS part of what makes him a more appealing partner for Jo), then this casting fails on that level, too.

5. Speaking of Mr. Bhaer, why in this movie (hot though he is), does he appear so very briefly? He's in a couple of scenes at the very beginning and then does not show up again for, seriously, 2 hours. Because his character is barely developed, we have no idea why Jo would fall for this guy (other than, again, his looks -- but that shouldn't be a leading reason for Jo; she's got much more depth than that). I've heard at least one reviewer suggest that Bhaer is, in this movie version, very deliberately a deus ex machina -- dropped in at the last minute like a glamorous hero, since this reflects what Louisa May Alcott (and Jo, as this movie version has it) was forced by her publisher to do with the Mr. Bhaer-and-Jo plot.

6. A lesser quibble, but still: I was distracted during Laurie’s cri de coeur on the windswept hillside where Jo rejects him. Jo mentions how proud she is that he’s graduated college, and Laurie throws into his plea that he’s tried hard to be a good man for Jo – has given up billiards, for example. But where was this coming from? It’s the first we’ve heard that Laurie has even BEEN in college. Or that Jo has been a redeeming influence on him. These are indeed elements of their relationship in the novel, but in this movie version, viewers see none of that backstory -- don’t experience a second of it. (I do get it that the movie already runs over 2 hours, long by today’s standards unless your last name is Scorsese. Surely Gerwig had to make some tough choices about what story lines to cut.)

Post (or pre?) cri de coeur.

 7. Also a lesser quibble, because I really like Laura Dern, but I wish someone (Gerwig) would have calmed Dern's acting down a little. In some scenes she came across as too giggly and giddy for Marmee's character. When Laurie first meets her, for example, Marmee comes bouncing out of the kitchen with her skirts hitched up to her knees and babbles about how she likes to bake at midnight. (Believable? Even remotely grounded in the novel’s characterization of Marmee? Uh, NO.)

8. Finally. When a letter must be read in a movie, and the director chooses to have the letter-writing character face the camera, delivering said letter as a monologue? Squiiiiirrrrm. I just can’t.*

Rejoicings:

1. Development of the Amy and Laurie relationship! Yeeessss! Even as a 9-year-old child falling head over heels for this novel, I always liked Amy best (here’s my argument about Amy that the New Yorker saw fit to publish). Nothing could have made my child self happier than to see her and Laurie’s slowly evolving romance, once they are both set free in Europe. In the novel, Alcott treats Amy and Laurie’s development from childhood friends to serious and well-suited partners with respect; she gives their relationship several chapters, which were always (still are) my favorite bits. Here, finally, is a film version of Little Women that does the same.

 

Yeeeesss!!!

2. Everyone’s saying this, too, but let me gladly jump on the bandwagon: OMG, Florence Pugh as Amy! She’s magnificent. Pugh inhabited the character both as a 12-year-old child and as a 20-year-old woman, which strikes me as almost a miracle of acting. Also just very lucky for viewers, because it’s so distracting when you have to switch actresses halfway through (as the 1994 film version does).

3. The clothes! Such tactility and variety – of pattern, of color, of texture. Such fun layerings, and so fun to look at. Also I liked how the clothes were part of the character development: Jo’s beautiful writing jacket told us that she expected glory; Amy’s clothes in Europe said she was learning style and sophistication; Meg’s clothes as a young wife and mother said she was struggling financially. And Beth was always in purple, I think as a sign of her quirkiness – which this movie version developed in ways I really loved. (More on this soon. Right below.)

Such fun clothes. 

 4. Eliza Scanlen in the role of Beth. As she’s a notoriously quiet character, Beth is always a quieter role, and I’ve never thought actresses in this role before were given much room to DO anything with her. But Scanlen actually made Beth funny for the first time I know of. This Beth gives frequent little muttered asides, and I loved her occasional explosions of opinion. (When Meg asks, “What color eyes do you like?” Beth shoots back, “Purple!”) Scanlen took Beth off the saint pedestal, and made Beth awkward in an appealing, gently humorous way – because this Beth actually has a strong personality, which doesn’t quite express itself in conventional forms.

They're as cute as pie, John and Meg at their wedding.
(But again with the HAIR. I am reminded of my hippie aunts
and uncles who got married in my parents' back yard
when I was a kid.)

5. I also liked Emma Watson in the role of Meg. Of all four sisters, Meg’s is the least dramatic / most traditional story arc, but Watson (and Gerwig, writing and directing) made her story feel equally alive and important. Seemingly small moments in Meg's life were given nice weight, and Watson showed us Meg’s guilt and frustration over the dress she wants but can’t afford as she discusses it with John. And I felt her mixed weariness and affection for her kids when she sits in her doorway at the end of a long day. (A shout-out to Gerwig for letting Meg continue to be a character with her own story line, post-marriage. Other film versions have pretty much shoved Meg off the screen once she marries.)

6. The physicality – the physical energy and expression of the main characters. Up to a point. I do think they overdid this with Marmee kicking up her heels in some scenes. And speaking of kicking up one’s heels, Timotheé Chalamet’s physicality may likewise have been a bit over the top – though Chalamet seems to be such a sprite or grasshopper or hyper-animated Gumby, I wonder if he COULD move without semi-levitating each time. 

But I generally did like the physical verve of the 2019 characters. Yes, the punching and running and tussling is more than they would really have done in the 1860s, but hey, you have to update certain things. A classic always stands to be refreshed, rejuvenated. The physicality, I thought, gave new overall energy to what CAN become a story too easily sanctified or preserved in amber. (Perhaps that’s one definition of a classic: that it can be made anew for different times. Its frame still holds, while smaller adaptations can be made inside it.)*

You believe them as a
family, don't you?
(I did.)

7. As for re-energizing an old-fashioned story: I love (LOVE!) that Gerwig used swathes of dialogue taken directly from the novel, but also sped it up – had people speak slightly over each other or interrupt each other. This renders dialogue more like real familial conversation. It also keeps the dialogue alive – keeps it from sounding too stiff or stodgy, as the novel itself, in these late days, is somewhat in danger of sounding.

8. The cutting between time frames – between the girl’s late childhood / adolescence and their young womanhood. (Or, to speak of the novel, between Part I and Part II of Little Women.) As someone who in my own childhood drank this novel down like a cherry lemon vanilla Sundrop (which is to say, many times), I can’t speak to how disorienting this structure may feel to someone who does not already know the story, but personally I loved it. (And hey, if you’re confused, you can always just pay attention to the lighting – to the warm golden color used for childhood, the cooler grays and blues used for growing up.) 

The movement between time frames uncovered deep resonances in the novel. It also underlines the movement between childhood and adulthood – what is gained, what is lost, in that transition – which is the heart of the book.

My first unabridged copy of the novel --
which I read 9 times, the year I was 9.

9. The ambiguity of the ending, which raises the question: Must a woman choose between being a serious artist and having her own family?** Louisa May Alcott did. She also resisted her editor’s request to make Jo marry by the end of the novel, though Alcott did eventually acquiesce on this point. I liked the way the movie sets those two choices – those two potential life paths –side by side, and celebrates both equally.

10. Speaking of which—the writing and bookmaking scenes! Usually (like anyone else whose heart is not made of stone) I cry when Beth dies. In this movie version, however, what moved me to tears was Jo falling asleep on top of her novel’s spread-out pages, and then Jo watching her novel be physically made, at the end. What a beautiful, tactile valorization of the printed word! And of the arduous work that goes into a book’s production.

Oh, Christian Bale!

11. No one will ever be as perfect in the role of Laurie as Christian Bale was in the 1994 version. (You can argue about this with me, but I will never agree. Plus, he looks like Dave!) But I did appreciate how Timothée Chalamet made Laurie so boyish and playful in the childhood scenes. He and Jo were like puppies together, and you could see and believe they were good friends but not, after all, potential partners. Also I appreciated that there was no self-indulgent kissing scene between him and Jo as there was in the ’94 version. (Bale’s kiss with Winona Ryder as Jo was much hotter than his later kiss with Samantha Mathis as Amy, which was irritating and also showed up the poor casting / writing of the adult Amy character in that version.)

12. I did like Saoirse Ronan as Jo. But a strawberry blond, blue-eyed Jo? How hard would it have been to have slapped a wig and some contact lenses on Saoirse and still let her do her awesome thing? (Highlights of her awesomeness: her speech about independence and loneliness to Marmee, in the attic; her intelligent, good-humored sparring with her book’s editor.)

13. I’m glad Greta Gerwig gave weight to Jo and Beth’s connection. I loved the scenes at the seashore where they confront Beth’s serious illness together – and yet, to a certain extent, still maintain their sisterly playfulness. (It was another moment that allowed Beth to be a more well-rounded character than I’ve seen in earlier versions.) And I found the last shot of Jo and Beth on the shore, with the sand blowing around them, to be lovely and poignant. Am also glad that Gerwig didn’t give Beth too many noble speeches about dying.

A happy childhood.

14. Finally – yes, finally! – the film does an artful, subtle job of threading this central theme through the story: the beauty of a happy childhood, the necessity of but also the resistance to leaving such a childhood behind, and the struggle to make that transition, to face the choices that accompany it.

Brava to Gerwig (the Golden Globes people should be ashamed of themselves for not nominating her writing and her directing -- they really should) and to her cast and crew. I hope they all the Oscars.

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* I realize this is an accepted device in movie-making, and perhaps it works sometimes, though I can't off the top of my head think of any instances where I have loved it. 

**How can I be okay with all the anachronistic physical tussling but still quibble about Marmee and Jo’s hair? It has to do with categories, and making consistent choices within those categories. There is, for example, the category of how people are costumed and how sets are designed—whether the movie has decided to try to stay true to the times of the actual setting (New England, 1860s)  or to play about with those conventions. This movie takes or approximates an historically accurate approach to clothes and furniture and so on. Thus, the weird hairstyle choices really stick out.

***The movie’s ending raises this question but then leaves the answer quite open.

An Ode to England

Dave and me, March 2017

Just off Palace Green, in Durham

I intended this blog as a reflection on life in another country -- specifically England, where Dave and I've made our home for more than two years. But "Wuthering Yankee" soon became a different creature than the one I had planned; the political landscape of late 2016 and so far of 2017 seemed to require my looking back -- at my roots in the United States, at the people and places I came from before I landed on this other shore of the Atlantic.

Today's post will be my last for "Wuthering Yankee." In honor of my original purpose for this blog,  and in honor of my adopted country, I've decided to sign off with a list of what I've come to love about England.

Here it is, then, in no particular order:

1. The walking culture. Everyone walks in England. Tiny tots who would almost surely be in strollers,* in the U.S.; old frail-looking people with canes; schoolkids on their way to and from school; teenagers on dates; middle-aged couples headed to parties. At all hours of the day, when I look out my windows onto Albert Street, there is at least one person walking up or down our long hill.

I love the walking culture because it encourages a lighter carbon footprint. I love it because it encourages overall good health, for people of all shapes, sizes, and ages. I love it because it fosters a sense of community, too. The center of Durham, thick with shops and restaurants and pubs, is also thick with people. You almost always run into someone you know, while you're walking in town or doing your shopping.

Typical summer day in Durham

Too, you almost always hear at least one street busker -- often four or five, in a given walk -- singing or playing guitar, or trombone, or the bagpipes.

The pedestrian culture also makes such features as the Durham Market and the Saturday outdoor market -- which happens all year round, in all weather -- viable enterprises. People arrive at both markets on foot; the markets are big, friendly, pedestrian spaces right here in the center of town.

All the pedestrians out and about in our town gives Durham a sense of vibrancy and face-to-face engagement that seems hard to find in many U.S. towns of this size.

2. All the footpaths. England is threaded with footpaths, which cut through all kinds of property -- public, private, farm- or business-owned -- and are open to everyone. (You just make sure to close the gate firmly behind you, if you're walking through a cow or sheep pasture.) In my experience, these paths -- even the ones that cut through deep woods or along lonely cliffs -- are well maintained. And people use them. On footpaths alone, you can walk the length and breadth of the country in 100 ways. So far, I've mainly used footpaths as a shortcut to a friend's house or for an afternoon's jaunt, but it's also a common practice to use them for week-long walking tours or walking vacations. I can't think of a better way to see the country.

One of the many footpaths

outside of Durham.

3. Carry bags. (Re-usable shopping bags.) My impression is that every household in England owns several of these. You hang them on the coat rack beside the door, and take them with you whenever you're shopping. Yes, you do see some people carrying groceries or other purchases in plastic bags, but it's much rarer than in the U.S. It's assumed here that you'll bring your own re-usable bag. ("Do you need a bag?" clerks sometimes ask, and if you do, they charge you five pence for one.)

4. No clothes driers, no ACs. Surely there are some, in some houses, but it's far from the norm. It's another way that I see people in England living out their ecological concerns.

It's true that the climate of England makes it easier for most people to live without air-conditioning than it would be in much of the U.S. (Here, opening a window is often the most you need to do!) On the other hand, the English weather would seem a real obstacle to drying your clothes on a rack or a clothesline. But everyone whose house I've seen in England does find a way to do this.

5. The weather. Seriously. English weather gets a bad rap in general. Yes, it's fairly rainy. Yes, it's hard to guarantee that, even at the peak of summer, you'll ever have a really hot, jump-in-the-swimming-pool day, at least here in the North of England. But I find the overall climate to be very mild and unstressful. So it rains some. You wear a raincoat, or carry an umbrella. (Really, most English people don't seem to mind a little drizzle falling onto their heads. I'm often breaking out my umbrella when everyone else on the street is still walking along, uncovered.) But the English rain passes quickly. It's rarely a downpour. A typical day, in my experience, involves waves of sun and cloud and light rain breaking over the land at gentle intervals.

Speaking of temperate weather:

Here's a tree blooming in late December!

Maybe it's just me, but after having grown up in the heat and humidity of North Carolina summers -- then having lived through ten years of Chicago winters -- I find the temperature of Northern England to be quite mild. Highs in 70s / 20s (F/C) in the summer; lows in the 30s / 0s (F/ C) in the winter: You do get four different seasons, but none of them slam you.

6. The general attitude toward the weather. No one, as mentioned above, really seems to mind a little rain. They just have the appropriate clothes for it. They go right out into the wet. I've been at backyard barbecues where it started to rain, and everyone just carried on barbecuing and eating and standing around in the rain. Similarly, the winter months don't turn Durham into a ghost town, with everyone hunkered inside. The outdoor markets continue; there is outdoor seating (with heat lamps) year round. People just sit out there, having their pint of ale or their fish and chips, in their coats and hats.

I really do love this -- this straight-on engagement with, or defiance of, local inclement weather. You get the impression that people around here are pretty well acclimated or adapted to their environment.

Outdoor eating (and drinking!) in midwinter.

7. The railways. Just as the country is threaded with footpaths, so too it is webbed with rail lines. It's an efficient, environmentally friendly, generally low-cost and stress-free way to get yourself almost anywhere in the UK. Driving to London from Durham, for example, takes five hours if you're lucky -- the last hour of that through dense suburban traffic -- but Dave and I can walk from our house to the train station in five minutes and catch a train that will take us to London in under three hours. Plus, rather than having to keep your eyes on to the road, you get to sit back and look out the train window.

Dave and I have not owned a car since 2003. This has had much to do, obviously, with where we have lived: Guatemala City, Chicago, and now Durham, England. In this country, I love that I can get almost anywhere I want to by train -- or by some combination of train / bus / metro. Some of my favorite trips recently have been to visit my friend Marta, who rented a summer cabin in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, or to visit the seaside resort town of Saltburn with my friend Jo -- two trips I made by train.**

Marta and I at the Dumfries rail station.

Jo and I touring Saltburn-by-the-Sea

8. I could go on and on about what I love in this place. Hen and stag parties on weekend nights in the streets of Durham and Newcastle. Mushy peas. Extremely well-behaved dogs. How the sea is never more than 50 miles away, wherever you go in England. Swans on the rivers. How people in this part of the country say "aye" and "ta" ("yes" and "thank you"). Bubble and squeak and white bait on the menu. Kids playing on beaches -- in their coats and Wellies -- all year round. Dave's happiness teaching at Durham University, and how the kids in his classes really like and appreciate him -- despite (or possibly because of) his rigor as professor! University students walking to around in the twilight in black tie and evening dresses. Pub culture. The grocer on North Road who yells about his fruit for sale. An eleventh-century castle and a World Heritage Site-listed cathedral in view out my living room window.

It's not perfect, of course. Of course, no place is. But I feel lucky and grateful to have landed, at least for now, in this windy, friendly, rain-and-sun-mottled sweet green corner of the globe.

View out our window: train on the viaduct, cathedral behind the winter tree.

A hen do! (The stag do's look equally entertaining.)

Me in the North Sea: It was chilly!

* They're called "pushchairs," in the UK. Can I just say that I love this?
** Also, doesn't this look like one of the most fun ideas ever -- to hop on a sleeper car in London one night and wake up in the Scottish Highlands?

Roots and Shoots: Or, Moving Forward by Looking Back

The week that Donald Trump was elected president of the U.S., I started writing this blog.

. . . or, tearing my hair

like a repressed '50s housewife?

Outside of throwing up, tearing my hair out like an Old Testament prophet, or remaining permanently in the fetal position I assumed on the morning of November 9, 2016, I couldn't think of what else to do. I am, after all, a writer. Why not try to write my way through the angst and grief I was feeling?

I didn't have much of a plan beyond that, but I did think this blog would focus on the present moment -- the present moment in U.S. politics, and the present moment in my life as a U.S. expatriate in England. While I gradually became more and more at home here in England, I thought I might have something to say about understanding and living with cultural differences. As someone who's spent time in various countries over the years, I thought I might also have something to say about tolerance, openness, seeing life from someone else's perspective.

Last November, I thought this might be the best response I could make to the fact that approximately half the voters in my native country thought Trump should be president.

But a strange thing happened along the way.

I meant to write about England -- about my present life here, about my future on this side of the Atlantic. But instead, nine times out of ten, I found myself looking back.

Many of these posts on "Wuthering Yankee" have been about my youth or my childhood. Or they've reached farther back, to my parents' lives -- or to the lives of my uncles and aunts, or to my grandparents' lives. None of this was part of the original vision, insofar as I had one.

I haven't been home since the 2016 elections, but in the past year the U.S. has become a wildly volatile and -- if I've reading the news from there correctly -- a wildly unhappy place. In some ways, my homeland has come unmoored. Jumped the tracks. Lost its center. All sorts of unsettling metaphors seem to apply, and for a cogent, thoughtful description of the sense of derealisation many of us have felt during these first months of the Trump presidency, I urge you to read my friend Emily Sinclair's brilliant essay in Empty Mirror.

A political moment like this one, in which many U.S. Americans no longer feel at home in their own country -- when we feel deeply opposed to many of our own government's policies, deeply opposed to the alliances and ideologies of our president -- is also, perhaps necessarily, a moment of reckoning. If we feel alienated from our own country, who are we, then? Where does our identity lie?

"Remember who you are and whose you are," my mother admonished me, all through my teens, whenever I walked out the front door. She said it so often, I heard the sentence sometimes in my sleep. As a very young woman striving for autonomy, I did not love this invocation. I wanted to move forward -- out into the ever broadening world -- and my mother, I thought, only wanted me to look back: Who were my people? How had they shaped me? As I moved further out and further away from my family of origin and my original community, how would their legacies inform my life choices?

My family, at about the time my mother

started telling me to remember.

These were questions I wasn't much interested in. Not till recently, anyway.

In the past 10 months of writing this blog, I see now that I've been doing essentially what my mother urged me to do, all those years ago as I left home. I've been remembering who I am, and whose I am.

In the midst of great political instability in the U.S., I've looked to ground or re-ground myself by remembering the place that I come from. By "place" I don't mean a physical place, necessarily. I mean more of a spiritual, or philosophical, one. A place where guests are always welcome at the dinner table, where lending a helping hand is second nature, and where traveling to different parts of the world is not so much an excuse to indulge yourself and your senses as it is a chance to meet people from and learn about those other parts of the world.

I'm still so grateful that my parents took me and my 

sister Linda to Nigeria when we were 3 and 5. 

It's one of my earliest and most formative memories.

Ten months after I started this blog, I see that what I most needed -- out of the volatile mix of rage and heartbrokenness that I felt after the U.S. elections -- was to celebrate the culture of love and acceptance that shaped me from before my birth.

It's not a terribly radical or politicized response to the troubling context in the U.S. I acknowledge that. But before we can speak truth to power, we have to know - to feel firmly grounded in -- to remember -- what our own truths are. 

I plan to end this blog soon, probably after my very next post, in early September. I may have come to the juncture where I've looked back enough -- at least for now -- and am ready to orient forward. One event that's pulling my attention forward right now is the publication of my first book, Day of All Saints, forthcoming from Miami University Press on November 1.

It's thrilling, of course, to see a book take shape -- to see your own messy manuscript pages become, well, a real thing, with a beautiful cover. I'm so grateful to Jeff Clark of Quemadura Designs for the thoughtful cover he created for Day of All Saints. Can you see, underneath the flowers, that there's a photograph -- somewhat ghostly? The photo is of a young guerrilla soldier in the Ixcán, the region of Guatemala where part of the story takes place.* 

I finished writing Day of All Saints in the final months of 2016. I revised it, with much help from the good people at Miami U.P., through the past winter and spring. In the background always was the despair-inducing news from the Trump White House. It's been enough, sometimes, to paralyze any sane, thinking person. And sometimes I've been paralyzed.

But delving back into the place I come from, as this blog allowed me to do, has been a way to draw strength for the day's work. Recalling the people I come from --  people who emphasize love of the Other, and being unafraid of the world's differences -- has been one way to keep pushing forward, even in the face of the anger and despair that news from my home country has stirred up routinely this year.

Remember who you are and whose you are. I'd never have guessed, decades ago -- as my mother shouted this sentence at my departing back, every time she got a chance -- that looking back in this way would give me energy when I most needed it. That it would re-ground me when I felt most ungrounded. This year of all years -- this first year of the Trump presidency -- I do remember my spiritual roots: Anabaptism, pacifism, activism for a more socially just world. I do remember my philosophical home: a place where I have no more or less right to sit down at the table than anyone else on this planet.

I look backward -- sometimes: like this -- to ultimately keep looking forward.


* I'm excited to talk about Day of All Saints and to share it with anyone who's interested. Early next winter, I'll return to the U.S. for a short book tour, and if you're in conversation with me on Facebook or Twitter, you'll hear plenty about it -- perhaps more than you want! -- over the coming months. And it's available now for pre-order at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Amazon UK.

Back to the Yoga Mat, Back to the Desk: On Going Deeper

Dave and me in Guatemala, at about the time of the 

"I like you" incident.
(If only we could have kept our eyes open!)

12 or 13 years ago, when we lived in Guatemala and worked in the same building, my husband Dave was working on a piece of writing. He does this every day of his life -- literally: Dave is a writing machine -- so why does this one instance stand out in my memory?

His work that day must have been short and not too biblically specific,* because he brought a draft of it down to my office and asked, "What do you think of this?" I ran my eye over the page. I don't remember what my problem was, exactly, with what he had written, but I looked up from my desk and said to him, "Well, I like you."

Dave had the good grace to laugh at this response. I laughed, too, once I heard how it sounded. It's since become a catchphrase, whenever one of us asks the other for feedback on a perhaps questionable idea.

("Do you think we should adopt a cat?" or "What do you think of putting just one more houseplant in this room?" Answer: "Well, I like you.")

Some might say that we have enough

houseplants already.

It's hard to give criticism to someone you love. It's hard to give criticism, period. (I mean criticism in the positive sense of the word. I mean giving feedback, with the goal of helping someone else improve or perfect the thing they are trying to do). Maybe the reason criticism is so hard to give is that most of us know how hard it is to receive.

In recent years, I've become quite passionate -- some might say, obsessive -- about a pair of activities that I see as inherently linked, in part because they both depend to a fair extent on receiving and working with another person's critique. I'm talking about yoga and writing.

In yoga, outside critique comes in the form of getting adjustments from your instructor. In writing, it's about asking other writers to make suggestions on how to improve your story. Necessary though it is to one's overall practice of yoga or story-writing, many people in both fields actively fear or dislike the critique.

I know some yogis who flinch whenever the instructor steps over to them. They freeze up; they think, Oh God, what am I not doing right? What mistake has this instructor just seen me make? Or they think: The teacher never adjusts Person X over there. Person X must be so much better at yoga than me.

Similarly, I know some writers who approach the writing workshop** -- the process by which a writer shows her work to others and receives feedback on it -- with unmitigated dread. With the feeling, almost, of seeing your own darling child (the story you've labored over so long!) attacked in front of your eyes.

Who am I kidding? I have been that fearful yogi, that insecure writer. I still am them, on given days.

The critiques in a writing workshop, as with a yoga instructor's adjustments, are meant to be helpful, of course. They're meant to help you see what you cannot see on your own, so that you can go back to the work and re-enter it more mindfully. Why, then, do we often experience such criticism as threatening? Why do we often receive an adjustment, or a suggestion for the story we've written, with a sinking heart? Oh my God, I knew it. I knew it. I'm really no good at this.

Writing and yoga both involve a quality of putting yourself out there -- of being seen. What is workshop feedback, or a yoga instructor's adjustment, but a direct outcome of someone else seeing you -- seeing your work? Perhaps it's not the first thing you think of. Writing is, after all, a mostly solitary activity. To do it, you almost have to be alone, and silent, and deeply focused. In yoga, too, the emphasis is on going inward -- on focusing on how your body feels in each posture, or on how each posture feels in your body.

In other words, in both writing and yoga, you're trying to do this thing that feels simultaneously very challenging and very important. Okay, at least that is how I experience these practices. I've been writing seriously for over 10 years, and doing yoga with an increasing sense of commitment for about half as long. I've already given myself -- a fair bit of myself -- to this work. I've put considerable time and effort toward doing these things with as much skill and understanding as possible, and I feel some ownership in them. At some deep-down, largely unspoken, cellular level I really don't want anyone else to fuck with my work. I am -- yes, sometimes -- afraid of being seen

As I've mentioned previously in this blog, I've been working for the past 2 years on my first full-length novel.***  It's been through 4 full-length drafts and has been critiqued by various fellow writers on several occasions. At times, with this novel, I feel like I'm living in it.

Almost exactly 1 year ago,

when I'd finished my first
full-length draft.

Part I of the novel -- approximately the first third -- is, I think, actually finished or nearly so. Recently I've been feeling good enough about it, and getting enough positive feedback on it, that I began to cherish the hope that I was almost done with the whole thing. Last month, I bashed through what I thought was a final draft of Part II. Yeah, baby! I thought. In another month now, the whole book should be done done done!

Dave had read Part I for me already and had liked it a lot. (Thank you, Dave.) Last week, I gave him my new draft of Part II. He read it while I was out of the house (doing some yoga, no doubt) and when I came back, I said, "So?"

Dave did not exactly say, "Well, I like you," but his response was not far from it.

It's too slow, he said in essence. You lost some of the tension you'd built in Part I. You got caught up in a story line that's not really essential. You need more scenes with these characters who cause the conflict, and less of this background building.

Oogh. Oogh and oogh and oogh.

You know that feeling when someone tells you exactly what you do not want to hear but you know at the same time it's right? I had to lie down on our living room floor for a minute.

"Honey, I'm sorry. Honey, are you okay?" Dave said, hovering over me.

"I'm okay," I said from the carpet. "Don't be sorry. I'm pretty sure you are right."

"Yes, but your voice has gone all flat like it does when you're sad," Dave said.

It had. I knew it had, because it felt like a boulder had crashed onto my chest, which would flatten out anyone's voice, wouldn't it? But I tried to tell him I'd be okay. "I don't want you to think I'm not grateful," I said. "I really am. I need to hear this. It's just that I can see how much work I still have to do, and I was really hoping I didn't."

The good news is that I did get up off the floor, after 10 minutes or so of pure wallowing. I didn't try to write anything more on that day. I had a glass of red wine instead and watched an episode of The Handmaid's Tale. (There's some good writing! Both the novel and the new TV series, in case you haven't read or seen them yet.) Gradually, over the next day or 2, I worked through my disappointment over how much more work I must do. I made some new plans. I outlined an 8-step process by which I will now get the last 2/3 of this novel into better shape. I can do each step individually -- it's the only way -- and each step should take between 1 full day and perhaps a few weeks. One step at a time, the work is not too overwhelming.

This new writing work is about going deeper into my practice, as the yogis say. You go deeper by hitting an obstacle but finding your way through it, simply by coming back to it and trying it again -- ideally with someone to guide you. A yoga teacher, for example. Or a fellow dedicated reader and writer, who will think through the obstacle with you, or even help you come up with a new approach.

The new 8-step plan for revision,

on the wall over my desk.

Going deeper cannot be rushed. In my yoga practice, for example, I cannot get my knee completely behind my shoulder yet, no matter how hard I try. I have confidence that I may be able to do this one day, but it will take months and probably years of returning to my yoga mat almost daily -- asking my body to move into this posture as much as it can, again and again, teaching it to go farther. It happens in increments. It happens only if you try again and again -- if you practice regularly.

Yoga is serious work. Writing is serious work. They are both disciplines of the mind and the body, and dare I say, soul.**** But you cannot, or I cannot, practice them in a vacuum. I need outside eyes, other hands.

* Much of Dave's academic writing is too specialized for me (or 99% of the world's population) to understand very well.

** The workshop format is commonly used at writers' conferences and in Creative Writing MFA programs.

*** I did write 2 novels when I was a kid. I don't think they really count. And I do have a novella -- a shorter book -- coming out this fall, hallelujah and FYI. (But no full-length novels. Not yet.)

**** Yes, writing is a discipline of the body. Just ask anyone who's tried to physically stay at her writing desk every day for a given number of hours.