A Day in the Life of Louise W. Knight

Posted on September 1, 2010 by cynthia

Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” On the first of each month, Catching Days hosts a guest writer in the series, “How We Spend Our Days.” Today, please welcome writer Louise W. Knight:

Today I’m dealing with lists. I have my List of Book Events, and under each date, a list of things I must not forget to do: buy plane ticket, let my host know when my train arrives, find a place to stay on October 5th in New York City, send the book festival organizer a blog post of 350 words….  And I have my List of Urgent Tasks: add the chronology of Addams’s life to my author website, revise the Wikipedia entry for Jane Addams (it is full of errors), write my next talk about Addams and the history of women’s suffrage. I do this list work at my consulting desk, with my laptop. It’s where I engage the executive part of my brain — where I earn my living working with nonprofits and foundations, manage life’s pesky details, and, at the moment, organize my book tour. In this space, with its big, white door-table, and many file cabinets, I make quick decisions and act on them through emails and phone calls.

But where I long to be is sitting at my other computer in another corner of my study. It’s your basic machine, with a big monitor that sits on a glass-topped desk that has a built-in tray for the keyboard. This workplace, which is where I wrote my book, is nearly encircled by bookcases, a blank wall, which the computer faces, and, to the right, above an oak table, a window. I placed a curtain rod between two bookcases and hung a curtain behind me, and, voila – my writing cubicle. There is something about writing in this enclosed space, lined with books, that helps me concentrate, but it is not only that. For me, entering this space means entering the portion of my mind that writes.  It is a deep, creative place that I have to inhabit fully to write a book; this cozy corner helps me get there.

And the reverse is also true. When I leave the corner and pass through the curtain, usually around noon, I leave that part of my mind and that feels good too. My creative brain goes dormant, out of sight, out of mind, until I go back behind the curtain the next morning.

Now, so soon before my book comes out, I’m not writing a book in my corner, but other things, like book talks and book reviews. I just finished and sent off yesterday a review about two new books on feminist intellectual Charlotte Perkins Gilman for the Women’s Review of Books.  I was able to immerse myself in Gilman’s world for a while. I enjoyed it, although I also suffered from the handicap I suppose all biographers suffer from when reading other biographies – the desire to try my hand at shaping the life myself.  Not an option, I told my creative brain as it tried to take over.

My creative brain is feeling a bit thwarted I guess because I’m spending so much time at my laptop, trying to figure out the logistics of speaking and travel. I don’t think I have ever had as crazy a two-month (now stretching into a three-month) period in my life as that which is coming up. The fretting has begun. What will I forget to take? Should I pack all my vitamins and mineral pills in little daily packets for the whole two months, since I probably won’t have time later? I started this morning making a list of such tasks to do ahead. What about my bills? Maybe I should switch to online payments so I don’t miss one. And I’m trying to start using my new smart-phone, with its digital calendar. Help! What if I screw up? I know I’m going to end up carrying around printed versions of my schedule, like a Linus blanket, because I will not be sure I can rely on the phone.

But part of me is also excited. Contact with readers at last! Though I am stuck today at my laptop, fussing with lists, I will soon go out into the world, to talk with people who are interested in what I wrote behind the curtain. Hello to all you readers out there! Let me know what you think!

AND THOSE SAME 3 QUESTIONS…

1. What is the best book you’ve read in the last few months and how did you choose it?

  • I would have to say The Feminist Promise by Christine Stansell (Modern Library, 2010), which I chose because of my interest in women’s history. If you are curious to know what came before the Second Wave of the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s as well as to understand the Second Wave and what has come after, then this beautifully and intelligently written book, which covers the history of American feminism from 1792 to the present, is the one for you.

2. Would you give us one little piece of writing advice?

  • Edit your writing with generous, experimental abandon. Most of us are too careful when we edit, weighing each removal with intense scrutiny. Loosen up. You can always put whatever you take out back in.  But I find I almost never do.

3. What is your strangest reading or writing habit?

  • I cover the flyleaves and all available front and back blank pages of a nonfiction book with notes and page numbers while I am reading. I am re-indexing the book so I can take proper notes or find what I want later. Publishers who skimp on blank pages and put art on the flyleaves create big problems for me.

Books By Louise W. Knight:

Posted in A Day in the Life | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Eudora Welty’s potato salad

Posted on August 30, 2010 by cynthia

At the beginning of summer, Ari Weinzweig wrote about Eudora Welty’s potato salad in the Atlantic. He did not list the ingredients as I do below; instead he wrote sentences about them. “As always, for me, the story behind the food is essential…” And I recommend his story behind mayonnaise.

As the end of summer approaches, enjoy…

Eudora Welty’s Vicksburg Potato Salad

a quart of just-cooked, cut-up potatoes
3 chopped hard-cooked eggs
a whole green pepper, chopped fine
a couple of roasted red peppers chopped fine
6 strips of crisp bacon, chopped
a bunch of mayonnaise and mustard
salt and pepper to taste

Mix everything together except the bacon, which you sprinkle on top.

Eudora Welty at her desk from the cover of The Writer's Desk by Jill Krementz

“A Southern Author’s Poetic Potato Salad” is an article I’ve read two or three times, and I don’t even like to cook.

By the way, Mr. Weinzweig suggests that we “get a copy of Ms. Welty’s work and do some reading while the potatoes are cooking.” Perhaps start with “No Place For You, My Love” from The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty…

“Surely even those immune from the world, for the time being, need the touch of one another, or all is lost….they were, at last, imperviousness in motion. They had found it, and had almost missed it: they had had to dance.”

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jane’s passions

Posted on August 27, 2010 by cynthia

Jane Addams was a political activist who worked toward, and spoke out, for social justice, including women’s suffrage. I had heard of her but had no idea…

In  Jane Addams: Spirit in Action by Louise W. Knight, I discovered that Jane cofounded the NAACP and the ACLU, and that she was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

She was born in 1860 and lived until 1935. She was a writer and she loved books:

Is it the child who loves books who becomes a dreamer? Or is it the born dreamer who, inevitably, loves books? Whether cause or effect, books were Jane’s passion throughout her life. The day she died, she had a pile by her bedside she was reading.

Some of her favorite characters were Jo in Little Women and Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop. She named Leo Tolstoy’s My Religion as “the book that changed her life.”

In a speech on the Pullman Strike in 1894, she “compared George Pullman with King Lear…” And ”Need a Woman Over Fifty Feel Old” was the title of an editorial she published the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1914.

A biography of substance about a woman of substance. September 6th will be the 150th anniversary of her birth.

Posted in biographies, reading lists, reviews | Tagged | 5 Comments

catching lives

Posted on August 26, 2010 by cynthia


I don’t hear much about biographies anymore–or autobiographies. Now it’s all about memoir. Not the whole life but a slant on it.

Still, biographies are being written. A Pulitzer Prize is given each year for a biography. In 2010, the prize went to The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles.

I recently read a wonderful biography: Spirit in Action: Jane Addams by Louis W. Knight. I was writing away on that post, and then just felt like we needed a little warm-up–something to put us in the right mood. The book is wonderful. Come back tomorrow to read a little about Jane’s passions.

Some other biographies I’ve enjoyed over the years: Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary by K.M. Elisabeth Murray, Ferraro: My Story by Geraldine Ferraro, and Seasons of Her Life: A Biography of Madeleine Korbel Albright by Ann Blackman.

Do you read biographies? Do you have any to recommend?

Posted in biographies | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

look again

Posted on August 23, 2010 by cynthia

In a 1984 Paris Review interview, the writer James Baldwin said the following:

I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village, waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, “Look.” I looked and all I saw was water. And he said, “Look again,” which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle. It was a great revelation to me. I can’t explain it. He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw. Painters have often taught writers how to see. And once you’ve had that experience, you see differently.

Many of you are visual artists as well as writers. I’m not. But I’ve become a much more visual person in the last few years. I think maybe this blog is my nudge to look again. To be more aware of the world around me.

These days, with writing, instead of having ideas, I’m seeing scenes. Maybe it’s just that I’ve gotten out of my own way. My thinking has gotten out of the way of my…something.

When I started with the words of James Baldwin, I didn’t realize I would end up with something, but that’s as far as I have time to go with this today…

Posted in art, details, shapes, writing | Tagged | 7 Comments

toes

Posted on August 22, 2010 by cynthia

I painted my toenails orange for June, green for July. They’re sporting yellow polish at the moment.

I broke three of my toes growing up–one when I put my bare feet down to stop a swing.

My second toes are longer than my big toes, although not by much. Apparently this has a name–Morton’s toe. I’ve heard it’s a sign of intelligence.

Eyes and hair are overrated. I’m going to write about toes.

Posted in character, details | Tagged | 6 Comments

out my window: 8/18/10

Posted on August 18, 2010 by cynthia

I'm sitting at my desk, working on revisions, and I look out the window in front of me.

It's not fall yet

but a fox

“let me catch sight of you again going over the wall
and before the garden is extinct and the woods are figures
guttering on a screen let my words find their own
places in the silence after the animals”

from “Vixen” by W. S. Merwin
Posted in Columbus GA, out my window, poetry, revision, the day | Tagged | 16 Comments

out my window: 8/17/10

Posted on August 17, 2010 by cynthia

From the desk where I write, I can see change. And I can hear it: quiet. The kids are back in school. I can feel it too: it's only 85 degrees outside. Fall is just around the corner...

Posted in fall, leaves, out my window, the day | Tagged | 6 Comments

crossing borders

Posted on August 14, 2010 by cynthia

Black Maps, a collection of stories by David Jauss, won the Associated Writing Programs Award for Short Fiction in 1995 (Lorrie Moore/judge). These nine stories–with only one in present tense and the rest in past, and four in third person and five in first–all deal with the crossing of borders. In addition to each story, the book as a whole has a story to tell.

As Robert Frost said, “If you have a book of twenty-four poems, the book itself should be the twenty-fifth poem.”

David Jauss writes of his collection, “The book, then, moves thematically from negation to affirmation, from the blackest of maps to one that shows the possibility of light.” After understanding this, it was no surprise that I preferred the stories toward the end of the book.

Each story is extremely well written. The first story, “Torque,” takes a limo and turns it into an intrinsic symbol, one that acquires its meaning from the story.

If he had a limo, everyone would see that he wasn’t who they’d always thought he was…

And then later in the story,

He wanted to prove to her that he was the kind of man who made his dreams come true, the kind of man who deserved a limo.

The fifth story,“Firelight,” starts with a moment and then takes us back in time and leads us up to it. In the story are 3 repetitions of the word “firelight,” and then the words “fire” and “light” separate in the last paragraph.

“Brutality” includes this metaphor: “thinking thoughts she didn’t dare let bleed into words.” It deals with the idea of a continuous life:

And who you were is a part of who you are, isn’t it?

In “The Late Man,” allowing the character to imagine what he could have done adds depth to the story.

“Glossolalia,” the last story in the collection, was chosen by Alice Adams for the Best American Short Stories in 1991. It also won a Pushcart Prize. In it, a son tells the story of his father’s breakdown. The first words of the story “That winter” prepare the reader for the very effective jump in distance later in the story in a paragraph that includes the phrase “…our life together after that winter…” Then there’s another jump in perspective and distance on the last page: “Perhaps if I had said yes, we might have talked about….” Then what did happen in such a beautiful sentence using an echo:

But I didn’t say yes, and in the seven years that remained of his life, we never came as close to ending the winter that was always, for us, an unspoken but living part of our present.

Then a return to a specific moment as well as a narrowing of time from a season to a night, from that winter to that night, echoing the opening. And a last paragraph again with repetition of that night. Wow.

Posted in David Jauss, awards and prizes, continuous life, craft of writing, mfa, stories, structure | Tagged | 8 Comments

alone with all that could happen

Posted on August 11, 2010 by cynthia

Alone With All That Could Happen is a collection of 7 craft essays by writer David Jauss. I had read some of them when they were first published in AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, but it was time to read them again. I should probably schedule time to reread craft essays because I can’t ever get it all. Or, because I’m writing in third person this time, something else falls into place that I didn’t notice when I was working on first person…

Here are a few of the words from this book that have made a difference in my writing:

“Autobiographobia“

…imagining the other is ultimately a way of discovering the self.

“From Long Shots to X-Rays: Distance and Point of View in Fiction“

Perhaps the most important purpose of point of view is to manipulate the degree of distance between the characters and the reader…

“What We Talk About When We Talk About Flow“

Thus, altering our syntax…allows us to get our thoughts off the normal track on which they run…so if we change the way we think, we can sometimes change what we think.

“Remembrance of Things Present: Present Tense in Contemporary Fiction“

We use the generalized present to talk about an act that is repeated throughout time, as in the sentence “I write every morning.” The tense is present, but the events described are not. Hence they are unmoored from their actual places in time.

“Some Epiphanies About Epiphanies“

…the best epiphanies approach their revelations indirectly, through imagery, metaphor, and symbol rather than through direct statement. In short, they arrive with some elusiveness, like insight itself.

“Stacking Stories: Building a Unified Short Story Collection“

Because our choices of words, characters, and plots arise from our own obsessive concerns and themes, from our own individual selves, it is inevitable that there be unifying relationships between the stories. But we must discover them and then, to heighten their effects, strategically add connecting details, parallels, contrasts, repetitions…

And finally, this excerpt from the last essay in the collection, possibly my favorite because it’s about process and it’s a way of thinking about writing that had never occurred to me before, “Lever of Transcendence: Contradiction and The Physics of Creativity.”

My students don’t hesitate when I ask them to write their actual names, but they do when I ask them to make up fictitious ones. The creative process, I tell them, resides in that hesitation, that moment of uncertainty.


Posted in David Jauss, craft of writing, mfa | Tagged | 10 Comments