Writing

Writing

Engaging First Novel Raises
Thought-Provoking Questions

By Artsphoria's Bookmarker

This full-bodied debut novel
will appeal to many readers,
with a fictional tale that could
reflect the true story of many
people.

Spanning four decades in the
life of Robert Vishniak, this
layered story follows a familiar
dream and understandable
drive. Raised in a middle-class
neighborhood, Vishniak is
determined to live a life that
affords the luxuries that come
with being a "Rich Boy." His
journey depicts the barriers of
class, heritage, and success.

Photo by Myra Klarman

Sharon Pomerantz
continually draws
readers forward
with her accessible
writing style.

The author has created a world
of diverse and fleshed-out
characters. Collectively, they
have a strong influence on
Vishniak's future while serving
as constant reminders of his
past.

In addition, Pomerantz skillfully
raises an important underlying
question in her work: As
Vishniak enjoys the benefits
that money offers, has it bought
or brought him contentment
and joy in his daily life?
Readers discover part of the
answer in the realization that
people remain essentially the
same, even after they acquire
wealth.

Although many relentlessly
pursue money as a cure-all for
all ills, they ultimately cannot
escape unresolved issues and
ongoing struggles--despite the
achievement of a sometimes
misleading dream.

RICH BOY, by Sharon
Pomerantz, will be published
by TWELVE on Aug. 2, 2010,
(ISBN: 978-0-446-56318-5;
$24.99).

Dissent will save us:
21st-century rights

By Andrea K. Hammer
Director of Artsphoria

With freedom of speech taken
for granted during the 21st
century, the thought of fully
armed Canadian border police
searching a journalist’s car and
demanding notes for a book-
tour presentation boggles the
mind. Nonetheless, this invasion of privacy on
the way to a Vancouver public library was the
harsh reality for Amy Goodman, the co-host of
Democracy Now!

Publishing a weekly syndicated column titled
“Breaking the Sound Barrier” and a collection of
these pieces in a book of the same title, the
investigative journalist is no stranger to
controversy. During a talk at the Free Library of
Philadelphia, Goodman stressed her commitment
to encouraging “robust” debate about the critical
issues of the day along with fairness and accuracy
in reporting. According to Goodman, only 12
percent of op-ed pages present an antiwar
viewpoint on the war in Afghanistan; only 3 of
almost 400 interviews on major networks air this
position.

Openly offering her viewpoints along with details
of her troubling experience in Vancouver, Goodman
described being photographed and given “control
papers,” stipulating a limited 2-day stay and
requiring another agency check before departure.
Goodman, referring to her sense of violation,
eventually learned the patrol’s underlying concern.
Activists were protesting massive funding for the
Vancouver 2010 Olympics, which some claimed had
overshadowed other critical social services
including those for the homeless. As a result of this
encounter, Goodman also realized that although
we live in a globalized world, the top story in
Canada had not reached the rest of the world—an
important function of journalists.

During her interrogation in Canada, Goodman
explained that her extemporaneous talks begin
with the last column in her book. On her tour, she
has discussed Tommy Douglas, the late premier of
Saskatchewan and “father” of Canada’s universal
health care system.

The journalist expressed alarm that America is the
only country that does not guarantee the right to
health care, which she described as a particular
outrage when trillions of dollars were poured into
the escalating war. She also noted that everyone
has basic access to education and then simply
asked why this principle does not apply to health
care. Stressing that “dissent is what will save us,”
Goodman pointed out that army veterans are
dying because they are uninsured.

Health care is a subject close to Goodman’s heart,
particularly after trying to navigate her now-
deceased mother through a series of hospital
blunders. Approaching the hospital with her three
siblings as “advocates and armed guards” for her
mother, the journalist said that she can’t imagine a
patient managing without this protection in our
“broken” health care system. Goodman also
described a lack of personal care as hospital
workers confused instructions for her mother’s no-
solids diet; despite her vehement protests during
the mix-up, one physician seemed to hold her
accountable, asking “What don’t you understand
about ‘no solids’?”

As a result of these agonizing experiences and
remembering the extensive time that her own
physician-father spent interacting with patients,
Goodman stressed the critical need for doctors to
help with pain management, talk with patients,
and look directly at them. Through the wisdom of
one physician at a New York hospital, she also
learned five simple but important phrases to say
during the end of a loved one’s life: (1) thank you,
(2) forgive me, (3) I forgive you, (4) I love you, and
(5) good-bye.

Freely sharing her personal yet universal
experiences, this award-winning journalist with a
powerful voice is one whose impassioned words
continue to reverberate. As Goodman suggests,
freedom of speech and provision of health care are
not yet fully protected rights—astonishing in a so-
called democracy during the 21st century.

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Pulitzer Prize-Winning Writer:

The Book Is Not Dead

By Andrea K. Hammer, director of Artsphoria

During a recent book-tour stop promoting her current novel Every Last One,
Anna Quindlen vividly recalled the power of seeing her early work in print.

"In my line of work, you never forget your first book--not the first one you
owned; the first one you wrote," she said to a lunch-hour crowd at the
Philadelphia Free Library. "I can vividly remember the morning when my
father came home after mass, carrying a stack of Sunday papers that
almost blocked a view of his face because my byline was on page 1 for the
first time. And I can vividly remember the evening that I persuaded a security guard at The New York Times
to hand over an early edition, still warm from the presses, that contained my first column. But there’s no
question that the biggest day of all was when the FedEx man drove up and handed me a copy of Living Out
Loud, and I saw my name on the cover."

Quindlen is now the author of five bestselling novels and seven nonfiction books. Her New York Times
column “Public and Private” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. From 2000-2009, she wrote the “Last Word”
column for Newsweek.

"Which gives me a particular point of view on what is clearly now conventional wisdom and that is that the
book is dead. I keep hearing that the book is dead, as I’m sitting writing yet another one in a room
lined with them. Technology is going to kill it. The libraries of the world are going to become museums.
And you know what? I don’t believe it," she continued.

"Part of something that I think is peculiarly American and that’s bringing an either-or mentality to everything.
In case you haven’t noticed, at this point in time, the president of the United States is either Baby Jesus
or the anti-Christ, depending on where you’re coming from. So in looking at all of these issues, I went back
and looked at the clips and books and magazines, endless pieces about how the invention of television
was going to mean the end of radio. Endless pieces about how movies were going to be the end of live
theater. Pieces about how recorded music was going to mean the end of live music and concerts. We all
know, sitting here today, that all those forms still exist—sometimes overshadowed by their newer siblings
but not extinct. Despite all of the predictions, I think that reading in all forms is going to be part of the life of
the mind, even as we all feel like computers are as essential as a pen. And books, instead of flying off of
store shelves, are now flying into the Kindle or iPad. I have to believe that."

Quindlen then remembered growing up in the area and spending days reading in a club chair by a fireplace.
Sending a ripple of laughter through the audience, she chanted her mother's refrain that “It’s a beautiful day
outside; all of your friends are outside.” Although she joined them sometimes, Quindlen never felt the same
connection playing down by the creek.

"I always felt like the best part of me was back in that room, in that book, laid flat on that table like a game of
statues, all those people frozen, until I could pick up that book again and bring them back to life.
The truth is that after I became an English major in college [at Barnard in New York City] and then went into
the business of words, I realized that the world, in some ways, is as hostile to the act of reading as my
girlfriends had been when they told me to 'put down that stupid book and come outside,'" she said.

"Again, in some ways, I think it is peculiarly American that while we keep paying lip service to the virtues of
reading there’s something in this culture that’s so activist that suspects people who read as dreamers, as
people who need to grow up and come outside where real life is. I can’t tell you how many captains of
industry have leaned into me at dinner parties and confided in this kind of self-congratulatory way, that they
don’t have time to read. They’re just to busy, they’re too important. Every once in a while one confides that
his wife belongs to a book club. I mean it’s all I can do not to stab him with a salad fork."

Quindlen explained that the act of writing helps her process issues such as gun control or affirmative
action. She added that wrestling with words on the page also helps her understand herself more
thoroughly.

"I’ve learned—and everyone should learn—to use the written word the way it was meant to be, as a legacy
of your life. I think about this all the time," she said. "If I were hit by a bus at 72nd & Broadway, what would
there be left of me for my children? For me, at this moment, the answer is really satisfying because they
would have my words. They could pick up a book or an old magazine and there I would be, talking to them,
alive again, my words in their heads. That is who I am at some level; my voice is who I am, and I need that."

Then, she noted the ways that lawyers, research scientists, and grant writers all use words to help others.

"If you’re an executive and you can mesmerize the people who work with you with your words, you’re almost
guaranteed success as a leader. Writing is probably the only thing that we learn in school—with the
possible exception of music and art—that can totally belong to us," Quindlen said. "This connection with
other human beings, this opportunity to speak on paper with thought and eloquence and care in a way that
we rarely speak it in life."

She honestly described, however, her arduous process of writing.

"In talking about students, let me be clear about one thing I always say to them over and over again. I really
hate to write. I hate looking at a blank screen and trying to figure out how to fill it again. I hate having a vision
of a perfect paragraph or scene in my mind and, when I finally sit down, having it come out less than perfect
when it’s written down. I hate having to do it over and over again," Quindlen said.

"I mean with a book like Every Last One, I finish a 350-page manuscript, I have my last conversation with
the copy editor, I approve the jacket art and then I say, 'Oh my god, it’s all going to start again.' New made-up
people, new made-up places, new paragraphs I know will sometimes be DOA [dead on arrival] on the
page.... But I always think of it like housework. You wash the dishes and put them away. The next day, you
take them down and eat on them and wash them and put them away. I hate having to write, but I love having
written. I can’t have one without the other."

Despite these challenges, Quindlen added that she reminds herself of the end result.

"Right now, I have a novel that I think is the best work that I’ve ever done, that I feel that I’ve brought a level of
purpose and control and ability that I’ve never quite had in this form before."

To request an extended account of this presentation for your publication, contact admin@artsphoria.com.
For more information about the author, visit annaquindlen.net.

They make reading sound like a luxury, when I think it’s an absolute
necessity in a democracy. Because words are what break down
the barriers among us. Words are what won’t allow the big lies to stand.
To my mind, in a democracy, it’s more of a threat to cut library budgets
than to cut the defense budget.

And that’s why I think reading will maintain, in all kinds of different forms,
whether it’s a digital book or an actual one because it is that protection
against the big lies; it is the thing that allows the bright lines that divide us
not to stand. Information, stories, words, they tell us over and over again
that we’re more alike than different. They help us to understand the world,
and they help us to understand [ourselves]. That’s what reading is for me: it
helps me to understand myself. That’s what writing does for me, too.