Sally Beauman To Publish New Book

I’m so thrilled at this news! I found this bit on Publisher’s Lunch:

Author of DESTINY and REBECCA’S TALE, Sally Beauman’s THE VISITORS, about an eleven-year-old girl drawn into the world of a lord and all the intrigue, confusion and excitement surrounding the obsessive hunt for the last pharaoh’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings, to Harper, at auction, and LIttle Brown UK.

As someone who is absolutely batty about Sally Beauman, this is the best possible news. [You can see proof of my fangirlism here and here and here and here and especially here and some more here and here.] I just love her books so much. Her characters haunt me, particularly Helene; every time I’m in London, I think if I just look hard enough, I’ll catch a glimpse of Helene.

But what really adds to the pleasure of this book is that it involves the “last pharaoh’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.” I am intrigued by that because earlier this year I visited Highclere, the beautiful setting of the show Downton Abbey and the home of the Earl of Carnarvon:

George Herbert, the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, was the financial backer for the search for an excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb. He was quite ill when the tomb was eventually discovered, but he had dug with his own hands in that hardpan soil; it had become an obsession for him. While I was at Highclere, there was a very interesting museum in the basement of Egyptian artifacts that Herbert himself had discovered. It made a strong enough impression on me that I began to devour books on the history of the family as well as Egyptology.

Thus, Sally Beauman’s new book will work on me on several different levels. I’ll be first in line to grab it, in full on hard-back, baby!

Welcome To England

I have not been in England long enough to have any sweeping observations about how life is different here. I do, however, have some micro-observations:

English food is radically different. Food is pretty universal; we all have access to pretty much the same basic staples from which to create our menus (and our cultural identities; you would not mistake Indian food for Australian, for example). Somehow England, which shares the vast majority of easily available items with the USA, has decided to go coo-coo bananas and mix ingredients that never should have made acquaintance. As someone who regularly eats an organic, grain-free, gluten-free paleo diet, the lack of said foods here (even at Waitrose) leaves me a little baffled. But as with many different areas, I’m reminded that THIS IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY, it isn’t “America-lite”. So I just have to find new things to eat, and learn to love the pork sausage (which right now does nothing for me.)

Driving on the left side of the road is very cute, but gets ordinary very quickly. The novelty of this lasted about two days before I adjusted to it. I drove on the left side after lunch at a pub in a tiny hamlet; the road was long and twisting but not trafficked at all. It felt strange to shift gears with my left hand, but otherwise was just like driving anywhere else. I even pulled over to allow a lorry to pass.

English accents become indistinguishable very quickly. Like driving on the left, the accents quickly become background and you don’t really hear them unless you are deliberately listening for it.

Castles and vast estates are impressive, no matter how sophisticated you are. The National Trust maintains some of the most stunning homes in the world and I love them. I sometimes think that some people must sneer at the tourists who gawk at the lovely homes, but I think they’re gorgeous and a way to get a sharp sense of history.

History is everywhere. There is literally not a single place I’ve been that didn’t have some interesting, historical aspect to it. The Cheshire Cheese is a pub that has been existence since the 1500s. It is a dark, low-ceilinged place with dirt on the floor and massive, thick tables that, while not as old as the building, have probably been there since at least 1950.

England is beautiful. The coastline to the green, green hills of the South Downs, it is all just stunning. I love every inch of it.

A Day At The Beach

It was dramatic and evocative. All silver and reflective blue, shrouded in tulle fog, and made claustrophobic because there was no horizon, no point of reference anywhere. We marched up an Iron Age cliff, and looked two hundred feet down to the flat silver beach and jutting rocks. The sun finally came out in early afternoon, and then it was almost indistinguishable from the Jersey shore, except for the occasional British flags.

Houston, I Have An Apology

I lived in Houston for a number of years, driven more by circumstance than choice. My final few years in Houston were hard times, both personally and professionally. I left Texas blaming my bad times on Houston — I told people that the place has bad vibes and that it brought me ill luck.

But my time away from Houston has led me to a different perspective. I find myself stiffening up when I hear someone ignorantly criticizing Texas. I find that the knowledge of Texas by most “outsiders” is so shallow that their criticism is more like superstition than judgment.

And then, this past weekend, I read a review of the book, “Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn From the Strange Genius of Texas”. I have not read the full book yet, but the review highlights aspects of Texas and Houston that anyone who has lived there would recognize instantly. Houston is, by far, the most vigorous, diverse, and “can do” place I’ve ever visited — it’s like my vision of what all America was once like when it was younger, more rambunctious, and more interested in opportunities rather than outcomes.

Houston is always near the top of the list in the number of business start-ups created per capita — given that Houston is the fourth largest city in the USA, that is an incredible statistic — in raw absolute numbers, Houston dwarfs all other regions of the USA in entrepreneurial activity. These start-up businesses span the range from nanotechnology and other high-tech firms to restaurants and lawn maintenance operations. And they include aspiring writers as well …

In spite of my bad times in Houston, I realized one morning that Houston is the place where I took the great leap into trying to survive as a full-time writer. I lived on the edge (and beyond the edge) of oblivion while spending time writing the novel that eventually brought me a two-book contract with Diversion Books. The inspiration for the book was my experiences in Washington, D. C., but it was in Houston where I performed the hard work of actually writing it!

Could I have written the book somewhere other than Houston? Probably I could have. But I suspect there was something in that wide open, “go for it” Houston atmosphere that finally gave me the grit to take the risk and get the work done.

So, Houston, I apologize for the cruel things I’ve said about you. You will always be that wild boy that I loved, but just could not live with.

My Book Deal

If you’ve been wondering why I haven’t posted much.. well… here’s part of the answer:

Playlist For Spring

The weather was fine enough to venture outdoors for a nice spring-time run. It was the first of the year and went quite well, considering I did a barre class beforehand. It’s going to take a few weeks to feel like I’m back in running shape (I’m in spinning and barre shape right now).

This was my playlist. Some songs are questionable (I Just Had Sex, for instance?) but it kept me going.

Sylvia Plath: An Embarrassment of Riches

Two of the three new Sylvia Plath books arrived today. I’m so freaking excited, I can barely stand myself right now.

On Rihanna

I’ll go on record right now and predict that Rihanna will be dead in ten years, and Chris Brown will be holding the smoking gun. I think she knows this, and I think it is part of the thrill of dating a man who so obviously loves her to death.

Relationships that involve violence are fascinating to watch; living inside them must be a breathless thrill ride, an adrenaline-pumping free-for-all in which you never know if he’s going to hit you or kiss you. People who survive on that kind of drama seem sad to me, but Rihanna would probably say it was the most passionate, exciting, intense relationship of her life. Craving for that kind of excitement isn’t going to be satisfied with placid tv-watching, eight minutes of missionary, and twelve minutes of reading before drifting off to peaceful sleep. Oh no, the woman who loves Chris Brown, or in fact any woman-beater, wants those huge, dramatic fights with the shivering possibility of real danger and that glimpse of true darkness which she mistakes for a place they can both go together. The vases crashing overhead are all the soundtrack she needs to get her nerves humming. When he gets in her face she is uncertain whether he is going to smash her face in or kiss her with a searing tenderness that will send her to the moon. It has to be a massive rush.

She doesn’t leave because she likes that intoxicating push-and-pull, and if the price of that thrill is to get punched in the face, she’s happy to pay it. There are individuals out there who will attempt to claim “Battered Woman Syndrome” is all the excuse any woman will ever need for staying in a dysfunctional relationship, but those people are willfully ignoring the most obvious factor of any abusive relationship: she likes it.

Nicole Brown Simpson, the poster girl for battered women, had left OJ Simpson numerous times, and always went back. Yet…once when they were broken up, Nicole went back to OJ though, and begged him to come back. He rejected her; he said he was happy with Paula Barbieri. Nicole then wrote aching letters, attempting to entice him back to her. She reminded him of their home, of their shared children.

This is not a woman who was happy to be free. She missed the heart-racing thrill of being smacked in the face and shoved against walls. She missed the one man who gave her that. I’m not saying that’s a healthy or good thing to want, but she evidently got something out of it that could not be obtained in any other way.

Rihanna is apparently of the same mindset. In Sylvia Plath’s epic poem “Daddy” she declares that “every woman adores a Fascist / the boot in the face.” Sounds apt vis a vis Rihanna. Incidentally, she has a song titled S&M. It’s a great song; I work out to it all the time. The lyrics are telling:

Feels so good being bad
There’s no way I’m turning back
Now the pain is my pleasure cause nothing could measure

Love is great, love is fine (Oh oh oh oh oh)
Outta box, outta line (Oh oh oh oh oh)
The affliction of the feeling leaves me wanting more

Cause I may be bad, but I’m perfectly good at it
Sex in the air, I don’t care, I love the smell of it
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But chains and whips excite me

Cause I may be bad, but I’m perfectly good at it
Sex in the air, I don’t care, I love the smell of it
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But chains and whips excite me

Well there you go. I think there is something very honest about this song, when you consider her willingness to return to Chris Brown.

She is inexorably tied to him. She knows that what happens between them isn’t readily understood and I think she even likes that secretive aspect of it. It certainly creates an “us-against-the-world” dynamic which only serves to strengthen their bond. (I guess all those copies of Fifty Shades of Grey are fine for fiction, but introducing it to the mainstream – for real – is just too much.) Those times when Chris Brown blows up and smacks her are part of the reason she loves him. They aren’t a reason to leave him. They’re a reason to stay.

I predict several more incidents of her being beaten, maybe even badly. She will bear a few of his kids, show up at some glitzy party grinning with him on her arm, then the next day land in the hospital with a broken arm. Then one day, she will be dead. It’s comforting in its predictability.

I am reminded of Nicole Simpson again on a 911 call in which she tells the dispatcher “He’s going to kill me.” She has almost no inflection in her voice. She’s not even scared. It’s a statement of fact. It was part of what drew her to him, I suppose.

Rihanna has to know that the same fate awaits her. For someone so talented, so beautiful, who has so many opportunities to choose better, it is depressing to watch. I guess that makes her time here on earth, producing music and being amazing, even more precious. I’m determined to enjoy her career, knowing it is destined to be short-lived.

Lance & Me

Back in the day, in a period I don’t like to discuss very much, I was quite a good cyclist. I won a few races (metric centuries and centuries, mostly), worked in a bike shop as a mechanic, not because I needed the money but because I just loved handling bikes. They were – and are – one of the most elegant machines ever made, poetic in their simplicity and awe-inspiring in their muscle and speed.

Occasionally I’d head up to Austin for a nice long ride, and once in a while, I’d glimpse Lance Armstrong powering up Bee Caves Road. At the time he was a Texas phenom but I’m not sure he’d done anything huge yet. He had just turned pro and there was buzz about him. Yet, out there on the long flat roads, he seemed accessible, normal. Just some average dude out there trying to stay in shape.

I don’t remember when I fell in love with him. I don’t remember when I became a fan. But one day, I simply was. And since that moment, my admiration never wavered. When he won the first Tour de France, I lost my mind with joy. The fight with cancer had been epic; his recovery and ensuing cycling victories seemed like the stuff of legend.

By the seventh Tour de France victory, I felt exasperation and anger at those jerks who would make up horrible lies about him. Lance Armstrong doping? Whatareyou, crazy cakes? There was just no way. The purity of my belief cannot be questioned.

When he admitted earlier this week that he was, in fact, winning those races with assistance from banned substances, I felt dull shock. At first there was a little defense attorney inside me, screaming he NEEDED testosterone because he had only one testicle. And, by the way, it was his own blood.

Yet there is no excuse for the EPO and cortisone. He swore to compete by the rules of the game and he failed to that.

I still marvel at his athletic prowess. Even with every drug in the universe I couldn’t compete in the Tour. (It had been a dream, at one time, to try. Even today no women have ever come close to qualifying.) I remain convinced that he was on an entirely different level than the rest of us, drugs or not. I don’t think he won those races fairly, but I know that to even get to that point, he had to be so far ahead of even elite athletes that the advantage was miniscule. It was just enough to get him over the line.

That much is real. That’s what I will chose to remember about this tragedy.

50 Years of The Bell Jar

Fifty years ago today, Sylvia Plath’s iconic novel, The Bell Jar, was published under a pseudonym, Victoria Lucas. It was not until 1973 that the book saw the light of day in the US (her mother had attempted to block it from US shores).

Sylvia killed herself less than one month later.

Sylvia’s novel is difficult for me because it lacks the immediacy of her poetry. But taking it on its own terms, it is a terrifying look at madness. The listlessness. The boredom. The braying, nagging feeling of disappointment as if the question had been asked: this is all there is? It was answered in Sylvia’s book, which posited that there was no real reason for all that anxiety and sadness. Most madness memoirs today focus on depression or drug addiction or sexual abuse. But Plath’s – or Easter Greenwood’s?- problem was none of those things. It was simply that it was damn hard to be a girl in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

She desperately wanted to write novels, and I think if she’d lived, she would have done just that. But her poetry is so much more vivid, more alive, more emotional. It is worth noting that the message and imagery of The Bell Jar is identical to the poetry. But somehow, the condensed form put the thoughts under pressure, and made them explode in your face.

The Bell Jar became a feminist manifesto for the reason described above – it was hard to be a girl, and want sex and be scared of it, and to know that if anyone found out you were having it, it would be the end of you. The men had none of these struggles. The Bell Jar was an attempt to describe the repercussions of that oppression, and to document the madness that was galloping after her, and would soon overtake her.