Keynote Address: Sweetbriar College — September 22,2006

In the next decade, as the so-called Baby Boomers retire and-is it possible?-die, an enor­mous trans­fer of wealth, the largest in our his­tory, will take place-largely secretly and in silence.

How reas­sur­ing it is to find a sec­ond appraisal, to my mind more sen­si­tive and com­pelling than the first, in The New York Times (March 31).

In my heart, she has a spe­cial place because of some curi­ous con­nec­tions: she was at Radcliffe a few years before me, in the wretched fifties, and came out of that expe­ri­ence with for­mal train­ing, an early mar­riage, and three sons.

This essay, by Steve Almond, from the March 25^th edi­tion of The New York Times, comes like a bomb­shell, dis­pelling not only my notions about why peo­ple take the writ­ing work­shops I teach, but why I often find teach­ing them frustrating.

Five days ago I had an aston­ish­ing expe­ri­ence as I was wait­ing in line to get on an American Eagle regional jet in Louisville, Kentucky, fly­ing to Chicago.

“Doing good” has always been asso­ci­ated with that look which is why Doris Duke, mys­te­ri­ous, unpre­dictable, may turn out to be an inter­est­ing sub­ject for my next book. Already I gather that she “did good” with­out car­ing much about it or dream­ing of wear­ing “do good” clothes.

Next week, as I begin to unravel the many strands of Doris Duke’s life, pre­served in a mas­sive archive at Duke University in Durham, NC, I must work hard to clear away my pre­sump­tions, in fact, my prej­u­dices about a woman whose whole his­tory seems, super­fi­cially, at least, to have been clouded, or dis­torted, by scandal.

BARNEY ROSSET died a few days ago and the New York Times ran a long obit­u­ary on February 23, cel­e­brat­ing his role in free­ing the U.S. read­ing pub­lic from censorship.

“Spring is like a per­haps hand in the win­dow,” e e cum­mings wrote, and while I can never lit­er­ally explain what he meant—what line of poetry can be lit­er­ally explained?—the line always comes to mind when I see the first hints that spring will even­tu­ally be here, even in the moun­tains of north­ern New Mexico: a bud encrusted with snow, a nest that will soon be used, the first leaves of the daf­fodil bulbs I planted last fall.

As the snows begin to recede here in the south­ern Rockies, the des­can­sos by the sides of our roads come back into view. These are shrines cre­ated by fam­i­lies who have lost some­one in a car wreck at that spot.

Whitney Houston’s death last Saturday alerted me to a part of her story: the roles played in her rise to fame by her mother, Cissy Houston, a gospel and pop singer who sang back up to Aretha Franklin, whose tri­umphant hymns to women’s inde­pen­dence her­alded my polit­i­cal com­ing of age. Aretha was Whitney’s god­mother. This matri­archy, source of strength and grace, is rarely rec­og­nized as such.

Sitting long hours in the class­room arouses in me the rest­less­ness that was the bane, or per­haps the bless­ing of my child­hood: when will I be let out? Eventually the dis­cus­sion catches my atten­tion, but first there is the long­ing for the open road that I first encoun­tered, in fic­tion, in Kenneth Grahame’s deli­cious The Wind in the Willows.

I’ve lived in the moun­tains for a long time, got­ten the knack of it. Every morn­ing down the hill by eight to catch a ride, if I’m lucky, with some guy going to work in Santa Fe. Always a young guy alone in a beat-up car, maybe dri­ving in for break­fast from the campground.

Fifteen years ago, when I first encoun­tered Plato’s teach­ings at St. John’s College here, I railed against them. My mother used to call this, “Kicking against the pricks,” no pun intended. Today I’m begin­ning to real­ize that this cur­ricu­lum, based on the Great Books, a sys­tem devised in the 1940’s to encom­pass the whole of a gentleman’s essen­tial library, reveals the base-the stones-on which we all stand.

I’m try­ing, with a good deal of anx­i­ety, to put together what I know and believe with the sup­po­si­tions and proofs of the ancient Greek philoso­phers. They use a lan­guage and a way of think­ing, totally abstract—almost—that is as for­eign to me as the abstruse cal­cu­la­tions each mem­ber of my class must write, from mem­ory, on the blackboard.

What a plea­sure it is to see, in the midst of dis­heart­en­ing news about the low num­ber of women writ­ers whose writ­ing appears in major national peri­od­i­cals, that the Atlantic is at least at the top of the list.

Our heart­felt attempts at cheer and good­will this hol­i­day sea­son bark their knees-if they had knees-on reports like Name It/Change It. Just when we wanted to for­get all about misog­yny comes this por­tent reminder that it is always with us, espe­cially in the var­i­ous forms of media I attempt to ignore but which bathe our coun­try in a bath of vitriol.

Now that my newest book, Mending: New and Selected Short Stories is reach­ing its read­ers, I find myself in a rather delight­ful quandary: Sarabande Books will pub­lish my next book, The Blue Box, a fam­ily nar­ra­tive based on the let­ters and papers of three of my fore­moth­ers, in August, 2014—which seems a life­time away. As I debate turn­ing my ener­gies in another direc­tion (The Blue Box is vir­tu­ally fin­ished), I am intrigued by the life of Doris Duke, whose papers have just been opened to the pub­lic as part of the Rubenstein Library at Duke University.

They were old, they had entered those years when noth­ing ever hap­pens except falls, ill­ness, approach­ing dis­abil­ity, and nei­ther of them had planned on that when they mar­ried, when the chil­dren were born, and then the grandchildren.

In an econ­omy of high unem­ploy­ment, depen­dent on five per­cent annual growth, the woman spray­ing her fel­low shop­pers joins the ranks of the immi­grant shat­ter­ing the peace of a neigh­bor­hood with a leaf blower and the bull­dozer beep­ing as it destroys a hill­side for another expen­sive development.

“Look at the embroi­dery,” she said, spread­ing out the ban­dana. Dense, tiny silk flow­ers in red, gold, pur­ple and blue cov­ered every inch. “On the other side, too.” She turned it over; mirac­u­lously, it seemed to me, the wrong side of the ban­dana was also com­pletely cov­ered with tiny flow­ers. I’d been sewing let­ters on a sam­pler, much against my will, and I knew how messy the back side of any­thing embroi­dered usu­ally looked.

Our books are expen­sive and employ lan­guage that is rapidly becom­ing obso­lete. They are sold in book­stores, which are them­selves, spe­cial, sep­a­rate, threat­ened, and rare. These books are writ­ten slowly, some­times painfully, and edited slowly, and also some­times with pain, all to con­form to a stan­dard: what seri­ous lit­er­a­ture ought to be. But to uphold a stan­dard that no longer means any­thing to most peo­ple seems an exer­cise in futility.

When I became aware of her as my mother (I was her third child), she was a tiny blond woman, almost doll-like, formed by the con­ven­tions of upper class mar­riage. I almost never saw her with­out make-up, her hair set in care­ful blond curls, wear­ing a pow­er­ful gir­dle, a suit and car­ry­ing a purse; she seemed always to be armed for a dis­tant battle.

It glit­tered obscurely in the back of the curio cab­i­net my grand­mother kept in her dark lit­tle house in Richmond, Virginia, the house where she’d raised six daugh­ters and a son. On the walls there were snap­shots of all those golden-haired girls, and the one dark-haired boy, as well as their equally fair chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, but I don’t remem­ber them. Familiar icons, alike in all houses, they were not inter­est­ing; but the curio cab­i­net, and its contents-which only my grand­mother touched-alerted me instantly to the elec­tric pres­ence of stories.

It has taken me a long time to real­ize how lit­tle I knew about the women who raised me.

They lived in our house, full time, on the top floor, where we chil­dren knew instinc­tively not to go: small rooms I saw many years later, suf­fo­cat­ingly hot, reached by long flights of stairs or a creak­ing ele­va­tor put in a gen­er­a­tion ear­lier for a daugh­ter dying of tuber­cu­lo­sis. One of those rooms had a beau­ti­ful view of the Ohio, the bound­ary between the slave states and the free.

My lit­tle prac­tice restored my faith in one cru­cial phrase, one cru­cial pos­si­bil­ity, which I feel to this day, and that is the pos­si­bil­ity of achiev­ing through my body the peace that passes understanding.

Best New Ending Wins a Signed Copy of Mending: New and Selected Stories! I’m open­ing this up to you, my readers-write your own end­ing to the fol­low­ing short story and sub­mit it via the con­tact form on my web­site. I’ll pick my favorite and the win­ner will also be pub­lished on my web­site. Entries are due on November 18. Good luck! Sallie

The city has a way of enforc­ing its rules on the unwary that even the Wall Street pro­test­ers might find oppres­sive: a way of dress­ing that implies a way of being, a way of talk­ing that depends on a cer­tain kind of conformity—the rea­son, in addi­tion to the expense of liv­ing here, that writ­ers and artists get out.

When I started out as a writer in the 1960’s, I had to go to New York. There was no alter­na­tive. Even Boston, where I lived for a few years after col­lege, and which had an old lit­er­ary tra­di­tion, wouldn’t do; the real pub­lish­ers, agents, book­stores and read­ers were—they had to be!—in New York. I had no idea, really, what New York was like; I’d never lived there; and I couldn’t have pre­dicted how hos­tile the envi­ron­ment would be to me.

When a play by a woman is reviewed, I notice, cer­tain atti­tudes pre­vail. Of course there are excep­tions, but the rule is that the play is treated with con­de­scen­sion if not out­right hos­til­ity. Women authors face the same bar­rage but it is much more intense, and more uni­ver­sal, for playwrights.

There is noth­ing wrong with cities. They are occa­sion­ally beau­ti­ful, always stim­u­lat­ing, and as my beloved daughter-in-law, Camila, said as we were walk­ing back last night, every­one feels at home in them—or at least in New York.

A while back, or per­haps it was more than a few years ago, we all became aware of the epi­demic of vio­lence against women in this coun­try, and mem­oirs began to be writ­ten as the sur­vivors felt empow­ered to describe what they had gone though, bat­tling through shame and the fear of fam­ily reper­cus­sions. We all have our lists of these titles, some of them bit­ingly effec­tive, oth­ers less so, and per­haps I was not alone in imag­in­ing that writ­ing about the prob­lem would make the prob­lem go away, or at least dimin­ish it.

Years ago when I was liv­ing in Manhattan with three small sons, des­per­ately try­ing to con­tinue the writ­ing to which I’ve devoted my life, I stum­bled on a hid­den jewel: The New York Society Library, on 79^th Street just off Madison.

My last reading—this month—in Kentucky was for another of what I call a dear audi­ence, at the sec­ond floor library above the police sta­tion in the lit­tle out­ly­ing town of Prospect. Years ago this was a farm­ing com­mu­nity; now, it has sprouted pros­per­ous sub­di­vi­sions, green with trees and grass, strip malls, gas stations—but also a small wildlife sanc­tu­ary, in ease­ments, and res­i­dents who still remem­ber the value of the land.

Now and then I have the priv­i­lege of read­ing to an audi­ence I can only describe as dear. That was the case with the group at the Jeffersonville Public Library this evening: twenty or so peo­ple who hung on every word of my story, “Selling The Farm,” as though the two sis­ters in the story were their own friends, or even their own sisters.

I always find that a read­ing in my home­town is both warmer and more dis­con­cert­ing than read­ing in other cities, warmer, because so many old friends and rel­a­tives are sit­ting on the chairs at the back of the book­store, dis­con­cert­ing because they are old friends and rel­a­tives who do not view me first of all as a writer. Either they know too much about me, or not enough. They have come out of that mix­ture of kind­ness and curiosity—what we call support—that leaves me a lit­tle breath­less, like a hearty slap on the back.

Twenty-five years ago, a group of women from all over the state started to put together what would be, for the area, the first gath­er­ing of women writ­ers. I remem­ber the first meet­ing I attended, in a tall office build­ing set in the mid­dle of the green University of Kentucky cam­pus. Women writ­ers came together who would become well known: Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bamberra, and many oth­ers. We were all at the begin­ning of some­thing big—we knew it, rejoiced in it, and won­dered how time would define, or change, our orig­i­nal dream.

Like all authors, I face an inter­est­ing para­dox when I travel to teach and read in my hometown—or, in this case, my home state. I am grate­ful that the home­town aura will bring in lis­ten­ers, both to my class and to the read­ing I will give next Saturday. We are all curi­ous about peo­ple who grew up near us, or are our age, or nearly, with the expec­ta­tion of a shared point of view (and prejudices)—or at least shared experiences.

I’m always a lit­tle ner­vous before my first read­ing from a new book, so far untried by read­ers although with two won­der­ful reviews, some of my best (Library Journal, Publishers’ Weekly) but with­out the surge of com­ments that gath­ers slowly, in the media and in the form of email from strangers and friends, over a period of months.

Preparing to read from my new col­lec­tion Mending: New and Selected Stories, at the Alamosa Bookstore in Albuquerque, New Mexico, goes beyond won­der­ing who will be there, which is always impos­si­ble to predict.

For the past three years, I’ve had the deep plea­sure and priv­i­lege of work­ing on a col­lec­tion of papers found in the top of my mother’s closet after she died, let­ters from long for­got­ten rel­a­tives, mainly women, in Virginia, West Virginia and Georgia, cov­er­ing more than 150 years.

After teach­ing last week at the Cape Cod Writers’ Conference, with, for and among an ami­able group, I came home with a few thoughts: what stu­dents are seek­ing in work­shops such as this one (I imag­ine aca­d­e­mic classes may be dif­fer­ent) is contact.

It’s impor­tant to avoid overus­ing your own point of view.

My poetry leads me to focus on word choice, the rhythm and sound of lan­guage, the flow of sentences—all of which are essen­tial to the suc­cess and the inten­sity of the short story.

These five days are about your expan­sion. This doesn’t mean belit­tling who you are right now as you sit here. It reflects what I’ve learned from my own writ­ing and from teach­ing work­shops: that we all have more pos­si­bil­i­ties and poten­tials than we realize.

She was the kind of woman who said now you can have every­thing and then took it back.

SO HERE WE ARE after all these years—more than fifty—gathered together for the sec­ond time since we grad­u­ated from the pri­vate all-girls school in Louisville, Kentucky—before the Civil Rights Movement, before the Women’s Movement, before Vietnam and all the wars that have fol­lowed it.

CAST: GARY, a young man; HOWARD, a middle-aged man; SARAH, a middle-aged woman. PLACE: Three seats in a row on an airplane.

The North Atlantic was not my coun­try. Its wild waves crashed unre­gard­ing of the small girl at their edge, who knew only the soft brown Ohio hurrying