On Saturday, November 3, 2007, Louisiana celebrates its 5th annual State Book Festival in Baton Rouge at the Capitol. At this year's event I'm looking forward to presenting my new novel, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, set in post-Civil War Louisiana, and to visiting with the marvelous state librarians, who organize the festival. I'm hoping to see friends Laura Joh Rowland (author of a thriller series set in feudal Japan) and Barbara Colley (author of the Charlotte LaRue mysteries) and meet writers Barbara Hambly and David Madden and many more.
Five years ago, when my first novel was published, Barbara Colley included me in the panel discussion she moderated at the first-ever Louisiana Book Festival. Since that time, Barbara has created many more adventures for her series character, Charlotte LaRue, who runs a housecleaning business in New Orleans--and cleans up crimes, too. Since that first LBF, Charlotte's been faced with the clean-up after Katrina, as well.
At that first festival, I was honored to share, along with the Louisiana State Librarians and many writers and readers, a warm feeling of success. Five years later, I'm still glowing and ready to celebrate again the joy of books. Laissez les bon temps rouler!
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Friday, October 26, 2007
PERSON/PERSONA
Novelists learn early in their careers to create characters and reveal aspects of personality through what the characters say, do, think, and feel. Moreover, what characters say about each other reveals as much about speaker as subject. In the creative process, novelists draw on the experiences we all share in getting to know ourselves and others. We play a variety of roles—offspring, sibling, spouse, parent, friend, lover, worker, and so on, highlighting or downplaying aspects of ourselves to fit a variety of circumstances. Each of us is multi-faceted, and when novelists translate the multi-faceted aspect of human nature to fictional characters, they bring those characters to life.
Later on in their writing careers, novelists discover that each has created a character who is not confined in a book or in a body. Beyond a novelist’s person is his or her persona. In THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A NOVEL, Jane Smiley writes that a literary persona “is equally the possession of the author and the reader; both create it and both respond to it, since it is made by the act of reading and remembering novels.” A writer’s persona begins with his or her experiences and choices of material and style; then, like a character in a novel, the persona is further shaped by readers’ expectations and reactions.
Though a person writes a book, often the persona sells it to a readership. Derek Lee Armstrong and Kam Wai Yu tell us in THE PERSONA PRINCIPLE, How to Succeed in Business with Image-Marketing: “Once your persona is born, you must develop, expand, and elaborate, until the persona can function on its own . . . Allow your persona to live independently of its creators . . . Let your personified venture grow equity in its identity that is not dependent on your personal interference.”
How does a writer reconcile person with persona? Recently, I posed that question to Kathy Patrick, founder of the Pulpwood Queen Book Clubs and author of THE PULPWOOD QUEEN’S TIARA-WEARING, BOOK-SHARING GUIDE TO LIFE. Asked if her public persona differs much from her private self, Kathy replies: “My public persona is much different from myself. People perceive me as this outgoing big-haired, tiara wearing girlie girl. First I don't actually have big hair . . . I clip my big hair on and call it my ‘Go to Town’ hair.” Kathy, who owns Beauty and the Book, a hair salon/bookstore, believes “the public expects me to have my hair done and be dressed a certain way in public. At home, it's hair pulled back in a ponytail, ball cap, no makeup, t-shirt and pull on pants. At work I'm a big talker because I have a lot to say about beauty and books. At home I don't talk at all because I'm either writing or I'm reading. Which persona is more me, I think I am both. I love to dress up and I love to dress down. Other times I like to dress in costumes and do theater, or story hours. I believe that we can be more than one thing in life. Some people call that schizophrenia, to me I call it my life in books.”
Truly, Kathy Patrick has found a beautiful balance between what Jane Smiley calls “a reading and writing life, and a lived life.” Kathy hosts the annual Girlfriend Weekend in East Texas, a celebration for Pulpwood Queens, readers, and writers. And while promoting literacy, Kathy is also willing to add a little color and curl to her guest authors’ personae.
Rosemary Poole-Carter
Later on in their writing careers, novelists discover that each has created a character who is not confined in a book or in a body. Beyond a novelist’s person is his or her persona. In THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A NOVEL, Jane Smiley writes that a literary persona “is equally the possession of the author and the reader; both create it and both respond to it, since it is made by the act of reading and remembering novels.” A writer’s persona begins with his or her experiences and choices of material and style; then, like a character in a novel, the persona is further shaped by readers’ expectations and reactions.
Though a person writes a book, often the persona sells it to a readership. Derek Lee Armstrong and Kam Wai Yu tell us in THE PERSONA PRINCIPLE, How to Succeed in Business with Image-Marketing: “Once your persona is born, you must develop, expand, and elaborate, until the persona can function on its own . . . Allow your persona to live independently of its creators . . . Let your personified venture grow equity in its identity that is not dependent on your personal interference.”
How does a writer reconcile person with persona? Recently, I posed that question to Kathy Patrick, founder of the Pulpwood Queen Book Clubs and author of THE PULPWOOD QUEEN’S TIARA-WEARING, BOOK-SHARING GUIDE TO LIFE. Asked if her public persona differs much from her private self, Kathy replies: “My public persona is much different from myself. People perceive me as this outgoing big-haired, tiara wearing girlie girl. First I don't actually have big hair . . . I clip my big hair on and call it my ‘Go to Town’ hair.” Kathy, who owns Beauty and the Book, a hair salon/bookstore, believes “the public expects me to have my hair done and be dressed a certain way in public. At home, it's hair pulled back in a ponytail, ball cap, no makeup, t-shirt and pull on pants. At work I'm a big talker because I have a lot to say about beauty and books. At home I don't talk at all because I'm either writing or I'm reading. Which persona is more me, I think I am both. I love to dress up and I love to dress down. Other times I like to dress in costumes and do theater, or story hours. I believe that we can be more than one thing in life. Some people call that schizophrenia, to me I call it my life in books.”
Truly, Kathy Patrick has found a beautiful balance between what Jane Smiley calls “a reading and writing life, and a lived life.” Kathy hosts the annual Girlfriend Weekend in East Texas, a celebration for Pulpwood Queens, readers, and writers. And while promoting literacy, Kathy is also willing to add a little color and curl to her guest authors’ personae.
Rosemary Poole-Carter
Friday, October 19, 2007
LITERACY FOR LIFE
Being part of the reading and writing online community through forums and sites such as Goodreads.com, AuthorsDen, and Amazon Profiles, I find continuing inspiration. Getting to know others who share my passion for literacy, I often find others for whom reading is not only a pastime but also a salvation.
Kathy Patrick, founder of the Pulpwood Queens Book Clubs, grew up in Kansas with two younger sisters and a pair of warring parents. She spent much of her childhood in fear, but in books, Kathy found her escape and her calling. She says: “I tell everybody that will listen, books saved me. . . I was scared most of my childhood but by reading books I could escape into the pages and become those characters who were brave, bold, something I was too scared to be as a child. Because of reading and books, I have become brave, bold and now it is my mission in life to bring reading to others. I also feel that if my book touches one person like the book that turned me on to reading, I have accomplished my goal. Reading has saved my life and given me a purpose, my mission to promote literacy.” Kathy’s book The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara-Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life will be released in January.
Like Kathy, I grew up afraid—in my case, of my alcoholic father’s rages—and I found comfort and courage in books. My happiest childhood memories are of my mother reading to me while I ate lunch. We called the time Soup and Stories—I’d bring her a stack of Golden Books, and I still don’t know when Mama ever got a chance to eat her lunch. These lines from “The Reading Mother” by Strickland Gillilan could have been written for my mother: “You may have tangible wealth untold: Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be—I had a Mother who read to me.”
I hope to write more about this lifelong love of literacy and would be delighted to hear from others for whom books have been a salvation. If you’d like to share your thoughts, please do (contact: http://poole-carter.info). Rosemary Poole-Carter
Kathy Patrick, founder of the Pulpwood Queens Book Clubs, grew up in Kansas with two younger sisters and a pair of warring parents. She spent much of her childhood in fear, but in books, Kathy found her escape and her calling. She says: “I tell everybody that will listen, books saved me. . . I was scared most of my childhood but by reading books I could escape into the pages and become those characters who were brave, bold, something I was too scared to be as a child. Because of reading and books, I have become brave, bold and now it is my mission in life to bring reading to others. I also feel that if my book touches one person like the book that turned me on to reading, I have accomplished my goal. Reading has saved my life and given me a purpose, my mission to promote literacy.” Kathy’s book The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara-Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life will be released in January.
Like Kathy, I grew up afraid—in my case, of my alcoholic father’s rages—and I found comfort and courage in books. My happiest childhood memories are of my mother reading to me while I ate lunch. We called the time Soup and Stories—I’d bring her a stack of Golden Books, and I still don’t know when Mama ever got a chance to eat her lunch. These lines from “The Reading Mother” by Strickland Gillilan could have been written for my mother: “You may have tangible wealth untold: Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be—I had a Mother who read to me.”
I hope to write more about this lifelong love of literacy and would be delighted to hear from others for whom books have been a salvation. If you’d like to share your thoughts, please do (contact: http://poole-carter.info). Rosemary Poole-Carter
Monday, October 15, 2007
TIMELESS HISTORY
A few years ago, I joined the Historical Novel Society, a community of writers and readers who share enjoyment of the many forms of historical fiction: novels based on the lives of historic personages, novels using history as a backdrop, mysteries, romances, adventures, speculations, and more. While I enjoy reading novels that incorporate history in a variety of ways, in my own writing, I tend to use history as not so much a backdrop as a mask. Versions of the personalities that fascinate me, ideas that move me, issues that anger me today existed in the past and come to life again in historical fiction.
J.P. Hartley opens his novel THE GO-BETWEEN with these words: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” Yes, they do—and yet, they don’t. Doing things differently is the mask, but the needs and passions that drive those actions have changed very little over time. As I turn from a history book on the American Civil War and Reconstruction to the morning paper, I find far too many parallels. When I see a soldier missing a limb or talk with a veteran missing friends, present and past blend together—the physical and emotional damages of war have not changed.
Yesterday at a bookstore signing, I asked my friend Wava Everton to perform the Civil War song, "Somebody's Darling", mentioned in my novel. The chorus is this: “Somebody’s darling, somebody’s pride, who’ll tell his mother where her boy died.” One of the customers listening to Wava’s glorious voice was a weather-beaten middle-aged man, whose eyes began to fill. After she finished the song, the three of us talked a little about the man's son, whom the man had not seen in years and who had just shipped out for Iraq. The father's sadness and sense of loss was as timeless and moving as Marie Revenal de la Coste's haunting lyric. In a bookstore in the 21st century, three people—all of us parents—wished what parents have always wished: May our children outlive us.
Rosemary Poole-Carter, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, 978-1-60164-014-7
J.P. Hartley opens his novel THE GO-BETWEEN with these words: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” Yes, they do—and yet, they don’t. Doing things differently is the mask, but the needs and passions that drive those actions have changed very little over time. As I turn from a history book on the American Civil War and Reconstruction to the morning paper, I find far too many parallels. When I see a soldier missing a limb or talk with a veteran missing friends, present and past blend together—the physical and emotional damages of war have not changed.
Yesterday at a bookstore signing, I asked my friend Wava Everton to perform the Civil War song, "Somebody's Darling", mentioned in my novel. The chorus is this: “Somebody’s darling, somebody’s pride, who’ll tell his mother where her boy died.” One of the customers listening to Wava’s glorious voice was a weather-beaten middle-aged man, whose eyes began to fill. After she finished the song, the three of us talked a little about the man's son, whom the man had not seen in years and who had just shipped out for Iraq. The father's sadness and sense of loss was as timeless and moving as Marie Revenal de la Coste's haunting lyric. In a bookstore in the 21st century, three people—all of us parents—wished what parents have always wished: May our children outlive us.
Rosemary Poole-Carter, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, 978-1-60164-014-7
Friday, October 5, 2007
Ladies in Waiting or Women in Action
On the radio I heard Susan Faludi discussing her new book, THE TERROR DREAM: FEAR AND FANTASY IN POST-9/11 AMERICA. Among her many provocative points, Faludi described an historic pattern of behavior in times of crisis: following the shock and terror comes the mythmaking in which certain persons are designated heroes and others are the victims to be rescued. Not too surprisingly, hero and victim status is generally assigned along gender lines by both mythmakers and media. Faludi cited the news media’s fixation on the widows of 9/11, although both men and women lost spouses and other family members; the survivors who must carry on in the face of loss were painted as the victims. Then, when some widows rejected the victim role and asked hard questions of the government, the media ostracized them. When the myth in the making is one of specifically male heroism, Faludi commented that it requires bolstering by specifically female weakness and helplessness. She traced this pattern in American history back to the settlement of the nation.
I deeply appreciate the bravery and sacrifice both men and women have made for the good of one another and the good of all. In my comments here, I have no wish to denigrate their contributions to human society. And I recognize that what each individual can contribute to society can very well be determined partly by physical strength, intelligence, talent, willingness, or resourcefulness. Still, Faludi’s radio interview sparked my thinking: though we might welcome rescue and protection, sometimes they come with a price.
I remember my mother’s descriptions of how independent many women were during WWII, managing life on the home front and assisting with the war effort. When the crisis was over, the women were expected by society and often by themselves to go home, to resume their proper domestic roles. So, those who had become women of action for the good of the country in wartime transformed themselves once again in peacetime to ladies in waiting.
For my novels and plays, I often research and write about the American Civil War and Reconstruction eras. And the course of history often fills me with frustration and outrage. In the first half of the 19th century, women’s rights activists had been busy with their agenda, but they willingly or grudgingly put their issues on the shelf with the outbreak of war. Women’s rights activists were among the most vocal advocates for the emancipation of slaves, but the fight to preserve the Union, which grew to encompass the fight to free blacks from bondage, did not expand to encompass true equality among races or genders. Particularly in the South, the kind of mythmaking Faludi writes about was evident in the new order: white males became white knights, silencing women who might speak for themselves and rescuing the white ladies from attack by men of other races by keeping the women in the bondage of dependency. Sometimes the price of protection is too high.
Rosemary Poole-Carter
I deeply appreciate the bravery and sacrifice both men and women have made for the good of one another and the good of all. In my comments here, I have no wish to denigrate their contributions to human society. And I recognize that what each individual can contribute to society can very well be determined partly by physical strength, intelligence, talent, willingness, or resourcefulness. Still, Faludi’s radio interview sparked my thinking: though we might welcome rescue and protection, sometimes they come with a price.
I remember my mother’s descriptions of how independent many women were during WWII, managing life on the home front and assisting with the war effort. When the crisis was over, the women were expected by society and often by themselves to go home, to resume their proper domestic roles. So, those who had become women of action for the good of the country in wartime transformed themselves once again in peacetime to ladies in waiting.
For my novels and plays, I often research and write about the American Civil War and Reconstruction eras. And the course of history often fills me with frustration and outrage. In the first half of the 19th century, women’s rights activists had been busy with their agenda, but they willingly or grudgingly put their issues on the shelf with the outbreak of war. Women’s rights activists were among the most vocal advocates for the emancipation of slaves, but the fight to preserve the Union, which grew to encompass the fight to free blacks from bondage, did not expand to encompass true equality among races or genders. Particularly in the South, the kind of mythmaking Faludi writes about was evident in the new order: white males became white knights, silencing women who might speak for themselves and rescuing the white ladies from attack by men of other races by keeping the women in the bondage of dependency. Sometimes the price of protection is too high.
Rosemary Poole-Carter
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