What a bunch of babies, all those people crying about Atticus turning out to be racist! I was more shocked by Jean Louise’s uncle punching her in the face and busting her lip to calm her down at the end of the book. And then by how she does calm down, and they proceed to have a drink and a reasonable conversation. The whole thing was very, hey, you know, sometimes you just need to smack a hysterical woman.

But that’s not what this post is about. Or maybe it is, obliquely, in that it’s about irresponsible and socially damaging attitudes that are deeply entrenched within a culture, and at which no one so much as bats an eye.

In short, I liked that Atticus turned out to be a racist. Not because I like racism, but because as a writer and a deeply flawed human being, I appreciate writing that reflects other human beings as human-being-like, which is to say, both deeply flawed and yet capable of good. At our very best, this is all that anyone can hope to be. But my appreciation for the besmirching of Atticus’s character goes further. I think Lee was making a point about racism itself, one that is every bit as valid today as it was in the 1950s.

Her point, I think, is this: Sometimes people who don’t think of themselves as racists, are. It’s not an earth-shattering revelation, but it begs the question, If it was true of Atticus Finch, could it also be true of me? Atticus, after all, does not see himself as a racist person. Neither do Jean Louise’s aunt or fiancé. Rather, they see themselves as kindly toward Black people. Their opinions on the habits, culture and limitations of Black people are, they believe, based upon observations and therefore constitute plain facts. The racism at which Lee is striking out, I believe, is different than the overt, blunt-trauma variety of Mockingbird. It’s more insidious, and depending upon your milieu, more socially accepted.

To wit: I grew up in a proudly Southern community. We didn’t have a Confederate flag on our school lawn or anything, but more than once I heard it defended as a symbol of “heritage.” As a child, I also heard the argument that the South’s position in the Civil War wasn’t about slavery per se, it was about state’s rights, and it was economic (never mind that the economy of the South was based upon slave labor). So when Atticus breaks it down to Jean Louise at the end of the book, explaining The Way Things Are, it all felt very familiar to me.

At the same time, none of the adults I knew growing up would have considered themselves racist. It was a Christian community; KKK-style racism wold have been condemned. Nevertheless, racist jokes were told. Mixed-race dating was discouraged. The reason? Differences between “them” and “us” were insurmountable — and then there was the supposed censure of society at large to contend with.

This is the reality: unlike Jean Louise, most of us are not “born color blind.” In our country, people who are not racist have to be ultra-conscious, willing to evaluate every thought they have about “the other” — whatever color their skin may be. They have to learn to recognize racism’s variform manifestations, and to yank it out of themselves by the roots. It’s a lot of work, actually. Sort of like weeding a garden, every day.

The flaws of Watchman are manifold, I can’t argue with that. It’s unfortunate that for whatever reason, Lee wasn’t willing or able to give this novel the same careful attention she gave to Mockingbird, revising and polishing it into a real gem. But even if she had, I think it would still have been reviled. The book is meant to make us uncomfortable — in our own culture, in our own skins. “I’m tired of having my heroes knocked down,” someone recently complained to me, shortly after the book’s release. But if we don’t have heroes on some pedestal being saintly for us, then the work isn’t finished; it remains up to us.

E. D. Watson is Newfound’s Blog Editor. A writer by day and a library clerk by night, her stories have appeared in Bodega, [PANK], Narrative, and THIS., among other publications. She eats cheddar-and-mayonnaise sandwiches when no one is looking.

The post In Defense of ‘A Watchman’ appeared first on Newfound.

In a rare interview with the author in the spring 2015 issue of the Paris Review, Ferrante declares herself “still very much interested in testifying against the self-promotion obsessively imposed by the media. This demand for self-promotion diminishes the actual work of art, whatever that art may be, and it has become universal.” She then goes on to explain the creative space that opened up for her when she realized that her anonymity would be protected by her publishers. “[It] made me see something new about writing,” she says. “I felt as though I had released the words from myself.”

The interview gave me pause, and, as someone who’s ambivalent  toward social media, I found Ferrante’s views refreshing. It’s commonly accepted that everyone who’s anyone needs to have an online presence. But here’s a woman who doesn’t care what everyone else is doing; she’s not convinced. Ferrante does, of course, have an online presence—a website presumably maintained by somebody else (sans author photo), and the countless public-forum conversations among her readers—but Ferrante herself seems to have washed her hands of the whole business, and it has done nothing but improve her writing.

But that doesn’t mean #FerranteFever isn’t real. However much it may seem like a ploy devised by the publisher, Europa Editions, or a grown-up version of literary Belieberism, what it describes is in fact a kind of enchantment, a gauzy delirium that descends while reading Ferrante’s novels. I know because I’ve caught it.

I contracted it at work, where I catch most things, colds and enchantments alike. Such are the benefits and hazards of working at a public library. In the stacks one evening, I discovered a slim volume, The Days of Abandonment. I began reading it the following morning, my day off, and—laundry be damned!—I couldn’t stop. Within a few weeks, I’d consumed everything Ferrante has written, including her densely populated Neapolitan novels. Like the rest of her devoted readers, I’m now counting days until September, when the fourth Neapolitan book is scheduled for release.

It’s difficult to say precisely why Ferrante’s novels are so deeply affecting. That Ferrante is a masterful writer is plain—and recognition is due also to the brilliant English translations by Ann Goldstein. But trying to explain why Ferrante’s books are spellbinding would be like trying to explain what is magical about Bach’s Sixth Brandenburg Concerto. There’s something numinous in her apparently straightforward, elegant prose. She’s not a tricky writer, presenting readers with a basket of puzzle pieces to fit together; she doesn’t rely on literary cleverness. There is a kind of purity in her writing, an intensity. Reading Ferrante is like following a crackling fuse with your eyes; each line of text burns across the page.

But it isn’t just the writing that drives Ferrante’s stories, it’s her willingness to examine an individual’s interior life. I read a lot of books, but Ferrante’s stand out to me for their honesty, and it strikes me as an honesty that is hard won. In the Paris Review interview, Ferrante quotes Leda, her protagonist in The Lost Daughter. “ ‘The hardest things to talk about are the ones we ourselves can’t understand.’ It’s the motto—can I call it that?—at the root of all my books.” Ferrante’s brand of honesty isn’t merely the art-as-mirror acknowledgment that brutality and heartbreak exist in the world, but an investigation into their individual origins and impacts. The Neapolitan novels, for example, are a sweeping examination of a complicated friendship at the center of two women’s lives, which, for better or worse, affects every decision they make.

At a time when much of contemporary American literary fiction seems to be moving away from this kind of deeply personal writing and toward the fantastical and bizarre, Ferrante’s approach to literature is life-affirming. She celebrates what it is to have a human heart, the rawness and apathy and rage, as well as the brief, transcendent moments of happiness.

E. D. Watson is Newfound’s Blog Editor. A writer by day and a library clerk by night, her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Bodega, [PANK], Narrative, and THIS., among other publications. She eats cheddar-and-mayonnaise sandwiches when no one is looking.

The post Catching #FerranteFever appeared first on Newfound.

The last few days of November were excruciating. I woke up on November 30^th with my inner voice screaming, “You failed! You are a failure! A fail-y, fail-y FAILURE!” Like I’ve said before, my inner voice is a jerk.

However, something sort of miraculous did happen, something my jerk-wad inner voice has only recently, begrudgingly acknowledged: I wrote a good-sized chunk of a novel. 30,000 words, give or take. And I’m still writing it. NaNo wasn’t a failure, not really. (That’s right: the title of this post is misleading; our culture is more interested in people’s failures than their triumphs, and I wanted you to read this post. Sue me.)

Of course NaNo was a failure in the sense that I didn’t complete my novel. I still don’t know how it will end, not even close. I’m now about 60,000 words in, and figure I’m only about halfway. I’m not Tolstoy; this isn’t going to be War and Peace. I know that a lot of those words will have to be mercilessly razed in the revision process. I’m trying not to think about that. Yet.

What I learned from NaNo is that I can write more in one day than I thought I could. A lot more. NaNo participants are supposed to produce approximately 1600-1700 words per day; most days I managed to get close.  Some days I actually exceeded my goal. But other days I didn’t write at all. Nevertheless, I impressed myself. Now, I’ve established a more moderate goal of 1000-1200 words per day. I still don’t get there every time, but it’s easier to consistently achieve.

When you’re writing that much, you don’t really have time to be critical. Most days, my jerk-wad inner voice can hardly get a word in edgewise because I’m too busy writing. Of course that means I’m generating a lot of literary doo-doo: sentences that will make me cringe when I go back to revise. But it’s eerily nice having my headspace silent, save for the whirring of my brain cells—which if you’re wondering, sound sort of like an electric fan.

Since the NaNo experiment, I’ve had several people ask what my “plans” for the novel are—meaning, how I want to publish it. I can’t think that far in advance. That’s like asking a pregnant lady which university she thinks her fetus will attend—or if she thinks it will go to college at all. For now, I’m just trying to maintain my momentum, applying ass to chair, as they say. My cello playing has suffered; I’ve been stuck on the same song for six weeks. If only there were a National Cello-Playing Month to give me a kick in the pants!

E. D. Watson is Newfound’s Blog Editor. A writer by day and a library clerk by night, her stories have appeared in [PANK], Narrative, Real South and Gulf Stream, among other publications. She eats cheddar-and-mayonnaise sandwiches when no one is looking.

The post NaNo FAIL; Or, How Cello Lessons Had No Impact on My Ability to Write a Novel appeared first on Newfound.

If you too are a perfectionist, you understand that it goes beyond high personal standards; perfectionism can be crippling. There are loads of things I’ve shied away from because nothing mortifies a perfectionist like a learning curve. We want to be excellent at everything, right from the get-go.

To wit: This was supposed to be The Year I Wrote a Novel. I’d made this promise to myself before; my hard drive is chock-full of false starts. Invariably, somewhere along the way I’d realize what a mess I was making. I knew the middle part, maybe, but not the beginning or the end. “You’re wasting your time,” a little voice inside my head would say. “Stick to short stories! You’ll waste decades of your life writing a stupid novel no one will publish. You’ll be the most embarrassing kind of person in the world: a novelist manqué!”

My inner voice is a jerk.

After a few false starts early this year, I set aside my attempts at a novel and began cello lessons instead.

I know what you’re thinking: Why would a perfectionist with a sadistic inner voice take up the cello? The answer: I didn’t mean to. Three years ago, I borrowed a friend’s cello for a writing project because I needed an up-close look at the instrument. As soon as I opened the case, I knew I could never give the cello back. For weeks, I slept with it beside my bed.

I didn’t know how to read music or play any kind of instrument, but in those hazy days of early love, that hardly seemed like an obstacle. My friend explained how to hold the bow, and I spent hours playing the open strings, feeling the cello vibrate against my chest. Eventually though, disillusionment crept in. It wasn’t long before the cello was consigned to its case in a corner of the living room. Months would go by without me touching it. Spiders swathed it in cobwebs. Dead bugs collected at its base, a mound of small reproaches.

This went on until one day I couldn’t take how terrible I felt about myself. Having a cello I didn’t play was embarrassing. It was worse, I decided, than having a cello I played badly. I went online and found a teacher.

Seven months later, I can butcher a few pieces by Bach and Handel and Mozart. No orchestra would hire me because I’m terrible. But I am learning to read music. I can do triplets and sixteenth notes and slurs and can shift into second position. In the process, I’ve discovered that trying is sort of fun. And that learning to play well will take a long, long time.

Which brings us to NaNoWriMo.

I’ve never participated in National Novel Writing Month before because I always thought, “What’s the point? No one really writes a novel in a month. Maybe you’ll write fifty thousand words, but it won’t really be a novel, it’ll be a terrible mess that needs a jillion revisions.”

I was completely missing the genius of the idea. It’s a rip-the-bandage-off-quickly approach to writing your inevitably crappy first draft. What has held me back from writing a novel in the past is the notion that I’ll spend ages on an initial draft that will suck. With NaNoWriMo, I can embrace the suck. Of course it’s going to suck! Like babies! Like beginning cellists! Novels suck too in their early days! And if it’s worthy of nothing other than the recycling bin, then I’ve only lost a month and can at least say I tried.

Too, there’s something to be said for the idea that countless writers all over the globe are manically typing their first drafts this month. I know they’re there all the time, year-round, like the stars during the daytime. But one thinks about them more during November. Just like it was a mistake to try and learn the cello by myself, maybe it would also be a mistake to write my first novel without some solidarity.

E. D. Watson is Newfound’s Blog Editor. A writer by day and a library clerk by night, her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in [PANK], Narrative, Real South and Gulf Stream, among other publications. She eats cheddar-and-mayonnaise sandwiches when no one is looking.

The post How Cello Lessons Convinced Me to Do NaNoWriMo appeared first on Newfound.