The Compromise: An American Novel
Author's log of writing The Compromise
The 1619 Project of the New York Times promotes awareness of 400 years of slavery in America and brings forth vital dimensions of its legacy. These dimensions have been lacking in our collective imaginations and knowledge of history. I value this instruction and hope to rise to the tasks I have given myself, to write…
The neighbor’s apples are turning red. The oak trees are dense with leaves. I’m not compelled to prove that I descended from Druids, but I do have a photo of me taken in the 1970s dancing sprite-like around the apple tree in the backyard. The 1980s could have found me cooking apples to freeze and…
The Declaration of Sentiments was signed at Seneca Falls on July 20, 1848. It states that all men and women are created equal. It was the first national convention for women’s equal rights. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were the primary activists. Frederick Douglass chose to argue at the convention for the inclusion of women’s…
The beasts of conflict do not exist in time. They exist in us, modified by each generation. Though we have reasons to worship evolution, progress, and efficiency, we have to start with what is, here and now, already full of the events of the past. Slavery is iconic of all markets of human flesh: human…
We enter the season and the chapter of nuptials. The traditional comedy ends in a wedding, a symbolic union for the community. In Berkeley, blooming white roses remind me of weddings, and so do their thorns. In the ninth chapter, “The Wedding, 1843” Eliza is wed to Richard Fowler. This union was an arrangement that…
Bad news on Easter is hard. I walk out my door under scented blossoms in the warm air. Let’s hope that beauty does not give us amnesia. We need wisdom to hold the contradictions. The gorgeous spring may hide the wrongs of the past, but hope does not rise out of anything else. Photo by Banter…
Writers find ways to enter new subjectivities. What semed difficult proves an adventure. We cross out of one gender to another, cross race, age, historical periods, and consciouness. We may be daring, but we also want to anchor our imaginations in our truth. Last night, my writer friend Phil held up his newly published book…
Black History Month has slipped by and I have not posted on this topic even though The Compromise is fundamentally influenced by this history. Most of what I’ve learned through research has strengthened the novel’s concept and approach, and this posting will express gratitude to many sources. Our capacities for warmth and creativity surpass any…
“Together they knew how to be more than a single flame.” I had a wonderful time dramatizing this well-known Gothic love poem by Edgar Allan Poe, a work covered by most high school American literature classes. I put the drama in a kitchen classroom where four characters discover their parts in the scene: a spinster…
Metafiction raises the fictional world off the page. It becomes visible when the author aludes to the artificiality of the fiction itself. Do I do this? You bet. But before I own up to it, I’d like to work with its dimensions. I’d like to explore metafiction including alusions to the constructed nature of language…