The Compromise: An American Novel
Author's log of writing The Compromise
If we write and teach well, there are echoes. The useful phrase is used again. The fertile image is reimagined. The play of light on rings and the echo of sound on stone are rarely spoken of, so they find their places in art. Few things in writing The Compromise give me as much pleasure…
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…
“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…
Are the limbs and flourishes of wit tedious? Then brevity is the soul of wit as Shakespeare’s Polonius observed. But I’m not so sure. Flourishes may raise the expectation of comedy but also conceal the growing tragedy. Shakespeare wrote, “Present mirth hath present laughter. What’s to come is still unsure.” Is humor doing my story…
Today Google posted a Google Doodle to celebrate Native American woodcarver Amanda Crowe, a Cherokee woman. She carved fine art wooden bears and taught others to whittle and carve. The way of the knife includes this. The Compromise describes two small wooden birds that the sisters wear as totems. They were carved by their Cherokee-raised mother…
Siblings ride out of their childhoods hoping that big open spaces and new towns mean opportunities: employment, education, and family. The terrain through which they ride is beautiful and inspiring, but uneven and treacherous.