Launch Day: Clare Dudman interview and more

"A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage" tells of a young boy's travels through the black heart of Depression America and his search for light both metaphorical and real. Writing with a controlled lyrical passion, Marly Youmans has crafted the finest, and the truest period novel I’ve read in years.            

     --Lucius Shepard

March 30th at last: today A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage officially enters the world. (To read the first chapter, go here. To read more about the book, go here. To buy the book in hardcover or as ebook from an online seller, go here. To find a store and obtain a copy from an indie, go to IndieBound.)

UK novelist Clare Dudman has contributed another piece to the launch interview, and you may find it at Keeper of the Snails.  If you have kept company with me here for a while, you may remember that poet Dave Bonta and I met up with Clare at Powys Castle in Wales, back in May of last year.

Two more launch announcement pieces are: poet Katie Hoerth's post at Katie's Blog; poet Robbi Nester's post at Shadow Knows.

Thank you to all of these writers. And if you don't know Clare's novels or Katie and Robbi's poetry, please take a closer look at their blogs...

Please pop down to the next post for a rather different celebration of the day!

Railroad days: A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage

 

Photo by Nate Miller

 Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak without provoking strength.

--Theodor Adorno

Normality is death.

--Theodor Adorno

Clare Dudman reminded me of Adorno in a comment, and how now and then it flits through my head that I really must read him. I'm always seeing quotes from him and thinking that I should. But not today. Today and tomorrow and maybe Wednesday I shall be hoboing with A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, streaking over that familiar landscape one more time. (I know that I said one last time once recently, but this time really is the last ride--turning the final copy in this week.) I plan to have my eyes wide open and not to be "riding the blinds." Having a little age on it, the manuscript now feels like something written by someone else, and so I don't have much trouble being ruthless...

Photo by Jim Kevlin

So for now I have picked two Adorno quotes that have relevance to the book, the first to the events of the book and the second to the protagonist, who flees from an image of what he believes normality to be.  Once strength has been thoroughly "provoked," is it ever possible to find a place where one can be "weak"? Of course, a little quote like the second one is a kind of rabbit-hole because "normality" is such a slippery item.

After that, I shall be making some more plans for The Throne of Psyche (Mercer University Press, 2011), writing new poems I trust), and working on other forthcoming manuscripts.

Rattiness abounds

I am delaying the post with links promised yesterday until tomorrow because I must say that the ever-generous Dave Bonta with his sneaky little recorder has made me the Woodrat Podcast of today. You may scurry rat-like to Via Negativa and hear me and novelist Clare Dudman and Dave and rooks.

Wales Album: Clare Dudman (& the Stars-and-Garters)



I dragged the jet-lagged Dave Bonta
to meet penpal-and-novelist
Clare Dudman at Castell Powis.
Sunny. Lots of glare. Not Welshy weather...
except for the chilliness in the air.



Correspondents meet in the flesh, hurrah!
Lovely, that feeling of already
knowing and being known...

Clare treated me and Dave to a lovely lunch
at Lady Somebody or Other's Tea Shop at Castell Powis.
Lady Hyacinth? Lady Heliotrope?  Lady Bluebell?
With my luck, it was Lady Forget-me-not.

And today I want to give Clare an award,
the coveted Stars-and-Garters of Indefatigability
for outstanding bravery and peristence
in the worthy cause of book-flogging.
In tireless service to her latest book, one year old now,
she did 35 events last year, traveling
around the UK and chatting with
the general populace
(or maybe the not-so-general populace)
about A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees (Seren.)
You ought to buy it, you know...
That would make me happy.
I hope they love her, those fellows at Seren.

Everything at Castell Powis is "wonderfully rich and stately,"
as Diana Wynne Jones once said about a fierce old lady.
Castell Powis is just such an old lady, imperious and also bountiful,
wealthy enough to behave in the way Mother Nature does--
as profuse and indulgent as a sea of bluebells in the Welsh woods.
Here is Clare with a world of wisteria,
that languorous flower.
Just looking at her, I feel all Lady Wisteria-ish,
wistful and droopy and wishing for another tea party in the sun.

The Snail Castle

Novelist Clare Dudman and I have planned to meet for years, and yesterday we did. Hop to Hodmandod Land and enjoy! I went with the just-arrived poet and blogger Dave Bonta to Welshpool and Powis Castle. Click on the title to fly there.

More news when I get home--the iPad is not conducive to blogging.

CLARE DUDMAN INTERVIEWS MARLY

Welsh novelist Clare Dudman talks about Val/Orson and interviews me at her blog, Keeper of the Snails: http://keeperofthesnails.blogspot.com/2009/06/review-of-valorsen-and-interview-with.html.

The Seven Questions of Clare Dudman

I love these questions because they are all so nakedly Clare, Clare, Clare, and reveal her in the asking more than anyone could reveal in answering. But I will answer them all the same.

1. What can I fit in the space between the stars?

Swaths and of nothingness, cloth from invisible bolts.

2. What is the first thing you know that you saw?

White light trembling on water.

3. Can I really smell the rain?

As it seeds the ground and marries with earth.

4. When does white noise become dark?

When a demon breaks the blur into separate pieces.

5. Where did you leave your favourite dream?

In the air, flying.

6. How can I stop feeling the lashing of a tongue?

Walk in green leaves until the noise of a whip is only the wind in branches.

and 7. Why do some words stain with an indelible ink; while others leave no mark at all?

On writing
Some come from the ink jar of mastery, some are blood that will not be scrubbed away, and some were never really more than warm dissolving air.

On the soul considered as a piece of paper
News of the terrible error of one’s ways, news that is a streaming joyfulness, news of birth and death, and sometimes stray trivial news that comes to have meaning years later: indelible. The missed direction, the love unnoticed, the daily rout, and what seems (but is not) the common ruck of men and women passing on the street, talking into machines or to one another: no mark, unless a phrase should aspire to be stray trivial news that comes to have meaning years later.

About Clare
Clare Dudman’s questions and dreams and news about her own books and those of others can be found at http://keeperofthesnails.blogspot.com/. See more at http://www.claredudman.com/. And Clare in The Palace at 2:00 a.m.: here.

And read her books, too, won’t you? They, too, lead to questions and answers in the mind.

Photo credit: I saved this leafy labyrinth long ago and have no idea of the source. Tell me if you do.