Fracas! Ruckus! Brouhaha!

Vignette by Clive Hicks-Jenkins for Thaliad

Dear Slate,

What a lot of grief you are getting for publishing an article about how adults ought to be embarrassed to read children's books. ("Against YA" by Ruth Graham.) I guess maybe that was the point, as it is so often the point in these days. To get attention. To cause a commotion, a hullaballoo, a hoo-ha. To make a sort of paparazzi fuss, all lightbulbs and yelling and jeering. I'm a bit tired of the ruckus, you hear?

A long time ago C. S. Lewis told us that "A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest." Likewise, Maurice Sendak made it clear that it was whether books were good that mattered. And as to fantasy and fantasizing being for children, he said, "I believe there is no part of our lives, our adult as well as child life, when we're not fantasizing, but we prefer to relegate fantasy to children, as though it were some tomfoolery only fit for the immature minds of the young."

I agree with Lewis and Sendak. Ages and genres make no difference at all. Being packed with energy and life counts the most when it comes to a book, not some idea of audience age and kind or mode. I read the Alice books when I was five, and I am still reading them today. Stand where two roads diverge in a yellow wood, and take the way with the nooks for reading and the stones for skipping and the books without labels, without ages. Hey, it'll make all the difference.

Good cheer,
Marly

P. S. To somewhat change the subject, I don't like the idea that grownups desire to read weak, thin, smarmy books. And that's where the real criticism is hidden, I think--in the idea that some people are content with such books, whether they are written for toddlers, young adults, or grownups. And the writer assumes that children's books are, indeed, lesser, and that an adult could not have a rich experience reading them. Carroll. Sendak. L'Engle. Those are a few of many arguments against that thought.

P. S. So you don't think I'm being mean to her, here's another article by Ruth Graham--a highly sensible proposal that suggests that maybe we've dropped something we should pick up again, revised for our own day.

Notes on my recent books, no. 2

In THALIAD, Marly Youmans has written a powerful and beautiful saga of seven children who escape a fiery apocalypse----though "written" is hardly the word to use, as this extraordinary account seems rather "channeled" or dreamed or imparted in a vision, told in heroic poetry of the highest calibre. Amazing, mesmerizing, filled with pithy wisdom, THALIAD is a work of genius which also seems particularly relevant to our own time.  --Lee Smith

Light heart, broken heart, child heart--

Olana - Matthew Six

Mineral Pigments, Gold on Kumohada
60 x 48"
2007-2009

This modest little post is dedicated to my friend Makoto Fujimura, who lost 20 major works and 50+ smaller ones in the flooding of Chelsea's Dillon Gallery during Hurricane Sandy. He has served on the NEA board, founded International Arts Movement and Fujimura Institute, and is well known worldwide for his nihongan paintings.

Yesterday afternoon the mail brought me the most delightful little book by royal mail. I now have a beautiful Godine edition of the late Charles Causley's selected poems, and I have a paperback collected poems that I wish were a bit higher quality, but this is a little charmer: a paperback of the Selected Poems for Children, the poems chosen by him not long before his death.

"Among the English poetry of the last half century, Charles Causley's could well turn out to be the best loved and most needed." --Ted Hughes

I dearly love Causley and can't fathom why he's not better known on this side of the Atlantic puddle. Editor John Wilson introduced his poems to me some years ago, and I've been very glad of it.

Writers and readers cast a kind of after-burial vote for whose books will last and whose words are worth reading, and I'm casting one for Causley. Charles Causley is one of those still-water-running-deep people one longs to have known, and I could feel a little envious of those who have, were envy not one of the seven deadlies... Invidia.

In this book, one meets elephants and mermaids and sea-lovers and tales of kings or paupers that make one laugh or crack the heart. I've just started to dip into it here and there, seeing poems I know (like the marvelous "Timothy Winters" or "Mary, Mary Magdalene" or "Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience") and poems entirely new to me, bright or sometimes uncanny or grim(m). Here's a poem to drive a child--or you or me--out of bed and into the blooming sun:

Early in the Morning

Early in the morning
The water hits the rocks,
The birds are making noises
Like old alarum clocks,
The soldier on the skyline
Fires a golden gun
And over the back of the chimney-stack
Explodes the silent sun.

And here's one of his lively tales in small:

Charity Chadder

Charity Chadder
Borrowed a ladder,
Leaned it against the moon,
Climbed to the top Without a stop
On the 31st of June,
Brought down every single star,
Kept them all in a pickle jar.

Here's a snip from a jolly, longish poem called Three Green Sailors. Causley was a sailor, and that was the source of many a grief-struck or lovely poem of his. But this one is a comedy for children and the child-hearted, and reminds us that Causley was a teacher of young children. I wonder if he once recited this poem to a class:

Three Green Sailors

Three green sailors
Went to sea
In a sailing ship
Called The Flying Flea.
Their caps were round,
Their shirts were square,
Their trousers were rolled
And their feet were bare.
One wore a pigtail,
One wore a patch,
One wore ear-rings
That never did match.
One chewed baccy,
One chewed cake,
One chewed a pennyworth
Of two-eyed steak.
One danced to,
One danced fro
And the other sang the shanty
Haul Away Joe.

And here's a little weather poem especially for Mako, with the hope that his every painting day is a sweet Saturday:

All Day Saturday

Let it sleet on Sunday,
Monday let it snow,
Let the mist on Tuesday
From the salt-sea flow.
Let it hail on Wednesday,
Thursday let it rain,
Let the wind on Friday
Blow a hurricane,
But Saturday, Saturday
Break fair and fine
And all day Saturday
Let the sun shine.

The book is illustrated by John Lawrence, who traveled to Launceston, Cornwall to meet with Charles Causley and make sure his work was accurate to the place. Small, vigorous vignettes decorate the book and add much pleasure and charm.

Running with goats, etc.

Here's another question and answer from the Shared Worlds people that will eventually go into the writers' pot at the Booklife site. I'll let it sit a few days and then tweak the answer and send it over to Jeremy Jones at Wofford.

It'll be clear that I have evaded answering the first half of the question. As it happens, I didn't feel like it and have exerted my right to be whimsical and difficult. Feel free to pelt what is there with rotten fruit. Or even to make sensible (or silly--I have a liking for silly) suggestions.

The question is from writer Nisi Shawl: ROAARS is an acronym used in Writing the Other [written with Cynthia Ward] as a shorthand designation for a set of differences dubbed "important" by the dominant culture: Race, (sexual) Orientation, Age, Ability, Religion, Sex. 1.) What is your best experience writing a character of another ROAARS? 2.) What about your worst experience writing a character of another ROAARS?

As a woman, I am in some danger when writing about a man who could be described as sensitive or reflective. I was raised in an era that tried to declare that men and women were the same, but it's not at all so, "equal" being so very different from "same." I've had to tweak several male characters in revision to make sure they weren't women in disguise, and that happened even when the character in question was waging war or exerting himself in feats of redwood-climbing.

I'd say that the clearest I've ever been on writing about the opposite sex was in the book I'm polishing now. I've written a fantasy for each of my children, and the current one was for made for a sports-mad boy of 12 who came late to liking books and school (still hates homework) and who is extremely social. He is blessedly normal in all his boy-ways, and all I had to do was meditate on his likes and dislikes to have an imaginary boy rise up around me along with a pack of young associates who didn't always want to follow his lead, a fair degree of silliness and nonsense, twists and puzzles, feelings conveyed through action and reaction, a bit of revelatory violence, a fairly quick pace, and a general male refusal on the part of the primary character to ponder about anything except what must be done next, now. And football. We had to have football. If I could have worked in track and wrestling, I would have done so.

I have long advocated tossing little boys out the door to run with goats and goatherds until they are ten or eleven years old--until they are ready to sit still in a classroom and crack open a book--although nobody ever pays attention to this modest proposal of mine. So what I have aimed to write for my son and any other young readers is a book that might serve as one of the first adventures a boy hears after coming in from the fields and joining what is called civilization--a story full of juice and sun and life. And a dash of football.

* * *
I have been rather over-involved in facebook--all those funny people! all those writers!--and am now making a resolution to do better in tending to the blog. Oh, and if you want to know about my upcoming books (I'm up to four now), please slip down to the next post.

Books, deadlines, & truffles

Deadlines and minor panics have been sprouting up for several months, but now at least the current round of college applications is done--much more to do there, but at least we hit the eleventh hour with submissions on Friday. Make that the eleven fifty-ninth minute. And The Throne of Psyche has gone to Mercer University Press. I made the deadline of Friday; then my mother (wonderful persnicketiness!) found some glitches, and so I tinkered some more and turned it in again last night. I guess that's called not quite making the deadline. I got a reward anyway: last night my husband flew home from Houston with a giant purple box of Vosges (haut chocolat, indeed!) truffles, and I discovered that an announcement of chocolate brings the very speediest responses to facebook status lines . . .

Soon I hope to do some more posts on friends-with-new-books since a bumper crop has come along lately. I have a rather daunting stack, but it's not the best of times in Book Land, and one must do one's little bit to help. Yesterday I had lunch at Alex and Ika's with two local writers who just received excellent reviews in the not-defunct-after-all Kirkus: Peg Leon of Cooperstown, whose second book, A Theory of All Things, is forthcoming from Permanent Press; Alice Lichtenstein of Oneonta, who also has a second book appearing, Lost, from Scribner's. Both books have March pub dates and sound like fine reads. I'll get to them.

Meanwhile, I have decided that I don't quite like the first third of my third--perhaps my last, as I have written one for each of my children--novel for children. So I shall be getting back to that soon. The rest of the book has great swing and momentum, but the first third seems a bit mired in molasses. The pacing is a tad off, and the introduction of the various characters comes too slowly.

From a review of the anthology Enemy of the Good (U.K.: P. S. Publishing) in Tangent:

“The Red King Sleeps” by Marly Youmans weaves a vivid fantasy dreamscape of romance, death, decay, and the dangerous power of the mind to create worlds. This story is not long, but Youmans makes every word count. The imagery she presents is as beautiful as it is eerie. It is not surprising that she mentions that this story was “written in the seizure of a dream.” This story will seize anyone with a taste for the dark and surreal. --Maggie Jamison

That's the Tenniel Red King sleeping at the top of the post, of course. I was given the Alice books when I was five and read and reread them endlessly. My Red King doesn't look much like this one. He doesn't even look like a Mervyn Peake illustration--and I adore Peake's Alice illustrations (and what wonders he did with Bleak House and other books!)

And now since I appear to be truffleable, or worthy of being truffled, I will go have a very small bite to eat . . . If you were here, I would share. Alas. As it befalls, I am alone with a large number of helpless truffles. First I shall recite "The Walrus and the Carpenter," waving my handkerchief as I do. Then: a nibble or two. Good cheer!