Storyweb: Storytime For Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Chad Everett’s TV show, Medical Center. If only I could start with the theme song to Medical Center! If I were telling you this story in person, I’d risk humming a few bars, complete with an ambulance-like scream of notes. But alas, I’m left with mere words to conjure up for you the magic that was Medical Center, an hour-long weekly hospital drama starring Chad Everett as the hip, young Dr. Joe Gannon. Chad Everett and Medical Center were literally my claims to fame when I was in college in the early 1980s at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, commonly known as UMSL. By this time, the 1970s-era television show was in late-night reruns. My boyfriend and I got hooked on the show when we’d catch it after getting home from our night shifts at work. We got home about 12:30, and Medical Center came on at 1:00. That theme song was a siren call of another sort, calling to us to put away the cares of the day and join Chad in fighting for the welfare of yet another patient. It became a game be

This week on StoryWeb: Cynthia Morris’s novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach. What do you get when you combine time travel, intriguing literary history, Paris, and romance? Why, Cynthia Morris’s novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach, of course! I know Cynthia from participating regularly in what she previously called Free Write Flings, month-long excursions that have “flingers” writing freely for fifteen minutes each day in response to various “prompts.” I’ve dipped into Cynthia’s Free Write Flings twice a year for the last several years – every October and February – to generate ideas for StoryWeb. Go behind the scenes with us to see how it works at Beth Hayden’s website. Note that Cynthia has just launched a new version of this month-long experience. It’s called The Devoted Writer. Cynthia is a well-known and expert writing and creativity coach. Through her business, Original Impulse, she offers online workshops, individual coaching, books to help your creative practice, and travel opportunities. Based in Denver, Cynthia lead

This week on StoryWeb: James H. Cone’s book Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. It has been more than 25 years since I read Rev. James H. Cone’s book Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. I was teaching an English 101 course focused on the writing of the Civil Rights Movement, and I wanted to learn more about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X and to understand better the relationship between them, the intersection points, if any, between them. Of course, I’d already read Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and his landmark “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and I’d read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. But it was James H. Cone’s 1991 book, Martin & Malcolm & America, that helped me to deeply understand how the two seemingly diametrically opposed civil rights leaders were actually two sides of the same coin. There was so much more to say than that Dr. King preached nonviolence and that Malcolm X advocated violence. Indeed, it was not even accurate to say

This week on StoryWeb: Malcolm X and Alex Haley’s book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Malcolm X wrote his famed autobiography in collaboration with African American journalist Alex Haley (most famous for his epic book Roots: The Saga of an American Family). If you are one of the many Americans who believe Malcolm X espoused violence, even hate, I urge you to read this compelling book. It reveals Malcolm X as a much more nuanced thinker and leader than depicted in mainstream media. The Autobiography of Malcolm X resonates with so much other American literature before and after its publication in 1965 after Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21 of that year. Writing his first slave narrative more than a century earlier, Frederick Douglass emphasized literacy as the crucial key to freedom. Malcolm X, too, speaks of the transformation he experienced in prison when he came under the influence of a fellow inmate who inspired him to read voraciously and thereby educate himself. But Douglass also indicates that

This week on StoryWeb: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In April 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was in Birmingham, Alabama, protesting racism and racial segregation in the city. He was arrested on Good Friday for demonstrating, which a circuit court judge had prohibited. While he was in solitary confinement, Dr. King wrote what is arguably the most important letter in American history. It was addressed to the white clergy of Birmingham, who had publicly criticized Dr. King for getting involved in a matter far from his home in Atlanta. Dr. King began drafting his responses on the very newspaper in which the eight white ministers had published their “call for unity.” According to the Washington Post, he continued writing on “scraps of paper, paper towels and slips of yellow legal paper smuggled into his cell.” The justly famous letter – now known as “Letter from Birmingham Jail” – draws both from the early Christian tradition of letter writing (often from jails) and the Afr

This week on StoryWeb, Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles. Born in 1876, Susan Glaspell was a prominent novelist, short story writer, journalist, biographer, actress, and, most notably, playwright, winning the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Alison’s House. She and her husband, George Cram Cook, founded the ground-breaking Provincetown Players, widely known as the first modern American theater company. In fact, it was Glaspell who discovered dramatist Eugene O’Neill as she was searching for a new playwright to feature at the theater. Though she was a widely acclaimed author during her lifetime, with pieces in Harper’s and Ladies’ Home Journal and with books on the New York Times bestsellers list, Glaspell is little known today. She comes down to us for two related works: her one-act play Trifles, written in 1916, and a short story based on the play, “A Jury of Her Peers,” written in 1917. The play and the story were based on Margaret Hossack’s murder trial, which Glaspell covered as a young reporter for

This week on StoryWeb: Elizabeth Strout’s book Olive Kitteridge. Has there ever been a grimmer, more taciturn main character in a book than Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge? We’ve all known someone like Olive, someone who looks like she’s just bitten into a lemon, someone for whom a kind of self-righteous grumpiness rules the day. What’s so unlikely is to have such a Gloomy Gus serve as the focal point of a book. And it must be said: Olive Kitteridge is not a sympathetic character. As readers, we don’t like her. Those around her – most notably her son – don’t like her either. Her husband is long-suffering. Perhaps in years past, he saw something redeeming in Olive, but even he has to brush off and walk away from her brusqueness. Why, then, would I recommend a book like this? While we don’t like Olive, we do come to understand her – and maybe we come to understand a bit more about those unpleasant people who cross our own paths from time to time. For Strout seems to be saying: everyone has a story; there’s

This week on StoryWeb: Emily Dickinson’s Poem 372, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes –” For Patricia and our students Emily Dickinson’s Poem 372 is not – technically speaking – a story. And Dickinson is not a storyteller per se. But her nearly 1,800 poems speak deeply and powerfully to the human condition. They give a still unparalleled account of what it is to be human. Poem 372 does have some elements of storytelling. Instead of “once upon a time,” we get “after this, then this.” And then Dickinson describes the numbing, the freezing, the letting go – perhaps the dying that follows loss, pain, trauma. Was she writing of a disappointment with her sister-in-law, Sue, believed by many to have been her lover? Was it a loss of a different kind? We will never know that part of the story – the who, what, when, where, perhaps not even the why. But we do very much know the how – how the loss affected her, how it feels as a human being to grieve, to feel pain. Without a doubt, this poem makes me think of my d

This week on StoryWeb: James Joyce’s short story “The Dead.” James Joyce’s “The Dead” is widely considered to be his best short story, called by the New York Times “just about the finest short story in the English language" and by T.S. Eliot as one of the greatest short stories ever written. The storyline is simple enough: a long-married Irish couple -- Gretta and Gabriel Conroy – attend a lavish dinner party thrown by his aunts in celebration of the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6). At the party, they each have a variety of conversations with assorted party guests, and Gabriel gives the evening’s post-dinner speech and leads the toast. As Gabriel and Gretta leave the party, the snow which had been lightly falling when they arrived at the beginning of the evening has become quite heavy. The closing scene finds Gretta asleep at their hotel while Gabriel stands at the window looking at the snow blanketing the city. Gabriel feels, in fact, that the snow is falling over the entirety of Ireland. Before falling as

This week on StoryWeb: Richard Thompson’s song “1952 Vincent Black Lightning.” For Jim, in honor of his birthday My husband, Jim, and I love this song by Richard Thompson and its signature line, “red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme.” In fact, the first concert we saw together was Thompson playing at the Boulder Theater, and of course, I sported a black leather motorcycle jacket. When Thompson sang the song, one of his most popular, and got to this particular line, Jim called out, “Me, too!” Thank goodness, Jim is not a heckler – and he didn’t disturb the concert – but I loved it! I’m guessing many red-headed women have gone to Richard Thompson concerts in black leather jackets. Thompson’s “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” is a perfect story song. It’s short – just four stanzas – but it really tells a story and packs an emotional punch in that compact space. There are two, maybe three characters – the thief James Adie and Red Molly, of course, but James’s 1952 Vincent Black Lightning is almost a

This week on StoryWeb: Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” In honor of the winter solstice Without a doubt, the most famous poem about winter is Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” In fact, Garrison Keillor says that this is perhaps the single most famous poem of any kind in the twentieth century. Frost himself called the poem “my best bid for remembrance.” Written nearly in the blink of an eye in June 1922 after Frost had been up all night finishing his long poem “New Hampshire,” the poem, said Frost, came to him nearly in an hallucination in just “a few minutes without strain.” It was published the next year in a collection of Frost poems also titled New Hampshire. It’s likely that you know this beloved poem – and also that you know other Frost poems, such as “After Apple-Picking,” “Birches,” “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” and of course “The Road Not Taken.” The thing about Frost’s poems is that they seem, at first glance, to be so simple, so straightforward. In “Stoppin

This week on StoryWeb: Rick Nelson’s song “Garden Party.” For Julia, in honor of her birthday In 1972, my two-year-old sister could sing all the words to this Rick Nelson hit. Why she latched on to this particular song when it came on the car radio none of us will ever know – not even Julia. She would sit in her car seat – not one of the safety-conscious car seats of today – and practically dance in her seat, legs and arms bopping to the beat. So “Garden Party” has a special place in my memories. But there’s an interesting story to the song itself as well. Rick Nelson was, of course, one of two sons of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, famous stars of their own 1950s and 1960s television show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. To be an Ozzie or a Harriet, to be a Ricky or a David, to be a Nelson meant that you were part of a wholesome, all-American family. The Nelsons epitomized the white picket fence dream of Eisenhower’s America. As a teen in the late 1950s, Ricky Nelson emerged as a rock-and-roll performer, wit

This week on Story Web: the Coen Brothers’ film Fargo. I suppose I must have a dark sense of humor indeed to think of the Coen Brothers’ film Fargo as a comedy – even if I do realize that it is a dark comedy. I mean, what can you say about someone who shrieks, then laughs uproariously, at the woodchipper scene? Yes, Fargo is a weird and dark tale – from William H. Macy as Jerry Lundegaard, the pathetic car dealership manager who pays two sleazy criminals to kidnap his wife, to Steve Buscemi as the “funny-looking guy” in that criminal pair, from Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson, a pregnant police detective, to Steve Park as Mike Yanagita, the high school classmate who visits her in one of the film’s many bizarre scenes. All of the actors in the movie are outstanding, but my favorite by far is McDormand, who also happens to be married to Joel Coen and who acts in a number of the Coen Brothers’ films. Apparently, I am not alone in my assessment of McDormand’s portrayal of Marge Gunderson, as she won a Best O

This week on StoryWeb: Theodore Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz,” A story contained in sixteen short lines of poetry – that is Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz.” This autobiographical poem tells of a little boy dancing with his drunk father as his frowning mother looks on. How to read this poem? Is the speaker a man looking back at his drunken father with affection or remembering the fear he felt at his father’s whiskey binges? Love and fear simultaneously? There is mixed, conflicted affection in the poem. The boy hangs on “like death” and acknowledges that “such waltzing was not easy.” But he also mentions “[t]he hand that held my wrist” and says that his father “waltzed me off to bed / Still clinging to your shirt.” Despite the intimacy, however, it’s impossible not to notice the hard, nearly brutal images in the poem. The father dances around the room so roughly that pans slide off the kitchen shelf. The father’s hand is “battered.” The boy’s ear “scrape[s]” his father’s belt buckle. The father “beat[s]

Lydia Maria Child: “Over the River and Through the Wood” In the 19th century, Lydia Maria Child’s name was nearly a household word. An outspoken abolitionist, women’s rights supporter, and crusader for Native American rights, Child was also a prolific author. A journalist and editor, she wrote novels and short stories (often using fiction to express her anti-slavery views), poems and children’s books, and domestic manuals for wives and mothers. Her most famous book – which went into 33 printings – was The Frugal Housewife, first published in 1829. Four years later, she published An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans, believed to be the first anti-slavery book published in the United States. She also served as editor for Harriet Jacobs’s influential 1861 slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. In all, Child wrote more than 50 books. Though Child was very prominent in her time, she comes down to us now primarily as the author of a poem originally published as “The New-Eng

This week on StoryWeb: Lee Smith’s memoir, Dimestore: A Writer’s Life. I first fell in love with Lee Smith’s fiction nearly thirty years ago when I was a cook at Le Conte Lodge in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. On my afternoons off, I’d sit on my cabin porch, reading first Lee’s novel Oral History, later her novel Fair and Tender Ladies. She created characters with such powerful voices – women and men of Appalachia who spin yarns through story and song. Granny Younger’s voice and Ivy Rowe’s letters have stayed with me all these years. The more I followed Lee’s career, the more I was drawn in. So it was an honor years later to edit a collection of previously published interviews with her. Gathering these interviews in Conversations with Lee Smith was like sitting on the porch drinking sweet tea and hanging out with a long-lost but beloved cousin. Last year when Lee published her newest book, Dimestore: A Writer’s Life, I was more than delighted. In the interviews I had collected, Lee had told bits an

This week on StoryWeb: Jill Ker Conway’s memoir The Road from Coorain. The Road from Coorain traces the unlikely story of young Jill Ker’s journey from a sheep station in the western grasslands of New South Wales, Australia, to the position of president of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Journeys of such epic proportions are rare even for the increasingly ubiquitous genre of memoir. But the young Jill – hemmed in by the extreme drudgery of sheep farming, the tedium of the dry, parched landscape of the Australian outback, and later by the emotional demands of her widowed mother, who had relocated the family to Sydney – dreams big dreams. From the family’s 30,000-acre property known as Coorain, a place so isolated that she was seven before she saw another girl child, Jill Ker travels first with her family to Sydney, then on her own to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to earn a PhD at Harvard University. Though Jill Ker Conway’s most public triumph comes in her becoming the first woman to be named presiden

This week on StoryWeb: Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven.” For this spooky Halloween edition of StoryWeb, I’m featuring Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” Everyone knows this haunting poem – but less well known is Poe’s essay “The Philosophy of Composition,” in which he explains how he quite methodically wrote the poem. Now “The Raven,” you have to understand, made a splash. Poe was a relatively unknown writer when he published the poem in January 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror and again the next month in The American Review. Almost overnight, he became a huge literary sensation, though he didn’t make much money from it or his other writing. Readers just couldn’t get over the macabre poem. Poe decided to ride the wave of the poem’s instant popularity, and a year later, he published “The Philosophy of Composition” in Graham’s Magazine. His account of how he wrote “The Raven” step by step is likely exaggerated – he makes it almost seem as if he was completing a paint-by-number artwork. Do this, do that – and v

This week on StoryWeb: Frida Kahlo’s painting The Two Fridas. Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is known for her stunning self-portraits. You might not think of her immediately as a painter who tells stories through her art. Indeed, you could be forgiven if you think of her husband, muralist Diego Rivera, as the more narrative painter of the two. After all, his paintings told tales of the Mexican Revolution. But Kahlo’s paintings tell a tale – the same tale – over and over again, nearly obsessively, as if Kahlo had a compulsive need to share her story. For the tale she told in so many of her paintings was the devastating effect a serious bus accident had on her body and her simultaneous refusal to let that accident define her life. The accident she endured – and the injuries that resulted – are almost too gruesome to imagine. As a university student, she was on a bus when it collided with a streetcar. Several people were killed, and though Kahlo survived, she suffered an almost incomprehensible injury: she was impa

This week on StoryWeb: The Partridge Family’s song “I Think I Love You.” Fifth grade – and the song I can’t get out of my head is “I Think I Love You.” Every girl at Griffith Elementary School – make it every girl at schools around the United States – feels the same way. How we swooned over David Cassidy, the teen idol who played a made-for-TV band’s lead singer. The fictional band was The Partridge Family, based loosely on the real-life Cowsills, a family pop band popular in the late ’60s. The TV show debuted in fall 1970, just a month after “I Think I Love You” had been released as a single. The show featured Shirley Jones as a widowed mother of five children, who scheme to put together a band as a way of helping the family financially. Amazingly enough, this unknown family band has its debut at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas! Jones’s real-life stepson, David Cassidy, played Keith, the oldest of Shirley Partridge’s children. Susan Dey, Danny Bonaduce, and two younger children rounded out the family cast. Like