Tag Archives: narrative nonfiction

Dispatches from the Writing Life #17: After a Week in Scotland

Posted on by

There’s nothing of note to report on my revisions of the Jane Grant manuscript. I’ve recently returned from a weeklong vacation and am still settling back in. In terms of writing, this involved starting a reread of the chapter in which Jane makes her movie debut (the subject of my last post). I needed to reacquaint myself with the sequence of events to see how it all flows and work out some clunky prose as I went along. It’s been a quiet re-entry, which is good for those first post-vacation days.

Scotland was lovely. We stayed in Edinburgh, in the city center, so we could walk to just about everything we wanted to see. Twice we ventured outside of the city: once on a tour to the Highlands with a stop at Loch Ness for a boat ride and once on the train to Glasgow to see the Gallery of Modern Art and take a walking tour.

During one of our Edinburgh days, we went to the National Gallery. I was immediately drawn to this portrait and wanted to know more about the subject.

Look at her expression.

(Portrait of Naomi Mitchison by Wyndham Lewis, 1938)

I was not surprised to learn that Naomi Mitchison (1897-1999) was a writer and women’s rights activist. The Gallery’s website provides this description of her life:

“Naomi Mitchison was a novelist, poet and passionate campaigner for social justice and women’s rights. Born in Edinburgh, Mitchison’s first novel was published in 1923, when she was twenty-six. Mitchison wrote over seventy books during her lifetime and edited and contributed to many more. She also produced hundreds of articles for newspapers and journals. Mitchison travelled extensively over five continents, was involved in the campaign for access to birth control from the 1920s and spent nearly twenty years as a local councillor in the Scottish Highlands. She was awarded a CBE in 1981.”

Another painting from later in her life is nearly as arresting.

(Portrait of Naomi Mitchison by Clifton Pugh, 1974)

The Gallery website provided additional details of her life in connection with this painting:

“Edinburgh-born Naomi Mitchison was a writer of plays, fiction, poetry and essays as well as being a passionate campaigner for a range of social and political issues. With her husband, barrister and later Labour MP, G. Richard Mitchison, she entertained a circle of intellectuals and literary friends in their house in Hammersmith and later at Carradale in Kintyre. During the 1950s and 1960s she travelled widely in India, the Middle East and Africa. Her personal involvement with the Bakgatla people of Botswana – to which the inscription on this portrait refers – inspired a number of writings on African issues. Mitchison was awarded a CBE in 1981. She died at Carradale in 1999, aged 101. The National Galleries of Scotland also hold a sculpture bust and an earlier portrait of Mitchison.”

A quick internet search about Mitchison (minus any AI “sources”) revealed that she was interested in science (specifically genetics), qualified for a spot at Oxford University, and halted her studies to volunteer as a nurse during World War I. Mitchison married a barrister in 1916 and turned to writing in the 1920s. She also had seven children and a string of lovers.

Hers was a life packed with adventures. It was big and important, deserving of a biography. I’m going to track down Jenni Calder’s, titled The Nine Lives of Naomi Mitchison.

What I’m Reading

I’ve started historian Megan Kate Nelson’s latest, The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier.

In honor of the Scotland vacation, I picked up a Val McDermid police procedural set in Edinburgh, Past Lying, the seventh in her series featuring Karen Pirie. It holds my interest.

What I’m Watching

Started Legends, about a small team of British customs agents circa 1990 attempting to infiltrate a heroin ring, and the second season of The Chestnut Man, a Danish mystery, both on Netflix.

Continuing with The Other Bennet Sister (still enjoyable) and After the Flood, both on BritBox.

Heading into the last season of Ghosts UK (Paramount+). I’m still watching the Australian drama from the 2010s, A Place to Call Home (Prime), but it’s getting a bit soapy. I may have to alternate with episodes of Deep Space Nine (Paramount+).

Finished The Trial of Christine Keeler (BritBox), an interesting British political drama set in the 1960s.

What Else Is Happening

Getting back to bowling after a week off wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Despite too many splits and a few gutter balls, the overall scores were acceptable. I especially appreciated rolling two strikes in the tenth frame.

Have a good couple of weeks. Hope you stop by for the next installment.

Dispatches from the Writing Life #16: Jane Grant, Movie Star

Posted on by

Once. For one night.

(Not Jane Grant. From Perils of Pauline, 1914. By Donald MacKenzie / Louis J. Gasnier – http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=107636, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81384623)

It’s a pretty great story about Jane. I’m still unraveling it and putting it back together after I ran across some new sources that popped up while I was researching something else.

This meant another week of examining documents that described the same event in different ways, so I’m trying to figure out what’s the most plausible. In the end, it will help build a fuller picture of Jane’s early years at The New York Times.

What I’m Reading

Still on True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen by Lance Richardson. Also trying to get caught up with (rather ironically) back issues of The New Yorker.

What I’m Watching

Almost finished with The Trial of Christine Keeler, an interesting British political drama set in the 1960s, plus the first three episodes of The Other Bennet Sister (very enjoyable) as well as the third weekly episode of After the Flood, all on BritBox. Finished the German spy thriller, Unfamiliar, on Netflix, which is now perfectly poised for a second season. I also started an Australian drama from the 2010s, A Place to Call Home (Prime). I’m liking it a lot more than I thought I would.

Still enjoying the British Ghosts (Paramount+) and spending way too much time thinking about the characters.

What Else Is Happening

Well, bowling, but an hour later than usual. League season has ended, and the alley has shortened its hours. We had forgotten about that and ended up going for ice cream to pass the time until it opened. That was good enough to make us almost forget how uneven our games were. But one of us rolled a sparrow during the first game. (Not me.)

Now that the bowling alley has gone on summer hours, so will the blog. There will be a new post every other week at least through September.

Happy Mother’s Day to all who are observing.

Have a good couple of weeks. Hope you stop by for the next installment.

Dispatches from the Writing Life #15: Of Primary and Secondary Sources

Posted on by

This book I’m writing about Jane Grant will be the first full-length one focusing on her. She has turned up in a few other books published by both trade and academic presses, so I was able to consult some secondary sources for part of my research.

The information they contain needs to be verified, and occasionally that process sends me down research rabbit holes. This is what happened with one piece of chronology in my fourth chapter, in which Jane travels overseas with the YMCA in World War I.

The most valuable secondary source has been Susan Henry’s 2012 book, Anonymous in Their Own Names, a scholarly look at three women, including Jane, who pushed for legal changes to ensure that married women, if they chose, could keep their birth names. I always start my secondary source research with academic works.

Henry wrote about Jane’s trip: “In September 1918 she sailed for France. Her first stop was the Stars and Stripes office in Paris where she hoped to visit her friend Woollcott, who had been working there since February and with whom she had been corresponding. But he had left for the front, so she continued on to her duties in Tours.”

Henry took that information from a 1943 letter that Jane wrote to Woollcott’s biographer, Samuel Hopkins Adams. The letter is part of the Jane Grant papers at the University of Oregon and is one of the many documents I read and scanned on my research trip there a few years ago.

So I pulled up the letter and read what Jane wrote:

“In September, 1918, I went to France with the Motion Picture Bureau of the Y.M.C.A. When I arrived in Paris I went at once to the office of the Stars and Stripes in search of Aleck…and learned that I could not see Aleck, although he [a commanding officer she spoke to] would not tell me if Aleck was out of Paris or when he would return. I was mighty young then and mighty lonely and as Aleck was the only person I knew in Paris I made going to the office of the paper a regular stint until I was detailed to Tours.”

Jane’s 1968 memoir, Ross, The New Yorker and Me, contains this recollection: “Once I had hurdled the obstacles of getting to war Aleck resolved to have me detailed to the Entertainment Bureau of the Y. ‘They need singers badly and your dancing will be no hindrance,’ he wrote me at Tours. I was delighted with the prospect and elated when I was summoned to Paris to arrange for transfer to my new duties with the entertainment unit Aleck had assembled. He had met me at the station the evening before.”

I need to fashion a chronology that makes sense. I have to consider that Jane’s letter to Adams was written twenty-five years after her trip to France, which brings the issue of memory into play. Also, in 1943, in the middle of U.S. involvement in World War II, Jane had a lot going on. She was busy with a project for The New Yorker and with duties on the Writers’ War Board. She may have still been processing her feelings over Woollcott’s unexpected death early in the year.

Her memoir came even later. Jane spent over a decade researching, writing, and rewriting that book. But as much as she drew on her journalism training, the memoir wasn’t meant to be objective. She had a specific purpose for writing it. As with her letter to Adams and with Henry’s account of these events, the information in Jane’s memoir must be verified by other sources.

That’s what takes a lot of my time. I usually find some interesting things along the way, and in this case, I have. My goal is to get the information as correct as possible.

I thought once again of historian Jill Lepore’s “Plymouth Rocked: Of Pilgrims, Puritans, and Professors,” which I mentioned last week. (Here again is The New Yorker article, though it may be paywalled.) “History isn’t brain surgery,” she wrote. “Even when it’s done poorly, it’s not fatal. Still, it can knock you down.” I don’t want to do it poorly.

What I’m Reading

I started another big biography of another important man in the book world: True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen by Lance Richardson. It’s good but very stuffed with details. It reminds me of how hard it is as a biographer to figure out what to put in and what to leave out.

What I’m Watching

The second weekly episode of After the Flood (BritBox) and over on Netflix, Unfamiliar, a German spy thriller.

Still enjoying the amusing British version of Ghosts (Paramount+).

What Else Is Happening

Another very acceptable bowling this week.

It was a real bird week here at Southfork. Woodpeckers, orioles, and grosbeaks have been spotted at the front feeder. And in the neighborhood, a hawk (probably a Cooper’s hawk) and a few backyard chickens. Lucky chickens—the hawk wasn’t in the same part of the neighborhood.

(an orchard oriole)

Have a good week. Hope you stop by for the next installment.

Dispatches from the Writing Life #13: More Life Than Writing

Posted on by

I made a bit of progress on revisions, still working through some history of World War I as it pertains to Jane Grant’s experiences. I read up on the 1916 Council of National Defense and the Woman’s Committee it created in April 1917. Once the United States entered the war, the government decided it needed the support of women and tapped into the well-established network of female organizations that had been around for decades.

Then I looked to see what kinds of articles the New York Times published about these developments to better understand the atmosphere at the newspaper where Jane worked. And I started considering how press coverage of the conflict and the existence of the Woman’s Committee (run locally by the upper-class women she covered for the Society Department) influenced the choices she made about what to do during the war.

Writing occupies a significant chunk of time almost every day, yet there are always other things going on, too. I used to think that I would have more time for writing in retirement, but I’ve found more flexibility in my schedule rather than more time. And that’s okay. This past week I met a friend for a leisurely lunch, wrote an endorsement (blurb) for a forthcoming book about the Philippines during World War II, and spent a lot of time getting ready for a weekend with family centering on a baby shower.

What I’m Reading

Gayle Feldman’s Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built remains absorbing. It’s due back at the library in five days and can’t be renewed, so I’ll have to finish it some other time. It’s a remarkable achievement.

What I’m Watching

Only one episode left to finish this season of The Forsytes (PBS).

Watched the first episode of the new Dan Levy comedy, Big Mistakes, on Netflix. Very unsure about it. The cast is great and I get the premise, but the execution didn’t quite land during that first episode. Still, with Levy, it’s probably worth watching at least one more episode. (I had to try Schitt’s Creek twice before I stuck with it, but that was mostly because of the presence of Chris Elliott.)

Nearing the end of all the available episodes of Animal Control on Netflix.

Finished the Netflix series, Detective Hole and the first season of Helsinki Crimes (PBS). I think we started Helsinki Crimes last week, but I forgot about it. Not that it’s bad, but it’s a pretty routine police procedural. It’s set in Helsinki, though, which gives it a little something special.

During one of the several family gatherings over the weekend, conversation turned to one of our favorite good bad movies: VelociPastor. I don’t know if any synopsis can do it justice.

What Else Is Happening

Slightly better bowling this week. There were gutter balls again during the first game, but the second game had a strike and a few spares. And afterward—ice cream!

The two pear trees and the mulberry tree survived a week of rain and winds, so that bodes well. There are more buds on all. A most welcome sight is the rapid growth of the peony bushes. Peonies are my favorite spring flower, and every year I closely watch their progress.

(not our peony bushes)

Have a good week. Hope you stop by for the next installment.

Dispatches from the Writing Life #12: Jane Grant and Elisabeth Marbury

Posted on by

Lots of things happen during revisions, including moments when you feel like doing a gentle head-bang on the desk because you can’t believe you almost overlooked something. That’s also when you realize this is exactly why revisions are essential.

They were right there in the scans from the archives. Two brief letters from Elisabeth Marbury, one to Jane Grant, one To Whom It May Concern, both from the summer of 1918, both a part of Jane’s quest to get an overseas posting.

Jane volunteered for the Publicity Bureau of the Mayor’s Committee of Women on National Defense (MCWND) sometime in 1918. Marbury, who officially headed the bureau, was a powerhouse in New York City theater circles, so it’s also possible that Jane already knew her or at least had known of her through her job at the New York Times.

Elisabeth “Bessy” Marbury was born in 1856, the daughter of a prominent New York City lawyer. A former debutante, she drew from her family’s wealth and connections to set herself up in business to promote and manage actors and playwrights. Marbury met Elsie de Wolfe, an aspiring actor about ten years her junior, in the 1880s. The couple lived together for forty years while Marbury grew her company, opening offices in Paris, London, Berlin, and Madrid, and de Wolfe launched herself as an interior decorator.

Together they bought a home in Versailles, France, where they spent part of every year until World War I made that impossible. But between 1914 and 1916, Marbury coordinated relief efforts for wounded French soldiers while she was still in the country. Queen Elizabeth of Belgium presented Marbury with a medal in honor of her war service in 1919.

(garden at Villa Trianon, Versailles, France)

Once back in the United States, Marbury worked with at least one other wartime organization in addition to the MCWND. Her business also remained open and thriving. Marbury utilized her theater contacts to put on programs to help fund the war effort. In the summer of 1918, Jane was “conducting the Publicity Bureau” for her on the MCWND and doing such a good job that Marbury both hated to lose her and willingly wrote a letter of recommendation to help her get overseas.

Jane didn’t forget Marbury. During the 1920s, when Jane was involved in two other quite different endeavors, she looped Marbury into those as well, one successfully, the other not. But by then, Jane was practiced in establishing connections with influential people and making good use of them.

What I’m Reading

Gayle Feldman’s Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built is very absorbing. It’s a huge book, and I admire all the careful research Feldman conducted and her skillful crafting of the narrative.

What I’m Watching

Two very quiet, excellent movies on Prime: Sam and Kate, starring Sissy Spacek and Dustin Hoffman, and The Summer Book, set on a small Finnish island, starring Glenn Close as the grandmother. No murders, nothing blows up. Just relationships.

More episodes of The Forsytes (PBS). Still very unlike the last series and clearly setting up a second season.

Only two episodes left of the Netflix series, Detective Hole.

Finished Mudtown (BritBox). The ending was a bit unexpected, and I still have some questions.

Animal Control (Netflix), an amusing workplace comedy, continues as filler watching.

What Else Is Happening

Voting happened on Tuesday. There were some local races plus the big statewide Supreme Court one that was a decisive liberal victory.

I listened to Megan Kate Nelson’s second appearance on the excellent Drafting the Past podcast, created and hosted by Kate Carpenter. If you like to read good history books, this is the place to hear authors talk about how they research and write them.

I also watched historian Pamel Toler on WW2TV on YouTube. Host Paul Woodadge designs great programs covering so many aspects of the war in addition to military history. It’s really worth a watch.

The usual two games of bowling served as a sharp reminder of the consequences of missing last week. A two-word summation of my experience this week: gutter balls.

More exciting was our first visit of the spring season to the garden center. We returned to Southfork with two pear trees and a mulberry tree, all of which the foreman planted in the front acreage. So far, the deer haven’t eaten them. They’ve also left alone the other tender green shoots that have been popping up in the garden beds. So far.

Have a good week. Hope you stop by for the next installment.