Tag Archives: nonfiction

Dispatches from the Writing Life #20: Jane Grant is Back in France

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It felt like I was stuck in chapter one (re)revisions on an endless loop. But, of course, it wasn’t endless because one day I did reach the end **and** realized there was nothing I needed (at that point) to go back and fix. So I left it there.

Then I returned to chapter three, the ending of which prompted me, many weeks ago, to take another look at chapter one and chapter two. New revisions on chapter three didn’t take very long this time around—it was mostly a matter of deciding how I wanted to deal with a couple of secondary source information dumps I had added so I could take some books back to the library before they were overdue. I deleted some of that information because it turned out to be unnecessary. The rest I incorporated where needed.

Now I’m back in chapter four, in which Jane is overseas with the YMCA during and just after World War I. Her first job was as a secretary or clerk at Tours, France, work she found dull even though she understood how it benefited the soldiers. She was much happier socializing with them after hours and tried to split her time as evenly as possible between enlisted men and officers. There was much flirting, but Jane wasn’t looking for a serious relationship.

(Jane Grant stayed here when she came to Paris.)

It wasn’t long before Alexander Woollcott, her friend and colleague from The New York Times, arranged her transfer to the Y’s Entertainment Bureau. That brought Jane first to Paris, where she met Harold Ross (and we all know how that turned out), then on to various locations in France and Germany with a performing troupe.

As I mentioned way back in #4 of this series about this overseas chapter: “There is less to weed out, and more to weave in.” (There was also enough stuff to weave in earlier chapters that I had to create a new one, so what was once chapter three is now chapter four.) I’m still trying to track down a source or two that can provide additional insight on the AEF presence in Tours. There will likely be other things like that to weave in, but I don’t know exactly what right now.

What I’m Reading

Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King by Caroline Bicks. This is an interesting hybrid of memoir—Bicks is the Stephen E. King Chair of Literature at the University of Maine—and literary criticism/history. I haven’t read a lot of King’s books (there are so many!), but The Stand is one of my all-time favorite novels, and this is holding my interest, especially as Bicks examines the differences in King’s story drafts.

Karen Tei Yamashita’s unique and challenging novel Questions 27 & 28, about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Stunning.

I finished two excellent books: Jayne Anne Phillips’s memoir, Small Town Girls, and Megan Kate Nelson’s The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier. Highly recommend both.

I also finished Sherry Thomas’s mystery novel, The Librarians, which started off well enough but ended up with an overstuffed plot.

What I’m Watching

Eagerly watching season 4 of Dark Winds, which recently dropped on Netflix, and very glad to know that AMC has renewed it for another season.

In the current watch rotation but proceeding rather pokily are season 2 of The Agency (Paramount+), Waking the Dead (BritBox), Lawmen: Bass Reeves and Mindfully Murder (both on Netflix).

We sped through both seasons of Karen Pirie (BritBox), which was a re-watch for me, but a welcome one after having been to Scotland. It was a nice reminder of how good the series is.

I watched all of Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie as quickly as I could. I liked it a lot. That may be because I’m not a die-hard fan of the original books—I don’t remember even reading them all when I was young. Give me Nancy Drew any time. But I’m a huge fan of Caroline Fraser’s book Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I’m looking forward to the next season of this series.

I finally finished A Place to Call Home (Prime) and found it an interesting iteration of a soap opera.

What Else Is Happening

No bowling during the week of the 4th of July. The alley shut down for a very long holiday weekend. Returning the week after was a little rough on one of us who bowled poorly with the other rolling their highest score ever, in large part due to two turkeys in one game!

It’s hot, hot, hot. I thought Wisconsin’s heatwave had already come and gone, but that was only the shorter first one. This second one is stretching across at least a couple of weeks. And now we’re getting hit with smoke and haze from wildfires further north. Yikes.

And here at Southfork, the loaner cats only have a couple more days with us. It will seem very quiet when they are back in their own home.

Thanks, as always, for reading. Stay cool. See you next time.

Dispatches from the Writing Life #19: When Biographical Subjects (Nearly, Maybe) Collide

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Over the last half of this past week, I had to swap my writing time for interview prep time. There is a documentary in progress on Dr. Mary Walker, Medal-of-Honor-winning Civil War physician and relentless women’s rights activist, and I was asked to talk—in front of a camera—about her life and the book I wrote about it.

I’ve given many presentations about Walker, but most of them focused on her Civil War experiences that led to the Medal of Honor. So, I was especially delighted with the opportunity to talk about her commitment to dress reform and women’s suffrage, plus a variety of other women’s rights issues.

On October 23, 1915, when Dr. Walker was in her early 80s, she turned up in New York City for a women’s suffrage parade. The event kicked off at Washington Square at 3:00 on a chilly but sunny afternoon and continued about three miles along Fifth Avenue to Fifty-ninth Street. Participants (just over 25,000, including 2500 men, according to The New York Times) represented the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the Women’s Political Union, the Women’s Trades Union League, and other groups.  

It was a huge event; to that date, the largest suffrage parade held in the city. Crowd estimates ranged from tens of thousands, to a hundred thousand, to two hundred thousand.

(Suffrage parade, October 23, 1915. Library of Congress. George Grantham Bain Collection.)

I like to imagine Jane Grant somewhere in that crowd of observers. If she was working that Saturday, she may have slipped away from her desk at The New York Times late in the afternoon to watch. Maybe she caught sight of Mary Walker—though it’s hard to believe that the elderly doctor marched for very long. I think about that overlap, two very determined women in the same place at the same time but knowing nothing of each other. Jane, young and at the beginning of her career, not yet realizing how important women’s rights would become in her life. Dr. Walker, near the end of her life, motivated for decades by a deep belief in gender equality.

These kinds of what-if, almost, maybe historical encounters always intrigue me. But now I’m back to those Jane Grant revisions, and who knows what will spark my imagination next.

What I’m Reading

I’m a couple of chapters into Jayne Anne Phillips’s memoir, Small Town Girls, and am finding the writing just lovely. Still reading and admiring historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist Megan Kate Nelson’s The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier.

I’ve started The Librarians, a mystery by Sherry Thomas, which is intriguing so far.

I finished and enjoyed two novels: Virginia Pye’s Marriage and Other Monuments and Ann Patchett’s Whistler. I read Elizabeth Strout’s Things We Never Say in two sittings and have lots of opinions about it.

What I’m Watching

In the current watch rotation are season 2 of The Agency (Paramount+), Waking the Dead (BritBox), Lawmen: Bass Reeves and Mindfully Murder (both on Netflix).

I’m on the final season of A Place to Call Home (Prime). Deep Space Nine (Paramount+) has taken a backseat to this Australian drama.

Finished The Other Bennet Sister (BritBox), The Boroughs (Netflix), Legends (Netflix), and The Pembrokeshire Murders (BritBox), Spider Noir (Prime), and St. Denis Medical (Netflix).

The Other Bennet Sister was pleasant but irritatingly divided into 30-minute episodes. The Boroughs had its solid cast and good premise weakened by an anemic plot. Legends and The Pembrokeshire Murders were both well done. I really fell for the noir vibe of Spider Noir, which was the perfect vehicle for Nicholas Cage. And I’m looking forward to another season of St. Denis Medical.

What Else Is Happening

Weekly bowling had its usual highs (a sparrow) and lows (gutter balls and impossible splits), but it’s still fun.

And here at Southfork, we are cat sitting for three weeks, an elderly brother-sister feline duo. We are entertained.

Thanks, as always, for reading. See you next time.

Dispatches from the Writing Life #18: “You’re Going the Wrong Way!”

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As I’ve been kind of stuck on revisions in Chapter One of the Jane Grant book, I keep thinking of this scene from the 1987 comedy classic Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

In their hurry to get home to their families for Thanksgiving, the characters played by Steve Martin and John Candy take the wrong highway ramp and will soon find themselves barreling into oncoming traffic. A couple driving in the right direction try to warn them that they’re going the wrong way. But Candy says to Martin, “How would he know where we’re going.”

My plan, as far as I remember it, had been to move through this round of revisions sequentially, chapter by chapter. That worked okay until the third chapter raised some questions about the second, which in turn sent me back to the first. I realized I didn’t like Chapter One at all, so I’ve been taking a lot of time going back over sources, notes, and drafts to try and work out why it doesn’t work. After more than two weeks, I’ve inched through about six pages.

My goal now is to stick with the chapter and not get sidetracked by another. Like Martin and Candy, I think I’m going the right way. But there’s always the chance that I don’t know yet where this chapter, which focuses on Jane’s first years in New York City, will take me. That’s the revision journey.

What I’m Reading

To continue with the automobile theme, reading has taken a backseat to writing and other things in life. But I’m continuing with historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist Megan Kate Nelson’s latest, The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier. I’ve also started a novel by Virginia Pye, Marriage and Other Monuments.

I finished the Val McDermid police procedural set in Edinburgh, Past Lying, and liked it.

What I’m Watching

In the current watch rotation are The Boroughs (Netflix), Spider Noir (Prime), Legends (Netflix), and The Pembrokeshire Murders (BritBox). St. Denis Medical (Netflix) is the current filler show. It’s not quite as engaging as Ghosts UK, but it doesn’t irritate, so that’s good.

I’m still returning to The Other Bennet Sister (BritBox), A Place to Call Home (Prime), and Deep Space Nine (Paramount+).

Finished the last season of Ghosts UK (Paramount+), which was wonderful and I miss the characters, BritBox’s After the Flood, and the second season of The Chestnut Man (Netflix), which had an unexpected twist. Easily raced through season two of The Four Seasons, which I always think I will like more than I actually do. To be fair, I feel the same about the original movie.

What Else Is Happening

Weekly bowling remains on the schedule even through the summer months. There has been no overall improvement in my games, but some good frames happen now and then.

I’ve spent my first afternoon of the season on the golf course. I would never claim to play an actual game because despite a couple of sets of lessons, hitting the ball, much less hitting it far and straight, remain elusive. This summer, at least once a month, I’ll walk the nine-hole course, push my cart, and take a few swings on every hole. There is no score keeping. But this week we were treated to the sight of a family of Sandhill cranes rooting around for food on the ninth hole and a couple of herons flying overhead. It was a good time.

And here at Southfork, thanks to the foreman (aka Charles), the lawn and garden beds are thriving. The peonies that I look forward to so much every year have had their glory days, but the amaryllises and irises have taken up the slack with spectacular blossoms. The two new pears trees and the mulberry tree, started as bare roots, are leafing out. The back forty is bursting with color from many different plants and flowers. The cat mint (that I always mistake for Russian sage) is gorgeously purple. The apple trees appear to be in good shape. (Only fruit grows here at Southfork, not vegetables.) There will be more blooming throughout the summer. I’ve spotted the first hummingbirds of the season, plus there have been lots of busy bumblebees around.

Thanks for reading. Hope you stop in again to find out which way my writing is going.

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

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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

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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.