Sarah Sentilles's Blog

 

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The following is a guest post from the brilliant Carole DeSanti! I met her last summer at the Taos Summer Writers' Conference and meeting her was one of my favorite parts of 2012. Her book is amazing. Here is her version of "Ten Interview Questions for The Next Big Thing." 

 

Thank you, Sarah Sentilles, for inviting me to be a part of The Next Big Thing, a blog-based vehicle for writers supporting writers.  Click on Sarah’s link to find out more about her novel-in-progress, and check out her previous books – smart, provocative, full of courage and beautifully written.  I’m writing about the paperback release of my novel, long in the making, and grateful to be venturing further into the world in a new format.

 

What is your title of your book (or story)? 

The Unruly Passions of Eugénie R.  

 

Where did the idea come from for the book?

The Unruly Passions of Eugénie R.  arose from a desire to flee the pressures of 20th/21st century  commercial publishing (i.e. my day job) to escape back into the earlier love that brought me to novels in the first place.  As a young editor, I sometimes felt like a courtesan of literary life – if the publisher thought something would sell and dropped it on my desk, I worked on it -- from diet books to erotica.  I supplicated bestselling authors and pretended to like things I didn’t, which was hard going, because for me, reading is an intimate, personal act.  I started reading about 19th century prostitution to better understand the instrumentalism of business life and what it was doing to me.  Eugénie R. is what she loves:  she mourns for the part of herself that could once say, “I love, therefore I am.”  The first line she spoke to me was, “How does a woman learn to doubt herself?”   And, from there, came my own passion to bring back what was lost – a voice that would not have been heard in its own time – because such women were not allowed to speak publicly; they were denied a voice in their world.  I wanted to breathe life back into the “phantom limb” of her story.  It still ached to be heard, to be of use. Not to be forgotten.

 

What genre does your book fall under?

The Unruly Passions is a literary historical novel.  If I were to invent my own genre, I might call it a fictional memoir, though….

 

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? 

The story of a young woman’s loves, losses, and coming to consciousness in the wild tumult of Paris’s Second Empire, leading into the Franco Prussian War and the Paris Commune period.

 

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? 

This novel reads more like a 19th century novel than it is like present-day historical fiction, but my comparisons of choice would be Hilary Mantel, or A.S. Byatt, or Rose Tremain – I can only aspire!  

 

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 

It is represented by an agency.

 

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? 

I worked on it for more than a decade, researching and writing, revising extensively, and traveling to all the locations of the story, more than once. There were so many drafts that I can’t begin to say which was the first.

 

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I was inspired by the need to tell a story that had not been told; by the work of devoted historians, by the now-silent voices of history.  By the beauty of the French countryside. Discoveries along the way…a piece of bread in a bottle at the Carnavalet Museum in Paris. A lady’s umbrella at the textile archive in Norwich, UK. A chance conversation; a worn-away 19th century advertisement on a wall in New York City.  A long project requires ongoing inspiration, and I was inspired by learning to create the magic that sustained me through it. And  I came back again and again to a quote from Stendhal, “the logic of passion is insistent.”  I felt the passion and the insistence; I wanted to understand its logic and where it would lead.

 

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

It’s the story of an old love rekindled; a child abandoned and the search for reconnection in a society set against that.  Love and friendship between women, perhaps more than anything.  It’s about the way we exploit one another, care for one another; falter, and regain faith.  This is really a giant banquet of a novel, a sprawling beast; more like life and less like a script.  The historical period has been deeply researched and is accurate, from the Salon system for arts promotion to the military, to the way children were fostered by the state.  No short cuts were taken.   No easy outs! 

 

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

When I heard Marion Cotillard speak recently in New York, describing how she prepares for her roles (which sounded a lot like the writing process) for the first time I could envision a film version of this novel. Stephan de Chaveignes – the young Jeremy Irons – who is that today?  Pierre Chasseloup – Dan Stevens. Madame Jouffroy, Christine Baranski.     Jolie (the lesbian revolutionary)….Jody Foster?

 

The Unruly Passions of Eugénie R.   will be available in paperback on March 26, 2013.  For more, please visit www.caroledesanti.net.

I’m now passing the torch to two very interesting and talented writers. Emily Winslow: http://emilywinslow.wordpress.com.  Her last novel The Start of Everything, is on the top of my to-read pile. I did a great deal of research for Unruly Passions in Cambridge, UK, and I always thought it would the perfect place to set a mystery.

And the delightful Paula Longhurst, who I had the pleasure of meeting at The King’s English Bookstore in Salt Lake City.  Her blog is: http://englishrosesloverain.blogspot.com/2013/01/next-big-thing-blog-hop.html

 

 

 

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The Next Big Thing is a blog series making its way around the internet. Today, I’m delighted to participate by answering a few questions about my newest project.  Many thanks to Natalie Serber for inviting me to join in. You can find out more about Natalie’s next novel here. And if you haven’t yet read her beautiful collection of stories, read it now. It’s a New York Times Notable Book for 2012. And it has one of the most powerful opening stories of any collection I’ve ever read.

What is your working title of your book?

My working title just changed a few weeks ago. For the last six years it was THE VIOLIN. Then it was THIS WAR SOUND. Then WAR SOUND. Today it’s ANOTHER WAY TO SAY EVERYTHING. I imagine it will change again.

 

Where did the idea come from for the book?

My novel is inspired by the life of a real person – Howard Scott, a conscientious objector during World War II. I learned about Howard in 2006 when my friend, the artist Amy Walsh, showed me an article in the Boston Globe, “Howard Scott’s Unfinished Sonata.”

To protest the internment of Japanese Americans and the draft, Howard walked out of a Civilian Public Service (CPS) work camp without permission and was sent to prison in Tucson, Arizona. He was released after several months only to be drafted again. He refused to report either for military duty or for work at a CPS camp, and again was sentenced to prison. While in prison, this time on McNeil Island in Washington, Scott used wood from a fallen maple tree and storage barrels to build a violin based on typed instructions sent to him by his wife, Ruane Scott. He was released before he completed it.

The article told the story about that violin. Howard’s grandson Nolle is a furniture maker who studied at the North Bennett School in Boston. His friend Jess is a violinmaker. The two of them finished Howard’s violin and presented it to Howard on his 87th birthday. There were pictures in the paper. Howard was luminous.

 

As soon as I read the newspaper story I knew I had to write about Howard and his violin.

I contacted Howard and then spoke with his daughter Kayleen. I flew to Seattle and took the ferry to Bainbridge and spent a week interviewing Kayleen, her two sisters, and Howard. The family gave me access to the hundreds of letters Ruane and Howard wrote to each other while he was in prison, including the violin letters. And they granted me permission to write a novel inspired by Howard’s life.

 

What genre does your book fall under?

Literary fiction.

 

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Vera Farmiga or Rosemarie DeWitt would be Indie.

Michael Peña would be Miles.

Christopher Plummer would be Beaman.

I wish I could say there would be a character played by Christopher Guest, but it’s not really that kind of book or movie. Maybe someday he’ll call me, though. I have a really good idea for a mockumentary.

 

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Can it be a long sentence that uses a lot of punctuation and conjunctions? My novel has several parallel stories, which are connected by a violin – one belongs to Miles (a soldier just back from Iraq with PTSD), a second belongs to Indie (a college art professor), and a third belongs to Beaman (a conscientious objector during WWII with Alzheimer’s); it’s about what happens when they find each other after Miles has been called back to war.

 

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Agency.

 

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

My best estimate is three years, but that depends when you start counting. In some ways, I have been preparing my whole life to write this book. In other ways, I started writing the novel the minute I read about Howard, which was seven years ago – but I also wrote a dissertation and two other books during that time.

 

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

It belongs to the same genre as books like David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars, Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Nicole Krauss’s Great House, and Michael Ondaatje’s English Patient —novels written about war and art and violence at a particular time in history that illuminate something about that time and those themes that straight history cannot. 

 

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Howard and Ruane Scott and their family. A veteran in one of my classes at a university in California, who’d been stationed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. A painting of a soldier I bought from that veteran called “The Surge.” The photographs taken at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The transformative power of art.

 

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I wrote my first sex scene for this book.

 

I tagged these amazing writers to keep the blog chain going. Their books will blow your mind:

 

Carole DeSanti’s beautiful THE UNRULY PASSIONS OF EUGENIE R. will be released in March. She will do a guest blog post on my blog (At least that’s the plan for now. It might change.)

 

Monica Drake’s new novel THE STUD BOOK comes out this April. She’ll post here.

 

Ruth Ozeki’s new novel A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING comes out in March. She’ll post her answers here.

 

Emily Rapp also has a new book coming out this March, THE STILL POINT OF THE TURNING WORLD. She will post her blog here. 

 

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Here is my latest piece on Religion Dispatches -- a response to Ross Douthat's insistence that Americans need to be having more babies, and that if you don't have children, you are un-American and decadent. I also examine the biblical mandate to "be fruitful and multiply" and suggest it's time to throw that commandment out. The earth needs something different from us.

 

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/sexandgender/6660/do_not_have_sex_w...

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I wrote a piece on Religion Dispatches in response to Mourdock's comments about rape and pregnancy and what God intends . . . 

 

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/sexandgender/6550/rape_and_richard_...

 

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An essay I wrote about sexism in reviews of and responses to women's writing -- especially women's writing about religion -- just came out in the newest issue of the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and it is now available online: 

 

http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news-events/harvard-divinity-bulletin/articles/the...

 

I have been overwhelmed by the generous response by readers. Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to write to me and share your own stories. Your emails and letters make writing this kind of essay worth it, no matter what the risk. I am grateful! And I am excited that this essay might help continue the conversation about sexism in all its forms. Many of you have shared that you are reading the essay with groups of women you know -- in writer's groups and book groups and classrooms -- and are discussing what kind of action to take next. I am delighted to hear this! It gives me hope!

 

P.S. A note about the title . . . It came from a Saturday Night Live Jeopardy skit in which one of the players says "Penis Mightier" instead of "pen is mightier." You can see a grainy version here: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/80693916/

 

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I just drove home listening to a show called "Religious Leaders Lose Their Faith" on NPR's "Talk of the Nation." I pulled over -- never safe to drive and talk on the phone! -- and called in 17 times, but the line was busy. I would have loved to be part of the conversation.

I think what makes my story different from the ministers interviewed is that I didn't lose my faith, I left it. That is part of the reason I use the analogy of a break up to describe my departure from institutional religion in Breaking Up with God: A Love Story. The version of God in which I had always believed became ethically untenable for me to hold on to, and I had to walk away, even though I was in a doctoral program studying theology, even though I was in the ordination process to become an Epsicopal priest.

The show on "Talk of the Nation" was a response to an earlier piece on "All Things Considered" -- "From Minister to Atheist: A Story of Losing Faith" by Barbara Bradley Hagerty. That story is the first in a series about losing faith, so look for more interesting conversations to follow. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to add my voice to the mix!

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What do the Pope and the feeding tubes doctors are giving to brides so they can lose 10-20 pounds to fit into their wedding dresses have in common?

Both are dedicated to making women smaller.

Last week was a big week. The Vatican disciplined U.S. nuns last week for being “radical feminists”—that is, for talking too much about poverty, hunger, and healthcare and not enough about opposing abortion, gay marriage, and women’s ordination. And ABC ran a story about brides going on the “K-E Diet,” which involves having a doctor insert feeding tubes through their noses that run to their stomachs, a crash diet that allows them to lose 10-20 pounds to fit into their “dream dress.”

I couldn’t get both stories out of my mind. They share the same root cause: misogyny. A belief that women are not full human beings. That women are meant to be seen and not heard. That women should take up less space—in clothes, in homes, in churches, in classrooms, in businesses, in the world.

The dedication to making women smaller is not, however, the only thing the Pope and feeding tubes for brides have in common. Both also reveal how misogyny—whether divinized or internalized—causes people to fail to respond to real problems and instead focus on woman-as-problem—as too fat or too loud or too feminist or too human. In this case the real problem being ignored in favor of disciplining women is hunger. Nuns are being told to focus less on hunger and brides are voluntarily starving themselves to fit into a dress . . . and meanwhile people around the world do not have enough to eat: 25,000 people die every day of diseases related to malnutrition and 1 in 4 children in the US are food insecure.

What will it take to pay attention to this hunger? What will it take to do something about it?

 

(Note: This post is the first in a series—what I am calling the Venn Diagram Series. I am open to suggestions for venn diagram topics!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Have you ever thought about attending a writing workshop? Do you have a story you are longing to tell?

I will be teaching a writing workshop this summer in Taos--July 15 though July 22--and I'd love for you to join me! It is open to all levels of writings, and it is a week-long workshop, "Seen and Unseen: Writing the Spiritual Memoir." Here is the description:

Flannery O’Connor wrote that “Fiction is the concrete expression of mystery—mystery that is lived.” So, too, are spiritual memoirs. In this workshop, we will tackle the tricky business of writing a spiritual memoir and will work toward mastering craft. We will investigate the differences between rich description and syrupy blather, between the effective use of metaphor and a reliance on cliches, and between the expression of one's vision and the pitfalls of preachiness. Special attention will be given to the attempt to say the unsayable; the body; belief and its undoing; memory; truth as fiction, fiction as truth; creativity and the possibility of hope; violence and injustice; meaning-making; suffering; redemption; and responsibility. Workshop sessions will involve responding to one another's work as well as guided discussions about exemplary texts and techniques.

You can register and find descriptions of other teachers' amazing workshops here: http://www.unm.edu/~taosconf/Workshops/Workshops.htm

I also recently just did a fun Q & A about the workshop, which you can find here: http://taoswritersconference.blogspot.com/2012/04/q-and-with-2012-taos-instru...

Here's a preview of that conversation:

What do you think are the biggest challenges of writing a spiritual memoir?
Avoiding being cheesy or preachy or saccharine. Staying in the questions and not moving too quickly into answers. I was a judge for a “spiritual essay” contest last month, and the authors of many of the essays I read moved toward difficult questions, but then they moved quickly away from them, retreating into doctrine or pat answers or clichés like “things happen for a reason” or “God works in ways we don’t understand.” The best essays were written by authors willing to stay in a place of unknowing, in a place of mystery and possibility. I am much more interested in authors who are willing to admit the world doesn’t work like they thought it worked or their faith doesn’t fit like they thought it fit. Good spiritual writing requires courage, a willingness to walk into the fire instead of around it.

I hope to see you in Taos!

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(For Maylen)

I’ve been noticing that much of the resolution energy at the beginning of this year (at the beginning of every year) has been directed at women. Telling us to lose weight. Telling us to be smaller. Telling us to take up less space.

I’m tired of this. Tired of the constant messages to grow up, stay young, tighten, exfoliate, shrink, lose, inject, cut, redistribute, flatten, inflate, pinch, suck, firm, disappear. And I’m tired of the way I’ve internalized them.

I heard a story on the radio once about a study some scientists did with plants. They divided the plants into two groups, the person on the radio said, and while he talked I pictured a greenhouse, walls of glass and light, straight rows of leafy green life. Assigned to the first group were volunteers whose job was to look at the plants lovingly for hours at a time, and assigned to the second group were people told to watch the plants with indifference. After a few weeks, the scientists discovered that the volunteers’ gazes had affected the structure of the plants’ cells. The plants looked at with love had strong cell walls while the plants looked at with indifference had cells whose walls had collapsed. Love could make a physical difference, the scientists reported, could make a plant thrive, could make life crumple.

Listening, I wondered about my own cells, the effects of hours spent looking in the mirror and wishing my body were something else, shrunk, cut off, shed.

At the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, I received emails describing the horrors of female circumcision, men and women cutting girls’ clitorises off, sewing their labia shut, but watching reality shows about women slicing their breasts open to insert pouches of plastic, or putting needles in their faces, or cutting skin at hairlines and behind ears and pulling it back, or vacuuming fat out of their stomachs, I’m not sure what the difference is. I watched one show about a man who had calf implants, and after the surgery, he couldn’t walk for weeks. He stayed in a hotel room alone. Not one friend or family member visited him. The only person he talked to was the man who delivered pizza to his room every night. I watched another show about a woman whose breast implants were infected. I watched the doctor pull one bloody inflated balloon out of her breast, then another, watched the woman wake up from surgery, listen to the doctor telling her she’d almost died, and then cry, deep heaving sobs, not because she’d been so sick, not because she’s almost died from the infection, but because she didn’t have enormous breasts anymore. 

My friend Maylen is a healer, a writer, a yoga instructor, a teacher, and she taught me a guided meditation this morning (and she’s taught it to me before, but I sometimes forget the very things that can be most life transforming). I will share it with you now: Lie down on the ground or on your bed or on the floor, and imagine a light making its way from your toes to the top of your head. Move slowly. Stop at each body part and say: I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.

I love you, feet. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.

I love you, ankles. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.

I love you, calves. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.

Keep going until you get to your head.

I love you, face. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.

I love you, top of my head. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.

And then make a new resolution. I will love myself. I will love my body. I will take up space.

 

 

 

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I asked my lovely readers to choose the gift that should be NUMBER ONE on the Top Ten Atheist Xmas List Countdown . . . and this is what you geniuses came up with: 

×        Two round-trip tickets to Vegas 

×      The “Adventures of Lil Cthulhu,” a DVD that’ll keep kids at an atheist party entertained without the usual Rankin/Bass fare

×        A mix CD of songs your favorite atheists might love. Suggestions included: the Dar Williams song “The Christians and the Pagans” (which always makes me and my brother cry!) and Greg Brown’s beautiful “Lord, I Have Made You a Place in My Heart” (which ends with the last line “Oh Lord, I have made you a place in my heart and I hope that you leave it alone)

×        A collection of DVDs including   Religulous and  Life of Brian

×        An “It’s a Girl!” t-shirt (I mean, seriously, what would the world look like if Jesus had been a girl???) 

×        Darwin Fish Emblem for your favorite atheist’s car

×        Stainless Steel Wine Saver (If Jesus did turn water into wine, you’d probably want to be able to save it . . .)

×        Membership to the National Organization of Women (especially since the Catholic Bishops seem bent on waging a war against women’s access to safe and effective birth control and reproductive health!) 

×        A recording of you reading Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass due to the fact that it is a beautiful piece of human art that stresses the need for humility and the limits of human knowledge

×        Many readers pointed out books I had neglected to include on the list:

o      Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great

o      Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus

o      The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas by Robin Harvie and Stephanie Meyers

×       And last but obviously not least, an iPad.

 

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