July 14 2020
NOTES ON A WRITING LIFE | 15
Dear All,
This last month, I’ve been at home in Key West still hunkering down as the virus Covid 19 increases its hold on Florida. No Bastille Day break-out, no travel to France this year. It seems to be a time to appreciate where we actually are, and to take stock and be grateful.
I think back over 25 years of being a writer here in a community of writers who have become close friends, steady allies and supporters of my own efforts, and of how that came about. We need our communities; nobody flourishes alone, whatever the myths may tell us. Friendship grows over time and through dozens of small actions and conversations, through simply hanging out; all the things we took for granted, and are now hardly possible. When I arrived here I had no idea that so many writers were my neighbors on this island and would become my friends. I gradually met most of them when I was literary editor of a local newspaper, Solares Hill, whose editor David Ethridge asked me to review at least one book a week, and gave me free rein to choose my books.
The English poet Judith Kazantzis came to town and took me to parties – the first I remember being at David Jackson’s house, a couple of years after his partner Jimmy Merrill’s death. People gave a lot of parties in those days. We have all grown older and less energetic about entertaining, drinking, eating and staying up late but I remember from back then sumptuous parties given by Lynn and David Kaufelt, at which I felt as if I’d strayed into the pages of a F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.
Judy Blume and George Cooper came to live here permanently and have now been running their bookshop, Books & Books, and hosting readings for several years. Old Island Books on Fleming was the place for readings in the 1990’s, with Liz and Genevieve Lear providing a welcome, drinks and snacks as we crowded in to hear Richard Wilbur, John Malcolm Brinnin and others. When Margaret Atwood and Valerie Martin rented the house across the street from us and invited us to tea – cucumber sandwiches, no less - we got to know them and their husbands and invited them back. Alison Lurie threw a publishing party for one of my novels. Harry Mathews was always an enthusiastic blurber for my work – “I love writing blurbs!” I’ve had so many generous blurbs written for me that I now feel I want to help any younger writer with blurbs myself. We have to pass on what we are so freely given.
“ I took the photo of Bob and Annie as we all left John Martini’s and Carol Munder’s Christmas lunch, the last great feast we all had before the virus hit and we had to stay home. It looks a little elegiac now, but at the time I just liked their matching red jackets as they walked arm in arm in the setting sun.”
I’m writing about literary friendship today because of the recent death of Bob Richardson, biographer of Emerson and William James, Annie Dillard’s husband, dear friend to so many of us, who died just after his 86th birthday at the end of June. Bob and I did not see each other often, but I was always aware of him there as a sort of literary godfather. He asked me to speak on a panel at the Literary Seminar, the year when he was Chair. He invited me to write a book about Virginia Woolf for the “Muse” series at the University of Iowa Press. He wrote letters to support my applications for a Guggenheim, while reminding me with a grin that it was always a long shot and probably wouldn’t work. He was always asking me what I was writing, and from both him and Annie I’ve always felt a steady stream of appreciation and encouragement.
I heard him say one year at the Literary Seminar that Key West is a good place for a writer to live because nobody who settles here can be ambitious. Ambition and excellence are not the same thing.
I remember how Bob and I held the opposite ends of a banner when we marched against the Iraq war, and that we had seven people, a rooster and a dog with us. The last time he and I talked was when we sat next to each other at Christmas lunch on Sugarloaf last year, 2019. He told me as we ate our turkey and drank our wine that he was writing a book about Resilience. I thought, who better. Resilience fitted Bob Richardson. He navigated illnesses over the last years with uncommon grace and was always smiling and slightly ironic, finding other writers and other people more interesting than himself. I hope that the book soon sees the light of day. We need it now – resilience – as never before in our lifetimes. Our lives change utterly, our numbers diminish, our friends disappear, and resilience - thankyou Bob - is the way we survive, encourage each other, and go on writing.
I took the photo of Bob and Annie as we all left John Martini’s and Carol Munder’s Christmas lunch, the last great feast we all had before the virus hit and we had to stay home. It looks a little elegiac now, but at the time I just liked their matching red jackets as they walked arm in arm in the setting sun.
Recent news: the paperback version of my novel Without Her is due out in late July, and I have two online reading and discussion events coming up – at Books & Books in Coral Gables on August 4, in conversation with Diana Abu-Jaber, and at Books & Books in Key West on August 7, with Katrin Schumann. The book can be pre-ordered from Delphinium Books or any good bookstore.
Affectionately, Ros