LIFE IMITATES ART

One of the features that has always drawn me to both the writing of and the reading of fiction, is the way that fiction writers often begin their books by asking the question: "What if....?" Historical facts, actual events, accurate portrayals of the clothing people wore or the food they ate during a given period, these can become springboards from which a believable story emerges, as opposed to actually being the story. Non-fiction writers are more bound to the facts when they write, while for fiction writers, these facts serve the same purpose as shading or color in a painting. They give the work dimension and credibility, but it is the embellishments, empathy, and flights of fancy that give the characters their breath and the settings their immediacy.

The recovered Chagall

I wrote my novel Phoebe & The Ghost of Chagall over the course of three years, and it involved a fair amount of research in the areas of:  Hitler's troubled relationship to art, the rich and compelling life of Marc Chagall who graced this earth for almost a full century, the circle of now-famous artists before their fame in pre-World War One Paris, the occupation then liberation of Paris, art theft and the thriving black market and how they work in tandem, art stolen from Jewish homes and elsewhere by the Nazis during World War Two, and finally, the most compelling fact of all: the one hundred paintings that actually went missing during Marc Chagall's lifetime. In real life, these "lost" painting were a source of great trepidation for the painter, so in my book, with the liberating format of fiction, Chagall gets to come back to the world of the living and retrieve one of these lost paintings, and help a woman with some very real problems of her own in the process. I think in fiction, the goal is to let the research fuel the story, make it seem plausible, without taking the reader out of the tale. Facts should have the role in fiction much like that of a very skilled waiter. The flavorful dishes appear before you and are whisked away and replaced by others so seamlessly and unobtrusively, that one forgets the waiter is even there. But without the waiter, the excellent experience could not happen.

I have attended quite a few writers' workshops and there was a moment in one of them where we were critiquing a fellow writer's story and someone said: "It just doesn't feel real."  The author, even though she was technically supposed to be in the "cone of silence" part of the class, shouted triumphantly: "But this really happened!" At this point, the teacher jumped in, making a harrumphing noise and holding up his hand in a shushing motion, telling her: "That doesn't matter at all if we don't believe it." This has always stuck with me, and served as a beacon in the partially-made-up land of fiction. Along these lines, I love stories about real-life events that begin: "You can't make this stuff up." What follows this opener is usually compelling because indeed there are times when fact is stranger than fiction.

And then there are times like this week, when fact and fiction collide. I avidly follow any news or current events that involve Chagall or stolen art, because frankly, I became a bit obsessed with these topics while I was working on Phoebe & The Ghost of Chagall. A few days ago, I found a link containing an event that could have come straight from the pages of my book.  It was a fantastical story that told of 1.4 billion dollars worth of stolen art, masterpieces of so-called "degenerate art" that were thought to have been destroyed by the Nazis. Instead, these paintings had been hiding in a run down apartment building in Munich in 2011. The current occupant of the building, and hence the owner of this cache, was the 80 year old Cornelius Gurlitt, son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, the modern art specialist recruited by Hitler to sell off some these appropriated paintings to raise money for the Third Reich.

Just this initial story raises a wealth of magnificent and juicy questions, the stuff of good fiction. How could Cornelius, who was caught while being investigated for tax evasion, not have known the origin of these paintings, as he claimed? He was described as a man living in squalor who would sell a painting every now and then when he needed cash. And why did the authorities wait two full years to go public with this story? They expressed that they were concerned that claimants would be coming out of the woodwork, and authenticating such claims would be a nightmare. But meanwhile, records are dying along with the rightful owners, who are now in their 80's and 90's and knowing this, it would seem that time would be of the essence. Plus, there is a well-known organization called Art Recovery International that has long been in the business of reuniting Jews with the art stolen from them during the Second World War. Would posting pictures of the newly-rescued art on this site not have been a terrific place to start?

The recovered Matisse

I think there should be compensation for the rightful owners.  That said, I have hopes that this generation will see fit to make sure that art of such magnificence finds its way to the walls of museums.  I strongly believe, as does Chagall, or rather the Chagall character in my book, that beauty of this caliber should be seen by many eyes, not squirreled away in the darkened apartment of the nefarious Corneliuses of the world. My book has a happy ending. Justice is served, paintings are in the hands of their rightful owners. And some will, of course, continue to remain unaccounted for, just as in this real life drama. So here is where we are experiencing that rare and wonderful moment of overlap, where writers and readers of both fiction and non-fiction can eagerly await the next installment.





Link to purchase Phoebe & The Ghost of Chagall:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_3_14?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=phoebe%20and%20the%20ghost%20of%20chagall&sprefix=phoebe+and+the%2Caps%2C206&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aphoebe%20and%20the%20ghost%20of%20chagall

Autumn 10/26/2013

I have not added to this blog in a ridiculous amount of time, but not because of idleness. In truth, I would rather be working on my new novel, or a new story than on my little blog.  And yes, I am the first to admit that the jury is still out in my mind as to the value of social media for authors. But more than that: time feels sped up. It is early morning and there are the rituals there, the yoga and the walking of the dogs & the writing & the pruning of the suckers on the olive tree, then in no time, as if in those old films where there is a full-screen shot of a timepiece whose hands are wildly moving clockwise,  it is suddenly 3 p.m.! Perhaps I am not alone in this phenomenon? But when life gets juicy, with highs or with lows, I am always drawn back to poetry. I find it to be the most immediate and arrow-to-the-heart form of expression in words. Here then, a freshly minted poem:

Falling

By: Jill Koenigsdorf

And so it begins-

the cracking open & path

clearing-

Your eyelash found,

a fine sickle, dark

against the surface

of a new stick of butter.

The sawdust you made first,

then the ashes.

Spring has the reputation

as the time of awakening-

                         rebirth

But I say it is Autumn.

So much urgency-

a quickening before

the journey inward.

The earnest impossibility

of preparedness.

Squirrels bury the neighbor’s walnuts

in every pot they find,

making a mess of what

was carefully smoothed &

patted down-

nudging aside old roots.

The last figs

dry

on the branch.

The last tomatoes

puckered

as the faces of old women, cling

to the vine.

The last, the last,

but also the sweetest.

And all the showiest flowers

a study in duality-

half in their vibrant, summer glory

the other half

brown & rich

with seeds.

They too long for surrender-

to close the distance between themselves &

the fertile soil below.

They lean forward-

teetering towards that contact-         

then

coming to rest there

where they await the rains

that will make them green

again.

Life Along the Seine

Triple Whammy: The Wild New World of Publishing

I'll be reading and signing books at 7 pm on July 12th at the Occidental Center For the Arts in Sonoma County...You won't want to miss this one! Details below.

A Panel Discussion: Wild New World of PublishingFriday, July 12, 7:00 - 9:15 pm

Triple Whammy: A Panel Discussion and Book Launches Celebrating the Wild New World of Publishing

OCA invites writers and booklovers to discuss and explore the exciting and creative new directions of publishing in this new age. Each author will talk about her journey, read from her book, and offer some tips, strategies and writing prompts. There will also be a Q&A and book sales and signings and refreshments.

The authors are:

Jill Koenigsdorf (Phoebe & the Ghost of Chagall), Becca Lawton (Junction, Utah), and Jordan E. Rosenfeld (Forged in Grace). Each author has published her book in a slightly different way: Becca as an e-book with Van Haitsma Literary; Jordan through the writer’s collective Indie-Visible Ink, and Jill through MacAdam/Cage Publishers. The moderator is Susan Bono, Editor at Tiny Lights Publication.

An interesting and informative event for both readers and writers! Free admission but donations are happily accepted.

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Left Bank Writers Conference, Paris, June 2013

    There are so many reasons we say "no" to things. Fear, finances, time constraints, and the list goes on. In my own life, I had been saying no to too many things for too long. Yet my trying to be "practical," "disciplined," and "realistic," was not having the desired effect. Instead of feeling proud of myself and more secure, I felt itchy, anxious, hungry for the pleasure and the expansion that always comes from new experiences and challenges. 

SO: being a firm believer that nothing feeds the body/mind/spirit like travel, and that all writers benefit from writers workshops, I applied to something alternately called The Left Bank Writers Conference and The Left Bank Writers Workshop. At a workshop or conference,  I get so much out of being amongst my tribe, of immersing myself in words and communing with fellow authors for a full week. And this conference would also satisfy the yearning for France (I had not been back in 8 years.) Through amazing feats of budgeting contortionism, I soon found myself on a plane in San Francisco on June 14th bound for Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris. I would be staying above the best ice cream parlor in Paris, Berthillon, on the Île St. Louis, my favorite part of the city.

It was one of those magic weeks where synchronicity and happy circumstance seemed stationed around every corner. What a diverse group of eight we were! From the deep South to Australia, we had an ambassador from every school of writing: theater, poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. And we were all giddy to be a part of it. There is a little bit of "lost" in all artists, and as Gertrude Stein famously quipped "You are all a lost generation." We channeled Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Eliot, Picasso, Chagall, making daily pilgrimages to their haunts, their apartments, their studios.

We started each day by writing in the Jardin de Luxembourg. We touched the plaque on the bar at Café des Lilas where Hemingway used to write. (I touched the plaque there also dedicated to Man Ray) There is something very powerful about being in a city with so much history. You walk the same streets that others walked thousands of years ago. The age and beauty of the place is quite moving. And we ate long lunches, like the French, with copious crisp bottle of Rosé and unparalleled people watching. There was even a magnificent Chagall retrospective, "Between War and Peace" that perfectly aligned his art with what was taking place in his life at the time.

I came looking for inspiration and found it. Paris renews my spirit. My next book features Madame Curie as a character and sure enough, a block from my petite apartment, on the banks of the Seine, was the very apartment where she lived for a time. On my last night in Paris, the first night of Summer, the streets alive with people dancing and making music until dawn for the Fête de la Musique, I stood outside her building and looked up, most happy that I had said "yes."

Poem In Your Pocket Day

Today is National Poetry In Your Pocket Day. I have chosen the 4th portion of beloved Frank O'Hara poem "Alma" which goes like this:


4
Onward to the West, “Where I came from,
where I’m going. Indian country.” Gold.
Oh say can you see Alma. The darling
of Them. All her friends were artists.
They alone have memories. They alone
love flowers. They alone give parties
and die. Poor Alma. They Alone
/She died,
and it was as if all the jewels in the world
had heaved a sigh. The seismograph
at Fordham University registered, for once,
a spiritual note. How like a sliver
in her own short fat muscular foot.
She loved the Western World, though
there are some who say she isn’t really dead.

1953

from Lunch Poems

I began my writing life as a poet, my first poem at age ten having something to do with moths. I think the first line was "There's moths a-plenty by my bedside now...." I recall also as a young thing looking at the Redbud trees starting to bloom in the neighborhood and writing: "Who knows if these/rows of trees/are really large curd/lavender/cottage cheese?"  I was so proud that it rhymed and was going for the look of the buds on the trees. That's still what I see when I look at a Redbud.

As a rounded peg in the square hole of Kansas Suburbia, I always took great solace during my stormy adolescence from those pleasing, small, transporting poetry books that City Lights put out. They were perfect, the size of a sandwich, and that too made them seem slightly subversive & outré. And man, I was hungry for outré.

On the ladder of writing genres, even though I write primarily fiction now, I have always placed poetry on the top rung. It speaks volumes that at the end of a particularly powerful poem at a reading, audience members emit a sound, something between a moan and a sigh and a whew and an oomph of surprise. I love that this low short guttural sound happens spontaneously and universally, as natural as breathing. I always feel moved to write after reading or hearing poetry. I still write poems myself, but it now it seems saved for the larger events in life: heartbreak, Spring, love, death, longing. When I need to express something and crystalize the verbiage, poetry is the means to get in touch with the essence of things. I admire the distillation and focus that requires.

I always recall what a fellow workshop attendee once said at the Napa Valley Writers Conference years ago. He was a poet and I was in the land of fiction. We got the chance to rub shoulders while waiting in line for a buffet lunch. I said:
"I always try to guess which ones here are the poets and which writers are in fiction."
"Well that's easy," he said.
"How so?"
"The fiction writers are talking about agents and the poets are talking about the food."

LOVE IS IN THE AIR

The birds around my house are starting to hunt for nesting materials and the ones not at that stage are singing their hearts out (the males) trying to impress a potential mate. I always think the males in the human kingdom could learn a lot from birds: the singing, the beautiful plumage....the effort. It is a magnificent sight to see the male hummingbirds soar high in the Spring, then just dive down full speed at the exact angle that best shows off the sunlight illuminating the red plumage at their throats, all to wow the females.  Or the redwing blackbirds with their epaulets in full flame and fluff trilling out their liquid song in the cattails. All this color and song and courtship is a giddy thing. 

For the birds that are at the nesting phase, I put out lint from my dryer screen or hair from my hairbrushes, draping the soft stuff in branches for them to find. I collect abandoned nests and find the practical beauty of them a marvel. The goal appears to be strength and coziness. I have seen them lines with everything from pussywillow buds to horsehair. I love that hummingbirds start gathering spiderwebs for their tiny nests because they are not only strong and soft but will expand at the babies grow! Even now, looking out the window by my desk where I am tugged outside instead of staying put and writing, I can see the birds, brighter than usual, busy and beautiful.

SPRING! ...when the world is mud luscious and puddle wonderful etc.

Yesterday in Sonoma: record breaking high temperatures (we hear this so often now that sadly that phrase doesn't have the oomph it once had)> 78 degrees in mid-March! And it seems the great parade of bulbs and wildflowers has picked up tempo. On the trail today: Indian Warrior Fern Flower, jumbo forget-me-nots, Buttercups, Scotch Broom, Fawn Lilies, ancient gnarled plum trees in an abandoned orchard, stumps covered with lichen, branches lacy with white/pink blossoms. Saw my first Swallowtail butterfly of the season, and the air was humming with newly-hatched gnats. So early to see a garter snake and an alligator lizard sunning, plus the insidious, dreaded, rampant, greasy, deadly poison oak making all hikes in the woods a type of obstacle course.

The beasts and I hiked up to Fern Lake, where we encountered three lads in shorts bearing fishing rods. SUCH memories came rushing at me of my own years by Lake Lotawanna, in Missouri, up at dawn and donning my worm-and-fish-guts-stained orange bikini that I lived in from dawn til disk, all summer long.
I asked the lads "What do you catch here?" "Bass mostly," says they. And at that point I could have talked shop, asked: "Are you using spinners? Rubber worms? Live crickets?" But I just said: "Bass, yum!" and moved on, but not before taking a sidelong inventory of their tackle boxes.
Pleased to report that bait has not changed much over the decades, still decorative floaters and worms and feathered/hooked items, not at all reminiscent of the actual living creature.

The dogs almost pulled the leash out of my hands when a female wild turkey crossed our path, with the wattled, impressive Tom hot on her heels. The duck were flapping their wings on the lake's surface, the birds were trilling: everyone was trying to impress. Ah, courtship! We humans could learn something about effort from the feathered ones.

All I want to do these days is plant things. Something so satisfying about filling the little six-packs with soil, marking each compartment with a stick bearing the name of some special heirloom tomato, "Ace," "Princepe Borghese," "Black Cherokee," "Mr. Stripy,""Celebrity,"  and tamping down your tomato seeds, imagining a bountiful summer harvest. There is nothing like reaching your arm into a tomato vine you have started from seed, the little hairs on the vine rubbing your bare arm and leaving that acidic, green scent, plucking off a still warm from the sun tomato and eating it like an apple.

It isn't officially Spring for another week, but the lilacs have just started to flower and my pea vines have flat mini-pods emerging from the white flowers. Rebirth indeed.....

It's mustard time in the Valley....

The weather had been so glorious the past week, all the spring mustard blinding yellow in between the rows of dark, gnarled vines. She thought fondly of the old Herb Caen columns in the Chronicle, one in particular where he wrote, “I imagine heaven to be a lot like Sonoma in the spring.” Phoebe always gave a silent thanks to all the Italians and other dreamers who had settled in the region, for they made sure, hundreds of years ago, when they first started planting the old vines, to sow mustard alongside their grapes for the nitrogen the plants contained. Today, those miles of dazzling yellow flowers all over both valleys were the first harbinger of spring in Sonoma and Napa. 

~Phoebe & The Ghost of Chagall

Writer versus Promo Machine

Well, it's February. A wonderful month. Birthday month, and so green and Spring-y in Northern Cal. The wild radish and quince and narcissus are blooming and soon, the wild mustard will fill in the rows between the vines here in Wine Country. Yet here I sit,  a writer in a quandary. So much of writing these days asks that the writer constantly toot his or her own horn. (Hence this blog) Almost the second I heard that a life-long dream was about to take place and that my novel Phoebe & The Ghost of Chagall was going to be published,  I also started hearing about how much of my book's marketing "in these dire times for publishing" would be on my shoulders. I sprang into action, lassoing blurbs, reviews, readings. I became a sort of promo machine, or my version of a promo machine, which covered all the angles but maybe had some batteries that needed replacing. 

But you know what? I would argue that most writers are not by nature promo machines. We are often quirky soloists who wake up at 5 in the morning with some snippet of dream or morsel of dialogue that sounds so brilliant that we must scribble it down on the piece of paper towel that's handy so that it won't be forgotten. (Then at 8 o'clock that same morning, we read the nugget of excellence on the paper towel and cock our heads in puzzlement.) 

 My point is: writing is a solitary endeavor. Perhaps we write for some future audience, but in the here and now, there is only butt-in-chair-and-fingers-on-keypad. Most of the writers I know, while of course we all fantasize about being interviewed by Terri Gross, are thoughtful word nerds, more likely seen in an animated discussion about the usage of propensity versus proclivity. We are not by and large, the best ad men.  Sure, we want fame or at least rent money, or more accurately, we want people to read & enjoy our books.  And yes, after so many sedentary hours in isolation, we may get a little rowdy at those summer workshops at the end of the day, "letting off steam" after a day of writing five pages to get to one good line.  But all in all, I would argue that all the social media stuff is not second nature to most writers. And therein lies the rub. Once we have a debut novel out on the streets, the last thing we want is for it to die a quiet death. But not many writers can afford the price tags of publicists, and from what I have heard, their affect on books sales is often negligible. And thus, we are required to tap into our own inner barker. (Ever-on-the-ready, I myself carry copies of my book in my truck like the old Fuller Brush Men and foist them upon innocent strangers...) But most writers today must tweet and procure stars and pay their own ways to read at cities with good independent bookstores. Call me whacky, but this sounds to me like a full time job. 

Oh hell, I'm romanticizing the act of writing again, painting it like it's more nobel to commune with the muses and be in "the zone"and mustering the discipline day after day.  I sound like I'm saying nothing should be taking so much time and energy away from the actual writing. And yet, it's 2013 and, apparently,  it does. 

The Gift of Listening

There is something pretty wonderful, nay, essential about being read to. As a child, my mother, Australian, read to me nightly from all sorts of books I may never have encountered without her. My favorite amongst the many she offered was "Snugglepot and Cuddlepie," by May Gibbs, a surprisingly ahead of its time, beloved Aussie tale of two "gumnut babies," little cherubs that live in Eucalyptus acorns. In all this time, the book has never once gone out of print.  Perhaps incidentally, it was a very environmentally conscious tale of all the creatures in the bush and the evil Banksia men (humans?) who invade their idyllic life. "Environmentally conscious" was a term that did not exist in 1918 when the book was first published, but how rapt I was imagining a world where there were seahorse races, art made on Eucalyptus leaves,  and small creatures with their own magic in Nature.
When I read from my own novel last night at Mrs. Dalloways bookstore in Berkeley, in order to be relaxed and banter more, I reminded myself: EVERYBODY likes to be read to. What a treat to sit back, open your ears and have someone read you a story. Do we ever outgrow this? When I lived in New Mexico, I had a long commute between Santa Fe and Albuquerque to work at my antique booth, and I started checking out books on c.d. from the library. If the reader was a good one, the words would come alive and the hour's drive passed in no time. Note to whoever read the Dickens classics: thank-you.You are a very talented reader.
Last night was a successful event: full seats, attentive audience of old and new faces, and some books sold. That old adage we writers hear that: "You can't tell if something is working unless you read it aloud" is never more striking than when you're at a podium reading your own words!  Thanks to all who came for opening their ears to my words.