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Author Archives: Kate Stover
Ten Years of Writing about Memoir Has Taught Me This
Memoir is the most entrepreneurial form of writing. It attracts inventors who are willing to take risks and use nontraditional skills and interests. Though their goal might be as simple as recording history, or telling stories, or finding meaning, their … Continue reading
Posted in memoir
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“We get the Dialectic fairly well.”
Why would a poem written in 1940 be included in The Best American Poetry 2023? W. H. Auden’s brilliant poem about contradictions wasn’t published during his lifetime because he questioned its value. Auden was a great poet who doubted his … Continue reading
“I’ve spent my whole life studying her . . . because I always want to do whatever I can in any given moment to make or keep Mom happy.”
What happens when a stand-up comedy routine becomes a memoir? In this case, it becomes a best-seller. This book started as a one-woman show about growing up trying to please a mother who was her best friend and controller of … Continue reading
Posted in memoir
Tagged comedic timing, Dark humor, I'm Glad My Mom Died, Jeannette McCurdy, trauma
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“Memories are then replaced by different joys and sorrows, and unbelievably . . . you are positive that this is all you’ve ever wanted in the world.”
This novel makes us ask: which versions of our memories are to be believed? Is it really true that the protagonist has all that she’s ever wanted? Is she hiding something? From whom? I disagree with the reviewer who described … Continue reading
“…I see in the flashlight beam, a world of dust . . . massing, revolving back, splitting into twos and threes and lonely ones—”
The poet Rasma Haidri continues, “and I know I orchestrated this fugue of spheres.” I love the way hope infuses this poem – and many of the poems – in this collection. We see stories about people who are looking … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged a favorite author, Blue like Apples, poems infused with hope, Rasma Haidri, writing in Norway
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“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
Because we all make questionable decisions from time to time, it’s only natural to wonder if we are our own worst enemy, or if we are the hero in our life, or something in between. Many memoirs begin with this … Continue reading
Posted in fiction
Tagged a favorite novelist, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, fictionalized autobiography, hero
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“I live on the boundary of the outside and the inside.”
I’ve always believed that the best way to take the pulse of a bookstore is to check out the display on the front table. Instead of best-sellers, this bookstore featured Czech poets – a treat for someone like me who … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged Czech Poets, Czechia literary traditions, distrust of boundaries, Zbyněk Hejda
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“I had lost my self-confidence where you were concerned, had traded it for a boundless sense of guilt
I’ve been thinking about Kafka’s story about turning into an insect this week, and why he would write a story about a young man who shamed his family by turning into a useless cockroach. A Czech bookstore had a book-length … Continue reading
Posted in non-fiction
Tagged Franz Kafka, Letter to Father, traumatic childhood, you-are-there reading
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“I expect you to beat the odds. That’s my gift to you, in fact, that gift of expectations.”
At the end of this novel, Peter Sullivan tells the hard-scrabble students in his English class that he believes in them and expects them to succeed, even if no one else has ever had faith in them before. What a … Continue reading
Posted in fiction
Tagged Affirming, Contemporary Charles Dickens, humanity and warmth, Richard Russo, Somebody's Fool
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“I have learned,” said the Philosopher, “that the head does not hear anything until the heart has listened, and that what the heart knows to-day, the head will understand to-morrow.”
Interesting ideas sparkle throughout this novel. Here are two examples: “Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will” and “…for life may not be consecutive, but explosive and variable, else it is a shackled and timorous slave.” It was … Continue reading
“You make the path boldly and follow it fearfully.”
The last word of this sentence stunned me. The Annie Dillard I know is one of the boldest writers. Could she experience fear when writing? She does. She says, “In your humility, you lay down the words carefully, watching all … Continue reading
Posted in non-fiction
Tagged a favorite author, Annie Dillard, Pulitzer Prize winner, The Writing Life
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“Fiction . . . is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider’s web . . .”
Virginia Woolf continues, “attached ever so lightly, perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves.” It’s only when the web is … Continue reading