Wine and Books Bookclub, March 5th

Chapter Ten Readers, March 22

Association of University Women, Annual Authors Luncheon, April 18

On the surface the novel tells the story of a young black painter trying to find his way back to his art who meets and hooks up with a white ex-seminarian who is struggling with a different loss of faith. The story takes place over the course of a summer. Wyeth (this choice of name, recalling Andrew Wyeth, is no accident) lives alone but shares a studio space with several others. Wyeth has jobs both at a gallery and for an art restorer, so the story centers on the art world and is set primarily in Manhattan. The characters are diverse in terms of gender, race, and sexual identity; Wyeth is gay and is also wrestling with being his authentic self with others as well as with the notion of “black subjectivity.”

None of that tells you about the quality of the book. It moves briskly but with little if any plot. There are no conventional stakes, although there are a few questions that propel the action: whether Wyeth will or won’t end up in a committed relationship and, near the end of the book, whether he will/won’t accept an offer to have a piece in a group show of artists whose work he despises. Mostly the book is full of shimmering details – I can’t think of a book that gave me the feel of being in Manhattan the way this one does. It’s also steeped in philosophical questions and tart dialogue, and the way he describes the minutia of art restoration and of the act of painting is breathtaking.

And speaking of details, as a writer, I absolutely loved a scene where Wyeth meets a friend at Kinokuniya, a wonderful Japanese bookstore I have frequented (thank you, Jane). There are pages of description, of the ledger-style notebooks Wyeth’s friend favors, a particular chalk that is “buttery smooth and resistant to breaking,” the qualities of certain papers, and whole paragraphs devoted to a discussion of my favorite pencils, Blackwing. I’m sure all writers, as well as artists, are fetishistic about pens, paper, and notebooks and will recognize themselves in this scene.

There’s something very Jamesian in Taylor’s writing, especially the character interiority and a focus on social interactions and the power dynamics in closed social circles. I should also mention that there is a lot of very graphic, honest, and direct gay sex. I found something of Proust in Taylor as well, in the way he stretches time and is always thinking thinking thinking.

Brandon Taylor deserves a wide audience. I’m betting he’s going to get one.

A Walk in the Park is a work of nonfiction should join the ranks of the best stories of outside adventure, and so much much more. The overarching story is of two friends who, over the course of several trips and with a lot of help, succeed at a risky end-to-end traverse the Grand Canyon, one of the toughest hikes in the world. The book tells of the duo’s hubris and folly in attempting this initially without proper preparation and how, after mishaps and guidance, they come to complete the project.

There are many reasons to read this book: for one, as a story of adventure and excitement, which will truly keep you on the edge of your seat and turning pages; but even more for the fascinating lore: history, geology, and the stories of the original peoples and tribes who have inhabited the Park from the earliest times to the present. There is also a very touching story about Fedarko and his father that runs throughout. And for those of us who will never hike the Canyon, this book is the closest you will get.

Even more compelling is the sheer gorgeousness of the writing:“The light spilling down the limestone turned the face of each cliff into forked rivers of fire. There were pink pools and riffles, eddies where the rose-tinted currents coiled and spun, and whirlpools the color or a freshly opened cantaloupe. This was light made liquid, as if someone had melted down the stained-glass windows of every cathedral in France and poured the emulsion over the stone.”

Fedarko concludes the book with a plea against commercialization of the Park. “The longer we spent and the farther we ventured, the more deeply we understood that in the months and years to come, it might no longer be possible to complete a walk such as this without colliding against changes so profound that the land would never again be the same.…Haunted—that’s how we walked. Haunted by what we saw and heard, and by the knowledge that the future that was bearing down on the canyon was…already transforming the place.”

Although there’s an argument to be made that helicopters and trams can bring the experience of the Canyon to people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to access it, A Walk in the Park speaks most eloquently for the value of leaving some magnificent and rare places completely alone.

Dambo, who has installations in five continents and 20 countries, uses his talent to promote environmental awareness. He made his first troll on the Puerto Rican island of Culebra in 2014. He views his giant whimsical creatures as “unspoken warriors of the plants and animals that can’t speak.”

There are five trolls so far in Rhode Island, the beginning of a statewide public art trail, set in locations that take a little exploring to discover. This makes them not only an environmental statement but also simply fun, luring people into nature with their magical presence. Several more trolls are currently in the works, to bring the total to seven.

Mrs. Skipper, in East Providence, is sited at the Kettle Point Pier. This area was at one time a sandstone quarry for railroad gravel, while the pier and surrounds were used by giant oil companies through the 1980s. The area was then cleaned up as part of the Kettle Point revitalization project and the development of the East Bay bike path, which runs from Providence to Bristol. Mrs. Skipper has panoramic views of Providence River, the Narragansett Bay, and the Providence skyline.

Luckily for me, Rhode Island is a small state, since I plan to visit all the trolls on the trail. Eventually.

McConaghy sets up the novel as a thriller, and the story is an intriguing one: For years, widower Dominic Salt has been the island’s caretaker, raising his three children in this natural paradise. But due to climate change, sea level rise is happening so fast the island will soon disappear. A boat is going to be picking the family up in seven weeks, the timeline of the novel, and the family is packing up what they can of the precious seeds that have been kept in a vault in case the world’s food supply needs to be regrown after environmental catastrophe. All the researchers have left, and the family is alone on the island.

Into this tense situation a woman, Rowan, washes up on shore, just when Dom discovers the island’s communications equipment has been sabotaged, cutting them off entirely from the outside world. McConaghy slides between all five characters’ points of view, alluding to but not explaining various mysteries that pile up and keep the suspense high. I found some of the plot aspects strained plausibility, but what’s undeniable, and makes the book a must read, is how McConaghy’s plunges you into this evocative setting and her truly endearing characters, most especially the youngest boy, Orly.

McConaghy writes as hauntingly of their emotional and inner lives as she does the captivating penguins, birds, and seals they live among. Thematically the book is equally rich, weighing questions like, if the world is coming to an end, do you embrace love What do you save, the practical or the beautiful Besides an elegy for nature, Wild Dark Shore is about families, and parenting, and choosing hope despite grief and loss. This is a gorgeous, heart-pumping, heart-wrenching and mesmerizing read.

This is a novel that is as leisurely as it’s possible to get. As if to emphasize how slowly time moves in a “forgotten elsewhere,” Wlliams never rushes his plot or his prose. Faha comes alive in his hands with lovingly detailed descriptions of both the place and the social and cultural intricacies: “In the fields the cattle, made slow-witted by the rain, lifted their rapt and empty faces, heavy loops of spittle hanging, as though they ate watery light.”

What I found most extraordinary, though, is how he plumbs the depths of single moments, somehow conveying the quality of existence and, for lack of a better word, transcendence, in a way few writers can (Proust being one). Here’s an example of what I mean, plucked out of several pages of a description of a humble man singing a song in a pub: “He sang. After the first few lines I couldn’t look at him. Nobody could look at him. It felt like an intimacy you weren’t entitled to, but knew it privileged you and you didn’t dare move in case you broke whatever had made it happen. He sang the love song in a way that made you realise a reality that existed not outside but alongside and even inside the one you were accustomed to.”

It’s not all heightened rumination, though. Williams has a few strategies that give energy and tension to the novel. A stranger, Christy, boards with Noe’s grandparents and befriends him. Christy is ostensibly in town to work on the electrification project but is really there to right a romantic wrong, a situation that keeps us guessing until the very end. There’s also is the tender awakening of Noe’s romantic desires: He develops crushes on first one, then another, and yet a third daughter of the local doctor. This story line enhances the comic sensibility that is subtly present throughout the book, tempering its elegiac tone.

This Is Happiness is wise, witty, wonderful and just perfect for chilly autumn afternoons beside a fire.

I’ve been especially eager to visit Shelter Island’s Sylvester Manor since I began writing my current novel, which has a focus on the slave trade in the northeast. The lands of Sylvester Manor were home for millennia to indigenous Manhansett People, then owned by an Anglo Dutch sugar consortium to run a “provisioning plantation” for the Barbadian sugar trade. It was worked by enslaved Africans as well as indentured or paid Native American and European laborers. The estate’s grounds are estimated to contain the unmarked graves of up to 200 enslaved servants and laborers. Since the 1600s it’s been owned by eleven generations of Sylvester descendants, at one time a food industrialist’s summer estate. Then, in 2014, it was gifted to a nonprofit organization for a completely different purpose.

Currently the site includes a 1737 Manor House, a restored 19th-century windmill, an Afro-Indigenous Burial Ground, and a working farm. It offers educational, history & heritage, and cultural arts programs.

As I walked the grounds of the estate on a day when there were only a handful of other people, I tried to imagine the place alive with work and workers. Provisioning plantations were the means by which plantation owners ensured a steady supply of goods for their highly profitable sugar plantations in Barbados. These filled the gaps in the supply chain, providing resources that were not produced on the sugar islands.

At 236 acres, Sylvester Manor was one of the largest such provisioning plantations in the north, and it is the largest that is still intact. It’s remarkable that the young man who inherited this property in 2013, instead of keeping it for private use or selling to a developer, had a different vision for what it could be. You can read more about this very happy turn of affairs here: [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/11/garden/sylvester-manor-on-shelter-island-returns-to-its-roots.html]

It’s now a historical, educational, and archaeological treasure that in 2015 was designated a Historic District of national significance on the National Register of Historic Places.

It often has shows of nature based sculptures like the ones shown below.

May 15: BookClub gathering

April 26: Independent Book Store Day

Book Expo, Barrington Library

October 21 – 7 PM – 8:30 PM Book Inc. Writers’ Institute Workshop: “Dynamic Setting” (via zoom) More info here

October 1 – 6 PM
Meet the Author. In conversation with Biddle Duke. 
Ashwagh Hall, East Hampton, free and open to the public.
More info here

June 13 | Bristol book club

May 26 | Keene Valley book talk (with writers Caperton Tissot and Lorraine Duvall)

May 11 | Linden Place

I was honored to be an artist in residence at this spectacular mansion/museum, which culminated in a fun outdoor reading on the grounds.

April 21 | Montauk library book club

April 20 | Atlantic Bluffs Club book club (Montauk)

March 9-12 | Tucson Festival of Books and Masters Workshop

My table at the festival, and writer friends from the Masters workshop

The elephants were crafted by The Coexistence Collective, a team of more than 200 indigenous Indian artisans, to serve both as a jaw-dropping display and as a call to action. Organized by Elephant Family USA, a nonprofit committed to the protection of Asian wildlife, they aim to illustrate the symbiotic relationship between humans and wildlife and to spotlight the balance between both. 

The statues, shaped from the invasive weed Lantana camara, were placed in large groups in several of Newport’s green spaces. Viewing one cohort of the elephants at the magnificent Breaker’s mansion on the Cliff Walk, I couldn’t help feel the power of art to awaken our consciousness to the need for a more sustainable future.

My photos can’t capture the grandeur, or the awe they inspired. Still, here are a few to inspire.