Carolina Writers at Home edited by Meg Reid

I have read and enjoyed many books offering first hand accounts of the creative process of writers, the jumbled desks of writers, and the how-to-do-it tips of writers.

Add to this now Carolina Writers at Home, a terrific book of essays by Southern writers. Edited by Meg Reid, it is a veritable grab bag of delights. There are authors featured from both North and South Carolina and the text is enhanced with evocative, sepia-toned photos by Rob McDonald. As I have deep connections to North Carolina — my father was born and raised in Greensboro — I am especially fond of this book.

There are twenty-five essays here about homes from the Coast to the Mountains to the Piedmont. I took my time and read one each morning over several weeks. I savored them and found it was a happy way to begin my day. 

The authors were given free rein and could write about any aspect of home that was important to them: space, possessions, time to write, wildlife, views, pets, gardens. It didn't matter just as long as it was what interested them.

Jill McCorkle's bookshelf - I couldn't resist taking a photo to show you

Some of the writers I was familiar with: Clyde Edgerton, Nikky Finney, Jill McCorkle. Some were new to me and I was happy to meet them. 

George Singleton writes about moving from the home he had lived in for thirty-three years. 

Kathryn Stripling Byer mourns the loss of a magnificent oak tree that once graced her yard. The only memento left now is its stump.

Daniel Wallace shares on his 'ark of things' from a small wooden cricket catcher to his collection of glass eyes. (Strangest collection ever? How does one start amassing those odd objects?) 

Oh, these are grand musings by wonderful writers about a place dear to their heart. There is not a bad one in the bunch. I was lucky enough to have been given the hardback edition (best choice) but the book also is available in paperback.

When the outside world is topsy-turvy, it is good to be reminded how important it is to have a comfortable, safe place to come home to.

Highly recommended!

The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg

The personal essays in The Little Virtues are very serious. But then I guess that is to be expected as the author is a woman who lived in Italy during the Second World War.  Her husband was arrested by the Germans and died in prison.

Be that as it may, and this is what I love about the personal essay form, Natalia Ginzburg assures the reader that she has an affinity for wearing worn out shoes and turns the piece into a musing on raising children. Or she writes that she started writing silly poems and moved on to even sillier short stories. Then she began spinning tales featuring more authentic characters and knew for certain that writing was her vocation. 

Her essay 'The Little Virtues' is a reflection on what she thinks children should be taught: 

In 'He and I' she writes a 12-page comparison between her likes and dislikes and the preferences of her second husband. He loves music, she doesn't understand it at all. He is always hot, she always feels cold. He loves traveling, she wants to stay at home. 

By the time I finished reading this entry, I wondered why on earth she stayed with this man. I suspect she wondered the same thing. 

The book has a copyright and translation date of 1985, although it was originally published in 1962 in Italy. Any biographical details included here I gleaned from the book's dust jacket.

The essays are thoughtful and wander about but I was hoping for a little humor. There is none. There is a darkness that pervades — not so much in specific details about her war experiences — but just knowing the time in which these were written gives the essays a certain heaviness. Perhaps it is the translation from the original Italian. I don't know, but this wasn't a book I thought, "Oh, I have to own this one so I can reread it often."

Many times while reading the essays in this slim volume I shook my head at the realization that the world situation she lived through and the current political climate have much in common. Alas, some things never change.

The Writer Who Stayed by William Zinsser

Three things do I require from a personal essay: interesting information about something or someone; a spot of personal information about the writer of said essay; and, please, a bit of humor.

William Zinsser manages to include all three in his online essays written for The American Scholar and collected in his book The Writer Who Stayed.

Interesting information: Check

I learned about the many contributions of songwriters of the Great American Songbook: Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Irving Berlin and the Gershwin brothers, George and Ira, and how many of their song lyrics added phrases and idioms to America's language. They were the poets of America from 1926-1966. 

I found out a bit about the life of Patrick Leigh Fermor, traveler and author, who was a great friend of Deborah, the Duchess of Devonshire (Counting My Chickens). In 1933, he traveled on foot from Holland to Constantinople and it took him two years to do it. He stopped and talked to everyone from Romanian shepherds to royalty and wrote two books about his odyssey - A Time of Gifts (1977) and Between the Woods and the Water (1986). Leigh Fermor (who shows up in Lawrence Durrell's Cyprus saga Bitter Lemons) died in June 2011 at the age of 96.

Personal tidbits about the author: Check

I learned the Mr. Zinsser served in Africa and Italy during World War II; that he at one time was movie critic for the now defunct Herald Tribune; that he was bitten by the travel bug and visited Tahiti, Samoa, Burma and other places in the South Seas; that he created and taught a course in nonfiction writing at Yale. The wisdom of that course is contained in his book On Writing Well. Mr. Zinsser is not, if not quite a total Luddite, at least leans in that direction. He doesn't use email and is a great believer in the idea that a little boredom never hurt anyone. In fact boredom clears the brain of the "sludge of information" that we are so accustomed to having at our fingertips all the time.

A bit of humor: Check

After reading that Central Park (which he used to visit when sheep grazed there) in Manhattan had a mobile app, he fears that we will never actually 'experience' anything in real time...a day when every organization has an app and nobody goes anywhere. A time when one can experience, in the palm of the hand, a day at the beach without the sunscreen and sand!

"I already have an app for major league baseball," Zinsser writes. "It's called a television set."

I wish Mr. Zinsser had an app. Oh wait! He does. His books: On Writing Well, American Places, Spring Training, Writing About Your Life, and now, The Writer Who Stayed. All in the palm of my hand.