Shaved Meats, Piled High: December 2017
Memory (Project) Lane
Back in the olden days (2004), I started a blog at Journalscape that I called the Memory Project. The idea was to write quickly and almost heedlessly about a single memory, then invite others to do the same. I also used it to write daily missives from book tours, share good news. At some point, I lost the password, and now the site is no longer open for new entries, although my entire archive is still there.
My favorite part of TMP was something I called the one-word resolution, which I first did in 2007. I'd pick a word, a single word, under which all my resolutions could shelter. Examples include "stretch," "be," and "love." Over the years, I have become comfortable with the idea that whatever I resolve I will not actually do. I attend yoga classes oh so fitfully and I like the concept of life as a "practice." Like one's novels -- well, like my novels, I guess I won't speak for every writer -- perfection is impossible.
So it's an odd thing, making a resolution that I know I won't follow through on. Yet, paradoxically, that's the word this year:
Now the sharper folks here (everyone) might be saying: "Excuse me, Laura, but isn't that a very lame dictionary definition?" Or: "Aren't you kind of cheating, using a hyphenated word?" To which I can say only: "Yes." But I couldn't find a better word, one that stressed the value of pursuing a goal, while acknowledging that one might fail at it. Follow through, to me, connotes my lofty ideals and my quite frequent inability to do anything about them. To study a language. To read more. To remember to do small, gracious things, such as write thank-you notes. To answer my email in a timely fashion.
Whatever one's politics, I think 2017 has been a trying year. Can we all agree on that? December also brings with it the "anniversary" of my father's death. But that gives me a chance to revive another TMP tradition, linking to my father's column about the top news stories of 1984.
Some other old favorites from TMP:
This multi-take article about Morey Amsterdam, which I think should have won the Pulitzer Prize.
Tess Monaghan's BMI, an ode to big girls in fiction.
The 2015 one-word resolution challenge, which turned out to be the last-ever TMP entry.
READ/READING: Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld; The Female Persuasion, Meg Wolitzer; Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado; Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Caroline Fraser.
REREADING: Junior Miss, by Sally Benson. Once upon a time, the New Yorker was a magazine that published short light fiction like these stories, about an utterly privileged girl growing up on the Upper East Side. The stories are some of the best things ever written about the inner life of a young girl, with her schemes and dreams. And, fittingly, one wonderful story is about too much follow-through on a New Year's resolution.
ME, ME, ME: Folks, I finally did it, racked up four starred reviews among the big pre-publication magazines. Booklist said of SUNBURN: "Ingeniously constructed and extremely suspenseful . . . showcases a writer at the height of her powers." Publishers Weekly then named it one of the top 10 spring mysteries of 2018 (spring is different on the publishing calendar.) And in the UK, the Bookseller singled it out as a crime novel to watch in 2018, calling it "a joy to read."
Laura Lippman
December 2017