Movie poster of "Get Low"

If I were teaching a writing class right now, I would require all my students to go see the new movie, Get Low with Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Bill Murray and Lucas Black. Sure that’s an all-star cast, but that’s not the reason for my insistence.

For those who study narrative drive, this movie is masterful in its storytelling.

My writing guru, Sol Stein explains in his book, Stein on Writing, that readers (viewers) are like dogs on a trail. They have picked up a scent; it is the writer’s job to keep “the dogs” sniffing by dropping crumbs of information in the unfolding mystery.

Driving the Depression-era fable of Get Low is the question of why Duvall, who is known by the locals as eccentric and mean, became a hermit living alone in his isolated cabin in the Tennessee woods for forty years. Throughout the movie, we get glimpses of the early, defining experience that made him, but we have to wait for the last ten minutes of the film to learn the full story. (The director’s one misstep is the ending; he should have cut the last two minutes, which did not add power to the story.)

“Writers are troublemakers,” Stein writes. “A pyschotherapist tries to relieve stress, strain, and pressure. Writers are not psychotherapists. Their job is to give readers stress, strain and pressure. The fact is that readers who hate those things in life love them in fiction.”

And that is the ‘Get Low’ on storytelling.

Here is the review of Is it Night or Day? by the Voices of Youth Advocates (VOYA), the library magazine servicing those who serve young adults:

In 1938 Edith Westerfeld is twelve years old when her family puts her on a ship in Bremen,Germany that carries her to the Deutchland, an oceanliner that transports her to New York City. From there, all alone, she is put on a train to Chicago, Illinois where she lives with her father’s brother, his wife, and their teenage daughter. Edith is treated more like a servant than part of their family, but she strives to learn English, do all of the work demanded by her aunt, do well in school, and save money to send her parents in the hope that they will be able to join her. From having to start with first grade at school, to the anti-Semitic attitudes that abound even in America, Edith struggles in this new country but finds solace in walks to the shores of Lake Michigan, in baseball’s Hank Greenberg, and in the public library where she escapes into books. Shattered by a letter informing her of the deaths of her parents, she realizes she must carry on with life despite her losses. Author Chapman tells readers in an introductory note that this historical fiction work is based on an American rescue operation named “the One Thousand Children,” which her own mother was a part of, in order to give voice to another group of Holocaust victims. Edith’s story is compelling and interesting, shedding light on a young immigrant’s fears, confusion, and loss. This is a superb addition to any Holocaust or American History collection. Students will be moved by Edith’s story.

To my delight, today’s word-of-the-day from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is “veridical.”

veridical\vuh-RID-ih-kul\

What pleased me most is the sentence the dictionary used to showcase the word:

“All psychotherapies are based on the fact that memory is not veridical, that unconscious desires and fantasies exert their force on us all…” (Henry Kaminer, Weekly Standard, July 31, 2000)

Same goes for memoir writing, which is entirely dependent upon memory and perception — two unreliable powers. A writer’s voice and memory is filtered by emotion. We insert facts and omit others, corrupting the form. Memoir writing is how we make ourselves up — shaping raw experience, identifying cause and effect in events, connecting the dots to conquer experience.

Not only do individuals create their own stories: whole communities, whole countries revise and rewrite their histories so that citizens can live with the country’s identity and historical legacy. “History is what people write down afterward,” one author said recently, “what really happened is something else.”

If perception and memory are so faulty, why write memoir? Because the telling can illuminate something in one’s own truths, it can transform experience into meaning — because how we remember determines who we are. What’s remembered becomes reality and identity.

We do not simply have an experience, William Maxwell wrote in So Long, See You Tomorrow, we are entrusted with it. “We must do something – make something with it. A story, we sense, is the only possible habitation for the burden of our witnessing.”

Memoir comforts us by bearing witness and creating meaning…even though memory is not veridical.

Crumstadt, Germany

My mother’s cousin, Elisa Levi, recently sent this email after reading, Is It Night or Day?. When Elisa was a child, she and her family fled Crumstadt, Germany for Uruguay. My mother and Elisa have corresponded and visited each other since 1938, the year my mother left Germany.

Dear Edith:

I finished reading Fern’s book. It made me relive all the sorrows and fears I experienced in Germany in school and on the streets of Crumstadt the year before my departure. I also remember the first months in Montevideo when my mother read us the letters from your mother, which talked about your trip to the US and your relationship with Aunt Mildred. Even though I was unable to say it then, I felt for you and I suffered with you.

I think the book is profound and touching. I sense there is a deep feeling between you and Fern. I can imagine it. You certainly must have suffered a lot again.

Love,

Elisa

My new web site showcasing my school presentations has gone live at AIVS (Authors and Illustrators who Visit Schools). Please visit: http://www.authorsillustrators.com/schumer_chapman/schumer_chapman.htm

As American lawyer, orator, and memoirist Rufus Choate once said, “A book is the only immortality.” Books are my way of announcing, “I was here.”

SLOW LOVE by Dominique Browning

I suspect I came to this dream/thought because yesterday I was reading Dominique Browning’s new memoir, Slow Love, an account of how she rediscovered herself after losing her high-powered job as a New York magazine editor. In it she writes: “I begin keeping notes about how I am feeling, what I am doing. Writing has always been my way to absorb things; I often write out my troubles.”

Me, too. And through that process, I define who I am.

Right now, I am trying to decide where to place my foot next.

Here is the link to the complete article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/books/review/Paul-t.html?_r=1&ref=books

French President Jacques Chirac

Fifteen years ago, in July, 1995, French President Jacques Chirac gave a speech finally acknowledging the French role in the July 16, 1942 “Velodrome d’Hiver roundup.” Here are his words:

July 16 and 17, 1942, Paris, France

“These black hours will stain our history forever and are an injury to our past and our traditions. Yes, the criminal madness of the occupant was supported by the French, by the French state. Fifty-three years ago, on 16 July 1942, 450 policemen and gendarmes, French, under the authority of their leaders, obeyed the demands of the Nazis. That day, in the capital and the Paris region, nearly 10,000 Jewish men, women, and children were arrested at home, in the early hours of the morning, and assembled at police stations…France, home of the Enlightenment and the Rights of Man, land of welcome and asylum, France committed that day the irreparable. Breaking its word, it delivered those it protected to their executioners.”

Profile of FSC (second from left) from Make It Better/North Shore Magazine

It’s impossible for us to know who we truly are without knowing something of our mothers.

That’s why Fern Schumer Chapman, a former reporter for the Chicago Tribune and Forbes, has spent years unraveling the enigma that is her mother, who was orphaned by the Holocaust.

Fern’s first book, “Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust: A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past,” became a cult favorite with North Shore book clubs and was a finalist in the National Jewish Book Awards in 2000. The book tells the story of her mother-daughter trip to Germany to visit the town where her mother, Edith, lived until she was 12. In 1938, Edith’s parents sent her to the U.S. to live with relatives in Chicago. Four years later, Edith learned that her parents had died in a concentration camp.

“Much of my adult life has been this slow discovery of my mother’s life,” Fern says. “Trauma is transmitted through families. I was very defined by her experience. Writing was my attempt to understand what shaped her—what shaped me.”

After the publication of “Motherland,” Chapman learned that her mother came over with a small group of children as part of an American rescue effort now known as The One Thousand Children Project. Researching the 1,000 children and talking to her mom prompted Chapman to write a book of historical fiction for young adults, “Is It Night or Day?” She assumes her mother’s voice to tell Edith’s story of immigration and survival. The book, which was published this spring, was recognized as one of Booklist’s Top 10 Historical Fiction Books for Youth for 2010.

And, Fern’s writing brought her closer to her mom. “I am my mother’s voice,” she says. As part of their journey, Fern has talked openly with her mom about the difficulties in their relationship as a result of the trauma. Fern’s mother grew as a result, and Fern forgave her for some of her behavior.

Today, Fern regularly speaks about her mother’s Holocaust experience in schools, museums and for groups. She says of her mom, who attends all of her speaking engagements, “She hears me, she supports me, and she loves me more for speaking the truth.”