Every day, I love opening my mailbox to see letters from my young readers nestled inside. Their notes come in from all over the country and world - and in case their authors are wondering, I do read all of them and try to respond to each one in a timely manner. Nothing beats a handwritten note; email will never replace the art of handwriting. Personality shines through differently on paper than it does on a computer screen. So, keep those letters coming.
Many of my readers are aspiring writers, and they usually ask for advice on going pro. Sometimes they include samples of their work: short stories, poems, and so on; one eleven-year-old sent me a bound, illustrated manuscript over 100 pages long! It was very impressive.
A few weeks ago, a ten-year-old named Annabella Nootebos of British Columbia sent me a letter and included a graphical short story in the envelope. It delighted me so much that I asked her permission to reprint it here. “Diary of a Sapling” tells the tale of a young tree’s early experiences in the world. Click on this link to see the full story:
It is a very bold and sophisticated work for such a young writer: told in the first person with humor, quirkiness, and confidence; such a definitive voice! I also loved how the design was mocked up to resemble a book. There’s also quite a bit of gallows humor there; Miss Nootebos is my kind of girl.
I hope you enjoy her story. In the meantime, I will offer to other young aspiring authors the advice I gave to Miss Nootebos: a writer’s job is to notice things about the world that no one else sees, and then describe those things beautifully and effectively. Observing the details is your job.
And above all: practice, practice, practice—and then practice some more.
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Readers of my first novel for children, Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters, will be sad to learn that one of the book’s real-life characters is no longer with us: the Biography Bookshop has packed up and moved elsewhere.
What’s rumored to be taking its place: yet another Marc Jacobs store, the fifth one on Bleecker Street alone and the seventh in the immediate area. If this rumor is true, it would mark yet another instance of tourist-geared commerce supplanting the neighborhood’s history and sense of community; this once-treasured part of Greenwich Village is being transformed into a mall-style street of global brands. Gone are the days of lovely local stationery shops and antique stores; in their stead, we have a Juicy Couture, three Ralph Lauren shops, and a Sunglass Hut.
Cornelia‘s readers will recall that eleven-year-old Cornelia visited the Biography Bookshop—which sat proudly on the corner of West 11th Street and Bleecker, across the street from the famous Magnolia Bakery— every day after school:
”[It was her] favorite destination. She always marched past the tilting stacks of books written for girls her age and headed straight for the dictionary section. There she inspected the books for new arrivals. After all, Cornelia had an impressive dictionary collection of her own, and she needed to stay up to date.”
Later in the book, the fictional owner of the Biography Bookshop gives Cornelia a book about famous concert pianists, which includes passages about both of her musician parents; it is then that Cornelia - and the reader - learns more about her long-estranged father, whose absence has colored her entire life.
When Scholastic Bookfairs made a little documentary about Cornelia and her real-life world in the West Village (a film seen by millions of children), the producers visited the Biography Bookshop and lovingly captured the old-fashioned wooden shelves and tilting books stacks. The store’s real-life owners—who always kept a behind-the-counter jar of treats for visiting dogs—told me that children and bookclubs from all over the country would visit the bookshop to see where Cornelia had spent so much time.
While I’m consoled that the Biography Bookshop was able to find a new, smaller home in a nearby neighborhood under the new name bookbook, I’m dismayed that it will no longer be a part of the West Village’s landscape or my daily life anymore. This upset has given me a new relationship with Cornelia: when I wrote the book in 2005, it was, in part, a love letter to a charming, individualistic part of New York City; now that world is disappearing.
These days, re-reading Cornelia has become a way for me to revisit what has been lost, and what continues to vanish every day.
Mister Kinyatta—another real-life character who turns up in Cornelia —in the doorway of the shuttered Biography Bookshop.
Well, we hardly could have expected him to live forever, but I was still heartbroken to learn yesterday that reclusive author J. D. Salinger had died. I honestly believe myself to be one of his most dedicated disciples; while most of his readers outgrew him upon graduating from high school, I’ve held a candle for his characters well into my thirties.
Many of today’s obituaries have remarked on how adolescents related to Holden Caufield – the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye — as the angry outsider; my own empathy with Holden (and Salinger’s other darlings, the Glass children) had a somewhat gentler tenor. I found his alienation exquisite and comforting; it made my own teenage feelings of separateness feel hallowed and intelligent – and promising. Although Holden probably grew up to be a hot mess, I felt that the fact that I, as a sixteen-year-old, shared his suspicions and black humor and irreverence would inevitably position me as the sort of adult artist I someday hoped to become.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve also come to realize that the 1950s and 60s New York City portrayed by Salinger - filled with smoky jazz clubs, jumbled classic-eight apartments, Vaudeville veterans, and “Little Shirley Beans” records – epitomizes glamour to me. There is something about this world’s intersection of academia, precociousness, and powder-room artifice that remains damn appealing to me – as well as how this realm’s inhabitants made a fetish out of urban childhood. I am drawn to present-day places and works of art that still radiate a Salinger-world feeling: the petting zoo in Central Park; the rickety dioramas of the Museum of Natural History; the tearooms and bar at the Carlyle hotel; Wes Anderson’s film The Royal Tenenbaums.
Iconic fashion editor Diana Vreeland once said that one’s time is when one is very young. Salinger’s death has made me realize that—while I indulge in all sorts of modern diversions and, statistically speaking, have a great deal of life ahead of me—I really am a twentieth-century creature. Most of my sensibilities derive from the period he documented. It’s no mistake that many of the other writers who’ve most influenced my writing - including Louise Fitzhugh, Truman Capote, and Kay Thompson—also immortalized Salinger-era New York in their books.
One tries to be forward-looking, as the arrival of the future is one of life’s few inevitabilities. That said, this weekend will most likely find me re-reading Franny and Zooey; I can’t wait to ditch the Internet, my iPod, all of the prattle surrounding the newly-launched iPad (which will supposedly remake the very fabric of our society) – and breathe in the dust of the Glass family’s living room again.
After all, it’s my spiritual home.
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The season of gratitude officially commenced today. While I am, of course, grateful for many big things (shelter, food, the love of a good man), I am also considering with great appreciation certain smaller things that make life lovely, such as:
1. The fact that my dog is a snuggler. I grew up with labradors, who were delightful fools, but rather uncooperative when it came to snuggling. My French bulldog, on the other hand, nestles into my stomach like a furnace-y little cannonball on cold wintery nights.
2. The Palm Beach Post, which is home to some of the most absurd, delightful stories and photographs of its local citizens. My mother, who resides in said area, often sends me particularly amusing cut-outs, featuring pictures of helmut-haired grand dames with windshield-tight faces (one of whom famously fed a rough-cut crew of sailors caviar and finger sandwiches when they shipwrecked on her private beach).
3. On that note, I’m also genuinely thankful that I prefer cheap salmon caviar to ritzier varieties. Which means that I can heap it on everything: scrambled eggs, blinis, roasted eggplant. True addicts can find all sorts of imaginative ways to eat it.
4. That my husband is a reader. Every time he picks up a new book, I become immediately, pestily, nosily interested in it. Which is how I was introduced to The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, The Things They Carried, and countless other brilliant books. I recently repaid the favor by introducing him to Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, which might just be my favorite piece of literature on the planet.
5. That someone decided that dark chocolate is good for you, making consumption of vast quantities of the candy therefore acceptable.
6. The highly-detailed, uber-specific genius of film director Wes Anderson. I always love to disappear into the vivid worlds of The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited. The recently-released Fantastic Mr. Fox is a welcome addition to the roster.
7. The boat traffic on the Hudson River. Bright yellow water taxis; the wonderful, rickety white-and-blue Circle Line tour boats; the famous red fireboat that spouts arcs of water into the air. An armada of cruise ships glides along every week; each boat looks like an enormous city-block floating down the river. Always the most moving: the Navy ships that churn in during Fleet Week; their white-clad sailors stand at attention in neat lines on the decks, saluting the city. My apartment/writing perch overlooks these beautiful sights and many years from now, when this apartment and magnificent view belongs to someone else, they will still be etched in my mind’s eye.
8. Our fashion-forward First Lady. Michelle Obama has come so far since the early days of the Obama campaign, when she was snapped countless times wearing barely-modernized replicas of Jackie Kennedy’s early 1960s ensembles. Ms. Obama is now a beacon of modernity, championing lesser-known American designers in a most single-minded manner. Hopefully her colorful, belted outfits will do wonders when it comes to improving the national aesthetic, just as Mrs. Kennedy’s style inspired women in her day.
9. The sage bon mots of Marlene Dietrich, a woman of great appetite and one of my great heroines. Two divine examples: “Tenderness is greater proof of love than the most passionate of vows,” and “A man would prefer to come home to an unmade bed and a happy woman than to a neatly made bed and an angry woman.”
10. Ina Garten, aka The Barefoot Contessa. I have rarely known complete trust before I made her acquaintance, via her cookbooks. Many heavenly meals later, I would put my life (or most important meals, at the very least) in her hands. To sample her plum-cassis crumble is to experience secular ecstasy.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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This week, I interviewed the delightful Audrey Tautou, who stars as the title character of the newly-released biopic Coco Before Chanel. Tautou is famously tiny, but I swear that her gaze is intense enough to push furniture around a room; I suspect that Mademoiselle Chanel had the same self-possessed authority.
Our talk took place early in the morning (for me, anyway), but Tautou had already been up for hours, doing television interviews. She was curiously animated for someone who’d been subjected to such a barrage; she gestured broadly as she spoke, her El Greco-like hands as eloquent as she was.
It must be quite a grind, speaking to dozens of nosy journalists like myself all day—but Tautou has found a most unexpected way to amuse herself. When our interview was over and I was getting up to leave, she exclaimed, “Oh, stop! Wait!” From her jacket pocket, she pulled out a camera. “I am taking a photograph of everyone who interviews me today,” she said impishly and asked me to pose. Although taken aback, I obliged.
“How interesting,” she observed, examining the shot. “You are the only one who did not look at the camera.”
“I guess I’m better on paper than on camera,” I offered - and it’s true, too. Unlike Tautou, not everyone is courageous enough to stare down the camera’s bald scrutiny.
In any case, I can’t tell you how much I adored this gesture. Turning the camera back on the media - it was too divine. Bravo, Audrey Tautou—and congratulations on a wonderful, rage-filled yet elegant performance.
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A few days ago, I heard an interview with National Public Radio’s Diane Rehm; this auturmn, she will celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of The Diane Rehm Show. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the great Ms. Rehm, but her two million listeners consider her a national treasure.
In 1973, Rehm—then a young housewife— turned up to volunteer at her local Washington, D.C. public radio station; instead, she was bustled into the studio to substitute for the sick-at-home host of The Home Show. History was made: Rehm soon went from discussing recipes and homier fare to interviewing Nobel laureates, presidents, and movie stars; her studio guest book likely rivals the White House’s.
Rehm is adored first and foremost for her brilliance, but I dare say that she is equally treasured for her voice. Ten years ago, Rehm was diagnosed with a condition in which the vocal cords constrict and speech becomes strained; her voice slowed to an alto drawl. This change understandably took a toll on Rehm’s confidence; as she said in the interview above, she constantly worries that first-time listeners will hear her and exclaim, “What is that woman doing on the air? I can’t stand her voice.”
She then made a heartbreaking admission: “I don’t love my voice. That’s the hard part. I don’t love my voice anymore.”
This brought tears to my eyes. You see, unlike Rehm, I really do love her voice. In our fast-talking, speed-loving culture, Rehm’s voice is one of the most reassuring sounds one can imagine; it is familiar, measured, authoritative, and soothing all at once.
Years ago, when I moved to Washington, D.C., I didn’t know a soul and had taken a fiercely competitive job; I was totally in over my head at first. Plus, I had just moved back to the States after living abroad for years and was going through a nasty bout of culture shock. On weekends, I would wander the marble halls of the National Gallery alone, and on weekday mornings, before I went to work, I would listen to Diane Rehm. These were my two solaces during this intensely lonely time: silent art and Diane Rehm’s voice.
Ms. Rehm, I hope you come to love your voice again. It has been very meaningful to so many, myself included.
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I recently saw The September Issue, a newly-released documentary about Vogue magazine preparing its mammoth September 2007 issue. This was still the Gilded Age of fashion: Neiman Marcus CEO Burt Tanksy is seen asking Vogue editor Anna Wintour to admonish young designers to keep up with a spiraling global demand for their apparel; today many of those designers can barely sell a scrap of clothing off the floor at Barneys or Bergdorf Goodman.
Much has changed for the fashion industry in the last two years, and for Conde Nast, Vogue‘s parent company as well. It has been reported that business consultants McKinsey & Company have been hired to reorganize how Vogue and other Conde Nast titles operate; the idea is to keep the magazines competitive in the Internet era. One feels that imminent change is in the air, making the documentary’s subjects appear rather sepia-toned, acting out a dated play under a bell-jar of sorts.
Particularly poignant is a scene featuring Vogue‘s creative director, Grace Coddington, as she stands alone at Versailles; the wind blows her famous red hair as she contemplates the history of the place and wistfully recalls the days of Romanticism. Coddington, 68, does indeed seem to belong to another era—perhaps that of the Aesthete, in which living-life-as-art was the highest priority; one wonders what vision will eventually replace hers at Vogue and other bastions of fashionable fancy.
A Vogue editor once said that Vogue is “the magazine of record;” in 100 years, she told me, people will look to back-issues of the magazine to learn about the styles and mood of previous decades. I’m not convinced that Vogue serves as a wholly accurate barometer in this regard; in the best of times and the worst of times, magazines always present a curated, rarefied view of the world around them. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially when one considers that they are meant to be backdrops for theatricality and vehicles for escapism (particularly Ms. Coddington’s gorgeous, wildly imaginative features) as well as guides to what’s in stores that season.
It would be a shame if the more Coddington-esque aspects of the Vogue fantasy were downgraded into a more literal-minded, catalogue-like format, as the magazine’s publishers seek to make its business-model more efficient. Only time will tell.
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In the September issue of fashion glossy Harper’s Bazaar, the editors ran a cutesy feature titled ‘What Would Coco Do?’ With the new film Coco Before Chanel due out this autumn, says the headline, “Bazaar wondered what the notoriously feisty Madame Chanel would say about the world after Chanel. So we asked [current Chanel designer] Karl Lagerfeld to channel the original fashion wit.”
One of these exchanges goes like so:
Harper’s Bazaar: Your clothing liberated women in the 1920s. Are you still a feminist?
Lagerfeld-as-Chanel: I was never a feminist because I was never ugly enough for that.
This quip rankled me on many levels: as a woman, as a fashion consumer, as a writer for both adult and young women. It is a spiteful, irrelevant observation: one’s appearance has nothing to do with one’s relationship to feminism. In my mind, a feminist is any woman who believes that women - like men - have the right to determine their own individual destinies, barred neither by law nor cultural convention from doing so. I am proud to count myself in that category.
That Chanel did not consider herself a feminist is well-documented, despite the fact that in some respects she could be considered a feminist icon: an impoverished-orphan-turned-female-business-mogul who redefined the attitudes of her generation and those to follow. Her self-created persona, aesthetics, and empire were premised on the defiance of the rigid social constructs of her youth. She could hardly be considered a creature of demure Victorian subservience.
Whatever her reasons for declining to categorize herself as a feminist, her career provides much inspiration for ambitious women everywhere. That her successor chooses to mock a demographic of Chanel’s consumers (not all of whom are buying his apparel with their husbands’ Mastercards), and propagate this erroneous impression of feminism, is unfortunate and disenchanting.
This “ugly feminist” would expect more from the ambassador of a brand supposedly devoted to elegance.
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I couldn’t be more delighted: fine artist David Foote has signed on to illustrate my next book for children, a wild collection of short stories about various breeds of fairies living in New York City (Knopf, September 2010).
David’s work is divine: energetic, unlikely, evocative; I’ve even described it as alarming, which can be a good thing, in my opinion. Stare for a moment at his painting Clouds below: the longer you look, the more faces and objects you will find hidden in the piece.
A current of tenderness and humor also runs through many of David’s drawings, and the combination of all of these things makes him a perfect illustrator for young readers.
As we get closer to publishing the book, we’ll see if we can post a sneak preview of some of David’s wonderful illustrations. When I first saw his sketches for Modern Fairies (as our book is called), my heart skipped a beat: it was like seeing the emergence of the next Edward Gorey or Tim Burton.
There seems to be no limit to his imagination, and I am thrilled about our collaboration.
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Last week, I spoke with National Public Radio’s Linda Wertheimer about some of my favorite classic children’s books. I expected this to be a quiet, late-summer conversation, listened to as people drove to work or prepared breakfast, and then forgotten. Imagine my surprise when the story became the most-viewed feature on NPR’s website for nearly two days; commentators passionately weighed in with their own lists.
This was a great reminder to me about how important a role such literature plays in our lives, even into our adulthoods. Our memories of our favorite children’s books are evocative and layered with associations. As the author of three (and soon four) middle-grade books, I am staggered by the idea that my work might help shape the subconscious of my young readers. This is an awesome responsibility, and therefore nothing can be taken for granted when writing for this audience. It is extremely important to me, for example, to offer up strong female protagonists, who prioritize intellectual curiosity over appearances. I try to emphasize the importance of friendship and de-emphasize the allure of trends. Language, travel, and music all play central roles in my books.
After the NPR segment aired, an NPR producer forwarded me a poem written by her ten year old daughter; it had been inspired by Tennyson, my most recent book:
THE DESERTED HOUSE
by Maya Millward
Inspired by my favorite book Tennyson
The rain falls so silently on a cold Colorless Temple.
All seemed lonely but one.
Was Zulma. Her skin the color of dark chocolate. A raspberry
Colored dress.
With a lemon yellow apron brought cheer to the house.
Like a bittersweet candy was the house.
Covered with the sweat, the blood and the tears of the slaves.
Death and destruction had come to this old, vine covered, deserted
House.
It is humbling, in a way, to see my book resonate so strongly with such a smart young lady, and I’m honored to become part of her library and personal history. I am often asked—in interviews and casual conversation—why I write for children, and receiving poems like this is the answer. I can’t wait to see what Maya writes in the future.
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March 03, 2010
Vogue documents Ms. Blume’s latest fashion statement
January 20, 2010
New book deal with Knopf!
December 04, 2009
Curiously attired, Ms. Blume turns up in Vanity Fair
September 21, 2009
Elle magazine spotlights Ms. Blume
August 25, 2009
Today: Tennyson released in paperback!
Lesley M.M. Blume is an author, journalist, columnist, cultural observer, and bon vivant based in New York City, where she was born. Learn more about her after the leap.
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