Carol Bergman

One of my students has more than 1,000 friends on FB. How does she find time to write? “If they don’t hear from me, they’ll think I’m dead,” she said. The class riffed a bit on that. Much laughter and also some practical suggestions. Why not post a status that says: not dead, just writing? Would that work?

The discussion got me to thinking about my own use of FB which has increased since I first joined in 2007. The questions that I raised for myself in earlier blogs have not been answered to my satisfaction: Is this virtual platform good for writers? Is it good for our relationships? Is a FB friend a real friend? Is FB just fun? Entertainment? Free advertising? Or more? How are we using or abusing this technology? Is it enhancing or interfering with our creative life?

And so I woke thinking about FB again this morning and posted this on my personal page:

Dear FB Friends,

Except for my Carol Bergman: Writer page, which I use for professional reasons –links to Twitter and my website blog—I am taking a vacation/hiatus from Facebook. If you wish to contact me, discuss, comment, send me a hug, wish me anything at all, or get together in the flesh, and feel one another’s flesh, please send me a private message on FB and I will send you my regular email address and my cell phone # if you don’t already have it. I look forward to talking with you, wishing you a happy birthday, and/or seeing all of you very soon in a non-virtual venue where we can linger and connect. The voice and the body are wonderful instruments.

xo Carol  Read More 

I suppose I should be pleased that I now have 67 Facebook friends on my professional Carol Bergman: Writer page. It’s an active page but what does that mean exactly and how does it enhance the writing life and/or help to solicit professional gigs and/or sell my books? I’m not sure. I do know that my students, prospective students and private clients look at my website and read my blog though they are loathe to admit this. Until I have mentioned them in a blog, then they might say something. “Oh, I think you were referring to me in that blog post the other day.” Of course, I don’t use anyone’s real name but they are nonetheless able to identify themselves and their triumphs or conundrums. I keep the FB page active by routing my blog into the “notes” function. The blog post, this one included, also appears as an RSS feed on my Amazon Authors Page and Goodreads. It also used to appear on the PEN AMERICA website but that has been redesigned and I can’t be bothered to re-do everything, not this week anyway. Are you getting my drift? All of this takes time, energy and a different mind-set than writing itself, although I am writing right now as I write this blog post. (And I hope you noticed the alliteration.) It’s so pleasurable I could do it all day but I have to get back to some other business, as opposed to writing, and then meditate/rest for a half hour before I go off to teach at NYU. Must remind myself to cut up an apple to slip into my bag. (Sentence fragment.) And what else? How about some reading? I’m in the midst of three books at the moment, two on my Kindle e-reader, another in hard copy. The current New Yorker is interesting and there’s more than one article I want to read there. I’ve read the NY Times online today. I wish I could be in a hammock, or on a cruise ship, or at a writer’s retreat because my mind is so befuddled by some brick work drilling on the East Side of my apartment house that I can hardly think much less work today on the revision of one of three failed novels. I have my headset plugged into the computer and am mildly distracted by the Brandenburg Concertos on Pandora, thank goodness. And did I mention that I’ve been “friended”( noun into a verb, quite common in the vernacular American English tongue) by a young woman writer in Kenya and a writer in Hong Kong and another somewhere else, all three people I don’t know, which is a bit unsettling. If you like me, I will like you. Isn’t that how it goes? Unsettling also because I am being “mapped” and “followed.” I forgot to say that my Carol Bergman: Writer FB page appears automatically on Twitter, whatever that means, and that I get notifications there of so many people following me, more than 67, and why? Then these same people, strangers all, writers in far flung places, turn up as requests on Linked In. I think my blog posts appear there also. All told, as I end this blog post, I realize that social media may be more exhausting than useful. Comments welcome.  Read More 

A student in my Wednesday night NYU class complained this week that his sentences are short and choppy, like sound byte texts. Everything shorthand, no full sentences or ideas, as I am demonstrating here. And he can’t seem to stop or change or shift into any other gear so that he can cruise into a longer sentence, a paragraph, or a page of sustained story. Apart from turning off electronic devices and/or never using them again, or using them only as needed, could I offer a realistic solution? I suggested he follow his intuition—turn off all electronic devices including the TV—and read all day long for days and days and days. Of course, he might need to abscond from his job and/or sequester himself in his apartment and/or take a trip around the world. Possible? Maybe.

It’s strange that my students never complain about this suggestion; they are longing for it. Even at the beginning of term when I suggest keeping notebooks and journals in longhand, they don’t object. Well, not entirely, perhaps. One or two might object. But then they get into it. The journals thicken, they have heft, they satisfy all our senses, and they slow us down.

There is no way to achieve precision and glory in our sentences unless we slow down.  Read More 

I went to hear some soothing low-brow Bossa Nova—a combination of Samba and jazz, with some Bolero influence—at the Cornelia Street Cafe last Sunday. I’m not a musician; I listen for pleasure. But I was with my husband who once played the tuba and has a good ear, and an opera singer/teacher of opera, and an opera singer/student . All of them had a lot to say about the singer’s voice which they thought light and underdeveloped. They were critiquing the performance and didn’t get into the music the way I did. I was really enjoying it and so were many others in the audience, some Brazilian, some not.

I’ve written here about a book club I once belonged to that annoyed me because the readers were not writers. They quickly dismissed a book that might have taken a year or more to write if it wasn’t entertaining, or immediately gripping, or they had to work to understand what the writer was trying to say. I eventually left the group, offending some of the members in my wake. But since I have written my first murder/thriller, I’ve changed my tune a bit. It’s hard to satisfy the demands of the genre and to write well at the same time. I’m now more admiring of books that others enjoy for whatever reason they enjoy them. It’s their privilege . Who am I to say that a work is not worthwhile, or not good enough. if many other people enjoy it? If a musician, or a writer, or an artist, or a filmmaker has succeeded in captivating an audience then that, in itself, is worth applauding, I feel.

Despite the disaffection at my table, I found the young Bossa Nova singer enchanting. I am not a professional and she didn’t ask me to evaluate her performance as a professional. That is another endeavor entirely, sometimes pleasurable, and sometimes not so pleasurable. My husband used to be a film critic and I remember him telling me that he wondered if he’d ever be able to enjoy films again. Now he is a screenwriter and he is always watching the script. I have the same experience of books: they have to be well written. I read twice, once for pleasure, once again to study what choices the writer has made. But I’m not going to tell anyone not to read a book if it is too low brow and/or it isn’t well written. They might enjoy it even if I don’t.  Read More 

Last Sunday, I went to the Neue Galerie with a Dutch friend and his sister. Tobias Tak is a tap dancer and graphic novelist : http://www.tobicomix.co.uk/. His sister, Elise Tak, is a digital artist who creates her own movie stars and narratives—movies within movies: http://www.elisetak.com/.

It’s a talented family. Tobias lives in London and works all over the EU; Elise lives in New York where she has been grounded for many years in the artists’ community in Brooklyn.

Walking around a gallery with artists is a unique and illuminating experience. As a writer, I am always searching for narrative and asking myself: Where’s the story? What is this about? Visual artists study the physicality of the work—shape color, line, composition—and often disregard the content in the first instance. It is only later that they become interested in the artist’s life, for example. I am interested in it from the beginning.

Standing in the dim gallery in front of a Klimt gesture drawing, I was struck by the erotic pose which almost fell off the page with abandon. And because I have researched Klimt’s life for my novella, “Sitting for Klimt,” I wondered who the model was. Tobias hadn’t noticed the pose or the model. Instead, he pointed to the decorative touches in the dress, swirling shapes resembling flowers. And because these swirling shapes were layered, he could tell that Klimt was searching for the right form. The first layer wasn’t quite right, so he kept going. It was all practice. He was searching.  Read More 

Back in the 1920’s, the “it” girl was magnetically and irresistibly attractive. She had arrived, mostly in the person of Clara Bow as designated by the public relations and advertising copy writers. It wasn’t a new concept; even the mystic Sufis knew what “it” was back in the 13th century. And Vincent Van Gogh, a mystic for all of his short troubled life, used the concept of “it” (het in Dutch) to describe the sensation when a painting had “arrived.” Any visual artist, writer, or performer will understand what this means and how it feels. It’s a kind of ecstasy, a bliss.

Most of the time we are just working, slogging along some would say, day by day. Many drafts, sketches, journal entries, more drafts, a final polish. We get published, or don’t. But even the work that is published may be mediocre compared to our vision, our intention. It’s okay, it works, or it’s good enough.

And then, one day, we hit the “it.” The passage we have written, the words chosen, the whole work has transcended our usual effort. How this has happened, we cannot be sure. A confluence of forces and gifts more than likely.

And so it was with my story, “Will Wonders Never Cease,” about an imaginary encounter between Houdini and Freud. I knew as I was writing that I had hit the “it.” It’s a long story and I didn’t try to place it in any literary magazines. Instead, I ran it as the last story in my new collection of novellas, “Water Baby.” But as the summer waned, I looked at it again and thought that it was very good and that I should publish it in London where it is set. My ties to the UK are long and deep; I lived there for ten years. So I sent it off to The London Magazine, founded in 1732, prestigious. Why not try for the best? And so, dear reader, I sent it off by SNAIL. It arrived in two days and two days later I had an email from the editor to say they’d like to run it in their April/May issue. I was chuffed.

Years of practice. What is certain is that we cannot get to the transcendent “it” manuscript unless we have practiced.  Read More 

I took a walk up Broadway yesterday and stopped in at “Book Culture,” an independent bookstore, one of three in the Columbia University neighborhood. The official Columbia University Bookstore is now a Barnes & Noble. I guess they struck a deal. But that’s another story. My story today is about three-dimensional books, buying them, holding them, and reading them, and how that experience is different from buying and reading books on an e-reader. Please note that I’ve eliminated the word “holding."

I know I’ve written about this on my blog before but, as time has passed and I am now nearly four years into owning my handy Kindle, the feeling of sensory deprivation, particularly when I am reading fiction, has intensified. That said, when I am reading a biography of an artist, which I do at least once a year, I feel the same way—deprived. I don’t have a tablet—maybe, in fairness, that would make a difference—so I can’t experience color plates. But it’s more than that.

I remember what it was like to be immersed in a book, not in reading, but the book itself, when I was a teen and my mother had to wrench me out of story reverie to come into dinner and I put the book down on the table carefully bookmarked and that object, that world, awaited my return, constant and predictable, partially because it was an object. Who needed dinner? I had been devouring the pages of that book and was nourished enough.

My mother’s father was a traveling salesman and every time he returned home to Vienna, he brought my mother a book. She built a library which she had to leave behind when she fled to Paris and then to America. Every time she moved after that, her books where unpacked before her clothes or her cutlery. Even when her sight dimmed, I could never persuade her to try an e-reader. She held a book and flipped the pages as I read to her.

That is a visceral connection. E-readers are flat and, in more ways than one, the words they store are elusive. We can still lose ourselves, sink into the story, but it somehow feels different on an e-reader, for a while anyway, until the story takes over.

So, every couple of months, I treat myself to a three-dimensional book at an independent bookstore. And I walk away relieved and satisfied to have made such a purchase. And this "relief" and "satisfaction" are sensory, not cerebral, because I haven't read the book as yet. I am, simply, possessing it physically. The book has heft, weight, and gravitas. I can feel it and know that it is mine.  Read More 

I went to see “Django,” over the holiday at an old movie theater on Grand Street in Oakland, California, just blocks away from some of the highest crime streets in the USA. Given the recent gun-toting events in Newtown and elsewhere, it seems a travesty to applaud this movie as well-made, well-acted, and well-written. So I won’t.

One of many 2013 resolutions: boycott all gun-toting violent movies. Let them be well-made, well-acted and well-written, I will not go.

Sitting around a well-appointed dinner table on New Year’s Eve in the self-same city where I saw “Django” and once upon a time taught high school English and American History in a ghetto school, our hostess asked: “What do you wish for in 2013 that is realistic?” I liked the caveat: realistic.

The wine flowed, the food was divine, answers were thoughtful. We were in a safe haven, unthreatened by war or robbery or famine or guns. With my book “Another Day in Paradise; International Humanitarian Workers Tell Their Stories,” about to be published for a second time in China using the “simple” alphabet, I wished for the Chinese to develop a social conscience.

But what about our own politicians, what about corporations, what about gun owners? everyone asked.

I had met a young Chinese entrepreneur on the airplane on the flight out and was struck by his drive; he was reading a book about success and said that if he couldn’t be a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, he wouldn’t be a success. It reminded me of the market-driven entertainment industry. What is a movie’s measure of success: the millions it pulls in on opening weekend. By that standard, “Django” will do just fine.

When I asked my young Chinese friend if his life was in balance—an Eastern concept lost in the throes of the communist/freemarket revolution—he hesitated. “I’m a rock climber,” he said,” but I don’t have a girlfriend.” I told him about the article I was reading in The New Yorker of December 24 &31, “Polar Express” by Keith Gessen and the already evident competition between our two nations—and others—to take advantage of the melting polar ice cap. “We could have a shooting war,” he said. “And that wouldn’t be a good thing.”  Read More 

I write this in the wake of the tragedy in Newtown; the first funeral took place yesterday, I believe, though I don’t know for certain as it has been so painful to read and watch the news. I overheard a man talking on his cell on a street corner : “When I watch the news, I don’t even feel sad, I feel sick.” Once again, a communal grief. President Obama’s well-crafted speech gave some solace. He’s a good writer and/ or his speechwriters are good writers. Still, I wonder how Abe Lincoln might have seized the moment with his well-honed oratory. In those days, according to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, “Team of Rivals,” words—written words—could make or break a candidate. A speech was delivered to a crowd and then printed in the local and national press. Few people, after all, could hear it when it was delivered.

What have we come away with here, what greater awareness? That we can do better, that we must do better—in every sphere of our American lives. At a party the other night, I met two young women, both studying opera and musical theater, who have given up on the idea of a well-rounded conservatory education—the path that most performers have taken in the past—because they couldn’t afford a loan with the prospect of no decent job at the end of it, albeit they are performers not scientists, or so I thought. One, in fact, was a scientist and had wanted to study chemistry, but because she knows so many who have wandered the country in search of work with doctorates in their pockets, she decided to wing it, study theater, and scramble for part-time jobs. She now has four—none of them satisfying—and had to leave the party early to work in a bar.

The next day I went upstate for a conversation with a Dean at SUNY New Paltz, one of New York State’s University campuses. Two years ago, I had been called in to discuss the possibility of a summer writing institute but there was no money to fund it, none at all. The Chairs and Deans were completely frustrated: they could no longer try anything new unless they proved in advance that the class had an audience. Nonetheless, they wanted to talk about it; they are educators, not marketers. Maybe one day, maybe one day soon, they all said. Well, nothing has changed, and won’t in the foreseeable future. Yet they still wanted to talk. Did I have any marketing ideas? Well, I am not a marketing person, I said, but I am pleased to be part of the continuing conversation about the changes in higher education, its greater reliance on virtual platforms, and so on.

Sad to say, both public and private universities are so desperate these days that they are competing with each other for students, many of whom have given up the idea of higher education—as my two young friends at the party the other night—or are attending two-year community colleges, which are cheaper. I wonder how will they expand their intellectual/cognitive abilities without more schooling? Will they become autodidacts? And will we continue to fall behind the EU and China in our educational and entrepreneurial accomplishments? I have had half a dozen Chinese students in my workshop these past two years, recruited by the university, and the Dean I spoke with last week has been to China twice this year on that same mission. Meanwhile, our home-grown students languish, and the excitement of a future in higher education has dimmed. Unless, of course, we are born into privilege or take the opposite route: study abroad, and stay there, as two PhD friends of mine were forced to do—one is working in Saigon, the other in Singapore. In a transnational universe this is not necessarily a bad thing so long as there is equal development and opportunity within our borders.  Read More 

Privileged with a press pass, I roamed around MOMA yesterday afternoon, avoiding the thick crowd in the painting galleries. What would I find? First, a “fragile” series by the bold feminist artist, Louise Bourgeois. The display of these 8 x 10 drawings of spiders upside down, long-legged and short-legged, women with big boobs and multiple boobs, falling over from boob weight or standing upright full frontal and totally naked made me laugh out loud. Other guests sauntered on by but I just stood there laughing. I was so satisfied by this upending experience that I almost headed out of the museum not wanting to spoil the sensation of this artist’s work with anything else. There’s an earnestness about museums. Curator’s notes and artists’ statements next to the works in a museum are often portentous so I don’t read them. No extensive labeling next to the Bourgeois drawings, though. I was relieved that they were just there to be enjoyed.

I meandered a bit more into the main drawing gallery where I found 24 charcoal sketches by Willem De Kooning, one of my favorite painters, as light-hearted as Bourgeois in many ways. In fact, they knew each other, both of them founding members of “The New York School.” I had never seen these charcoal sketches before. Known as “closed eye drawings,” or “blind drawings,” De Kooning experimented with the feeling inside his own body which he then “pushed” onto the page. Holding the sketch pad horizontal, he kept his eyes completely closed as he drew. The drawings are displayed vertically in order to be “read.”

How did he do this? And what would the analogy be in writing? Or music?

Those difficult questions led me to thinking about a student concert at the Mannes School of Music the other night. The second half of the program was Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, all four of them. When the teacher/director introduced the segment she explained that the students had taken an improvisation workshop. Improvisation? Vivaldi? Isn’t that a “classical” piece of music? Doesn’t it have rules and boundaries? Don’t the musicians have to stick to the notes? Apparently not. Every composer includes a “cadenza,” usually at the end of the work. This is a bit of space which allows the solo musician to strut her stuff, or the ensemble of musicians to strut their stuff. And strut they did at the end of each “season.”

Are writers able to take such liberties? Or do we stick to formulas and trodden paths rather than innovate and experiment? And what about fiction and poetry? When we evoke images, characters, a setting, a story, are we, in fact, “writing blind?” What if I were to close my eyes and write? How would that work? There is a game—exquisite corpse—the surrealists played using either words or drawings. One person begins, the page is folded, the next person continues the drawing or writes a new sentence, not knowing what came before. Does the finished drawing or story make sense? Sometimes, sometimes not. So this isn’t exactly the same as what De Kooning did because he had a strong sense of what he was making.

So here’s another question: How can I push the images and ideas inside my head/body onto the page? Even when I am writing nonfiction, this may be possible, no? Let’s say I conduct an interview, transcribe it, and then read it over. What if I put my notes away and then recreate the experience of the person—his or her essence—without relying on literal quotes? How would that work?  Read More