Carol Bergman

There are writers who continue to polish their work even after it has been published. Louise Erdrich revised her first novel, “Love Medicine,” and published it a second time, many years later. And, if memory serves, the poet Seamus Heaney did the same with one of his collections. I may revise “Say Nothing,” after I have written another book in the series, evolved the main character, and also my own definition of the mystery genre.

The great and famous British mystery writer, P.D.James, has given me courage to continue to experiment and to risk approbation and perplexed responses when “real” mystery genre fans read my book. Nearly ninety-years-old, James has written an extended essay, “Talking About Detective Fiction,” in which she says, “We may not always believe in the details of the plot, but we always believe in the man himself and the world he inhabits.” Plot challenged, most of my fiction is character driven. The mystery genre challenges this weakness or, better said, preference. That said, it is quite possible, according to James, that plot will become less and less important to some mystery writers as the world we inhabit becomes increasingly disordered and less re-ordering or "solving" at the end of a story is possible. To live as an agnostic, without absolute solutions or certainties, is our existential condition. And that is what I tried to illuminate for myself in my unconventional wartime murder mystery. I also worked hard on the language itself, the description, and the political backdrop.

It isn’t absolutely successful; it was an experiment. I sent it out into the world as an experiment. Readers have offered feedback that will be helpful to me in my next attempt. I look forward to the continuing process of deepening my writing and making it better. Not every work can be a master work.

Like P.D.James, I hope I am still writing at age 90. Indeed, I hope I live to 90 in good health with full creative power. That said, every writer knows that the master work is in the writing life itself.  Read More 

I took a much needed lunch break yesterday and traveled to the Gogosian Gallery on 21st Street to see Monet’s “late” paintings. I had read an article about the exhibition in the New York Times. The accompanying image was very different than the restrained, atmospheric paintings that have become a mainstay of so many museum collections. The pastel palette and soft focus haystacks, cathedrals and gardens always draw a crowd; they are pleasing and accessible. These late paintings are provocative and have rarely been seen by Monet’s admiring public. He had changed course; he was experimenting.

How does an artist (or writer), successful in his own lifetime, restore his creative energy without risking sales? This is the question that surfaced as I entered the well-appointed gallery with its capacious rooms. The paintings were not for sale, they were displayed to be seen, a receptionist explained, disingenuously, as every exhibition (especially one so generously reviewed) increases the value of the work.

A few of the paintings were familiar but most were not. Monet had transformed both his palette and his brushstroke. Both were looser, more layered, and expressive. Monet had become what we would call today an “abstract expressionist.” True, he was older, his eyesight was failing, and he was financially secure. But he was also contemplating the end of his life, the vertiginous unknown beyond. And this was brave and compelling.

The lily ponds, benign in earlier renderings, had become dark protected whirlpools spanned by a bridge in the near distance, then swirling away into an ominous tunnel under a bridge before exploding again into color and light. A dapple of sparkle in a lily head here, another there. These paintings are sublime.

It is my observation that the subject of most art is impermanence, that in the art we attempt to capture the present moment and hold it, knowing full well that before we have done so, it has disappeared. Out of this keen realization, which can give both pleasure and pain, we make our work. Read More 

Yesterday morning, I had email messages from South Africa and Australia. They were written and sent while I was sleeping. This may seem mundane now but it is not; it is extraordinary. In January, 1994, Vice-President Al Gore gave a landmark speech at UCLA about the uses of the “information superhighway” in both domestic and international development. The speech was prescient.

At the time there were only about three million or so computers connected to the Internet. Today, there are hundreds of millions. Even in the remotest areas of the developing world, in war-torn villages and villages without roads, there are internet cafes. An aid worker friend told me recently that first on the list of wants and needs in any town or village he has ever been to is the word “computer.”

What does this mean for writers? It means we can retrieve information quickly, contact sources globally and receive a reply quickly, and disseminate what we have written globally and instantaneously through uploads and links. There is no way that despotic regimes, such as China, will be able to prevent the onslaught of this free-flow of information. Their resistance will end eventually. Though I was loathe to allow my book “Another Day in Paradise; International Humanitarian Aid Workers Tell Their Stories,” to be published in China, I knew I could not prevent it. Some enterprising young democratic-spirited person would have scanned and distributed it in blank covers, or uploaded it to a website somewhere. Bravo, I say. Get the information out there. Collect as much royalty as I can, and then let it go. Is this theft? Of course. But it’s also a donation to the Chinese people. The walls of their electronic prison are breaking down.

I have started a new nonfiction project that requires research. Before the internet, a mere two decades ago, I would have had to write snail mail delivered letters and/or make long distance phone calls to regions in different time zones. It would have taken me months. Then, once I received a reply, the reply would probably have been inadequate. I might have had to travel to remote regions to interview people and pore through archival material, probably with the help of a translator. And though this old-fashioned footwork and reporting still is essential in some instances, it mostly is not necessary. On I go, in English, the new global language, speaking to librarians, curators and archivists all over the world as they digitalize their collections and make them available to curious citizenry everywhere.  Read More 

By the time a book is revised, edited, copy-edited, proofed, and sent to the printer, months have passed and the author is more than likely already working on her next project. Then, magically, and nearly forgotten, the book arrives, bound and sparkling, and the publicity begins. All new writing projects are now shelved and silenced, momentum interrupted, the “work” at the computer a different sort of work entirely. I have less taste for it than I used to when I was younger and hungry for recognition. Do I want people to like my book? Yes and no. Do I care if I make some money from the publication of a book? Of course. Do I want to have a launch party and readings? Not really. I want to get to my next project.

Few writers I know look back on published work with nostalgia, vanity, or regret. (I can hardly look back at my journals except to cull ideas.) Whatever we are working on –at the moment-is of the most interest and concern. What’s working, what isn’t? Is this the best I can do? When will I have time to write this week? It’s a completely absorbing solitary endeavor. So having to stand up in front of an audience and read from my last published work, however recent that “last” may be, feels like an interruption. That’s odd, I know, and maybe other writers feel differently, I just haven’t met them.

So I’m in the midst of publicity for my first murder mystery, “Say Nothing.” It’s up on amazon, it’s “live,” and I am sending out press releases every day, all day. My next project will be nonfiction. But when will I get to it? Thank goodness I have my notebooks, this blog, and my students to keep my mind from addling too much during this least-favorite stage of the writing life.

I had a student once, Stan Alpert, who came into my class to write about being kidnapped on his birthday. He's a lawyer by profession so he didn't seem to mind the publicity he got when the book was published and then optioned as a film. He didn't have a "next" project in the wings, not that I know of anyway. Stan, if you are reading this, please let me know how so much publicity, endless publicity, constant publicity, has effected your writing life.

http://www.scps.nyu.edu/about-scps/newsroom/newsletters/winter-2009/three-who-took-writing-classes-write-their-own-ticket.html
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My Kindle just celebrated her first birthday. She’s all grown up with nearly a hundred books in her library, several read and stacked away in the archive. Oh how she loves books. I downloaded three in one night as a present for her. She was pleased and so was I.

We have established a solid relationship, close to a symbiotic tie, I’d say. In fact, so coupled are we, that I sometimes need “space.” Much to her dismay, I’ll read a book from my still over-tall 3D TBR stack. Then I’ll return to her. She never berates or judges, complains that she has missed me, or that I have neglected her. How fortunate I am. And how guilty I feel when I shut her out for a few days. I didn’t tell her, for example, about the sensory deprivation I’ve been feeling of late or my trip to Barnes & Noble last week. It was her birthday; I didn’t want her to be upset. I felt guilty and disloyal. I wandered the store without a clear purpose. No, not true. I did have a purpose. One of the birthday presents I’d downloaded was Marilynne Robinson’s “Home.” The prose is poetic so I wanted to slow down. This is a bit hard for me to do on my Kindle. I don’t know why.

And I missed the paper, the smell of the paper, the artwork on the cover, the turn of the page. I rushed to Barnes & Noble like an addict to her dealer, an alcoholic to her bar. I picked up the book and bought it. Ecstasy.

So now I have the book in two places: on the Kindle and in my hand. Please, Kindle, forgive me. And Happy Birthday.


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I ran into a former student at the gym yesterday. I asked him about his trip, remembering he was going to London when the class was over last term. But he corrected me and said he had had two trips: one to London, one to the Galapagos. He’s taking a memoir class this term because he likes to try different teachers, but he wanted me to know, “nothing personal, you were good.” Much as I appreciated the compliment, I knew it wasn’t personal and didn’t take it personally. Then I had a strange thought, more like a flash of observation: “He’s 80 if he’s a day and he has all the time in the world.”

Most of the students who take my workshops are young, a few are middle-aged, a few are what we call “seniors.” The mix is important for many reasons: the youngsters provide energy and drive, the oldsters unhurried wisdom and wry humor. It’s the unhurried part I’m thinking about after my encounter at the gym yesterday as so many of my (younger) students are in a hurry to get unfinished, underdeveloped copy into the marketplace. I include myself, not that I am younger, but I am a professional trying to make a living, in a hurry to get projects moving. To make the writing better, stronger and deeper, however, I know that I have to slow down. For me, that means getting off the computer and working in long hand or spending a few thoughtful days refueling and not writing much at all except in my journals and notebooks. All with pen in hand, slowly, slowly.

I remember working on a revision of a story in a hotel room in Ann Arbor, Michigan some years ago. My business there was finished—I was taking my daughter on the college tour. I had wanted to get back to New York before the weekend, but I couldn’t change our flight without a steep penalty, so we decided to stay. My daughter had homework to do and I had the manuscript of a short story in development. I didn’t have a laptop with me, just the manuscript, so I hunkered down, took walks, sat in cafes, walked again, roamed in bookstores, walked with my daughter, had long talks with my daughter. It was almost like a retreat. We were both completely slowed down and so relaxed we got a lot done.

The story, “My Ellipsis,” was one of the shortest and best I’ve ever written, every word, every sentence considered. It got published quickly. Read More 

A sequence of severe storms has hit the Atlantic seaboard this week and this morning, as I write, there are power outages in several counties in upstate New York. The city was a mess yesterday, with lakes at every crossing, but it was still possible to get around. New Yorkers are known for their "can do” approach to life. We make do as best we can and press on.

And so I should not be surprised to find the most unusual people with seemingly desperate disabilities working out at the gym and/or swimming in the pool. I was in the fast lane the other day when I noticed a woman bobbing about in the slow lane next to me. Then she walked up the steps and I saw that she had only one arm, amputated well into the shoulder socket. Later, I met her in the locker room; we shared the same bench. I felt terrible because I could not stop staring at her as she struggled to get dressed and I wanted to say something about her bravery and fortitude. But all I said was, “I hope you had a good swim,” which is all I should have said anyway. She was shy, said she’d had a good swim, and that was the end of the conversation. Then I remembered that the previous week I had met another woman in the locker room who seemed to be struggling as she got dressed. She was more talkative and I had no idea she was blind until she pulled out her white cane. Two women, both with disabilities, both swimmers, one more talkative than the other, both living their lives to the full in the city.

So I suppose this is a moral tale, or a fable with an embedded moral. We all have wounds of one sort our another. Some are visible to others, some are not Some are more disabling than others. Most of us heal our wounds as best we can, and then carry on regardless. Writers have to do the same, and then some. We have to use our wounds as energy to write and we have to press on past our vulnerabilities. It takes a certain courage to do this—I’ve written about courage in this blog before—and it takes time.

My workshop at NYU has just started and, during the first class, students are often furtive about why they want to take a writing workshop. They’ve battened down their hatches against the winds surging inside them. They don’t feel safe in a room of strangers—who would?—and don’t understand the workshop method as yet. This timidity usually continues past the first submission and into the third week of class. After that, it dissipates.
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I’ve started reading Tony Judt’s “Postwar” and am impressed with his use of statistics in the first chapter. It reminds me of Harper’s Index with its cumulative power except that Judt embeds the statistics in a narrative and has a strong narrative persona and point of view.

Though the writing of history has changed a great deal in recent years—like all nonfiction, it’s much less omniscient—I wasn’t surprised to learn that Judt is British. He has a point of view and, as the diplomats say, he’s transparent about it.

I lived in Britain for a decade and worked as a journalist there. Though by reputation, it’s a more reticent culture, it is, in fact, a more open society in many respects. My observations and opinions, as an American outsider, were valued and sought. I learned to express them courageously. The producers and editors I worked with all had a strong point of view. It’s not that they worked deductively from a hypothesis, but that they interpreted and contextualized the facts. I was always told that it’s not enough to say something happened; we have to report on the meaning and importance of what happened.

Any facts we choose to include in a story are, by definition, skewed to our own perception and point of view. There’s no other way to frame a story because we are writing it. It’s much more honest—and the writing is better—if we disclaim our point of view in some way. Judt does this with the intensity of the phraseology he uses and his word choices. He’s a fine writer.

When I returned to the US, I had to shift my reporting into a strange, anodyne neutrality. It’s a lie, it doesn’t exist. The pressures of a market driven broadcast and print media creates this unreality. Personally, I think it’s a great danger in a democracy where it’s essential to remain informed and have informed opinions. The internet is an antidote and, though corroboration is a problem there, and anyone can sound off in a blog, there are also many responsible sites and online magazines.
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I began memorizing poems last spring and have, to date, memorized eight poems, most of them short, one quite long (“Daffodils” by William Wordsworth), all of them chosen for their linguistic beauty. I find it easiest to tackle two lines at a time though sometimes I work on the entire verse if that makes more sense to me. I let my brain decide. I carry a hard copy of the poem around with me while I am working on it and, when I think I’ve got it down, I paste the poem into my Common Book ( a book of quotations).

It’s a very pleasurable exercise for several reasons: 1./ Like meditation, it keeps me firmly in the moment. If I let my mind drift ahead, I forget the line I’m reciting. 2./ I feel close to the poet’s process. I’ve memorized two of Emily Dickinson’s poems, for example. I remember well being asked in junior high school to read some of her poems. I didn’t understand a word of them and, in college, thought them trite and simple. Not true. I now understand her genius. I’ve traced the lines she encoded with my mind and it’s as though I am encoding them with her. I suppose this is similar to an art student re-creating a masterpiece as an exercise. And 3./ Poems slow me down and insist on attention to detail in a small space. This is good discipline for a prose writer. (For the record, I do write poetry myself , and have even had some published but, for some reason, do not consider myself a poet.)

Which leads me to visual vs. auditory streams. In my experience, most poets “think” in images and hold words and lines in their heads with ease as they declaim them. I have memorized poems by writing them out numerous times, and then trying to recite them. Though I assume I have learned the poem, I stumble. That’s because I need the visual cue to continue. If I write the line and then say it, I’m okay. But if I have no paper and pen to hand, I don’t do as well.

I asked a neuroscientist friend about this and she said that my auditory stream is weak and that, if I want to strengthen it, I have to memorize the poem by ear, not by sight.

I thought about this for a while and wondered if it makes any difference to me. It doesn’t. Any way I commit the poems to memory is fine with me. Very fine indeed. Read More 

I do not usually blow hard in my blog but blow I must this morning. A Haitian-American student of mine lost her niece and her best friend. And that’s all she knows right now and she is just one person. Two relief worker friends are on their way to Haiti—both contributors to my book, “Another Day in Paradise.” They were packing suitcases last night and getting their affairs in order, saying goodbye to loved ones, as we were all watching the Golden Globes. The real world—not ersatz reality shows—is drama enough.

I had watched “The Hurt Locker” yesterday afternoon and then turned on the Golden Globes for relaxation but it was so insipid I could not relax. However, I do have to thank Nicole Kidman. When she appeared, she immediately pointed to her Haiti ribbon and said a few words about donation and George Clooney’s telethon. The MC—name soon lost into oblivion—had not even mentioned Haiti and was drinking beer. George Clooney did decide to come despite overwhelming preparations for his telethon, someone said. Alec Baldwin was not there; he was at a charity event in Canada. Thank you.

It was a sparkly, gazillion dollar affair, nearly pornographic in its disregard of the human suffering just south of our borders.

I had not made my money contribution as yet. My relief worker friends had suggested Doctors Without Borders or the American Red Cross. Both organizations are solid and well established in Haiti. So many people do want to help that the situation on the ground can be very chaotic with so many NGO’s turning up. So, best to go with the established organizations.

I donated to Internews this morning: http://www.internews.org/ I had heard their CEO on NPR talking about the media infrastructure in Haiti—there are/were about 40 radio stations in that small spit of land—and citizens rely on them for accurate information. Knowledge is power in such a catastrophe and helps to sustain civil society which is fast collapsing in an already collapsed, impoverished country.

If I could pray I would pray for the survivors in Haiti. At the very least, I wish them all courage and fortitude as they rebuild their country.

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