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f r ie nd s of a m e r ic a n w r i t e rsc hic a g
owww.fawchicago.org
FEBRUARY NEWSLETTER2016–2017 NUMBER 6
Editor: Shirley BaugherDesigner: Norman Baugher
President’s MessageROBERTA GATES, President
JOIN ME FOR A DISCUSSION OF BROOKLYN
The Readers & Reviewers group will be meeting at 10:30 a.m.
on February 8 to discuss Brooklyn, a tender and compelling novel by
Colm Toibin. Brooklyn, which is set partly in Ire-land and partly
in America, tells the story of a naïve young girl named Ei-lis
Lacey who emigrates to Brooklyn in the 1950s because there’s no
future for her in the small Irish town where she grew up.
It is not an easy transition for Eilis. She lives in a boarding
house for young women like herself, works in a department store,
and takes a course in accounting at night; but nothing alleviates
her homesickness until she meets Tony, an Italian-American who
wants to marry her.
But then, just as she’s beginning to feel at home, catastrophe
strikes her family back in Ireland, and she has to decide: Who am I
and where do I belong?
If you’ve read Brooklyn, or seen the recent movie of the same
name, you know how heart-wrenching Elise’s choices are. No matter
what she decides, she’s going to disappoint someone.
So do come and add your opin-ions to the mix. What would you
have done if you were Eilis? Did she make the right choice? Did she
let herself get pushed around too much?
Colm Toibin, who is one of Ireland’s most gifted contemporary
authors, is a quiet writer with a keen eye for detail. Though his
characters tend to be taciturn, particularly when it comes to
matters of the heart, the reader always knows how they are feeling
because their emotions are
artfully conveyed through description and gesture.
Not only that, but the characters are familiar to us. Their
struggles and sorrows are ones we’ve all experienced.
Colm Toibin, in a recent interview with The New York Times,
touched on Eilis’s homesickness, saying: “I hope that when you see
the young Lithu-anian girl at the cash register in the supermarket
looking really sad one day, you know it’s for good reason: She’s
missing home.”
If you’re planning to come (and I hope that you will), please
RSVP by e-mailing me at [email protected]. If you forget,
though, or decide to come at the last minute, that’s fi ne too. But
in any case, I hope to see you on February 8!
F E B R U A R Y P R O G R A M
The Newbery Library Its Sale and Collectionsby Lorraine
Campione
On February 8, 2017, our speaker will be Dan Craw-ford. Dan is
the manager of the Newberry Library Book Fair. He has a degree in
Library Science from the Univerisity of Wis-consin, Milwaukee and a
B.A. degree with a major
in Library Science from Upper Iowa University. Before that, he
worked in his high school library and a classroom library in his
junior high school. He was surrounded by books as a child, and each
of his parents read to him, little knowing what they were setting
up.
Many years ago, Natalie Albert, who was very involved with the
Newberry, suggested a book fair. The library discouraged this,
saying book sales never made money. But she persevered, and the
Newberry Library Book Fair became a reality. In 1985, Dan’s aunt,
Evelyn Lampe took over. Then, ten years later, she turned the event
over to Dan Crawford.
Continued
Dan Crawford
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2 Friends of American Writers Newsletter •
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Luncheon Reservations
Luncheon reservations for the Febru-ary 8, 2017 meeting of the
Friends of American Writers are due no later than 6:00 p.m. on
Sunday, February 5. Please note, this deadline is fi rm. No
reservations will be accepted fol-lowing this date and time. To
reserve, please contact only Lorraine Campi-one (773-275-5118) or
Pat Adelberg (847-588-0911).
Luncheon will be served at 12:00 noon in the main fl oor dining
room of the Fortnightly Club of Chicago, 120 E. Bellevue Place. The
cost of the luncheon is $45 payable by check (preferred) in the
front lobby on the day of the meeting. If you are reserv-ing for a
group, we ask that only one person make the group request to avoid
confusion. Please note, if you make a reservation and fi nd you
cannot attend, you must cancel no later than 6:00 p.m. on the
Sunday preceding the meeting. Reservations not cancelled must be
paid for by the member.
Literature AwardsTAMMI BOB, Chair
The literature committee had a very productive, lively meeting
that lasted three hours. We were able to narrow a fi eld of
about 40 to 15 fi ne books, which we’ll examine carefully over the
next few months until we arrive at our winners.
Many thanks to Karen Burnett, Mary Robb Clarke, Angela Gall,
Roberta Gates, Ida Hagman, Ellen Israel, Kathy Katz, Meghan
Maleski, Diane Miller, Karen Pulver and Trish Ronan, who read and
came prepared to discuss more than the usual num-
ber of books this month. We missed Diana Adams who was there in
spirit. Generally a three-hour meeting is dif-fi cult and
exhausting, but this one was fi lled with energy and laughter as
well as respect and consideration for the many books and their
authors.
Young People’s Literature AwardsMARTI DANIEL, Chair
The deadline has passed for authors who wish to make submissions
for awards consideration. Committee members are focusing on reading
books in the young adult, middle grade, and picture categories.
Readers consider the literary merits of each submission in their
decisions, as well as numerical scoring from printed judging
guidelines. Eliminations are made on books that fall short of a
rollover score. As with books received in the adult category, the
choices are excellent, and readers have their work cut out for them
deciding which entries to eliminate.
MembershipIDA HAGMAN, Chair
Ida announced that FAW now has 87 members and four sustaining
club members. No new members came in during the month of
December.
We Thank You So Much
Technical diffi culties notwithstanding, we thoroughly enjoyed
the glimpse into what went into the making of West Side Story
offered by composer/conductor Stephen Kleiman. We learned a great
deal about the incom-parable “Lenny”, his role in creating the
musical and his slight from both
Broadway and Hollywood when it came to handing out awards. The
fi nal duet of “Tonight” sung by a young Jose Carreras and Dame
Kiri te Kanawa elicited spontaneous ap-plause from the audience and
re-minded us how great “Lenny’s” score is. Here are a few photos
taken by our own Ida Hagman during Kleiman’s presentation.
A N N O U N C E M E N T S
Dan Crawford is a soft-spoken gentleman whose services have been
invaluable to the continued success of the fair. Not only has he
priced nearly every book entered in the fair, he can help you fi nd
exactly what you are look-ing for. He will share some of his
experiences with this important event, and tell us which books
entered into the
fair were the heaviest, which the most expensive, which were
almost illegal, and which were the strangest.
I’m sure you will fi nd the program both informative and
interesting. Dan Crawford has a great sense of humor and really
knows the Newberry—one of our city’s richest resources. Please
come, and enjoy.
The incomparable “Lenny”
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OST of us associate
Valentine’s Day with hearts, fl owers, choco-lates, and pretty
cards.
But how many actually know how this day, celebrated annually on
February 14 and is not a national hol-iday in any country, came to
be or for whom it is named? As a matter of fact, the history of
Valentine’s Day
and its patron saint is something of a mystery. The Catholic
Church recognizes three differ-ent saints named Valentine.
Interestingly, all of these saints were martyred. One story goes
that Valentinus was a priest who served dur-ing the third century
in Rome. The Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made
bet-ter soldiers than men who had wives and chil-dren, so he
outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine thought this was an
unjust decree, so he secretly performed marriage ceremonies for
young couples. When Claudius found out what the priest was doing,
he ordered that Valentinus be put to death. Another story says that
Valentine was a priest who was killed for helping Christians escape
from Roman prisons where they were being beaten and tortured. Yet
another tells of a Valentine who actually sent a “valentine”
greeting to a young girl who visited him in prison while he was
awaiting execution. He signed the letter, “from your
Valentine.”
None of these stories can be verifi ed, but all point to the
three Valentines as heroic and romantic fi gures because of their
bravery and their martyrdom. By the Middle Ages, St. Valentine had
become one of the most popular saints in England and France.
Which brings us to the date. Why February 14? While scholars do
not think any of the Valentines was actually born on that date,
there is some evidence that at least one of them died in the middle
of February 270 A.D. Anoth-er story suggests that the Roman church
selected the date to Christianize a pagan holiday, Lupercalia—a
festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture and to
the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus. At this festival, the
Luperci, an order of Roman priests, gath-ered to sacrifi ce a goat
at the cave where Romulus and Remus were raised by the she-wolf
Lupa. Followers cut the goat’s hide into strips and slapped young
women with
them. Roman women did not mind the slaps because they believed
the goat’s hide made them more fertile. Later in the day, young
women placed their names in a big urn. Single men chose a name and
became paired with the woman whose name they had selected.
Lupercalia was later deemed “un Christian” by Pope Gelasius who
renamed the day St. Valentine’s Day. As years went by, the day
became associ-ated with love. This notion was reinforced by the
idea that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating
season.
FEATUREARTICLEby ShirleyBaugher
www.fawchicago.org • Friends of American Writers Newsletter
3
Continued
THE STORY
BEHIND
VALENTINE’S
DAY
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Written Valentines began to appear after 1400. The oldest known
valentine was a poem written in 1415 by the Duke of Orleans to his
wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. This poem is
now part of the manuscript collection in the London British
Library. Several years later, King Henry V hired John Lydgate to
compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois. The practice of
sending valentines to a loved one grew until today an entire
industry has grown up around the produc-tion and distribution of
valentine cards. In the United States in 1840, a woman named Esther
Howland began selling mass-produced valentines made with lace,
ribbons, and colorful pictures. By 1900, printed cards had replaced
handwritten notes.
Today, Valentine’s Day is widely celebrated in the United
States, Canada, Great Britain, France, and Australia. An estimated
one billion Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year—making
Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the
year. Christmas is fi rst with 2.6 billion cards sent. Women
purchase about 85 percent of all valentines sold.
Ten Things You Didn’t Know Happened on Valentine’s Day
▲ Captain James Cook was killed in Hawaii on Valen-tine’s Day in
1779.
In 1779, The Battle of Kettle Creek occurred in Georgia during
the American Revolution. Four hundred patriots launched an at-tack
on 800 Loyalists. The patriot militia scored a decisive
victory.
On February 14, 1859, Presi-dent James Buchanan signed a decree
admitting Oregon to the Union.
On February 14, 1876, Alex-ander Graham Bell applied for and
received a telephone patent, beating out a rival by just a few
hours.
William Tecumseh Sherman, hero of the Civil War best remembered
for his march from Atlanta to the Sea, died on February 14 1891
inside his home on New York’s upper West Side.
On Valentine’s Day 1912, Ari-zona became a state—more than fi
fty years after Oregon joined the Union.
Labor leader Jim-
my Hoffa was born on February 14, 1913.
On February 14, 1945, in the fi nal months of World War II,
British and American forces launched a deadly attack on Dresden,
the historic capital of the German state of Saxony.
Israel’s fi rst parliament, the Knesset, met on February 14,
1949 presided over by its fi rst president, Chaim Weizmann.
American First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy con-ducted a memorable
tour of the White House on February 14, 1962.
4 Friends of American Writers Newsletter •
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www.fawchicago.org • Friends of American Writers Newsletter
5
Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge Evan S. ConnelReview by ROBERTA
GATES
There are two sides to every story, and no one knows that better
than Evan S. Connell, the author of Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge.
These are not new books—Mrs. Bridge came out in 1959 and Mr. Bridge
in 1969—but they’ve attained the status of classics and are well
worth the read, especially by anyone who’s ever wondered what’s
going on in the head of a spouse. Why? Be-cause these dueling
narratives show us that while the simple concerns of Mrs. Bridge
appear insignifi cant to her husband, they’re not—and vice
versa.
Using vignettes that focus on an event, an image or a
conversational fragment, Connell gives us more than 100 very short
chapters in each book which describe the trivia of every-day life.
For Mrs. Bridge, this might involve chaperoning a school dance or
dealing with a magazine salesman or learning to park the Lincoln
her husband gives her for her birthday and which “she drives as
prudently as she would . . . a locomotive.” Mr. Bridge, on the
other hand, spends his time examining his stock certifi cates,
discussing cases with his secretary or instructing his son to get a
haircut (to which his son replies that he cannot because “his
external being would not then be in harmony with his in-ner self”).
The Bridges are regulars at their country club, they see their
friends often, and once they even take a trip to Europe. Yet,
without really meaning to, they lose touch with each other.
As Mr. Bridge’s law practice fl ourishes, a live-in housekeeper
is hired and the laundry is sent out. Then the children grow up,
and Mrs. Bridge fi nds herself without much to do. In an attempt to
fi ll her time, she takes up painting, attempts to learn
Spanish and volunteers once a week at the charity center, but
nothing provides much relief. “It had been a long time, she felt,
since her husband had truly needed her. He accepted her, and he
loved her, of this she had never had a doubt, but he was
ac-customed to and quite unconscious of love, whereas she wanted
him to think about it and tell her about it.”
And how is Mr. Bridge faring on the other side of the equation?
Not much better, as he admits to himself when, in a rare moment of
contem-plation, he refl ects that his life had not begun until he
knew her. “She would like to hear this, he was sure, but he did not
know how to tell her. . . . So the years passed, they had three
children and accustomed themselves to a life together, and
eventually Mr. Bridge decided that his wife should expect nothing
more of him. After all, he was an attorney rather than a poet . . .
“
Like all of us, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge are complicated beings, but
in their quiet estrangement, they can only guess at the wealth of
thoughts and feelings contained in the other. They are like
icebergs, revealing only their quotidian tip while their deep-est,
truest selves are buried below.
The Reading Corner
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward as Mr. and Mrs. Bridge
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6 Friends of American Writers Newsletter •
www.fawchicago.org
SHIRLEY BAUGHER1710 N. Crilly CourtChicago, IL 60614
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