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Dale M. Kushner
The Conditions of Love
July 2013 - Dale M. Kushner
Communing with readers at Arcadia Books
by Dale M. Kushner | July 21st, 2013
I'm way overdue reporting on my joyous reading at Arcadia Books in downtown Spring Green, WI on a beautiful Sunday afternoon on June 23. Spring Green is a destination point for Frank Lloyd Wright fans who come to tour his Wisconsin home,Taliesen, and to see the fabulous American Players Theatre repertory company do Shakespeare, Miller, Brecht and other classics, but Arcadia Books should be a destination all on its own.
The store opened in 2011 and I gather is part of a very intriguing trend. Arcadia doesn't just offer books. It also has a café with a decidedly local flavor. "The Kitchen" features Wisconsin beer and cheese and its pizza even uses locally sourced flour! I love that the chef uses cookbooks from the store to teach "Cook the Book" cooking classes.
This should be a model for how local stores can thrive. Little signs dot the store, "Read it here. Buy it here. Keep us here." Housed In what was once the Spring Green post office, built in 1872, with high ceilings and big windows, Arcadia has a wonderful small town ambience. The store takes its name from the Tom Stoppard play, a favorite of its owner, James Bohnen, who also frequently directs plays at the nearby American Players Theatre.
In addition to great food, I'm sure one of the reasons Arcadia is such a popular community hangout is the geniality of its manager, John Christensen, who immediately made me feel right at home. He claims that Arcadia has "the best poetry case in the state," which of course endeared him to me. It was so sweet to see the reading room fill with interested, animated locals, coming to hear me read when they could be anywhere else on such a sunny afternoon. These were true readers, which I came to appreciate as they peppered me with questions. One that really made me think was something like "How did I deal with an editor's suggestion to revise or cut material?" I responded truthfully: for every cut or revision I asked myself, Will this add to or diminish from the integrity of the whole? How does the editor's vision line up with mine? Some of my decisions came easily, I realized, but to address some queries I had to shift things around before I was satisfied.
I owe a lot to readers like this one who help me understand my own process in hindsight. My gratitude to such thoughtful folks and their beguiling curiosities. But back to Arcadia Books! If you happen to be near Spring Green, be sure to put it on your list of places to visit.
Tags: Arcadia Books, book readings, Spring Green, The Conditions of Love
One of the Ten "Best Damn Books of 2013 (So Far)"
by Dale M. Kushner | July 15th, 2013
Cortnee Howard is the creator of the irreverent and infectiously addictive literary blog, The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog, where she has been interviewing authors, reporting on publishing news, and reviewing new works of fiction for some five years now. Recently, she compiled her list of "The Best Damn Books of 2013 (So Far)" and I'm thrilled and honored that she selected The Conditions of Love to be one of them. Thanks, Cortnee! And what a great crew to be part of. Now I'm eager to read my nine damn buddies.
Books That Changed My Life
What a task! Choose three books that changed your life. That's what Jeanne Kolker from the State Journal wanted from me. It was hard. The three I chose were The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank; On Lies, Secrets, and Silence by Adrienne Rich; and The Lover by Marguerite Duras. You can read why I chose them in WSJ's "Just Read It" Sunday column.
But before I was a reader, I was a listener; I was a little girl with a vivid imagination and a penchant for fairy tales. The horrible, beautiful, compelling pitch of Claire Bloom's voice reading Snow White is still in my ears. Likewise, I can still hear the tremulous narrator of Peter and The Wolf. These were on old vinyl records my mother played for me. I'm musing now—did these enchanting introductions to story and voice and to the musical sounds of words give birth to my writer-self? How I became a writer is still a mystery to me!
What books changed your life?
Being interviewed
The thing about being interviewed is that it IS all about you, which takes some getting used to! But now that I've been interviewed by two skillful, thought-provoking radio talk show hosts—I'm looking at you Anne Strainchamps and Stephanie Lecci—I'm accumulating a list of WHY I ENJOY BEING INTERVIEWED.
Of course, it starts with the interviewers. When Anne asked me at the top of our 45-minute chat for 45 North, "what's your book about?" I had to laugh. How could I possibly condense everything into a short sound bite. But, you know, it's good to be asked to focus on what the story is and what was it that kept me wanting to return to these characters every day for so many years.
Stephanie had many great questions as well. When she asked me whether Eunice learns how to deal with loss – well, that just reminded me what's so great about novels. You get to spend time with the characters and see how they change over time. In the third section, I believe that Eunice learns how not to get stuck in the past—she finds how to cultivate things that bring her joy. And I realized that I didn't know it was going to turn out that way when I began. And that's what great about writing novels.
But the best part of being interviewed is that these two incredibly perceptive readers connected me with a whole universe of other readers who I suspect—and hope–will see some of themselves in my story. Most of us write because we have a story to tell. That story, however personal or fabricated, emerges from our shared human experience. Mother troubles, love-life dilemmas, accidents, illness: my story is also your story in a slightly different version—is also her story, his story, their story.
Writers may work in solitude, but we are connected by invisible means to the pulse beat of humanity. Being interviewed has put me in touch with just how true this is. After one interview, a usually reserved and private woman approached me and whispered, "That happened to me too." This is what most fiction writers live to hear: how our imaginations have created a world so rich and complicated it feels like real life.
If you haven't read the book, I'm hoping you'll hear something in these interviews to make you want to give TCOL a spin. And if you have read it, I'm curious whether your takeaways in any way resemble mine. In any event, take a listen and let me know what you think.
My interview with Anne Strainchamps on 45 North — June 14, 2013
My interview with Stephanie Lecci for Lake Effect WPR (WUWM) — June 28, 2013
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