Last week I was in New Orleans.  As I have done on every trip there, I visited the Faulkner House.  The society is located in a house in the French Quarter on Pirate’s Alley, that William Faulkner lived in while writing Soldier’s Pay.  The ground floor hosts a hidden bookstore, of which the proprieter, Rosemary, likes to stock with almost all hardcovers.  It’s a great bookstore and one way I like to support redevelopment in New Orleans, by spending my money there.  But the Faulkner House is special to me beyond the house and store.

I credit Rosemary and the annual literary competition the Faulkner House sponsors with helping me publish The Sign for Drowning.  In 2005 I submitted the novel to their competition and was thrilled to find myself on the finalists list, and shortly thereafter named 2nd runner-up for best novel that year.  I was to attend the conference that November as an almost winner.  Katrina and the devastating flooding occured that September.   This was and continues to be a huge tragedy for the entire city and particularly the Lower 9th Ward.  It was with great pleasure that the Faulkner House’s conference, Words and Music got back on it’s feet a year later and hosted a couple hundred writers, including myself.   As I got ready to head to NO in November 06, I was in discussion with my now agent, Joelle Delbourgo- still waiting to hear if she would take me on as a new client.  Rosemary, in addition to organizing dozens of workshops, performances, panels, lunches, dinners, hotel arrangments, etc. actually gets editors and agents to schedule meetings with attending writers- and read their work in advance!  I, not so innocently, thought I should inform Joelle that I’d be meeting a few agents while in New Orleans, and it worked.  She offered me her representation and I accepted- and publication shortly followed.  

Rosemary’s and the Faulkner House’s generous support didn’t stop there either.  Bret Lott was the judge of the novel category in 2005, and graciously consented to write a blurb for my novel.  (This is truly it’s own international story of unlikely connections that I’ll have to blog about later.)  I also met Julia Glass, a favorite writer of mine, whose novel Three Junes had been a Faulkner winner in previous years, at the conference in 2006.  A year later when my ARC was ready, she agreed to read it, and wrote a blurb which I am honored to have received.

If you are a writer of novels, novellas, short stroies, poems, or essays, I highly recommend submitting your work to the William Wisdom- William Faulkner Literary Competition.  And whether you do or not, visit New Orleans, visit Faulkner House, spend some money in this beautiful, historic American city, volunteer if you can, common ground, donate if you can, makeitright

You’ll be the richer for it.

There is a pun in this blog entry title.  Coincidentally, when my parents took us as small children to England, my sister and I saw a streaker on the street in London and were inspired to streak in the halls of our hotel that night.  But here I am referring to a reading streak.

I recently went on a furious McEwan streak.  Last year, I enjoyed the great fortune of Bret Lott comparing my novel to The Child in Time by Ian McEwan.  When I first saw his blurb I was dismayed- embarrassed really.  I asked my publisher if it was allowed!  It was.  My British friend, Alan, calls me the American McEwan- very sarcastically.  Anyway- it was very kind of Lott- and I hadn’t read the book.  I’d read Atonement, Amsterdam and Enduring Love and loved them all, but I hadn’t actually heard of the much earlier- A Child in Time.  I ran out and read it and loved it as well and I admit- I could see how McEwan had grown.  This summer, I decided to finish off McEwan.  I began with The Cement Garden- a very slim and distubing novel- and excellent.  And then Saturday and On Chesil Beach.  Saturday is self-referential and drops a line about The Child in Time.  Which felt like McEwan was winking at me personally.  On Chesil Beach utterly surprised me when I assumed I knew what takes place in a post-nuptial hotel room.  McEwan is a master craftsman.

I hopped over to Ireland, like a Brit on holiday.  A lot of years ago I read Roddy Doyle’s, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors.  I thought he was little known and that I’d discovered a gem.  I kept my copy, but didn’t need to.  The book was totally unforgettable for me, but I failed to keep reading Doyle.  A week ago I read Paula Spencer, the woman (who walked into doors) and the sequel.  Even though perhaps a decade has passed, the first book leapt up in my mind and I couldn’t get enough of seeing what happened to Paula and her children.  I feel I could read a serial a day about the family for the rest of my life. 

But one thing got me.  The Irish critics on the back of the book said the book was hysterical, so much fun, a great laugh.  Now, I’m not Irish but I thought myself capable of catching tone.  This book about a physically abused alcoholic woman and her alcoholic child wasn’t “so much fun.”  Maybe in retrospect it had a lot of humor.  

But who could say, when two nights ago I finished The Snapper- and was laughing out loud all the way through.

As everybody already knows, Roddy Doyle can friggin write.

Last night I sat in my car for twenty minutes and listened to Frank McCourt on NPR taped in 2005.  He re-framed the memoir with Angela’s Ashes, giving it the credibility and linguistic beauty of any prose, and raising the bar for all memoirists I think.  And he’s more than lovely to listen to on the air as well, as his many NYC students could attest.  As Roddy Doyle would say, he’s grand.

I don’t think I’ll be leaving the United Kingdom just yet.