All posts by Francesca Rheannon

About Francesca Rheannon

Francesca Rheannon is an award-winning independent radio producer. In addition to hosting Writer's Voice, she's a freelance reporter for National Public Radio and its affiliates. Recipient of the prestigious Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award for reporting on substance abuse issues for her news series, VOICES OF HIV, produced for 88.5 WFCR public radio in western Massachusetts. She is also finishing a book on Provence (PROVINCE OF THE HEART) and working on a memoir of her father, THE ARGONAUTS.

Podcast

EVERY PAST THING and AMERICAN BLOOMSBURY

We talk with author Susan Cheever about AMERICAN BLOOMSBURY and Pamela Thompson tells us about her debut novel, EVERY PAST THING.

Today’s show begins in the early nineteenth century and ends in that century’s last year-November, 1899. We start our time travel with our first guest Susan Cheever. She takes us to Concord, MA where a “genius cluster” of great American writers gathered around Ralph Waldo Emerson. Her book is AMERICAN BLOOMSBURY: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work. She says these writers, popularly known as “The Transcendentalists”, invented a new form of American literature that often came from the yearnings, erotic passions, and disappointments they so deeply felt. Cheever tells us about the ambivalent relationship between Emerson and Thoreau, how Nathanial Hawthorne turned his despair into THE SCARLET LETTER and why Louisa May Alcott began writing LITTLE WOMEN. The daughter of the American writer John Cheever, Susan Cheever is the also the author of the memoir AS GOOD AS I COULD BE, published in 2001, as well as numerous other books.

“Every past thing becomes strange.” That’s how the protagonist of Pamela Thompson’s debut novel EVERY PAST THING begins the journal she writes within the book. Mary Jane Elmer is a young woman in 1899 who’s come to New York from Shelburne, Massachusetts with her husband, the painter Edwin Romanzo Elmer. She and Edwin are still mourning the death of their young daughter, Effie, but Mary Jane’s thoughts are also taken up by her romantic longings for a young student with whom she had a brief encounter 10 years before. Thompson’s novel covers only the course of a week, but the boook’s depth and beautiful prose takes the reader on a far and satisfying journey. Pamela Thompson lives in western Massachusetts.

Podcast

EVERY PAST THING, by Pamela Thompson

EVERY PAST THING, by Pamela Thompson

(excerpt by permission of the author and publisher)

Publisher: Unbridled Books; 1 edition (September 29, 2007)

It isn’t like they say—whoever they be—about Death, or about Knowledge.

That is Edwin’s first thought, on his back, under the apple tree, looking up at the blue sky. The frightening, dear sky. If he is dead, then life has not been so unusual. Is not so strange? Is not so different? The sky, with wisps of clouds like the feathers poking through his pillowcases. These wisps, he sees first. These wisps, and then a spinning darkness, all this world a spinning darkness and the wisps flecks, dancing. He might have caught the branch. He should have been able to catch the branch. But he had not even tried. He had not thought it—necessary. He had leaned—far. He must have been holding to a thin branch overhead, and to the hand-saw. He must have leaned. He must have leaned—too far. He was confused. Up down and down up, and in that case what is gravity, or the distinction between one being and the next. It was as if he were apple tree, as if he grew out of the trunk, a branch from the trunk, which grew from the earth, so heading toward the earth no different from growing out of it. He must have—he opens his eyes again to the sky, the wisps—he must have been holding on to the branch he cut. He must have cut off his own support. He tries to lift his arms to see how he had held them in the air, the saw in his right hand, left hand choosing the branch to prune—but his arms are too heavy, the confusion of lifting and arranging them too great.

So much effort. And the world would not have cared a whit whether some hypothetical apples might one day next spring have had their start in pink-white buds in the space he had made for them in the upper reaches of the tree. He will not see the spring. And that, too, an inconsequence. That one apple falls or a man lives or dies. He in his orchard. Others—elsewhere. Elsewhere, where the river rushes toward the falls, and farther, in all the cities and places he has never been.

I am so small,” he says. “So small.”

His words, barely a whisper, do not ruffle the air, do not make any more dent in the landscape than the fallen branches. Tiny nubs of green that will not unfurl. He wants to laugh—to see things come to this. Trees, limbs, ground. That is—he feels laughter in him, but no sound comes.

He will stay on the ground. Unless Mary rescues him. But she will not notice his absence until dinner. No reason for it. And it will turn dark before then, so he’d better save breath enough to call out when she comes looking. By then he may not be—

The ground is so cold. His limbs start to shake. He must be alive. Death surely a more significant rupture. He lives—or he cannot explain the facts: the sky, the cold, his shivering. He laughs, but no sound comes. The sky floats above and he is pinned below, captive, a chattering form upon the earth. If he cannot get himself up, he will die here.

I will die here,” he tries aloud.

But his words do not rend the air. He knows that. Knows that this is the end, and is surprised to find that death is so funny. But a private joke. After all—this. What all foolishness comes to. A figure prone upon the earth. He might have left the last tree a bit shaggier than the others.

Yet why not die? He had not known before how easy it would be. He sees how she could have slipped from them so quietly. Though not like sleep. Not a closing like that, but—something else. His bones shake so hard he is—are—pieces. Pieces see through skin to separate bones, feel each distinct from every other, as if he have not sinew or muscle or flesh. He know then, has not broken the sticks and pegs that hold him together. Failure not mechanical. Something else. Dissolution of the spirit. Shattering of—self. He is not—what he had thought himself to be.

He draws a great gasp of air. Arms try again—lift. This arm, this hand with fingers, must have dropped the saw. Fingers bend and unbend: Try to hold. Roll bones to one side. Knees tuck. Gather self. Must gather self. All selves. Laughs again, but no sound comes. Miracle all along it had been. Miracle all along to have held himself in one body. Parts could so easily have gone off on their own, kept their own time. (Something multiplies deep inside him.) Grass blades poke eyes. Other parts, probably, but they do not report. Only eyes mind. Sharp. Strips of viridian too blue. Gold and pink if sun slant under trees. Sun slant and wrap him. Sun slant and wrap and turn him into the earth.

Podcast

Norman Solomon and Valerie Martin

Valerie Martin
Valerie Martin
Normon Solomon
Normon Solomon

We talk with veteran journalist and commentator Normon Solomon about his memoir, [amazon-product text=”Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State” type=”text”]0977825345[/amazon-product].

Read an excerpt of his book here.

Also, we talk with novelist Valerie Martin about her wonderful new novel, [amazon-product text=”TRESPASS” type=”text”]1400095514[/amazon-product]. Some of Martin’s other novels include [amazon-product text=”The Confessions of Edward Day” type=”text”]0385525842[/amazon-product] (2009) and [amazon-product text=”Mary Reilly” type=”text”]0375725997[/amazon-product].

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DEEP WATER and DAM NATION

We examine water policy: functional and dysfunctional approaches. Journalist Jacques Leslie talks about DEEP WATER: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People and the Environment.

And gray water activists and editors Cleo Woelfle-Erskine and July Oskar Cole tell us how we can conserve water. The book they edited, along with Laura Allen is DAM NATION: Dispatches From The Water Underground.

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Frances Moore Lappe on GETTING A GRIP and more…

Ever since her ground-breaking book, DIET FOR A SMALL PLANET, Frances Moore LappÁ© has been showing how each of us can change the world for the better. We talk to her about her latest, GETTING A GRIP: Clarity, Creativity & Courage in a World Gone Mad.

Also, we play a clip from a Writer’s Voice field trip: Susie Patlove reading from her new chapbook, QUICKENING.

(Apologies: the audio for this episode is temporarily unavailable.)

Podcast

Les Leopold and Richard Michelson

Richard Michelson
Richard Michelson
Les Leopold
Les Leopold

We talk with Les Leopold about his terrific biography of labor leader and environmentalist Tony Mazzochi: [amazon-product text=”The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi” type=”text”]1933392649[/amazon-product].

We also recently interviewed Les Leopold about his new book, THE LOOTING OF AMERICA. You can listen to his July 2009 interview.

Also, poet and children’s book author Richard Michelson talks about his new book, [amazon-product text=”Tuttles Red Barn.” type=”text”]0399243542[/amazon-product]

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Dahr Jamail, BEYOND THE GREEN ZONE

Dahr Jamail

Dahr Jamail, BEYOND THE GREEN ZONE: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq.

Dahr Jamail was perhaps the only American journalist to remain unembedded long after other reporters holed up in the Green Zone. In BEYOND THE GREEN ZONE he exposes the impact of the war and US occupation on the lives of ordinary Iraqi civilians.

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Jewish Book Fair Authors

We talk about to two writers featured at the 2007 Springfield Jewish Book Fair: David M. Gross, author of FAST COMPANY: A Memoir of Life, Love, and Motorcycles in Italy and Alana Newhouse on A LIVING LENS: Photographs of Jewish Life from the Pages of the Forward.

Supported by a grant from the Jewish Arts & Culture Initiative of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation.

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Writer’s Voice Listener Web Quiz

QUESTION: Writer’s Voice interviewed Alana Newhouse about A LIVING LENS: Photographs of Jewish Life from the Pages of the Forward. Newhouse mentioned a letter that was given to Edward Jacobsen. Who was the letter from?

The first listener who sends in the correct answer to our email address will be the lucky winner of the inaugural edition of our Listener Web Quiz! Send it along with your address to writersvoice@wmua.org

Podcast

Alan Weisman & Katharine Weber

Alan Weisman talks about his acclaimed book THE WORLD WITHOUT US.

Also, Katharine Weber tells us about her novel, TRIANGLE. Katharine Weber was a featured author at the 2007 Springfield (Massachusetts) Jewish Book Fair.

Thanks to the Harold Grinspoon Foundation for supporting our series of authors featured at the 2007 Jewish Book Fair.