Bukowski in a Sundress {+ Giveaway}

I’m delighted to welcome award-winning poet and novelist Kim Addonizio here today to talk about her upcoming release BUKOWSKI IN A SUNDRESS: Confessions from a Writing Life (Penguin Books, on sale June 21).

BUKOWSKI IN A SUNDRESS is a collection of essays by Kim, who has been called “one of our nation’s most provocative and edgy poets” (San Diego Union). Her first foray into memoir, BUKOWSKI IN A SUNDRESS is a raw and uncensored depiction of her life– the good, the bad, and the hilarious. Thanks to the lovely Jessica and the wonderful folks at Viking/Penguin Books, I have a print copy to giveaway. Please see the end of the post for more giveaway details.

If Nora Ephron and Amy Schumer had a baby, it would sound a lot like Kim Addonizio. Like Mary Karr before her, Kim turns her poet’s sensibility to the art of memoir. In BUKOWSKI IN A SUNDRESS: Confessions from a Writing Life (A Penguin Paperback Original; On-sale: June 21; 9780143128465; $16), Kim gives readers a backstage look at her life in letters—the good, the bad, and the hilarious. From surviving alcohol-fueled hook-ups at writer’s conferences to explaining the appearance of one of her stories in Penthouse to her teenage daughter to visiting her mother in the Geriatric Psych Ward, Kim writes with verve and candor about love, lust, family, and her career.

 Equally compelling are the poignant and often uproarious stories about Kim’s family and romantic partners. Kim writes honestly and empathetically about her tennis champ mother whom she assisted through old age, her father who instilled in her a love of poetry, and her now adult daughter. Along the way, readers meet boyfriends, flings, and ex-husbands, all wrought in exquisite detail. With a glass of wine in hand, Kim chronicles the joys and indignities of being a writer, the optimistic bloom of new love followed by the crushing low of its unraveling, and the emotional obstacle course of familial ties. 

At once intimate and outrageous, BUKOWSKI IN A SUNDRESS is a seductive cocktail of wit, heart, and utter originality. BUKOWSKI IN A SUNDRESS has already gotten some fantastic pre-pub praise. Kirkus called the book an “unrelenting, authentic, literary midnight confession” while Booklist described Kim as “a secular Anne Lamott, a spiritual aunt to Lena Dunham.”

Here’s a Q & A with Kim provided by the publisher.

As you are, as you say, a writer occasionally tarred with the brush of being a “confessional poet,” readers often think that the details in your poems are entirely true. But here, you admit that you’re guilty of lying your head off in poems and that you “just plain make shit up.” With nonfiction—especially memoir—there’s an expectation from the reader that it has to be God’s honest truth. Is essay writing more difficult for you, given that you can’t get to the truth by “lying” the way you can in poetry and fiction?

Kim:

Essays are definitely trickier. In a poem or a piece of fiction, I can change things to shape a story or an idea, or just make the whole thing up.  In an essay, I have to find the story in what actually happened.  The heart of the piece has to emerge out of memory and lived experience. The fidelity in a poem or story is to emotional truth.  That’s true in memoir, too, but I’m trying as much as possible to say what happened and how it felt. Though often it was less funny at the time.  It seems to me you can tell all the facts but still lie in terms of the emotion, and there’s a fine line when you’re using humor. The thing is, I do find much of my experience funny in retrospect. Thank God.

Were there any parts of your life that you felt were off limits for this memoir? How did you go about shaping the book?

Kim:

Hey, even “confessional” writers have their secrets! That said, I was focused on how to structure the book around both writing and life, and giving weight to each of those things—which for me are so intertwined they often feel inseparable. I had a very different manuscript originally, one that revealed a lot about the ending of a long-term relationship.  It wasn’t until I hit on that writing/life dynamic that I was able to finish the book.  And now I’m glad all that other stuff didn’t end up being in it—partly because I didn’t want to be unkind to that person. Revenge memoirs probably aren’t a good idea.  You need to step back at a certain point.

Many of the essays in Bukowski in a Sundress explore the tender albeit fickle nature of familial relationships. You write about an estranged brother, the difficulties in caring for an aging mother, and striving to protect your own daughter from the world’s impurities (especially the erotica you once wrote for Penthouse). How has your family directly or indirectly informed your writing? 

Kim:

Both my parents, as it happened, wrote books—my mother a tennis guide and her autobiography, and my father a memoir called Sportswriter.  Writing was something I saw my Dad do, growing up.  He’d sit at the kitchen table typing his column for the Washington Post.  Yet literature wasn’t valued in our house.  It was my family’s focus on sports that led me to reading, where I found a world I could inhabit. Mostly I found my own way as a writer, without parental support or understanding of what I was aiming for (my father died as I was just starting down that road). Now that they’re both gone, the only person I worry about is my daughter, Aya. I guess she already knows most of my faults, but still. And then there’s the sex stuff, which no kid wants to read when it features a parent.

  

In addition to being a prolific writer, you’ve played harmonica in various bands. The relationship between music and writing—especially poetry—has long been a continuous one. Does focusing your creative energy on other arts like music affect your writing process, or is it more of an escape? 

Kim:

Music, especially the blues, has definitely influenced my poetry and my performance of it. I don’t think that’s true of my prose. And music is also, definitely, an escape sometimes, a room to go into when the writing isn’t happening. Studying music also reminds me of how much work goes into any creative endeavor, and reminds me that if I keep working, I’ll get closer to solving the problems of a particular piece of writing.

You were once characterized as “Charles Bukowski in a sundress.” Given the level of regard Bukowski is afforded in prestigious literary circles, it’s hard to believe the comparison was meant as a compliment. In the collection, you express your preferences for other characterizations, like “Gerald Manley Hopkins in a bomber jacket,” “Walt Whitman in a sparkly tutu,” or “Emily Dickinson with a strap-on.” Are you still adverse to the Bukowski comparison? How do you confront the unfair, petty, or sometimes belittling criticisms that writers often face, especially women writers?

Kim:

Of course I’m being facetious about those comparisons. I guess it’s human nature to put people into categories—which is useful, but can be limiting or reductive. I’m always open to honest criticism. As for unfair, petty, and belittling critics, I say, Fuck you. Because that’s what they’re saying to me. And yes, women writers—don’t get me started! Right now I’m rereading Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me. She talks about silencing and “the necessity of making women credible and audible.” That’s what it’s about, on the personal, the cultural, the societal level. We could bring race and class and sexuality into this, too. Why was #BlackLivesMatter necessary? Because everyone knows that those lives, in so many ways that play out every day, don’t matter as they should.

You write candidly about your romantic relationships. What was it like to commune with the ghosts of relationships past? Did you gain any new insights into these men or yourself in the process?

Kim:

Maybe this circles back, in some way, to the first question about “God’s honest truth.” There’s so much left out of all of those stories, and while they’re true, it’s impossible to tell, or understand, the whole story of those relationships and what they meant. I’m an awfully slow learner in terms of romantic love. I don’t seem to know how to make it work. It would help, for starters, if I knew how to get a date with someone who was actually in the ballpark.  The men I’ve encountered in the past few years aren’t even in the parking lot having a tailgate party. That probably, actually, says a lot about the work I’ve got to do on myself.  But I’m lazy that way. I’d rather write.

Author Kim Addonizio

Kim Addonizio is an award-winning author of fiction, essays, and poetry. She has received numerous honors for her work, including the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her poetry collection Tell Me was a finalist for the National Book Award, and she has won Pushcart Prizes for both poetry and prose. She is also the author of two hugely successful guides for beginning poets, The Poet's Companion and Ordinary Genius, and has taught writing workshops in New York City, the Bay Area, and at conferences across the country.

For more on Kim and her writing, visit her website and connect with her with Twitter and Goodreads.

Thanks to the lovely Jessica and the wonderful folks at Viking/Penguin Books, I have one print copy of BUKOWSKI IN A SUNDRESS: Confessions from a Writing Life by Kim Addonizio to giveaway. The giveaway is open to residents of the U.S. only and will end at 12 a.m. (EST) on Monday, June 20.

To enter the giveaway, just click on the Rafflecopter widget below and follow the instructions. The widget may take a few seconds to load so please be patient. A winner will be selected by the Rafflecopter widget and I’ll send an email with the subject line “Thoughts in Progress Giveaway.” The winner will have 72 hours to reply to the email or another winner will be selected. PLEASE be sure to check your spam folder from time to time after the giveaway ends to make sure the notification email doesn’t end up there. If you win and you’ve already won the book somewhere else or you just decided for whatever reason you don’t want to win (which is fine), once again PLEASE let me know.

Thanks so much for stopping by today. Do you enjoy reading memoirs? If so, what draws you to them?

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Finding Fontainebleau {+ Giveaway}

It’s a pleasure to welcome author Thad Carhart here today to talk about his wonderful new memoir FINDING FONTAINEBLEAU: An American Boy in France (Viking; on sale May 17), the beguiling story of a childhood in 1950s France from the much-admired New York Times bestselling author of The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, intertwined with the history of the imposing Château of Fontainebleau over the centuries.

This is the perfect read for Francophiles, memoir fans and European history buffs, and anyone who’s interested in France beyond Paris. Thanks to Emma and the wonderful folks at Viking/Penguin Books, I have a print copy to giveaway. Please see the end of the post for more giveaway details.

FINDING FONTAINEBLEAU recounts the adventures of Thad and his family—his NATO officer father, his mother, four siblings, and their dog—in the provincial town of Fontainebleau, France. Dominating life in the town is the beautiful Château of Fontainebleau, and the book intertwines stories of France’s post-war recovery with profiles of the monarchs who resided at Fontainebleau throughout the centuries and left their architectural stamp on the palace and its sizeable grounds. Years after his family moves back to the States, Thad finds himself drawn back as an adult, eager to rediscover the town of his childhood, and in FINDING FONTAINEBLEAU he shares both his memories and his new discoveries with warmth and humor.

FINDING FONTAINEBLEAU can be pre-ordered at PRH.com

Please join me now in a prepared conversation with Thad.

Many parts of FINDING FONTAINEBLEAU are written in the same vein as The Piano Shop on the Left Bank. What do you feel are the similarities, and the differences?

Thad:

I’ve been very lucky with The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, an international bestseller that is still in print. A writer is never entirely sure why a book captures the public’s imagination, but I think a big part of Piano Shop’s appeal has been the look at French life away from the familiar tourist circuit. It’s not that easy to get below the surface of things in France, and readers seem to have been hungry for stories about a French approach to things in Paris. In this respect, Finding Fontainebleau has a similar voice and scope, though the setting of the little Parisian shop is replaced by our family’s big old rented house in Fontainebleau and the adjacent Château.

What separates the two books is a focus in Finding Fontainebleau on France in the 50s, as experienced by an American family. The period covered is greater, too, moving back and forth from my childhood to more recent times, when my wife and I settled in Paris and raised our own children here.

A point both books share is the story of two Frenchmen – the shop’s owner, Luc, in Piano Shop; the Château’s chief architect, Patrick Ponsot, in Finding Fontainebleau – who go about their business with a seriousness of purpose coupled with an abiding sense of light humor that could only be French. While Finding Fontainebleau is in no way intended as a kind of “prequel” to Piano Shop, I like to think of them as companion volumes, drawing the reader in to aspects of French life that are otherwise inaccessible.

You’ve lived in Paris for more than 25 years and could have chosen any number of subjects that are better known. Why write about Fontainebleau?

Thad:

The short answer is that I lived there as a child, and so there has always been a gravitational pull to a place that had such a strong effect on my early life. The longer response is that I came to understand the extraordinary importance of Fontainebleau as a site only as an adult. In that sense my arc has been from the happenstance of childhood to the appreciation than an adult can bring to bear only after learning much more about France.

I’ve visited most of the great châteaux of France over the years – Versailles, of course, but also Chambord, Chenonceaux, Vaux-le-Vicomte, Chantilly, and many others. I have my favorites, naturally enough, but for me there is no site quite so rich, storied, or delightful as Fontainebleau. By turns a hunting lodge, château, palace, seat of government, and museum, it is the single greatest assemblage of successive architectural styles and decorative arts in all of France. If a visitor to France wants to understand the richness and breadth of French history, no structure tells the story better than the multiple wings and courtyards of Fontainebleau.

The Château is one of the oldest places continually occupied by the kings of France, a direct connection to medieval times. For example, Thomas à Becket, the exiled Archbishop of Canterbury, consecrated the original chapel at Fontainebleau in 1169. A line of rulers favored Fontainebleau from the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance, the French Baroque, the Enlightenment, and past the Revolution to the two Napoleons of the 19^th century, and each left his mark. Now the French Republic attends to its treasures on behalf of the people of France.

My story is two-fold: the account of living in this remarkable town as a boy, going to French schools, visiting Paris on weekends; and my return to the Château as a grown-up when I was able to witness significant parts of the ongoing restoration of its rooms by French experts. What I share in this account is my discovery of Fontainebleau’s unique legacy when I was allowed behind the scenes. It is where the Renaissance was first brought to northern France, and those treasures, like so many others, are once again intact and accessible to the visitor. I think there’s an inherent allure about the site that will capture the imagination of readers once they know the contours of the story.

Why is it that Fontainebleau isn’t better known?

Thad:

The simplest reason, I think, is that Versailles occupies the field as the “go to” château for visitors to Paris. But the reasons are in fact more complex than that. No single personality or period is associated with Fontainebleau, as is the case with Louis XIV and Versailles. One of Fontainebleau’s most attractive features is the fact that an unbroken continuum of French art, style, and architecture can be seen intact.

A particularly French notion of restraint infuses the rooms: grand, certainly, but seldom showy. Nor does the Château dominate the landscape when seen from afar, in the manner of Chambord or Versailles. Rather, when a visitor spends a day there, she or he takes in an accumulation of styles that are distinctive in themselves, but that magically cohere into a pleasing whole. Fontainebleau’s subtleties are multiple, creating an atmosphere that is both captivating and unique. It takes some time, and some imagination, to drink in its splendors, but a certain ambiance stays with you.

Your family arrived in Fontainebleau less than ten years after the war, and throughout Finding Fontainebleau there’s an almost palpable sense of the War and the Occupation in France. Why is this?

Thad:

I was born well after the war, so everything associated with it seemed to me at the time like ancient history. But of course a decade is not long at all in historical terms. It was only much later that I came to understand how World War II had shaken the entire country to its core. This was the France we arrived in, still recovering from the nightmare of defeat, privation, shortages, and the presence of the enemy on French soil for four long years. The bitter shame of having your country taken over by a foreign power isn’t something Americans experienced in the war, and that wound deeply marked a generation of the French.

The parts of my narrative that touch on this trauma are the things I noticed as a child: people picking up dropped pieces of coal from the gutter; the shock when my mother found that our babysitter was illiterate because of the war’s convulsions; the discovery that our house had been requisitioned for German officers during the Occupation. Only when I returned with my own children did I fully appreciate the remarkable achievement of the French in first surviving, then thriving as a nation. That, too, is part of the book’s story.

In FINDING FONTAINEBLEAU, as in your other books, you touch on the whole notion of living “in between” two languages, two countries, two cultures. Why is this important?

Thad:

My immersion in French during the years in Fontainebleau changed everything. Children aren’t given a vote in such matters; it just happened. As with anyone who grows up conversant in two languages, it altered the way I look at the world, in big ways and small. I was given a kind of alternative self, grounded in France and its attitudes. It meant that I developed a healthy skepticism for occasional French posturing, but also an abiding affection for a country that is far more beguiling than the prevalent ideas of many outsiders would suggest. I don’t regard myself as a missionary for things French, but I do enjoy telling stories that allow others to appreciate the human qualities that still set France apart.

Thad, thanks for joining us today and sharing this insight into your writing. It’s always good to know where an author is coming from, as well as background on the story’s beginning.

Author Thad Carhart - Photo Credit Simo Neri

Now for those who aren’t familiar with Thad, here’s a bit of background on him.

Twenty-six years ago THAD CARHART moved to Paris with his wife and two infant children. He lives there now, with periodic visits to New York and Northern California.

His first book, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, appeared in 2000, followed by Across the Endless River, a historical novel, in 2009.

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:

Thanks to the wonderful folks at Viking/Penguin Books, I have a print copy of FINDING FONTAINEBLEAU by Thad Carhart to giveaway. The giveaway is open to residents of the U.S. only and will end at 12 a.m. (EST) on Friday, May 20.

To enter the giveaway, just click on the Rafflecopter widget below and follow the instructions. The widget may take a few seconds to load so please be patient. A winner will be selected by the Rafflecopter widget and I’ll send an email with the subject line “Thoughts in Progress Giveaway.” The winner will have 72 hours to reply to the email or another winner will be selected. PLEASE be sure to check your spam folder from time to time after the giveaway ends to make sure the notification email doesn’t end up there. If you win and you’ve already won the book somewhere else or you just decided for whatever reason you don’t want to win (which is fine), once again PLEASE let me know.

Thanks so much for stopping by today during Thad’s visit. What are your thoughts on living “in between” two languages, two countries, two cultures? Would you like to live in France?

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