Tag Archives: authors

The Magicians by Lev Grossman: A Book Review

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Lev Grossman’s, The Magicians, 2009, was highlighted in a recent NPR feature on “Books for the Hogwart’s Grad.” It is an adult fantasy that begins with a 17 year old boy and does something no YA novel I’ve recently come upon has done – it nails what being 17 is really like.

On his way to a preliminary interview for admission to Princeton, Quentin Coldwater reflects on his life:  I should be happy, Quentin thought.  I’m young and alive and healthy.  I have good friends.  I have two reasonably intact parents…I am a solid member of the middle-middle class.  My GPA is a number higher than most people even realize it is possible for a GPA to be.  But walking along Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn…Quentin knew he wasn’t happy.  Why not?  He had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness…But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refused to come.  He couldn’t think what else to do.

In a passage that reminds me of my own adolescence, Quentin believes that “his real life, the life he should be living, had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy.  This couldn’t be it.  It had been diverted somewhere else, to somebody else, and he had been issued this shitty substitute faux life instead.”

When he finds the interviewer dead of a cerebral hemorrhage, events catapult Quentin into “the life he should be living,” with dizzying speed.  Walking by himself in the rain after finding the dead man, Quentin is transported to the upstate New York campus of the Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy.

Grossman clearly has chutzpah to write of a school of magic in a decade dominated by Harry Potter, but Brakebills has little to do with Hogwarts.  After a grueling entrance exam, Quentin begins his even more grueling, five year course of study with a small group of nerdy prodigies like himself.  He’s as slammed by as much work as any freshman at Harvard or MIT.  Magic becomes truly serious for Quentin when he casts a minor spell as a joke that sets off a chain reaction resulting in another student’s death.  Like people in the real world who make such mistakes in youth, he learns to live with the guilt and “move beyond,” but it never entirely goes away.

Quentin and a few other students begin to bond, most notably, Alice who becomes his lover.  Quentin, Alice, and most of their friends at Brakebills have been entranced since childhood by the magical world of Fillory, the creation of a 1930’s reclusive English author.

Stories of Fillory are woven throughout The Magicians, but grow in importance after Quentin and his friends graduate.  They move to Manhattan, and though Alice buries herself in serious magical research, Quentin and the others settle into serious dissipation:  “They had all the power in the world, and no work to do, and nobody to stop them.  They ran riot through the city.”  Happiness still eludes Quentin until he and the others discover Fillory is real and they find the means to go there.

The Magicians belongs to the adult “urban fantasy” sub-genre, and one of the characteristics of such books is a very realistic portrait of the gritty, day-to-day world we share, which makes the magic seem real when it appears.  The Brakebills graduates pass the bottle while discussing what supplies they should pack for their expedition:  how about parkas in case it’s cold?  Food of course, and trade goods – what would they be?  And weapons – handguns, and body armor, and battle magic, which they have to create for themselves, since it is forbidden

By this point in the narrative, every reader who knows Narnia, which Fillory consciously echoes, must be cringing at the thought of a bunch of armed and boozy, world-weary twenty-somethings storming the gates.  It turns out the explorers were wise to arm themselves, for Fillory is a gritty realm where strange creatures kill each other for no clear rhyme or reason.  When a human size praying mantis fires an arrow at Quentin, they realize this magic is not magical in the way the stories we loved as children are magical.

“This isn’t a story,” Alice says.  “This isn’t a story!  It’s just one fucking thing after another!”

Aside from a page-turning narrative, there is much to ponder in Grossman’s tale, and I find myself thinking of Woody Allen’s movies about movies, especially, The Purple Rose of Cairo, where a movie hero get loose in our world and is hopelessly unable to cope.  In The Magicians, characters from our world are equally out of their depths in a fictional story world.

Clinically speaking, our lives (apparently) are just one thing after another, but making stories is an instinct we all are born with.  From a two year old with stick figures, to the water cooler at work, to Jesus and Buddha, to writers of fiction, making stories is how we make sense of things.  Lev Grossman offers a fascinating reflection on making stories in the shape of a story that keeps us turning pages.

***

Lev Grossman, whose day job involves reviewing books for Time, published the second book of his trilogy The Magician King, this summer, which has moved to the head of my book queue.   Grossman is a lover, connoisseur, and advocate for the fantasy genre.  He strongly resists the notion that fantasy is “less than” other types of literature in any way.

Lev Grossman

Philip Levine: America’s New Poet Laureate

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Philip Levine - Poet Laureate of the United States

Philip Levine was born in Detroit in 1928 and started writing poetry at 13.  He hated the “prissy” stuff he learned in school and modeled the language of his early work on preachers heard on the radio.  Levine wrote many of the poems that fill his 16 books in the evenings, after working by day in the auto plants. He has been called the “poet of the proletariat.”

In announcing Levine’s appointment, James H. Billington, of the Library of Congress, called Levine

“one of America’s great narrative poets. His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling ‘The Simple Truth’—about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives.”  http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/08/10/139348573/philip-levine-named-as-americas-new-poet-laureate

Levine’s collection of poetry, The Simple Truth won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995.

Here is the title poem:

The Simple Truth by Philip Levine

I bought a dollar and a half’s worth of small red potatoes,
took them home, boiled them in their jackets
and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.
Then I walked through the dried fields
on the edge of town. In middle June the light
hung on in the dark furrows at my feet,
and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds
were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers
squawking back and forth, the finches still darting
into the dusty light. The woman who sold me
the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone
out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses
praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables
at the road-side stand and urging me to taste
even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way,
she swore, from New Jersey. “Eat,” she said,
“even if you don’t I’ll say you did.”
Some things
you know all your life. They are so simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.
My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965
before I went away, before he began to kill himself,
and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste
what I’m saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch
of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious,
it stays in the back of your throat like a truth
you never uttered because the time was always wrong,
it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken,
made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt,
in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.

When he first heard of the appointment, Levine was skeptical.  “I’m fairly irreverent,” he said, “and an old union man.”  In the end he realized this was his chance to reach a wider audience than he has had in years, and he accepted.  Levine will hold the office of Poet Laureate for the coming year.

***

Learning of Levine’s appointment was not just exciting in the sense of finding a new author to read, but exciting because the central passage of “The Simple Truth,” contains a compelling challenge.  What are those things, the poem seems to ask, in my life and in yours, that are so simple and true they can stand by themselves, unadorned, beside the salt shaker and a glass of water in evening light as it falls across the table:

Some things
you know all your life. They are so simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.

The Wind In the Willows by Kenneth Grahame: An Appreciation

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It was a golden afternoon; the smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and satisfying - Illustration for The Wind in the Willows by Arthur Rackham, 1940

Kenneth Grahame was a turn of the century British author who was Secretary of the Bank of England “in his spare time” (according to A.A. Milne).  In 1908, Grahame published The Wind in the Willows, his third novel.  Unlike his first two books, The Wind in the Willows was not an immediate success, though its early supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote to the author in 1909, “I have read it and reread it, and have now come to accept the characters as old friends.”

Arthur Rackham was perhaps the best known artist of “the golden age of illustration,” from 1870-1930.  His illustrations for The Wind in the Willows were his last work, published posthumously in 1940, a year after Rackham died of cancer.

Shove that under your feet, he observed to the mole, as he passed it down into the boat - Arthur Rackham, 1940

I cannot think of a more auspicious partnership in the history of book illustration, though I am biased.  I’m writing about The Wind in the Willows because I stopped by a blog that asked, “What is your favorite book?”  This has been mine since my mother read it to me when I was four.  When she finished, I begged her to start it again.  I began school determined to learn to read as soon as I could so I would not have to wait on anyone else’s convenience to row up the river with Rat and Mole.

The badger's winter stores, which indeed were visible everywhere, took up half the room - Arthur Rackham, 1940

I called this post an appreciation rather than a book review, because my intent is not to be systematic. Besides, in his introduction, A.A. Milne warns us not to dare anything so foolish:

One does not argue about The Wind in the Willows.  The young man gives it to the girl with whom he is in love, and if she does not like it, asks her to return his letters.  The older man tries it on his nephew, and alters his will accordingly.  The book is a test of character.  We can’t criticize it because it is criticizing us.

She arranged the shawl with a professional fold, and tied the strings of the rusty bonnet under his chin - Arthur Rackham, 1940

The magic of this volume lies in text as well as the illustrations.  This is story of friendship, of terror in the Wild Wood, of the ache of standing outside looking in on Christmas eve.  There is slapstick and comedy, and a battle against heavy odds to restore the natural order along the river bank, but the center of the story for me has always been Chapter 7, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.”

Otter’s son Portly has gone missing, and one mild summer evening, Rat and Mole row the backwaters trying to find him.  They catch the strains of a haunting tune:

“It’s gone!” sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again.  “So beautiful and strange and new!  Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it.  For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it for ever.  No!  There it is again!”

The animals follow the sound and it leads them to a place where a great Awe falls upon them and they are granted a vision:  [Mole] raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fullness of incredible color, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper.”

The animals find the baby otter and the vision fades, leaving them in misery as they feel what they have lost, but then, a capricious little breeze, dancing up from the surface of the water, tossed the aspens, shook the dewy roses, and blew lightly and caressingly in their faces, and with its soft touch came instant oblivious.  For this is the last best gift that the kindly demigod is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping:   the gift of forgetfulness.  Leset the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals.

The minister in the church I attended when I was young once said from the pulpit that “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” was the best theology he knew outside the Bible.

Together, Kenneth Grahame and Arthur Rackham preserved and shared a vision of an older, idyllic England of quiet lanes and riverbanks and launched it into a new century that needed such a dream, after one World War and on the eve of a second.  Last time I looked for a gift for a friend, a facsimile edition was available (from Modern Library I believe).

There are other nice editions like the one illustrated by Michael Hague and published in 1980, for there are more ways than one into this dream.

Wind in the Willows cover by Michael Hague, 1980

I guess you could say I’ve been dreaming along with the great British storytellers all my life – with Rat and Mole, with Pooh and Piglet; in Middle Earth and Narnia; with King Arthur and his knights; with Welsh wizards and Irish warriors and Tam Lin in Faerie; Harry Potter is simply the latest feast from the cornucopia I first encountered when I was four years old.

If you have not yet discovered the magic of The Wind in the Willows (and I don’t mean Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride @Disney) I suggest you give it a look as soon as can.  In my experience (as in Bilbo’s) there is no telling where the road will take you.

The wayfarer saluted with a gesture of courtesy that had something foreign about it - Arthur Rackham, 1940

Guest Post by Indie Author, Jayden Scott – Part 2

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Yesterday, our guest blogger, Jayde Scott, spoke of what led her to publish her novels on Smashwords.  Today she describes all the work behind her growing success, (in addition to writing novels).  She cautions that:   Independent publishing isn’t an easy route to go and it’s certainly not a ‘get rich quickly’ scheme. Be prepared to invest more time than in a nine to five job.

She includes a link to her blog, Fiction and More, and I’ve added it to my blogroll, since her stated intent is to help writers promote and market their work.  

Also, If you have not already done so, please visit her Smashwords homepage to look at the full range of her books: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JScott

My sincere thanks to Ms. Scott for sharing all she has done to champion her own work.  This is vital information to anyone thinking of following her path into print.

_______________________________________________________

So how did I do it? With lots and lots of marketing such as contacting blog hosts for reviews, giveaways, interviews and book spotlights. I don’t just copy and paste the information about my book into my emails to possible reviewers; I take the time to get to know their blogs and preferences and try to send them all information as requested in their review policies. Since they invest so much of their time and effort into reading my books, it’s only respectful that I at least try to make it easier for them to decide whether my book is something they might enjoy or not.

Independent publishing isn’t an easy route to go and it’s certainly not a ‘get rich quickly’ scheme. Be prepared to invest more time than in a nine to five job. Establishing a presence with all the fierce competition is tough work. Several times I changed the covers of my books, which involved days of searching sites like istockphoto.com and fotolia.com for the right digital art; once I changed the title, after which sales picked up. I also spend days on designing my print books and book trailers, and promoting those on various sites. As a very active Goodreads member, I devote a great amount of time to answering messages and updating my blog, http://jayde-scott.blogspot.com/, in case readers stop by to find out more about me and my books. And finally, I try to keep in touch with many author friends because, like in every job, connections matter. One of the most important tasks for any indie author, however, is writing and publishing a constant flow of well-edited quality work to keep up with fast moving trends. Even though I can’t afford paying a professional editor, I have two editor friends who proofread my work. My critique group helps with brainstorming and provides feedback on character development, story elements and pace. Even though my books are cheap, I try my best to give readers good quality for their money.

Writing has gifted me with a purpose in life, and nothing gives me more pleasure than hearing how much readers enjoyed my books. I’m a full time writer now who’s still sending out application forms to get a job, but the job market in the UK is shaky and doesn’t seem to want to recover any time soon. Independent publishing has at least helped ease my financial struggles and I know it’s helped many of my fellow authors, too.

Guest Post by Indie Author, Jayden Scott – Part 1

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At the start of May, Jayde Scott, a young writer from England, invited me to review her eBook, A Job From Hell.  Based on the professional presentation of her Smashwords page,  http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/56864, I agreed, though with some trepidation:  vampire romance isn’t normally “my thing.”

To our mutual relief, I enjoyed A Job From Hell and posted my review here at the end of May:  https://thefirstgates.com/2011/05/25/a-job-from-hell-by-jayde-scott-book-review/.  During the process, we exchanged a few emails – enough for me to realize what a complex operation an ebook publishing and marketing venture can be.  I invited Ms. Scott to describe her process, and she found the time – despite publishing two new titles this summer – to send a very detailed reply.  So detailed, in fact, that I’ve split her post into two sections.

In this section, the author describes what led her to the world of Indie publishing.  The next section outlines the nuts and bolts of her procedure.  Anyone who is interested in ebook publishing will find a wealth of information in Ms. Scott’s account.

__________________________________________________

Jayde Scott

A year ago, I would never have thought I’d be an indie author one day. At that time, I was unemployed, like many people in the UK, and could barely afford paying the rent let alone meet the monthly repayments of my student loan. Even with two good degrees, I had been looking for a job for three years without much success. During breaks from filling out application forms and struggling to get freelance work, I kept myself sane by writing as much as I could. It was my way to deal with the stress and pressure of not having a regular job.

Writing had been a hobby of mine for more than ten years. I had six books ready for publication and was actively seeking an agent or publisher for my work. Several times I came very close to landing an agent and did the ‘suggested’ changes to my manuscripts, only to have my hopes dashed again. With publishers I had similar experiences, some rejected me because I wouldn’t cut down on a 94k manuscript, others because they didn’t like a particular character. There was a time when I just couldn’t afford the horrendous postage charges for sending a manuscript to the US, so I kept postponing sending off large parcels until I got a freelance gig and had some money left.

After reading about Amanda Hocking’s success, I realised publishing doesn’t start and end with landing an agent and selling one’s work to one of the big six publishers. Sure, that would be a nice accomplishment, but I figured I might be more likely to win the lottery. It took me a long time to take this step because I kept hoping someone might make an offer soon, but when the offer never came in and I was more and more struggling to get a job and pay the bills, I decided I had nothing to lose by going the independent route. At least I had tried my best.

So, instead of wasting yet more time, I spent two weeks getting my first manuscript, Alex Gonzo, Royal Spy, ready for publishing via Kindle. It took a few attempts (actually, more than I care to reveal), but I finally figured out how to format it correctly after which it became easier with every book published.

Needless to say, I knew next to nothing about self-publishing a book or the marketing involved. I had heard of authors using Twitter and Facebook to promote their work, but that about summed up my knowledge of social media. My first attempts at Tweeting were pretty much useless and Alex Gonzo, Royal Spy didn’t sell a single copy. Five months later, I had barely sold 100 copies of that book, but I wasn’t ready to give up and self published A Job From Hell, which is the first book in the Ancient Legends series. That book didn’t take off straight away. In fact, I only sold about 60 copies in the first month. However, the more time I spent researching on the Internet and reading as many blog on publishing as I could find, the more I was determined to succeed, not least because I still hadn’t found a job and it didn’t look like I would in the near future.

Three months and a few more books later, I sell a few thousand copies a month. My books aren’t doing as great on Amazon as those of some of my fellow authors and I’m thinking maybe my coverart isn’t that great, maybe my blurbs would benefit from a makeover. However, at a price of 99c a book, my earnings at least pay the monthly rent, which is more than I would’ve earned if I kept contacting agents and publishers only to have my confidence crushed.

TO BE CONTINUED

Harry Potter Fan Fiction

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Harry, Ron, and Hermione in The Sorcerer's Stone, 2001

Fan fiction did not begin with Harry Potter or the internet.  According to Lev Grossman’s article, “The Boy Who Lived Forever,” in the July 18, issue of Time, xeroxed fanzines appeared after the premier of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” in 1964, and really took off with “Star Trek.”

In the broader sense, telling original stories with borrowed settings and characters is nothing new at all.  Homer did not create the Trojan War, Achilles, or Odysseus.  Shakespeare did not make up either King Lear or Henry V.  But with the internet and Harry Potter, fan fiction has exploded.  There are more than 2 million pieces on fanfiction.net and more than a quarter of these are based on Potter – everything from short stories to full length novels.

The final movie will not be the end of original Potter creations

Grossman explodes most of the stereotypes of those who write and read these tales.  One 38 year old writer and actress says it’s like character improvisation.  A best selling fantasy writer whose novels have been optioned by Peter Jackson says, “Fanfic writing isn’t work, it’s joyful play.”  This raises the key question of why writer’s of fiction write.  Joyful play, a platform, and an appreciative audience are there – and it’s not like many creators of “original” stories get to leave their day-jobs.

Well known authors fall on both sides of the unanswered copyright issue.  J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer encourage new fiction based on their characters and worlds.  Orson Scott Card, Anne Rice, and George R.R. Marin, author of A Game of Thrones do not, and threaten lawsuits.  It may or may not be coincidence that the authors Lev Grossman names as supporting fanfic are more recent and write for a younger audience than those who are in opposition and write for adults.  So far, all cease and desist requests have been honored, so there are no legal precedents in the world of fiction, though court cases involving music have been liberal in their interpretation of what constitutes “fair use.”

This begs the interesting question of who a character or world belongs to.  Groosman says that until recently:

Writers weren’t the originators of the stories they told; they were just the temporary curators of them.  Real creation was something the gods did…Today the way we think of creativity is dominated by Romantic notions of individual genius and originality and late-capitalist concepts of intellectual property, under which artists are businesspeople whose creations are commodities they have for sale.

Personally, I have always loved the poet’s invocation at the start of The Odyssey:  Sing in me, muse, and through me tell the story… 

In my experience, the “I” does not invent worlds or characters.  Whether you call it the muse, the gods, or the collective unconscious, fictional worlds and imaginal people come from somewhere else.  With a bit of luck and humility, the “I” may get to witness what happens, and may even get adept at finding new rabbit holes.  To me, the idea of “owning” a “product” of imagination smacks of hubris.

There is no real data on whether fanfic hurts an author economically.  Intuitively, I can only imagine it benefits Rowling and Meyer.  I hope so.  Creativity is creativity, regardless of what spark ignites it.  I’m thinking of dropping by some of the sites to see what these authors are up to.  For those who write for the joy of it, I wish them a lot more.

Victory to the Outsiders?

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In 2009, 288,355 books were traditionally published in the US, and 764,448 were self-published.  The numbers for 2010 were similar, though I don’t have the exact figures handy.  A million new titles a year.  No wonder my book queue does not grow any shorter!

As the sheer quantity of books in print grows, the amount of advice for writers seems to grow too.  Four smiling faces stare at me from the cover of the new Writer’s Digest, next to titles of the following articles I will find inside (this is their “10” issue):

  • 10 Markets Open to New Writers
  • 10 Writing Myths Busted
  • 10 Ways to Start Scenes Strong
  • Bestselling Secrets for 10 Top Genres
  • 10 Ways to Stretch your Creativity
  • 10 Tips for Beating the Fear of Rejection
  • Take your Writing on the Road:  10 Inspiring Destinations.

Last week at the gym, I had a minor epiphany.  The talking-heads were doing their thing on CNN, and I realized the TV financial advisors and those who offer writing advice have a lot in common.  They can inspire; they can stimulate the flow of ideas; at the right moment, they can spark individual creativity, but no one who depends on them, who tries to practice their often contradictory advice is going to do better than average in either arena.

After my workout, I took a book out to the pool area for a read and a swim.  Summer poolside reading is a pleasure I jealously guard.  No reading to self-educate.  This is where I let stories carry me away.  Where I forget the million titles a year for the one I hold in my hand.

This time at the pool, I was rereading passages from the wonderful, Emerald Atlas, by John Stephens, that I reviewed here:  https://thefirstgates.com/2011/06/08/the-emerald-atlas-by-john-stephens-a-book-review/.  This time, because of my earlier thought train, I noticed all the rules Stephens broke in his novel.

Common “wisdom” says that not only is the omniscient viewpoint passe, but it confuses middle-grade readers – and yet here it was, masterfully executed and just right for the story.  Similarly, the consensus on the proper age for middle-grade protagonists is 12, yet  Kate is 14.

Fortunately for us, John Stephens had a successful career writing for television before he started his novel, so I’m guessing he hasn’t read how-to articles for writers in quite a while.  For here is a built in contradiction – if a million books are published each year, and the brass ring goes to those that step”out of the box,” we are not going to get there by heeding advice on how to get into the box!

I want to be very clear:  I am not disparaging learning one’s craft – badly handled omniscient viewpoints aren’t pretty.  What I am saying is that if we slow down and listen, won’t our stories tell us what they want?  If stories come from deep in the part of ourselves that dreams, isn’t it somewhat rude to meet them with an armful of rules?

I find myself wondering how many truly original novels were written by outsiders, people who bypassed the whole seductive promise of 10 Ways to Break Into Print.  Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games was a TV writer like John Stephens before she wrote her novel.

Stephanie Meyer had not even written a short story before Twilight and had considered going to law school because she felt she had no talent for writing.  The idea for her vampire tale came to her in a dream, and she started writing because, after the birth of her first child, she wanted to stay at home and be a full time mom.  Echoes of the now-famous story of J.K. Rowling.

My cousin knew Jane Auel as a neighbor in a wooded Portland suburb, and never dreamed she was writing Clan of the Cave Bear at the kitchen table.  I doubt that the Inklings tried to tell Tolkien the proper age for Hobbits – 30 rather than 40.

What I am suggesting here – mulling over aloud, actually – is that all our lists of 10 Ways to do things are far less important than finding ways to remain Outsiders.  Outsiders who can dream without any fetters.  It isn’t easy, as anyone who even attempts it discovers, for the promise of an article or a friend’s advice on how to break into print can be as seductive as the lotus blossoms to the men of Odysseus’s crew.  Yet I am coming to believe it’s necessary to learn how to drop it all for extended periods of time.

For as the great Japanese teacher of Zen, Shunryu Suzuki said, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

You Must Go and Win: Alina Simone, Writer and Indie Rock Musician

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I love the way the digital age allows you to find marvelous things.  I was half-listening to NPR yesterday evening, struggling with a blog post I have since discarded and thinking about feeding the dogs.  A song came on that instantly caught my attention.  I walked to the radio in hopes of hearing the singer’s name, but when the announcer said it, I couldn’t quite make it out.  He was interviewing a youngish woman with a hint of an accent about her recently published book.  I caught the title, and quick trips to Amazon and youTube turned up an Indie rock singer with a haunting sound and a collection of vibrant essays that had me up reading way too late last night.

Born in the Ukraine in 1974, Alina Simone came to the US as an infant when her father, a scientist, refused to join the KGB.  She grew up in Boston and Sinead O’Connor’s music changed her life. You Must Go and Win recounts some of her misadventures on the trail of success, which her father had said was “only a matter of statistics…failure only means you haven’t thrown yourself, face-first, against the brick wall of probability enough times.”

But as she approached her 30th birthday, working a day job that had “something to do with Powerpoint,” and a career that seemed to be dying along with her cat, Simone considered letting it go.  As she wrote in the title essay, “You Must Go and Win,”

The problem was how to quit.  After all, America does not like a quitter.  In a broader sense, I knew that my exit from the music scene would cause not a ripple.  At worst, my core fan base of depressed Jews might find themselves a little more depressed.  But in this, I felt like I was practically doing them a favor.  No, for my own sake I needed a way to explain the sudden change of heart, a beautiful, glass-half-full way to spin this, like, “Don’t think of me as a failed musician when really I’m a successful cat nurse!”  After all, Etsa had turned a corner, hadn’t he?  The closets were once again redolent of cat pee, and lately he’d begun standing outside our bedroom door in the mornings again, serenading us with his bloodless screams.

Lucky for us, Alina Simone did not quit.  Instead, she still lives in Brookln with her husband, a Yale professor.  2011 has brought Simone a new daughter, Zoe, and has brought us a new album, “Make Your Own Danger,” in addition to her book.

Take a listen to her music on youTube and sample You Must Go and Win on Amazon. It will not be for every taste, but I am personally looking forward to listening to and reading from an exciting artist I found just “by accident.”