Author Robert Raynolds ...What is at the heart of any story?

This book begins with a very gracious setting of tone and scene. 
     The narrative character is a Roman,a pagan,the son of a senator, and a very ambitious man.  He opens the story by sharing a conviction he says he  was born with,that life is good. This,his earliest conviction, has stayed with him in his more than seventy years. Before beginning the action of his story at the climax of the reign of Emperor Theodosius the Great, the narrator wants first to give a view of his Roman world and he says he wants  "... to fulfill the ancient courtesy of introducing myself, a Roman." (page 9 The Sinner of Saint Ambrose by Robert Raynolds (c)  1952) 

A few pages later our narrator says: I hope by now I have conveyed in words something of that warm subtle sense of an actual meeting-how it is to feel the presence of a man before you know his name or hear his story. ( p 13)

And so we meet up with history through the fictive autobiography of Gregory Julian. Author Robert Raynolds artfully tends not to intrude, but I believe I do hear his hope in this passage below: 

 “ I have always been able to find a man or a woman who sensed what I felt and understood what I was talking about.  I think it is as simple as this, that people know life is at center an almost incredible mystery, and we love to communicate our strangeness to one another.  For the true interest of a man’s life to himself and to others is not only in what he did in the lusty days of his doing, but this interest resides deeply also in what the man thinks about it all when he finally matures, reflects and weighs for value. Then the open heart understands the wordless and the unexplained, and in my experience, compassion and sympathy are established.  This is a delightful thought, for it leads me to hope that between the lines of my story the reader is going to meet and understand the inner man of my heart.  For his interior life is the vital part of the man.”( Page 12)

Yes...it is often a storyteller's hope that: "...between the lines of my story, the reader is going to meet and understand the inner man of my heart..."

    "Perhaps one of the tragedies of human society is this, that no public man is as good as his private self might have been.  Or it could be put the other way around, since we are all part public, that society is composed of the tragedies of people.  Once he knows this, a sane man and compassionate man will love individuals more and more and society less." ( page 11)


 I found this book in a second hand shop with  a "Book of the Month Club" review still tucked into it and found myself reading all 443 pages of the tale. 

It's a compelling story; old Romans have quite a bit they can teach us. 

"What use is it for a corrupt generation to preach moral precepts to it's children?...When the state dishonors its obligation...justice is sold,  hatred is preached...children can see for themselves...For have not adults set before them these examples of how life is lived?" ( page 396)

Center pages of the Book of the month Club Review

You are in good hands with this narrator...and his author. "As I said, I was born with a fundamental confidence that life is good.  The fact that I have lived seventy-odd years would not amount to much unless I had been able to retain a respect for life and an affection for people. ( Page 13)

  

"At the heart of any story I could ever tell would be the tragic wonder of the human spirit..." (page 13)

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It is certainly a good question for any storyteller to ask themselves...what is at the heart of any story I tell?

best to you,

Jeannette

P.S.  I have not yet seen any other of  Robert Raynold's work but here are a few titles: 

Brothers in the West

The Choice to Love

In Praise of Gratitude 

Thomas Wolfe: Memoir of a Friendship

3 Minutes or less: Life Lessons from America’s Greatest Writers ~ a book review

    What would you share about the subject of illusion in three minutes or less?  It’s a great writing challenge, isn’t it?  Would you be interested in reading what some of America’s favorite authors wrote on that subject when invited to share a prepared speech with such a time limit? 

     Perhaps your favorite  American author has spoken at an annual PEN/Faulkner gala. 
3 Minutes or less: Life Lessons from America’s Greatest Writers is an anthology of over one hundred and fifty such essays published in 2000 by Bloomsbury.  Every year has had its topic. The collection includes eleven different topics each addressed by ten to twenty different authors. 

     Eudora Welty delivered one of my favorite essays of the collection on the topic of beginnings.  She speaks of her sense of her own internal timeline and experiences of being freed of clock time. 

“Remembering, we discover and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge.  Our living experience at those meeting points is one of the charged dramatic fields of fiction.”

  Welty shares a passage from her novel,  The Optimist's Daughter,  that focused on confluence

“...which of itself exists as a reality and a symbol in one…Of course, the greatest confluence of all is that which makes up the human memory, the individual human memory.  My own is the treasure most dearly regarded by me in my life and in my work as a writer.”

     I felt intense freedom reading Russell Baker on the topic of illusion.  I won’t steal his thunder or explain why he says, “Our best use and our peculiar gift, if we have any, is our ability to sustain the precious illusion that the teller of the tales is not the author.”  

     Susan Richards Shreves shares the prescription given her as a young writer to tell the truth about the way things are, knowing that writing is none the less an optimistic act requiring hope about the way things could be. She illustrates this with a very personal story from her family’s history that left me with indelible images of the power of the imagination.  

     Other well plumbed topics included are Obsessions, Heroes, Confessions, Reunions, and of course Endings.  

     Some of the writers privileged to contribute to this anthology through their archived speeches are William Styron, Annie Dillard, Larry McMurtry, Rita Mae Brown, Maurice Sendak, Jane Smiley, William Kennedy, Sue Miller, Allan Gurganus, Jane Hamilton, and Thomas Flanagan to name just a few you might readily recognize.  

    From the clever and the confessional to the inspiring and profound, all of these essays are worth the three minutes they take to read and many of them invite reading again and again.  

     And having read, perhaps you’ll be inspired to organize and write what you would share in three minutes or less on a topic such as  First Love, Journeys,  A Lesson, or The Sense of Place.       

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Springs Pour Forth...the Trees are Well Watered

A Sunday walk in redwoods on a creek brought deep remembrances of childhood terrain...pilgrims, xenoi though we be....there are some places that are more deeply kindred than others and speak of home.

Children's stories often tell the the tale of babes lost in the woods...but for some of us we ~find~in the woods, learn to listen,where water sings on rocks and carves wood and stone ...

The quiet collects in shady pools...may it cling to us, follow us, back into people realms where we lay our hands to work of many kinds.  I recently heard a musican suggest that music is a chance to sit quietly, to be able, under the guise of enjoyment, to think on important things in life.  An artist spoke to me recently of people needing art to see things that speak inner realities, the known but unknown, the hidden but accessible if...

we want to see, listen,seek, find, be found.

He makes springs pour water into the ravines;

it flows between the mountains. 

They give water to all the beasts of the field;

the wild donkeys quench their thirst.

The birds of the air nest by the waters;

they sing among the branches. 

He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;

the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work.

Psalm 104:10-13 NIV

A joyous Monday to you.

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Sun After a Storm and a Writing Prompt

Water is always needed on the California Coast and we finally got some. It didn't fall straight down though...it came every which way, but we aren't complaining.

Before the Tuesday storm,

and I heard it was just the leftover of a typhoon

that Japan took the full brunt of, things were mighty tidy in the courtyard.

Only little limbs fell and the redwoods and cypress and pines got scoured by the wind and look lovely clean and much greener now.

It sure helps to have sunshine after a storm. The old house absorbed water like a wick.

After the rain, new buds bloom...

I threw open windows to the portal on the sea....

This picture I took reminds me of a writing prompt in a series of workshops I participated in...

"If I were a gate..." I will have to find that poem I wrote and post it on "Writepurpose" sometime.

But maybe, while I get back to work...one of my readers will write a poem...

just take the prompt...and off you go...

IF I WERE A GATE...

Why did God Invent Writers?

The reader knows that the author in his memoir, The Tender Bar, is in fact going to become, not an attorney, but a writer, so it makes the conversation he records with a priest on the Amtrak stand out as a turning point for him.
"Can I tell you something?" the priest asked. "Do you know why God invented writers? Because He loves a good story. And He doesn't give a damn about words. Words are the curtain we've hung between Him and our true selves. Try not to think about the words. Don't strain for the perfect sentence. There's no such thing. Writing is guess work. Every sentence is an educated guess, the reader's as much as yours. Think about that the next time you curl a piece of paper into your typewriter."
(p. 225 The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer 2006 Hyperion N.Y.)

Unfortunately the author also tells us a few pages later that "The inspiration I took from my talk with Father AMTRAK wore off as quickly as the scotch." ( ibid p. 226)

I am feeling something similar about reading this 416 page tome. While it's inspiring in style, and well crafted, I can't wait for this guy to get into rehab! I suppose that means the author, whose voice is quite likable, has engaged me and that there is enough insight in his narrative voice as he recounts difficult events and his frequently misplaced hope and admiration, for me to trust that he will do more than survive the bar, his doomed lusty first love and the self defeating behaviors he documents so well. He's got me concerned for him, but I'm not yet fully convinced the tale is worth recommending.

This is what being in a book group does....gets you to read books you may not have otherwise encountered and finish them before you pick up any of the others you have stacked up and ready to read.

But this little word from Father AMTRAK also caught my eye because for just a moment it made me miss my typewriter..."curl a piece of paper into a typewriter..." I can hear the ratchet sound as I roll the wheel. ~~~~~~~~~~~

Why Do We Tell Stories?

Sometimes what wants to come out wants to be handwritten...here are four pages. If you click on the image it will enlarge and should be legible. Please tell me if it is not. When you finish a page, you can use your browser's back button to return to the post and then click on the next page.

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