Comments on: Coming Home to Roost http://www.100memoirs.com/2008/11/coming-home-to-roost/ Because 99 just isn't enough Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:23:37 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: shirleyhs http://www.100memoirs.com/2008/11/coming-home-to-roost/comment-page-1/#comment-650 shirleyhs Sun, 16 Nov 2008 17:39:49 +0000 http://www.100memoirs.com/?p=164#comment-650 What a pleasure, this morning, to find your comment, DeWitt. Now I can tell you a few other things I enjoyed about your book. The place names in your first essays were quite familiar. I spent two summers during college working at the Devereaux Foundation as a counselor and living at Knollwood, one of their large estate properties in Devon. The Philadelphia mainline seems under-explored in literature, as does Pennsylvania in general--compared to Boston or New York and even Atlanta and Charleston. And, of course, I admire many of the writers you have known--Tim O'Brien, Dan Wakefield, and others. I spent 21 years as a professor at Goshen College, most of them in the English department, so I know the joys and travails of that life also.<br><br>Thanks for the encouragement to submit to Ploughshares. I hope to get some writing time next month, and your invitation will help create just the deadline I need to spur me forward. Your experience in constructing a book after accumulating a lot of essays was helpful. I've been told that publishers prefer a more novel-like structure, so it is good to see that a collection of essays is at least a possible way to go. <br><br>Thanks for confirming my hunch that you share more of your father's values than you would have guessed at earlier stages of your life. For many people, this epiphany is a surprise, and not an altogether welcome one--perhaps one that is only possible to see (admit) after age 60! I also enjoyed discovering this theme without too many hints along the way. You gave me the reader an "aha" moment. What a pleasure, this morning, to find your comment, DeWitt. Now I can tell you a few other things I enjoyed about your book. The place names in your first essays were quite familiar. I spent two summers during college working at the Devereaux Foundation as a counselor and living at Knollwood, one of their large estate properties in Devon. The Philadelphia mainline seems under-explored in literature, as does Pennsylvania in general–compared to Boston or New York and even Atlanta and Charleston. And, of course, I admire many of the writers you have known–Tim O'Brien, Dan Wakefield, and others. I spent 21 years as a professor at Goshen College, most of them in the English department, so I know the joys and travails of that life also.

Thanks for the encouragement to submit to Ploughshares. I hope to get some writing time next month, and your invitation will help create just the deadline I need to spur me forward. Your experience in constructing a book after accumulating a lot of essays was helpful. I've been told that publishers prefer a more novel-like structure, so it is good to see that a collection of essays is at least a possible way to go.

Thanks for confirming my hunch that you share more of your father's values than you would have guessed at earlier stages of your life. For many people, this epiphany is a surprise, and not an altogether welcome one–perhaps one that is only possible to see (admit) after age 60! I also enjoyed discovering this theme without too many hints along the way. You gave me the reader an “aha” moment.

]]> By: shirleyhs http://www.100memoirs.com/2008/11/coming-home-to-roost/comment-page-1/#comment-51 shirleyhs Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:39:49 +0000 http://www.100memoirs.com/?p=164#comment-51 What a pleasure, this morning, to find your comment, DeWitt. Now I can tell you a few other things I enjoyed about your book. The place names in your first essays were quite familiar. I spent two summers during college working at the Devereaux Foundation as a counselor and living at Knollwood, one of their large estate properties in Devon. The Philadelphia mainline seems under-explored in literature, as does Pennsylvania in general--compared to Boston or New York and even Atlanta and Charleston. And, of course, I admire many of the writers you have known--Tim O'Brien, Dan Wakefield, and others. I spent 21 years as a professor at Goshen College, most of them in the English department, so I know the joys and travails of that life also.<br><br>Thanks for the encouragement to submit to Ploughshares. I hope to get some writing time next month, and your invitation will help create just the deadline I need to spur me forward. Your experience in constructing a book after accumulating a lot of essays was helpful. I've been told that publishers prefer a more novel-like structure, so it is good to see that a collection of essays is at least a possible way to go. <br><br>Thanks for confirming my hunch that you share more of your father's values than you would have guessed at earlier stages of your life. For many people, this epiphany is a surprise, and not an altogether welcome one--perhaps one that is only possible to see (admit) after age 60! I also enjoyed discovering this theme without too many hints along the way. You gave me the reader an "aha" moment. What a pleasure, this morning, to find your comment, DeWitt. Now I can tell you a few other things I enjoyed about your book. The place names in your first essays were quite familiar. I spent two summers during college working at the Devereaux Foundation as a counselor and living at Knollwood, one of their large estate properties in Devon. The Philadelphia mainline seems under-explored in literature, as does Pennsylvania in general–compared to Boston or New York and even Atlanta and Charleston. And, of course, I admire many of the writers you have known–Tim O'Brien, Dan Wakefield, and others. I spent 21 years as a professor at Goshen College, most of them in the English department, so I know the joys and travails of that life also.

Thanks for the encouragement to submit to Ploughshares. I hope to get some writing time next month, and your invitation will help create just the deadline I need to spur me forward. Your experience in constructing a book after accumulating a lot of essays was helpful. I've been told that publishers prefer a more novel-like structure, so it is good to see that a collection of essays is at least a possible way to go.

Thanks for confirming my hunch that you share more of your father's values than you would have guessed at earlier stages of your life. For many people, this epiphany is a surprise, and not an altogether welcome one–perhaps one that is only possible to see (admit) after age 60! I also enjoyed discovering this theme without too many hints along the way. You gave me the reader an “aha” moment.

]]> By: DeWitt Henry http://www.100memoirs.com/2008/11/coming-home-to-roost/comment-page-1/#comment-50 DeWitt Henry Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:29:47 +0000 http://www.100memoirs.com/?p=164#comment-50 It is an honor to be reviewed here, and included among your 100! Thank you. These essays became a book partly thanks to the editorial eye of a wonderful poet and memoirist, John Skoyles (SECRET FREQUENCIES, U. of NB. Press). I had written them over a number of years as they had to be written, but when your material is "fragmented" by time, one thing you need be careful of is repeating facts that might be needed to frame a self-standing essay, eg. I teach at Emerson, etc. Skoyles urged me to edit out such repetitions. He also persuaded me to leave out "narratives" that distracted from the life flow (I actually had a retelling of King Kong, the 1933 film, which is posted on my Fooling Around in Prose site). I don't think I could have seen the deeper continuities and the rhythm of the book without his help. But there it came together. The form is to my mind something like Tim O'Brien's THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, where the repetition of theme and image is really a spiral.<br>Thank you, also, Shirley, for the enlightening point that you see this writer returning to some of the values of his father. That is truer than I realized. One last note (for now), I wish you luck with your own writing. And both you and your readers should be aware that Ploughshares is now reading submissions for a memoir issue guest edited by Kathryn Harrison. It will close January 1. See <a href="http://writingitreal.com/blog/?p=240">http://writingitreal.com/blog/?p=240</a> . It is an honor to be reviewed here, and included among your 100! Thank you. These essays became a book partly thanks to the editorial eye of a wonderful poet and memoirist, John Skoyles (SECRET FREQUENCIES, U. of NB. Press). I had written them over a number of years as they had to be written, but when your material is “fragmented” by time, one thing you need be careful of is repeating facts that might be needed to frame a self-standing essay, eg. I teach at Emerson, etc. Skoyles urged me to edit out such repetitions. He also persuaded me to leave out “narratives” that distracted from the life flow (I actually had a retelling of King Kong, the 1933 film, which is posted on my Fooling Around in Prose site). I don't think I could have seen the deeper continuities and the rhythm of the book without his help. But there it came together. The form is to my mind something like Tim O'Brien's THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, where the repetition of theme and image is really a spiral.
Thank you, also, Shirley, for the enlightening point that you see this writer returning to some of the values of his father. That is truer than I realized. One last note (for now), I wish you luck with your own writing. And both you and your readers should be aware that Ploughshares is now reading submissions for a memoir issue guest edited by Kathryn Harrison. It will close January 1. See http://writingitreal.com/blog/?p=240 .

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