Dear NY Times Editors

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

To the last editor still working the desk: please ask your writers to review their lead (or lede, if you prefer) carefully and more than once before pressing ‘submit.’ The following regards a review in the New York Times Book Review:

“A weekend in the country. Two couples–Sarah and Mathew, Kiki and Arman–reconnect after years of estrangement in a quaint upstate farmhouse.”

from a NY Times book review, Danya Kukafka’s review of St. Ivo

I suspect it might take more than the first chapter to explain how, in fact, they could spend “years of estrangement in a quaint upstate farmhouse” and still feel a need to reconnect. How does one stay estranged in a farmhouse? That must be one huge farmhouse. Steven Pinker does a whole section on misplaced phrases in The Sense of Style, and the reviewer might want to grab a copy.

The rest of the review isn’t much better, to wit:

“The perspective focuses narrowly on Sarah’s interior...” On what part of her interior might it be so narrowly focused? Might we be reading Danielle Steel without meaning to?

And the one that stopped me:

“The friction resides, innovatively, in the agony of interpersonal misunderstandings, the awkwardness of old friends–now strangers–trapped together for a period of days. What to reveal and what to gloss over?”

Let’s take this phrase at a time:

“The friction resides… in the agony of interpersonal misunderstandings…”

People reside. Cats and dogs may also, but friction? If it’s friction it ain’t doing no residing, ma’am. If it were, THAT would be innovated, but more likely it’s just bad phraseology. Agony indeed. ‘Show, don’t tell’ is a piece of advice the reviewer might want to consider. As for interpersonal misunderstandings – oh, never mind.

“…trapped together for a period of days.”

This is innovative? Despite innumerable authors stuffing characters together in houses being one of the most overused plot devices going? Try insipid or interminable; those are better modifiers.

“What to reveal and what to gloss over?”

To explain: that’s what a writer does. Bob Seeger in his Against the Wind says it so much better. And who’s the question even being put to?

Then again, as the reviewer inadvertently points out, the original book’s no masterwork either:

“Soon enough she would lie in a strange bed, consumed with anxiety, made worse by the lie she’d just told and the many more she was sure to tell now that the first lie was out there. Soon enough she’d be nothing but a feeble cage for her thundering heart.”

from St. Ivo by Joanna Hershon

“…nothing but a feeble cage for her thundering heart.” Oh dear. To which the reviewer piles on:

“The novel is steeped in this hushed paranoia: the jumpy fear that permeates contemporary life, as its characters simultaneously long for connection and refuse to let themselves be seen.”

Perhaps the characters are all naked in that ginormous farmhouse so they don’t want to be seen? Sounds like porn to me.

To quote a very lame science fiction movie I once watched, about two scientists confronted with an outer space monster, one scientist musing earnestly, “An intellectual carrot–the mind boggles.” One can google the phrase, it’s that famous. Kind of like Mystery Science Theater 3000 without the bad robots.

Woke From a Dream

[You can overlook the current politically correct expression in the title; this essay’s not one of those.—Editor]

Early morning with light crawling into the sky, I woke from a dream. In some variation of an office environment like I’ve spent my adult years since college. Some dreams confirm whatever insecurities spring up from you subconscious–and this was not one of those either. On waking, what remained in my mind was the assurance I was comfortable pushing boundaries, even competent. It was a curious idea. I’m well aware that I’m a contrarian but that’s not the same thing–maybe it’s part of the same thing and I’ve never considered it that way. I’m skeptical.

When it came seriously discuss transitioning our architectural practice, what the original partners, winnowed down to two, learned–and were disappointed learning–was none of the junior level partners showed serious interest in running the business. It was puzzling. We’d started the practice some twenty-five years earlier, mortgaging the houses we owned to buy the business. We’d been fortunate to find a banker who’d lend us the money–architectural practices like a lot of professional services are risky and timing is everything. But here we were being offered ongoing contracts with a number of public institutions, and to our way of thinking we’d have had to be crazy not to go for it. Still…

Five years after the buy-out, Michael Ragland, our banker, by then a vice president at SunTrust, showed up to celebrate our paying off that loan. In the middle of the early 90s’ recession.

This wasn’t an assurance I was born with, nor had I been born into a college-educated family who expected comfortable success in all our affairs–it’s hard growing up needing social security checks to subsist. Some view what FDR began as a pernicious move toward–perish the thought–socialism. When our father died, what kept our family afloat was the Social Security aid to dependent children, that and the small salary our mother took home.

So growing up, what I felt was not so much fear as an instinct that life was fraught and I’d best be careful, like crossing a log over a stream, rushing water below, each step taken tentatively. Fear of falling = fear of failing? You learn not to fail, or at least to recover when you do.

D says I’m definitely a glass half empty kind of personality. Hmph. Like that’s a bad thing.

But looking back, being of a timorous nature didn’t entirely inhibit me, even as it did make me cautious. I’d try stuff, some of it reckless, some not so much. Being dared by another kid didn’t mean I’d reflexively launch myself into whatever adventure he might propose. I could smell trouble from a ways off–most of the time.

There was an irregular trail passing through a patch of undeveloped woods in town that ran parallel to a seriously large ditch, with an attendant series of dirt piles where the backhoes had dumped the dirt to clear the ditch. This one ran in a straight line, so you knew it wasn’t a natural stream. Piedmont South Carolina was low country, so lots of ditches but this one was bigger than most–probably drained a wetlands. The dirt piles had been there a while, enough so that over time they’d been smoothed to a rollercoaster ride, and you could jump on and off the piles as you chose. The only risk–other than bouncing off a sapling growing through some of the piles–was falling off into the ditch, it being eight, ten feet down. Breaking something was a definite possibility.

If you were in a hurry, riding the flatter walking path got you through this mile or so of woods, but when the daredevils got hold of you, riding that ridge beside the ditch was a necessary skill learned the hard way. I never landed in the ditch, though came close a few times.

My bike’s front fender (all bikes had fenders, and only one gear) was wobbly being out of alignment, probably from being whacked against saplings, and sometimes while in motion I’d kick it to keep it from rubbing the tire. One time, directing the toe of my shoe straight at it, my foot went through the spokes, stopping the bike abruptly like in one of those cartoons, cartwheeling the bike end over end, with me still attached. No helmet; nobody wore helmets back then. I was lucky. I learned something about things in motion wanting to continue that way.

Climbing trees was another occupational hazard growing up. The good ones were maples with sturdy branches. The bad ones were southern pines. One in particular in the corner of my neighbor’s backyard was a grand old pine you had to scramble to reach the first branches though once you got there, it was easy enough to climb to the top. Great view from there, long as you avoided the dead branches and tested the others before putting your whole weight on them. Granny was horrified when she heard of it.

I started a paper route in junior high that I grew to a larger one over the years. My first enterprise, and I did well at it. Same bike, but with a large metal front basket, and two rear sidesaddle baskets, all loaded with newspapers so it weighed near as much as I did. By the time I graduated high school I’d grown the paper route into something like three-hundred-fifty subscribers, and paid a neighbor from across the street to deliver half of them. On my way to challenge Warren Buffett.

In Pat Conroy’s South of Broad, he describes delivering morning newspapers as how he introduces a fictive version of Broad Street in Charleston, a couple hours east of my home town. Reading his story, it was like going back in time.

College was a three hour trip west–far enough so that I was on my own. The first year I was thoroughly lost, like a lot of freshmen, and it took three more years before I’d gotten the hang of it. Some folks grow up in the military; I grew up–some–as an undergrad. I remember thinking it was amazing that I actually could design buildings after a while. Most folks would have never guessed–me neither. Then graduate school, and I flat tore through that place. Really.

Five years later, I wrangled a job in Washington as part of the original Metro team. We were a hot bunch of architects, looking back. In another seven years it was time to leave Harry Weese & Associates–the Metro stations were mostly designed, and if I ever was going to move away from transit design it was already late in my career. I’d made it to chief designer position–but only because the three architects in charge of the office, along with three other senior architects had headed off to open their own office.

No one was beating on doors to hire a transit architect, but I stumbled on an over-the-hill branch office of a once large corporate firm and gave it a shot. The guy running the architectural group was someone I liked, Greg Lukmire. It was a pretty lean office with a lot of retirement aged engineers and a few including Mel Straus (of “you think it’s easy?” fame who was our age. I was thirty-seven when I started. Three years later, when the corporate heads needed cash and unloaded our branch office, four of us bought it and Greg put his name on the door. Fine with me; what I was chasing was the chance to do my own designs, and I got it. Thirty years later, we sold the place–back to another corporate firm.

So the point? Step at a time, I’ve taken risks, had setbacks and knocks and stayed on my feet in spite of them. Architecture is a tough business, and I succeeded. Not even close to a story of great import except to me, and I’m fine with that. Fame means you get a better looking obituary. Doing what you set out to do means a whole lot more.

Red Curry Paste Anyone?

I’m addicted to Thai food. There, I said it. As long as I have few serrano peppers on hand to augment the curry and some hot sauce in case the peppers are too mild having been picked too early. Back when I’d first arrived in DC, someone took me to Chinatown for lunch (when there still was a Chinatown in DC) where I discovered Szechuan style with those wicked dried peppers, and I’ve been chasing peppers since.

But Thai flavors go beyond that. One night after our workout at Skyline, D introduced me to a Thai restaurant in Arlington, so the rest of it’s all her influence. I was living in Annandale then–not the one in the Steely Dan song. D and I got married and she left her long commute townhouse out on I-66, and we started out. We bought a Thai cookbook about that time.

First time we made one of the Thai recipes, we started by making our own red curry paste. Nearly a day later, we finished. Nice dish, though we set the book aside. My theory is the reason you’ve never heard of conquering Thai armies is it takes too long to fix dinner, and the next morning everybody’s off in the woods somewhere taking care of business.

Wasn’t until a few months ago, I picked the Thai recipe book back up for a nice dish of Red Curry Fried Catfish. Now, I buy the already prepared red curry paste. Saves at least a couple hours of prep. It’s a good recipe. All about controlling the heat. I can send it to you if you like, and yes, you can leave out the serrano peppers if you insist – the curry paste already has a bit of heat.