A few months ago I visited the Chequamegon Book and Coffee Company in Washburn, Wisconsin. Finding Louise Erdrich’s Books & Islands in Ojibwe Country seemed like serendipity, since I was on my way to Madeline Island, or Mooningwanekaaning, in the Ojibwe language. In this book Erdrich ponders the question of why she loves books. She writes:
Books. Why?
On Madeline Island, one of the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior, public signs are now written in English and Ojibwemowin. While the Objibwe who encounter these signs are sure to read English and don’t need the translation, the signs signal respect and remind those of us whose families were immigrants of who was here first.
Having only taken a few inept family photos and one pretty bad class in photojournalism at Northwestern University before I applied for admission into the graduate program in photography at the Institute of Design at IIT, I was lucky to get in. At the time I had no idea that the program, founded by Moholy-Nagy of the Bauhaus, was legendary. Nor had I any idea that it was tremendously influential in how serious photograph had and would evolved in the second half of the twentieth century. Ignorant as I was, my passion for photography fit happily into the intense, experimental practice that the program demanded.
In 2002, the Art Institute of Chicago put together an exhibition titled Taken By Design, Photographs from the Institute of Design, 1937—2001, a visual history with essays. I was included in that show. A Lasting Vision: Photographs from the Institute of Design 1970—2001, picks up where Taken By Design left off. In 2001 the graduate program in photography was shut down. I’m looking forward to seeing the work of those with whom I was trained as a thinker and a photographer.
The exhibition A Lasting Vision opens on Friday, July 31 at Crown Hall, 3360 South State Street, Chicago, IL and will run for several weeks. A catalogue will be available.
The maelstrom around the publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set the Watchman (2015), a novel set in a time after that in her To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), has proven how essential books are. Go Set the Watchman was published fifty-five years after Mockingbird, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and became one of the most revered books in America. The book and the movie made from it, starring Gregory Peck as the honorable Atticus Finch, became a phenomenon. Mockingbird appeared on required reading lists, communities read it together. Readers identified with Scout or Jem or Atticus, or with life at that time in small town America. Go Set the Watchmen, which takes place years later, portrays a very different Atticus, an old, bitter racist. Today’s sages are weighing in. What do these two books reveal about race in America? Which book is more honest? Was it a mistake to publish Go Set? Was Harper Lee’s editor at Lippincott, the publisher of Mockingbird, a vital creative force? Was Lee manipulated into publishing a second-rate novel? What greedy forces are behind the publication of a novel that is sure to undermine the aura of the first book? That two novels have created so much debate and conversation is exciting. In a time when we are deluged with information from sources that are quickly eclipsed by other sources, it is heartening to see two novels prove how central books can be to our cultural life.
by Juhi Singhal Karan
We asked five bloomers for the best, the most helpful piece of writing advice that they’d received. Here in their own words is the bit of writing wisdom that has stayed with them over the years.
Lynn Sloan
About 25 years ago, when I confessed to my intense activist friend that I wanted to write stories, instead of saying “how silly” or “the world doesn’t need more fiction,” she said, “Read this:” Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande, originally published in 1934, and reclaimed from history’s dustbin in the ’80s by John Gardner. I dove in. Brande asserts that the writer needs to recognize that she has two sides: the child-like enthusiast, who is intuitive and sensitive, and the elder critic, who is discerning and knowledgeable. The enthusiast believes her ideas are fresh and exciting, that her writing is important. The elder doubts it. She points out the many problems. The two neither like nor trust one other. Keep them apart, says Brande. A writer should give full rein to the enthusiast, believing in every word she sets down, then call in the elder for revision. Again and again.
Separate these two sides of writing—this advice freed me. Wanting to retrieve Brande’s exact words, I searched my shelves, but her book is gone. I hope I passed it on to a beginning writer.
April. It shouldn’t snow in April, but I was stuck in a snowstorm in evening rush hour traffic on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive. Ahead, four lanes of red taillights crept up the rise at Belmont and disappeared. I’d left my office at the college half an hour late, and with this traffic I was going to be much later than I’d promised my unforgiving babysitter.
My husband and I shared the relieve-the-babysitter-and-start-dinner shift, but he was out of town. By the time I got home she would be seething and our kids would be bouncing off the ceiling. Trying not to think about that or the depressingly long to-do list I’d left un-done at school or the short story I was trying to write that had a huge logic gap in the middle, I flicked on the radio and merriment filled the air. Bright piano jazz, a woman’s spritely laugh, a man’s chuckle. Radio, the opiate of the commuting masses. Thank goodness.
… as a writer? Deep, rough male voice.
Had I lucked into a talk show about writing? I loosened my grip on the steering wheel.
Do you find it hard to be productive? the man went on.
Not at all, the woman answered with a laugh.
So she was the writer.
Every state in the union has an image. Often it’s a two-faced image. I live in Illinois, the land of cornfields and corrupt politicians. I visit its northern neighbor Wisconsin, the land of cheese-heads and granola-eaters. Ludicrous simplifications, but there you are. Last week I bought a cup of coffee in small cafe in Illinois, then a few days later I stopped in a similar place in Wisconsin. The placards behind the coffee machines in each place expressed such different philosophies that I found a new way to compare these two states.
Illinois
“Be kind. No act of kindness, however small, is wasted.”
“Don’t Try so Hard to Fit In. You were Born to Stand Out.”
“We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.
Wisconsin
“Due to Economic Cutbacks, the Light at the End of the Tunnel has Been Turned Off.”
“If you could read my mind, you wouldn’t be smiling.”
“Today’s Menu: Take It or Leave It.”
Wisconsin wins on style.
Outside the large urban/suburban/exurban centers of America, the language of the land takes on different slants, depending on where you are. Accents, colloquialisms, cadence, and customary vocabulary vary by region. So does the language of road signs. Here are some legends from signs seen recently in the Northwoods of Wisconsin.
ALVINA LEDBEITER needed a new pair of shoes. Not that anyone would see them on her she still had a few occasions where she wanted to look sharp before she laid her head on as, for all Eternity. Duke Crocker’s ninety-third for starters where she intended to outshine that widow- ladies who believed he had one more wedding in him. Alvina might be a widow-lady she was no such fool.
“Always dress your best when going shopping or to the emergency room,” as Momma used to say. Alvina donned her smart, navy suit and her only black heels that were just about shot, then her white hair, fluffing that patch right at the back that her neglectful friends usually missed—women had to be so careful—and put on her face. Without a dab of Fire & Ice she almost disappeared.
Halloran’s smelled to high heaven of perfume. Waving off the ghouls with perfume spritzers, she made her way to Shoes, which was as pretty as she remembered, all beige and soft lights and elegant women drifting among spotlit islands and dark-suited clerks bearing shoeboxes. She walked past the displays of glorious high heels to the back corner where on a glass shelf sat the sensible black shoes with two-inch heels. The wallflowers. It had come to this. She picked up one with a gold buckle that proclaimed, “I may be dull, but I’m expensive and Italian,” and looked around for a sales clerk. All were as busy as chipmunks, except for those two fat girls. Surely Halloran’s hadn’t hired girls too fat to bend over as shoe clerks? She carried the Italian number to the lane the clerks took to the storeroom, and waited.
“Sir?” “I’ll be right back.” “Sir?” “I’m with a customer.” “Can you help—” “I’ll send someone over.” “Excuse me—” “I’m busy.”
“Can you get this for me in a size… ” The last one didn’t even pause. Halloran’s had certainly gone to the dogs.
She surveyed the room. By the entrance, a young woman appeared—well, they were all young compared to Alvina. This one had wavy blonde hair just like the weather girl on Channel 7 and the kind of tan that came in a bottle. A hush fell over Shoes as she wafted over to the designer display.
Behind Alvina came a whoosh, a clerk hurrying from the back.
“I would like to try—” Alvina said, but the little man raced toward the girl. Other salesmen—where did they come from?—converged on the blonde, but the clerk who’d almost knocked Alvina down got there first. “May I help you?” he breathed.
The others turned away, defeated. One of the disappointed strolled by Alvina and she asked if he might help her. “Going on break.” The others vanished or returned to the customers they’d abandoned. Across the expanse of luxe, beige carpet, the Weathergirl handed a silver sandal to the unpleasant little man. He bowed, an honest-to-goodness bow. Alvina let her disgust register on her face when he tried to bypass her on his way into the storeroom. She jutted out her arm and clipped him with the shoe.
“Size 6.”
Without a word, he took the shoe and turned away. Within the tangle of dyed hair at the back of his head she saw a shiny black patch, like patent leather. He must have painted his bald spot. Who did he think he was fooling? Sharpie pens left an iridescent sheen. She looked down and saw the telltale pinky-purple streaks where she’d touched up her shoes. Embarrassed, she glanced up hoping no one had noticed. Every pair of eyes was admiring the Weathergirl as she settled in a plush chair. The very air sighed as if Loveliness herself had alighted in Halloran’s shoe department.
“Size 6.”
The vain little man thrust a shoebox at Alvina, then adjusted the remaining boxes and scurried to the Weathergirl, where he knelt and spread out his offerings around her feet, the little toady.
Churning with annoyance and humiliation, Alvina found a bench and sat. Surely one of the clerks would jump, seeing that she was a good bet to buy something. Surely they worked on commission. But no one paid her a speck of attention, not even those two fat girls. She stared at them, then at the pimply fellow straightening the ankle boots, who rushed toward a newcomer laden with shopping bags. All the other clerks kneeled and opened boxes and hurried to the storeroom and back. She could wait until Kingdom come. No one was going to slip off her worn-out pumps with the pinky-purple streaks and guide her feet into the expensive Italian pair in the box on her lap. She sighed and opened the lid, slipped on one, it fit, then the other. They practically kissed her feet. She strolled to a mirror—her ankles looked no worse than Queen Elizabeth’s—then walked toward the bent-over toady, and said, “When you have a moment… ”
He adjusted his position to block her, and the Weathergirl didn’t lift her gaze from the mile-high sandals lashed to her perfect ankles. Alvina might just as well be invisible.
“When you’re free, if you could… “
He shifted again, making a show of ignoring her.
Alvina glared at his back. She should say, “Is that Sharpie ink on your bald spot?” Instead she retreated to where her old pumps leaned dejectedly next to the empty shoebox. She had half a mind to walk out. She looked down at her doughy feet in the boring but Italian shoes. The buckles flashed gold at her, just like winking. Alvina smiled, sat, nestled her old pumps in the folds of tissue, and tapped the lid in place.
As she passed the fat girls, she waved to the closed box she’d left on the seat. “They weren’t right for me.”
Neither looked at her feet.