Lary Bloom
Writer, Editor, Teacher
The Bloom Blog
Photo by Nancy Dionne
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Book Tour (Part 4)
I could spot her easily in the audience yesterday -- a lithe and handsome woman, sitting alone at a rear table. A cancer patient. I knew this because, well, it's what you learn when that disease intrudes on your family. Besides, she wore the telltale scarf around her head, to my way of thinking a much better solution to the hair issue than a wig.After my presentation, she asked if she could talk to me a few minutes. Odd, but I knew almost exactly she would say, and I was right. This was a literary event after all -- a book signing after a reading. And I could somehow see in her hazel eyes her intent. She said, "I have written a memoir about my illness that almost was published by a major house." She also said, "It's an inspirational book." This made me sad. Not because her book wasn't a worthy effort. But because I knew why the publishing world didn't, in the end, embrace it. Publishers are inundated with "inspirational" cancer stories. Sometimes, of course, they work. Lance Armstrong. That works. The new book, "The Woman at the Washington Zoo," by Marjorie Williams, works. But the latter isn't meant to be inspirational. It's meant to be real. And that's the trouble with "illness" books. The machinery of illness overwhelmes the narrative.
The woman at the book signing told me that she has other stories that she wants to write but this one is hanging over her, and it's particularly frustration because she's had the disease for a long time, and, as it continues to intrude, she gets more and more frustrated over lack of prospects for her book. If I had come across her years ago, I would have told her to just keep trying to sell the book, that someone would take it. But that's not what I felt here, not after learning what I have learned about the publishing world and the realities of cancer.
And so I told her just what she didn't want to hear. I told her to put aside that book, and to get onto the other stories she wants to tell, and, when appropriate, "borrow" from the book she had written in doing so. That is, tell the stories that have nothing to do with chemotherapy, but allow herself the licence at any point to mention it. Make her stories more metaphorical, and much less a blow-by-blow account of cancer horrors. She took notes, and thanked me. I don't really know if she took the advice to heart. I hope so. I could tell she is a storyteller. And I sincerely hope she finds the right story to tell us all in the time that she has to tell it.
Posted by:Lary Bloom at 3:02 PM
Web
Design by Arvid
Tomayko-Peters
Lary Bloom • Telephone: 860.526.2067 • Fax: 860.526.8088 • Email: