Friday, October 31, 2014

In Case You Make a Mistake

I’ve been fortunate to talk with so many interesting people, and to correspond with some who were not available to talk. You wouldn’t recognize the names of most of them, but they were far more interesting than most of the celebrity names you would recognize. Some have recognizable names, though, like Dave Barry, who was very kind when our grandson, the same age as his son, had cancer; or Frank Deford, who disagreed with my defense of 3 on3 women’s basketball; or Katie Couric, who wrote me a personal note thanking me for writing when her husband got colon cancer.

None of them compare, though, to the children at Bottenfield Elementary in Champaign, IL, when our daughter, Mary Beth, taught there, and when I was the guest author for their day-long writing fair.

Later, the kid wrote me letters, about 50, most of them decorated with quite lively and colorful art work. Mary Beth must have impressed them with my qualifications, for almost all of them thanked me “for taking time out of your busy schedule.” Here are some other excerpts:

Lynsey: “I’m The Blonde With The Blue Shirt and Flowered Shorts. Books Are Life! I would die without them.”

Mukta: “My imagination is like yours. You are a great writer.”

Kate: “I want to be an author like you when I grow up.”

Rachel: “The writing fair was fun, but having you come made it better.”

Natalie: “I think it’s amazing that you are a minister and a writer. Being a minister takes a lot of time and writing takes dedication. 5 years ago you also had cancer. Now that’s amazing!”

Sara: “The questions you answered were easy to understand.”

Marc: “Thank you for telling us about your life. It has amazed me of how you can accomplish so much in such a little time.”

Mark: “The next time I write a story, I’ll be sure to use your advice.”

Jan: “I want to write for the soul reason you do.” [Jan is either quite perceptive or a little off in spelling.]

Roger: “It really helped me to see how to get characters and settings. You said you didn’t consider yourself famous, but I think you are.”

Christopher: “Thank you for letting us ask you questions.”

Hans: “If I could remember the titles of your books, I would check them out of the library.”

David: “I was the kid who asked that question of how was it like having cancer.”

Jenary: “I have your autograph on my dresser. I saw someone buying your book.”

Kellie: “Maybe my next story will be about my two hermit crabs. One of them died, though.”

Lauren: “It was neat to meet a real author.”

The one I like best, though, is a little blond first-grader whose name I can’t remember.

“Do you ever make mistakes when you write books?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” I replied.

“Well, then,” she said, “it would be good to write them in pencil, wouldn’t it?”

John Robert McFarland

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: “Language is a constant source of humor because we misuse it so much.” Helen Karr McFarland

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml


Tuesday, October 21, 2014

A RANDOM BOOK REVIEW: To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

If Paul O’Rourke had simply gone to Henry Louis Gates, Jr, he could have saved me 335 pp of confusion & good writing, and then Joshua Ferris and I could both be able TO RISE AGAIN AT A DECENT HOUR. [Little, Brown, & Co, 2014]

O’Rourke is a young and highly successful Manhattan dentist and, despite of and because of his NYC presence, a die-hard Red Sox fan. He desperately wants an identity beyond dentistry, a sense of who he is rather than what he does. It is a restless search that keeps him up nights, hence the title of the book.

He tries to find identity in a succession of women, each of whom is attractive to him because of her family, a place where there are roots, where there is identity. He wants each one more for her family identity than for herself, and thus always loses both.

Someone impersonates him online, and claims that he is actually an Ulm, part of a small clan that originated in the Holy Land. It is both attractive and disturbing, a real and exotic and unique identity, but his own individual identity had been pre-empted. People think it is he who is posting online, including some vaguely anti-Semitic ramblings, even though he once tried to be Jewish to get a girl.

Ferris never seems to be able to figure out which direction he wants to go, the best way to explore identity. The book is a mishmash of themes: family, women, whether to have children, religion, ethnicity, identity theft in the cyber age, etc. Maybe that is his theme; that there is no theme. Finally he just sort of gives up and has O’Rourke becomes a Cubs fan, which in the baseball world is both total identity and total frustration.

It’s good writing, but I’m glad it’s over so that I can, indeed, rise again at a decent hour.

John Robert McFarland

One of the great things about having more clothes and gadgets and sports equipment and tools than one could ever need or use up is that the only gifts left are books. So almost all my reading is from gift books from my wife, and our daughters, Mary Beth Connolly and Kathleen “Katie” Kennedy. Katie’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: “A person should live their own life.” In this age, the singular “their” makes good sense, but it clanks so badly when I hear it I just can’t use it.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write, once in a great while, Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml


Thursday, October 2, 2014

The End of Your Life Book Club


A RANDOM BOOK REVIEW: THE END OF YOUR LIFE BOOK CLUB, by Will Schwalbe

First, let me admit that I fell in love with Mary Ann Schwalbe. A fascinating woman. She was a classmate of John Updike at Harvard/Radcliffe. She chose both to work and to raise a family, with three children, at a time when most women were required to do one or the other, but not both. She started her career as a London actress. She became head of a girl’s school and director of admissions at Harvard. She founded the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women & Children and spent months at a time in refugee camps around the world. She was a woman of simple but profound faith in God.
                    
Throughout it all, she was a reader.

After she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she and her son, Will, formed their book club. He often went with her to doctor’s appointments and treatments, and they discussed what they were reading in those times, from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo to The Elegance of the Hedgehog. [As one who has spent a lot of time in such places, this sounds like an excellent plan, although I used to make my fellow patients in the treatment room sing songs I “enhanced,” like Chemo Pushers Ball and Gonna Wash that Cancer Right Out of My Bod.]

One of the fascinating things about Mary Ann’s reading: she always read the end of the book first, because she didn’t want to waste her time on an author who didn’t know how to end a book.

If you want to meet a fascinating woman, or get a lot of good book recommendations, I recommend The End of Your Life Book Club.

John Robert McFarland

One of the great things about having more clothes and gadgets and sports equipment and tools than one could ever need or use up is that the only gifts left are books. So almost all my reading is from gift books. I think this one was from daughter, Katie Kennedy, whose Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: ”Some people are nice… and if you talk to them properly, they can be even nicer.” Colm Toibin, in Brooklyn.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write, once in a great while, Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml