Nom de Plume

Jasper Merian is freed from bondage. It’s the end of the 17th century, and he hews out a farm in the wilds of the Carolinas, battling a demon for dominion. He takes a wife and has a son, Purchase. Well after he tries to buy his first wife and son out of slavery (and fails), his first son Marcus appears. And all of a sudden, he is the patriarch of a thriving farm, Stonehouses, and the generations that come after him. Through Jasper, both his sons, and the grandson Caleum, Dominion tracks the lives of the Merian family through the generations, until Caleum must defeat the same demon his grandfather did years before.

I wasn’t sure about this one at first. The prose seemed inflated, with drawn-out arcane language and pseudo-historical conceits. Two pages, five pages, the first chapter … they were a little irritating. Suddenly, it all fell into place. It worked. Baker’s tale is rich in mythology; indeed, his characters have the weighty authority of legend while still alive. As Americans, we all live with a mythology of those who settled this land and carved out an existence. Baker adds yet another dimension; hokey as it sounds, he manages to interweave diversity into history without making it the entire story. And this is what I found so compelling; while Edward P Jones (who we all know I hate) talks about slavery, Baker talks about context. The result is a wonderfully compelling read that will make you relearn your early American history, and perhaps even infuse it with a magic that wasn’t there before. Highly, highly recommend.

Elizabeth just wrote about getting into the holiday season with trees and ornaments and all that jazz. She says she had a little mailbox that she used to write letters to Santa for all her pets. Our letter-writing routine was that I wrote a letter and then we burned it in the fireplace. My mother claimed that the charred bits flew to the North Pole and reassembled in Santa’s hands. I think there was something about the fireplace purifying the letter so only the nice kids’ letters made it.

At the time, this seemed normal.

But what I want to know is whether anyone else had this same tradition. You see, my mother really had a lot of fun screwing with my head when I was a kid.

Take the Easter Bunny, for example. According to Mom, the Easter Bunny was actually a woman. Every Easter, before she went off to work, she would deliver eggs to households around the world. And being a successful, entrepreneurial sort, she delivered them in style: from her green and yellow briefcase. There were vague mumblings about an unemployed Mr. Easter Bunny.

Then there were the supermarket seeds. Noting that grocery stores seemed to appear out of nowhere, she claimed there were supermarket seeds. Grocery store owners would buy a seed, plop it into the ground and –sproing!–the very next day, there would be a brand-new supermarket. (The sproing! was her very word, BTW, and was accompanied by a throwing up of the hands.) I think I was 10 or so before I realized this wasn’t true. I casually mentioned supermarket seeds to a friend. She stared at me wordlessly, and then cracked up. I never lived it down. She sproinged! in front of all the kids at recess for months.

And of course, I shouldn’t neglect to mention that my mother had me so well-trained at five that she would trot me out at cocktail parties just so she could ask me what my purpose in life was in front of amused guests. “To support you in your old age, Mommy,” I would chirp. Then the kicker: “In the style to which you would like to become accustomed.”

You have to hand it to her; getting a five-year old to say that last convoluted bit is no mean feat.

I’d like to think that I’m not terribly warped by all this, but who knows? So back to the original question. How did you get letters to Santa–and was she screwing with my mind there too?

Great blog.

Two weeks ago
It’s about two in the afternoon. Steve calls. “For my company Christmas party, do you want steak or salmon?”

“When is it?”

“I’m not sure. Which do you want?”

“I don’t care,” I say, running through my schedule in head. “Can you forward me the e-mail?”

“We’ll get one of each then.”

“Forward me the e-mail.”

“Okay.”

Later that night
We’re sitting in the hot tub. All of a sudden, Steve says, “For the company christmas party? I put you down for the salmon. I’ll get the steak.”

“Okay. When is it?”

“Oh, like the week before Christmas.”

“Can you find out and tell me?”

“Sure.”

“Just forward me the e-mail.”

“Okay.”

A week ago
It strikes me that I might have to go get a dress or something for his party. Which reminds me, I still have no idea when the party is. I call him and ask when it is.

“It’s the 14th. That night.”

I pull open that darn ubiquitous thing — my Outlook calendar. “That’s a Thursday,” I say.

“Yeah,” he agrees.

“Okay, I’ll mark it.” We hang up. I note it on my Outlook calendar, and also on the wall calendar in the kitchen.

Three days ago
Laura is here visiting from Bellingham. I have just spent $400 dollars on vintage chairs. The lines are great, and match the couch perfectly. Alas, the blue is far brighter than I thought. I am irritated. (Granted, a normal state of being.) Steve says, “Oh, by the way, it’s formal. I have to wear a suit. It’s at some place called the Woodmark Hotel.”

Great, I think. I need to go shopping. Both last week and this week have been crazy busy with work. But it’s Thursday, so I have time. Maybe Wednesday night. I have a meeting on the east side at three. That should work. I can do the shopping over there and miss traffic. Plans unfurl in my head.

But it’s Steve, so I doublecheck anyway. “It’s next Thursday, right?”

“Yep. At 6.”

I am pleased. I have managed to pin Steve down. He has given me all the information I need. Thursday. 6. Kirkland. Formal. YAY! Or as YAY as a company Christmas party can be.

One hour ago
The phone rings. It’s Steve. “My party? I made a mistake. It’s Wednesday, not Thursday.”

I won’t be able to make it home in time, so am going to have to change over there in some bathroom on the Microsoft campus. Then, squander an hour and a half.

“I am going to kill you,” I say.

“But I’m so cute and adorable!”

Despite (or perhaps because of) its popularity, I never managed to muster enough interest in Patchett’s Bel Canto. But when I saw this earlier novel by Patchett on the library shelf, it looked interesting, so I added it to my pile and brought it home. I read part of it the night before we went skiing last Sunday, and the rest of it the day after. (Geoff and Mike had a party that night that we barely made in time that night.)

Sabine has been Parsifal’s assistant for twenty years. Desperately in love, she lives with him and his lover Phan when Phan starts to get sick with AIDS. She and Parsifal marry so she can be his widow–his deep, abiding friendship and protection is all he can offer. When he dies unexpectedly of an aneurism, she is cast adrift. After all, the assistant without her magician is nothing.

Then, she discovers that his past was all smoke and mirrors, that his family is not dead as he claimed but alive and well, and that he didn’t come from Connecticut, but from Nebraska. Not even his name is real. When his mother and sister come out to LA, she is at first inhospitable to these unexpected, and unwanted, revelations. But despite herself, she is drawn into the family and goes to visit them in Nebraska, where she learns about Parsifal’s father and uncovers a deeply disturbing history that explains it all. And through it all, she finds that she is, in many ways, a magician herself.