"This book is about life as an improvisatory art," and it's an art I would do well to learn. The first chapter of Mary Catherine Bateson's Composing a Life might as well have been written for my group of friends: female scholars and artists whose life trajectories have been interrupted by marriage, children, the economy.

I've recently joined the (unpaid) staff of The Revenant Culture literary zine--I'll be serving primarily as an editor, but also as a theatre critic. The first review went live today, and here's an excerpt:

Shakespeare's (Tiny) Tempest
Over half the play is missing. In fact, nearly two-thirds of the text is strangely absent from Summer Shakespeare's production of The Tempest. No matter. What remains is fifty minutes of belly-laughing farce, with the human tragedies and loves rounded out to little comic melodramas. It may be a dinghy to Shakespeare's imperial ship, but it still floats. (Mostly.)

To read the rest of the review, or to find out how to buy tickets for one of the final three performances, visit The Revenant Culture Blog.

"With each new book we must dare failure, or worse: mediocrity."

--Katherine Paterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia, winner of the Newberry Medal and Jacob Have I Loved, winner of the National Book Award.

Recent conversations and bits of reading have all converged on this theme of mediocrity. It seems we artists would rather sell the brushes, toss the manuscripts, and burn the house before submitting ourselves to mediocrity. But we'll never know if our work is mediocre until the investment is made, and the work is completed. So we terrorize ourselves, paralyze our work for fear of mediocrity.

I was just told, again, that

1. wanting to "do something" with life was a pernicious form of pride,
and that
2. the best way to serve Christ is to sacrifice all ambitions or dreams.

It's all about sacrifice, this person said. Serving. Suffering. Especially for women, like me. We have to sacrifice everything to serve our home. This is our God-given ministry.

It's hard to refute these arguments from pastors and fellow Christians. There is scriptural truth in what they say. Yes, life is about service. Life is about "take up your cross and follow me." It's about suffering and death. And yes, moms are called to be "keepers at home." But suffering and death and sacrifice and stuck-at-home-ness is not the POINT of life.

Novels in Three Lines or, The News in Three Lines

In 1906, Felix Feneon wrote 1,220 news items for a French newspaper. A sampling of his journalistic genius appears below.

"To die like Joan of Arc!" cried Terborgh, from the top of a pyre made of his furniture. The firemen of Saint-Ouen stifled his ambition.

With inspiration from Feneon's Novels in Three Lines, I've begun devising my own little "novels." In truth, my stories do tend to run longer than Feneon's--I'm only limited by what I can fit on half of a 3x5 card. I fold the note card to make a little book, and slip the volume into one of Benjamin's shirt pockets.

Shirt Pocket Stories, Volume 1
Pirouette

Cranberry Maine laughed when the branches creaked high above her head. She danced when the elm swayed in a mighty wind. But she fell, limp and pale, her face pressed to the dirt, when the muttering Puppenmeister slashed her tree-tangled strings with a knife.

Ingmar Bergman, the writer and director of film classics The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, was often asked to defend, or at least explain, what he intended these films to accomplish. His answer surprised me. Perhaps, if I were a better student of film, it would not have.