11.21.05

The Miami Book Fair this weekend was fabulous! I do recommend it to anyone passionate about books and reading. Nice assortment of famous and mid-list authors in attendance. I saw Maureen Dowd, Richard A. Clark, James B. Stewart, Dave Barry, Tess Gerritsen, Edna Buchanan, Christine Kling, Les Sandiford, Andrea Mitchell, Lisa Ling, many others. Candace Bushnell was there, and Jennifer Weiner, and Jose La Tour, but it was impossible to see everyone's presentations.

My presentation, Fact & Fiction, was with P.J. Parrish (only one of those sisters who write under that pseudonym) and Mary Kay Andrews. They were charming, and it was fun to discuss our books together. We had no moderator to speak of—a moderator for the panel seemed to have fallen between the cracks of this very lively book fair—and when he introduced us, he got everything mixed up, so we just ignored him and did our own thing. : )

Some old friends came, and lots of others whom I did not know, I sold some books, got good questions, so it was a positive experience.

Now, here's something funny—or horrible, depending on your point of view—we had a lovely hospitality suite where we could go to put our feet up, have snacks and coffee, meet other authors, etc. It was set up in the library of the host institution, Miami-Dade College, the co-coordinator of this event along with the large Coral Gables independent bookstore, Books & Books. I have never had much respect for MDC (it used to be called MDCC and was basically a community college, but it has added some four-year majors), thinking it a third-rate academic institution at best. (My husband taught there for two semesters, so I know whereof I speak!) This clinched it for me.

The sign to the hospitality area read: AUTHOR'S HOSPITALITY SUITE

Hmmm, I wondered, who was this one, single author? There was surely more than one author at the Miami Book Fair. Yep, misplaced apostrophe—see the book by Lynne Truss on punctuation, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, for more on misplaced apostrophes. This is one of my pet peeves—the sign should have read:

AUTHORS' HOSPITALITY SUITE

That indicates that more than one author is involved. Basic punctuation. Grade school punctuation, really.

I was tempted to point it out to them—or take some white-out and correct it—but, why bother? Embarrassing, yes, especially when there are so many writers (who presumably know their punctuation), but not worth the effort.

There was an article on Lynne Truss, by the way, in the Sunday magazine of the New York Times this weekend (11/20/05). She has just written another book, Talk to the Hand, a book of manners. (Just read this and thought it a howl, as well as an excellent, thoughtful, intelligent read.) I thought the tone of the article bordered on the negative. I heard Lynne Truss speak a couple of years ago at the British Library when Eats, Shoots and Leaves was first published, and found her utterly delightful. From the tone of this piece, it appears that the writer found her much less so. That little book on punctuation, by the way, made Ms. Truss a mint. Let's hear it for the common, lowly apostrophe!

There's a web site for a game based on the book.

11.16.05
     Have been thinking a lot about life and death recently. Life because my newest grandchild, sweet little Lily Francesca Maud, made her appearance in early November, joining siblings Zoe, William, and Esme. (I also have another grandchild, Julian.)

And death because one of my dearest and sweetest friends passed away last August. It is ironic and infinitely sad that the best people I knew as a young woman were the first to pass on. I was thumbing through my address book the other day and it was sobering to see the crossed-out names. Another common thread connecting these lost friends? They'd all had bittersweet lives—though some had been immensely successful, career-wise—and they'd all suffered traumatic romantic disappointments. Like the characters in Thornton Wilder's Bridge of San Luis Rey, there was a connection: the bridge was love. My friend who died in August had the saddest love story I had ever heard. Love, meeting up with that someone who could be one's life partner, is a chancy business. Timing is all.

My friend, who'd just been graduated from college, and whom I met during Peace Corps training in Puerto Rico, fell in love with a woman in our group who was a few years older than he was and who had been an elementary school teacher. She was about to be engaged to another man. They'd fallen into a fast friendship, a meeting of minds and sense of humor, and then came the realization that they were soul mates. It hit them both hard. The woman decided to break off her relationship with the other man, but circumstances intervened—the almost-fiancé heard some nasty stories about her thanks to a spiteful gossip who specialized in character assassination—and he broke off with her first. Unfortunately, the gossip also resulted in the woman's being dropped from the Peace Corps, and so my friend was sent abroad for two years and his love stayed behind.

She eventually qualified for another Peace Corps group and was also sent abroad. They corresponded. (Her letters to him—a stack neatly bound in red ribbon—were found by the executor of his will after his death. He'd kept them for 40 years.) They wrote of marriage, of children—they had names picked out—and then came a turning point, a letter from her that asked for specific commitment, for a when and where, from him. She was being pursued by another man in her group, a brilliant and charismatic fellow who rarely took "no" for an answer.

Did I say my friend was younger than his love? He was also young for his chronological age, immature. He was not that experienced sexually. He couldn't commit—years later he told me that he'd been scared and that fright had led him to make the biggest mistake of his life. He let her go, too easily, too quickly. She was stunned, and turned to this new man. They married, had children, came back to the United States, and turned a fledgling business idea into millions.

The marriage faltered and they divorced after a few years, but they remained business partners and ran the company together. My friend, who'd never married and whose relationships always came to a dead end, rediscovered her, but was afraid to approach her. He'd made a career in do-gooding, non-profit enterprises; he had no money to speak of, while she was a bona fide millionaire, her company a household name. He felt he was not good enough for her and could not bring himself to contact her, though I and the few others who knew this story urged him to do so. I had run into her at a Peace Corps reunion, you see, and the first words out of her mouth were: How is he? Did he ever get married?

To cut to the chase: he finally contacted her, a month after she'd remarried. In the interim he had changed careers and was now in a high-paying, prestigious profession and with a top firm in New York City. They talked. She said, oh, dear one, why didn't you call me last month? He was, once again, heartbroken. They had sporadic contact, then she disappeared from sight. She cut her ties to her company, which had been bought by a huge conglomerate. Moved. Phone changed. E-mail didn't work. Some kind of crisis had occurred.

He never found her again. The love of his life—the one he discussed with a precious few friends and described as "the one who got away"—had vanished. He died alone, having suffered a sudden and massive heart attack. He was not found immediately; the next-door neighbors noticed he was not around and, failing to reach him on the telephone, called the police, who broke down the door to his house.

I located her a few days after he'd died. The Internet is a marvelous tool, indeed! I wish I had tried to find her earlier, but I was too involved in family and career for the past ten years and had no time for anything. I regret this now. There is nothing like hindsight, is there? She was told he'd passed away and the executor asked if she wanted her letters returned. She did. When the executor—who was perhaps his closest friend—told her that he'd always loved her, she said nothing.

Someday I will write this story, create fiction with these two beautiful young people who met, loved, and lost. This time, though, I promise that the story will have a happy ending. This is the least that I, as a writer and friend, can do. I wish I had done more.