Shakespeare's Sisters

                                                                                                           Having just finished Eleanor Brown's marvelous debut novel, The Weird Sisters, I have been thinking a lot about sisters in general, but more particularly, sisters in Shakespeare. Though her story is modern, Brown's trio of sisters, Rosalind, Bianca and Cordelia, each carry traits of their Shakespearean namesakes (How could I not love this book?) and themes from the plays echo subtly through the novel. The women in Brown's novel, like so many of Shakespeare's sister characters, are studies in contrasts, yet are bound by their shared histories. In Much Ado about Nothing, for example, Beatrice is elder cousin to the younger Hero. Where Hero is demure, passive, and ripe for marriage, Beatrice is outspoken, sharp-witted, and happily single. While the women aren't biological sisters, their sister-hood is evident in their affectionate banter and fierce loyalty to each other. On the other hand, Twelfth Night presents a pair of women, Olivia and Viola, whose names are near anagrams for the other. They're not related, but are actually sisters under the skin (or breeches, in Viola's case). Both women are without parents, and grieving for lost brothers; they're alone in a man's world, and they're both pining for someone they can't have. Olivia falls in love with Viola-dressed-as-a-boy because in her she finds a sympathetic listener who understands her. At the end of the play, when the two women actually become sisters through marriage, that relationship becomes explicit. My current project features a biological pair of Shakespearean sisters, Kate and Bianca Minola. When my sister asked to read the book, I said, "Okay, but just so you know--the sisters in the story are not us!" My Kate and Bianca, like their originals, resent each other and fight constantly. My sister and I never fight. (And no one ever believes us when we say this.) My fictional sisters have drifted apart, but my real-life sister and I are close. And yet. . . Like my Kate and Bianca, my sister and I couldn't be more different. She was always the risk-taker, I the cautious one. She was social, I was bookish; she's athletic, I'm. . .pathetic.  As a teenager, she drove confidently and fast, while I gripped the wheel, white-knuckled, refusing to move from the right-hand lane. And you could have drawn a chalk line down the middle of our shared bedroom, her half neatly dusted and picked up, mine looking like my closet exploded. When we ended up in the same gym class in high school, I looked to her for protection from the bigger, tougher girls who ate skinny chicks like me for breakfast. Did I mention she was a freshman at the time? Even now, our lives have gone in completely different directions, but she's my touchstone, and I'm hers. We know each other better than we know ourselves. And this truth about sisterhood, like so many other aspects of human nature, is something Shakespeare got completely right.  (P.S. Happy birthday, sis!)

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Greetings From Asbury Park

Asbury Park holds a place in my heart like no other. Growing up in the 60s in a family of limited means, our "vacation" each summer was a day in Asbury. We started in the morning with a trip to the Monte Carlo pool, with its cheerfully painted Adirondack chairs. We stored our stuff in a locker room that sported a sign with a 40s style bathing beauty in a red swimsuit. After a morning swim, we walked through the cool underground tunnel that led straight to the beach, where we spent the afternoon until it was time for dinner at the Homestead Restaurant. Sometimes we took a ride in the swan boats on Wesley Lake, but we always ended up on the boardwalk, riding the carousel, eating Kohr's custard and taffy from Criterion, always stopping to sit on the reversible benches--where you  could either watch the people or the ocean. I always chose the ocean.

 As you can see from the photo, going to Asbury is a tradition in my family, one that started during World War II. Most of the men in the family were away, so my grandmother, my mom and two uncles, as well as a number of assorted great aunts would spend a week in one of the more modest boarding houses. It was a women and children's vacation during the week, and on the weekends, the men who were either too young or too old to serve would come down and visit. After the war, the tradition continued into the early 50s. On the rides down during our day trips, my mom would tell me stories of Asbury's heyday. My favorite was her description of dances held around the Monte Carlo pool, where a band played out on a floating platform in the middle of the water. It was easy to imagine the ladies in their 40s updos, dancing with their soldier husbands and boyfriends to Big Band music. But the Monte Carlo pool, like many of Asbury's landmarks, is long gone. My heart broke when the carousel was dismantled, when Convention Hall and the Paramount fell into disrepair, and when the Palace Amusement building was demolished. But after years of economic decline, recent revitalization efforts in Asbury are revealing hopeful glimmers of its glory days (to quote its most famous champion, The Boss). And while Asbury is no longer the dream resort of my youth, it's a place I'll always love--even in all its shabby splendor.

A Book By Any Other Name

When I tell people I have written a book, the first question nearly everyone asks is: "What's it called?" And I hesitate to tell them every time. Because the title I have now--the so-called "working title"--is very likely not the one the book will end up with.

This is something that takes a while to learn. When I wrote my first novel, I came up with a title I loved. (More about that later.) It was short, succinct, and had a cute double entendre going for it. The trouble is, it wasn't a real indicator of what the book was about, so my agent and I brainstormed lots of titles that suggested both Shakespeare and the book's Jersey setting.

This activity soon became a kind of parlor game for my family and friends, who came up with suggestions like:

 Much A Dude About Nothing 

The Merry Ex-Wives of West Windsor

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, NJ

and my personal favorite, courtesy of my son Adam: Julius, Seize Her! or alternatively, Julius Sees Her. (Isn't this fun?)

Anyway, my current project is going out as Taming Kate, which gives a pretty clear idea of what my book is about and what it's referencing. But its very familiarity could end up working against it, and down the line it could certainly change. And there's always that frustration of coming up with what seems like the perfect title, only to find that it's already out there. The lovely, rhythmic, and oh-so-apt Much Ado About You,  for example, was off limits to me, because it already belongs to the incomparable Eloisa James. And a title I considered for my current book, Plain Kate, is a young adult book that was released in September.

And that first title I came up with? The one I loved? It's The Marriage Plot, which just happens to be the name of Jeffrey Eugenides' upcoming novel, due out in October.  Eugenides is the author of  The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex, works that are about as far from fun beach reads as you can get.

So I had to have a little going away party for my title.  (I always knew it had potential.) I wished it luck, gave it my blessing, and now look forward to seeing it on the New York Times bestseller list.

Just not with my name next to it.

Adapting Shakespeare, Part II

In many ways, Shakespeare’s plays ask essential questions about what it means to be human. In the comedies, many of those questions have to do with love, and while the plays are funny, their themes are decidedly serious. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, asks if love is really just an illusion. Twelfth Night raises questions about the meaning of gender, the limits of faithfulness, and the places our journeys take us. In the comedies, it is often his female characters who struggle with such issues; they are fully realized women, and I have come to think of a couple of them as friends. Much Ado about Nothing, on which I based my first novel, features my favorite Shakespearean heroine. To me, the question in that play is rooted in Beatrice’s experience:

what happens when a seriously smart woman, chafing under the conventions of her time and station in life, meets her intellectual match in a man she claims to hate? Kate, of The Taming of the Shrew, lacks Beatrice’s “merry heart,” but shares her intellectual gifts. Unlike Beatrice, who uses humor to mitigate her situation, Kate has a white hot core of anger—but it’s an anger borne of loneliness. While it’s easy to write Kate off as a shrew, Shakespeare doesn’t give us a one-dimensional character, but a frustrated woman who resents living in the shadow of her younger, prettier, and much more compliant and conventional sister. So I asked myself: what would happen to a Kate or Beatrice or Viola in a modern setting with modern problems? Strangely enough, it’s pretty much what happened to the heroines of several centuries years ago. They struggle with finding their identities as women. They have anger with few outlets for it. Sometimes they fall in love with men who don’t deserve them. Sometimes they fall in love with men who do. And just as in real life, all of them are different people in Act Five than they were in Act One. I teach my students a simple formula about Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies: in the tragedies, people die. In the comedies, people get married. And while I don’t marry my heroines off, I do give them what they deserve—a happy ending.

Once a Bennie. . .

Bennies* are not made, but born. I, for example, am a Bennie. I come from a long line of Bennies, in particular my Italian grandpa, whose idea of beachwear consisted of a Banlon shirt, khaki shorts, black socks and dress shoes. No kidding. I have pictures. Popular wisdom holds that the word originated as an acronym for the cities from which the tourists arrived: Bayonne-Elizabeth-Newark-New York. (Well, that about covers my family.) We live “up North.” We go “down the shore.” We arrive in overloaded cars and trudge up to the beach hut or the gate or the boardwalk stand to buy our daily badges laden with chairs, bags, food and sunscreen. We are the always either the palest or the most sunburned bathers by the sea. We spend a lot of money on food, house rentals, beach chairs, toys, souvenirs and boardwalk rides. And the locals pretty much count the days until we leave. I’m not sure why we are reviled so much. There is a certain Star-Ledger columnist for example, who has made a career of sneering at Bennies. My nieces, who have thrown off

their Bennie status by dint of living in Ocean County for most of their young lives, use the word as an adjective in its most pejorative sense—as in: “Did you see that ugly shirt he was wearing? It was so Bennie.” I was horrified one day last fall when I opened a local paper in Avon to see that the winner of their town Halloween contest was dressed as. . .me. Not me, in particular, but a Bennie. The picture was grainy, but I could make out a kid dressed in yes—an ugly shirt, his hair slicked back and wearing a penciled mustache that suggested perhaps he was meant to look Italian. Hmm. The best of us act like respectful guests. The worst of us are exemplified in a certain reality TV show That Shall Not Be Mentioned, as it besmirches the very name of my beloved coastline. But here’s what all Bennies have in common: we are outsiders. We are seasonal renters and day trippers who can only dream about living in the towns we visit each summer. I think maybe that's why I set my novels at the Shore. I will always be a Bennie. But through my characters, at least, I can finally belong.

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*Derogatory term for those who visit the Jersey shore as tourists

Just What She Ought

“Rosemary, your books need more sex.” So says my 76 year-old mother. Not a comment I expected, certainly, but one I’d like to address. In the industry, my genre label is “women’s fiction,” but I think of what I do as romantic comedy. Though my protagonists grow and change through the narratives, a love story serves as the, well, heart of my books. And I love writing love scenes, those anxiously awaited pages in a story that get re-read, flipped back to, or highlighted on a Kindle. For these reasons, they have to be good. More than that, they have to be convincing. The reader has to be swept along on the emotions of the couple—she has to get as weak-kneed and fluttery as the heroine, otherwise the writer has not done her job. It’s not easy to get those scenes right. And it’s even harder if you move those two people into the bedroom and then leave the door open. Which I am loath to do. I’m a big believer in the love scene fading to black, in quietly closing the door upon the couple to let them get on with it, without me reporting their every move. It’s not that I don’t appreciate a well-written sex scene myself now and then. I’m just not that comfortable writing them, and I know there is a certain readership (one that does not include my mother, obviously) that's just as uncomfortable reading them, and might prefer to use their imaginations a little—or a lot, as the case may be. My model in this is of course, Jane Austen, who, to modern readers’ great frustration, never detailed a kiss between her heroes and heroines, and in fact limited their declaration scenes to narrative rather than dialogue. This practice is maddeningly summed up in three short sentences from Emma, in the scene in which Mr. Knightly finally confesses his love. Instead of a direct answer from Emma, we get this from the narrator: “What did she say?—Just what she ought, of course. A lady always does.” So Mom, and anybody else out there who’s interested, use your imagination. If you want to know what my heroine is doing behind closed doors, well, it’s just what she ought, of course—and anything else you might want to dream up for her.

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Resolution 1/1/11

Be it resolved, on this First Day of Two Thousand and Eleven, between the Author Presumptive and Herself: I. The Author Presumptive (hereafter known as A.P.) shall allow herself no more than two (2) minutes per day of dark ruminations upon The State of Her Career, The Suspicion That She Has No Talent,  and Those Who Have Already Garnered Book Deals. II. The A.P. shall observe strict parameters for the commencement and conclusion of Cocktail Time, which shall begin no earlier than 5:00 4:30 p.m. EST on alternate days ending in “Y,"  unless in the case of Emergencies or Other Unforeseen Circumstances (as defined by The A.P.). III. The A.P. shall adhere to the advice of her Esteemed Agent with a Minimum of Whining. IV. The A.P. shall demonstrate more appreciation for Her Darling Husband (hereafter known as H.D.H). V. The A.P. shall cook at least three (3) Nutritious Meals per week for H.D.H. and Her Beloved Offspring (hereafter known as H.B.O) at least one of which shall feature A Fish Protein that has not occupied a can. VI. The A.P. shall cease all imaginings of Dire Events each time H.B.O. operate a motor vehicle, occupy the passenger seat of a motor vehicle, or in fact, step out the door of The Maternal Domicile. VII. For each minute spent Trolling the Kindle Book Store, the A.P. shall spend an equal and opposite number of minutes on Her Elliptical Trainer. VIII. The A.P. shall limit her consumption of the offerings of the Bravo Network to only one (1) program per season, unless and until Top Chef resumes, thereby rendering this resolution  Null and Void. IX. The A.P. shall immediately desist from fantasies involving Three Book Deals, Lifetime Movie Adaptations, and Lunches with Nora Ephron and/or Tim Gunn. X. The A.P. will daily remind herself that she is in possession of A Loving Family, Loyal Friends, Moderately Good Health, and that she is, in fact and indeed—One of the Lucky Ones. Happy New Year, everyone!

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Best. Gift. Ever.

Right before Christmas a friend handed me a small, worn volume with a marble-patterned cover. He told me he picked it up at his library book sale, and figured I was the one person he knew who would want it. There was no title on the cover, but when I opened it, here is what I saw: My reaction was one usually reserved for a blue bag from Tiffany. I held my treasure, caressing its pages, and while my husband and our friends chatted over drinks, I happily got lost in Parker's poems. I discovered Dorothy Parker in my late teens, at exactly the age when her combination of acid and sentiment held its strongest appeal. The author of work The New York Times famously dismissed as "flapper verse," was also capable of real poetry: Like January weather,/The years will bite and smart,/And pull your bones together/To wrap your chattering heart./The pretty stuff you're made of/Will crack and crease and dry./The thing you are afraid of/Will look from every eye. (Try to read that one without a small shiver of recognition.) I know few writers who get to the heart of women's fears and disappointments so well as Parker, probably because she had so many of her own. Her life has become the stuff of legend, with so much emphasis on her alcoholism and broken love affairs that we forget her sharp, bright talent. And given her role at The New Yorker and her association with the Algonquin Round Table, we tend to forget something else as well--she's the original Jersey girl.

Born in Long Branch (also home to Norman Mailer and Robert Pinsky--is there something magical in our salt air?)  Parker's sardonic observations and ability to hold her own with the guys--whether drinking, quipping, or writing them under the table--have a familiar Jersey edge. From her poem, "Observation": But I shall stay the way I am,/Because I do not give a damn. You go, girl.

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Adapting Shakespeare, Part I

There are some stories we just never tire of hearing. Their characters seem like old friends, and we know exactly how they will end. As an avid reader of literary updates, sequels, prequels and pastiches, it seemed a natural choice for me to write one of my own. And for better or for worse, I chose to adapt the material of the biggest guy in the literary room: William Shakespeare, widely considered an inveterate stealer of plots himself. Shakespeare’s comedies and their many conventions—mistaken identity, false love versus true, controlling parents, the find love/lose love/get love back narrative—actually have their roots in early Roman plays. When it comes to romantic comedy, there really hasn’t been anything new in a couple of thousand years. Though Shakespeare is accused of stealing plots, he was actually adapting much older stories for his contemporary audience, using recognizable and well-loved conventions that he knew his audience fully expected; it’s a practice writers and filmmakers still employ today. In fact, you could say there’s a pretty straight line from Much Ado about Nothing to When Harry Met Sally. When I set out to adapt my four favorite  Shakespeare comedies, Much Ado about Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I strove to create fresh material while staying faithful to the definitive elements of the plays. While I’ve given them Jersey shore settings (in a happy coincidence, two of the four are originally set in coastal towns) added characters, and updated language, I’ve tried hard to preserve the heart of each story. In the books I use real life situations—a family wedding, the opening of a bed-and-breakfast, the renovation of a restaurant—with realistic characters, the essence of which are Shakespeare's originals. Beatrice and Benedick’s banter, Kate’s anger, and Viola’s faithfulness are as recognizable and relevant today as they were 400 years ago. I hope their 21st century counterparts express these things faithfully--even without the iambic pentameter.

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Something Cooking

One recent morning I awoke in the dark, pre-dawn chill of my room and squinted at the blue numerals on my clock that read 4:50. Instead of turning over for that extra hour of sleep, I blinked, shook my head, and had one not very coherent thought: why is that oven up so high? Yes, I even think about food in my sleep. I had started my Christmas baking that day, and my subconscious was apparently still back in the kitchen, mixing up a bowl of my grandmother’s anise-flavored ricotta cookies. * Except for reading and writing, there are few things in life I like better than cooking and eating. In fact, food figures prominently in my books: characters fall in love over simmering pasta pots and steaming plates of risotto, and they trade secrets and confidences across tables. Not surprisingly, my heroes seem to know their way around a kitchen. If you are Italian—and perhaps even if you are not—you know that food is love.  So here's a little from me to you. Happy holidays!

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*Mema's Ricotta Cookies 2 cups of flour 2 teaspoons of baking powder 1/4 teaspoon of salt                                                   1 cup sugar 1 stick of butter 2 eggs 2 teaspoons of anise extract 1 cup of fresh ricotta cheese

1. Pre-heat oven to 350. Sift flour, baking powder and salt into bowl and set aside.
2. In a larger bowl or stand mixer, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs and anise extract.
3. Add dry ingredients and ricotta alternately to butter mixture until well blended.
4. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls, two inches apart, on parchment covered cookie sheets and bake for 10-12 minutes. Do not overbake! The bottoms should be a light golden brown.
5. Let cool and top with confectioner's sugar glaze and non-pareils or colored sugars.
6. Try not to finish them all before Christmas Eve.