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Sunday Sentence

by Erika Dreifus on
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In which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

Okay, “commentary alert”! This week, I had to choose two sentences. They’re both from the same piece.

Just as it is considered a breach of prison etiquette for visitors to ask the incarcerated what brought them, say, to Cayuga Correctional Facility, the rules for casual social exchange in the weeks from mid-May to late June ought to require that no one ever ask anyone with a day job what she is doing “for the summer.”

and

It is that summer supplies energy to whole new channels of resentment: toward the painter who has secured the three-week fellowship at Yaddo; toward the academic who is teaching a course at the University of Edinburgh; toward the psychotherapist who is decamping to Wellfleet; toward the inveterate bohemian who has sublet her Chelsea apartment to a group of professional clowns so that she can travel with her daughter through Patagonia.

The source of these insightful sentences? Ginia Bellafante, writing for The New York Times. My only quibble is the piece’s title: “Sympathy for the Working Mother.” (One need not be a mother to identify with and applaud these particular lines! I daresay many of my fellow writers-with-day-jobs, regardless of parenting status, may share these feelings.)

Happy Summer, whatever your plans may (or may not) be!
Happy Summer, whatever your plans may (or may not) be!

Wednesday’s Work-in-Progress: Spotlight on Elizabeth Nunez

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

This past week I had the privilege of reading Elizabeth Nunez’s latest book, a memoir titled Not for Everyday Use (Akashic Books). I obtained a digital galley with the intention of asking Elizabeth–whom I’ve been lucky to get to know through my “day job” at The City University of New York–if she’d be willing to answer a few questions for The Practicing Writer.

I finished this excellent book quickly, and the ever-gracious Elizabeth agreed to answer my questions (in fact, she has already returned her responses!). I had to tell her, though, that the newsletter interviewees are booked (so to speak), for the next several months. This interview won’t appear until the August issue, which will go out to readers at the very end of July. (In the interest of keeping things somewhat suspenseful, I won’t reveal the identities of every interviewee between now and then, but I’ll tell you that our very next issue will feature Roxane Gay, who will tell us about her soon-to-be-published novel An Untamed State.)

Meantime, I encourage you to watch this video of Elizabeth’s recent appearance at the Center for Fiction (although this latest book is nonfiction, Elizabeth is an acclaimed novelist). You’ll get to hear her read from the memoir, and listen to her conversation with Louise DeSalvo (who offers terrific questions and comments in a discussion that encompasses race, religion, writing and more). An hour well spent.