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Letter from Joyce Archives

February 1, 2003

Dear Friends,

As a lot of you know, who are regular visitors here, I’ve got a new book out this month, The Usual Rules. I think of it as a novel about families -- children losing parents, parents losing children, siblings pulled apart, and about the ways people in families sometimes manage to find each other again. But my story came out of the experience of finding myself in New York City on September 11 of 2001 (just passing through, I thought, though in the end I stayed close to a month). A few sentences I read in the paper, about a young girl who had lost her mother in the towers, haunted me. I couldn’t stop thinking about how such a young person would rebuild her life. I would never have intruded on the personal grief of real people at such a time. So I decided to create a fictional character in a similar situation. I wanted to explore the nature of loss, but also, the nature of healing, if in fact that might be possible.

I had been embarked on a totally different work of fiction at the time (and grappling with the experience of watching my youngest child leave home) when the attack on the Trade Towers took place. Like a lot of people I know, I found, in the days after 9/11, that the kinds of issues and concerns that had occupied me before no longer seemed so significant -- or at least, they were eclipsed by others, that mattered so much more. I wanted the book I wrote to speak to what I was feeling at the time, and the questions I thought needed answering -- chief among them, for me, "Where is hope to be found?" That was the starting point for the novel.

As always, I look forward to the moment when -- after months of solitary writing and revising -- I can go out into the world and share my work with readers, and hear what you think. (Well, sometimes, hearing back has been a painful experience, too, but even the criticism is part of the process, and one that has strengthened me, I like to think.)

I’ll be giving a number of readings in New York City first and visiting some schools in the New York area (Brooklyn, and New Jersey) before heading to the West Coast, then back east for readings in Philadelphia and some other places I’ll let you know about, as plans become clear. I hope you’ll take a look at my tour schedule and, if I’m passing through your area, that you’ll come and say hello.

In the interest of catching you up with a few topics that have absolutely nothing to do with the new book: I want to mention that the young woman we have been hearing from on this discussion forum over the course of recent months -- Ann -- who (as I mentioned in my last letter) first wrote to me from her small village in Israel last April -- arrived in the U.S. several weeks ago, thanks to the generosity and hospitality of numerous friends, and is now living with a host family in my home state of New Hampshire and studying at a fine private school there. For the moment, I think Ann may be too occupied with the huge and complicated adjustment she is going through to spend much time writing to us here, but I wanted to let those of you know, who have expressed concern about her, that she is happy and well (already heading up the literary magazine at her new school) and adjusting valiantly to the new experience of a New England winter. I’m sure we’ll hear from her again, when she’s ready.

For myself, I managed to escape the winter for about six weeks, when I traveled back to the little village in Guatemala I now consider to be my part-time home, to spend Christmas and part of January. I was joined there by my sweetheart, Ken, from British Columbia, Canada, and, for a little while, my son Charlie and his friend Conor. After they left, another dear old friend, Lee Larson, of Portland, Oregon, came down, at my invitation, with his family, to run basketball clinics for the young people of San Marcos La Laguna with a wonderful former WNBA coach, Tom Newell. Organizing basketball clinics in Guatemala was never a goal I’d envisioned for myself, I have to admit, but it was a wonderful, inspiring week for all of us - though I can’t say my own basketball skills have improved appreciably, yet. I think Tom and Lee may have to return, and work with us all some more.

Back in New York now, I’m at work on a new theatrical production of my novel To Die For, scheduled to have its debut in a showcase performance this coming April at The Players’ Club in Gramercy Park. This month, I am also happy to announce that a new edition of To Die For is available, through iUniverse.com, with a beautiful new jacket featuring a painting by old friends (occasional visitors to this discussion forum) Dori and Joe DeCamillis, of Birmingham, Alabama.

Finally, to mark the 30th anniversary of the publication of my first book, Looking Back: A Chronicle of Growing Up Old in the Sixties, I have brought out a new paperback edition of that book too, with a new foreward and Readers’ Guide that I hope may make the book a useful tool for teachers and students. As those of you may know, who read my memoir At Home in the World, Looking Back tells only a piece of the story of what was going on at the time I was writing it, and so it seemed important to say some things about it, from the distance of three decades.

For this new edition, I chose to reprint that book with its original cover photograph of me, at the age of eighteen -- though as I approach my fiftieth birthday this November, the image reminds me of the many ways that age marks us, inside and out. I don’t look like that barefoot girl on the cover any more. But in another sense -- and this is what prompted me to write The Usual Rules -- there may be no age group whose struggles and pain speak to me more poignantly than those of young people. I hope you’ll let me know what you think about it. And, as always, about whatever else might be on your mind.

Your turn.

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