I
love independent bookstores, and I’d like to begin by thanking The Odyssey Book
Shop, its owner Joan Grenier and all the staff here for hosting this event. I
note that the Shop just celebrated its 50th anniversary, and has been host to
community events, readings, and book signings, just like this one, since it opened.
And
now it is both an honor and a pleasure to introduce this evening’s author,
reader and signer of books, Harriet Chessman. Standing here, I must echo
Admiral Stockdale’s famous words at the vice-presidential debates in 1992, “Why
am I here?”
After
all I met Harriet for the first time at IYA next door, about an hour ago. So you might well wonder what I might have to
say by way of introduction. It wouldn’t
be cricket to read the biographical blurb from her website which is repeated in
the front matter of The Beauty of Ordinary Things. Though I admit as I
started to think about what I would say, I put it into my text just in case I
couldn’t think of anything. I’m now skipping over it.
Harriet Scott Chessman has taught literature
and writing at Yale University, Bread Loaf School of English, and Stanford
University’s Continuing Studies Program. In addition to The Beauty of Ordinary Things, she is the author of three acclaimed novels as well
as The Public Is Invited to Dance, a book about Gertrude Stein. Her
fiction has been translated into ten languages. She lives in the San Francisco
Bay Area.
If
you want more minutiae about Harriet’s life and writing, at least you know
where to look for it.
Of
course there IS a reason that I’m here tonight and that is, we went to high
school together. -- Well not exactly -- because we graduated ten years apart.
(You may place bets on which one of us is older.) And for that matter, when
Harriet attended the school it was called Northfield, though everyone still
called it Northfield School for Girls. I would not have gotten into that school
for any number of reasons, genetic and otherwise. So we share an odd bit of
past.
As
the archivist at our school, I have access to parts of this shared past which
reveal a few things that she may have forgotten, I hope I’m not reminding her
of any that she wishes had stayed forgotten. Below her photograph in the
yearbook, we learn that she was a Cop in Moore Cottage, that she sang in two choirs,
that she was a Sports Rep., a Big Sister Rep. and that she was known as “Hap.”
More importantly, we discover her interest in poetry, witness her yearbook
quotation:
And I roseIn rainy autumnAnd walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
My
first thought on reading those lines from Dylan Thomas’ "Poem in October" was
that maybe her birthday was in that month. I haven’t checked.
In
any case her love of poetry clearly did not stop there, but stayed with her.
Gerard Manly Hopkins’ “Windhover -- To Christ Our Lord” infuses her latest book
and the hovering helicopters of Nam -- Vietnam -- provide the counterpoint. I’ll
stop with the book review, but what you will hear read this evening, and later
read for yourself is a beautiful novel that is truly a poem.
Please
join me in welcoming Harriet Chessman.
The Odyssey Bookshop has signed copies of The Beauty of Ordinary Things on hand.
