An Interview With Edward Sylvan
…In Watkins Glen, I’ve focused on how one particular community is affected by the act of restricting access to water based on the ability to pay for it as a way of highlighting how this issue is only going to grow in importance in the coming years.
As part of my series about “authors who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Eleanor Lerman.
Eleanor Lerman is the author of numerous award-winning collections of poetry, short stories and novels. She is a National Book Award finalist, recipient of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her novel, Radiomen (The Permanent Press), was awarded the 2016 John W. Campbell Prize for the Best Book of Science Fiction. In 2019, her novel, Satellite Street (The Permanent Press) was a finalist for both the Montaigne Medal and the Eric Hoffer Award. Her most recent novel, Watkins Glen, was published by Mayapple Press in June 2021. www.eleanorlerman.com
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I was born in the Bronx in 1952, which seems like a different world now. We spent our summers in a beach town called Rockaway that no one realized was part of New York City because it, too, seemed like a different world from the tenements and city streets we grew up in. But in those days, it was a vacation area for working-class people — my family rented two rooms in a boarding house and my grandmother and I slept in the same bed, which was in the kitchen. Both in the Bronx and in Rockaway, everyone’s grandparents were immigrants — mostly Jews from Eastern Europe — and most grandparents spoke little English. So, I grew up with a few lessons about hate and prejudice that I’ve never forgotten, including that you never know when the Nazis are going to show up again even if they’re in a different guise, which has made me eternally sensitive to the rise of nationalism, attempts to scapegoat immigrants and fear of “the other.”
When you were younger, was there a book that you read that inspired you to take action or changed your life? Can you share a story about that?
In 1967, when I was fifteen, I was looking through a rack of paperback books in a drugstore and by chance, came upon The Spice-Box of Earth, a collection of poetry by Leonard Cohen. Cohen’s name was familiar to me because his song, Suzanne, was often played on the radio. So, I bought the book and read it on the bus ride home. I still remember the experience of reading that book — it was like coming upon the secrets of the universe. Until that time, I thought poetry was something that was written by people like Robert Browning, whose work I was forced to read in school but which had about zero relevance for the angry, drug-addled kid I was at that age. By the time I stepped off that bus, however, it was like everything that had ever happened to me had been put into context. My mother had recently died; I was lonely, miserable and full of rage, but I had finally found the path that would lead me out of the darkness I was in and off into the rest of my life. I was a terrible student in school because I was too crazy and unreachable to let anybody teach me anything, but I knew that I could write, and with The Spice-Box of Earth, I had found someone who could teach me to write in modern language that could also be both beautiful and lyrical. In particular, the poem “Travel” affected me. Its last lines are:
Now I know why many men have stopped and wept
Halfway between the loves they leave and seek,
And wondered if travel leads them anywhere —
Horizons keep the soft line of your cheek,
The windy sky’s a locket for your hair.
Reading that final stanza, I began to understand that the last line of a poem is the most important part of the whole structure. You can’t just let a poem trail off: it has to have a definitive ending, and it should be a real kicker. And I also understood something even deeper about how to end a poem: that you can, at the last minute, go off in a completely unexpected direction that is actually the essence of all the lines that preceded it. In effect, in “Travel,” it is as if all the stanzas that precede the windy sky’s a locket for your hair could be removed and that one line could serve as the whole poem. It’s magnificent and brilliantly done.
In the years since I’ve had many ups and downs as a writer. I even stopped for a long time, but when I started again, I found that what I’d learned about reading Cohen’s poetry could help me read novels the way I’d read Spice-Box: as how-to manuals that not only told me stories but also provided instructions for the most complex elements of a book, such as how to construct a plot, to the most elemental, including how to punctuate dialogue. For that, I turned to John Cheever, Ann Beattie, John Updike, and others. I thank them all, but most of all, I remember Leonard Cohen with endless love and gratitude. Everything I write honors him.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting mistake that occurred to you in the course of your career? What lesson or take away did you learn from that?
It didn’t happen to me, but I spent many years working as an editor and this story always made me triple check my work: when the late opera singer Beverly Sills’ autobiography was published some years ago, there was a terrible mistake in the first sentence of the first chapter: It should have said, “I began my public life as Bubbles,” (her childhood nickname), but instead, what was printed was, “I began my pubic life as Bubbles.” The instructor in a class I was taking about editing techniques told us that story to illustrate how easy it is to correct mistakes with your eye and brain when you’re reading text and thus, never see a glaring error that is right in front of you even if it is specifically your job to do exactly that. The book had to be reprinted at great expense and embarrassment to the publisher. To this day, I remind myself of what I think of as “The Beverly Sills mistake” when I’m reading over my own work for typos and other errors so that I never come anywhere near to that level of disaster.
Can you describe how you aim to make a significant social impact with your book?
In recent years, Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia have become a growing concern, perhaps as the Baby Boomer generation — who learned to be activists at an early age — begins to deal with these illnesses themselves, either because they are afflicted or know someone who is. And perhaps it’s because of what’s called the “Sandwich Generation,” meaning people with both their own children and their aging parents to care for, who are seeking ways to share and express the enormous challenges that weigh on them when they’re in this situation. There are a number of films, novels, television programs and other forms of media and art that have begun to spotlight these issues and I hope that Watkins Glen, which is told from the unique point of view of siblings dealing with Alzheimer’s, will make a valuable contribution to this vitally important body of work.
Can you share with us the most interesting story that you shared in your book?
A pivotal event in Watkins Glen takes place when a local water company imposes huge price hikes on customers in a low-income township and surrounding rural areas, which will place a great hardship on working-class families as well as those living on fixed incomes. This incident is based on fact: all over the U.S., private water companies are taking over the distribution of a public resource — water — and instituting pricing structures that are unsustainable for many working families. This is part of a much larger and worldwide crisis in which access to water is becoming more and more restricted to the wealthy and well-connected, especially as droughts and other climate-change-induced disasters continue to proliferate. In Watkins Glen, I’ve focused on how one particular community is affected by the act of restricting access to water based on the ability to pay for it as a way of highlighting how this issue is only going to grow in importance in the coming years.
What was the “aha moment” or series of events that made you decide to bring your message to the greater world? Can you share a story about that?
My younger brother and I have always been close. We’re both in our sixties now but continue to be the best of friends. A few years ago, we started to talk about how we were both each other’s witnesses, meaning, we were able to validate for each other that traumatic events in our childhood had really happened, that they were as difficult to live through as we thought they were, and that the struggle to incorporate those experiences into our adult lives without having them dominate our reactions and behavior was an ongoing challenge. It was the realization that siblings can play that important role for each other — to be each other’s witness in a way that no one else can because no one else (who is still alive) has known us longer — that became the foundation for the sister-brother relationship in Watkins Glen.
Without sharing specific names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
Most writers write because it’s something they’ve been driven to do since they were children: it’s not a choice so much as an intrinsic part of their nature. But most writers never achieve any real level of recognition or fame, so they have to find the reward for their work in creating the work itself. But, over the years, I’ve been gratified to be contacted by people who have found something that moved them in my work. In particular, many years ago I wrote a poem called “Starfish” that has taken on a life of its own: if you Google the word “Starfish” and my name, you will get a few hundred thousand online mentions. I’ve heard from people who’ve read it at weddings at bar mitzvahs, at anniversaries, commitment ceremonies, funerals, even pet adoption events (a dog eating a piece of pie is featured in the poem). So, if I have a cause that infuses my work, it’s the need to always have hope, especially as you get older, as you experience loss and illness. Sometimes hope is impossible because circumstances are too dire, but you have to try to feel even a tiny sliver of hope now and then, even if it is only drawn from memories of better times.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
I don’t think fiction writers can solve problems, but perhaps what we can do is use storytelling to spotlight important issues. In the case of Watkins Glen, the real-life issues that the characters are struggling with that need more attention from the community, politicians, scientists, medical researchers, and society in general include: more research into how to prevent and treat all forms of dementia; more resources, including financial relief, for those who serve as caregivers to the elderly and ill; and legislation to prevent the privatization of access to irreplaceable natural resources such as water.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
I think that people who exemplify the concept of leadership have two irreplaceable qualities: First, they can think things through in a very short time, even under pressure, and have a plan for how to move forward in whatever challenging situation they find themselves and second, other people intrinsically trust a person who they know is a leader and will support decisions or plans of action the leader proposes.
We’ve all been in situations — perhaps in a work environment — where some emergency comes up and no one seems sure of what to do until someone stands up and says, “I have an idea.” Usually, that person has demonstrated some form of leadership all along so that when a group finds itself with a critical problem that must be solved, they are already primed for the natural leader to offer a solution.
Many years ago, I was working in a large office and it was my turn to be the head of the fire safety team for a year, so I had to take a fire safety training course. One of the lessons that stuck with me focused on the need to sweep the office when the fire alarm went off — which meant herding people out of meeting rooms, getting them out of the bathrooms, the kitchen area, etc. The fire safety instructor explained that unless people actually smelled smoke, they would assume the alarms signaled a fire drill and wouldn’t be in a hurry to believe you that danger from a fire was imminent unless they already trusted you, so you had to always present yourself as a leader, a person who knew what to do in a challenging situation, and in that way, if there ever was a real fire, people would follow your instructions and everyone would be safe.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
- I wish someone had explained that early success does not a career make. Meaning, I had my first book of poetry published when I was twenty-one and another when I was twenty-three, but it was a hard road after that, which I didn’t expect.
- I wish someone had impressed upon me the importance of learning to edit my own work. When I was young, I had the idea that, other than checking for typos, etc., whatever I wrote should be left alone. That is absolutely not true! You have to be able to read and re-read your own work with as much objectivity as possible and be honest with yourself about what’s working, what’s not working, and what needs to be clarified.
- Along those same lines, it would have been helpful to have someone share the importance — for a writer, in particular — of being able to discard work that isn’t turning out the way you want. That’s not failure: it’s understanding that not every idea or story that you come up with can sustain itself, so you move on to the next thing. I’ve found that even years later, I’ll go back to some story that I filed away because it wasn’t working and be able to take a part of it to use in something new. So, what was a “failure” just turned out to be waiting to be incorporated into a new form, which is quite rewarding.
- I could have used some coaxing about how to be an ambassador for my own work. I am actually pretty skilled at what I think of as performing, meaning doing poetry readings, primarily — but I don’t love it, so I never sought out those opportunities. Instead, I just responded as they came along. If I’d understood the need to promote my own work in the pre-Internet days, I probably would have transitioned more easily into the digital age and paid more attention to being an active online advocate for my books.
- One thing I’m glad someone did tell me was my sixth-grade teacher, who convinced my class that we could read and understand Shakespeare. She picked “Julius Caesar,” and not only had us read it aloud, we had to perform it in our classroom. She also took us to see the play performed live, in a theater. I understand, now, that by showing us that we could read and understand Shakespeare, we could read anything, which meant that the whole world of literature was open to us. And on a wider scale, it meant that we could always try to view the seemingly unattainable as being within our reach if we made the effort.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Many years ago, I wrote a magazine profile of the comedian David Brenner. David, who often would guest host The Tonight Show when it was Johnny Carson’s program, showed me a room in his apartment that was full of file cabinets, and in the files were all the jokes he’d ever told, all the stories, filed away with notations about when he’d used the material and where, such as at a particular club or on television — particularly, when he’d appeared on The Tonight Show. David said, “I need to know what I wrote when, and where I used it so I don’t repeat anything — unless I want to.” That always stuck with me, not so much because I didn’t want to repeat myself but because I did want to be aware of everything I’d ever written and not used, since even in a discarded text there might be something of value to incorporate in a new piece of work. So, I’ve kept my own version of David Brenner’s filing system all my life.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :
I’d love to meet Bob Dylan since we both spent the early years of our (vastly different!) careers in Greenwich Village and I used to catch a glimpse of him now and then. However, though I’m sure we’d have a lot to talk about, I doubt he’d be available for a chat. Still, I’ll take this opportunity to say, Hi, Bob. To this day, every time I find myself walking around the Village, I still think about you and your extraordinary music.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Either by Googling my name or visiting my web site, www.eleanorlerman.com
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
Social Impact Authors: How & Why Eleanor Lerman Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.