Ann S. Epstein writes novels, short stories, memoir, essays, and poems. Please use the links or site menu to go to the HOME PAGE; learn about her NOVELS, SHORT STORIES, MEMOIR, ESSAYS, and POEMS; find interesting facts in BEHIND THE STORY; read REFLECTIONS on writing; check NEWS for updates on publications and related events; see REVIEWS; learn about her END-OF-LIFE DOULA credentials and services; and CONTACT US to send webmail.
“When I finish something and it seems good, I’m dazed. It must have been fun to write. I wish I’d been there.” — “The Art of Dying” by Peter Schjeldahl (Personal Essay in The New Yorker, 12/23/19). Schjeldahl captures the “Did I really write that?” sensation that many writers, including myself, experience. Writing is a present/absent process. One is at once fully immersed in the act, yet also removed to another plane. For more of my literary thoughts, see REFLECTIONS.
At 2 AM on Nov. 26, 1947, the San Diego Aqueduct opened, bringing the city its first water from the Colorado River. It began as a trickle, but soon grew to a torrent, just in time to avert the region’s worst water crisis. Construction began as a WWII emergency when naval installations and support industries more than doubled the county’s population. The project was almost cancelled when the war ended, but since the military bases and industries remained, the Navy agreed to complete the $17.5 million pipeline and the city of San Diego pledged to lease it for half a million a year until it was paid off. Discover more San Diego history in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
I’m happy to announce that bioStories will publish the creative nonfiction essay “My Name Could Be Toby Gardner,” a seriocomic lament about the loss of my name in a family whose pathology included the obfuscation of their real names. Below is a photo of my parents, my brother, and myself, taken in 1951. In reference to the essay, I’ve captioned it “Gussie, Cal, Steve, and Toby, a.k.a. Kate, David, Joel, and Ann.” Read more about my creative nonfiction in MEMOIR.
A century ago, Berlin’s fashion industry thrived, thanks to Jewish designers and manufacturers. The 2,700 fashion houses on Hausvogteiplatz rivaled the prestige and glamour of Paris and London. All that died when the Nazis destroyed Jewish businesses in the 1930s. Not only was glass shattered on Kristallnacht, but books — and fabric — were burned. Today, a non-Jewish conglomerate is bringing back Germany’s famous labels, including Manheimer’s mens and ladies wear, seeking the endorsement of the founders’ heirs to reestablish their long tradition. Read more about fashion and the Nazis in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).
My Amazon and Goodreads review of Stoner (Rating 5) – A lacerating yet loving look at academia. In understated and simple prose, Stoner by John Williams nails the complexity of university life. A belated reader to this 1965 classic, I nevertheless found it a lacerating yet loving look at academia as it endures today. Williams’s controlled prose is masterful, a skill I appreciate both as a reader and a writer (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page). He lulls readers with the sameness of Professor Stoner’s life, then ignites a spark that inflames both the character and us. We urge Stoner to rebel against his wife’s sabotage and department chair’s vindictiveness. Instead, Williams holds steadfast to his character’s acquiescent nature, in turn persuading readers to acquiesce to the author’s choice. Thus do Stoner, and Williams, earn their place in the literary pantheon.
Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle (1905) to expose the brutal and dangerous working conditions in Chicago’s meat-packing industry. Workers, most of them Eastern European immigrants, earned pennies an hour, for 10-hour days, six days a week. They lived in tenements in Packingtown, next to the stinking stockyards and four city dumps. Almost as an afterthought, Sinclair included a chapter on how diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat products were doctored, mislabeled, and sold to the public. He was dismayed when the public reacted with outrage about the filthy meat but ignored the plight of the workers. “I aimed at the public’s heart,” he said, “and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” Read more about the meat-packing industry a hundred years ago in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
Ponder Review submitted my piece “David’s Crossing,” about my father emigrating from Poland to America as a boy, to the nominating committee for the Pushcart Prize in creative nonfiction. Read more in MEMOIR.
In his profile of director Todd Haynes, critic John Lahr writes “When Haynes was in eleventh grade, his film teacher, Chris Adams, told him ‘that films shouldn’t be judged on how they conveyed reality, that films were not about reality.’ Cinema was a trick, almost like Renaissance perspective: a two-dimensional event that represented three-dimensionality; it created the sense of direct, unmediated life, whereas, in fact, everything in it was mediated. The notion, Haynes said, was ‘a revelation to me.’ He began to interrogate our ‘endless presumptions about reality and authenticity.’” (“The Director’s Cut: How Todd Haynes rewrites the Hollywood playbook” by John Lahr, The New Yorker, 11/11/19, p. 57). I think this observation also applies to writing fiction. The author’s challenge is to make readers experience a highly mediated story as a direct and real event. As a writer, I bend reality to my “narrative will” so that fact and fiction are equally plausible and hence achieve authenticity. For more of my thoughts about writing, see REFLECTIONS.
As men went off to fight in WWII, women were hired to replace them in the defense industry. Although the iconic poster of “Rosie the Riveter” is fixed in our minds, she was one of many women in manufacturing jobs. Rosie and her peers accounted for as much as 80% of the labor force in some factories. As valuable as they were, however, women were paid far less than men: $31.50 versus $54.65 per week on average. After the war, women were expected to return home and resume their roles as housewives. Read more about Detroit’s Rosie the Riveter and WWII in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve., a fictional biography of the actor who played the Munchkin Coroner in The Wizard of Oz (see NOVELS).
My short story “Poppies Journal” has been accepted for publication in The Minnesota Review (November 2020, Issue 95). Here is the log line: In “Poppies Journal,” a preschool teacher observes children at play. Is the troubling behavior she records in the classroom notes an indication of their disturbed minds, or hers? Read more in SHORT STORIES.
