In praise of “Writers & Co.” and Eleanor Wachtel

Posted on February 19, 2018 by doradueck

Today, a post in praise of long-time CBC program “Writers and Company” and its host Eleanor Wachtel, a woman I have come to trust without reservation for her wide-ranging eye on the world’s best literature and her exquisite interviews with the people who produce it. I’ve heard interviews with writers in a variety of formats, live or recorded or on television, and sometimes they’re too short to allow for more than sound bites or perhaps the interviewer hasn’t read the book, not thoroughly at least, or is talking too much, or you wish you could jump in and ask your question because the interviewer isn’t getting around to it! Wachtel’s interviews, however, are an hour long, and the conversation has room and it’s rich, it gets where I also wanted to go without my knowing in advance where that was. Continue reading →

Filling in the spaces: An interview with Connie T. Braun

Posted on February 9, 2018 by doradueck

In my opinion, a book that takes me into another person’s world while also sending me off into my own (as I lift my eyes from the page) is a good book! So it was with Silentium: And Other Reflections on Memory, Sorrow, Place, and the Sacred (Wipf & Stock, 2017) by Connie T. Braun. 51UcJrDqkNL._SX312_BO1,204,203,200_

This collection of poetry and essays forms a memoir both of Connie’s mother, who fled Poland in the upheavals of the Second World War, and Connie herself, as we enter her childhood and powerful family bonds in B.C.’s Fraser Valley, and travel along to sites of family history. It’s memoir, yes, but a kind of “quest” or discovery literature too.

I experienced many resonances as I read: our common Mennonite heritage, our appreciation for the writing of Patricia Hampl, places H. and I also saw on a tour to Poland. And the surprise mention of Linden, Alberta, where I grew up! I was also taken into the differences, my immigration past being the 1920s arrival of my grandparents to Canada, hers a postwar arrival. Connie Braun has become one of the most significant Mennonite writer-witnesses to that particular period and those events. Continue reading →

Happy New Year!

Posted on December 30, 2017 by doradueck

Before 2017 disappears completely, let me wish everyone who reads this a safe and happy new year. A couple of comments on the way out….

I posted 11 times this year. I just counted and I’m surprised. I thought I’d done better than that. Maybe I can average once a month in 2018! 🙂 I still enjoy stopping by Borrowing Bones now and then, and I hope you do too.
I’m venturing a new blog, which will be more niche, more specific, than this one. Chronicles of Aging, I’m calling it, with the intention to post out of my experience of being in the last quarter of my life. I’m not old-old, but old nevertheless. Writing will be a way for me to notice and share what I observe in the process. I plan to post more frequently than here, but have determined to keep the entries short, 300 words max. I invite you to check it out, and if it’s your niche or interest, to follow or, if you prefer not to get email notifications, to bookmark the site.
I didn’t get around to a “best of 2017” list of books but I recently enjoyed Rose Tremain’s The Road Home. It’s been a while since I felt myself so drawn into and rooting for a character as I did with Lev, a widowed fortyish immigrant to London from a formerly communist country. Tremain is a superb and deeply empathetic writer. As for movies, I recommend “Wonder,” an important story about bullying and courage and good parenting. I’ll call these the best of the year and leave it at that.