Let's write about "How to read a book!"

 This Is the Solution to America’s Literacy Crisis, and It’s a Lot of Fun by Peter Schmidt.

If you’ve read the news lately — or, more likely, heard it, watched it or spied half a headline on your friend’s Instagram feed — you’ve been told that literacy is doomed. High school seniors are reading at the lowest levels in over 20 years, and college students don’t know how to read a book cover to cover. There is plenty to mourn in these developments, but as an English syllabus fixture of yore might have said, reports of literacy’s death are greatly exaggerated.

Having come of age amid Covid-19 lockdowns and the proliferation of social media, young people crave the forms of human connection that teach us to live in the world we actually inhabit, not the one we see onscreen — asking questions, thinking together and beholding the strangeness of the reality passed down to us. 

As it happens, books are uniquely powerful objects around which to organize these sorts of activities.

That’s why the act of engaging with written texts — the basis of our cultural, political and intellectual life for over 500 years — is not coming to an end. It’s changing to meet new needs by offering the kinds of experiences digital technologies can’t provide: synchronous, IRL encounters with other human beings.

In other words, the future of reading is a party.
Books are bringing people together. Gen Z reading groups are popping up across the United States and the Silent Book Club, a community that gathers for silent reading, now has over 2,000 chapters across 68 countries. 

Reading retreats and summer camps hosted by the Bad Bitch Book Club regularly convene between 15 and 90 enthusiasts for weekend-long getaways, giving new meaning to the term “escapist literature.” 

Sally Mercedes, the events coordinator at Magic City Books in Tulsa, Okla., sees bookstores playing an increasingly social function for their customers. “A lot of bookish people tend to be introverts,” she told me. “We need a space where we know that we’re on common ground with others.”
Other experiments are remixing the traditional book club format or breaking out of it entirely. The Consumption Book Club, a “literary and culinary event series” organized by the Gen Z artists Colette Estelle and Kyle Barnes, brings to life works such as Jeff VanderMeer’s “Annihilation” via meticulously themed dinner parties and facilitated conversations. 

A recent public reading of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” organized by 20-somethings drew hundreds of people to Washington Square Park in New York City. 

The Strother School of Radical Attention, where I work, helps to gather groups over a dozen times a month in six states for Sidewalk Study, a practice of reading and enacting long-form texts while moving through public space.
These gatherings vary in location, duration and subject matter, but their unifying spirit is simple: that reading can be as much a mode of vibrant sociality as it is of secluded interiority.
Easy as it is to forget, sitting alone and reading in silence — the activity that professors tend to worry about — was once a novelty. 

In his “Confessions,” Saint Augustine of Hippo relates stumbling upon Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, in a moment of perplexing absorption: “While reading, his eyes glanced over the pages, and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent.” That Augustine bothered to describe this scene tells us something about the way reading commonly took place in the ancient world: as a public practice, recited before groups of lettered and unlettered listeners alike. Herodotus is thought to have read portions of his histories aloud, and performative “recitationes” of written texts were a favored form of entertainment and debate in Imperial Rome.
The practice of reading in and for groups endured in modern times in spaces of religious worship, workers’ study groups and avant-garde literary performances. 

But the spread of the printed word and the subsequent democratization of literacy cemented solitary, silent absorption as the dominant image of the reading person. This is the kind of reading we are taught to do in school. It is also the kind of reading that students are now failing to do in ever greater numbers.
Why? There’s no denying that young people are suffering from the harms of smartphone use and cognitive outsourcing to artificial intelligence. 

These are serious problems, but they are only half the story. Students understand as well as anyone else that long-form text is no longer the exclusive, or even the most effective, tool for distributing knowledge, connecting people across time and space and coordinating complex decisions. We’re in a moment of eclipse: The informational function of books is declining, and their experiential function is coming to the fore. This shift can bring new vitality not only to the lives of readers but also to long-form texts themselves.
Engaging with books as instruments for group experience is not the sort of reading that we encounter in classrooms, but it has plenty to teach us about the complexities of inhabiting the world together — and the ways that our literary inheritance can prepare us for the challenge. While educators may never abandon traditional instruction in solitary reading, right now they face an enormous opportunity to impart a new vision for the role of literacy in public life.

Last month, I helped to organize one of these gatherings in Dumbo, on the Brooklyn waterfront: an all-night group recitation of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” on the eve of the poet’s 207th birthday. We had 25 RSVPs, but, swelled by plus-ones and walk-ins, ended up with closer to 50 people in attendance. Two or three older Whitman enthusiasts joined us, but nearly all of the other people seemed to be in their 20s.
After four hours of recitation, singing, repetition, call and response and countless other experimental reading methods, we decamped to the shore of the East River, where around 2 a.m. we let out a full-throated collective yawp. 

In the breathless quiet that followed, a recent college graduate standing beside me admitted that she had never even read Whitman before. Several nodding heads assured her she wasn’t the only one. Then, emboldened by the company, she proposed: “Let’s do it again📙📘📗❓”

P.S. From Maine Writer:  I recently reviewed on Amazon a very short story read on my Kindle, written by Heather Graham, titled "Mercy Knows No Color".  For those with an Amazon Prime account, this read is probably free if you have an iCloud or e-reader. It is only 13 pages long.

Those who follow Heather Graham will be a little surprised by her creation of a short history lesson couched in the roots of the Civil War.  I recommended this short essay/story for community read aloud programs, even before reading this essay in The New York Times❗ Also, I put the short review on my Facebook page link here.

Let's write about teaching profane literature! OMG next comes book burning

Echo report published in The New York Times by David Ovalle

Florida Professor Fired for Assigning a Profane Story, Lawsuit Says

South Florida State College fired an English professor after she assigned a story about a teacher who talks about sex with her students. Now the professor is suing.

Vinita Prabhakar, who taught English at South Florida State College, said in an interview that she assigned the story to challenge her students.

An English professor is suing the president of a Florida college that she says fired her for assigning a story that he called “political,” according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.

The story, Ottessa Moshfegh’s “Bettering Myself,” is an award-winning story narrated by a fictional teacher who drinks to excess, uses cocaine and discusses sex with her students.
The instructor, Vinita Prabhakar, said in an interview that she had taught the story in her classes for nearly a decade without incident. But in February, according to her lawsuit, the president of South Florida State College, Fred Hawkins, objected to the assignment after a student expressed “mild discomfort.” The president told Ms. Prabhakar that he would not want his college-age daughter to read the story, the lawsuit says.

In a move that is highly unusual for a college president, Hawkins immediately ordered that Ms. Prabhakar be suspended and her contract not renewed, the suit says. The suit asks that she be restored to her teaching position.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a group that advocates free speech, is representing Ms. Prabhakar.
Some courts have ruled that universities can restrict certain speech of university professors in classrooms. 

But, they have also ruled that the First Amendment offers greater protection if the speech is part of professors’ official duties, which can include teaching approved material, and is not disruptive.

Ms. Prabhakar’s attorneys also assert she is protected by a Florida law governing campus free speech. 

Public officials such as Hawkins “may not suppress speech because they dislike the ideas it conveys or fear a reaction to it,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit is the latest legal battle over the boundaries of protected free speech in schools in Florida, where Republicans have for years sought to restrict teachings they believe are inappropriate or too left-leaning.

Hawkins and school officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has championed efforts to quash what he has deemed liberal indoctrination in education. For instance, he pushed a parental freedom law that limited instruction on gender and sexuality in elementary and middle schools, prompting some districts to remove books featuring L.G.B.T.Q. characters.

In 2022, DeSantis also signed into law the Stop WOKE Act, which restricts concepts related to sexism and racism that can be taught in K-12 schools. The law sought to do the same in higher education, allowing the state to limit the teaching of ideas related to race, sexism and unconscious bias by tying it to teacher salaries.

A federal appeals court, however, struck down that portion of the law this month. The majority wrote that the provision was a “breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse” in classrooms where students are “trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard.”

Ms. Prabhakar, who has worked full time at South Florida State College since 2023, said the point of assigning “Bettering Myself” was to challenge students in her introductory reading and writing course. As part of the assignment, students had to read first-person stories told by other unlikable narrators — like “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver — to contrast narrative voice, perspective, vocabulary and style, according to the lawsuit.

In colleges, such materials “take students out of their comfort zone, expose them to new ideas and provide opportunities for growth and intellectual maturation,” the suit said.

Ms. Prabhakar said in the interview that she had taught the assignment in previous years at South Florida State College with approval of supervisors.

The student who had emailed to say the story “made me a bit uncomfortable” ultimately completed the assignment and participated in class discussions without any incident, the suit said.
It is unclear who complained about the assignment to the school administration, according to the lawsuit. It accuses Hawkins of terminating Ms. Prabhakar without a formal complaint or attempt at lesser discipline.

The lawsuit is the latest legal battle over the boundaries of protected free speech in schools in Florida, where Republicans have for years sought to restrict teachings they believe are inappropriate or too left-leaning.

Hawkins, a former state representative and a DeSantis ally, was named president of the public community college in 2023. The school’s main campus is in Avon Park, Fla., southeast of Tampa.

The selection process drew scrutiny because Hawkins held no advanced college degrees and became eligible only after the board of trustees lowered the position’s educational requirements. 

At the time, one trustee acknowledged to The Tampa Bay Times that the board was expected to appoint a Republican and that he had concerns about a potential left-leaning president’s adherence to “woke” ideology.

In the suit, Ms. Prabhakar said she had apologized to the president and agreed to teach only material that appeared in a textbook. But Mr. Hawkins told her he had “been in contact with Tallahassee” and the board of trustees. The suit also names the board of trustees.

Ms. Prabhakar, 51, said that she hoped her lawsuit would help protect fellow professors. “I’m also doing this for my students,” Ms. Prabhakar said. “They were robbed — they were excited to come to class.”

Let's write about the history of human language development

 When Did Ancient Humans Start Talking?

Language makes us human, but exactly when humans began speaking remains a mystery
By Dave Roos
https://www.history.com/articles/early-humans-language


Language, more than any other ability or physical trait, is what makes us human. Babies instinctively start to babble at around six months and speak their first words between 12 and 15 months. Yet even the brightest chimpanzee—our closest living genetic relative—if raised by human parents, will never utter a word.
Whether Neanderthals possessed complex language remains debated, making Homo sapiens appear truly unique in the sophistication of our ability to convey detailed ideas, information and meaning through sound. Language, more than any evolutionary leap, is likely what propelled modern humans to become the dominant species on the planet.
“Language is our secret weapon,” says evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel. "If you put 30, 50 or 150 people together, all of our ideas can be shared. And that means we're innovative, we're creative and we can work together as a team in ways that no other animal can.”
The first Homo sapiens evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago, but it's unlikely that they had fully developed language at first. 

By at least 50,000 years ago, however, humans were making symbolic art that reflected advanced cognitive abilities and almost certainly a spoken language.

When exactly humans first acquired language between 300,000 and 50,000 years ago remains a mystery, but there are plenty of theories.
Animals Communicate, But Don’t ‘Talk’: Dogs bark. Dolphins click. Parrots mimic human speech. Vervet monkeys can even produce three distinct alarm calls to warn neighbors about leopard, eagle and snake attacks. Clearly, many animal species use vocalizations to communicate, but is that the same thing as language?

Pagel says no. Human language is “compositional,” meaning it’s made up of discrete words that are formed into sentences. Adult humans have a vocabulary of around 20,000 words that can be assembled in nearly endless combinations of subjects, verbs and objects.
“All of a sudden, we have this huge set of permutations,” says Pagel. “We can create an infinite number of sentences, and they all have different meanings based on the individual meaning of the words.”
Although the underlying mechanisms aren’t fully understood, humans are biologically hardwired to use language, while other animals aren't. A chimp can be trained to use sign language and even seals can be taught to repeat human words, but it’s always in exchange for a reward, usually food.
"You don't have to train humans to speak for a reward,” says Pagel. “They just start babbling as babies and never stop.”

As evidence that humans are born with an innate drive and gift to communicate, researchers point to a remarkable experiment from the 1980s. The Nicaraguan government opened a school for deaf children who primarily communicated through rudimentary gestures like pointing. When the children got together, however, they immediately created their own sign language complete with syntax and grammar. It was the first time researchers had documented the birth of a language.
Did Neanderthals Have Language? Neanderthals are the closest extinct relative of modern humans, sharing 99 percent of our DNA. Neanderthals had big brains, controlled fire and used tools, but there’s no strong evidence that Neanderthals had the capacity for language.

Neanderthals lived between 400,000 and 40,000 years ago, and they coexisted for thousands of years with Homo sapiens who migrated from Africa to Europe and Asia. Yet unlike Homo sapiens, whose ancient art, sculpture and jewelry are found in the archaeological record, Neanderthals didn't leave behind any conclusive evidence of what Pagel calls “symbolic thinking.”
“One of the defining features of language is that it’s the ultimate symbolic activity,” says Pagel. “You and I are conversing at a really sophisticated level just using sounds. That's symbolism at its highest level. And when you look for symbolic behavior in the Neanderthals, you just don't see it.”
A remarkable example of early Homo sapiens symbolic art is the Lion Man, a sculpture carved from mammoth ivory with the head of a lion and the body of a man. The Lion Man dates from 40,000 years ago and was part of a flowering of human culture that included the first musical instruments.
As for Neanderthals, researchers have argued that two cave paintings in Spain were produced by Neanderthals more than 65,000 years ago, but that claim remains controversial because some researchers have questioned the dating methods.

What Evolutionary Leap Produced Language? What was it that enabled Homo sapiens to develop symbolic language while even close genetic relatives like Neanderthals likely never got past the grunting stage? Was it some kind of physical adaptation or purely a cognitive leap?
One theory is that prehistoric humans couldn’t use spoken language until they developed the right anatomy to produce speech. When researchers examined human remains dating back hundreds of thousands of years, they found that only humans 50,000 years old or younger had larynxes and vocal chords large enough to produce the wide range of frequencies necessary for spoken language. That might explain why Homo sapiens symbolic art only took off around 30,000 to 40,000 years ago.
Pagel and other scholars are doubtful, however, that the anatomy of the vocal tract evolved expressly for language. They point to the fact that birds and other animals can mimic human speech without human vocal chords or a larynx.
If it wasn’t an anatomical adaptation that enabled speech, then it must have been a neurological upgrade. One potential candidate is a gene called FOXP2, better known as the “speech gene.” All mammals have the FOXP2 gene, but a small mutation in the human version of FOXP2—just two amino acid replacements—is thought to contribute to the fine-motor control of the facial muscles that’s lacking in chimps.
FOXP2 is a transcription factor, meaning that it works by turning at least 100 other genes on and off. “There’s this incredibly complex network of genetic interactions in the brain,” says Pagel, “and FOXP2 is just one piece of the puzzle.”

An Intelligence Tipping Point? Another theory is that no single gene or mutation was responsible for language, but rather that human intelligence reached a tipping point after which language naturally emerged.
“The idea is that once your general information-processing capacity gets big enough, there’s more of a need to communicate in a structured way, so eventually you get language,” says Richard Futrell, who teaches language science at the University of California, Irvine.
Once language starts to emerge, there are natural constraints that shape it. The human lifespan isn’t long enough to learn and pass on millions of unique words, for example, nor is human memory good enough to remember them. These constraints create what Futrell calls a “transmission bottleneck.”
“There's a limit to the number of words you can have in the language, and that means to express complex thoughts, you have to string the words together,” says Futrell. “That gives you structure and grammar and syntax and all the things that make language unique.”
How Language Supercharged Human Evolution. Since all modern humans have language, it’s possible that our distant Homo sapiens ancestors were speaking some kind of protolanguage as far back as 150,000 to 200,000 years ago, but we’ll never know for sure. What’s clear, however, is that language played a key role in unlocking human potential.

Pagel, an evolutionary biologist, says that language has been even more central to human evolution over the past 200,000 years than our genes. In the animal kingdom, cooperation is usually confined to close kin. Animals will often only help each other if it increases the chances of passing on their own genes.
With the advent of language, humans could expand their circles of cooperation to include larger, unrelated groups. Not only could they share information and ideas more easily, but they could use language to “police” the behavior of others.
“If you don’t cooperate, I'm going to go around our community telling everyone and you're going to be ostracized,” says Pagel. “Language becomes this conduit for exchanging information and at the same time this regulator of cooperation.”
It was this ability to cooperate and collaborate and innovate that enabled Homo sapiens to migrate out of Africa roughly 70,000 years ago and spread around the world. Humans didn’t need to acquire the same kinds of genetic adaptations as other species to survive in Arctic cold or desert heat. They had language.
“It's our culture and the exchange of ideas that enables us to move into these new environments, and make the clothing and shelters and other technologies that allow us to live there,” says Pagel.

Let's write about the history of the ubiquitous "pickle"

 (Julie's note: Remembering how much I enjoyed eating the pickles at the Broadway Market in East Baltimore.  Of course, they came right out of a big barrel and they were huge!)

New York Is a Pickle Kind of Town by Emma Allen
The Dutch authors of a new book, “The Pickled City: The Story of New York Pickles,” stop by the brined-delicacy staple Russ & Daughters. By Emma Allen
Not all foods endure—ortolan, aspic, candy cigarettes—but the pickle may be as close to immortal as a snack can get. The world’s oldest known cookbook, from around 1700 B.C.E. Mesopotamia, includes a recipe for a pickled-fish-and-grasshopper sauce. 

Shakespeare wrote, in “The Tempest,” about being “in a pickle”; pickles were served aboard the Titanic. Carlos Alcaraz and Frances Tiafoe have both been known to drink pickle juice in lieu of Gatorade—no unfair advantage there. The U.S. pickle industry has an estimated revenue of three billion dollars per year.
Paul van Ravestein and Monique Mulder, two principals at Mattmo Creative, a branding agency in Amsterdam, have become surprising experts in the preserved-cucumber field. 

In 2022, they published “De Zure Stad” (“The Sour City”), a history of Dutch pickles, then shifted focus across the Atlantic for “The Pickled City: The Story of New York Pickles.”

“It’s an obsession, basically,” van Ravestein said the other day, in the hundred-and-twelve-year-old Russ & Daughters appetizing shop, on East Houston. During their New York pickle research, Mulder and van Ravestein had come upon a trove of tax-archive photographs from the early twentieth century, featuring a man posing with numbered placards in front of thousands of Lower East Side storefronts, nearly a hundred of which were pickle purveyors.
“For us, suddenly, it became alive,” Mulder said. “A guy is waking up early in the morning and saying to his wife, ‘I go to my work.’ ”
The pair showed the photos to Niki Russ Federman, a fourth-generation owner of Russ & Daughters, who was wearing the shop’s traditional white lab coat and doling out pickled herring in cream sauce. Her Polish-émigré great-grandfather got his start selling schmaltz herring wrapped in day-old Yiddish newspapers from a barrel, then upgraded to a pushcart, then to a horse-drawn cart, then to the original store, around the corner.

“I’ve never seen it zoomed in like this!” Russ Federman said, peering at an image. “This was the J. Russ National Appetizing Store—there was nothing national about what he did. It was taking care of Jews within four square blocks.” Joel savvily rebranded as Russ’s Cut Rate Appetizing. 

Now Russ & Daughters has a nationwide shipping operation and a restaurant that serves eighteen-dollar Break-Fast Martinis.
“Why are you still here?” van Ravestein asked. “Is it resilience or flexibility?”

“Luckily, whether it was by choice or by obligation, in each generation there’s been someone in the family who made this their life,” Russ Federman replied. In 1935, the store became the first in the country to have “& Daughters” in its name. “Joel needed cheap labor,” Russ Federman said. “But also, who better to sell pickles than three cute girls with their hands in herring barrels?”

“It’s a matter of communication, branding,” van Ravestein posited.
“You tell the story,” Mulder added. “The food is an interface that is also your legacy.”
Van Ravestein munched on a half-sour and recalled an article, from 1890, that likened pickles to alcohol or coffee: “So kids couldn’t eat them, because it gives you a kick.”
Russ Federman mentioned a contemporary listicle of ten “superfoods,” most of which were sold at her store: “It’s herring, sardines, salmon, sauerkraut, liver—caviar was on the list!”
“You know what we had yesterday evening?” Mulder asked, as she sipped a shrub (pickled-beet juice and vinegar, popular with the marathon-runner set). “A vermouth with pickle juice.”
The Dutch visitors headed south to Sweet Pickle Books, on Orchard Street, a hip used bookstore with a pickle side hustle that was opened, in 2020, by a millennial named Leigh Altshuler, who previously served as marketing director for the Strand. Shoved in a corner was an adult-size pickle costume by the designer who made Katy Perry’s Super Bowl halftime-show sharks.
Before opening her store, Altshuler had prepared three hundred and sixty jars of pickles to sell, and eventually started giving them away to people who donated books. “I was, like, ‘This for sure will last me forever. It’ll be a gimmick,’ ” she told the Dutch duo. A year later, her shop was bursting at the seams, and she kept selling out of pickles. “People had been putting it on TikTok,” she said. Altshuler had to outsource pickle production upstate, and began cranking out pickle merch. “All of a sudden, Harry Styles was wearing it,” she said. “It was a whole drama.”
Mulder and van Ravestein mentioned the frenzy surrounding the Heinz pickle pin, a coveted souvenir at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
“People are obsessed with pickles!” Altshuler said. “People come in and say, ‘Oh, look at my pickle tattoo,’ or, ‘My dog’s name is Pickle.’ ”
“In Holland, a lot of young people, they’ve started fermenting at home,” Mulder added.

The Sweet Pickle Books building—near where “Lower East Side cool girlies” (per Altshuler) had dumpster-dived for Timothée Chalamet’s old “Marty Supreme” costumes—has been in its landlady’s family for a century and a half. 

Altshuler said, “Her grandfather sold melons from a pushcart outside.” ♦

Published in the print edition of the July 20, 2026, issue, with the headline “Pickle People.”

Let's write about John Grisham's inspiration as a writer

From Mr. John Grisham:  (Maine Writer:  I am anxious to read his novel as described in Mr. Grisham's letter.)  

Author John Grisham and his wife Renee in Paris

As I write this letter,  I am finishing the last edits of The French Illusion, my next novel, to be published in the Fall. I usually spend about six months writing a novel, and when I'm finished I quietly pat myself on the back for another job well done, then try to forget about it, and start thinking about the next story.

But, not so fast❗ Although writing is often enjoyable and challenging, the editing is not. It takes weeks, even months, to slog through the manuscript again and again, tossing out sections here and there, tightening up the plot, adding and discarding characters, tweaking sentences, and trying to remember what I was thinking when I wrote such dreadful dialogue only four months ago. The editing process is a drag, but it is crucial to the completion of a novel. Editors are professionals who can spot small weaknesses that are easily fixable, as well as major problems that require overhauls. Good writers never stop listening to their editors.

Outlining the story beforehand and editing it after the first draft are two exercises most writers prefer to avoid. But both are important to the success of the book, and often fatal if ignored.

Anyway, back to The French Illusion. So, when A Time To Kill was published in 1989, its reception was rather low-key, to put it mildly. There was no second printing, no paperback, no mention of foreign translations. Hollywood never called. However, when The Firm arrived 18 months later, things were far different. After selling the U.S. and U.K. rights, my agent took the book to Europe where it was well received. Renee and I watched in disbelief as the Germans, French, Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese lined up to buy the translation rights. Then Scandinavia, then Asia. By the end of 1990, we had contracts to publish the book in 30 languages.

We had never been to Europe and couldn't wait to see Paris. We've always read a lot - Renee has a degree in English literature - and we knew the legend of the "Lost Generation," a collection of disillusioned and struggling American writers and artists who gravitated to Paris in the early 1900's. They included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, and Ezra Pound, and they hung out with the likes of T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, and James Joyce. We found their old haunts, had coffee and drinks in their favorite bars, enjoyed long meals in the same timeless bistros, and spent hours on the sidewalk cafes of Boulevard St. Germain. We also visited the famous sights, poked around galleries and museums, and roamed the streets for hours. Like millions before us, and after, we fell in love with Paris and have returned many times.

My French publisher is JC Lattes, one of many imprints of Hachette, the Paris giant that owns Little, Brown and Grand Central in the U.S. The Lattes office is on Rue Jacob, a busy, narrow side street with the usual assortment of shops and small hotels. The building is centuries old (aren't they all?). It is tall and narrow with four or five levels connected by a baffling configuration of stairways. ADA would not approve. It's a throwback to the old days of publishing with small offices, sagging shelves stuffed with manuscripts, unsteady air conditioning, and walls covered with artwork and book jackets. Though thoroughly tech-wired and modern, the offices, like many in Paris, seem timeless, as if little has changed since the dark ages before the internet. The Lattes team is young, enthusiastic, and eager to publish books that will satisfy and entertain their audiences.

I adore the Lattes offices and visit as often as possible.

Anyway, back to The French Illusion. One day I was at Lattes being interviewed by a radio journalist, a Parisian, and we were talking about his beloved city. He asked why I had never used it as the backdrop for a novel❓ I had set books in Italy, Brazil and the Caribbean, among other places, so why not Paris❓ 

I tried to explain that I can't simply "create" a story. It takes inspiration, an idea captured from somewhere, and once I have the beginnings of a plot I can start to think about the characters and the setting.

Finally, the inspiration arrived with The French Illusion, a suspenseful story that begins and ends in Paris.

So, what am I reading❓👀📗📘🕮

I just finished two good books, both non-fiction. The first is Redemption, by Lawrence Wright, a longtime journalist for New Yorker: The story takes place in the author's native Texas and is about a group of nuns in a convent outside of Waco. Through the efforts of a Catholic deacon, they visit the eight women on death row at the prison in Gatesville, Texas. At first, the nuns are afraid of the women, all convicted killers, and the inmates are suspicious of the nuns. Before long, though, they realize they have more in common than they could imagine. Friendships flourish as the women begin to understand one another.

Redemption will be published by Knopf in October.

The second is Up On Cove Mountain by Earl Swift. As a young man, Swift hiked all 2200 miles of the Appalachian Trail, an experience that not only changed his life but gave it direction. However, his trip was haunted by tragedy. Along the way, he met and befriended a young couple. They hiked together for three days before he picked up his pace and left them behind. Two weeks later, he heard the news that they had been murdered at a campsite he had used. The killer was arrested, tried, and given the death penalty. Thirty-three years later, Swift returned to the trail - older, wiser, and somewhat slower, but still haunted by its memories.

Up On Cove Mountain will be published by Mariner Books in August.

So, what am I writing❓

Finishing The French Illusion, and in a holding pattern, waiting for inspiration.

Let's write about the 70th anniversary of the blockbuster "Peyton Place" and the tragic life of the book's author

(Maine Writer:  I recall how our Dundalk, Maryland public library kept this book hidden under the distribution desk so minors like me would be unable to read it.)

70 years since the scandal surrounding the publication of 'Peyton Place'. Echo report published in Elmundo America by Luis Fernando Romo. 

Grace Metalious and her husband, George, at home in front of the typewriter.

The anniversary of the provocative 'best seller' that made a poor American housewife rich and famous is celebrated. She ended up ruined, alcoholic, and estranged from her family.

Grace Metalious' name may have been forgotten, but not her scandalous novel Peyton Place, which is now celebrating its 70th anniversary. Fame exacerbated her alcoholism, she fought with her three children, and her lover inherited everything.

A poor housewife, uneducated and addicted to alcohol, overnight became one of the great literary phenomena of the 1950s. Amidst the scandal involving Ingrid Bergman after leaving her husband and daughter for Roberto Rossellini and Elizabeth Taylor's excommunication by the Vatican for her affair with Richard Burton during Cleopatra, there was another uproar that left conservative American society disturbed.

In 1956, Grace Metalious published Peyton Place, the most transgressive and sinful novel to date, exposing the most shameful human miseries such as domestic violence, racial and class hatred, corruption of religious power, and taboo conversations like childhood sexual abuse, the right to abortion, and women's sexual awakening, among others.

But, until success came, Grace couldn't shake off the memory of that lonely girl who escaped the poverty of her home by taking refuge in her aunt's bathroom where she wrote poems and fairy tales.

An avid reader with an unfathomable imagination, Grace wanted to erase any trace of the impoverished ghetto in which she was trapped. The small Franco-American community of Manchester, a town in New Hampshire, New England, was not meant for her.

Therefore, she didn't hesitate to change the spelling of her last name, DeRepentigny, to invent a French aristocratic lineage while in high school. She tried to convince everyone that her full name was Grace Marie-Antoinette Jeanne d'Arc de Repentigny, but she became the laughingstock of almost everyone.

In her quest for a glamorous past, she took after her mother, who used to sell trinkets like antique French furniture at flea markets. She never heard from her father again after he enlisted in the Navy.

Despite opposition from both families, Grace married at 18 years old her high school friend George Metalious, from whom she took her last name and with whom she had three children, Marsha, Christopher, and Cynthia.

Once again, writing helped her cope with a tubal ligation, her husband's service in World War II, and their infidelities.

After moving to Gilmanton, New Hampshire, Grace sought a way to type her first major novel while enduring severe poverty. To concentrate, she sent her hungry, blue-lipped children out into the street, while neighbors criticized her behavior. To them, the writer was a strange specimen sabotaging the strict conservative norms by dressing in an androgynous manner.

Rising above adversity, in the summer of 1955, she completed her first manuscript titled The Tree and the Flower.

Several publishers ignored the story until it landed in the hands of Kitty Messner, the founder of a small independent publishing house and one of the few women in the field.

After changing the title to Peyton Place, the novel was released in September 1956. The story exposed the hypocrisy, scandals, and dark secrets behind the moral façade of a small town in New England. On the 70th anniversary of the work, the publisher Blackie Books releases Return to Peyton Place, which the writer marketed in 1959.

The puritan and self-righteous society collapsed. How dare she, a woman, insult the image of so many respectable citizens? Critics called the work sensationalist garbage, immoral, obscene, and devoid of literary value.

Some bookstores even displayed a sign saying: "We don't have any copies of Peyton Place. If you want this book, go to Salem." Punishment soon followed. Children didn't want to play with her kids, her husband was fired from his teaching job, the townspeople thought she was talking about them, and they tore her apart with gossip.

Revenge also came. In the first month, she sold 100,000 copies, and Twentieth Century Fox paid her 250,000 dollars for the film and television rights. In 1957, the movie was released under the title "Peyton Place" starring Lana Turner and Hope Lange, receiving nine Oscar nominations. And in 1964, the TV series of the same name was created with Ryan O'Neal and Mia Farrow.

Wealth revealed the dark side of fame for Grace Metalious, who succumbed to alcoholism and stopped speaking to her children. 

After divorcing George in 1958, she married a DJ, from whom she also separated to return to her first husband. Tragically, she passed away at 39 from cirrhosis after becoming a grandmother.

Shortly before her death, her last lover, the journalist John Rees, persuaded her to leave everything to him. The family contested the will when he had already spent it all.

Let's write about rare times when politics was fun!

When Maine Politics Was Fun—and Sometimes Funny
By Tom Porter published in Bowdoin News

Yours truly Maine Writer is among the contributors.

Chris Potholm ’62: government scholar, political strategist, and author

Politics is, of course, a serious affair, but that doesn’t mean it should be devoid of humor, says Chris Potholm ’62, Bowdoin’s DeAlva Stanwood Alexander Professor of Government Emeritus.

It was this rationale that prompted Potholm—a seasoned political strategist and former Maine guide as well as a Bowdoin scholar—to help compile a newly released collection of humorous essays called Real Life, Real Funny: The Way Maine Humor Should Be (Down East Books, 2026).

Potholm says the book came out of a conversation he was having with a couple of friends who are also old hands from the Maine political scene—PR guru Dennis Bailey, a veteran of many campaigns, and former Congressman David Emery, a GOP insider and political consultant.

“We were talking about how miserable politics is today and how when we were on opposite sides of a campaign, of course we wanted to win, but we didn't think it was ‘all or nothing.’ We had friends on both sides, and if you lost, it wasn’t the end of the world.” In fact, adds Potholm, you might even hire your opponent to work on your next campaign. Politics today, he laments, is much less convivial and more divided. “People just didn’t do the sorts of things that they’re now encouraged to do.”

As a result of their conversation, the three friends decided to put together a collection of more than forty essays from dozens of contributors. In addition to contributions from the book’s three editors, there are vignettes from a number of well-known political figures, such as former US Defense Secretary and US Senator William Cohen ’62, H’75, former Maine governors John Baldacci and Angus King H’07 (currently a serving US Senator), as well as the current state governor, Janet Mills.

Potholm visibly cracks up as he recalls some of the anecdotes: Bill Cohen trying for a photo opportunity with “Andre the seal” while campaigning in Boothbay Harbor and promptly getting bitten on the backside by said mammal; John Baldacci failing miserably in a cow manure throwing contest at a Maine county fair (“I never was good at slinging the bull,” quipped the politician); or Maine Governor Janet Mills being attacked by a goose!

“Angus King also had some great stories,” says Potholm, “as he used to roll around the state on a motorbike, dressed in leather.” Many of the people he encountered weren’t used to seeing a politician looking like that. Some were incredulous. “Yeah, sure, and I’m Queen Elizabeth,” said one woman after King introduced himself as the state’s governor.

On another occasion, King and his motorcycling buddies had pulled over at a rest stop when they met a couple of fellow bikers from Massachusetts. “Welcome to Maine, I’m the governor,” said King, only to be reminded that they were in still in New Hampshire at the time!

A number of Bowdoin alumni are featured in the book: Apart from Potholm and Cohen, there are contributions from Jed Lyons ’74, Spiros Droggitis ’74, Bob Whelan ’62, Kevin Delahanty ’74, and Edie Smith ’81. Also featured is Bowdoin’s longtime communications director Scott Hood, who writes amusingly about his dog’s tendency for bringing roadkill into the house.

The book also includes stories from outside the world of politics, several of them featuring stock Maine characters such as farmers, fishermen, and hunters. Many of the tales are imbued with the deadpan humor so common in the Pine Tree State, says Potholm. “For example, if a Mainer runs into a friend at Hannaford, a typical greeting might be, ‘Hey, I didn't know you were out on bail,’” (said with a straight face).

Mainers are known across the nation for their dry sense humor, he observes. As the opening sentence of the book notes, “Maine humor is not an oxymoron, whereas Utah humor is.” The key trait is its understatement, explains Potholm. “It’s just a couple of clicks from reality.”

Juliana L'Heureux of Topsham, Maine, is honored to be among the book's contributors.