What is Memoir?

The often incorrect use of the term memoir is a pet peeve of mine; after all, it is my genre. It's what I write primarily, and what I teach. So when the Washington Independent Review of Books asked me to write an essay defining memoir, I was more than happy to oblige. Read my essay.

A Family Tradition: Hazelnut Torte (Kosher for Passover)

My version of Oma's Hazelnut Torte on its very own cake stand, used
only on Passover

For every birthday of my childhood, there would be my German grandmother's Haselnusstorte (hazelnut cake). She lived a four-hour train ride away from us in Wiesbaden, and if she wasn't visiting for my or my siblings' birthday, the Torte would arrive in a package. She'd make sure to save the right kind of cardboard box for those parcels. Even after we'd grown up, when she wouldn't necessarily send it right on our birthdays, the tradition prevailed: The next time we'd visit her, a Haselnusstorte would be waiting on her kitchen counter, glazed in dark chocolate and neatly decorated with a gummy bear per slice, or for the more grown up among us, with a blanched almond.

My kids are more into piled-high soft American chocolate cakes for their birthdays, but my Oma's Haselnusstorte has become a different tradition in our Jewish household because, as it is flourless, it happens to be kosher for Passover. It is also tremendously easy to make if you have mastered the art of separating eggs, i.e., making 100% sure that no yolk gets into the egg whites (they won't stiffen otherwise). Tip: Use a separate glass for cracking the eggs and pour each egg white into a bigger bowl for beating once you're sure no yolk has gotten in there. If you have an accident, toss that messed-up egg white.

My husband, my kids, and so far all guests at our Passover Seder table love/have loved my Oma's Haselnusstorte, and so, every Passover, I make the traditional version using hazelnuts (also called filiberts), but over the course of the eight days of Passover I also bake an almond and a walnut version. See for yourself what version you like best. Here's the recipe:


Hazelnut Torte

6 eggs, separated
3 cups finely ground hazelnuts (= filiberts, about 9 oz. ground)
1 1/3 cups sugar
grated rind of half a lemon
1 bar of semi-sweet chocolate
canola oil and matzo meal for pan
9" round springform pan

Beat egg yolks until they are foamy, add lemon rind, then beat in sugar until creamy. Add nuts. Beat egg whites until stiff (=peaks in the foam will stay when you turn off your beater). Carefully fold the egg whites into the nut mixture. The nut mixture will be a little stiff but it will loosen up with careful folding in of the egg whites. Coat the pan with oil and matzo meal. Pour batter into the pan. Bake at 350F for one hour. Let cake cool off.

Melt the chocolate, add a teaspoon of canola oil (to keep it just a bit soft for cutting), and spread it over the cake.

Enjoy and Happy Passover!

A Walk through the Master of Nets Garden in Suzhou

Moon gate at the Master of the Nets Garden in Suzhou, China - If you
remember my earlier photo essay about the Blue Waves Pavilion - moon gates
like this one are typical for a classical Chinese garden. Walking along a path,
you are suddenly presented with a neat hole in a wall, and of course you're
going to duck in to see what lies beyond.

I just saw on Paul French's China Rhyming blog that this weekend Shelly Bryant is offering another tour of classical Chinese gardens in Suzhou, China. Since I was fortunate enough to have a private tour with her just about a year ago, I thought I'd share my last set of photos from that excursion. A little early spring garden serenity seems in order, particularly as it is still really cold in Chicago right now. Plus, as the first anniversary of my trip is coming up, I am feeling a little nostalgic, so putting this photo essay together is a nice little commemoration.

That's me in the half moon - captured by my friend Miho as I am, as usual, taking pictures. Notice the intricacy of this garden: Every bit is decorated, in an elaborate yet non-garish way. There's the mosaic of the floor and the shard pattern of the doors.

 

 

 

Close up of a floral floor mosaic in another room of the garden.

 

 

Three women in a mirror - my friend Miho, Shelly and I

 

Remember the typical tourist photo where you stand in front of a landmark and have someone else snap a picture to document, "I was here!"  Well, how did people do that before cameras? This garden was first built in the 1400s, and Shelly explained that the Chinese wanted to give people the feeling of being in the landscape, of seeing themselves as part of it. The solution? Mirrors! So here, we could look into this ancient, slightly beveled and spotty mirror, and see that yes, we were there!

 

As an added bonus, mirrors make small spaces feel larger, and this garden feels indeed much larger than the one acre it actually occupies. I was genuinely tired after walking through its labyrinth of paths, miniature parklands and garden rooms.

 

 

 

On this floor plan that I scanned in from Maggie Keswick's book The Chinese Garden, you can see that this garden is more built than planted. The three rooms in the lower right corner are really halls of the house, but even they feature trees and shrubs. The big "empty" space in the middle is the pond.

 

 

 

I don't have a decent photo of the pond, I guess I just wasn't that impressed with it, but this does give you a feel for the overall look of the garden (photo via Asian Historical Architecture).

 

 

 

I was more into the nooks and corners and all the intricate details.

 

 

 

Each window has its own lattice pattern.

 

 

 

One window leads to the next, double framing carefully arranged plantings.

 

 

 

Some of the window ornamentation in this garden is fancier than that of the Blue Waters Pavilion as it was first built during a time when tastes were towards heavy decorations, similar, in a way, to European baroque. See the rockeries among the trees beyond this window, meant to bring the mountains into the city.

 

 

 

A room detail - sadly, I don't remember the name of the room. Some of them have beautiful names that hint at how the Chinese saw the purpose of a garden (this garden was rebuilt in the 18th century by an administrator who said he'd rather be a fisherman, hence the name):

"Pavilion of the Accumulated Void"

"Barrier of Clouds Hall"

"Hall from which One Looks at the Pines and Contemplates the Paintings"

 

 

 

The eye is busy (isn't it?) looking out of this window, going round in circles, almost trapped by the jagged pattern of the frame, the vertical of the bamboo, and the frame of another window beyond. I remember feeling slightly overwhelmed after being in this labyrinth of a garden; I was craving open space (that's the American in me).

 

 

 

Alas, this is the reality of modern day China: Here is the old canal that wraps around the Old City of Suzhou, beyond it spreads an endless carpet of highrise apartment buildings. And by endless I mean endless. On the almost two hour drive back to Shanghai, the vista of these clusters of apartment buildings does not relent and blends seamlessly into Shanghai's own carpet of apartment buildings. Suzhou is a mid-size city by Chinese standards, which means about 4 million people live in the city proper, and the metropolitan area has about 10 million people.

 

 

 

I shall leave you with this more contemplative view of a remnant of the old city wall of Suzhou. The canal was at my back taking this picture. 

Leslie Maitland on Writing from a Different Point of View in Memoir

My author Q&A with Leslie Maitland appeared in the Washington Independent Review of Books last week. Her memoir Crossing the Borders of Time, about finding her mother's first love whom she had lost in the Holocaust in France, just came out in paperback and thus has been rather successful. One of the questions I asked her dealt with writing a memoir about someone else's experience in the third person, i.e. from that person's point of view. I have gotten a lot of pushback from editors on that myself, often hearing, "That's not memoir," so I was particularly curious to see how she managed to get away with that.

My question: Large parts of your book are written from your mother’s point of view. Did you ever question your authority to do that? Did you ever fear you were betraying your mother in telling the story of her long lost love? Especially when you describe her in intimate sexual situations?

Leslie Maitland: Mom and I have always been so close that I never questioned my authority to speak from her point of view. She freely shared it with me, both informally throughout our lives and quite formally, in sitting down for in-depth interviews. I never felt that I was betraying her in telling her story, because she fully endorsed the project and assisted me in countless ways. She traveled with me to Germany, France, and Cuba on reporting trips, and she spent innumerable hours translating complicated documents and letters, many of them written in Sütterlin, a virtually indecipherable form of Germanic script that was outlawed by the Nazis in 1941.

No doubt, she was brave and generous in allowing me to write so openly about the troubles in her marriage, and because she is in fact a private person, somewhat shy, I’m sure the sexual scenes made her uncomfortable. At her request, there were a few things I cut out to satisfy her modesty. But everything that relates to her personal life is based entirely on what she shared with me.

Read more...

Study in Gray

It seems to me that in March, right before spring, when everything is especially barren, nature invites contemplation. On my recent walk through our property in northwest Indiana, I had to move in closely, really bend down, and spend some time in a spot to see the beauty amidst the muted colors, such as the terrific mosaic of this fungus growing on a tree stump.

"Hello?" I wanted to say, "whose castle is this?"

 

 

 

Birch bark - another study in texture

 

 

 

Grasses by the pond and trees in the pond

 

 

 

There is a certain beachy happiness to be found in the pond.

 

 

 

Three stars under water

 

 

 

I am in the pond, too.

 

 

 

We had wind that day, and I am proud that my photography skills have advanced far enough for me to have captured the spinning of the windmill.

 

 

 

Looking closer, you can see the buds on the red maple.

 

 

 

And here, a definite sign of spring - the pussy willow.

 

On Belonging to a Group

How could you not feel
elegant under this chandelier?
Ballroom of the Woman's
Athletic Club of Chicago,
where the concert was held.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the issue of belonging to a group - wanting to belong, bending over backwards to belong, finding that for all your effort the return might be nil, and on the other hand not seeing those who do appreciate you. This is an old wound of mine that itches once in a while, and this time the Unraveling - Ways of Seeing Yourself class I've been taking brought it up again when one week's unit asked, "Who's your tribe?"

I understand "tribe" as its own social strata, not as close as family and friends, but closer than acquaintances; with a tribe, there is some group cohesion around a common goal or interest. I have spent lots of time and energy trying to belong to some groups, with little or no results in terms of feeling that I belonged. I was not invited, consulted, considered; my own invitations were not returned or accepted. Why, I ask myself, do I keep doing that? And who are the groups that do welcome me? Do I even see them? Or am I focused on those that give me the cold shoulder?

In an effort to be more accepting of invitations I do receive, I stepped out recently and attended a chamber music concert despite rather forbidding weather, simply because my former boss had invited me. It was one of those group experiences that was unexpectedly easy, friendly and pleasant. I had nothing at stake; I only knew one person, who was, thankfully, attentive and generous. The music was beautiful, the venue elegant, and the luncheon after the performance had me sitting next to one of the musicians from Vienna, who was easy to talk to. So here, for once, I followed a door that was opened for me, rather than knocking on a door that I wanted someone to open.

It was a wonderfully dignified affair, maybe not the deepest social interaction, but that isn't always needed, right? Sometimes it's enough to spend a few hours in pleasant company, in elegant surroundings, talking about sophisticated things like a Viennese musician's concert touring schedule, or cultural cruises down the Danube. It makes you feel special, taken care of, and maybe even appreciated.

Going back to the tribe topic - my former boss is the program director of this concert series, and so she knew people and was clearly a member of that tribe. Of course I don't know what frustrations and emotions lie behind the facade of a well run concert series, and while she did allude to a number of things having gone wrong, they weren't apparent to me. I could simply be there, watch her purse while she took care of something, and enjoy an event that a group effort had made possible. And so I'm left wondering whether the events we get to enjoy are those we aren't intimately involved with, while the ones we help put together or even organize ourselves will be the ones that leave us with a sense of satisfaction (hopefully!) or, more often than not, all kinds of emotional baggage.

The Writing on the Wall

"Mom vandalized the wall!" - that was my son's first reaction upon seeing my word of the year written on our living room wall. "Hey, there's a word on the wall!" - "Does Dad know about this?" - those were my kids' other reactions. My husband was, thankfully, bemused, and happy to hear that it can be easily removed, and of course I did clear this new wall decoration with him.

I am plainly pleased. Now "Create!" calls out to me every time I sit on the opposite couch, in my spot, where I usually sit with my laptop, my knitting, or my notebook. Already I am imagining an exclamation point calling me to action as to what I should be doing when I'm pushing emails around or dawdling on Twitter. I only put it up earlier this week, but I can already say it's wonderful to have that tether, steadfast and beckoning me amidst all the mayhem of everyday family life.

I got the idea for the wall decal while visiting our electrician's new house where all kinds of nice family sayings decorated the walls. They looked like they were stenciled on, but his wife enlightened me that they were merely vinyl decals you can order on Etsy. So I had my own decal custom made to my specs by VinylDesignCreations. It was amazingly cheap, exactly what I wanted, and promptly delivered! I am (can't you tell?) very happy with my writing on the wall.

Snow Day

Yesterday the biggest snow storm of the season hit Chicago. Never mind that it's March and we're more in the mood for spring flowers than snow flakes. It started snowing in the morning, picked up in the afternoon, and didn't stop until late evening. Officially, the city got 9 inches of snow - the biggest drop of snow since the February 2011 blizzard.

My two older kids' school declared a snow day, and so we got to spend a weekday together. In fact, I ended up driving my daughter to an appointment that we had moved to early afternoon so she wouldn't be out there in the evening. But that meant I was out there in the thick of it. Since inclement weather tends to make for good photo opportunities, and I hadn't been out with my camera in a while, I decided to pack up my gear, bundle up, and roam the parks with my camera. Here is a glimpse of my snow day.

 

emma & shel in the storm

 

 

 

I love taking pictures of bikes, and these snow-covered ones seem so dynamic compared with all the sleeping white cars in the background.

 

 

 

Ulysses S. Grant weathers the storm.

 

 

 

What's cozier than looking out at the storm from a café? Delightful Pastries in the Old Town neighborhood - their paczkis (Polish doughnuts filled with raspberry jam) are indeed a delight.

 

 

 

Once we had driven home safely, I was curious to see what the lakefront was like, so I didn't get out of my winter garb but headed out to the Point, a peninsula a block away.

 

 

 

Even in a storm, snow can appear as lace.

 

 

 

I am fascinated by snowy benches...

 

 

 

...and snowy branches.

 

 

 

The storm at the Point

 

 

 

Turn around and you see this - a lone tree on the edge of the white nothingness of the lake.

 

 

 

Back at home, looking out.