Monday Musings

Oy, I've been remiss in posting. So much going on and so I've been Twittering instead of posting because I can't seem to find the time to write something more thoughtful. I've started two posts on the economy and I get too depressed and I'm too reluctant to share my own story publicly. So instead, those posts sit in my drafts folder with a collection of quotes, links and thoughts that I'll probably never complete here.

But there is news to report today. First off, a gigantic congratulations to Jennifer Boresz who e-mailed last night to tell me that she and her long-time boyfriend Brian got engaged this past weekend. Jen is moving back to the Cleveland area from Toledo later this month and I'm looking forward to catching up with her when she returns. After a lot of soul-searching, she has decided to leave her television job to return to freelancing for print and broadcast.

Speaking of freelancing, I'll be speaking to a class at Lorain County Community College next Tuesday about freelancing. And again to a John Carroll University magazine journalism class later in November.

Congratulations to Catalyst Ohio magazine editor, Charlise Lyles, who released an updated version of her memoir, "Do I Dare Disturb the Universe? From the Projects to Prep School," published by Gray & Co. She was featured on Dee Perry's "Around Noon" program today on WCPN. Listen here.

Questions of Sen. John McCain's character are the subject of a scathing story in Rolling Stone. In short, the article describes McCain's long history of suffering from Napoleon's disease, misogyny, drinking, gambling, cavorting and essentially reveling in mediocrity. The reporting makes me feel sorry for any woman who has ever been part of McCain's life. To wit:

During his 1992 campaign, at the end of a long day, McCain's wife, Cindy, mussed his receding hair and needled him playfully that he was "getting a little thin up there." McCain reportedly blew his top, cutting his wife down with the kind of language that had gotten him hauled into court as a high schooler: "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." Even though the incident was witnessed by three reporters, the McCain campaign denies it took place.

It's a long read, but takes the notion of McCain's always putting country first to the test.

Connie on Poynter

Poynter has a great audio interview with PD columnist Connie Schultz. Nice job, Connie! Two of her columns are published in this year's "Best Newspaper Writing 2008-09," by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. She has a gift for sharing her thoughts on writing, whether it's to a group of senior citizens or an addled fearful fellow female journalist.

Straight talk on McCain's presidential ambition

From opinion piece in Politico by Elizabeth Drew, author of complimentary biographer, "Citizen McCain."

In his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For,” he wrote, revealingly, “I didn’t decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. . . . In truth, I’d had the ambition for a long time.” (bold is mine)

...

There’s a certain lack of seriousness in him. And he does not appear to be a reflective man, or very interested in domestic issues. One cannot imagine him ruminating late into the night about, say, how to educate and train Americans for the new global and technological challenges.

McCain’s making a big issue of “earmarks” and citing entertaining examples of ridiculous-sounding ones, circumvents discussion of the larger issues of the allocation of funds in the federal budget: according to the Office of Management and Budget, earmarks represent less than one percent of federal spending.

...

Campaigns matter. If he means “shaking up the system” … opposing earmarks doesn’t cut it.

McCain’s recent conduct of his campaign – his willingness to lie repeatedly (including in his acceptance speech) and to play Russian roulette with the vice-presidency, in order to fulfill his long-held ambition – has reinforced my earlier, and growing, sense that John McCain is not a principled man.
In fact, it’s not clear who he is."

The top job, take two

Great piece on women (or lack thereof) in high-profile media positions at The G Spot. H/T to Jill for sharing the link. I wrote about the dearth of women in high-profile journalism positions recently here. 

Here are a couple of take-aways from the G Spot piece, but I hope you'll read it in its entirety.

"Liberal women, and especially liberal feminist women, are not particularly welcome in opinion journalism."

"Media outlets have gotten beaten up so hard by the right for their alleged "liberal" (ha!) bias that for a long time now, they've shied away from hiring strongly liberal columnists (and the ones that fall through the cracks, like Paul Krugman, seem to get there by accident -- remember, Krugman was hired by the Times back in the days when he best-known as a fan of globalization and the neoliberal world order)."

"The key to getting more women opinion columnists and more (salaried) women bloggers out there is … to keep on publicizing this issue, and need to keep the pressure on … Some of it is just plain laziness -- men considering only people they know through their own personal networks, who tend to be largely male. Or men having an unconscious bias in favor hiring others like them (same sex, same race, similar class or educational background, etc.) With the well-meaning guys out there who are sympathetic towards feminism, probably all they need is a little pressure, a bit of pushback. I'm pretty sure we can through to them. And if we make enough noise we can at least have some influence over the others."

Time is short today, but rest assured I'll be returning to this topic frequently. 

Zelda on Scott

I love reading the letters of writers. I think they contain some of their best, most heartfelt work. And they reveal much about the inner workings of the writer's heart, soul and brain. I have a copy of "The Real F. Scott Fitzgerald," by Sheilah Graham that contains some moving letters from the end of his life.  Here is a passage from a letter from Zelda Fitzgerald to Scott's family following his death in 1940.

"So many years have passed since summers lost themselves in the green valley of White Bear [Minnesota] and time floated immutable and eternal above the blue sleek surface of the lake. …Always we hoped to some day be able to offer testimonial to the courtesies that were extended us; from so many kind hearts, in so many lonesome places. … Now that [Scott] won't be coming east again with his pockets full of promises and his notebooks full of schemes and new refurbished hope, life doesn't offer as happy a vista. … Life has a way of closing its books as soon as one's category is fulfilled; and I suppose the time has come. … If when things have resolved themselves more tangibly, I want to know how to find my way about the bread-line, I will write you — Don't forget me."

And the top job goes to....?

...Another guy.

Yep, that's right. Women are remarkably absent from any discussion of replacements for Leonard Downie or Meet the Press or NBC Washington Bureau Chief . The ME of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has announced his resignation, so I wonder what names will circulate to replace him?

I have no problem with men holding powerful positions in journalism. I have a problem with them holding virtually ALL the powerful positions in journalism. If you want to know why our mainstream news coverage resembles a middle-aged white guy, you need look no further than the newsrooms of most major newspapers.

As it happens Len Downie, a hometown boy, happens to be one of the greatest editors of one of the greatest newspapers. I would have worked for him in a heartbeat. You don't get 25 Pulitzers without fostering a sense of possibility, creativity and high expectations in a newsroom. Likewise, Jim Amoss at the New Orleans Times-Picayune is another I'd work for in a snap because of his commitment to fulfilling the promise of the press as a watchdog for the public.

But seriously...how far do newspapers in particular have to decline before news organizations start looking a little differently at who is at the helm? This isn't an anti-guy rant, but more an anti-establishment rant. You know the old definition of insanity? Yeah, well, I think it applies to newspapers by the bucket loads.

Check out the numbers: According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 2006 census: 38 percent of journalists working in daily newspapers are women; 65 percent of all supervisors are men.

Only 3 percent of women hold clout positions in journalism, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

All this is despite the fact that women have been the majority of college journalism majors since 1977. (Ah, yep, that would include me.)

AN-ND... newspapers that enjoy growth from innovation and development are more likely to have a diverse set of leaders at the top.

But, hey, we don't pull our weight, right? Women correspondents report ONLY 25 percent of the stories on television, and women comprise 25 percent of contributors to "general interest" magazines.



Maybe THAT'S why we leave journalism in droves. Or maybe it's because the longer we work in this business the less we get paid compared to our male counterparts.

These statistics are helpfully gathered at McCormick Foundation's New Media Women Entrepreneurs, where they encourage and yes reward us for our knack with new media, social networks and our broader network of contacts and insatiable curiosity.

C'mon! We've got the data, now let's do something about it. And then maybe we can stop mourning for what was and start reaching for what's next.

A gift from friends

Harper Lee's novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" was partly a magnificent gift from friends who in 1956 gave her a year's salary as a Christmas present so that she could devote all her time to writing. After writing, rewriting and nearly losing the pages to the New York winter, Lee's novel was finally published in 1960. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961.

Writers send their darlings out into the world with every hope and prayer that they won't be squashed on arrival. It is a most anxious time when the work leaves the writers hands and when it appears in its final form. Lee, who turns 82 today, had nothing to worry about. It was well received and included this from a Washington Post reviewer: "A hundred pounds of sermons on tolerance, or an equal measure of invective deploring the lack of it, will weigh far less in the scale of enlightenment than a mere 18 ounces of new fiction bearing the title To Kill a Mockingbird."

Her book is now required reading in high schools around the country.

"I never expected any sort of success with Mockingbird. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers but, at the same time, I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected."

Word of the day
denizen: one that frequents a place

Review: "Wit's End"

I didn't read Karen Joy Fowler's book, "The Jane Austen Book Club." I'm not sure why, but I remember reading a book blurb and just feeling as if I didn't get the point. That's not to say, of course, that many others haven't read the book and enjoyed it immensely. I mean, it was on the bestseller list for a spell.

When I got a publisher's copy of her new novel, "Wit's End," I decided to give it a try.

Despite the creepy cover photo of a giant green eye peering into a tiny door (more about that later), I went into the story with an open mind because the subtitle said: "What happens when your readers steal your characters?"

And the press materials went on about her exploration of the online life of fan fiction. Cool. Seems new and provocative. A side of online life I've not yet experienced.

Except that I really for the life of me can't figure out what this book is about.

It starts out with Shaker Heights native Rima Lanisell, who has lost her mother (a long time ago, I think), her father (of a long illness) and her brother (suddenly when he crashed the car while drunk). Familial relationships were bizarre with her weirdly close relationship with her younger brother, Oliver, and her strangely distant relationship with her father, Bim, who was a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer.

She was horrified by her father's revelation of things in his columns like her first crush. One Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist once told me that after a certain age (say 12-13), permission is required to write about your children's personal mishaps. Old Bim would have done well to follow that advice.

Anyway, Rima has left all of this misery and her middle school teaching job behind to visit her godmother, Addison Early at her home, Wit's End in Santa Cruz, Calif. Addison is a mega mystery author known as A.B. Early. And the people who inhabit Wit's End are all a little bizarre and I guess serve as surrogate family for the grieving Rima.

Addison, who has her own bizarre upbringing in that her parents were actually brother and sister—a fact only revealed to her when her "father" announced he was getting married and would now be her "uncle"—holes up in her studio working on her latest Maxwell Lane novel. She's written a bunch, including one with the character of Bim Lanisell, Rima's father, in which Bim kills his wife (Rima's mom?).

Apparently that novel iced the relationship between the real Bim and Addison, who from near as I can gather became tight while reporters covering the same story. In fact, it is sort of revealed though never really explained that Addison had an unrequited crush on the much-older Bim.

Rima becomes obsessed with a fan from Holy City, home to a mid-20th century cult led by an overweight, charismatic leader named William Riker and a place where Bim and Addison first met. And there are references to what she finds on wikipedias and blog entries.

In fact, that foray into the online fan world reveals that her life (and that of her dead brother's) has been speculated on by some of A.B. Early's fans. How? Not really sure. Because fact and fiction all seem to roll together in this story.

Addison and Rima are strangers and it's hard to feel as if they ever actually bond. Rima goes on her own little adventure with a crazed fan and learns something about Addison's real father, which seems to cause the book to jump the shark at the end rather then pull the meandering narrative strings together. Why do I say this? Because at the end, the character of Maxwell Lane—Addison's star sleuth—becomes an avatar in a new Web-based story and Rima talks to him as if he were real.

Confused? Yeah, so was I. I'm not sure what story Fowler was trying to tell. But I'll never look at doll houses in quite the same way. I never had one, but my sister did—and does. Addison used them to stage the murders in miniature for her novels. Very creepy.

Writing advice from Barbara Kingsolver

"I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer's block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don't. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done." — Novelist Barbara Kingsolver on her job as a technical writer

Last week I finished reading her book, "The Poisonwood Bible." While I don't have the time this week or next to give it an appropriate review, I will just say that it ranks as one of the finest novels I've ever read. The first 75-100 pages are slow-moving, but it picks up after that and for the next 475 pages. A riveting portrait of women's survival, a country struggling for independence and America's subterranean presence.

Ted Gup: "Attendance is mandatory"

CWRU professor, journalist and author Ted Gup has a terrific piece in the April 11, 2008, issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education titled, "So Much for the Information Age."

He begins:

I teach a seminar called "Secrecy: Forbidden Knowledge." I recently asked my class of 16 freshmen and sophomores, many of whom had graduated in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes and had dazzling SAT scores, how many had heard the word "rendition."

Not one hand went up.

This is after four years of the word appearing on the front pages of the nation's newspapers, on network and cable news, and online. This is after years of highly publicized lawsuits, Congressional inquiries, and international controversy and condemnation. This is after the release of a Hollywood film of that title, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, and Reese Witherspoon.

I was dumbstruck. Finally one hand went up, and the student sheepishly asked if rendition had anything to do with a version of a movie or a play.

I nodded charitably, then attempted to define the word in its more public context.

The timing of my reading this piece is interesting because I had just concluded a phone interview with a woman who was a native of England, but has lived in the states for 40-plus years. She was expressing her concern about the American educational system's lack of attention to civics, geography and basic world history.

Gup shares a similar concern, stating that for all its supposed connectivity, this cohort remains remarkably out of touch with the world.

In recent years I have administered a dumbed-down quiz on current events and history early in each semester to get a sense of what my students know and don't know. Initially I worried that its simplicity would insult them, but my fears were unfounded. The results have been, well, horrifying.

Nearly half of a recent class could not name a single country that bordered Israel. In an introductory journalism class, 11 of 18 students could not name what country Kabul was in, although we have been at war there for half a decade. Last fall only one in 21 students could name the U.S. secretary of defense. Given a list of four countries — China, Cuba, India, and Japan — not one of those same 21 students could identify India and Japan as democracies. Their grasp of history was little better. The question of when the Civil War was fought invited an array of responses — half a dozen were off by a decade or more. Some students thought that Islam was the principal religion of South America, that Roe v. Wade was about slavery, that 50 justices sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1975. You get the picture, and it isn't pretty.

These are college students at a prestigious university, presumably interested in pursuing journalism. And they don't know that Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan. Or that India is a democracy. Or that South America is largely Catholic continent!

Gup's point to his students is that attendance to his class is mandatory; it only works if everyone participates. The same, he says, can be said of a democracy.

High school—and probably middle school—history teachers should take the first five minutes of class weekly or even daily to have a current events quiz. Make it three to five questions, but use it as a test to see if students are reading, listening to or watching the news. Our democracy depends on an informed, engaged citizenry.

Word of the day
dunderhead: dunce; blockhead

Curiosity as female trait

"Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery." — Victor Hugo

Maybe this is why women make such great (albeit underpaid) journalists...

Widening income gap

Here's lovely little stat from the March/April issue of Columbia Journalism Review from a 2002 Indiana University national survey of journalists:

"...researchers found the median salary of female journalists to be $37,731—nearly 20 percent lower than the $46,758 pulled down by male journalists, a wage gap that widens as journalists grow older and more experienced."

A wage gap that widens as journalists grow older and more experienced??? Are you kidding?? No wonder women leave this profession in droves.

The article isn't available online, but the gist is that female journalists can get along in this business if they either become "one of the boys" (and still get paid less despite having "more education, better contacts and broader personal networks") or choose to become "one of the girls" writing about those subjects that benefit from the "women's angle."

Blech!

St. Patrick's Day 2008

"When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious." — Irish novelist Edna O'Brien

Word of the day
blithe: of a happy lighthearted character or disposition

One harsh—and mistaken—critic

"Richard Wright, soon to become the bestselling author of Native Son, categorically dismissed [Zora Neale] Hurston's book: 'The sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought,' he wrote."

From the article, "A Protofeminist Postcard from Haiti," by Valerie Boyd, about Hurston's book, "Their Eyes Were Watching God." Boyd wrote the biography, "Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston", published in 2003.

Review: "The Distance Between Us"

Masha Hamilton knows firsthand the psyche of a foreign correspondent and she captures the dedication and the self-imposed isolation that exists in those who tune out their own needs and voices to tell the stories of others abroad.

In her book, "The Distance Between Us," Hamilton's main character Caddie Blair is hard and cold, yet also funny and warm. She's a guy's girl who is in the Middle East for the story—THE story of who gets the right to "piss on the ancient ground," which has long been the subject of battles large and small. There are two types of people, she says: "There are whose who leave, and those who stay."

While on a risky trip to Lebanon to interview a reclusive politician, Caddie misses the warning signs of an attack and her photographer boyfriend, who kept telling her he wanted to leave but whom she convinced to come with her on one more assignment, is fatally shot in an ambush.

Like the Palestinians and the West Bank settlers that she covers, she is filled with thoughts of revenge. She is quickly losing herself in a quest to block out all else. That is, until a strange Russian professor shows up along with a journal of photographs that her late boyfriend's parents sent from Britain.

One is feeding her need to lose herself physically and emotionally, the other is forcing her to look at what she's become. Caddie's emotions or even lack of them hurts because you know she's going to implode if she doesn't face them.

Most journalists will recognize the desire to lose yourself in your reporting. Sometimes it's out of sheer enthusiasm for a subject, other times it's an escape—from reality, from boredom. But what Hamilton shows in her journalist is that while she was busy escaping her feelings and boredom thinking she was covering the story of the death and violence of the Middle East, it becomes increasingly apparent to the reader and to Caddie that she's NOT reporting the story.

She didn't put a human face on the death and violence that marks the territory. It remained faceless, nameless, a sheer numbers game. Through some painful and traumatic moments, she learns how much she missed the things around her. And it's through the photos in her boyfriend's journal that she sees herself—and him—for the first time. He had wanted out and she blew him off.

"War strips us naked. I am horrified by what I find in me," he writes at the end of his journal. The effect on Caddie is immediate, though other events have also been building toward her recognizing the "selective deafness" she has exhibited in her work and in her life.

She knows now that the stories have to be about people, about individuals, and that's the only way to lessen "the distance between us."

Word of the day
haunting: to visit often; to have a disquieting or harmful effect on

Make your writing sing

"If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write because our culture has no use for it." — Anaïs Nin

Documenting women's role in journalism history

There's almost an urgency to Sheila Gibbons commentary in Women's E-News yesterday. She's urging female journalists to start saving those notes, documents, scribbles, story drafts, e-mail correspondence, journals and blogs for donation to the National Women and Media Collection at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Why? Because without the documented history of women in journalism, the gender gap in journalism history will persist. It's hard enough to be a women in this business. What a tragedy if there were little to no record of those who toiled away, too busy multitasking or simplifying to document their impact.

I admit I'm no packrat and in my haste to organize and simplify, I'm quite good at tossing materials without a moment's thought. I don't believe for an instant that any future journalists or historians will care about what I said, wrote or documented. But I do believe strongly in the value of history for history's sake. In other words, you never know what source will unlock a story for future generations.

If I needed any evidence of that, I need only look to the biography of Edith Wharton that I'm about two-thirds through today. Wonderful example of how the tiniest details, in one case a note to a beloved niece, express a private detail not found in other works about her.

Hat tip to Romenesko for including in the left rail.

There's a new writer in town...

... and her name is Michelle O'Neil.

If you get a moment today, please stop by Full Soul Ahead written by Michelle O'Neil and check out her magnificent, soulful writing.

She's new to Cleveland, having moved here from Virginia earlier this summer. She found me by Googling Cleveland writers. And she's been kind enough to read and comment regularly here on Creative Ink.

We met for coffee at Dewey's at Shaker Square last week and had a lovely conversation. Originally a journalist, she went to school to try doing something more meaningful like nursing.

Today she combines both aspects of her professional life into some of the richest, most personal writing. Her inspiration comes from her children Riley and Seth.

To get a glimpse at how beautiful a child with special needs can be, check out this entry.

Mostly, I hope you'll take a moment to welcome her to town. She's a beautiful addition to our writing community.

Welcome, Michelle!

Savoring a good read

It's quite possible I will keep coming back to and quoting from Hermione Lee's excellent biography of Edith Wharton. It's simply a terrific mix of research, smart writing, compelling subject and synthesis of material.

That sounds so academic, but what I really mean is that I dig this book.

In the chapter, "Republic of Letters," there are number of fabulous stories about her publishing, including a letter to Scribner's after the publication of her book, The Greater Inclination:

"Gentlemen, Am I not to receive any copies of my book? I have had no notice of its publication, but I see from the New York papers that it appeared last week, and I supposed that by this time the usual allowances of copies would have been sent me. Yours truly, Edith Wharton."

Well-documented throughout is her philosophy on writing novels.

"My last page is always latent in my first." A work of art must make you feel that "it could not have been otherwise." These qualities had to be produced though "a perpetual process of rejection and elision."

Sort of reminds of of the great writing teacher William Zinsser's admonition to select, focus, reduce. Her writing is never gratuitous. She has a point to make.

"No novel worth anything can be anything but a novel 'with a purpose,' & if anyone who cared for the moral issue did not see in my work that I care for it, I should have no one to blame but myself."

There are sections of the book in which Lee demonstrates Wharton's editing style, demonstrating the development of scenes and dialogue to which she paid such careful note.

"In the conversation between Ellen Olenska and Newland Archer in the carriage in The Age of Innocence, for instance, the manuscript develops like this:
1. 'Is it your idea, then, that I should be your'
2. 'Is it your idea, then, that we should go off together'
3. 'Is it your idea, then, that I should be your mistress'
4. 'Is it your idea, then, that I should live with you as your mistress since I can't be your wife?' she asked abruptly.
(This, but without 'abruptly,' was the final printed version.)"

Isn't that cool? Maybe you just have to be a writing freak like me to appreciate such process. But it gives me a glimpse into her head and a chance to learn from her as if she were standing before me.

"In the scene at the end of The House of Mirth when Lily slips out of consciousness, imagining that she is holding Nettie Struther's baby, the manuscript changes read:

1. She settled herself into a position
2. She settled herself into an easier position, pressing the little
3. into an easier position, hollowing her arm to receive the little head, and holding her breath lest a sound should disturb the child's sleep
4. should disturb the sleeping child

"The final version is: 'She settled herself into an easier position, hollowing her arm to pillow the round downy head, and holding her breath lest a sound should disturb the sleeping child.' "

Wharton's stories are often of "a man who has failed to love a remarkable woman." What I found and keep finding as I make my way through her life (again) are the many deliberate things she did as a writer that draw me to her work, whether that is depth of subject matter or snappy dialogue or conflicted, struggling characters. Often it's what she leaves out of the story, the blanks I must fill in, that strike me most deeply.

She rarely wrote happy endings. And she never insulted her readers' intelligence. That is why were are still reading her books and still reading about her.

Is writing an inherently deviant act?

4. Several of the writers discuss the act of writing as their “bad” behavior. Is writing inherently a deviant act?

"Interestingly, both Joyce Maynard and Erica Jong talk about breaking silences as a way of being bad. So yes, they write to be heard in a world that wants to keep them quiet."

Amen to that, sister!

From Jewess interview with Ellen Sussman, author of "Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave."

Hat tip to Jill, who always seems to know what I need when I need it. A thousand thank yous!

The more things change...

...the more they stay the same.

She had immersed herself in ground-plans, guide-books, architectural treatises, diaries and travellers' accounts, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, in four languages, and she was bitterly disappointed that the publishers would not let her use as illustrations the historical garden-plans she had laboured to track down (rightly so, as reviewers complained of their absence). And she wanted more money ($2,000 for six articles instead of $1,500), since she was writing "with some sort of system & comprehensiveness on a subject which, hitherto, has been treated in English only in the most amateurish fashion" and "it is sure to have a popular success." ("I receive $500 for a short story, which is much less hard work.")

— Hermione Lee writing about Edith Wharton and her experience in publishing Italian Villas and Their Gardens in the giant biography, Edith Wharton.