Guest Blog Post: TWO-PART INVENTION is too universal to grow stale

By RuthAnn Deveney

Over the weekend, I re-read Two-Part Invention, which is my very favorite Madeleine book. This memoir is about her 40-year-marriage with actor Hugh Franklin, going back and forth in time between their early courtship and maturing marriage with Hugh’s battle with cancer. It is, as I warn people, very sad.

I probably found this book in late high school or just before college; this is my best guess based on what I had already read from Madeleine at the time. The first section of the book talks about her single life, when she worked as an understudy and stage manager on Broadway while she worked on her first novel. I began to see the connections between the events of her life from her nonfiction and her novels like The Small Rain and Certain Women. By the time I went to college, I was well-versed in her writing and it had had a huge impact on me.

In so many ways, I felt that Madeleine articulated things that I felt, even if I had not consciously expressed them to that point. Two-Part Invention is the most poignant example of that resonance for me, and every time I revisit it, a different line rings in my mind.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read it. Both of my copies are secondhand with brittle pages and weak parts of the spine. The writing feels old, but in a solid, good way. Two-Part Invention was published in 1988, two years after Hugh passed away. At that point, he and Madeleine had been married for 40 years, so now almost as much time has passed since his death (and the publication of the book) as their entire marriage. There are some quaint, “product of the times” aspects to the memories, like writing to book hotel rooms (?) and how Madeleine had to fight to breastfeed her newborns.

But the overwhelming feeling I get from this memoir is its realness. Madeleine talks about the backdrop of war in the sixties; she wrestles with her identity as an atypical housewife (writing was not “real work”); and she confronts the failings of modern medicine. She works through the difficulties of a long, painful illness and then just the beginning of her grieving process. These are universal concepts of the human condition, so the memoir never grows stale for me. Instead, I found myself surprised at how fresh and straight-forward her perspective was. Madeleine is wacky and wandery, but she does not mince words.

This time around, I was drawn toward the passages about difficulty and hardship. I am not naturally a romantic person, and I doubt I was ever swooning over the giddier parts of the book. But now that I have been reading this memoir for at least 15 years, I can see how my mind inclines toward harder topics.

Madeleine talks about prayer — how can she pray rightly for Hugh in his illness? She wants him with her, of course, but he is in terrible pain, and every possible complication does indeed occur. Her weariness and frustration is palpable. I unconsciously clenched my fists and my jaw as I read, only noticing after the fact and then consciously releasing the tension. Part of my response is investment in Madeleine and Hugh’s story; part of it is fear of grappling with this pain and sorrow in my own life. Please, no. But probably, yes, sadly.

As I finished the book, I reflected on why I keep coming back to it. It’s certainly not a 100 percent pleasant experience to read. Some parts are comforting and light: learning about Broadway in the sixties is fascinating, and I love to cheer on young Madeleine as she writes her early novels. But most of it is really tough. Despite that, I think the book is optimistic and life-affirming.

Madeleine says, life is hard, but it’s good. And usually, it’s good because it’s hard.

When my husband and I were dating, as it became clearer and clearer that we might get married, I approached him cautiously about reading Two-Part Invention. He is a reader, but the overlap in our reading taste was and is very narrow. Plus, I was painfully aware that opening up this part of myself to him would make me very vulnerable. I can’t remember how I asked him to read it, and I don’t think I posed an ultimatum, but it was clear that this book (and his liking it) meant a lot to me. Not that we would break up if he didn’t like it, but … well, let’s not think about that. So I lent him a copy and commenced low-grade fretting.

After a time, he returned the book to me. “I liked it,” he said simply. “I feel like I know you a lot better now.”

Relief! And today marks 13 years of marriage for us. I hope that we can be as wise and strong in our marriage as Madeleine and Hugh were in theirs.

 

RuthAnn Deveney works in corporate learning and development and loves walking around her small town of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. She lives there with her husband, dog, and a huge collection of Madeleine L’Engle books, including her most prized volume: a signed copy of A Swiftly Tilting Planet, which a friend gave to her in high school after finding it at a yard sale for fifty cents! You can read more Madeleine musings at RuthAnn’s blog or follow her on Twitter and Instagram. This piece was originally published June 25, 2018, on RuthAnn’s blog.

 

Do you have something you’d like us to share with our blog readers? We are taking submissions for guest blog posts. Email: social [at] madeleinelengle [dot] com.

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Guest blog post: Teacher finds a kindred while reading all of Madeleine’s books (in order)

By Melissa Giggey

I was a scrappy little tomboy standing in front of my fifth-grade teacher’s bookshelf, scanning all the possibilities. I remember with vivid detail the moment I laid eyes on the pink and blue spine of A Wrinkle in Time. I was intrigued. It was almost a magnetic pull. I was about to change, and Madeleine was guiding me.

As amazing as it is that I remember that moment, I don’t recall reading the book. I remember thinking that I knew the book was true. But I do remember distinctly the next time Madeleine came into my life. I was in eighth grade: rebellious, full of angst, and yet still a reader. One day while browsing the library, the name “L’Engle” caught my eye, and I pulled off the shelf A Ring of Endless Light. I read about the Austin family next, then I completed the Time Trilogy. I bought a copy of A Wrinkle in Time and re-read it over and over. I read whatever was in the library. I found a few spiritual reflection books and finally read about Poly O’Keefe. I’d become obsessed.

By college, I started buying old books online. I was now a collector. I had a list of all her published books and started checking them off. It was during this time that I wrote Madeleine a letter while she was at St. John the Divine. I was thrilled to receive a reply (though a little bummed that it wasn’t from her but instead from Léna Roy, her granddaughter). Madeleine was getting older. I was too late! I would not be able to attend her writing seminars or to correspond or look forward to new books. I was to only learn from her legacy. So I set out to do that.

In January 2017, I made a commitment to read all of Madeleine’s books as they were chronologically published.  This was in conjunction with the celebration surrounding Madeleine’s 100th birthday preparation and the release of the Wrinkle in Time movie. As of today, I have 13 books left.

I have just finished the Austin family chronicles with Troubling a Star, and my journey has brought me closer to Madeleine the writer, the mother, and the friend.  I have also traced my own faith journey that began with A Wrinkle in Time (but that is a story to tell another day).

So far, I treasure the Crosswick Journals the most because they are purely Madeleine. She isn’t veiling her life and her stories within another character; she features herself. I first read A Circle of Quiet at around age 16 and at once knew that Madeleine was a kindred spirit. As I began rereading the Crosswick Journals as an adult, I examine how far I’ve come from the anxious, unsure young woman I was to the brave person I am. The books make me ask, How much dreaming does it take to live deliberately? How much of my introversion benefits from my choices to make the most of my life?

My choices have led me to a life of nurturing and teaching. We can’t let our mind fight our hearts constantly. This is where I find validation of my profession, my calling, as a teacher.  IQ can’t measure love; a test can’t ever measure who a person truly is. When we try to help children find “self” we simply have to show compassion and teach empathy. They will in turn develop a true self as they practice love.

Madeleine expounds on this idea: “How do we teach a child—our own, or those in a classroom—to have compassion: to allow people to be different; to understand that like is not equal; to experiment; to laugh; to love; to accept the fact that the most important questions a human being can ask do not have—or need—answers.” Madeleine equates this to fanning a flame in children.

In contrast, I feel that a general lack of self in adults is reflected in our maddening political climate. Madeleine talks about the tendency to not be brave enough to rebel when it is needed, but instead to follow the crowd. She says that we should be afraid of people who deal with generalities and not particulars. Our leaders today have exploited a culture of stunted maturity. But if we speak to the generalities—the madness in our country has mostly to do with a “cause” or multiple “causes” that people have embraced. Many have placed a false hero at the helm of their mission. There are many who aren’t self-aware enough to know their own mind and choose for themselves. It is all smoke and mirrors on the part of the administration to wrest power from the weak. The scary part is not knowing the administration’s end game.

However, I am in particular speaking of those I love who I have admired in the past. They are family whom I love and who I consider to be nurturing, loving people. In this climate, however, they have become consumed by hate, prejudice, and the generalities that are being fed to them. There are individuals who can’t seem to understand that the people they should love the most, those closest to them, are alienated and hurt with the maxims of their causes, such as “make American great again.”

In a bold move for her time, Madeleine compares these types of reactions to falling for communism. She quotes E.M. Forster’s essay, “Two Cheers for Democracy”: “I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” How did we become a nation of people willing to turn against each other for the sake of “causes”? How can my family have turned against those they love and chosen country over friends?

Madeleine continues, “This is a statement no good communist should accept, a communist will–or should–betray any friend, parent, child, for the party. When we choose a generality, an idea, a cause, instead of a person, when this becomes the accepted, the required thing to do, when it doesn’t matter if villages are destroyed by bombs, traffic deaths become statistics, starving babies can be forgotten.”

It is reassuring that when Madeleine wrote A Circle of Quiet she was in her 50s. She was naïve and always questioning. She knows there is constantly a battle for self and it takes place in the mind. Now in my late 30s, I am just now beginning to understand this battle.

Melissa Giggey spends most of her time reading and writing with teenagers in a classroom and exploring life and adventure as a mom in Gainesville, Georgia, but reads voraciously and writes on her blog, is on Twitter @giggsteach, and Instagram @melissagiggey.

Do you have something you’d like us to share with our blog readers? We are taking submissions for guest blog posts. Email: social [at] madeleinelengle [dot] com.

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Katherine Paterson’s moving keynote address at Walking on Water: The Madeleine L’Engle Conference

Dear Ones,

Katherine Paterson gave a moving keynote address at the November 2019 Walking on Water conference. She talked about her writing process, what it means to have readers, and Birdie, the protagonist of her latest novel, still awaiting publisher’s edits. She moved the audience (and herself) to tears, and reminded us, as Madeleine said, that “in art we are once again able to do all the things we have forgotten; we are able to walk on water; we speak to the angels who call us; we move, unfettered, among the stars.”  Listen and watch her speech, and Sarah Arthur’s introduction, and be moved.

–cjv

 

 

 

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Guest blog post: In adaptations, L’Engle valued capturing the essence of the original

By Peter Royston

In the book Literature Into Film, author Linda Costanzo Cahir writes, “Every act of translation is simultaneously an act of interpretation,” and that “Through the process of translation, a new text emerges — a unique entity — not a mutation of the original matter, but a fully new work.”

Madeleine L’Engle would be the first to acknowledge that the creation, or the incarnation, of new life, of “a unique entity,” grants the creator a great deal of power — but also a great deal of responsibility (to paraphrase Spider-Man!).

That responsibility comes down to choice: how do we as artists choose to adapt, to translate, original works?

“An artist is a nourisher and a creator who knows that during the act of creation there is collaboration. We do not create alone,” she wrote. That collaboration is usually between the audience and the creator but in the act of adaptation, another player comes into the mix: the original artist. Adaptation becomes a triangular collaboration between the adapter, the audience and the original creator. But how do we choose to face that collaboration? As an act of silent worship, or as an active conversation?

For L’Engle, choice is the most important part of being an artist, just as it is the most important part of being a religious person. By choosing, we fix order onto the chaos around us. In “Icons of the True,” (chapter 2 of Walking on Water) she writes that the non-believer “sees no cosmos in chaos, we are all victims of the darkness which surrounds our choices; we have lost our way; we do not know what is right and what is wrong; we cannot tell our left hand from our right.”

It is the artist’s job to make choices and therefore assign cosmos, or meaning, to chaos. Said another way, as she posits in A Wind In The Door, artists are Namers. She writes, “Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art …When we name each other, we are sharing in the joy and privilege of incarnation, and all great works are icons of Naming.”

Cahir posits three different types of adaptation models: 1. Literal translation, in which the plot, dialogue and “all its attending details” are exactly as they are in the original text, 2. Traditional translation, where much of the overall plot of the original is there, but other changes have been made that the new creators feel are necessary, and 3. Radical translation, “which reshapes the book in extreme and revolutionary ways,” reinterpreting the original and making it more of its own “unique entity.”

If we had to label L’Engle’s opinions on adaptations, we can infer what L’Engle would have thought. She wrote that, “to serve any discipline of art … is to affirm meaning.” But comparing stories to the paintings of Icons of Eastern Orthodox artists, she wrote, “The figure on the icon is not meant to represent literally what Peter or John or any of the apostles looked like, nor what Mary looked like, nor the child, Jesus … The icon of Jesus may not look like the man Jesus two thousand years ago, but it represents some quality of Jesus, or his mother, or his followers, and so becomes an open window through which we are given a new glimpse of the love of God.”

For L’Engle, the “open window” for adapting artists was not through literal adaptation but radical translation. Why? Because far more important was the capturing of the quality or essence that gives us a “new glimpse” of the original. “An Icon is a symbol, not a sign,” she wrote.

Of course, an adapting artist must collaborate with her work with great humility. Like Meg in A Wrinkle in Time, artists need to appreciate their faults.

“We are human and humble and of the earth, and we cannot create until we acknowledge our createdness,” Madeleine said. We cannot Name unless we are Named.

Peter Royston is the Director of The Music Hall Academy, the performing arts/enrichment program of the historic Tarrytown Music Hall in Tarrytown, NY. A theater educator and writer, Peter is the author of over 50 study guides for Broadway, Off Broadway and regional productions, including a series of lesson plans for the A Wrinkle in Time play adaptations at Stage Partners. Peter wrote the award winning history timeline for Actors’ Equity’s 90th Anniversary, and a resource guide on the artist Al Hirschfeld for the New York City Department of Education. He was also a writer on NYCBOE’s “Blueprint for the Arts” for Theater. Peter is currently working on a theatrical adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wind In The Door.

Do you have something you’d like us to share with our blog readers? We are taking submissions for guest blog posts. Email: social [at] madeleinelengle [dot] com

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#LEngle100’s mission: Keep our eyes and imaginations on the next 100 years

Dear Ones,

A typical 100-year-old birthday party does a lot of looking back on a life well lived — but when we celebrated what would’ve been Madeleine’s 100th year, we wanted to do a lot of looking ahead, too. After all, what’s better than for Madeleine’s words and wisdom to echo throughout others’ lives and work over the next 100 years?

Fans responded, sharing how she influenced their careers, relationships, and curiosity about the universe. We’ve been sharing these anecdotes in social media, and even in the last Madeleine L’Engle newsletter (you’re subscribed, right?!). Today, we just have to keep the party going a little longer:

I have always had a love of fantasy literature, but oddly had not heard of Madeleine L’Engle until I was in college. Her books were crucial to my understanding of my place in a gigantic world full of possibility. She melded the spiritual and the physical in a way that I had never considered making science and faith accessible and very real. I am very grateful to her for creating worlds that help better define the one I am living in. ~ Laura Saloiye, public librarian

They taught me at an early age to look into myself and find my peace. I love passing Madeleine’s inspiring writings onto my fifth grade English Language Arts students especially in light of what they face growing up in today’s world. ~Amy Y Adams, educator

From the first time I picked up one of her books, my universe expanded and my curiosity was piqued. Not only did I get lost in each book, but I also became engrossed in learning as much about the scientific world as I could. Her books were priceless in my world and remain so today. ~Katie Michna, school librarian, educator

A Wrinkle in Time was the first book I ever read that allowed me to be the heroine in a story where the stakes were high and the themes profound. It made me realize I wasn’t alone in my awe of the universe, that somewhere there was a brilliant, published woman who felt the same. It carved out a space for me. It made me realize I could have a career in science if that’s what I wanted. I went on to become a Chief Technology Officer and even had the chance to work alongside Sally Ride. Now, I’m writing children’s books of my own, carving out new spaces for a new generation. ~Nicole Valentine, educator

You’ll find more reflections about Madeleine and her lasting influence on readers and fans by searching #LEngle100 on social media, and on our website. If you’re inspired, post your own reflection — remember to use the hashtag #LEngle100!

Plus, a podcast is in the works! With a special co-hosts and archival audio, we want your voices there, too. Do you have a question you burning to ask? Send a voice memo to social [at] madeleinelengle [dot] com!

Tesser well,

Erin F. Wasinger, for MadeleineLEngle.com.

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