Greetings! I’ve loved staying home with the new baby, but I’m looking forward to getting back in the classroom.
This spring I’m teaching Bob Dylan as Literature & Inspiration at Arlington Community Education. What’s that all about? From the fairy-tale simplicity of “Girl from the North Country” to the surrealist panorama of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” to the autobiographical narrative of “Sara,” Dylan’s songs have transported listeners to worlds real and imagined. In this literature and writing class, we’ll examine the literary forms of surrealist poetry, lyrical ballads, and protest songs and learn how to apply these techniques to our own writing.
The class is at Arlington High School on Tuesdays, from May 21 to June 11, 7:00 – 8:30 PM. You can register at the Arlington Community Education website.
Like Catherine, the love interest in A Farewell to Arms, I recently experienced stalled labor, resulting in a C-section. I wrote this email to Heavy Bored host Andrew Wittstadt the other day.
Hi Andrew,
Thought you might like an update. When we discussed [Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms], I was pretty unworried about pregnancy and labor complications. But I ended up having serious complications at the end of my pregnancy and actually needed a C-section. Not only that, but I had a bleed on the operating table! But luckily it’s not 1917. One thing that they do differently now though, is that even though a C-section is a major surgery, they keep you awake so you can experience the birth of your child. But that also means if things go wrong, you are lying there listening to them talk about an arterial bleed and calling for back up and discussing whether or not to perform a historectomy. Pretty scary stuff, but modern medicine is amazing.
The baby was healthy and perfect from the beginning, but I’ve had a bit of a recovery. I have some conditions they are still monitoring.
I’ve attached a photo I took while writing this.
–Valerie
If you haven’t listened yet, Andrew and I discussed Hemingway’s legacy, anti-war literature, and reading A Farewell to Arms while pregnant.
My discussion about Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms with Andrew Wittstadt on the Heavy Bored Podcast
What does it mean for a work of literature to be universal? In the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary, The Vietnam War, there is an interview with a female North Vietnamese soldier. Before she left home to serve the communist cause, her parents gave her a copy of A Farewell to Arms. She helped to build the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the illicit road through Cambodia and Laos that brought armaments to the Viet Cong in the south. At night, when the work was done, the road she had just built would be bombed by the Americans. While she was huddling in a trench, waiting out the bombardment, she would read A Farewell to Arms. She said the novel connected her to all the soldiers in history who ever suffered in war.
Join Andrew and I as we discuss Hemingway as a universal writer, a white male writer, an anti-war writer, and more.
To celebrate the final week of my chapbook sale, I’m talking about the inspiration behind both books, Sprawl and Illuminations. Each book was written at a different time in my life and emerged from completely different influences and styles. While Sprawl is a conventional short story cycle exploring politically charged topics around class, gender and sexuality, Illuminations veers into experimental forms and fantastical elements in order to create a dreamscape. Order both books to take advantage of the sale. Until October 31st, you can get 25% off the total order when you order both. To claim the discount, use the code OPENINGSALE at checkout in my Etsy shop.
Sprawl: Tales of Suburbia
Choose a spiral off the expressway, any one will do, into the land where neighborhoods bear names of the topography they replaced—Spring Creek Woods, Lakeside Farms, Autumn Oaks Manor.
In writing Sprawl: Tales of Suburbia, I wanted to challenge the conventional narratives around suburban America as places of conformity and whiteness. Inspired by my hometown of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I wanted to reflect the diversity and class conflict I witnessed growing up. In traditional suburban literature, such as Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road, the characters are privileged WASPs in a suffocatingly homogenous culture, who are struggling with ennui despite their material comforts. But this is outdated. In the 21st century, America’s suburbs are not only racially diverse but now experience a greater rate of poverty than cities. The book’s opening, “Sprawl,” is a sweeping panorama of this landscape, before zeroing in on the experiences of three young people in the subsequent stories.
Illuminations
By March, faithful reader, I found myself in the Land With No Heads. As you know by now, I had felt lost and loveless since the day I returned from overseas to find Ashley had abandoned our apartments, but I did my best to throw myself into my new ethnography. There was only one road in this country, which reduced my sense of aimlessness.
Illuminations begins with an epigraph from Authur Rimbaud: “I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.” In these four pieces, I abandoned literalism and concrete meaning in order to explore the unconscious mind. While immersing myself in the writings of Kafka, H.D., and Rimbaud, I became interested in how imagery can create free associations that trigger unexpected depth. I experimented with different writing styles, from iambic poetry to 19th-century travelogue, in order to take advantage of the sound and voice associated with each form.
Thank you for joining me on this journey into my creative inspirations and explorations. As an emerging writer, it means so much to me that readers like you have connected with my work enough to purchase these chapbooks.
If you haven’t already, don’t forget to order your chapbooks today! You can still get 25% off when ordering both books until October 31st. Just enter the code OPENINGSALE at checkout. I hope these chapbooks resonate with you and allow you to see the world in a new way. Thanks again – it’s readers like you that make writing life such a rewarding adventure.
After seeking an artistic way to share my writing with more people, I’ve designed two handmade chapbooks that I’m excited to share with you all. They are now available to buy in my Etsy shop. Each book has a cardstock cover and is printed in small batches. Until the end of October, you can get 25% off when you order both chapbooks. Just use code OPENINGSALE at checkout.
Enter the mirror world: whales grow feet and walk into Target, monks without heads perform bizarre rituals, and lovers are trapped in a prison of their own making. In each strange tale, we learn a little bit about our own world.
24 pages, contains two short stories and two prose poems: “A Natural History of Headless Society,” “Singing of Migration,” “Disjoined by Neptune’s Might,” and “Illuminations.”
Choose a spiral off the expressway, any one will do, into the land where neighborhoods bear names of the topography they replaced…Enter the Sprawl. In these four stories, we meet young people seeking connection and meaning within impersonal landscapes rampant with social inequality and alienation.
24 pages, contains four short stories: “Sprawl,” “Being Here,” “The Storm” and “Tough Guy.”
Take advantage of the launch sale! Until the end of October, get 25% off when you order both books. To claim the discount, use code OPENINGSALE at checkout.
Browse the full collection and get your copies today at ValerieLutePress.
I hope that each of these little books can bring some beauty into your life. Thank you for supporting my writing and small press. Please help spread the word by sharing with fellow book lovers!
Narrative with Valerie Lute 