High Tide in Tucson_ Essays From Now or Never - Barbara Kingsolver [0]
ESSAYS FROM NOW OR NEVER
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Illustrations by Paul Mirocha
for Steven,
and every singing miracle
CONTENTS
PREFACE
HIGH TIDE IN TUCSON
CREATION STORIES
MAKING PEACE
IN CASE YOU EVER WANT TO GO HOME AGAIN
HOW MR. DEWEY DECIMAL SAVED MY LIFE
LIFE WITHOUT GO-GO BOOTS
THE HOUSEHOLD ZEN
SEMPER FI
THE MUSCLE MYSTIQUE
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AT BREAKFAST
SOMEBODY’S BABY
PARADISE LOST
CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT ROCK GODDESS
STONE SOUP
THE SPACES BETWEEN
POSTCARDS FROM THE IMAGINARY MOM
THE MEMORY PLACE
THE VIBRATIONS OF DJOOGBE
INFERNAL PARADISE
IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
JABBERWOCKY
THE FOREST IN THE SEEDS
CAREFUL WHAT YOU LET IN THE DOOR
THE NOT-SO-DEADLY SIN
REPRISE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PRAISE
OTHER BOOKS BY BARBARA KINGSOLVER
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
PREFACE
When I told my mother I was making a book of my essays, many of which had been published previously in magazines, she responded with pure maternal advocacy: “Oh, good! I think there are some out there that I’ve missed.”
Hurray for Moms, who give us the courage to take up our shelf space on the planet, but I know I can’t count on the rest of humanity for the same passion to read every line that ever leaked from my pen. A magazine piece is meant to bloom like an ephemeral flower on the page, here today and recycled tomorrow, but it’s another matter to commit those words to acid-free paper and have them skulking on bookshelves for the rest of my natural life. When I began to assemble these pieces, I found that every one begged for substantial revision. Some were magaziney in tone, and needed to be more bookish. Others, when let out of the bag of a journal’s tight word limit, grew wild as kudzu vines. (One of the longest, “Making Peace,” began life as three paragraphs in a doctor’s-office magazine.) Then I had to prune them all back again, and impose unities of theme and tone on tracts with disparate origins. Most of the essays are now altered almost beyond recognition since their debut, and seven are new, written for this collection. My intent was to make it a book, with a beginning, an end, and a modicum of reason. The essays are meant to be read in order, since some connect with and depend on their predecessors. However, I once heard from a reader in Kansas that he always starts books in the middle—even novels!—so what do I know?
Because so many of the pieces did begin as magazine articles, the book owes a great deal to all the editors who’ve worked with me patiently over the years. I’m particularly indebted to Paul Trachtman, previously at Smithsonian Magazine, who first talked me into the genre of creative nonfiction; Nancy Newhouse at the New York Times Magazine, who saw me through civil war in Togo, toenail loss in Hawaii, and more; the staff at Parenting, who suggested new angles on timeless themes, and called back to help after a phone conference I had ended abruptly so as to chase burglars from my house; the editors at Natural History, who invited me back from poetics to science; Carol Sadder at Lands’ End, who boldly printed my antifashion manifesto in a clothing magazine; Lisa Weinerman at the Nature Conservancy; and the formidable fact-checking team at the New York Times, whose aptitude for thoroughness will stand them in good stead with St. Peter—he will, I expect, hire them.
Without the friendship and wise guidance of my literary agent, Frances Goldin, I would still be laboring in a cubicle as a technical writer, and that is the truth. She has taken such risks for me I can hardly count them. So has Janet Goldstein, my bright, faithful star of an editor at HarperCollins. Many other friends and colleagues contributed to this book in different ways, all essential, especially Ann Kingsolver, Joy Johannessen, Janice Bowers, Anne Mairs, Emma Hardesty, Julie Mirocha, and Kelly Brown. Paul Mirocha brought remarkable insights to the work of illustrating the book and remains an inspiring collaborator. (Our first joint project, in 1984, was a document on biological