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Novels by Mary Marcus
New on the Blog
The Northwest Woods
Henry and I got lost on Easter Sunday trying to get to a beach party in the Northwest Woods: A large track of land owned once upon a time by one person and now, like so much of the land around here, in East Hampton, subdivided into places for the weekend rich to renovate, landscape, and decorate to their heart’s content. I have a secret yen to participate in the above activities, but I have never so far in my life’s journey given into the temptation. For years I’ve been consciously working on this issue. I’m optimistic that one day, before I am rolled into the crematoria, I will have a place with chairs and couches, proper window shades, and a magnificent rug and lamps and pictures that all have a certain harmony and forethought and I will be comfortable in that room. It seems far more complex than writing a book, or learning to stand on my hands in the middle of the room as I can stand on my head and on my forearms. The aforementioned takes practice, the other stuff takes a sense of entitlement I’ve never possessed. Every place I’ve ever lived is bare, except for books, and pictures. Books are one thing, and pictures are easy, even before I married into a family of an artist and his friends, I had lots of pictures. Pictures and books don’t seem to be on my personal index. Once upon a time, I had a friend who was the opposite of me in that regard and we were great friends for a long time. I thought of...MOMA
It was raining cats and dogs when I went to MOMA today with my friend Mark, who is in town to cover some musical events. The MOMA of today isn’t the MOMA I cut my teeth on, where I knew where everything was. The new MOMA is beautiful. I knew the first time I entered its doors it was beautiful, but it’s not home anymore, it’s just a beautiful place where I don’t know my way around. Mark was interested in this thing that was going on, a dance choreographed by someone he admires a lot, with a group of musicians that changed every hour. It was in one of those gorgeous big white rooms of many stories with galleries and window spaces dotting the walls. The room was white, the walls were white, the floor was white. The dancer was wearing white. We leaned against the wall, and watched the dancer and listened to the piano music that was strange, hard to process and alienating—but not alienating enough to be awful. I didn’t exactly get it, but I liked it. The dancer was moving around the room. Mark told me sotto voce that the choreography owed a big debt to Merce Cunningham, someone Mark had known well. Myself, I thought the choreography owed a big debt to yoga. There was an up-dog, a down-dog, a gorgeous upward facing bow, not to mention several Warrior III’s. But that seemed like a stupid thing to say to my friend. Or to anyone else who wasn’t into yoga. I thought about the old MOMA where there weren’t all these huge public...Okla Elliot
Very few of my close friends are on Facebook. I participate to post my blog and do the occasional round of keeping up with the two thousand plus imaginary friends I have, that I “made” in order to promote my work. Though I like the pictures of people’s children and dogs, any and all yoga stuff, the occasional plate of gorgeous food, I think we all spend too much time on line. It’s bad for the eyes, it’s bad for the ass, and I think honestly it’s even worse for the spirit. I say this about FB with a few notable exceptions. One is my friend Andrea, whom I’m seeing in a few minutes. The other is the wonderful fiction writer Steve Yarbrough who I can honestly say is my real friend, whom I wouldn’t have met but for Facebook. I read his posts the same way I read the New York Times: religiously. Steve plays the guitar and will sometimes make a video of himself playing Bluegrass. It’s great fun. Friend him on line, if you like gentle reader, but better than that, read Steve Yarbrough’s books. The other person whom I’ve been following (far less sedulously) was a dude named Okla Elliot who was young, taught English and religion at some obscure university and wrote a book about Bernie Saunders during the campaign. And always had a lot of lively things to say about poetry, about the books he was reading, about his life (which sounded weird, frankly), monkish with junk food seems to be the only description I can come up with. Okla was found dead...
The New Me
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