 I really appreciate your coming, and you know it. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. And my reading is about 30 minutes, and then I'll have question period. And before I read, I'd like to tell you a little bit about the genesis of this book. A few years ago, I gave a reading from my mother's journal, Hungry for Light, with slides and commentary on her paintings. And people cried, and I almost cried, too. The paintings were beautiful, and her words were not just inspiring, but nourishing. After what someone asked me, how, in my first novel, Sins of the Mothers, I could have portrayed this eloquent, moving woman as a monster of narcissism. Mother was split, I told her, and my feelings towards her are split, too. I wanted to bring the two sides of her together and see her whole. To do this, I decided to write a novel, which eventually became Paradise Farm, about her as a young artist at the time when surrealism and cubism were new and exciting, struggling to find her own artistic vision. I'd start from where I could understand her imaginatively and try to figure out what made her the way she was, what her own mother must have been like, what it was like to grow up with a crazy brother. In the process of writing, I began to think about how what we call a self is formed. What is it? What helps or hinders its growth? I imagined a spectrum of selves from the most rudimentary and damaged on autistic child who can't even say the word I to the most integrated, with my young artist heroin somewhere in the middle. The polar opposite of the sick child would be a healer. For a long time, I'd wanted to write about Muriel, a Maverick psychoanalyst I had known when I was growing up, a strong, vibrant personality. What would happen if I brought this woman into a fictional context with my mother and my grandmother and my crazy uncle? Looking at them through Muriel's eyes, maybe I could find new ways of looking at them myself. A difficult family isn't fate. The great thing about being human is that you can recreate yourself, not by analyzing, but by active imagining. I'm gonna read five short selections to give an idea of the novel's different voices. I call my young artist heroin Laura and Paradise Farm begins in spring of 1929 as Laura's father, the patriarch of a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family is dying. His last act has been to arrange for his family to move into a guest cottage and to rent out their opulent family home to two psychiatrists who wanna turn it into a clinic for disturbed children. In this first selection, Laura's father has recently died and her mother Agnes has found a photo and a lock of hair, momentos of an affair he had long ago with Laura's nursemaid. She held the lock of hair between her first and second fingers, making it move back and forth like a snake. It was electric and live and remembered the laugh. When she first heard him laughing like that, she had thought it was someone else, but he had been talking just a minute before to Laura's young nursemaid Marie. Agnes had heard the familiar murmur of his voice and then suddenly that laugh. It was a sound deep down in his throat, a sort of animal sound full of a mindless energy. She had wanted to hear it again. She had wondered, what could be so funny to make him bray like that? She'd have to ask him, she thought, threading a red velvet yarn through her crochet needle, but when she'd finally gotten up the courage to ask, he'd been annoyed, angry even. When he was angry, he forgot to talk like a northerner and drew out his syllables into a soft southern drawl. Laugh, he'd repeated, pulling on his mustache. He wanted to know what I was laughing about with Marie. Can't a man laugh in his own house? The night of his birthday came back to her, how she'd reached out for him and felt only cold emptiness on his side of the bed, how she'd gone down to look for him in the kitchen, thinking he was eating a second helping of the birthday cake she had made him, the one with his favorite frosting, and then she'd heard him in Marie's room laughing with her and feeding Laura. That still infuriated her, debauching a child that way. She had a vivid image of Laura perched on Marie's lap, eating cake from her father's hand. Her face flushed and avid. Agnes thought of confronting him, but what could she say? Eugene laughing or eating cake with the maid was supposed to be invisible. Those were the unspoken rules. It was only when she found the girl crying in her room in her slip, her stomach clearly swollen that Agnes had been able to do something. I'm sorry, Marie, she said, conscious that she looked contained, regal, with not a hair out of place. You'll have to go. I can't have you around the child in this state. The girl cried harder, but Agnes was firm. She wanted her out by morning before Laura woke up. She'll think I deserted her, Marie wailed. You should have thought of that before sleeping with Mr. Kaminer, Agnes spitted her. Now get out. Her vehement surprised her. She had meant to be gracious and icy cold. Marie, still crying, began jumbling her things into an old grip, pulling them off hangers, stuffing them in any which way. Agnes remembered with satisfaction that her cornflower eyes had turned an ugly red. Her nose was running, and she wiped it with the back of her hand. Why, she's only a child, she had thought surprised. A child with a snotty nose. What is the point of terrorizing her? It isn't all her fault, is it? Isn't it partly his? That's when she got the idea of asking Marie how she had made Eugene laugh. Marie had looked at her bewildered. I said, how? Tell me what you did. She took hold of the girl's shoulder, caressed it, told her not to be frightened. The skin was very soft. The shoulder was soft. She could see the flesh between her fingers as she pressed, and further down the soft rounds of the girl's breasts. Her own breasts felt dark and constrained under her corset. What was so funny about your butterfly pin, for instance? Why did he laugh when he saw you wearing it? My pin? Marie unconsciously fingered the spot between her breasts where she pinned it. I don't remember. Maybe he thought butterflies belonged in gardens, not, she hesitated. Agnes put her face so close to the girl that she could smell her breath. If you tell me, I'll let you talk to Laura before you go. The girl had touched the spot between her breasts again and glanced down, sniffing, and yes, smiling. It was hard to believe that in such a condition, thrown out of her job with a bastard child to take care of, she could actually be smiling. Following her glance, Agnes noticed the ruddy color of her nipples. They showed through the thin fabric of her slip a frank deep red. She'd suddenly understood the breasts, the nipples, the roses, the butterfly. It was a revelation of another world where men and women play with each other like children. In the next scene, Laura, my painter heroine, has her first encounter with the little autistic girl, Robin, who is the psychoanalyst's first patient. Laura was sitting in the garden with her sketch pad and watercolors. Picking out a small brush, she dipped it in the container of water at her feet, rubbed it over a block of soft brown. Working quickly, she made the broken clouds next to the silver birch with its chameleon leaves. She always thought she was going to remember what colors she had used, but she didn't, so she labeled every part of the sketch, matter, ochre, pearl gray. When she looked up, she saw Robin watching her with fascination. Muriel had told her that when Robin grimaced, she thought she was smiling and that Laura could ignore her or talk to her if she felt like it. The girl was wearing a blue dress and Laura was struck by her startlingly white skin and delicate features. She was twirling a piece of her hair around her finger. The illusion of ethereal charm lasted until she started to walk. She moved in short hopping steps as though she were some kind of wind-up toy. When Laura looked up, she moved away and stood with her finger in her mouth. Laura sensed it would be better if she didn't look at the girl. You can watch me if you want, she said in a low voice. I like having an audience. There was something frightening about seeing a person who had all the attributes she had, body, face, hair, even beauty, but who couldn't get comfortable with them. The girl threw her arms up as though she were surprised to find these appendages hanging from her shoulders. Still, the eyes, when she caught them accidentally were, Laura kept searching for the word. The only word to describe them was hungry. Moving very slowly so as not to startle the girl, Laura began to sharpen a pencil, yellow number two. Then she tore a sheet of paper off her pad and put it on the ground. Then she turned her back and pretended not to notice when the girl crept up and looked at them. This is for you, Laura sharpened another pencil with her knife. Come on, you don't need to be afraid. She held it out, but Robin only whimpered. Laura stroked her pad with a flat side of the point and made a thick line. Then she made a thinner one, just that, thinner and thicker. The girl watched then hesitantly put her hand on Laura's wrist. As though she were reading braille, she let her hand feel the movement Laura was making, softer than a bird's wing. She stood with her eyes closed as if she were blind or hearing music with an ecstatic look on her face. There was something infinitely touching about it. The girl made soft guttural sounds in her throat. Without thinking, Laura drew an oval for a face. The girl suddenly snatched the other pencil and jabbed awkwardly at the center, making a small dot. An eye, do you wanna make another? No, the girl was shaking her head frantically. Laura didn't have the slightest idea of what was going on, but it seemed that they were communicating. Laura looked at the paper again, letting her mind move freely. Oh, I see, she said excited. It's this. She rapidly sketched thighs and legs under the oval, making it a belly, or maybe this. She drew another quick sketch with her soft pencil on the creamy paper, this time of two big breasts. Robin drew back her lips, showing her teeth like a cornered animal. Then began scribbling frantically over one of the breasts. Good, Laura encouraged her. You're helping to color it in. She could hear the child's breath and feel the tenseness of her body as she leaned over, pressing against her shoulder. Robin kept scrubbing at the paper with her pencil, holding it in her fist. That's nice, you're filling in all the space. You don't want any white to show. The girl didn't respond. She kept on grinding the pencil to and fro almost as if she were in a trance. The paper was wearing thin in spots. In a few seconds, it might tear. Laura felt an uncomfortable sensation in her stomach. It looks good, very strong, Robin. I think maybe you're finished. What do you think? The child was gasping as though she couldn't breathe. Raising her arm, she brought the point of her pencil down, making a round hole right in the center of the blackened breast. She stabbed it a second time. When Laura tried to stop her, she began to scream a sort of high, thin wail, more like a dog howling than a person. Laura jumped up, the pad fell from her lap. I can't run away, she thought. But God, what can I do? She was afraid to touch Robin, who still had the pencil clutched in her fist. Just then, David and Muriel opened the gate to the yard and ran towards her. In a moment, Muriel had her arms around Robin. The child collapsed like a pricked blowfish and lay limply against her. Muriel had no trouble in taking the pencil away. Now in this next scene, Laura's mother Agnes has taken a lover, but has kept it hidden from Laura's brother Johnny, a brilliant mathematician who has a Cassandra-like obsession with the rise of fascism and the fate of the Jews. Johnny couldn't sleep, even though his mother had a sick headache and had told him not to bother her. He went up to her room with the idea that she would make him cocoa and talk. He needed her to shut out the voices in his head that were whispering phrases from Hitler's mind conf. Pierce any abscess and a Jew leaps out. Jews are the black plague. Even before he reached the door, he heard voices. You shouldn't have come, you know. Here the voice got faint and he couldn't quite hear. Johnny is, what if he? Then there was an angry mutter, a man's voice. It sounded like Walter. Then what sounded like objects being thrown down with a soft thud, then his mother's voice low, urgent. No, please. Johnny couldn't bear the strange sound of fear mixed with something he couldn't understand. No, she said again, almost a moan. Johnny threw open the door and saw a man with his back to him, his mother down on the floor in front of him. The man had his hands around his mother's throat and was swaying back and forth as if strangling her. Johnny didn't stop to think. He ran forward and grabbed the man by the shoulders and pulled him back. The man exclaimed in pain. Agnes screamed, Johnny, don't. The man tried to turn and fight back but he was hampered by his pants which had slipped down around his ankles. As he stumbled, cursing and clutching himself, Johnny, almost in tears, punched him. The man, having assured himself that he was still intact, tried to kick off his pants and fell to the floor bare ass up, hitting his head on a decorative chamber pot as he went down. Johnny stared at the white gleam of his buttocks and kicked at them with one foot. It went through his mind that his mother shouldn't be looking at this. Is he dead? Agnes was surprisingly calm. She knelt and examined Walter, took his pulse, her nightgown loose. No, but he'll have a terrible bump on his head. She looked at Johnny. Her forehead wrinkled as if she were trying hard to think of how to explain this to him. He'll be furious, she muttered to herself. You shouldn't have hit him, John John. Didn't I teach you never to hit? But he was strangling you. Maybe Laura's right, you're a fantasist. You thought he was strangling me? No, he was. She stammered, stopped short, glanced around her. Her eyes rested for a minute on the chamber pot and suddenly her face brightened. He was using my chamber pot, she said. I think he was a little drunk, but you didn't need to hit him. I was helping him to get his trousers zipped. The zipper stuck and then he couldn't get it closed. I couldn't let him go out like that with his pants open, could I? Johnny shook his head. He started pulling up Walter's trousers, tugging them over that bare white expanse. Walter started to stir. Go now, he's waking up. Don't worry, he won't be angry at you. The next day, Johnny tried to talk to his mother about what had happened. She gave him an odd smile. You and Walter fighting in my room? What a strange idea, she said, straightening his jacket. Walter's miles away in New York. You should get some fresh air, Johnny. Sitting inside and reading those awful books breeds morbid thoughts. But Walter, please don't insist on this nonsense, Johnny. I'm being as patient as I can. Go for a walk or a swim, something active. Put it out of your mind. Johnny wandered around the farm the way she had told him to, taking deep breaths and swinging his arms. He wondered why people kept trying to convince him things were different from the way he saw them. He knew Walter had been in her room and he knew Walter meant harm, just as he knew that the Jews were in danger. Danger had a smell like burning rubber. It came at him when he read about Jews being beaten up in Austria, just as it rose up from Walter's body when Johnny touched him, a deep black, pungent smell. He stood looking at the vegetable garden for a moment to calm himself. Everything was innocently growing, unaware of the threatening black smell. The vines were heavy with ripe tomatoes. The beans clambering up their poles, masses of peas sprawled over their supports. He wasn't a dirty Jew, he thought. What he did was clean, innocent as these growing things in front of him. What came from love was good, he realized. Only hate was bad. He hated Walter. He loved his mother and Laura. And what you loved, you needed to be close to and touch. It was natural. He broke off a pot and opened it, scooping out the tender peas with his tongue. He wished he were an animal so he could lie in the stables, his head against a warm flank. You saw the cows kissing each other, rubbing their broad, quiet far heads against each other's sides, their eyes placid. He imagined himself sucking his thumb the way he had as a baby, nothing to worry about, lulled by the comfortable warm breath of the cows. In this next scene, Laura has been struggling with, she's been struggling with the restrictions of cubism, and she has a breakthrough finally to a freer, more surreal style. Laura finally felt she was ready to go back to the portrait of her father that had stumped her for so long. She took the last version on oil out of her studio closet and looked at it. Then she searched for the photograph of her father in the Warren album. She found the picture of her father as she wanted and put it next to her painting. He was dressed in a linen summer suit and vest with a watch chain. She was standing next to him in a simple white dress. He was looking away from her at some point beyond the photographer, fingering his gold watch chain. Her colors had sentimentalized him, she thought. They didn't add a dimension, they falsified what was there. By their warmth, they suggested a corresponding warmth in him. This time, she was aware of a gaunt wariness in the photograph, a tension around her father's eyes. Some of this must surely have been pain and fear of his last illness, but was that what she wanted to show? She wasn't sure. She sat down in front of the photograph, adjusting herself in the chair with pillows behind her because her back hurt and made herself study it. After a minute, she began to fidget restlessly. Why should she want to show her father's pain or some weakness of his that was lurking at the edge of her awareness? She had wanted to portray the best of him, his courtly manners, his love for history, the way he searched for the meaning in things. She remembered how once when she'd asked him some questions about Christianity, he sent her to all the churches in Princeton to learn the differences for herself. She had been so grateful to him for thinking she would be able to do it, but why so grateful she wanted suddenly? Looking at the high forehead with the sandy hair combed back and neatly parted, did she imagine herself a stupid? In the photo, she was looking at him with burning intensity, willing him to notice her. The implications of the photograph were too difficult to grasp all at once. She forced herself to concentrate only on his head, in her mind, she divided it into the significant planes of forehead, cheek, chin, neck. The trouble with her earlier tries had been that she didn't go far enough. It was as though her father was somehow fighting back, resisting her efforts to see him, but this time, she was resolved to push. He was dead after all, she thought half seriously. He couldn't take hold of her hands. She concentrated on the plane of his forehead. She looked at it neutrally and let herself feel how high and broad it was. It was simply a shape now, it had nothing to do with her. He was an aloof, mental man, she thought with a start, despite the sudden temper tantrums, the nighttime adventures with maids. She realized that the haze of passionate love that surrounded his memory was hers. She didn't really know what he felt for her. He was too hidden. Maybe the pain she needed to get into the painting was partly hers. It hurt to think how far away he had really been. She began to work on his mouth. What if after she shaped it, made it as soft and sensual as she remembered it, it suddenly began to speak and told her everything she'd been waiting to hear since she was a child. Hi, daddy, she said aloud, but of course he didn't answer. Who did she think she was, Pygmalion? She kept working at the mouth, trying to make it yield its secrets. Suddenly, on an impulse, she picked up a stick of lavender pastel from the open box and rubbed it over the lips, destroying the hard outline. This time, the effect of the color wasn't sentimental. She felt as if she'd indicated a possibility. If you watched, daddy, you could learn something, she thought. How to soften your edges? The thought was crazy. It made her laugh. Then she took a light green and worked over his forehead, watching the way it came alive with a strange, slightly sinister glow. She imagined his brains inside there, coiling mysteriously like white worms, and for a minute she wanted to paint them, then she shook her head, telling herself, no. There's been enough of his thoughts, enough of him, she almost thought, riding herd on her life. What came out now had to be from her. She felt her pulse's race. Unexpectedly, she found herself cracking open the planes of his head, like the carapace of an insect. New forms started to appear as they do in dreams, as they had when she finger-painted with Robin. Tumbling out so fast, she had trouble keeping up with them. She let them come, half flowers, half bodies, sprouting from her father's head like a multitude of Athena's. More quietly, she started to elaborate on the fantastic shapes, pedal arms, breasts like strange fruit. This was what she had been looking for, the gateway to something new. When she looked at her composition from a certain angle, the whole thing seemed like a spherical bowl or vase, or even like a torso. His eyes in the portrait were also breasts, and his mouth, a purplish, open sex. I've done it, daddy, she thought. I've made you see me. Looking at her work, she felt closer to her father than she ever had when he was alive. Her breasts and his eyes were interchangeable, his mouth and her sex. He couldn't open his eyes without seeing her female self, or his mouth without being aware of her sex. He and she were mingled one minute and separate another. She was both part of him and not him, and it was not at his will, but at hers. He would have hated it, been disgusted, aghast, but she realized she didn't mind. For once, she didn't care what his opinion was. He even added to her satisfaction. She looked at the sun, going down outside her studio window with a feeling of exhilaration. For the first time, she felt she truly existed. She was the person who had done this. And there's one very short last episode when Johnny, Laura's brother, has been obsessed with reading a book of German anti-Semitic cartoons. And this is just a page. When he was working on his giant glider in the barn, Johnny forgot the hook-nosed P-guide faces in his cartoon book. Forgot everything except symmetry, balance, and beauty. A soft light seemed to emanate from its wings. He fitted on the wood bar and adjusted it, so that by leaning to the right or the left, you could steer with the weight of your body. There was a box of feathers set carefully against the wall. Johnny loved to sift them through his fingers, feeling himself drawn to slight variations of color or size. Slowly, painstakingly, he had covered the wings of his glider with feathers, multi-colored, but mostly tawny and edged with black. He had rescued the feathers from the taxidermist. Now he was almost done. It looked like some giant bird. Laura had been out making studies of the cows in the backfield. When she looked up and saw what seemed at first a giant dragonfly moving up the water tower ladder. As soon as she realized what it was, she started running. She could just make out Johnny struggling up the rungs, the glider with its wings bumping along behind him. By the time she got within shouting distance, he was almost at the top. And as she ran, panting with exertion and the heat, she saw him step across to the playroom roof and drag his glider with him. Now he was walking along the ridge toward the chimney where they sat as children and told each other their secrets. She called to him, but the little figure kept moving the way things do in nightmares. She ran harder, her throat burning. She knew he wanted to get to the chimney because it was the highest point on the farm, the place where they'd made their wishes. When she was 10, she had wished never to grow up. He had wished for a hooded falcon. From the chimney, you could see the field stretching back to the woods and beyond them to the blue mountains that ringed them. They had wanted to run away together. Now he was strapping himself into his glider. She was near enough to see the sun gleam on the feathers. John, she shouted, her breath coming in painful gasps, it won't hold you. Wait. He heard her, peer down at her for a minute, smiled. Don't worry, he shouted. I'll be back for you. Then he looked up at the sun and pushed off. The wind picked up right then, and it seemed to carry him. The glider drifted, hung. Laura felt her heart pounding. He floated, arms outstretched under the feathered wings, legs straight behind him like a diver's. It was working, she thought. He'd done it. He'd drift to the ground, be all right. There was a look of absolute triumph on his face. Thank you. Now I'd love to answer some questions if anyone has them. Any kind? I think to some degree it has. Certainly I feel more compassionate towards her after imagining what she must have gone through with this family and see her more as a human being and less as a monster. And I also could see more directly what sort of things. I mean, she was sort of sadistic, for instance, to men. And I could understand that more when I reviewed how her own mother had been such an idiot from the eyes of a young woman whose mother is going wild over a much younger man and then confiding everything to her. As I worked that out, actually day to day and saw them interacting, I could see that this might make a young woman mean to men later in reaction. If you or their impact on you is analogous to their parents' impact on them, or you could be more Freudian and say, well, what made her, what she had certainly an element to that? Or you could just say, what was the world like in the early 30s? Well, I tried to do a little of each. I mean, I certainly was trying to figure out what made her the way she was. But I also wanted to look at the background. And it was an amazing time. The moment I picked was a moment of high optimism about humanity. I mean, it was right before the crash. It was when people were not realizing the horrible thing that was going to happen with the Holocaust. And when people were having the most amazing theories about how children could be brought up so that they would be completely unaggressive and there would be no more war, and this could all be a lot through psychoanalysis. And so I'm very interested in what impact that had on living at that time, which was quite a different time for Morris. Yes, Fran? Yes, I had quite a bit of information. The most amazing thing I had was I had a cache of letters of my grandmother to her shrink in the 1920s that she had kept coffees up. And she had kept them while she was having the love affair with the Baron Walter. And they were very, very explicit. So she would even say, he's falling in love with a flapper. What shall I do to keep him, dear doctor? I'm afraid I had to do something really terrible. I can't tell you what it is, but it has a Latinate name, and so on and so forth. And at great length, and then she would very worried was she frigid. She was reading a popularizer of Freud-Tridon, and I actually had her library also. So I could try to reconstruct what she was reading. She read almost exclusively French romances in French. She loved Colette, but she loved all the sort of cheaper variety also, but she had fairly good taste. And then she liked, instead of freeing Freud, she read this popularizer who was a very strange man. I can't remember. He painted his toenails gold and went around bothering people, and so I had this thing. And then I also, for my mother's life at that time, well, I had her recollections in her own journal of back then, which weren't very many, but for instance, one of the men I portray, Mortimer Adler, has written an autobiography called Philosopher at Large, in which he has a whole chapter devoted to how she tortured him when he was a young man, and he wanted to marry her, and he loved her so dearly, and he was teaching postdoctoral courses at Columbia, and the whole of the postdoctoral course was devoted to figuring out Ethel, which is my mother. And then, finally, he didn't know. He was very stiff and very brilliant, and he had it. And I have her notebook of 100 conversations with Mortimer. He's the man that invented the great books idea at Chicago, where the curriculum now is based on that. And so she didn't have a college education, and he apparently took her out and gave her these amazing conversations about everything, and she felt she was getting quite educated. And then he wrote about her that she drove him crazy, and he finally sent a friend of his to propose for him because he felt he was too gauche and he couldn't do it. And he waited outside in a taxi while the friend went in, and he waited and waited and waited, and it got to be midnight, it got to be one o'clock, it got finally at three o'clock, the man staggered out, his clothes all disheveled and lipstick all over him, and he said in his thing, he said, and I always blamed Ethel, I never blamed John. So I had quite a bit of material. Yes. He was long dead, you know, but I did hear, I saw part of her struggles to come to terms with him. She had, I knew that she had idealized him terrifically, and he was loved history, and he was very sort of aloof, and I knew things about French, that she had done a mural when she was the age of this, and she'd done it for him concerning the war, and I knew things like that. And I knew that later on in her lengthy, lengthy analysis, she had come to realize that he wasn't as perfect as she thought, and that probably he was somewhat tyrannical and weak, and probably an alcoholic, and probably had incest with his son, you know, whether this was all made up by the lengthy analysis, which was running out of steam and had to make up some new things, or whether it's true, I don't know, but she eventually had a very disillusioned feeling about him, and she saw it in seeing his face, she said, and I looked at his photo and I'd always thought he had a strong jaw, and he didn't, it was weak. So that did sort of give me a jumping off point. Which lets you know of the upcoming events, and in the case of where we are right now, what's happening for the rest of March, and then the new one will be out towards the end of this week. Getting that next week. Thank you again for coming. Stacey's is outside, and maybe 20% of the prostitutes could arrive early, and please feel free to comment on all of them. Thank you. Thanks, thanks for having me. Thank you. Thank you.