164: Can We Live on Through Our Writing?

Andrea Askowitz  0:00  
I'm Andrea Askowitz.

Allison Langer  0:16  
I'm Allison Langer. And this is Writing Class Radio. You'll hear true personal stories and learn how to write your own stories. Together, we produce this podcast which is equal parts heart and art. By heart, we mean the truth in a story. And by art, we mean the craft of writing, no matter what's going on in our lives. Writing class is where we tell the truth. It's where we work out our sheeeeit. Here's no place in the world like writing class, and we want to bring you in.

Andrea Askowitz  0:44  
Today on our show, we bring you a story by Amy Paturel. This story was originally published in LitHub on June 28, 2023. It is gorgeous. And this story is a really great example of how to write about someone else, and also revealing who you are as the narrator. And it does something else that's just amazing. Which is really, really hard. I don't know, I don't want to give any spoilers, but it's about someone who's died. And it's also about writing, and the importance of writing as a way to keep that person alive. Back with Amy's story after the break. We're back. This is Andrea Askowitz and you're listening to Writing Class Radio. Up next is Amy Paturel, reading her story, Getting to Know My Husband's Late Wife Through the Words She Left Behind.

Amy Paturel  1:48  
Shortly after my husband Brandon and I began dating, I was shocked to discover his bookshelves housed the same titles I had on mine. Beloved, The Cider House Rules, The Book of Ruth. The books weren't his. He doesn't share my passion for reading. They belong to his late wife. When Brandon and I married two years later, I found myself grappling with whether to keep Shereese's copy of East of Eden or mine. I was intrigued about the woman who came before me, and captivated by her love of the craft. We shared a way of inhabiting and understanding the world through storytelling. Me, as a journalist and essayist. Shareese, as a fiction writer and poet who died before she had a chance to publish. Since I couldn't read Shareese's work online, I asked Brandon to set aside some of her writing. I wanted to get a sense of her voice. "I'm sure she would love for you to read her stories," he said, hauling a giant cardboard box to my office. Inside the box were composition notebooks filled with poems, essays and short fiction she wrote during graduate school, along with her thoughts on writing. I wrestled with whether she would want me, the new wife, to have an all-access pass to her notebooks on craft. But when I told her sister I felt pulled to explore Shereese's work, she encouraged me. Even more compelling the words Shereese wrote seemed like a plea. "I'm leaving behind a trail of breadcrumbs in the form of good intentions," she wrote. In one binder, she'd even tucked a slip of paper with names, addresses and submission guidelines for several publishers. Almost like a roadmap to a destination only another writer could navigate. I'd always been drawn to handwritten remnants of a person's life. The chicken scratch in my grandmother's Bible, my mom's penciled captions on old photographs. The letters my sister wrote me when I studied in Spain. Handwritten words helped me feel closer to the person who wrote them. I wanted to know Shereese too, so I studied her notes like a forensic wordsmith, looking for clues. She wrote in black ballpoint ink with scripts so beautiful, it could have been its own font. Her writing spoke to me like we were in the same room. I could almost hear her saying, "I was here. Look at these letters. The curl in my G, the pause of the pen, the way I write with a mix of print and cursive, just like you." But her words stopped me cold. "Death, get ready to tangle with the living," she wrote. That passage came from her notes on a novel idea about two friends who were ripped from each other's lives when one of them unexpectedly died. She called life The Great Game Show, and the dead the disqualified contestants. "Maybe that explains my hang up in a nutshell. I want to play forever," she wrote. I felt like we were in a pas de deux between worlds. She's dead. I'm living. I wasn't interested in learning more about the life she shared with Brandon. That story ended before it began, just six months after they married. But as an investigative journalist, I was obsessed with her life as a writer. Which books she'd never finished reading, how her half written stories might have ended, whether she would have become an award winning novelist. I thumb through her books on craft: Phillip Lopate's Art of the Personal Essay, Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, Joyce Carol Oates' The Faith of a Writer, with her penciled notes still legible on the margins. But when I discovered her dog eared copy of The Book of Questions, a title I also owned, with questions like, "Would you like to know the precise date of your death? And if you could choose your manner of death, what would it be?" circled in black Sharpie, I nearly dropped the book. I never met Shereese, but I could see myself in the philosophical question she posed in the margins, if not in the ones she circled. The date of death? March 24, 2006. The manner, according to her death certificate? Blunt impacts to the head and neck. A red Jeep Cherokee slammed into Shereese's blue Subaru Outback, flipping it over one and a half times, landing with the driver's side door flush with the concrete. The Jeep's driver, intoxicated and fresh from the casino at 8:05am, survived. Shereese was dead before paramedics arrived. Like a psychic detective working a decades-long cold case, I felt pulled to her stories. I skimmed through them first, then tucked them away in a cabinet. But they called me. Months and years later, I would get an ethereal nudge to go back in and page through them again. Shereese even showed up in my dreams, including one where she left behind stacks of handwritten pages for me to manage. I thought about writing a novel loosely based on our otherworldly connection. But as I delved more deeply into the notebooks Brandon brought to my office, my focus turned toward getting her writing published. She had dozens of half written stories, beginnings of novels, and poems so dark and foreboding they read as if she knew her life would be cut short. As if she were living with an eye toward the end. Reverent, rhapsodic, almost eulogistic. I sit here in my room of wonder, books stacked to the ceiling, many written by people who no longer live. What can I make of this? "The first thought that comes to mind is that death for them is a non-death, if death means silence," she wrote. "They continue to speak. Their words are audible to human ears, and that is their triumph. They stretch beyond the grave. Will I?" She had such talent, such grasp of the craft, and her words engulfed me like a leaf caught in a gust of wind. I read through her journals over lunch while idling in the school pickup line. I even reflected on her storylines instead of mine between meal prep and dinner time. At night, while Brandon on our three sons slept, I slipped seamlessly from the world Shereese no longer inhabited into the fictional ones she created. And I began to believe her conjecture that writers defy death. Their words stretch beyond the grave like a composite of their souls. Shereese's stories moved me. They challenged and inspired me. They also made me feel guilty. It wasn't just that I'd inherited her life, her husband, her dog, even almost unbelievably, her teaching job, but also that I had achieved her dream of publishing. I haven't been able to find a home for Shereese's work... yet. But published or not, Shereese was a writer. In the same way I connected to the authors of memoirs we both read and loved, her notes, belongings and books became a sort of physical memoir, one that didn't die with her. "Life is so precious, there is never enough of it. And when it breathes out, what is left will be the working of our hands," she wrote. "That's where I come full circle. It is the need to be known. The fear of not only be unknown, but of being unknown." I didn't connect to Shereese from the tributes left on her memorial page, or from the stories and memories Brandon and her loved ones shared. I came to know her through words on a page. Uncensored, raw, real.  Like we were friends separated only by space and time. In that way, maybe she did defy death, like the authors we both loved- through her left behind journals and notes scribbled in the margins.

Allison Langer  9:17  
Okay, I love Amy Paturel. Every story I've ever read by her, I just am always just entranced. She's an amazing, amazing writer. And, I mean, what I find amazing is this narrator was able to write about someone else, but includes so much of herself. And I find that a very difficult thing to do, because a lot of people want to write about their grandmother or their mom or something and I'm like, where's the narrator? But I feel like I really got to know our narrator through this story about Shereese.

Andrea Askowitz  9:53  
Yeah, I wasn't even thinking about whether or not I wanted more of the narrator, because I guess I just got enough of the narrator. I'm in love with this story. I think it's so interesting and fascinating. But we do get- I like your question now, because what we do get about this narrator is like her- And she only mentioned it a little bit like, I don't know if she even called it guilt, but she inherited this woman's husband, dog, and even her job. But the part that she, I think, feels most about is that she's gotten this- this woman Shereese's dream to come true. She- our narrator- is a published writer. While Shereese...

Allison Langer  10:36  
Well that's not exactly right. Shereese wanted to be the published narrator, so I don't think her dream came true. But she's looking to try to make that happen. And that's what she says, by trying to get her published.

Andrea Askowitz  10:48  
Yeah, she's trying to get Shereese's stuff published. I want to talk about that in a second. But let me go back to that part.

Allison Langer  10:55  
It's towards the end, she says, "But published or not, Shereese was a writer. In the same way I connected to the authors of memoirs we both read and loved, her notes, belongings and books became a sort of physical memoir, one that didn't die with her."

Andrea Askowitz  11:09  
Yes, yeah, yeah. I'm talking about the part where our narrator says she inherited- she inherited her husband, her dog, and- but there was something there that now I can't find it.

Allison Langer  11:20  
Let me read that paragraph. It says, "Shereese's stories moved me. They challenged and inspired me. They also made me feel guilty. It wasn't just that I'd inherited her life, her husband, dog and almost unbelievably her teaching job, but also that I achieved her dream of publishing."

Andrea Askowitz  11:36  
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So our narrator achieved Shereese's dream of publishing. And we learn so much about the narrator right there, because what she feels about that- and one thing that I do want to say, is that since this publication- and this- this is a re-airing of an essay that was published in LitHub, but what I also know is that this narrator got one of Shereese's poems published in LitHub. So Shereese is now a published author. I'm so excited for her.

Allison Langer  12:09  
Posthumously, yeah, yeah, yeah. posthumously. That's cool.

Andrea Askowitz  12:13  
That is cool. So just to say that, that- that did happen.

Allison Langer  12:16  
Maybe that'll happen with us. Somebody will buy our shit, or manuscripts once we dead.

Andrea Askowitz  12:23  
Isn't that what happens to all of- all artists who are ahead of their time? It is, it's what happens. I'll be cool with that. But I'd like to- I'd like to see some success now. Okay. 

Allison Langer  12:33  
Me too. 

Andrea Askowitz  12:34  
Putting it out there. Yeah. Okay, so can I start from the top about what I love so much about this? Yeah. Okay. So right away I am- I'm kind of in love with all the characters in this story. Brandon, and Shereese's sister. They're so generous. They are cool. Because it is a big ask. Can I read the handwritten work of your ex who died? Like that's a lot. And then we see Brandon just coming in with a big box filled with with Shereese's writing. I think that's beautiful. And then the sister is like, Yeah, I think she would like that. So I'm just- I love everybody so far. 

Allison Langer  13:15  
Yeah. 100%. 

Andrea Askowitz  13:16  
Like, these are good people. I feel like I'm surrounded by really good people. So I just wanted to say that. Okay, and then what our narrator is doing, she's like, she's dropping breadcrumbs. One of the lines at the very top is, "I'm leaving behind breadcrumbs." That's a line from Shereese's writing. And Shereese is- this is like otherworldly, this story. And somehow, Shereese knew that she was going to die. She also wrote "Death, get ready to tangle with the living." That was from a novel Sharif was writing. 

Allison Langer  13:53  
Yeah. 

Andrea Askowitz  13:54  
And then our narrator uses this really cool French word? 

Allison Langer  13:58  
Pas de deux?

Andrea Askowitz  13:59  
Pas de deux. She's in a pas de deux between two worlds. And I said- I totally, like, I mean, I want to make fun of the French because I'm really making fun of me for, like, being stupid and not really knowing what that means. But I totally get it, like, I get that she's like- our narrator Amy is like... 

Allison Langer  14:17  
It's a dance. 

Andrea Askowitz  14:18  
She is in a dance, right, with Shereese.

Allison Langer  14:22  
So something that the listener's not seeing is the quotes. So sometimes it's hard when you're listening to know who's saying what, and we can see it because we see that it's in italics, or quotes, or whatever is going on in this essay. So if you were confused, maybe just go to LitHub and just check it out, and relisten or reread it or something like that.

Andrea Askowitz  14:46  
And we'll also have the full transcript on our website, writingclassradio.com. But I want to right now read three quotes that were Shereese's quotes. The first one was one I just read but I'm gonna read it again. "Death get ready. to tangle with the living." That was from Shereese's novel. And then later, Shereese wrote, "Would you like to know the precise date of your death? If you could choose manner of death, what would it be?" That's what Shereese wrote. Oh, and then the narrator so elegantly told us exactly how Shereese died. And it was kind of brutal. But she just wrote it down. She just said it. And I- I am so thankful, because I wanted to know, and then she gave it to us. It's not part of the story. It's not really relevant. But it's one of those things that's like, maybe nagging at the reader or at the listener, like, wait, what? Why? How did she die? She was young. So we know she was in a car accident.

Allison Langer  15:45  
There was one more quote, did you see the one at the end?

Andrea Askowitz  15:48  
I didn't write down the quote, but I did write down Amy's words, which was,  "She had an eye toward the end." So that was our narrator telling us that Shereese knew, on some level. Like she, she had, like- she must have known.

Allison Langer  16:02  
Well, it says- Let me read it. "Life is so precious, there's never enough of it. And when it breathes out, what is left will be the workings of our hands. That's where I come full circle. It is the need to be known. The fear of not only the unknown, but of being unknown." That whole quote was Shereese's.

Andrea Askowitz  16:23  
That hits me hard. 

Allison Langer  16:24  
Yeah. 

Andrea Askowitz  16:24  
Because I have a fear of being unknown. I mean, I'm also afraid of the unknown. That's gorgeous.

Allison Langer  16:31  
No, I just think the thing is, this whole essay is amazing. It is not easy to write about other people. And to be able to pull in quotes from their writing, or things that they've said, and make it all work and make sense, and also have it pertain to you. I mean, this- this writer is really talented.

Andrea Askowitz  16:53  
You made fun of me earlier, before we were on the air about asking the question, "Do writers defy death?" Because um, yeah, they do. That question is raised in this essay. And it is answered, because writers defy death. Yes, they do. And in this story, Shereese defied death. And that's why I think this is so brilliant. Make fun of me, go on.

Allison Langer  17:17  
Another reason to write! Another reason to write. Get it down.

Andrea Askowitz  17:21  
Damn, Amy.

Allison Langer  17:22  
Thank you for listening. And thank you, Amy Paturel, for sharing your story.

Writing class radio is hosted by me, Allison Langer.

Andrea Askowitz  17:39  
And me, Andrea Askowitz.

Allison Langer  17:41  
Audio production by Matt Cundill, Evan Surminski, Chloe Emond-Lane, and Aidan Glassey at the Sound Off Media Company. Theme music is by Justina Chandler. There's more writing class on our website, writingclassradio.com, including stories we study, editing resources, video classes, writing retreats- which by the way, we have one coming up in December. 

Andrea Askowitz  18:05  
Yeah, talk about it. Yeah. 

Allison Langer  18:07  
So we only have, well, actually, we have two- three spots left. One in the house and two out of the house. So if you're interested in finding out more about what we do on our writing retreats, and what that looks like in the house, and where it is, and blah blah blah, it's going to be December 5th through the 10th, 2023. So jump on our website under classes and look up the Key Largo writing treat. 

Andrea Askowitz  18:10  
Let me just tell you something a week in Key Largo with the likes of us is fucking amazing. Just saying. 

Allison Langer  18:31  
Yeah. If you don't like us now, you will like us afterwards. Or if you like us, now, you're gonna love us. Right? 

Andrea Askowitz  18:47  
Do you think people don't like us? 

Allison Langer  18:48  
Well, they probably stopped listening by now.

Andrea Askowitz  18:51  
That's true. If they're listening to this, they might like us. Thanks for listening to all this. Thanks.

Allison Langer  18:55  
If you want to write with us every week, you can join our first draft weekly writers group. You have the option to join me on Tuesdays, 12 to 1 Eastern time, or Eduardo Wink Thursdays, eight to 9pm. Eastern time. You'll write to a prompt and share what you wrote. You can also join second draft on Thursday. I'm going to be facilitating that from 12 to 1 Eastern time. So that's where you get to bring in another draft, you know, a more worked-on draft for real edits, so you can try to get published. Like Amy Paturel. All that stuff is on our website. And if you're a business owner, entrepreneur, community activist, group that needs healing, or you want your team to write better, we can totally help. So check out all our classes on our website, writingclassradio.com. Join the community that comes together for instruction, an excuse to write, and the support from other writers. A new episode will drop every other Wednesday.

Andrea Askowitz  19:48  
There's no better way to understand ourselves and each other than by writing and sharing our stories. Everyone has a story. What's yours? 

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  19:59  
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