Boston the City

After spending the weekend in DC suburbs, I’ve been reminded of how very unusual Boston is. I know my view of Boston is still decidedly romantic, but nonetheless, it’s unlike any city I’ve ever lived in. More than anything it reminds me of London, a younger sister city that escaped the WWII bombings and also the modernization of rebuilding.

To begin with, Boston doesn’t feel like a traditional American city, with industrial complex, downtown, inner city and suburbs. And unlike most places, where dozens of little towns have been gradually engulfed by sprawling city, here the towns have instead spread their influence onto the city so that the entire metro area feels very much like a small town.

What makes it feel that way? It may be that the roads are winding little paths with at most two “lanes” each direction and no painted lines at all. It may be that the perpetually jay-walking pedestrians hold a sovereign right of way so that the drivers keep slow and on the lookout, ready to stop for anyone even thinking of wandering into the street. It may be that the houses are all tall old buildings of wood siding or brick, fronted with creaking porches and towering trees. It may be that there are hardly any of those standard American shopping centers with their wide aisles and vast parking lots. Instead the roads are lined with tiny shops that cluster among residential areas.

Yesterday, for example, I walked two blocks to reach the little Armenian markets along our “main” road. The shopkeeper was shouting in Armenian at the boy putting pomelos and red peppers and quinces into the cardboard boxes that serve as display baskets. There was hardly room to move, between the racks of pita and Turkish delight, the fridges of Greek yogurt and the buffet table with eight varieties of olives. (MIT's Lebanese clubs posted these photos; they'll give you a sense of the shops in the area.) When I was ready to go, the shopkeeper and I conversed in English and then I listened to him practice his Spanish on the El Salvadoran customer behind me. This store captured for me the feeling of Boston: both small town and big city.

I got home with the onions and potatoes I’d gone for. And also with rosehip marmalade, which I ate on scones that made me feel like a Boston Londoner.

Which president? THE President?

During a quick trip to DC this weekend, my friend Michelle and I broke wildly with our typical habits and took the National Treasure 2 Tour of Mount Vernon.

Now, you may be expecting, as I was, that this would be simply a quick trip down the stairs to the legendary basement of Mount Vernon, perhaps with a few myth-debunking quips delivered by a smug brown-frocked tour guide. Not so. This was a full hour tour, beginning with the lawn where the movie crew pulled up and ending with the Potomac River where the water cameras were stationed. We were led along the way by a rather scattered guide, perhaps in her seventies, who distractedly shuffled laminated photos while gushing about the genuine Bruce Greenwood and the dashing Nicholas Cage (literally "dashing": his sprint from the riverbanks to the mansion were what seemed to impress her most).

Unlike the merely ordinary guests, we got to see the basement of Mount Vernon, complete with original bricks (of course! who re-bricks their basement on a whim?) and the very arched entrance to the supposed tunnel. We saw the cornerstone that inspired the secret door to the tunnel. But here's where it gets truly exciting. According to our tour guide, the tunnel wasn't going to be part of the movie until they got to Mount Vernon. What, exactly, it was going to be about I'm not certain, as our guide waved her hand airily and said it would involve the difficulties of throwing a birthday party for the President. Right. Anyhow, when Nicholas Cage saw the locked up door to the iceroom he had to see inside, and when he discovered a real, live spiderweb-filled room, complete with a tunnel, he said they had to work it into the movie. So they devised a secret tunnel and then used the iceroom as its exit.

The tour was fantastic and absolutely worth the little extra time, money, and time outside in the freezing rain. What was my favorite part? When our guide said, "Now, it rained all four weeks they were here filming, and it was freezing! All those women in the film, wearing their little cocktail dresses, they look like their having fun, but they're just acting!" Actresses acting: who would have guessed?

What do I do, anyway?

The universal response to “I’m an English major” is, “So what are you going to do with that—teach?” As a student I tried to sidestep this inevitable reply with more elaborate explanations like, “I’m majoring in English and minoring in editing and plan to work as an editor for a living.” But then when people still said, “So . . . English major . . . what are you going to do with that—teach?” I gave up.

Now when I tell people I work for a publishing house as an editor of children’s books the response I get it, “Oh? Do children’s books need to be edited?”

So . . . if I’m an English major who doesn’t teach and who edits things that don’t need it, what on earth do I do all day?

Most of my time at the internship is devoted to reading new manuscripts. Candlewick doesn’t accept unsolicited submissions, so these are books recommended by agents or sent in by authors who have previously met with our editors. I read the entire manuscript and write a critique (about two a day), which I pass on to the editors. Most of the books I’ve read have been just fine—neither amazing nor terrible. I’ve only gone through two truly dreadful manuscript, both written by authors who had previously self published.

I’ve also gotten to write a little jacket copy (the blurbs on the covers of books), transcribe the notes of other editors, sort through old drafts of now-published books, and fact check an anatomy picture book. My most baffling experiences involve sitting through the weekly coordination meetings, where we check on the progress of about 130 books scheduled for release up through the fall of 2012. It takes more than 40 major steps involving half a dozen departments and parties to get the book from manuscript to bookstore, and this is all after editing.

So is there work to be done, even by English majors? Plenty!

Concision?

The trouble with books is that they’re full of words.

I know, I know, a book is made of words, right? But when I can get through an entire book reading only the first sentence of every paragraph and not even feel I’ve missed anything, it seems time to suggest economizing. And I don’t just mean those loose baggy 19^th century monsters, either. Somehow even a contemporary 80-page novel for third graders can just be crammed full of too many words.

Apparently the world’s authors are widely suffering from an unmanageable logorrhea too often untempered by their shepherding editors.

Allow me to quote a particularly troubling passage I read last night in a published work: “he took his other hand and lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. His lovely, sad, warm, dark, impossibly deep eyes. Their color seemed to swirl and change; she couldn’t tell if they were brown or hazel or black or some new shade of dark that had no name and existed only there—here.” It’s not just the romance that’s gagging me here: it’s all those words, stuffing themselves down into my ears.

I’m not a huge fan of dieting (no puns intended), but most of the books I’ve met recently could stand to lose a few pounds of words.

Longfellow House

This week I went with friends to the Longfellow House http://www.longfellowfriends.org/index.php. I’ve been in a lot of historic houses, and this is definitely one of the best. (One not-best example: the Handel House. The place had been home to many exuberant remodelers after Handel so when the historic societies got hold of the place they stripped it back to the Handel-era interior and stocked it with various furniture and draperies from the time . . . but not a single thing in the house had belonged to Handel.)

This house, however, was great. It wasn’t just a literary site; it was a patriotic one. The eighteenth-century mansion was made famous by George Washington’s 1775­­-76 stay during which he mustered troops to face the British force occupying Boston. Sixty years later Longfellow rented a few rooms in the house and then got the whole thing as a wedding present from his father-in-law.

And it wasn’t just the site that was significant; the artifacts were there too. The people who lived there cared about the history, and they kept everything.

And seeing all of it wasn’t just an interesting historical experience but a poetic one since so many things we saw had been elevated by poems I’m attached to: “The Children’s Hour,” “The Cross of Snow,” “The Village Blacksmith,” etc.

And our visit wasn’t just touristy; it was behind-the-scenes. The girls I went with study library science, so they asked about the house’s archives and next thing we knew we were in the basement looking at refrigerated books and furniture and learning about the cataloging system.

And to top of the whole experience, it wasn’t just historical or literary or poetic; it was rhetorical. On our way out, I passed Gary Hatch going in.

The space

The Candlewick offices are not the sterile glass-and-chrome office maze I imagined: they’re much better! The outside stucco is a cheery yellow and the front office has bright walls, books on display, and big stuffed versions of some of Candlewick’s most beloved characters.

The inside of the building is all open. Nearly everyone sits at a cubicle with low walls and a sturdy desk. Low walls so you can see your neighbors; a sturdy desk so you can support mounds of paper. My desk, for example, is currently piled with towering stacks of old “foul matter”—the various marked drafts a manuscript has gone through before publication.

Whereas some of the presses I’ve visited have each department sequestered away behind muffling office doors, giving you the impression that Great Work is happening inside, the openness of Candlewick’s building makes the whole place feel bustling with creativity. It’s collaborative and busy, much like our grad school carrels (but without all the gossip and nervous freshmen).

And, of all peculiar coincidences, the other half of the building is being used by the local Spanish and Portugese branches. I can tell you it was quite a shock this summer when I looked up the address on Google Maps (see image) and the first thing I saw was the classic bronze plaque: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.