| The Immigrant Story
by Grace Paley
One day in my family's life
I entered the English language
d's and t's in my teeth s's steaming
I elongated i's
lost a few r's included
them where they weren't wanted I often stationed a preposition
at the end of a sentence
this was to guard against
aggrieved inflection Much to my surprise strangers understood me
I continued talking I was brazen I said everywhere I go there are verbs that are doing nothing
it has been years since certain nouns were referred to
by their right names
I must ask a sad question
will the laws of entropy operate in spite of strictness
is there a literature that chants the disappearance
of tongues “The Immigrant Story” by Grace Paley from Begin Again. Farrar, Straus and Giroux © 2000. Used by permission of Union Literary, LLC. (buy now) It's the 85th birthday of the English novelist and critic David Lodge, (books by this author) born in London, England (1935). He is the author of many novels, several of which resemble Lodge's own life. Lodge was born in suburban London to a traditional Catholic family, and he was raised in the years following World War II. His early novel The Picturegoers (1960) is about a Catholic family in South London who take in a university student as a lodger. Other early novels bear striking resemblance to his life: Ginger, You're Barmy (1962) draws upon Lodge's own compulsory service in the British military, and The British Museum is Falling Down (1970) follows the comical story of a Catholic graduate student working on his thesis. Aside from his semi-autobiographical novels, Lodge closely protects his privacy. David Lodge taught for a brief time at Berkeley and created the imaginary city of Esseph, which contains a fictionalized version of Berkeley. In Lodge’s literary world Esseph is located in the American state of Euphoria, between North California and South California. David Lodge said, "A novel is a long answer to the question 'What is it about?' I think it should be possible to give a short answer — in other words, I believe a novel should have a thematic and narrative unity that can be described." It is the birthday of the writer who said, "Be happy. It's one way of being wise." That's Colette, (books by this author) born in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, in the Burgundy Region of France (1873). She's the author of more than 70 books of fiction, memoir, and journalism, including the novel Gigi (1944), which has spawned a number of stage and film adaptations. When she was 20, she married an older man, a writer and music critic who wrote under the pen name "Monsieur Willy." The young Colette wrote under his pen name, too — her husband locked her up in a room until she had produced a satisfactory amount of writing each day. She fled their marriage in her early 30s, danced half-naked in music halls around Paris, and once incited a riot during a performance at the Moulin Rouge. She became lovers with several women, married three times, gave birth to a child at the age of 40 whom she left to be raised by an English nanny, had an affair in her 50s with her 16-year-old stepson, and was forever scandalizing her French contemporaries. But she was also highly respected, the winner of all sorts of prestigious international literary awards. And when she died at the age of 81, she was the first woman in France to be honored with an official state funeral. Colette wrote: "Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it." She once said, "What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner." Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® | 