Ianthe always believed she could write. Maybe it was the influence of her father's typewriter, which she has passed along to her own daughter. She grew up moving between her parents from place to place and attending 13 schools, but she read a lot and developed a "rich inner life."
She says that voice is a way to enter a piece of writing: "If you can write a memory, you have a better chance of finding a voice that is you." If you write into it, that memory can form the basis for a reflective essay or book.
When I read Ianthe's book, it brought to life her father's character and a sense of place, including San Francisco. I read Brautigan's The Abortion when I was 18 and living with my father in his San Francisco apartment on Green Street. There was a beautiful one-room library across the street (built in 1912 in a Beaux Arts style) that I often looked down upon from our 6th floor fire escape. For some reason I can no longer recall, I pictured the setting of his book taking place inside! (Aha! I looked it up and the novel, of course, was set in a "library for unpublished manuscripts," which Brautigan based on the Presidio Branch described thus: "There are high arched windows here in the library above the bookshelves and there are two green trees towering into the windows and they spread their branches like paste against the glass.") Lovely.
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| Cow Hollow Branch Library, Green Street, San Francisco |
