One Amazing Thing in Normal, Illinois

Dear Friends,

Last week I was invited to Normal/Bloomington Illinois. I would speak to students, and read poetry, and looked forward to meeting those who had arranged this visit. Lynda especially had been patient and encouraging. Somewhere along the line I realized that David Foster Wallace had taught here, which made me think of his life and work and his graduation speech.

I looked forward to the book in my bag, One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and to seeing again the person who would drive me. Bill Young. I had just finished reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safron Foer, and had decided that my rare and even very careful (you know, organic ranch raised creatures imagined sohappy to be eaten they run eagerly to the slaughterhouse) type of meat eating was now at an end. Bill and I talked of this. On the way to the place I was staying, The Chateau, a unit of motorcycle state police passed us in proud formation. We seemed to have a police escort! But as it turned out, there was a convention of state troopers at The Chateau. The readings of poetry, for a radio show all poetry, and the readings in general, went very well and I couldn't have been more hospitably treated. I loved walking into the Chateau, past the old tapestry, over the tired new carpet. Bill and I decided to have a post-reading glass of wine in The Lido bar. It was filled with rowdy and roaring state troopers, but who do you call when they are the ones disturbing the peace?

Bill and I went out for a burger -- well, a veggie burger, which can be had at Burger King. Ours must have been sitting deep in the freezer, said Bill. For a long time. But he ate it and we had a glass of wine -- from the Chateau cellar. The goblet was huge, but of course one would expect that at a Chateau. I wanted to see the wine cellar, but as the library was mainly American Jurisprudence and Janet Evanovich, and some diet books, Bill said that the wine cellar might not be what I expected. So up I went to One Amazing Thing, which I intended to fall asleep reading. Early on I realized that Chitra was throwing a plot at me! An irresistible plot where a mini-UN of interesting people get trapped by a disaster and each must come up with a story. Oh no! Oh yes! I was up very late. I read straight through because this is the sort of book that pulls you along. Divakaruni is so adept with her characterizations. She has a light touch with people. She is a careful, evocative writer. I wanted to be any of the several beauty salons described so lovingly. I wanted to eat the bits of food described with such delicacy. Chitra Divakaruni has written 14 books and they just keep getting better. I think I enjoyed this one the most, lying there in my French (?) four poster bed, French (?) scenes of rural life on the wall, wishing for another French (?) veggie burger, or another goblet from the Chateau cellar. Outside the rain fell and fell. The next morning driving back to O'Hare we were passed by a state police car hauling a trailer with motorcycles strapped onto it. Were the troopers still reeling in the Chateau? Was the rain too dangerous? Had they forgotten their rain gear? We will never know. But I am still a vegetarian.

And today, back in Minneapolis, I still admire this line from One Amazing Thing, "She ignored Uma superbly, as people do when faced with those those abject destinies they control." Haven't we all been ignored superbly? How I hate it when my abject destiny is controlled by others.