Studio of the Voice

From the cover

In the essay collection Studio of the Voice, master essayist Marcia Aldrich is at her finest as she invites readers along for a personal exploration of women’s lives, the complicated love of mothers for daughters and of daughters for mothers, slinky blue dresses and sultry red lipstick, Hollywood beauties and the stories we tell about them, the losses and treasures of getting older, her lifelong swim, and much more, speaking to us always in a voice that is hers alone: revealing, comic, elegiac, perceptive, and wise. The essays take on dazzling forms in this award-winning writer’s hands, some as shape-shifters, some fragmented and experimental, others in the classic mode–each of them to be discovered, savored, and shared.

Praise for Studio of the Voice

Essaying is the best way to freeze and examine and better understand the shifting phantasmagoria of our experiences in families and societies, and Marcia Aldrich’s Studio of the Voice is a whole collection of essays par excellence. With an eager, associative mind, Aldrich gathers and explores intergenerational conflicts and conundrums, generating meditative momentum toward a new vision of how we should, and can, relate to one another.
—Patrick Madden, author of Disparates: Essays

In Studio of the Voice, Marcia Aldrich creates a studio of the voice-driven essay. Endlessly curious, digressive, formally inventive, these essays shine a light on an essential quality of the essay: it’s not about the epiphany, but process, the questions one asks. Long one of our very best essayists, Aldrich is undaunted at the dark door of the multifaceted truths self-investigation can yield, though sometimes, surprisingly, it is only the door that is dark. One essay by Marcia Aldrich is a cause for celebration. This rangy new book should provoke a parade. A signal achievement, Studio of the Voice is an essential book of essays.
—David Lazar, author of Celeste Holm Syndrome and founding editor of Hotel Amerika

No writer evokes the way Marcia Aldrich evokes. For every scene she writes, story she tells, detail she describes, she palpates the imagination. This book is physicality incarnate. I can feel her hands as they clutch a bedpost, soothe a cheek slap, twist the chain of a pair of smudged reading glasses hanging around the neck, warm with a flash of menopause, rub the arch of Marilyn Monroe’s foot, burnish beauty, weigh the heaviness of rejection, thrill at the joy of a backflip, and press through dark water with the joy of swimming. Studio of the Voice maintains that we are most human when we are most embodied. Aldrich makes us feel fully human as she gives voice to her own body and the bodies of others in this vibrantly corporeal book.
—Nicole Walker, author of Processed Meat: Essays on Food, Flesh, and Navigating Disaster

Some Studio links

Connected essays are “On Difficulty” at Assay and “Too Vast for Words” at the Brevity blog.
I talk with Emily Hipchen at Hypertext and Cynthia Bradley at Under the Sun.
The Humble Essayist takes a close look.

How to order

Bookshop
Indiebound
Barnes & Noble
Elliott Bay Book Company
Books A Million
Schuler Books
Amazon

Recent reads:

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Winesap at Under the Sun, nominated for a Pushcart Prize

Phone Call in the Age of Coronavirus at Longreads

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Inflammatory Questions at Diagram

Thoughts on Turning 60 at Oldster

On Memoir and Bearing Witness, and Warhol’s Piss Art at Brevity

Brevity’s January 2020 Issue Launched Today

Great reading here, if I do say so.

The Brevity Blog

Our newest issue, Issue 63, is out this morning, featuring crisp, provocative essays from Maggie Smith, Lara Lillibridge, Joanna Brichetto, Natalie Rose, B.J. Hollars, Kelly Shire, Marcia Aldrich, Robert Julius, Natalia Rachel Singer, Amie Whittemore, Margo Steines, Matt Donovan, Mary Zelinka, Doug Lawson, and Jill Kolongowski and her Spring 2019 creative writing class. All of these, along with stunning photos by Mike McKniff.

Also new today, in our Craft Section, Jen Corrigan, Jennifer McGaha, Mary Ann McSweeny, and Sonja Livingston discuss impatience and restlessness in writing, the art of discovery, the role of compassion in nonfiction, and how to bring Nancy Drew into your essaying.

Meanwhile, we are still accepting submissions for Brevity’s upcoming special issue, “Experiences of Disability,” to be published in September 2020. We are also still actively seeking some financial support to make this issue possible, and even small amounts go a long way. …

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Unified Theory of Ned

A model of tolerance and patience but holding your ground. I miss him.

The Brevity Blog

By Paul Haney

Ned Stuckey-French was an essayist and a scholar of the essay, a book-review editor and an anthologist. He was an author, an English professor at Florida State University, a generous reader, a connection-maker, an advocate for anyone attempting what he termed “this queer little hybrid thing,” the essay. A tallish, lanky fellow with thick glasses and a runner’s build, Ned was political, and he was personable. He was a wise-ass, he was a warm soul. He was Ned, and he was on Facebook.

“I’m on Facebook every day,” Ned confessed at AWP in 2011. The name of his talk: “My Name is Ned and I’m an Addict.” To Ned, Facebook was a meeting place abuzz with opinions and gossip and news of the day. It was a tool of democracy, a forum for hashing out political disagreements and plying rivals with logic…

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The Slow Goodbye

Roger Federer at the US Open

I follow Federer. I’ve been following Roger Federer since he began, tracking the glorious career that seems to never end. He’s the author of many surprises—a game that is like no other, the way he has made losing look more like winning than actually winning because the shots we’ll remember are his, not his opponent’s, a career that went into a tailspin only to resurrect itself, and finally to play at a level only dreamed of into his late thirties, a time when most tennis players have become spectators of the sport.

But after his loss that should have been a win at Wimbledon to Novak Djokovic this summer, I haven’t looked forward to his matches. I didn’t even turn in to register the sad outcome of his losing early (6-3, 6-4) to Rublev, a player I never even heard of, in Cincinnati, a tournament he’d won many times. Later, when I saw the result, I wasn’t surprised. Others were shocked, expecting him to go further.

Despite Federer’s protests to the contrary, I didn’t believe he put his loss at Wimbledon in the rear view mirror. I noticed that I had begun to check out on Federer’s career, no longer believing there would be more thrills and chills and extraordinary pleasures. I’d have to say I was expecting losses, hard-to absorb losses. Oh, there would still be moments of spectacular play, spells and runs of wonder, but they would no longer be sustained all the way up to the end. I’d have to say we’re probably witnessing the beginning of the end.

And so when the US Open began with its predictable hyping of the top three players, Djokovic, Nadal, and Federer, I didn’t believe Federer would come through. Perhaps for the first time in my long career of following Federer, I didn’t think he’d manage to come back this time. It wouldn’t be a matter of an injury—he’s said he’s healthy and playing injury-free. No, it wouldn’t exactly be a body thing—it would be a mind thing, a heart thing. The loss at Wimbledon had dimmed his optimism.

Of course, Federer always appears optimistic, hopeful about another day, another opportunity. That is what he’s learned to say, and perhaps he believes it. Many marvel at his ability to move on after a tough loss, almost as notable as his ability to play at such a high level all these years. Still there are some losses, some disappointments that sink deep into the psyche, and no matter how much we say we’ve absorbed them and moved on, we haven’t. Some losses make us doubt.  He may doubt whether he can win. Can he make the right decisions at the right times, can he pull off the shots when he needs them, does he have the mental and physical stamina to prevail against players whose intensity is electric, whose will is fortified with iron, who are younger? These doubts worm their way in quietly and then take up residence.

When I began writing this, he’d lost the first sets of his first two matches, first to Sumit Nagal and then Damir Dzumbar, both outside the top 100. Unheard of.  He righted the ship and went on to win the matches, but he was not the Federer who blows away opponents this low on the tennis ladder and this early in a tournament.

The pundits wondered what it meant and worried that such a beginning did not bode well for his winning the slam. No one with such a statistical beginning has gone on to win. Sure enough, he beat Dan Evans in his third match quickly and decisively, 6-2, 6-2, 6-1. Then he beat David Goffin in the Round of 16,  raced through that one, another straight-set victory in little over an hour, 6-2, 6-2, 6-0.

Relief was in the air: the Federer of old had returned. The rust had worn off. He had awoken from his slumber. The ease with which Federer polished off Dan Evans and David Goffin lulled commentators into thinking he was back and fighting ready. They were already skipping over his next opponent, Grigor Dimitrov, and salivating at the match-up with Nadal since Djokovic had withdrawn and cleared the path forward.

As we now know, on September 3 he lost to Grigor Dimitrov in the quarter final and he’s out. He reached the last eight for the thirteenth time at the US Open. He didn’t play well. He didn’t serve well, he didn’t move well, his forehands were ill-timed and erratic. He wasn’t able to switch gears and move to another level and stay there.

By the fourth set,  you could see things were not right and at the end of the set, which he lost, he took a medical time out. A back injury. And while he came back to see the match through to its conclusion, the fifth set was not competitive. Several commentators have spoken of problems beyond his back—problems with movement, with playing at night, with timing his forehands, with age.

More than the physical impairments though, I noticed how the light has gone out of his eyes. That’s a cliché, a euphemism, an inadequate way to mark the emotional change I detect in Federer. It’s as if he knew he wasn’t going to win this from the start and was just going through the steps because that’s what he signed on to do. Once again, this tournament offered him a great shot at winning because the best player in the game had withdrawn. It’s as if he sees the chances but doesn’t believe he can capitalize on them.

I’ve listened to the talk about Federer. I don’t deny age is catching up with him and causing physical problems. However, I hasten to remember that a few short months ago, despite his advanced age, he played well at Wimbledon, extraordinarily well, near perfection really, until he lost in the final tie-breaker in the fifth set.  Djokovic didn’t so much beat Federer, as Federer lost. And it’s a loss like some other frustrating losses—the 2010 US Open semifinal, when he wasted match points against Djokovic, or in 2011 at Wimbledon when he lost to Tsonga after being up two sets to love—but worse. He hasn’t gotten over it, and who knows if he ever will.

No one says this. Federer is quoted as saying the loss at Wimbledon played no role in his loss last night, that he was ready to play to win. I feel sure he believes this. I just don’t.

The Year in Review

I walked 2,120 miles give or take a few. I was walking as if my life depended upon it. Sometimes I broke into running, the beat to move forward was so strong, as if one of my flock was going to plunge off a cliff if I didn’t catch her. I pissed off my daughter fewer than five times, an improvement over my past record. I pissed off my son once and badly, and so the improvement with my daughter was erased by my poor showing with my son … more at Supersition Review

Someone Called Mother (audio)

Hear Jill Talbot and me (sounding a bit like Vanessa Redgrave in Call the Midwife) read Someone Called Mother.

Someone Called Mother

Icouldn’t be more pleased to share this collaborative essay I’ve written with my friend Jill Talbot.

Longreads

Marcia Aldrich | Jill Talbot | Longreads | March 2019 | 12 minutes (3,201 words)

Interested in more by Jill Talbot and Marcia Aldrich? Read their collaborative essay, Trouble.

She was old when she had me, or so I thought. She had given birth to two daughters in her twenties during her first marriage. Then her husband died unexpectedly and the period of being a single mother began. Her hair began to turn gray and a red rash ran down the middle of her face, a rash of grief. Eventually she met my father, married, and the rash disappeared. Some years later I arrived when she was 40. Twelve years separated me from my sisters.

Now, when women wait longer to have children, aided by infertility treatments and surrogacy options, my mother wouldn’t seem old at all. She wouldn’t be an outlier. But when I was growing up, my…

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Brenda Miller

Source: Brenda Miller

Kyoko Mori

Does Gender Matter? For the AWP Panel, 2017 I spent the first part of my adulthood—my twenties and thirties—running, cycling, lifting weights, and playing basketball with a bunch of men while the o…

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