Chapter 4 A Letter from William Corwyn
A Letter from William Corwyn
From: William Corwyn
To: Sam Vetiver
My dear, we don’t know each other, but I know of you, and in case nobody has ever told you: You write like a ninja.
I suspect that, as a white male of a certain age, I’m out of line using that term. I hope I haven’t offended you. If I have,
I hope you’ll forgive me and read on. If there’s one thing we might agree on, it’s that there’s a delicious pleasure in deploying
exactly the right word, isn’t there? A pleasure so sharp, so exquisite, it’s almost sexual. Le mot juste. Therefore I feel justified in taking the risk of using the term ninja to describe the way you write.
You might be wondering, Who the hell is this man? How does he have the audacity to write to me? And why is he writing to me? You would, of course, be smart to ask these questions. Any writer would, and a female author, I imagine,
might have extra suspicions. (Note I did not call you an authoress, a word I despise for its smarm—do you as well? But I digress.)
If you’ll indulge me, I’ll explain by spinning a yarn. Professional hazard.
A few years ago, when a personal tragedy befell me, my physician advised me to take up martial arts.
It would improve my flexibility, my physical and emotional balance.
Initially, I rejected this suggestion. At the time, I was considered an athlete—not Olympian, but I could run a six-minute mile, throw a TKO in any boxing ring, outrace the whippersnappers on the black diamond slopes.
I’d still be doing all of those things if a tree hadn’t rudely shredded my knee on an off-trail ski course near Breckenridge—but again, I digress.
When I took my doctor’s advice, it was because of the sudden dawn not of wisdom but of vanity. Middle age and a convalescent
lifestyle had expanded my waistline, and one morning while shaving I saw more than the suggestion of a double chin. I will
spare you the description of the contortions I went through trying to see whether I’d developed the corresponding rearview
condition, Old Man Butt. (If my ass ever looks lapped by wrinkles like the riverbed of time, take me out behind the barn and
shoot me. But a third time, I digress.)
Off to tae kwon do I went. To my pleasant surprise, I wasn’t the oldest person there. To my chagrin, I was easily the most
graceless. For several classes, I was a miserable, dangerous failure, toppling over unexpectedly (I’m well over six feet tall,
so TIMMMBEERRRRR!). I was shocked that I was unable to balance. Every minute in that studio was an exercise in humility.
From the first moment, I loved it. That is how I feel about your writing.
Samantha, I hope that in addition to forgiving my writing out of the blue, you’ll give me a pass for being a latecomer to
your work. I’d heard of you, of course. Your first novel, The Sharecropper’s Daughter, is a household name, and we share a publisher. My editor’s office is next door to yours at Hercules. (And is there anything
more exhilarating than entering that building, that four-story lobby with its backlit glass-shelved rows of first editions?
The temple of books. What is it about you that makes me digress . . . and digress and digress?)
For years I told myself I wasn’t reading your novels because I’m a cultural Luddite. I never owned a Beatles album in the
’60s nor a Saab in the ’80s. The laptop I use for writing is an ancient beast I purchased in the last century. Therefore when
everyone else was exulting, “Sam Vetiver—have you read her? You HAVE to!” I smiled and said, Thanks, I will. Someday. With
zero intention of doing it.
I’ll now admit the real reason I didn’t. Sheer pig envy. And so well merited.
Because from the moment my editor thrust your latest book The Sodbuster’s Wife at me in her office and said, “You MUST read this,” and I forgot my book in my hotel room and found myself on a train north
without reading material, and I cracked your spine—I was enraptured.
This passage from page 173:
Once it grew light again in the shed, Anja lifted her face from the straw to find the chickens had tucked their heads under
their wings; thinking it was night, they had gone to sleep. They stirred and clucked as she passed among them, and she thought
everything might come right after all, of the bread and goat’s milk she might set out for supper. She opened the door and
smelled green destruction, the grass scoured from the earth by the twister and trees snapped so their sap bled, the land ravaged
to the horizon, the goat dangling tangled from the branches.
Willa Cather, step aside. This is but one of a Whitmanian multitude of passages I could cite, but then this letter would be
even more frighteningly long than it is. To select a few: I loved your bravery in depicting the pioneers’ slaughter of the
Sioux. I wept. The white man’s subsequent vengeful hanging. I raged. And the lovemaking by the wagon, the farmer mounting
his wife from behind as she clung to the wheel to keep from falling in the mud. Unforgettable.
Your meticulously crafted syntax, your ability to time travel: every paragraph lulls us into a stealthy, hypnotic pleasure—and
then those last sentences, BAM! They deliver an emotional roundhouse kick to the throat. Hence I call you a ninja.
As I venture out on the road with my own latest novel, All the Lambent Souls (and is there any greater pleasure in the world than connecting with readers? OK, I will stop apologizing for digressing,
since I am helpless before you), I’ll bring your book with me as a reminder of what’s possible. I know you’re in Boston, and
I wonder if there’s any way you might consider dinner with me while I’m there? Or at least grace one of my New England readings?
Regardless, I thank you for your book. It’s so rare that a novel has changed me forever in some invisible but indelible way.
And you’ve done that. Isn’t that what we all hope for?
Ever your admirer,
~ William.