“A writer at the height of her powers” (Oprah.com) reflects on a literary life pulled in two directions: from war zone journalism to the writing and teaching of fiction
In an essay entitled “Spirit and Vision” Melissa Pritchard poses the question: “Why write?” Her answer reverberates throughout A Solemn Pleasure, presenting an undeniable case for both the power of language and the nurturing constancy of the writing life. Whether describing the deeply interior imaginative life required to write fiction, searching for the lost legacy of American literature as embodied by Walt Whitman, being embedded with a young female GI in Afghanistan, traveling with Ethiopian tribes, or revealing the heartrending story of her informally adopted son William, a former Sudanese child slave, this is nonfiction vividly engaged with the world. In these fifteen essays, Pritchard shares her passion for writing and storytelling that educates, honors, and inspires.
Melissa Pritchard is the author of the novel Palmerino, the short story collection The Odditorium, and the essay collection A Solemn Pleasure: To Imagine, Witness, and Write, among other books. Emeritus Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Arizona State University, she now lives in Columbus, Georgia.
I.
A Room in London
The writer lives for two months in London, in another writer’s cramped but atmospheric refuge.
Spirit and Vision
In this essay, the question “why write?” is posed and by way of an answer, Walt Whitman is shown to be a writer of compassionate witness, in contrast to the profit-based pressures of the marketplace.
From the Deep South to the Desert South: An Epiphyte’s Confession
Aware of the power of region in fiction, the writer wonders if her own bland, semi-erased origins will be an obstacle to her literary ambitions.
On Kaspar Hauser
In the British Library, composing a fictional account of the German-born feral child, Kaspar Hauser, the writer comes to see books as devotional objects, holy histories, reliquaries of the human mind.
II.
Time and Biology: On the Threshold of the Sacred
How inescapable pressures of temporality and mortality upon any writer’s work can be met with cultivated courage and an undiminished passion for expressing emotional truths.
Elephant in the Dark
In this essay, an argument is made for “point of view” as being one of the most critical, early decisions to be made by the writer when embarking on a new story.
The Gift of Warwick
A powerful, bittersweet arc of community can emerge in a writing workshop over weeks or months, attesting to attachments formed by a common vulnerability of writers and their shared passion for language and story.
III.
Doxology
The origins and history of the dachshund lead into the author’s own love for her miniature male dachshund, Simon.
A Solemn Pleasure
When the writer reluctantly travels to a writing residency in a castle outside of Edinburgh, Scotland, weeks after her mother’s death, her grief is given perspective when she discovers a cemetery of ancient headstones, each inscription a compressed, often tragic, story.
A Graven Space
In this reflective essay on Georgia O’Keefe, a question emerges: is it possible we idealize the lives of renowned artists in an attempt to unconsciously avoid responsibility for the success or failure of our own creativity?
Decomposing Articles of Faith
Here is an unorthodox, even heretical, response to familiar phrases of Catholic prayer by the writer, herself an unorthodox, even heretical, Catholic.
IV.
Finding Ashton
In this piece, the writer embeds with six female soldiers in Panjshir Province, Afghanistan, and forms an unexpected attachment to the youngest, Senior Airman Ashton Goodman, who will be killed by an IED outside Bagram Air Field four months later.
“Still, God Helps You”: Memories of a Sudanese Child Slave
The harrowing story of a Sudanese boy captured from his village and enslaved by the Janjaweed, only to escape years later into still more harrowing circumstances, as told to the writer by William Akoi Mawwin, now the writer’s informally adopted son.
Circle of Friends
Bereft and directionless, in quiet crisis, the writer travels with photographers Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith to the remote Omo River region of Ethiopia, gaining an unexpected perspective on aging and loneliness.
V.
On Bibliomancy, Anthropodermic Bibliopegy and the Eating Papers
An essay on books, focusing on the use of books for divination, on rare but extant books bound in human skin, and on the ancient healing practice of eating words written on paper.
