Charlotte Tressler

Mother’s Day

May 12, 2024

Family, Rural Life

My mother, Elizabeth, with family dog McTavish and an unknown smaller dog. / Photo by Doug Bennett

My mother loved animals. Stray pups on the roadside (a common sight in 1970s rural Texas) always prompted her to pull over and launch a rescue mission, wading through thigh-high Johnson grass after the frightened dogs. That’s how I became the proud owner of my ugly mutt, Boris.

Bookishness runs in the family. / Photo by Doug Bennett

My mother loved language and literature. She had a master’s degree in English but was underemployed as a fourth-grade teacher after I was born. Most of my memories of her involve trips to the library and grammar lessons. I owe my mastery of personal pronouns to her. She was kind and gentle and quiet.

My adult life has been measured by milestones she never got to experience herself: children’s tenth birthdays, their high school and college graduations, a fifty-third birthday, the joy of holding newborn grandchildren and watching them grow.

My mother would have been 100 years old this year. I think of her and all the things she missed, and it makes me appreciate those milestones and my own life even more.

Happy Mother’s Day.

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The Art of X-Ray Reading

May 4, 2024

Favorite Authors, Great Books, Research

I picked up this book on a whim at the fabulous multi-level bookstore, Book People, in Austin, TX in 2019. Each chapter analyzes a great work of literature and points out what any aspiring writer might want to learn from it. After the first couple of chapters, I got the fool notion that I should actually read all of the books mentioned. Or most of them, anyway; I decided not to saddle myself with Chaucer or Virgil because of the archaic language.

Here are the books I read:
The Great Gatsby
Lolita (beautiful language, but the subject matter made me want to gouge my eyes out)
A Farewell to Arms
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Bell Jar
Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Short Stories
The Haunting of Hill House
Madame Bovary
Miss Lonelyhearts
Day of the Locust
A Cool Million (also by Nathanael West, but not listed in the book)
The Dream Life of Balso Snell (also by Nathanael West, but not listed in the book)
A Visit from the Goon Squad
The Grapes of Wrath
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Moby Dick
Their Eyes Were Watching God
To Kill a Mockingbird
How to Cook a Wolf
Hiroshima
The Marmot Drive (also by John Hersey, but not mentioned in the book)
The Sea Inside Us
Seabiscuit
The Bluest Eye
The Goldfinch
Learning the art of x-ray reading was a rewarding experience. I’m glad I stumbled upon the book and I’m glad I took on the challenge of closely examining these great books. I’m a better reader and writer for having done it. And it only took me two years.

The Art of X-Ray Reading by Roy Peter Clark | Goodreads

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A Thousand Acres

April 26, 2024

Favorite Authors, Great Books, Rural Life

A Thousand Acres is the story of three sisters in Iowa, told from the perspective of the oldest sister, Ginny, as their rural lives unravel in the aftermath of their father’s sudden decision to sign over all of his land holdings and day-to-day farm operations to them.

This transaction sets off a series of reactions from the sisters, resulting in a domino effect of both intended and unintended consequences and enlightening and devastating revelations.

The story is compelling and deeply personal. Jane Smiley’s portrayal of growing up female in the male-dominated world of pre-1970s rural America is spot-on. Ginny recalls the first time she saw her husband at a high school football game on page 344, and the lowly feelings she described took me back to my own upbringing:

I saw a rangy, good-looking older boy waving at me. I was flattered, so I smiled and waved back in spite of my habitual fearfulness. It was Ty, and when he saw me wave at him, his face went blank. I looked around. The girl he was waving at was two rows in back of me. After we started dating, five years later, he swore he could not remember this incident, and I’m sure he didn’t, but it was burned into my memory as a reminder of the shame you courted if ever you made the mistake of thinking too well of yourself.

I’m glad I read this book; it had been recommended to me several times. It shows that farm life, or any life, for that matter, is never as simple as it seems. Layer upon layer of secrets and things left unsaid lie below the exterior, public version of any family or community, and a single action can start peeling those layers back for everyone to see underneath.

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley | Goodreads

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Once There was a War

April 15, 2024

Favorite Authors, Great Books, Research

Hank Goode, the protagonist in my novel Goode Luck, is a WWII veteran. Although the story is not about his experiences in the Army, he, like most veterans, is affected by them almost daily. I wanted to get an idea of what he’d been through, so I sought out firsthand accounts of WWII military service.

John Steinbeck wanted to get involved but was too old to enlist as a GI and deemed too “communistic” for his request to be commissioned as an Air Force intelligence officer. He became a war correspondent for The New York Herald instead.

This collection of reports runs the gamut of wartime experiences with an expert blend of intimacy and detachment. Steinbeck doesn’t sugar-coat anything. The writing is spare and raw, ranges from humorous to bleak, just like the environment from which he reported. His work brought the front lines home to readers in the United States and gave me some understanding of what it must have been like to be there.

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The Marmot Drive

April 8, 2024

Favorite Authors, Great Books

I don’t know about you, but I love reading old books. There’s something about the writing from the 1940s and 1950s that is so impeccable and sophisticated. Not to mention the wonderful smell of a well-maintained old book. When my copy of The Marmot Drive arrived by mail, the first thing I did was bury my nose in the pages. I wasn’t disappointed; the fragrance was clean and dry and comforting. Like stepping into the entryway of my grandmother’s house.

Even better, The Marmot Drive turned out to be a surprising and brilliantly written novel. The story is told from the perspective of Hester, a twenty-something city girl who has travelled to the village of Tunxis, Connecticut with her boyfriend, Eben, to meet his family. Unbeknownst to them, Eben’s father, a town official, has organized a massive operation to rid the town of groundhogs, scheduled for that weekend. It’s all hands on deck, including Hester, and she sees firsthand how group mentality, festering resentments, and misinformation can derail even the best-laid plans.
I was impressed by John Hersey’s ability to effectively portray a young woman’s POV. I didn’t expect that from a middle-aged male novelist in 1953. I also didn’t expect the ending, which has elements of Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery, with undertones of Salem witch trials.
The writing is elegant and restrained; the 1950s vocabulary is fascinating. I always love learning new words; my favorite one from this book is “hobbledyhoy,” which means adolescent awkwardness.
I loved this book. I’m so glad I bought it. I will keep it forever.

The Marmot Drive by John Hersey | Goodreads

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The Axeman’s Carnival

April 2, 2024

Favorite Authors, Great Books

What can I say about Catherine Chidgey? She’s a masterful and insightful writer who can immerse her readers in worlds we’d never imagined.
In The Axeman’s Carnival, Chidgey’s narrator is a domesticated magpie named Tama, whose keen observations of the human world captivated me and kept me turning pages into the wee hours each night. I dreamed about magpies after I turned off my bedside lamp. I was both satisfied and sad when I reached the final page.
I highly recommend this book, and every other book by this author.

The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey | Goodreads

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