Honoring Peace:Requiem is Portland Bound

I’m headed to Portland for a series of events in early September. I’ll be doing a book signing at 23rd Ave. Books on September 11th. Yes, September 11th—so I’m offering the reading as a benefit. I’ve joined forces with the Portland chapter of Veterans for Peace as a way of honoring the events of September 11th and at the same stating my own relationship to the world—which is to say, I believe in pursuing peace. And the more strange and difficult the world becomes, the more it seems to me those of us who believe peace is a human right must make our stand. Portland seems to be my moment. Here’s what the Vets have to say about their organization:

Veterans For Peace is a national organization founded in 1985. It includes men and women veterans of all years and duty stations, including from the Spanish Civil War (1938-39) to World War II, the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf and current Iraq wars, as well as other conflicts. Our collective experience tells us wars are easy to start and hard to stop and that those hurt are often the innocent. Thus, other means of problem solving are necessary.

When I approached the Veterans for Peace, I told them that it might seem far-fetched that my novel about poets and writers from the 19th century had any connection to standing against war in the 21st century, but there is a connection. It springs from the people I wrote about. Shelley, Byron, Mary Shelley, Leigh Hunt—that whole circle had a very radical political bent. They fought against the oppression of their day. One of the little known facts about Byron is that in his maiden speech to the House of Lords, he spoke on behalf of the workers of Nottingham who were suffering terribly from the perils of industrialization, losing their livelihoods to the big, automated looms. The workers were out in the streets demonstrating and ultimately attacking the looms that were starving their families. The British government sent troops against them. Byron spoke on their behalf—not the common stance of a young Lord. Shelley too: he was thrown out of Oxford for his politics and almost jailed. One of his causes was the plight of Irish at the time, another downtrodden group, and because he encouraged them to rise against their oppressors, he was considered a danger to the state.

Mary was the daughter of two of the most radical political figures of the day. Her mother, of course, was Mary Wollstonecraft, a seminal feminist voice coming out of England, calling for equal educational opportunities for women and objecting to the legalities of marriage that limited women’s rights to own property, bank accounts, inherit—think Pride and Prejudice. Remember? The property cannot go to the women, the daughters. It is entailed to the odious Mr. Collins. That’s the time period. Those were the circumstances that Mary Wollstonecraft was speaking out against. They called her a “hyena in petticoats,” not only for her ideas, but because she had the audacity to speak in the public square. She challenged the whole idea that women should be confined to domesticity—and so did her daughter. Mary Shelley wrote Valperga, a novel about the struggle for democracy in Florence in the 14th century. Her women not only speak in the public square, her main character, Euthenasia, inherits the villa Valperga from her father and joins the radicals, offering her land as a haven. She’s hands-on in her support, standing with the freedom fighters as they press for democracy. Ultimately it costs her her life. Valperga is Mary Shelley’s most satisfying and fully realized novel. It deserves much more attention than it’s ever received. We see her working on it in the pages of Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein.

So, these are very political people I’ve written about. I’ve no doubt that were they alive today, they’d be in alignment with the philosophy of the Veterans for Peace and I’m grateful for the opportunity to bring the political aspect of my novel to light. I’m looking forward to my Portland appearance. I’ll be on KBOO radio the Tuesday before my reading. It’s community radio, a little like KPFA in Berkeley. I’m also going to be teaching a writers workshop in Portland on what I’ve decided to call, Story Stalking. More about that later.