Reflections from Modern Memoirs Client Nien-Tszr “Tom” Tsai

Nien-Tszr “Tom” Tsai published his two-volume, bilingual autobiography entitled Hiking on the Mountain and Start Your Engine! with Modern Memoirs in 2024, featuring the first-ever tête-bêche bindings that our company has produced. Tsai’s wife, Elizabeth Tan Tsai, who has published three books of her own with Modern Memoirs, spearheaded the project on behalf of her husband. This Assisted Memoir project, which included Modern Memoirs’ commissioned translation of the text from Chinese to English, took one year and four months from the day she first contacted us to the day books arrived on the Tsais’ doorstep. We asked the Tsais to reflect on the publication process and to comment on what it has meant to share his books with others.

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1. Tom, in Hiking on the Mountain, you write that you were born in China in 1937, and that your mother died when you were seven years old, the same year civil war broke out between the Communist Party and the Nationalist (KMT) government. In those troubled times, you grew close to your father, who raised you as a single parent. When you moved to California in the 1970s, he joined you and helped you and your wife, Elizabeth, take care of your two children. In honor of Father’s Day this month, please share a memory or value you learned from your father that you will always carry with you.

Tom Tsai: I remember that my father was always kind to other people. He was very generous to his friends. He was quiet, a man of few words. He lived simply, avoiding luxury. He exercised daily indoors and outdoors, doing tai chi beautifully, which I learned from him.

2. When you were twelve, your father joined the KMT army and moved the two of you from Mainland China to Taiwan. Later, you went to the United States to study, and it became your permanent home. You write, “Over time, my homesickness diminished while my affinity for my thriving homeland grew.” How were you able to maintain a connection with your homeland while building a new life in the U.S.?

Tom Tsai: I maintained connection by corresponding with relatives, classmates, and friends in Taiwan and Mainland China; reading books and newspapers about changes occurring there; watching Chinese cinema and opera; attending lectures by Chinese writers; helping Taiwan’s shipbuilding industry and the Mainland’s railway development; visiting Taiwan and the Mainland many times; singing with various Chinese choral groups in Taiwan and at Lincoln Center; and teaching driving to (and chatting with) Chinese visiting scholars and new immigrants.

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“Reading my writings transports me to yesteryears. This personal history shows how I have become what I am today.”

3. In Hiking on the Mountain, you write, “Ever since I attended a literary camp during my sophomore year in high school and began journaling, I have been fascinated with using writing to express my emotions and record my experiences.” What makes the writing process so rewarding for you?

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Tom Tsai: The writing process clarifies my thoughts and distills my experiences in precise words. These words become fixed in my mind. I can retrieve these words and relive my experiences. Reading my writings transports me to yesteryears. This personal history shows how I have become what I am today.

4. Your career was in mechanical engineering, but you also spent years as a driving instructor in the Washington, D.C. area, teaching 1,000 people—mainly international students and their parents—who ranged from sixteen to seventy-five years of age. Start Your Engine! shares letters from former students who describe you as energetic and kind, offering patient guidance that put them at ease and made them feel more self-assured. Many remember you encouraging them, even quite early in their lessons, to step on the accelerator and “Keep going!” How did this become your signature expression?

Tom Tsai: “Keep going” simplifies in two words the lesson I impart: You’ve begun, don’t be scared, maintain your speed, keep driving. It relaxes the students. It affirms that they’re doing well and should keep doing what they’re doing. It boosts their confidence. While this lesson is one that applies to driving, it can metaphorically extend to any area of life in which one must persevere.

5. In Start Your Engine!, you describe how everyday driving can offer broader philosophical insights. What is an example?

Tom Tsai: In my years of teaching driving, I have often drawn parallels between the rules of the road and the larger lessons of life. For instance, by following traffic rules, such as “keep to the right,” we automatically drive on the right side of the road. No one needs to remind us. Safe driving habits become a part of our life. The larger lesson is: Follow the rules and live safely.

6. Elizabeth, what inspired you to return to Modern Memoirs to publish your husband’s writings in this two-volume collection? What are your observations on the publication process—especially choosing the specialized tête-bêche binding? How have others responded to the books?

Elizabeth Tsai: The friendship and trust that I have developed with Modern Memoirs during the publication of my three books inspired me to return when Tom decided to publish his Chinese books in English and Chinese. MM arranged for their translation with a university translation center. After editing the translation, I turned the project back to MM, who suggested tête-bêche binding, where one can read the Chinese text and, turning the book head over tail, read the English text. The bilingual books arrived just in time for a family gathering for Mother’s Day. Our children and grandchildren did not leave empty handed! We are very pleased and happy with the books, which the Library of Congress has added to its collection, and our family and friends love them.

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Liz Sonnenberg is the staff Genealogist at Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Reflections from Modern Memoirs Client Stephen Rostand

Stephen Rostand has published four books with Modern Memoirs. The first three—a photography collection in 2007, a department history in 2008 (reprinted in a second edition in 2019), and a family history in 2020—were featured in the January 2022 edition of “Reflections.” Rostand’s fourth publication, entitled It’s Okay to Play, was completed in 2024 and features another collection of his photography. Upon receiving his books, Rostand wrote to us, saying:

“The books are beautiful, even better than I expected. The paper has the right feel and texture, the photos are crisp, sharp and appear much better on paper than on the computer screen. In all, the real book is a work of art and everyone is to be congratulated for their contributions to what is so outstanding and masterfully done. You all have added sharpness, focus, and, as we photographers like to say, ‘snap’ to my ideas. You did a great job. I am overwhelmed.”

We followed up to ask the author to reflect on his art and his continued interest in the publication process.

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1. In 2022, you said that you published your first photography book, entitled Mostly Paris, in order to preserve the best of your images for family and friends. What motivated you to create this second collection? With whom do you intend to share it?

Stephen Rostand: Mostly Paris was published 17 years ago, and during that time I often thought about doing another book of photographs, but what photos to use and their purpose was unclear. During this timeframe a constant theme that kept appearing in news articles and in my professional journals was the problem of “work/life balance” and “burnout.” Having, at one time, experienced this phenomenon, I thought it would be interesting to do a book of photographs demonstrating what people do to fulfill their lives other than work. I call the book It’s Okay to Play. It tries to show photographically how childhood play transitions to adult pastimes. I am distributing this book to family, friends, and colleagues, but I realize many of them are in my geriatric age group. Although it is never too late to play, I will also be giving these books to many of my younger colleagues who are at the onset or in the middle of their careers.

2. In the first volume, every image was shot in black and white. In It’s Okay to Play, two-thirds of the images are in color. What accounts for that change?

Stephen Rostand: In the era of film photography, before computers and digital cameras, whether the photo was in black and white or color depended on what film you had in your camera at the time; most often it was black and white. For those reasons, in that era, photographers tended to see in black and white. I, as many others, felt black and white showed the essence of the photo without the distraction of color. In the present digital era, the photographer has the option of black and white or color, without concern for film. As a result, one has the opportunity of seeing in either mode and can make a choice. Although I still believe, in many instances color detracts from the essence of the image, it can also add warmth or feelings that might not be appreciated in a stark black-and-white print.

3. The French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson once said, “Your first 1,000 photographs are your worst.” You have been photographing for sixty years. Do you agree with Cartier-Bresson? What is one of the key lessons you have learned about this art form in that time?

“When armed with a camera or a sketch pad, one’s surroundings take on greater dimensions. One tends to look in every direction, up, down, side to side, seeing people and places in greater detail, perhaps for the first time.”

Stephen Rostand: Cartier-Bresson is correct. A really good photograph is elusive. It takes a long time to know your equipment, to have the patience to see your surroundings, and to decide what would make a good photograph—its timing and its purpose. It means early on one can waste much film and time. Nevertheless, one can occasionally produce a good image. With more time and maturity, one’s images improve progressively until one can more readily discover the “decisive moment.” Thereafter, good photographs are produced more consistently. Time, practice, and patience are the secrets to success in any art form or, for that matter, in any field of endeavor.

4. In your recent book, you said that photography helps you to see things from different perspectives and gain insights into people, the world, art, and yourself. How is that so? Can you share an anecdote of when photography gave you such insights?

Stephen Rostand: Most people live their daily lives oblivious to their surroundings. Their focus is on work and their activities of daily living. When armed with a camera or a sketch pad, one’s surroundings take on greater dimensions. One tends to look in every direction, up, down, side to side, seeing people and places in greater detail, perhaps for the first time. One takes in the complete scene, is more aware of one’s surroundings, may be better able to anticipate what might be happening, see the humor or seriousness in the scene. Life becomes more interesting and richer. Some examples for me: seeing humor in the incongruous juxtaposition of a Sabrett’s hotdog stand next to the entrance of Harry Winston’s jewelry store on Fifth Avenue in New York; another is the deep spiritual response I had on seeing the blue-green ice of a calving Margaree Glacier on a cold, silent, overcast morning while virtually alone on a small boat on the inner passage of Alaska.

5. The American photographer Lois Greenfield once said, “My interest in photography is not to capture an image I see or even have in my mind, but to explore the potential of moments I can only begin to imagine.” For you, how much of photography is about your intention, and how much is about the unforeseen?

Stephen Rostand: Greenfield’s more philosophical bent does not resonate with me. Unless one is a professional photographer carrying out specific assignments, most photographers may often only have a vague idea of what they are looking for. Perhaps they want to capture a particular place, be it urban or rural, a portrait, wildlife, or flowers. I like to photograph, when possible, the theater of life. I like to have people in my pictures. But having a general idea of what one wants does not mean one can always anticipate what one will encounter when arriving at the venue. One’s intention often comes after having looked at the finished photograph because much work in the dark room or with Photoshop creates the final image, and often the process of making that final image is when the photographer’s intention and/or philosophy is revealed. The final image reveals not only the scene but also the photographer who took it. The image and the photographer are the same.

Sabrett’s Peerage, Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, May 1994
Photo by Stephen Rostand

Epiphany, Margaree Glacier, Inside Passage, Alaska, July 2015
Photo by Stephen Rostand

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Liz Sonnenberg is the staff Genealogist at Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Reflections from Modern Memoirs Client Marian Leibold

Marian Leibold has published two collections of poetry with Modern Memoirs. Her first book, entitled Forever Now: The Interconnectedness of All Things, was published in 2020. The second book, entitled Bridges: Visible and Invisible, came out this year. We interviewed Leibold about her first project in the October 2022 edition of “Reflections” and caught up with her again this month—National Poetry Month—to find out more about her second one.

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“Poetry often functions as a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious parts of ourselves, much the way a melody or song blends those same aspects of heart and mind.”

1. In one piece in your recent book, you say that “poetry is a tool for map-making.” What do you mean by that?

Marian Leibold: Poetry often functions as a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious parts of ourselves, much the way a melody or song blends those same aspects of heart and mind. Maps can be records of lived experience, visual routes to offer to fellow travelers, aids to orient one in the world, encouragement to explore, companions in the unknown larger world, or some combination of all of these. I would hope poetry can similarly serve as a tool for “map-making” for our individual journeys through invisible, yet real, terrain.

2. Your second volume is organized around the theme of bridges, with different structural types and their symbolic meanings framing the several chapters. What inspired you to use bridges in this way?

Marian Leibold: I knew I wanted “bridges” as a theme because it seems that now, more than ever, our contentious world is calling for reconnection. Bridges, both visually and metaphorically, offer the invitation for people to think about how they might build and/or cross bridges in their own lives to gain greater understanding and compassion.

3. As you did with your first book, you placed a painting you created on the cover. Can you share a bit about the place you’ve depicted in the painting and your process generating it? In deep, rich colors, it portrays a brook in a forest, with wildflowers growing on both sides of the water, and a fallen log crossing over the brook to form a natural bridge. Which came first, the title Bridges, or the painting?

Marian Leibold: The painting on the cover represents a natural landscape in which a once living tree is repurposed into a bridge. I spend as much time as I can in the natural world and the image of two hillsides connected by a fallen tree carries within it a hidden message for us all. The painting preceded the book title. Perhaps on some level, they just found each other.

4. In one poem you write, “My grip on life is loosening / while my full participation grows.” How would you say this second book is a product of the age you are now?

Marian Leibold: My second book, Bridges, includes many poems involving discernment. As time is a limited natural resource for humans, one must choose wisely how to use it. As I grow older, I become “somewhat” more realistic about the fact that there are only twenty-four hours in a day and that Nature will have her way whether I sanction it or not. Choosing to comply with her teaching seems like a good idea now!

5. What was it about your experience of publishing the first volume that led you to publish a new volume?

Marian Leibold: I enjoyed working with Modern Memoirs, and holding the finished product in my hands was like being given the keys to a door I had always wanted to open. Poems are not meant to live between the pages of dusty journals or on scraps of paper folded in pockets. They are meant to breathe their life into the world, and publishing my first book made this evident.

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Liz Sonnenberg is genealogist for Modern Memoirs.

A Painting as Portal to People and Places of the Past

This post is the ninth in a series-in-progress by company president Megan St. Marie about heirlooms and objects related to her family history that she keeps in her office to inform and inspire her work at Modern Memoirs.

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A print of this painting of a white horse once hung in the Vermont farmhouse of Megan St. Marie’s great-grandparents Alfred “Fred” Damian Lambert and Anastasie “Tazzie” Lambert, and now now hangs in her Modern Memoirs office. Read on for more information

Fred Lambert standing in front of his farmhouse in Highgate, Vermont with his Percheron workhorses, Dick (left) and Dan (right), c. 1950

Fred and Tazzy Lambert at their farm in Highgate, Vermont, 1937

Louis Raymond’s 1884 marriage license, listing his occupation as “Farmer”

An ancestry chart prepared by Modern Memoirs Genealogist Liz Sonnenberg for this piece, documenting some of Megan St. Marie’s paternal ancestry, including her 2x-great-grandfather Louis Homer Raymond, who died in 1903

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Obituary for Louis Homer Raymond (here referred to as H.L. Raymo) describing his sudden death after a routine appendectomy in 1903 when he was forty years old

A patrilineal line ancestry chart prepared by Genealogist Liz Sonnenberg showing Megan (Lambert) St. Marie’s patrilineal line, going back thirteen generations to her 11x-great-grandfather.

A plaque in L’Église St. Aubin listing the names of people who imigrated from Tourourve au Perche, France to Canada, including Megan St. Marie’s 8x great-grandfather Aubin Lambert dit Champagne

Megan St. Marie standing with her father, Raymond Alfred Lambert, in front of L’Église St. Aubin, April 2023. This is the church in Tourouvre au Perche, France where the first Lambert in their lineage to immigrate to French Canada was baptized in 1632

Ray Lambert standing with a local police officer outside of L’Église St. Aubin in Tourourve au Perche, France, April 2023

Fred Lambert’s barn in Highgate, Vermont, c. 1948. It was destroyed by fire in April 2024

Genealogy enthusiasts don’t have to explain to each other why we find poring over primary documents and family trees so compelling. We love getting lost in rabbit holes of research, and we rejoice in breaking through brick walls, wielding documentation like sledgehammers against uncertainty about our roots. Sharing our findings with others who don’t share our passion requires that we connect the dots between the names and dates and records we discover to present our ancestors in their full humanity, with storytelling and emotion fleshing out the bare bones of fact. Sometimes objects and heirlooms help in this process by tangibly bringing us closer to previous generations. My son and I snuggle under an afghan my grandmother made, and though he never met her, he can imagine her hands at work.

A print of a painting of a white horse that has been in my family for four generations inspires this piece of writing. It came to me from my father, Raymond Alfred Lambert, who grew up in a small farming village on the border of Vermont and Québec. He said it originally belonged to his grandfather, Alfred “Fred” Damian Lambert (1882–1963). Though I never knew this great-grandfather because he died before I was born, my dad has shared many stories about him over the years. Some were about his team of white Percheron workhorses named Dick and Dan. As a child I thought my great-grandpa Lambert had actually hired someone to paint this picture as a tribute to them. I later realized the implausibility of such an act—commissioning a portrait of a workhorse would have been quite an indulgence for a Vermont oat farmer!

At one point my dad said it was likely his grandfather stumbled across the picture at a barn auction and bought it since it reminded him of his horses. I accepted that theory until I hung it in my office at Modern Memoirs and noticed that handwritten on the back are the words “Great-Grandpa Raymond’s horse ‘Alpha.’” In addition to being my dad’s first name, Raymond was the maiden name of Fred Lambert’s wife, my great-grandmother Anastasie “Tazzy” Raymond Lambert (1886–1971). Like Fred, she also died before my birth, and I never heard any stories about her family’s horses. But, her father, Louis Homer Raymond (1863–1903), who would’ve been “Great-Grandpa Raymond” to my dad and his generation, listed his occupation as “Farmer” on his 1884 marriage license, and it’s entirely possible that he owned a Percheron workhorse named Alpha.

I know very little about the life of this more distant ancestor, and the most compelling details I have are not about his farm animals or his work, but about his untimely, and rather gruesome death. Louis’s obituary states that he was at the hospital recovering from an appendectomy when he awoke from a nightmare and leapt out of bed. Apparently, this sudden movement opened the incision from his operation, and he never recovered from the ensuing complications. He died, leaving behind his wife, Delia Pelkey/Pelletier (1864–1935) and their six children. Compounding the tragedy was the fact that Delia was pregnant with their last child, Dorothy Edna Raymond (1903–1977), who was born just a month after Louis’s unexpected passing. He was only forty years old.

Tazzy, the eldest child in the family, was seventeen when her father died, so he wasn’t there a year and a half later when she married Fred Lambert in 1905. The Franco-American community in their area was closeknit, and I wonder if Fred had known his late father-in-law before he died, if they’d talked about horses and farming, if the elder Louis had told young Fred that Percherons were the best workhorses around. I don’t know the answers to these questions; but I do know that Fred ended up with Dick and Dan, Percherons like the one in the painting that was apparently owned by Great-Grandpa Lambert—and, it turns out, like generations of Franco farmers before them.

My dad’s genealogy research stretches back to mid-16th-century France as it traces the Lambert family name to his 10x-great-grandfather, Louis Lambert (not to be confused with the above-mentioned Louis Raymond), who is the earliest entry in the patrilineal line ancestry chart included here. We can’t confirm exactly where Louis Lambert lived in the 1500s, but we do know that his son Jean had a son named Audax Odoard Lambert dit Champagne (my dad’s 8x-great-grandfather), who was born in a small village called Tourouvre. It’s likely that Audax hailed from there, as well. This community is in the region of Perche, from which Percheron horses get their name. Did Fred Lambert know he descended from Percheron families when he brought Percheron horses Dick and Dan to his farmhouse in Vermont? Perhaps. But even if he didn’t, the small connection is thrilling to me as I think of him, knowingly or not, uniting with his ancestral homeland through the animals who helped him farm his land in Vermont to provide for next generations.

In 2023, my father and I travelled to France on a dream-come-true heritage trip, visiting many of the places where our ancestors lived. We spied several Percheron horses as we drove through Perche on our way to Tourouvre, and seeing them made us think of the horse painting that once hung in Fred and Tazzy Lambert’s farmhouse in Vermont. We were on our way to visit L’Église St. Aubin, the church in Tourouvre where the first Lambert in our lineage to immigrate to French Canada was baptized in 1632. He is my dad’s 7x great-grandfather and was the son of Audax, named Aubin Lambert dit Champagne in honor of the patron saint of the church.

Today L’Église St. Aubin is still a place of worship, but it also serves as something of a museum devoted to the Percheron migration to French Canada.[i] There we saw 19th-century stained-glass windows depicting the immigration and also the return of descendants who commissioned the windows.

We also saw a plaque with Aubin’s name inscribed, and Dad and I both lit candles in his honor and in honor of his Parisian wife, Élisabeth Aubert, who immigrated to Canada as “une fille du roi” (king’s daughter) in 1670. (A dramatization of their union was included in the 2017 CBC documentary “The Story of Us”, starting at about minute 21 in this clip.) In the midst of a trip filled with moments that exceeded all of my hopes, it was the very best day for me because I knew it was the most meaningful day for my dad, and on some level we shared this special day not only with each other, but with Aubin and Élisabeth, and with Louis, Fred and Tazzy, too.

When we returned from France, Dad and I wanted to share our experiences with others, and we were delighted when the Franco American Centre at the University of Maine-Orono agreed to host our online presentation entitled Dans les Pas de Nos Ancêtres (In the Steps of Our Ancestors): A Father-Daughter Trip to France.

Since then, we have shared stories and photos at our family reunion, and I’ve written a few brief pieces for the Modern Memoirs newsletter, while wanting to write even more. When I finally found the time to draft this piece, my staff helped me solve the mystery around the origins of Fred and Tazzy’s picture of the white horse. With thanks to Book Designer Nicole Miller, I now know that it is a magazine illustration from circa 1902 entitled Sunday Morning by Austrian artist Carl Kahler. Perhaps Louis Raymond saw this illustration in a magazine, just a year or so before he died, and it reminded him of his horse, so he kept it. Perhaps Tazzy then held onto the picture in memory of her father, displaying it in the home she shared with her husband, Fred, on a farm where they also kept Percheron horses. Though I can only speculate about this part of the story, it’s immensely satisfying to know more about the picture itself, which acts like a portal to people and places of the past in my family history.

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Postscript

I thought I had said all I wanted to about Kahler’s Sunday Morning painting and how it connects me to my family history, but then I sent a draft of this blog post to my dad so he could review it before I shared it. In response he told me with sadness that the barn Fred Lambert once owned, where he kept the Percheron horses Dick and Dan, was recently destroyed by fire. I felt a bittersweet sense of synchronicity at hearing this news since I started writing this piece on the very day the barn burned, not knowing of the fire’s occurrence. The following is a brief reflection my dad wrote about the loss, which I am honored to share below:

On April 2, 2024 at 4 a.m. the barn on route 78 between Highgate Center and East Highgate, Vermont, formerly part of the farm owned by my grandpa Fred Lambert and grandma Tazzy Lambert, was consumed by a fire of unknown origin.

The barn was a place of many fond memories for me. Grandpa stanchioned his herd of 21 dairy cows in it. A pen was the home of a prized bull available for breeding cows, mostly Jerseys, a few Brown Swiss, and some mixed breeds. Next to the bullpen was a pen for calves and heifers with their promise of much milk to come from them in the future. On the north end were two stalls for Grandpa’s white-coated Percheron workhorses.

In front of the stanchioned cows was an alleyway. Hay stored above in the hayloft would be tossed down one forkful at a time and placed in front of each cow. Corn silage from the silo on the south end of the barn was shoveled before each cow, and grain from the feed store, delivered in burlap bags, added to the hope of an abundance of milk from each cow milked in the early morning and late afternoon. A necessary part of the barn was a long gutter behind the cows to collect waste the cows dropped into it. Shoveling the smelly stuff into a wheelbarrow and wheeling it outside to the manure pile was, to put it bluntly, a stinky job. A large watering trough for the horses and separate water bowls next to each cow provided water from a driven well near the barn.

The old barn is gone, but memories of it remain burned in my mind. For me it was my grandpa’s temple, where he paid homage to the bovines and equines that were such a big part of his life as a farmer steeped in the ways of agriculture he learned as a boy in the late-19th century in northern Vermont.

Dad’s likening of the barn to a temple designates it as holy ground in his heart, on par with the holiness of the church we visited together in Perche. Reverence for places like these is integral to my passion for family history, making this work transcend bare facts or mere nostalgia to achieve a sense of the sacred. With his family history research, my father has given me, and everyone in our family, a tremendous gift. His genealogy website contains over 48,000 names of relatives he has documented, dating back centuries. In addition to gifting us this treasure trove of information about our roots, my dad has passed along many objects dear to him and his family, like the Sunday Morning picture in my office. When I look at it, I think of our ancestors, the places where they lived, and worshiped, and worked, and how their lives allowed me to come to the place I am today, grounded in my own family’s history as I help others publish books about theirs.

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[i] We were also delighted to discover that the official Musée de l'émigration française au canada is located just up the street from L’Église St. Aubin, and we paid it a visit after our time at the church.

Megan St. Marie, photo by Jason Lamb Photography

Megan St. Marie is president of Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Young Like Didion

A BLOG POST BY
PUBLISHING INTERN OLIVIA GO

New York City, 2024

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On the last day of class, my creative writing professor at Smith College quoted Rilke:

If one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn’t write at all.

“It’s not worth the agonizing,” he explained. After ten weeks of laboring over our creative pieces, all nine of us students knew exactly the agony he was referring to: the grief of establishing your voice, plagued by constant self-doubt, all to create something that in six months that might make you cringe. Hands clasped, my professor continued in a serious tone, “But I couldn’t live without that agony because without writing, my life would have no real meaning.”

I have thought about his words for a long time, wondering where I find myself within them, if at all. My time at Smith exposed me to many fantastic writers, and I’m not just talking about the likes of Adrienne Rich and Sylvia Plath and George Eliot through my literature classes. I’m talking about Greta M. and Emily H. and Sofia C., whose work I have had the privilege of reading in my creative writing workshops. I feel so lucky and inspired to have encountered all of these writers, but in the past four years, I have also wondered about the impact of my own work and if it is worth saying in my own words what greater writers could better.

I have been writing creatively since I was eleven years old, scribbling short stories in a Lisa Frank notebook, promising myself I would be published by seventeen, and planning to move to New York, where the writers lived. I was voted “most likely to be an author” by my seventh-grade class, which at the time felt like an earnest promise of success. By the time I got to college, I had a complicated relationship with writing. On good days, I would start thinking I was one of the greatest minds of my generation; on bad days, I would spiral into an existential crisis, wondering what on earth I was even trying to do.

At the time of writing this, I am twenty-one, a senior in college, and as graduation approaches I am squinting my eyes, looking out towards what will be the rest of my life. The vision for my future is somehow hazier than the one I had when I was eleven, and my dreams of being a writer living in New York feel foolish. Echoing in my head, I hear the voice of my wise and acclaimed professor tell me on the last day of the last creative writing class I will ever take in undergrad that he could not live without writing, and I no longer know if I could say the same.

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I’ve been going to New York monthly to visit my partner, a recent Mount Holyoke graduate, who now lives in the city. When I am there, we spend most of our days together, holed up in their apartment, ordering Thai food, and rewatching shows we’ve seen so many times we’ve memorized the lines. Those days are only sweet and only wonderful. But on some days, my partner has a job to go to, and then I am left alone to find ways to occupy my time.

One such day, it was particularly beautiful and warm, and I had spent the entire day inside reading and checking my email because I did not know where else to go, or what else to do. Something about going outside by myself in the city where I had always hoped to live as a serious writer made me nervous and tired. But by dinnertime, my hunger outweighed my anxiety, and I walked out the door.

"I ate in silence and let myself imagine living in the city, being in love there, and writing there for real. The image was foggy like a dream."

Outside the apartment, it was dark and humid. Some men were playing acoustic guitar in front of their repair shop, and women and children danced to the music. I wandered around, trying not to look lost until I found a pizzeria around the corner. I bought a slice of pepperoni and a can of beer with a crumpled five-dollar bill. It was a crowded place, and I didn't know where to stand while I waited for my order. I finally took a spot by the corner and turned on my phone, frantically trying to make it look like I was doing something, as if idleness were some sort of crime. It had started to rain while I was waiting, so when my pizza was ready, I took shelter under a tree and awkwardly sat on a planter. The rain dodged the leaves overhead and managed to find my face. I ate in silence and let myself imagine living in the city, being in love there, and writing there for real. The image was foggy like a dream.

Meanwhile, around me I watched a fat rat run in front of a couple taking a nighttime stroll. They both screamed and clutched each other as they crossed to the other side. I laughed and then quickly stood up, panicked, turning around to make sure there weren’t any rats next to me.

At the time, we had been reading Joan Didion’s essay “Goodbye to All That” in my creative writing class. In it she says the city smelled like “lilacs and garbage.” I could smell the garbage sweating from the bags tossed haphazardly on the sidewalks the moment I stepped outside. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to also smell the lilacs. I swore I could smell them then. I swear it now.

 Didion writes:

It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also . . . a city for only the very young.

* * *

When we are alone, my partner admits to me that they sometimes regret choosing to live in New York.

“But you love it though,” I remind them, “right?”

“Yeah. . . yeah I do.”

They say it like they are trying it convince themselves of it, and yet I still believe them because I understand that feeling of loving something that doesn’t always love you back. Why do we keep trying? The more appropriate question is how can we not, when we are so young and so hopeful?

* * *

I had felt like I could live in New York only if I was a serious writer. But I’ve come to realize that being a “serious writer” does not mean being widely acclaimed, nor does it mean you know exactly what the future holds for you and your craft. It just means you take writing seriously.

I was standing in the rain among the rats—pizza cold and socks soggy. I thought about how stupid and young and terribly out of place I felt in New York. But it didn’t make me want to leave. It made me want to write. “Goodbye to All That” begins with the line:

It is easy to see the beginning of things and harder to see the end.

Maybe one day I will tire of writing and tire of the city. I don’t know when that day is, but it is not here now.

I walked back to the apartment and did the only thing I could.

I pulled out my notebook.

I wrote about the rain.

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Olivia Go is the fall 2023/spring 2024 publishing intern for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Reflections from Modern Memoirs Client Harold Hirshman

Harold Hirshman published his book entitled Sketches from Memory and More with Modern Memoirs in 2023. This Assisted Memoir is an expanded edition of his first book, Sketches from Memory, published here in 2005. The recent project took just six months from the day he contacted us to the day books arrived on his doorstep. We asked Hirshman to reflect on what the publication process was like for him, and what it has meant to share his books with others.

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1. In volume one, you describe “how hard the task of remembering is,” and you say that writing is better than photography at recapturing moments from the past. For you, why is remembering difficult, and how does the process of writing help you recollect?

“…memory is illusive, like quicksilver, and is influenced by present conditions.”

Harold Hirshman: Leaving neuroscience to the side, memory is illusive, like quicksilver, and is influenced by present conditions. Trying to evoke what really happened in the past is a daunting task. I cannot exactly say why writing helps, but once I have a pen in hand or even a recording device, the present fades to memory and the event to be described comes to the fore. The result is more than a picture, since it may contain smells, feelings, and emotion. Nonetheless, the reason I chose “sketches” as part of the title was to capture the incompleteness of the worded picture. The book is not a finished painting.

2. In the first volume, you also say there was a certain period in your life when you first felt “permitted” to write. From whom (or what) did you feel you received permission? Why did you believe you needed to be allowed to tell your stories?

Harold Hirshman: My use of the word “permitted” reflects three separate barriers that needed to be removed before I was comfortable writing. The first barrier was self-consciousness. Why would anyone care about my story? The second barrier was caution. I did not want to consciously hurt anyone I was writing about. The last barrier was mechanical. How could I get on paper what I was thinking and feeling? I was in psychoanalysis when most of the first volume was written. The analytic process of saying what comes to mind was critical to how I formulated these sketches. They were not intended to be didactic lessons from my life. They were intended to be like an analytic session—what came to mind as I tracked the starting idea along whatever wending path my mind took. Talking to my analyst convinced me I could articulate thoughts about the past and the present. He insisted that any writing I wanted him to consider had to be read aloud to him. One session, I was reading a piece about my mother and had to stop because I was crying, and so was he. His response showed me that others could relate to my stories. This then removed the barriers except the last, which I chose to address with a pen and legal pad. Fortunately, I have always had a secretary to make my work accessible to others from the handwritten text.

3. Both books share “sketches” about aspects of your life, such as family, faith, career, and more, but you say that deliberate omissions prevent these vignettes from presenting the complete story of your life. Nevertheless, “…they each pack a potent emotional punch,” according to staff member Emma Solis in her recent blog post. How did you choose which stories to tell and which to cut? What were your goals in writing these books, and how did the “sketch” format help you to achieve them?

“So I would have a memory and try to follow it. But I was always conscious of trying to do no harm.”

Harold Hirshman: The wand chooses the wizard, as J.K. Rowling wrote about Harry’s wand. So I would have a memory and try to follow it. But I was always conscious of trying to do no harm. Consequently, there is little about my first wife, or the courting of my second wife, Lorie, or about my children as they grew up. Given the intent not to be didactic and not to try to create a coherent conscious picture of me, the sketch chose me as the appropriate vehicle. As to my goal in writing the book, in some way I fell in love with what I had written and didn’t want it to molder in a manilla folder to be trashed after my death. I guess vanity played a part.

4. You initially wrote out the stories in your first volume on yellow legal pads, and you dictated the new stories for the second volume. Describe the differences between these processes as means of creating a first draft. Were they equally satisfying modes of storytelling? How did you move from handwritten text to a first typed draft? From recordings to a manuscript?

Harold Hirshman: The first volume was essentially handwritten. Then someone asked me to write about my career, and those law stories became the basis of the second volume. They are a longer narrative, and I caviled at the task of so much writing. My typing is not really adequate to create a story. Since I was used to dictating legal material, dictation was a natural alternative. I tried getting my own dictating machine and a speech-to-text app for my computer. Nothing worked, probably because of technical ineptness. Then—I don’t remember when—I learned I could use the “notes” function on my phone, and that became my standard method. Of course, this was reliant on having someone help to create a draft I could work with, and my secretary, Deb, is great. Comparing the two modes of storytelling? Writing a story is like a craft. Your fingers are connected to the words. This is actually my preferred method, but it then requires being typed and also, I get tired writing. Dictating is quicker and not fatiguing, but it is also less magical.

5. How did you know it was “time” to publish your first volume in 2005? What sparked you to take up the project again in 2023, reprinting the first volume and adding chapters that doubled the page count?

Harold Hirshman: My father died in 2002. Several years earlier, I had given him a tape recorder to capture the memories of his life, which he did and which I had transcribed into a manuscript. After he died, I wanted to preserve his words as well as my experiences in the subsequent year of mourning described in the chapter called “Minyan Madness,” hence the first book. By 2023, all of the copies of my first book were long gone. But when I contacted Ali de Groot at Modern Memoirs, she said that one of their technical wizards could resurrect the first book. I was delighted. I also wanted to publish what I had written since the first book. This time my fear of my papers becoming lost in folders when I am dead was augmented by the realization that once I am retired, I will not necessarily have easy access to my documents on the law firm’s computer system. For these reasons, I wanted to save my writings in book form. The second, expanded book was kind of a birthday present to myself—a present that never would have come to be without the help of Modern Memoirs.

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Liz Sonnenberg is genealogist for Modern Memoirs.