ANTHEM is coming, chapter 47

[NOTE: the last post at Blogger will be on Oct. 1 (Tuesday). To stay connected with Field Notes, you can sub here, or we may have a Feedburner work-around coming by Tues... I am a novelist, not a techie, can you tell? In any case, SUB for best results, hahaha, and stay tuned. xo Debbie]

ANTHEM, Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy, publishes on October 1. Each of the book's 47 chapters begins with a song from the Sixties to set the tone, mood, and scene. Every day between now and October 1, come have a listen and read a snippet from each chapter. On October 1, these posts will be archived with a link at ANTHEM's webpage for #teachingAnthem1969
 
This is Chapter 47 (day 1):

AMERICA
Written by Paul Simon
Performed by Simon & Garfunkel
Recorded at Columbia Studios, NY, NY 1968
Drummer: Hal Blaine

And so they journeyed home together....
They drove through a summer when men would walk on the moon and kids would throng to a farm near Woodstock, New York, and Wavy would be there telling them, "What we have in mind is breakfast for 400,000!" and people of all colors and shapes and identities would march against injustice of all kinds in an effort to bring down the established old order and re-establish the ideals of liberty and justice, equality and opportunity, safety and kindness for all.
The future of America drove home.

 

Without giving away just who drove home, you know that they do go home, and the circle completes itself, although our characters are much changed... and, perhaps, so are readers, for that is the magical, mysterious quality of art. And of America.

ANTHEM is love letter to America, in all its shapes and forms, all its people, and all its incarnations, trouble and good times alike. At our best, we are one nation, indivisible, and that's what I wanted to explore.

I wanted to take readers through the time that... well, as Gail Zappa puts it in ANTHEM's last scrapbook: "In 1965, half the population of the western world was under 25. You have an evolution and a revolution in consciousness when you have a situation like that."

But that was then, this is now, I hear you say. So to Gail Zappa's statement, I added one from Little Richard that ends the book: "It's not the size of the ship; it's the size of the waves."

So I leave you with Simon and Garfunkel's "America." Substitute friends for lovers, and you've got, "Let us be friends, we'll marry our fortunes together." Yes. That's what I want for America. And that's ANTHEM's over-riding theme. We've all come to look for America.

Here are a few more stills from ANTHEM's scrapbooks that highlight our struggles and our triumphs as a people... work that continues today, work that we are lucky to be engaged in, in a country where we can still make change. Where we can still demand the best for America.

 And a last still that will lead us to the next book, KENT STATE, which publishes in April 2020:

 Chapter 47 of 47 chapters. Thank you for coming along.

ANTHEM is coming, chapter 46

[NOTE: the last post at Blogger will be on Oct. 1 (Tuesday). To stay connected with Field Notes, you can sub here, or we may have a Feedburner work-around coming by Tues... I am a novelist, not a techie, can you tell? In any case, stay tuned. xo Debbie]

ANTHEM, Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy, publishes on October 1. Each of the book's 47 chapters begins with a song from the Sixties to set the tone, mood, and scene. Every day between now and October 1, come have a listen and read a snippet from each chapter. On October 1, these posts will be archived with a link at ANTHEM's webpage for #teachingAnthem1969
 
This is Chapter 46 (day 2):

BEGINNINGS
Written by Robert Lamm
Performed by Chicago Transit Authority
Recorded at Columbia Recording Studios, NY, NY  1969
Drummer: Danny Seraphine

Cars rolled past them on the quiet street. The morning was bright and cool. The fog was burning off. It would be a good day for a journey.
"Music is the rhythm of our humanity," said Eddie. "It's the soundtrack of struggle and peace, birth and death, love and war, joy and pain. Music is the heart you open and the family you choose."


When I hear "Beginnings" now, I think of the many 2am mornings I sat here trying to finish ANTHEM, trying to get this chapter right, trying to sum up the themes, characters, plot lines, symbolism, you name it... trying to get it right. Trying to touch what I'd wanted to say about 1969, and about the Sixties Trilogy as a whole... about the Sixties, about my own young life in those years, and about the nation as it struggled through those days.

"Beginnings" is what came to me. "Only the beginning/ only just the start." Exactly. That was where to end, at the beginning, as storytellers know, as life shows us, too. Each ending is a new beginning.

As Molly and Norman come to the end of their journey -- the beginning of the next trip -- they gain a new rider for the miles home, along with a new understanding of who they are, what they mean to each other, and how they want to think about the world they are inheriting.

I wanted to include Chicago in ANTHEM, with their brassy, jazzy, upbeat sound... they were just getting started on their own journey in 1969, and bands everywhere would soon want to include horns in their line-up, including my husband's... he was the self-proclaimed band geek who played the sousaphone in the St. Andrew's Parish High School marching band in Charleston, South Carolina, and the trombone in concert band, and he was my inspiration for Norman. No wonder I love Norman so. I used to go to Friday night football games just so I could watch Jim in the band.

We have one ANTHEM chapter left, a very short one, and I'll blog about it tomorrow... then it's pub date for ANTHEM, and I'll catalog all these song/chapter posts at the ANTHEM webpage.

If you are local to Atlanta, you might come on Tuesday night, October 1, to ANTHEM's book launch, hosted by the Georgia Center for the Book and DeKalb County libraries, 7pm, at the Decatur Library at 215 Sycamore St., Decatur. I'll be there and would love to see you.

All three Sixties titles will be available to purchase, thanks to bookseller Little Shop of Stories, and of course they will be at your local library as well.

The Sixties Trilogy turned into an 11-year project with Scholastic Press... what a risk they took, to being these documentary novels to readers young and old, everywhere. I'm grateful to them for their support, and for three gorgeously beautiful books. Phil Falco's design wizardry and David Levithan's editing skills created something special out of the stories I wanted so much to tell.

The end of the Sixties Trilogy gives us a new beginning as well... Kent State will be published in April, 2020... more about that book soon. Meanwhile:

Chapter 46.

ANTHEM is coming, chapter 45

[NOTE: the last post at Blogger will be on Oct. 1 (next Tuesday). To stay connected with Field Notes, you can sub here, or we may have a Feedburner work-around coming by Tues... I am a novelist, not a techie, can you tell? In any case, stay tuned. xo Debbie]

ANTHEM, Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy, publishes on October 1. Each of the book's 47 chapters begins with a song from the Sixties to set the tone, mood, and scene. Every day between now and October 1, come have a listen and read a snippet from each chapter. On October 1, these posts will be archived with a link at ANTHEM's webpage for #teachingAnthem1969
 
This is Chapter 45 (day 3):

PIECE OF MY HEART
Written by Jerry Ragovoy and Bert Berns
Performed by Janis Joplin/Big Brother and the Holding Company
Recorded at Columbia Studios, Los Angeles, CA and NY, NY 1968 
Drummer: Dave Getz

Molly glanced at Norman. "Where are we going?"
"Fillmore West," Norman told the driver. "Corner of Market and South Van Ness."
"What's happening?" Molly asked. 
Norman rummaged in his pocket. "I bought these today," he said, "at a pawn shop. The poster was in the window."
Molly snatched the tickets from his hand. "Iron Butterfly! You love them!"
Norman almost laughed. Someone excited for him. It was a good feeling.
"Barry would love this," said Molly. "Turn around!" she told the driver impulsively. "Norman you should take Barry!"
"Never mind," Norman told the driver. "To the Fillmore, please."...
"Norman, really..." said Molly....
"No." Norman gritted his teeth. "I don't want to do anything with Barry right now. Maybe never.... I want to take you... We'll have this to talk about for years and years..."
"We've already got a lot to talk about. A lot. For years and years."
"I want this, too. One day I might have to go to war. If I'm drafted, I'll go. And I don't want to sit over there thinking about how I could have taken you to see Iron Butterfly in San Francisco but instead I took Barry, who didn't care two hoots about me...." He's selfish. I appreciate you, Molly. Come to the concert with me." 



Hearts are breaking everywhere in Chapters 44 through 46. When I was trying to write LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER, my first novel, my editor, Liz Van Doren, at Harcourt Books, kept saying, "Let her heart break."

It took me several drafts to take her advice to heart (ha) and do that. It opened up the story. We hate to break our beloveds' hearts, and yet that's what fiction is about, isn't it? Let's see characters in impossible situations, physical and/or emotional, and let's see what they do, how they fall apart and put themselves back together, and thereby create a roadmap for us to do the same thing in our own lives, with our own heartbreaks.

In A LONG LINE OF CAKES, the fourth Aurora County book, which was published last year, I did such a good job of letting Emma's heart break that my editor (David Levithan at Scholastic) asked me if I wasn't going to put that thing back together that Emma tore up, so readers could see it at the end?

Well... no. Because Emma could put her heart back together emotionally by that point, and the physical didn't matter as much. And that's what's happening here, with Norman, as he begins to determine he's not going to spend any more emotional energy on Barry.

Norman is waking up to what's right in front of him, the cousin who traveled across the country with him, who navigated them to San Francisco, who is a royal pain in the neck as well as -- who knew? -- suddenly, a loyal and faithful friend. Let the record show that Norman's heart breaks, and he lets it. And he makes the decision to move forward.

"Piece of my Heart" and Janis were important to include in San Francisco chapters of ANTHEM, as Big Brother et al were a San Francisco band and I wanted you to hear that San Francisco sound, along with "Evil Ways" and Santana (Chapter 43), and, early-on in ANTHEM, CCR and "Bad Moon Rising" (Chapter 4).

You'll also find, as we hurtle to the end, a repeat of Chapter 2's Iron Butterfly and "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida" in Chapter 45, which serves as Norman's theme song in ANTHEM. Norman finally gets to hear the Butterfly live -- remember the drum solo? Watch what happens. I'm bringing it around full circle for Norman.

Iron Butterfly did play at Fillmore West in late June 1969, on the very date I have Molly and Norman there. It's details like this that delight a researcher when she's trying to make a story come together and be true to events. Far out. Or, as Norman would put it, "Groovy!"

Fillmore West 1970 — the research on Bill Graham and the bands who played the Fillmore — and its locations — was its own amazing rabbit hole…

Chapter 45