Issue 08 / 1997
8 / Mostly Memoir
This issue, Creative Nonfiction’s largest to date, features intimate stories that forge a bond between reader and author. Andy Solomon takes us back into his childhood, when he was caught smoking cigarettes in the basement of his Sunday school; Alec Wilkinson brings to life the irony in the way people look at modern art; Kay Morgan, a psychotherapist, writes about what she has learned from eight years of listening to her patients loose their emotional difficulties on her.
“Mostly Memoir” also features previously unpublished excerpts from “An Album Quilt,” by John McPhee.
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FROM THE EDITOR: Anatomy of “An Album Quilt” Excerpt
This issue was inspired by the first annual Mid-Atlantic Creative Nonfiction Summer Writers' Conference sponsored by Creative Nonfiction and Goucher College in Baltimore, Md. As Creative Nonfiction is the only literary magazine to publish nonfiction exclusively, so, too, was this event the only conference to feature workshops, readings, seminars and panels about nonfiction, only.At a Turn in the Road
There we were, taking the long way home through the park, Toby, my black lab, bounding on ahead, doing two miles for every one of ours. Lovers we were, holding hands when we weren’t struggling single file over rocks and roots.Like a Flower of Feathers or a Winged Branch
This is Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s description of a bluebird. I read this one morning in a doctor’s office and have thought of it daily ever since. Every time I see a bird or a branch of leaves or a flower I think of it.The Story of My Father
Old age is a great leveler: The frailer elderly all come to resemble turtles trapped in curved shells, shrinking, wrinkled and immobile, so that, in a roomful, a terrarium of the old, it is hard to disentangle one solitary individuals karma from the mass fate of aging.Transit
Doing my usual Monday morning imitation of Lucifer descending, muttering sullen insurrection, I Kathryn, Archbitch of San Francisco (self-appointed), hurl myself into the abyss and thump perilously down the wet brick stairs into the BART station, mere seconds behind schedule.At the Buzzer
A while back, for the first and only time in my life, I hit six free throws in a row. I was alone on my side of the court, so I looked around to see if anyone had taken notice of this, the pinnacle of my basketball life.Radio Wars, Closed Doors, When You’re Out I Check Your Drawers
It’s 1964. In her room my sister turns her radio up high. Eighteen and a half, her door shut tight. Scratchy voices croon shriek yodel about love. I have peeked through the space around her doors latch and seen her dancing like some tribeswoman out of National Geographic, the brown, plastic, radio icon urging her on from its place atop her highboy.Original Friend
A year ago, one of my mother’s rare, brief letters arrived, bearing in its folds the reason for its being: Tom’s obituary. In two column-inches of newsprint, I learned that, at 38, he had died at home of complications from diabetes; that he was a lifelong resident of our hometown in the Midwest; that he was survived by a sister.Vanish Away Like Smoke
Mr. Kohlbert locked his hands behind his back and paced in front of the class. “Und sooooooo…,” he droned, “Ve haf efry reason to belief dat Columbus vas a Jew.” I paused in the sketch I was drawing of a new 1957 Ford Thunderbird and glanced around the musty classroom.Bloodtalk: Daynotes of a Psychotherapist
Errors and corrections, errors and corrections. So far as I can tell, that’s what psychotherapy is all about.Cy Twombly
Cy Twombly, the austere and enigmatic expatriate painter who recently had a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, hates watching his paintings leave the house. He imagines the movers in Rome, where he lives, crossing the street with a canvas and someone on a motor scooter driving through it, like a stunt in a circus.Home
At home I sat in a chair by the window, watching Frisbee players in the park, cars pulling into the gas station. The hospital had been a natural setting for a crisis, its waiting areas filled with worried relatives who blinked at our footsteps then retreated back into themselves when they saw we weren’t doctors.An Album Quilt
That August I returned to the town in New Jersey where I had been born 50 years before. It looked much the same. Any town would, after five weeks.There was a great deal of waiting mail—08540, 08540, 08540.Interview with Lucy Wilson Sherman
Lucy Wilson Sherman answers CNF's questions about her recent essayInterview with Donald Morrill
Donald Morrill answers CNF's questions about his recent essayInterview with Phillip Lopate
Phillip Lopate answers CNF's questions about his recent essayInterview with Elizabeth Hodges
Elizabeth Hodges answers CNF's questions about her recent essayInterview with Michael Berberich
Michael Berberich answers CNF's questions about his recent essayInterview with Andy Solomon
Andy Solomon answers CNF's questions about his recent essay