Melissa Pritchard - A Solemn Pleasure: To Imagine, Witness, and Write

More Praise for Melissa Pritchard

Dreamy and delightful. NPRs All Things Considered

Wildly imaginative.... Endearingly quirky. Glamour

Precise and lucid. New York Times Book Review

Melissa Pritchard has her GPS set to find the how it isout there and in the heart. Sven Birkerts, author of The Other Walk: Essays and editor of AGNI

Melissa Pritchards voice is completely her own. Tayari Jones, author of Silver Sparrow

I have admired Melissa Pritchards writing for several years now for its wisdom, its humble elegance, and its earthy comedy. Rick Moody, author of The Four Fingers of Death and On Celestial Music

Melissa Pritchard is a treasure. Bradford Morrow, author of The Diviners Tale and The Forgers

Vivid, bold, and wickedly witty. Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahabs Wife and The Fountain of St. James Court

Melissa Pritchards prose, that darkly lyrical firmament, is brightened by the dizzy luminous arrangement of her stars and satellites, her great gifts to us: humor, irony, kindness, brilliance. Antonya Nelson, author of Bound and Funny Once

A writer of immense talent. Peter Straub, author of A Dark Matter

No one is quite so brilliant at voicing the all-but-impossible-to-track interior lives of the most complex human beings as is Melissa Pritchard. Brad Watson, author of The Heaven of Mercury and Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives

Also by Melissa Pritchard

FICTION

Spirit Seizures

Phoenix

The Instinct for Bliss

Selene of the Spirits

Disappearing Ingenue: The Misadventures of Eleanor Stoddard

Late Bloomer

The Odditorium

Palmerino

NONFICTION

Devotedly Virginia: The Life of Virginia Galvin Piper

First published in the United States in 2015 by

Bellevue Literary Press, New York

For information, contact:

Bellevue Literary Press

NYU School of Medicine

550 First Avenue

OBV A612

New York, NY 10016

2015 by Melissa Pritchard

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the publisher upon request.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a print, online, or broadcast review.

Bellevue Literary Press would like to thank all its generous donorsindividuals and foundationsfor their support.

Book design and composition by Mulberry Tree Press, Inc.

First Edition

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

ebook ISBN: 978-1-934137-97-0

For Jillian Robinson

To be a writer is to enter into public life.

Nadine Gordimer

Contents

R ECENTLY, IN THE NIGERIAN TOWN of Baga, Boko Haram Islamist militants killed several hundred men, women, and children. Elsewhere, the terrorist group ISIS is regularly recording the beheadings of prisoners and distributing the videos online. An Asian passenger jet has been missing for months and scraps of another were found floating in the Java Sea. In America, theres been a spate of black citizens killed by police, and courts have summarily absolved the officers of any wrong-doing. Ebola has cut a swath through generations in Africa. Shootings in schools, offices, and movie theaters have all made the news while homelessness and hunger tend to garner attention only if a celebrity takes up the cause and shines a light on the issueoften just in time to promote a new film. Note that I havent mentioned the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, the widespread allegations of rape on college campuses, whats happening along the Mexican border, or the terrifying flaws in our health care system. Theres only so much pain we can bear before numbness sets in and blindness takes over. How fitting, then, that a man begging for pocket change near my office holds up a sign that reads, I am somebody. Please see. Please help.

In the face of such widespread tragedy, such loss and strife, why would anyone waste a momentlet alone a lifetimewriting? (Why, for that matter, would anyone bother reading? Or volunteer to teach or take a class in creative writing?) The question comes up often enough in a writers life. Parents and students, parents of students, spouses, parents of spouses, employers, and strangers at public events or on airplanes will ask it in myriad ways. What theyre asking about is indulgence. The question is important and fair, complex and serious. The answer, though, is easy. Why write? Why read? Why teach or study writing? Because story and image, metaphor and syntax, and the endless combinations of twenty-six letters, confirm our humanity. These are our defense against apathy, our insurance against inequality, and ironically, our shelter from indulgence.

The transcendent power of literature, the ways its made and shared, the ways it shapes its makers and its believers, drives this gorgeous and moving collection of essays. Whether writing about the death of her mother or the horrors of child slavery, whether the essays explore Ethiopia or the Sudan or a college classroom, Melissa Pritchard lays bare the soul of a writer. And in laying bare the writers soul, she also exposes the soul of a teacher, a reader, a daughter, and a mother. She unmasks her fears and vulnerabilities, and she offers her readers the opportunity to lower their own guards, to step beyond their own comfort zones, to feel those emotions that are all too handily avoided. Like all great writers, Pritchard has no interest in providing answers. Rather, she strives only to articulate the questions in a manner that the readers can hear. Her aim is never to convey information, but only and powerfully to relay experiencesexperiences that are poignant and devastating, familiar and extraordinary, inspiring and gutting. Individually, each of these essays confirms that to write is to think and feel, to take part in the profound and sacred act of witness. Read togetherand the book is so arresting that many readers will finish it in a single sittingthe essays amount to a clear and irrefutable mandate for empathy.