I Know This Much Is True (135 page)

I paced; I apologized; my hair fell out; I caught 3:00-a.m. reruns of
Kojak
and Rhoda Morgenstern. And during one such long night of I Know[859-902] 7/24/02 2:15 PM Page 905

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insomnia, I made the painful decision to pack it in. To give up writing. I couldn’t do it; it was just too hard.

But nine or ten months earlier, on a dare from my wife, I had applied to the National Endowment for the Arts for a creative writing fellowship. And the very next day after my sleepless night of decision-making, the telephone rang and I was flabbergasted to learn that I had just been awarded one. With the $20,000 prize and, more importantly, with the faith the NEA had put in me as a writer

— the message they had sent me that my stories might matter — I took a leave of absence from teaching and was off and running once again.

The NEA had given me the gift of time to experiment and learn and grow. My fellowship commenced in January of 1993. My family and I lived frugally and made the money last for the next twenty months. During that period, I wrote fiction in the morning, researched in the afternoon, and was Dad in the evening. I visited libraries, hospitals, Native American museums, and, most significantly, New York’s Ellis Island.

I read about and talked to identical twins. I spoke with and learned from families who had endured domestic turmoil and mental illness about how they survived and coped. These generous people told me stories that were heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious and, little by little, I cobbled together the knowledge I needed to write
I Know This Much Is True
.

And along the way, I remained grateful to the mother of a son who suffers paranoid schizophrenia and who, early into this six-year creative odyssey of mine, had jabbed a threatening finger in my face and warned that if I was going to take up the subject of mental illness, I had better get it right because the popular culture was already overloaded with stereotypical “psycho-fests” and spook shows that fueled misunderstanding and added to the already-formidable burdens of the mentally ill and their families.

And if in the end, I wrote a novel that was truthful rather than exploitative — a fiction that chips away at misunderstanding rather than adding to it — I want you to know that that book would not I Know[859-902] 7/24/02 2:15 PM Page 906

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exist today had I not received the gift of time and the validation from the NEA. Like Sister Mercy years before, the Endowment had noticed me. And I ask that you do the same for other writers who are on their way but struggling.

Finally, I want to say that, as an American writer whose government gave him a life-altering gift of faith, it is important for me to give back. My wife and I designate ten percent of my book earnings to organizations that help the mentally ill, the victims of domestic violence, and the arts.

But more meaningful to me, personally, than checkbook benev-olence is the time I spend in the slammer. My involvement with York Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison in Niantic, Connecticut, was triggered in 1999 by what I have come to think of as a serendipitous accident.

Having by then taught writing to high school students for twenty-five years and then to university students for another two, I had just resigned from teaching so that I could work full-time on my third novel. Now, at the time, I had a third book contract and precious little else. No plot, no characters. Just some advance money from the publisher, and a recurring image in my head of an empty prison cell with the door swung open, and a working title which I’d plucked from a gospel song: Said I wasn’t gonna tell nobody but I couldn’t keep it to myself, what the Lord has done for me. My book contract reads:
Due June of 2004 from Wally Lamb, a book-length fiction manuscript.

Reluctantly, I said goodbye to my university students and colleagues, emptied out my office, and returned the key to the English Department secretary. I was closing the door on teaching, literally, when the phone rang. On the other end of the line was Marge Cohen, the librarian at York prison. Two suicides and several more attempts had triggered an epidemic of despair, Marge explained, and the prison school faculty, groping for something that might help, thought that writing might be useful to the inmates as a coping and healing tool. Would I come? For free? Yes, I promised. Once. For ninety minutes.

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On the hot summer day when I kept my promise, thirty inmates elected to attend my program. Dressed identically in maroon Tshirts and pocketless jeans, they entered in all colors, sizes, and shapes. Their attitudes ranged from hangdog to Queen of Sheba.

Most had shown up not to write but to check out that guy who’d been on
Oprah
. I spoke. We tried some exercises. They asked questions: You met Oprah? What’s Oprah like? At the end of the session, they challenged me to return. I said I would if they promised to write something. Anything. Two pages, minimum. We’d listen and react to one another’s work. Each woman’s draft would be her ticket into the workshop.

At session two, fifteen of the original thirty were no-shows.

Crystal wanted compliments, not feedback. Asaya said she’d meant to be vague and unclear — that her business wasn’t necessarily the reader’s business. Diane, at fifty-four the senior member of the group, eyed me suspiciously. She’d written under a pseudonym, Natasha, and sought reassurance that I would never, ever read her work aloud. I predicted Diane would be gone by session three.

But it was at the end of session three that Diane couldn’t keep her writing to herself. Her shaky hand went up. She asked if she could read what she’d written. Then, in a soft, tentative voice, she began a disjointed three-page chronicle of her horrific life story: incest, savage abuse, spousal homicide, lawyerly indifference, and parallel battles against breast cancer and the dark depression that often accompanies long-term incarceration and shuts down hope.

When Diane stopped reading, there was silence. Then, applause.

The dam of distrust had been sledgehammered. The women’s writing began to flow.

It’s been two-and-a-half years since those first sessions. The brave writers who have stayed the course have faced their demons without flinching, revised relentlessly, and become a community.

Through their autobiographical writing they have given voice to a voiceless population, and I have come to know them not merely as the drug abusers, gang members, thieves, and killers they have been, but also as the complex, creative works-in-progress they are. Each I Know[859-902] 7/24/02 2:15 PM Page 908

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woman has discovered the intertwined power of the written word and the power that resides within, even at an institution that exists to render her powerless.

They are tough cookies, these students of mine, not because of their crimes but because they will be neither defeated nor silenced, and I am proud to tell you that the anthology of their autobiographical writing, which I am currently editing, will be published by ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins, in 2003. Its title is
Couldn’t Keep It To Myself: Testimonies From Our Imprisoned Sisters
.

I have learned a lot from these gals — important, useful stuff for me to know both as a writer and as a human being. When you give, you get back. The NEA taught me that. Please continue to safeguard the awarding of fellowships to writers of promise and to work toward bringing in from the cold our brothers and sisters who paint and sculpt and dance and make art with cameras. Art, as you know, illuminates life and in these confusing and scary times, we can all use a little illumination.

Thanks for listening.

—Wally Lamb

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Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to Linda Chester, my literary agent and friend, and to her associate, Laurie Fox, who shares equal billing. Glinda and Dorothy in one agency: how lucky can a writer get?

I am indebted to Judith Regan, my publisher and
paisana,
for her loyalty, her patient trust, and her passionate response to my work.

Grazie,
Judith
.

The following writer-compadres offered invaluable critical reaction to this novel in its many stages, and I am grateful for and humbled by the generosity of their collective response. They are: Bruce Cohen, Deborah DeFord, Joan Joffe Hall, Rick Hornung, Leslie Johnson, Terese Karmel, Ann Z. Leventhal, Pam Lewis, David Morse, Bessy Reyna, Wanda Rickerby, Ellen Zahl, and Feenie Ziner.

A novel this size is both a big, shaggy beast and a complex process requiring faith, luck, moral support, and knowledge far beyond what its author brings to it. I bow deeply to the following, each of whom—in a variety of ways—helped me to find, tell, and publish this story (and, in two cases, to retrieve it from hard-drive never-never land):
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Elliott Beard, Andre Becker, Bernice Bennett, Lary Bloom, Cathy Bochain, Aileen Boyle, Angelica Canales, Lawrence Carver, Lynn Castelli, Steve Courtney, Tracy Dene, Barbara Dombrowski, David Dunnack, John Ekizian, Sharon Garthwait, Douglas Hood, Gary Jaffe, Susan Kosko, Ken Lamothe, Linda Lamothe, Doreen Louie, Peter Mayock, Susan McDonough, Alice McGee, Joseph Mills, Joseph Montebello, Bob Parzych, Maryann Petyak, Pam Pfeifer, Pit Pinegar, Nancy Potter, Joanna Pulcini, Jenny Romero, Allyson Salazar, Ron Sands, Maureen Shea, Dolores Simon, Suzy Staubach, Nick Stevens, Christine Tanigawa, David Teplica, Denise Tyburski, Patrick Vitagliano Jr., Oprah Winfrey, Patricia Wolf, Shirley Woodka, Genevieve Young, the morning crew at the Sugar Shack Bakery, and my students at the Norwich Free Academy and the University of Connecticut.

I am indebted to Rita Regan, who helped me with copyediting and advice about all things Sicilian, and to Mary Ann Hall, who put Gabrielle D’Annunzio’s
Tales of My Native Town
into my hands.

Special thanks to Ethel Mantzaris for long-standing friendship and faithful support.

Finally, I feel gratitude beyond what I can articulate to Christine Lamb, my life partner and love, who makes my writing life possible.

I acknowledge and honor the following teachers, from elementary through graduate school, each of whom encouraged excellence and nurtured creativity: Frances Heneault, Violet Shugrue, Katherine Farrell, Leona Comstock, Elizabeth Winters, Lenora Chapman, Miriam Sexton, Richard Bilda, Victor Ferry, Dorothy Cramer, Mildred Clegg, Mary English, Lois Taylor, Irene Rose, Daniel O’Neill, Dorothy Williams, James Williams, Alexander Medlicott, Alan Driscoll, Gabriel Herring, Frances Leta, Wayne Diederich, Joan Joffe Hall, Gordon Weaver, and Gladys Swan.

I was fortunate to have the support of the following writer-friendly institutions and organizations during the writing of this I Know[859-902] 7/24/02 2:15 PM Page 911

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novel: the Norwich Free Academy, the Willimantic, Connecticut, Public Library, the Homer D. Babbidge Library, the University of Connecticut, and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts.

This novel would not have come into existence without the generous support and validation of the National Endowment for the Arts.

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A List of Sources Consulted

Baker, Russell.
Growing Up
. New York: New American Library, 1982.

Barron, D. S. “Once There Were Two: Twins Are Bound Together Forever, Even When One of Them Dies—Stories from the Lone Twin Network.”

Health
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Bettelheim, Bruno.
The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of
Fairy Tales
. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.

Burlingham, Dorothy.
Twins: A Study of Three Pairs of Identical Twins.
New York: International Universities Press, 1952.

Campbell, Joseph.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
. Princeton: Princeton University Press/Bollingen, 1972.

Cohen, David Steven, ed.
America: The Dream of My Life—Selections from the
Federal Writers’ Project’s New Jersey Ethnic Survey
. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990.

D’Annunzio, Gabriele.
Tales of My Native Town,
trans. Rafael Mantelline.

Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1920.

DeSio, Paul.
Ricordiamo: The Italian-Americans of Norwich
. Norwich, Conn.: Columbus Book Committee, 1992.

DiStasi, Lawrence.
Mal Occhio (Evil Eye): The Underside of Vision
. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981.

Dittmar, Trudy. “Cows, Arrogance, the Nature of Things” in
The Pushcart
Prize XXI: Best of the Small Presses,
ed. Bill Henderson. Wainscott, N.Y.: Pushcart Press, 1996. (Originally published in
North American Review
.) Donahue, Bruce.
Case Study: The Pequot War, 1636–1638
. Norwich, Conn.: Norwich Free Academy History Department, 1996.

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A LIST OF SOURCES CONSULTED

Gottesman, Irving L., James Shields, and Paul Meehl.
Schizophrenia and
Genetics: A Twin Study Vantage Point
. New York: Academic Press, 1972.

Hagedorn, Judy W., and Janet Kizziar.
Gemini: The Psychology and Phenomenon
of Twins
. Anderson, S.C.: Droke House/Hallux, 1974.

Holy Bible—Saint Joseph “New Catholic Edition.” New York: Catholic Book Publishing Company, 1962.