Newtonville Books Community Blog

By Belinda Goldsmith

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – American novelist Amy Tan is working on a new novel with her health now improved after suffering neurological Lyme disease.

Tan, 55, is mainly known for her books exploring mother-daughter relationships, such as “The Joy Luck Club,” and what it means to be raised as a first generation Asian American but she has also written two children’s books.

She is writing a new novel, collaborating on an original television pilot with director Wayne Wang and co-writer Ron Bass, and creating a libretto for her book “The Bonesetter’s Daughter” which premieres in September 2008 with the San Francisco Opera.

But since 1999 the San Francisco based author has suffered from neurological Lyme disease which was only diagnosed when the disease had reached a late stage, causing fatigue, hallucinations and memory lapses.

She spoke to Reuters about her health and writing:

Q: How is your health?

A: “I am doing really, really well but I am not cured. I did have some terrible moments when I could not memorize anything and it did affect my writing, but I am doing really well now. It makes this huge difference when you have your mind back.”

Q: How did your illness affect you?

A: “It slowed me down, I was writing in circles and could only write short things. I could not concentrate on writing a novel. You find out what is required to write when you are missing some of the pieces of your brain. I also learned what an amazing thing the brain is as it keeps everything together.” 

Q: What are you working on?

A: “I am working on too many things — a libretto for an opera for 2008, a story for National Geographic and also researching a new novel. I have started parts of it. I am also learning French. I’ve been taking on a little bit too much.”

Q: Why are you learning French?

A: “I come to Paris probably at least twice a year and I have a lot of French friends. I want to be able to read French novels in French. There is something about translation that makes you wonder what you are missing.”

Q: Your last novel was about Burma. Was this a break from your other novels about mother-daughter relationships or upbringing as an Asian American?

A: “I guess I don’t see these huge departures like readers do. There is a continuum for me. I hope as a person I am growing and that I am growing as a writer. The commonality is that I have always been looking for a voice. In many ways that voice is the same voice I have had through all of my books.”

Q: What is your new book about?

A: “I never talk about what a new book is about as it will leave me. There is a story in Chinese where a man goes to a magical place and is overwhelmed by the beauty and the peace. He has to leave and they tell him that if he tells anyone where this place is he will never find it again. That is the metaphor for writing. You are in a secret place and discovering it but once you tell people it is gone.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSN2437115620070626?pageNumber=2

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AP) – The FBI has recovered the long-lost manuscript of Pearl S. Buck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Good Earth,” after the daughter of one of the author’s former secretaries tried to put it up for auction.

The 400-page manuscript turned up earlier this month at the Samuel T. Freeman & Co. auction house in Philadelphia and officials there notified investigators, federal officials said Wednesday.

The original typed manuscript, complete with Buck’s handwritten edits, went missing from her family farm in suburban Philadelphia around 1966. The author long believed it had been stolen.

While it appears that the manuscript may have been “inappropriately obtained,” no charges will be filed, U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan said.

“To the extent that somebody may have been suspicious some number of years ago, that was some number of years ago,” Meehan said. He declined to identify the person believed to have taken the manuscript, but said she had worked as a secretary for Buck.

Federal authorities said the manuscript could be worth at least $150,000, but officials at the auction house said there is really no way to know the actual value.

The manuscript is in FBI possession for now, while the family trust and the Pearl S. Buck Foundation decide what to do with it.

Buck died in Vermont in 1973, having long wondered what happened to the original version of one of her most renowned works.

The 1931 novel, centered on village life in rural China, helped earn Buck the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938, making her the first American woman to win the honor. The novel won the Pulitzer in 1932.

The pages were found in excellent condition in a suitcase, along with a collection of letters from people including Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Authorities did not say where they had been kept, but said the secretary’s family had taken them for consignment at the auction house.

“It appears they have been in the possession of this woman’s family for some period of time,” Meehan said.

Buck, the child of Presbyterian missionaries, spent much of the first half of her life in China. But she was once denied a visa because her writings showed an “attitude of distortion, smear and vilification towards the people of new China.”

After receiving the manuscript earlier this month, the auction house faxed a copy of one page to the Pearl S. Buck Foundation in an attempt to verify its authenticity, said Joe Huenke, an assistant in Freeman’s rare books department.

Using Buck’s old typewriter, the foundation determined the manuscript to be authentic. But officials there also told the auction house it had been reported stolen long ago.

“As soon as we learned that it was reported stolen, we really had no choice but to alert the authorities,” Huenke said.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/06/28/goodearth.manuscript.ap/index.html