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Discovering What
You Didn't Know
The author of a new collection of original
and prize-winning short stories illuminates
the fiction writer's path.
Winter HOurSt
Tuesday-Friday: Lunch and Dinner
Saturday: Dinner
Sunday: Brunch & Dinner
JOAN LEEGANT
-17546 Woodward Ave. (2 blocks north of I ■ leNiehols) Detroit
Special to the Jewish News
313-865-0331
S
Closed Monday • Enter rear • Valet parking
ONG FIU4
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?3551G
weet Georgia Brown showcases Detroit on the move"
ome years ago, I ran out of
my second-floor study and
down the stairs to my hus-
band, who was sitting in
the living room reading the paper,
and called out, "Guess what!
Henny's pregnant!"
"Who?" he said. We knew no
Henny and never had. And my hus-
band certainly had no idea who
Henny was.
Henny is a fictitious character. I
made her up. I had been upstairs
writing a story about her and her
about-to-be brand-new husband
Nathan in 1943, and discovered,
somewhere around page 3, her con-
dition.
People who don't write fiction are
often surprised to learn that the
writer may not know much about
her characters when she begins writ-
ing. In fact, the writer might not
know much about her story at all —
perhaps just a location or a mood or
a vague sense of what the situation
may be.
Yet this is precisely what pulls the
writer to writing: the desire to find
out what happens, and to uncover
something new.
The writer Fred G. Leebron, in an
essay called "Not Knowing," wrote
that the urge to write fiction springs
from inside; that it's a pressure — if
sometimes in response to external
events — from within to know.
is the author of 'An
Hour in Paradise" (1VW Norton;
$23.95), a collection of Jewish stories
which has been selected by Barnes
Noble for their Discover Great New
Writers Program this fall. It is being
featured at the front racks of all 600
Barnes. Noble stores nationwide.
Leegant lives in Newton, Mass., and
teaches writing at Harvard University
and at Hebrew College.
In this respect, the writer is much
like the reader. Both enter the story
in order to discover. And, as Leebron
points out, if either the writer or the
reader has already discovered what-
ever there is to be discovered, then
why bother?
This, naturally, throws into question
the timeworn advice to writers to
Leegant's short story collection takes its
title from the Yiddish proverb, "Even an
hour in Paradise is worthwhile."
Joan Leegant
11/21
2003
84
1045 Brush Street - Detroit • phone (313) 965-1245 • www.sweetgb.com
Author Joan Leegant: "The writer is
much like the reader. Both -enter the
story in order to discover."