Table of Contents Back Issues Homepage         AWe Books   October 8, 2000     Join Awakened Woman's Circle. Subscribe to our free newsletter!                     Don't Fence Me In A Review of Natalie Goldberg's Thunder and Lightning By Laura J. Weinstock   Natalie Goldberg is one of my heroes. Her book, Wild Mind, with its practical techniques and untrammeled spiritual fervor helped get me started as a fiction writer. Her memoir, Long Quiet Highway, tore me open with weeping and fits of laughter. As a fellow Buddhist, writer and Jewish New Yorker transplanted to the West, she resonates for me. We click. And not just when she writes. She is equally adept at giving vibrant lectures. Like her other books, her most recent, Thunder and Lightning, is well written and uniquely honest. One of the most pleasurable characteristics of Goldberg's work is her stark naked candor about topics few authors will ever broach. In Thunder, she painstakingly describes how she pieced together her novel and how she battled with her editors and herself over treasured chapters she didn't want to change. She even furnishes us with ten poorly constructed sentences from her original manuscripts -some of them so bad, they made me cringe. (Followed up, in this case, by a Buddhist discourse on attachment and letting go). This raw openness is rare. It is a gift. Thunder is extremely humorous, particularly when it comes to food. In addition to Zen and writing, Goldberg has a third passion: eating. She describes with great ardor numerous meals consumed with friends, her daily intake of chocolate croissants and hot cocoa (followed by an additional pastry if she likes what she has written the day before), lunches with her editors, food that her characters devour. One night, I read out loud to my partner, Rachel, Goldberg's detailed recollection of the food eaten by characters in other people's books. We laughed so hard -- our cheeks started to hurt. How could Goldberg manage to talk about food when discussing William Styron's Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness? Styron was so emotionally crippled at the onset of his illness that he couldn't be happy when receiving a prestigious award or remember to attend the luncheon held afterward in his honor. Ostensibly, Goldberg is describing Styron's ability to reel in, but not frighten away his readers when addressing the delicate subject of depression. But Goldberg cannot resist informing us that Styron had no appetite for the scintillating plate of seafood placed before him. Clearly, this made the seriousness of his suffering real to her. In another story that made me laugh out loud, Goldberg is able to help a nervous student by making fun of herself. "Katagiri would say something simple --'The present moment is right here,' or 'When you drink a cup of tea, pay attention to drinking a cup of tea' -- and we strained to understand its supernatural, profound and enlightened intent. We were so self-conscious, so tense, so earnest that we missed everything. If he said, 'This is a hand,' we construed it to mean a foot, an elbow, the suffering of Bodhidharma." Yet for all her mirth, Thunder is more somber than vintage Natalie Goldberg. In Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind, she told us to be free, creative, boundless. Here, she teaches us to rein in the wildness, give it form and structure. Gone are the days when Natalie meandered in her notebooks for thirteen years. "Now people are more efficient," she tells her students. The first seven pages of Thunder are not a preface but a warning that writing will not make us happy. Not a merry message, particularly when contrasted with her past exuberance. Her words still move and entertain. But Thunder didn't grab me like her earlier work did. Perhaps her writing was affected by the recent death of her father. Or maybe it is a combination of circumstances. She states: Each new book I attempt is more difficult. When I was young, the mountain seemed far away. I had a lot of energy to run to it and lots of new things to say. But now I have arrived at the mountain and my body's pressed against it. I've said everything I know; I have to go to the unknown to speak. With no space between me and the mountain I have to move this mammoth escarpment each time - even one centimeter - to produce a book. The mountain's heavy, huge; my body's tired, getting older. All this I didn't know in my early, loving flush with writing. Here, Natalie and I diverge. Though not under any illusions that all of life's problems vanish with the discovery of one's creative passion, I am not in sync with her weariness and sober message. I still feel joyful to be writing. Two minor criticisms: a chapter in Part One, "But Who Is Listening," didn't belong there; the middle section of the book where she discusses other literature and what to glean from it was too long. I have one major criticism. In sharp contrast to her uncontainable openness about everything else, Natalie is very timid in declaring her love for women. It is as if she is dabbing one tiny toe into the current, to see what consequences lie below. On page 147, Natalie tells a friend that she greatly admires the author, Colette, because she had both male and female lovers. Not till page 162, does Natalie reveal what the careful reader has already surmised - that Natalie herself likes "men and women with equal fervor." Why is it so important that Ms. Goldberg come out? There are almost no lesbian or bisexual women authors published in the mainstream who are out in their books. Rachel and I could only think of three: Adrienne Rich (a famous poet years before she came out), Rita Mae Brown (an anomaly as a successful lesbian fiction writer, out from the start), and Nicola Griffith (a writer of science fiction and mystery, not the most highly regarded genres of writing). Someone as famous as Natalie Goldberg, who writes well-esteemed works of non-fiction and fiction, makes a huge difference by coming out. May she become as brazen in this department as she is in all the others. May this help her regain joy and freedom in her life and art.   Order Thunder and Lightning from Powell's Independent Bookstore!