Our old neighbor, author Caroline Leavitt sends us a Friend of the Happy Booker Report about another cool reading and party we were sorry to miss. Yeah, yeah, we know…(for the record: Triangle is tucked safely in our luggage— it's the first book we'll be reading on vacation.)
FotHB Report—Katharine Weber by Caroline Leavitt
If you’ve written your third novel about the triangle shirtwaist factory, you couldn’t ask for a better venue to have a posh reading - slash - publication party than the wonderful Tenement Museum on Orchard Street in New York City. And no audience could ask for a more gripping reader than novelist Katharine Weber. Triangle is already racking up megawatt praise. An August Book Sense selection, it’s been lauded by the L.A. Times and gotten a prized star from PW. Entertainment Weekly called it “the most effective 9/11 novel yet, and it isn’t even about 9/11.” Maureen Corrigan on NPR Fresh Air raved, and The Cleveland Plain Dealer has compared Katharine to Willa Cather herself.
Moving, intelligent, and yes, it most assuredly is brilliant, Triangle is about the stories we tell, or as Katharine said at the party, “It’s about a lie.” This is the story of Esther Gottesfeld, the last survivor of the Triangle Shirtwaist factor in 1911, where 146 workers, mostly immigrant girls died. But the story Esther tells and retells about that day isn’t quite true. Esther’s granddaughter Rebecca, George her fiancé, and Ruth Zion, an overzealous historian, all seek to get at the truth. But what is the truth—and whose truth is it? About history, music invention, repetition, DNA (which Katharine said at the party, “doesn’t lie”) and social tragedy, Triangle is complex and humane and yup, heartbreaking.
Katharine had a moderator sitting beside her, pinging her with questions (the audience had to wait), and she was riveting. She talked about the very subtle echoes of 9/11 in Triangle, which some readers saw even in the gorgeous cover art of the book, which is the pleated front of a shirtwaist that vaguely recalls the skeleton of the World Trade Center. The air was thick with emotion. One woman from a Pennsylvanian coal mining town compared the mining disasters she had seen to the Shirtwaist factory fire. Another man sitting in front of me was visibly moved at being a block away from where he had been raised on the lower east side. And Katharine talked eloquently about the deplorable conditions that still go on in factories today, where children do much of the labor. She also put the book in a historical context, reminding the audience how interest in the factory fire piqued during the 60s when feminism did (after all, it was mostly women who died), and now, of course, there’s a resurgence of attention because of 9/11. What was most incredible was the genuine shirtwaist she had on hand to show the audience, a delicate, pin-tucked, intricate thing of beauty that she said just might possibly contain the stitches from her own grandmother’s hands.
Of course, the food was delectable. Wine, cheese, and thematically correct cheese buttons strung on a thick thread. I was dying to congratulate the editorial people, but could find only a few assistants from FSG. Truly, though, that publishing house must be beside itself with the early and huge success of this book, and so proud to have published it. Everyone was mingling and laughing and connecting so easily that people were throwing arms about one another and sharing cabs was second nature. And Katharine—well, she just glowed, and rightfully so, because she’s produced a transcendent, haunting beauty of a novel.
Caroline Leavitt is the author of eight novels, most recently the BookSense selection Girls in Trouble. A book critic for numerous publications, including The Boston Globe, People, The Washington Post and Cookie Magazine, she lives in NYC's unofficial sixth borough, Hoboken, NJ with the writer Jeff Tamarkin and their young son, Max.
I deeply regret and am embarrassed that I forgot that Ms. Weber wrote FOUR (count 'em) novels and not three. Now I need chocolate.
Posted by: Caroline | July 02, 2006 at 04:06 PM
Caroline:
Thanks for bringing us right there into the event.
I'm interested that Weber talked about feminism, particularly in light of the problematic scholar as supporting character in _Triangle_. Did she talk at all about the creation of Ruth Zion and how feminism figures into the book?
Posted by: Christy | July 03, 2006 at 04:40 PM
Yup, she did. Ruth was so zealously feminist that she saw the fire only through her own lens--that of feminism, and therefore, was looking for her own particular truth. She had an agenda. Katharine, as I mentioned, did also talk about how the fire generated new interest in the 60s because of feminism. Most of the people who died were women, of course, and then there was that business about sewing, which is typically "women's work." I don't want to speak for Katharine but I think this is another part of the whole notion of "whose truth is this and why do we need it to be true?"
Posted by: Caroline | July 03, 2006 at 05:12 PM
That was brilliantly written. And the book was amazing. I stand in awe at these terrific writers that so kindly entertain us with their brains and wit and charm.
Posted by: cindy | July 31, 2006 at 01:25 AM