Etc.
Author’s Note from Pete and Alice in Maine
Alice appeared one evening in April of 2020, when I was down-stairs by the fridge in the dark before bed. My husband was up-stairs, the house was quiet. And her voice came to me. I knew immediately it was Alice, a character I dreamed up many years ago, but had not done anything with. Alice is a New Yorker with a second house in Maine. And now Alice wanted to come to Maine with her husband, Pete, to find refuge from the virus.
Since that March, as Covid descended, I had been concerned about people from away coming to Maine to buy up all the toilet paper, rent Airbnb’s, or retreat to their second houses. I was worried they might take up all the hospital beds. Maine, where I was born and raised, is a poor and aging state. And, at least in our town, our grocery store was rationing toilet paper out of their back room to two rolls a family.
So, when Alice’s voice appeared in my head, I told her to go away, I didn’t have time—I was homeschooling my kids, for God’s sake! And it was too complicated for me to understand her point of view. But she wouldn’t leave. Suddenly I was writing a book about how privileged white people were coming to my vulnerable state. But as I humanized them, I realized that they also carried problems with them and were also seeking safety.
There’s a joke in our family: When someone asks us how a trip or vacation was, we’ll say, “It was great, but we took ourselves with us.” I realized that Pete and Alice might have money and a nice car and a second house, but, like all of us, they bring themselves, too.
2020 was quite a year for my family: Shortly after Alice became my Ancient Mariner, my husband lost his job and went on unemployment. Then, in the fall, while we continued to home-school our kids, I got sick from an autoimmune storm, likely triggered by a virus, which attacked my left eye, my thyroid, and then my pancreas. My eye and thyroid recovered, thankfully, but my pancreas did not. I was diagnosed in January of 2021 with autoimmune type-1 diabetes.
I am a child of divorce and, though I have been married now for fifteen years and have two sons, I can’t say I know any better what magic recipe has so far kept my marriage intact. I am always surprised when some friends’ marriages reach the breaking point when they seemed fixable, at least to me; and others that don’t seem fixable stay together. Pete and Alice became a way for me to explore my questions on the page.
As I started writing from Alice’s perspective, I found myself circling back to important questions I have had—increasingly— about my home state: Who gets to find sanctuary here? What happens to the natural world of Maine when many more people come? How will the influx of new people affect my Maine?
I wrote these pages like I was in a trance. I wrote around the edges of my health crisis, sheltering in place, homeschooling my kids, planning grocery budgets, and stressing about everything that was happening in our country and world. Funnily enough, Pete and Alice became a sort of refuge for me; a reprieve from my own life.
Contact Caitlin:
We speak w/ @authorcaitlin on her PETE AND ALICE IN MAINE, a pandemic family story in a novel: https://t.co/PEOUNvcS2g
— Scott Simon (@nprscottsimon) July 29, 2023
Selected Archive:
Coffee, Booze, Undressing, Deprivation: How Writers Get in the Mood to Write
Before he began to write, John Cheever put on a three-piece suit and took the elevator from his Manhattan apartment down to the basement, where he took off his jacket and tie, and then began.
I Thought I Just Needed To Endure My Awful Periods. What I Needed Was A Hysterectomy.
I should have advocated for myself more vociferously, but I didn’t understand. I thought that this is what all women put up with.
In Vacationland, wading through a climate catastrophe
Last July, I opened a closet to take out a dress to wear to a reading for my first novel. I found that everything in my closet, including that dress, was covered with mildew. I closed the door and said to myself, I can’t even deal with that, and put on some just-washed jeans.
When Birds Nest in the Doorway, Go Out the Window
On a dark night last spring, I followed my thirteen-year-old son quietly around our house, climbed a wooden stepladder that straddled our trash barrels, and struggled up behind him through our kitchen window.
Caitlin Shetterly’s Playlist for Her Novel “Pete and Alice in Maine”
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
On Building Characters and Finding Friends in Books
A lot of people were escaping to my home state of Maine in the early months of Covid.
Showing Myself in My Author Photo—Gray Hair and All
It was a Friday this past March and I still didn’t have an author photo for my new (and first) novel, Pete and Alice in Maine.
The NICU Never Leaves You
My new baby and I were surrounded by cords and more cords, computers flashing bright colors and constant, beeping alarms.
Waiting for the Elvers
Last spring, when COVID descended and my sons’ school shut down, we went to the river. The river I am speaking of is one of Maine’s tidal rivers. Twice a day, the brackish water flows behind our house through hemlocks, oaks, and spartina grass to meet a freshwater stream that cascades over slippery rocks bordered by black alders.
My Quest for Pure Water
We tried to eat fresh, local food, but we realized that our water could still be loaded with pesticides and contaminants.
I live with my family in an almost 200-year-old house on the coast of Maine.
On Wintry Runs, Finding a Room of My Own
When winter is at its coldest, when everything is frozen and still, that is when I prefer to run.
After my husband has left to take our 10- and 4-year-old sons to school, I pull on two pairs of running pants, two old, knitted wool hats, two thin jackets, a thick pair of mittens, slather my face in shea butter and then I go out into the weather.
These Days I Miss John Updike, a Remote and Noble Male Mentor
Over 20 years ago, in the fall of 1997, I got my first job, at The New Yorker magazine. A small-town girl from coastal Maine, I had graduated from Brown six months earlier and had been recommended by the writer Francine Du Plessix-Gray, a visiting professor there. I had taken the bus to New York City, with two pairs of nylons and two wool J. Crew suits packed into a small suitcase — one black, one a pale, beige-y blush — for my interview.
A House Haunted by a Mysterious Smell
We moved in the middle of a summer thunderstorm, dashing through the rain to haul things through the front door of our new 150-year-old house. This was Dan’s dream house, the kind he used to see sitting on the crest of hills while riding in the back of his parents’ old Ford Escort: a big, stately off-white colonial with a red door, two whitewashed chimneys, a jack pine and an apple tree out front.
I Look at Houses the Way Some Men Look at Cars
Lately, as I drive around, I find myself peering out the windows at houses. In my mind, I’m practically moving myself into other people’s lives: I’m painting their walls, arranging my chaise longue in a picture window, setting up my son’s room; I’m hanging my artwork, replanting window boxes with blue and yellow pansies, and putting in gardens on their front lawns.
I Share, Therefore I Am
What does sharing mean in the age of social media? Last weekend, we brought another family with us on a weekend away. They, too, have a small child who’s five — a year older than ours. As can often happen with small children (and perhaps even more so with small only children), there was a lot of refereeing of the sharing of things.
To Gray or Not to Gray: The Problem With Hair Dye
Should a Modern Mom Look as Old and Haggard as She Feels? The other day I noticed that I was way overdue for a spring spruce-me-up. And so I made two appointments — for an eyebrow wax and a haircut.
In a Fixer-Upper, Leaks and Love
When I was a child, there was a running joke in our family about someday buying a fixer-upper. Whenever we took car trips, my mother would point out the window to long abandoned houses and say, “There’s a real fixer-upper for us!” And we’d all chuckle. It wasn’t just a joke: part of us wanted to believe that we, the Shetterlys, were capable of swooping in and bringing a collapsed pile of wood, glass and shingles back to life.
Drawing on Inspiration
When I was 12 going on 20, and mashing stacks of black jelly bracelets up my arms, painting my fingernails a frosty blue and wearing my hot-pink-and-black tiger print tank top five out of seven days of the week, I fell in love. Hard. With John Taylor, the bass player for the band Duran Duran.
When Ambrosia Salad Spells Dread
Daniel Davis, a tall, thin birch tree of a man, is willing to eat almost anything. Indeed, cooking and eating are two unadulterated pleasures in Dan’s life.
The Crazy Lady Upstairs
Before we took the apartment on Rialto — a palm-tree-and-bougainvillea-lined avenue a few blocks from the Pacific — the landlord told me about her. He said there was “a kind of daffy older lady” who’d be living above us. He said she was like “the concierge of the building” and had been there a few decades but sometimes drank too much and every so often would “yell.”
Recession Diary: A Turn In Fortunes
At the end of August, Dan and I moved into our own apartment in Portland, Maine. Two weeks later, we dove head first into what felt like our only lifeline: a master’s degree for Dan, which we hoped would bring more opportunities if and when the recession lifted.
Recession Diary: From Mom’s Home To Their Own
At night, as our baby and my mother slept, Dan and I staved off insomnia with a nightly ritual of exchanging play money in the game of Monopoly.
Recession Diary: The Long And Winding Road Home
I kept wishing for a miracle. But late one night, toward the end of March, after applying for hundreds of jobs to no avail, Dan told me he wanted to go home.
A Man, Woman, Baby And An Empty Bank Account
When my husband, Dan, and I piled into our Prius with our dog, Hopper, and cat, Ellison, we thought we were doing the smartest thing in a failing economy: going West.
Top Chef Cooks Up Ways To Cut Costs, Not Quality
Because of the recession, top restaurants across the country are trying to cut costs without compromising quality. According to the National Restaurant Association, 80 percent of America’s fine dining establishments reported that their earnings for the first half of this year were significantly down from last year.
‘Time Stands Still’: A War Portrait, Unretouched
Donald Margulies’ play Dinner With Friends, which took the Pulitzer Prize in 2000, charted the collateral damage of a disintegrating marriage. There’s collateral damage of a more immediate sort in his newest play, Time Stands Still, which is getting its world premiere at Los Angeles’ Geffen Playhouse.
Author Pieces Together Natural Mosaic
Terry Tempest Williams writes about the collision of the human and natural worlds. The environmental writer is best known for her 1991 book, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, which weaves together the author’s personal experiences with observations of nature and human’s often-destructive impact on it.
Reworked Albee Classic Ruffles Some in Theater World
Edward Albee recently expanded his first play, The Zoo Story, from one act into two, almost a half-century after its premiere. That’s raised controversy within the theater community.
Iraq Veterans Air Their Anger on an L.A. Stage
After Sept. 11, 2001, part-time actor Sean Huze enlisted in the Marines. While still in active duty, he wrote his first play, The Sand Storm. When he returned home Huze says, he was filled with rage at what he’d seen and been through. Last year, he and some other vets formed Vet Stage in Los Angeles to make their voices heard.
Playwright David Rabe Leaves the Stage Behind
Playwright David Rabe is renowned on Broadway having created powerful plays, including a Tony Award winner and three that have been made into films. But it has been more than five years since one of Rabe’s plays has opened in New York. Now he has turned to writing novels.
Getting Ford’s ‘Lay of the Land’
Writer Richard Ford’s latest novel is The Lay of the Land. It’s the third in a series that began with The Sportswriter and continued with the Pulitzer-winning Independence Day. The latest book was four years in the making.
Lemieux Takes Up Political Ideas in Art
Contemporary photographer and visual artist Annette Lemieux has her work in many of the major art museums, but she’s not quite sure where she fits. Is she a political artist? After Sept. 11, she shunned that title — only to find that she still had to reflect the world around her.
Poems for Daughters
Reporter Caitlin Shetterly talks to poets about the poems they’ve written for their daughters.
Lanford Wilson
The great director Federico Fellini once said that a dark theatre is like a womb — safe, self-contained and life nourishing. The playwright Lanford Wilson toys with that safe feeling. His plays expose what’s in the dark, both good and bad. Caitlin Shetterly spoke to Lanford Wilson about how darkness shapes his creative vision.
Secret Santa. Very Secret Santa.
Caitlin Shetterly reports on a true-life holiday fable from rural Maine, complete with a misunderstood recluse with a heart of gold, a deserving family in need, and a very special Christmas tree farm with secrets of its own.
‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’
It’s been called America’s greatest play and it’s most often remembered as the bleak story of one night and a mother’s descent into addiction. It’s also about a father’s relationship to his sons, and echoes O’Neil’s own troubled role as a father. Caitlin Shetterly reports.
A Work in Progress
Richard Ford is one of the best observers of middle-aged American male angst. He’s now in the middle of writing his third book about Frank Bascome, the divorced dad protagonist of Ford’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel Independence Day. Richard Ford prepared for two years before starting this novel, and Caitlin Shetterly asked him to describe precisely how he works.
Painting Me
The writer Caitlin Shetterly grew up in the gaze of a father who was a painter and a mother who was a writer. She reflects on how both parents drew on their daughter as a subject.
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