Blog Posts for Brenda Webster

Huang Xiang luminous spirit, brilliant poet

Brenda Webster — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:49:03 -0700

Huang Xiang condemned to death in China, has found asylum here. He is a slender man, always in motion, singing to himself, moving, full of kinetic energy which explodes as he reads his extraordinary poems. You would not imagine, seeing him that he had spent twelve years in prisons and labor camps. But the poems themselves contain the contradictions of his life. He feels himself a life-force, ...

Muriel Gardiner: Hero

Brenda Webster — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:27:04 -0700

Muriel Gardiner: Hero Muriel Gardiner was a close family friend. We shared a large house and farm outside of Princeton with her, her daughter Connie and her husband Joe who had gotten out of a French interment camp after heading the Austrian resistance. Her own anti-fascist activities later made Muriel the unwitting model for ...

In the army with William Saroyan: A story from Rome

Brenda Webster — Tue, 26 May 2009 23:25:02 -0700

I heard a funny war story last night from my cousin George Oppen's best friend JZ who just had his 90th birthday. Apparently during the war, JZ was in Astoria, Queens making films for the army. John Cheever and William Saroyan and Kucor were in his group. Saroyan was generally disliked by the sargeants because during morning marching drill he would stop to pet a dog or give a nickle to a ...

Freud and the crippling of psychoanalysis

Brenda Webster — Mon, 25 May 2009 00:49:22 -0700

We know that Freud insisted on sex as the key to neurosis. This led him to some grotesque results such as telling a psychotic patient to divorce his wife, leave his children and re-marry because sexual satisfaction would cure him.Guess what. It didn't. The first wife died in poverty and the second realtionship foundered, the man, broke down.All right. It was a new "science" and Freud ...

Freud was just plain wrong about sex

Brenda Webster — Tue, 12 May 2009 06:50:05 -0700

Freud was just plain wrong about the sexual underpinnings of neurosis. I don't know why it took me so long to realize exactly how wrong. Today, sitting on my terrace in Rome reading Lou Breger's biography of Freud, I finally got it.What is strange is that I wrote a memoir ten years ago writing ruefully about my various analysts giving me sexual interpretations. The most ill advised came from the ...

Rome Diary

Brenda Webster — Fri, 08 May 2009 07:58:32 -0700

Here in Rome again getting over jetlag. So many new boutiques between here and Campo di Fiori. It's hard to remember what they are replacing. Can you imagine an Italian Sushi bar. Well, there it is in a tiny cubby hole fresh as can be.Another more significant change. Alfredo, our barista, who has been the soul of Via Guilia for at least thirty years died suddeny two months ago. It isn't the same ...

writing a play

Brenda Webster — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:33:49 -0700

Writing a play is sapping my energy to blog. I am so fascinated by this new medium. Already with my last novel Vienna Triangle, I was getting tired of description. Tired, too, of having to move a character in to the dining room for dinner.Now all I have to do is dialogue. I love it. I have a wonderful collaborator with over twenty years theatre experience. I hand her the bare bones and she add ...

Head bashing robin

Brenda Webster — Fri, 01 May 2009 10:22:33 -0700

Five days ago I was startled by a bird flying full bore into my picture window. I rushed over to see if he was alright. He was. A beautiful robin with an intent look. I talked to him through the glass, hoping he'd realize that it wasn't an opening.A few minutes later I heard a sharp tap tap tap. It was the robin back again determined to get through. He had a bit of straw in his beak. So maybe it ...

Head bashing robin

Brenda Webster — Fri, 01 May 2009 10:22:25 -0700

WOM-BA mini Tour

Brenda Webster — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 17:40:09 -0700

Announcing the WOMBA tour! World of Mouth Bay Area, an eclectic cadre of local women authors, will be kicking off the very first WOMBA book tour on Thursday, April 16 at Orinda Books. The tour, Face Books: Social Networking in Real Time, is intended both to bring together Bay Area writers and readers, and to take social networking off the computer and back into the community. ...