Bestselling author offers life advice during pandemic
ROGER ROSENBLATT OFFERS TONIC FOR FEARFUL TIMES
Roger Rosenblatt didn’t set out to bare his soul on the essentials of how to get through today’s anxious, uncertain times. Yet he does so in his wise, touching and poetic new book, “Cold Moon: On Life, Love, and Responsibility.”
Reflecting on the three most important lessons he’s learned in life, the 80-year-old best-selling author speaks elegantly to why we’re on this planet. Sharing moments in time, including childhood memories from Connecticut, he offers hope and encouragement.
The three lessons he calls the “essential trinity of our existence” at the core of “Cold Moon” are: An appreciation of life, the embrace of human love and the exercise of responsibility toward one another.
He’ll elaborate on those themes during a Zoom conversation hosted by Byrd’s Books of Bethel Wednesday, Oct. 28, at 7 p.m.
The author of five New York Times Notable Books of the Year, four national bestsellers and seven off-Broadway plays, Rosenblatt is a Distinguished Professor of English and Writing at SUNY Stony Brook/ Southampton. He shared more about “Cold Moon” and its message, via email.
“It may seem that the pandemic inspired ‘Cold Moon,’ because the book centers on the essentials of living, and that sort of focus may be necessary in a time as scary, strange and diverting as ours is now,” he said.
“But, in fact, the book was written between late December 2019, and the end of January 2020, when the last full moon of the year occurs, auguring the winter solstice. And it was on its way to publication by the time our lives were beginning to be ruled by COVID-19,” he said.
“What makes ‘Cold Moon’ seem prescient lies in the nature of its three subjects, which remain relevant in any situation, plague or no plague. An appreciation of life, the embrace of human love and the exercise of responsibility toward one another constitute the essential trinity of our existence. These are big, complicated areas of thought. Yet what each requires is fairly simple: keeping one’s eyes open.”
He added, “A closer inspection of life cannot help but result in a deeper appreciation of life’s wonders. A closer inspection of love reminds us of the precious gift we have in one another. It follows, then, that we have a responsibility to keep life and one another afloat — that nature depends and thrives on interconnected responsibilities.
“Look very closely at everything around you, and the world will take your breath away before a virus has a chance to,” he said.
Calling Byrd’s Books “one of the very few remaining great bookstores in the country,” Rosenblatt shared more of his plan for the Zoom event:
“I’ll try to hone in on the power of watching closely the very world that, these days, seems suffused only with anxiety and sadness. Underneath our anxiety and sadness lies what Emily Dickinson calls ‘the culprit, life’ — far more powerful than any corrupting disease. The celebration of children and the general acknowledgment of beauty; the function of love, both in the present and in memory; the idea that we are responsible for each other, just as beetles are responsible for maintaining a species of mimosa tree, as the trees sustain the beetles; or in the process of microchimerism, when a child and mother engage in their mutually-dependent chemical transaction before and after a birth — all such things offer us an eternal and expanding amazement.
“And an implicit warning, as well, especially when human life is taken wantonly, carelessly, or when murder is fueled by categorical hatreds. Want a vaccine for the coronavirus? Try a shot of observing every miracle the world offers.”
The author said he doesn’t mean “that the exercise of such observation, of such appreciative seeing, should offer a momentary respite from the zombie-like world around us, including the ceaseless drumbeats of a presidential election, but rather that it should be a modus operandi, our ongoing way of living. For when the dust clears from the virus and from politics, we will be left with only one another.
“How shall we live? What shall we focus on under our various cold moons? Three things only. Life, love and responsibility. Near the end of my life, in my own winter solstice, this is what I’ve learned, all I know.”
Earlier this month, Rosenblatt was roasted on Zoom by a number of friends, including actor/director Alan Alda. After some good-natured teasing, Alda told Rosenblatt he’d “perfected the art of friendship” and used his moons well.