Writing Gloucester: Four Novelists Speaking

One of the many things that Gloucester has to be proud of is the tradition of the Lyceum that has been alive in this town for 175 years. The concept of lyceum is distinguished anyway. It got its origins in ancient Greece where informal schools were held for anyone who wanted to attend. Lectures were given and all were invited. It was both a social and an educational event. The lyceum came to New England in the late 18th century, mostly in small towns such as Gloucester, and citizens could gather to hear speakers on a great variety of topics. In Gloucester we are fortunate that this tradition has been kept alive and flourishing.

Tonight the Sawyer Free Library hosted a Lyceum featuring four local novelists. Over fifty people crowded the main floor of the library and John Ronan, the host of a local television program called The Writer’s Block, acted as moderator.

Peter Anastas is a friend and I have previously written about his books No Fortunes and Broken Trip. His book At the Cut is a memoir of growing up in Gloucester in the forties, a little Greek kid in a town full of Irish and Italian kids. Broken Trip is a lean, spare novel about the rougher side of Gloucester – the drug addiction, prostitution, alcoholism, fractured families, homelessness and general dysfunction that is an aspect of life here that many would like to deny.

Kory Cucuru is a young guy, barely thirty, who quit college to become a stand-up comic and to ultimately write St. Peter’s Fiasco, a comic novel satirizing both the revered St. Peter’s Fiesta here and Sebastian Junger’s popular The Perfect Storm. I have not read his book but intend to now. Cucuru is from an old Italian Gloucester family with more than a few names on the walls in City Hall. He published the book on his own and said he sells more copies in bars than in bookstores.

I read Joe Orlando’s book The Fisherman’s Son a year and a half ago when it first came out and liked it. Orlando is a local attorney whose office is just a couple blocks from my house. He is also a Gloucester native and, despite being a lawyer, has the heart of a novelist. “The novel,” he said, “is the art form that can change the world.” Since this is a belief that I hold dear, he immediately won my appreciation. He said that when he was a boy and read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin he knew he would want to write novels some day. And when he read that Abraham Lincoln once said to Mrs. Stowe, “so you’re the little lady who started this great big war” he knew that the novel was more powerful than technology.

Anthony Weller is the only novelist of the group who is not a Gloucester native though he has been visiting here since he was a boy. He is a beautiful man with a multitude of gifts. I have not read his book but I have heard him play the guitar with Herb Pomeroy’s Trio. He has published four novels, including The Siege of Salt Cove, with major publishers and has traveled the world as a journalist.

Listening to these four men speak was a treat, especially to a fellow, albeit less accomplished, novelist. They spoke about the novelists who influenced them (Weller loves V.S. Pritchett, Cucuru prefers Vonnegut, Anastas mentioned John Collier). They talked about loving Gloucester (“it’s full of anarchists,” Anastas said) and about how Gloucester’s earthy, gritty island mentality has captivated them.

But most of all they talked about writing, all the things writers always say - write every day, write what you know, writers write. But there was more than that. In listening to them I heard the love of what they do – more than love, a passion for the written word, the need to say “this is what I have to say and I’m going to say it.” As one who shares that passion for the written word I was proud and humbled to spend a little time with them.

Thanks for reading.