The Red Tent (SparkNotes Literature Guide Series) by Anita Diamant

Biography

Anita Diamant is an award-winning journalist and the author of several bestselling novels (The Red Tent, Good Harbor, The Last Days of Dogtown, Day After Night), a collection of essays (Pitching My Tent, and six nonfiction guides to contemporary Jewish life.

Good to Know

Some interesting outtakes from our interview with Anita Diamont:

"Modern dance concerts inspire me like little else. I'm amazed at the creativity and the range of the human imagination in the human body. Along a similar vein, I tend to prefer contemporary art museums and galleries for the visual/mental kick-in-the-pants. I don't go in expecting to like everything I see; I'm just... looking!"

"I unwind by walking on the beach. Sky, sea, sand, rocks, birds -- the great noisy emptiness. Nothing like it."

"I'd rather be home, or close to home. Traveling around the US or abroad is fascinating, but I lack the bug or gene that inspired people to visit the four corners of the globe. I'm not uncurious, honest. Maybe I'll grow into it..."

Feature Interview

What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer -- and why?
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf influenced me as a journalist and as a novelist in ways that continue to unfold. I'm pretty sure that I missed the humor on virtually every page when I first read the essay, as an earnest undergraduate. Today when I re-read it, I'm still inspired not only by Woolf's clear-eyed message that women's stories need to be told, but also by her style, conviction, and wit. Written in 1928, these 118 pages still challenge readers and writers to consider, "Who is left out?"

In one passage, Woolf ponders the lives of the flesh-and-blood lives of the women who were Shakespeare's contemporaries. She wrote, "One knows nothing detailed, nothing perfectly true and substantial about her. History scarcely mentions her... She never writes her own life and scarcely keeps a diary; there are only a handful of her letters in existence. She left no plays or poems by which we can judge her.

"What one wants," Woolf wrote, " is a mass of information; at which age did she marry; how many children had she as a rule; what was her house like; had she a room to herself; did she do the cooking ...

"All these facts lie somewhere, presumably, in parish registers and account books. The life of the average Elizabeth woman must be scattered about somewhere, would one collect and make a book of it."

Virginia Woolf challenged me to tell stories that have (or might yet) fall off the page of history simply because they belong to women.

What are some of your favorite books, and what makes them special to you?
<.li>Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers -- The real Mary Poppins got lost in 1964 when Hollywood turned her into a cream puff. Her name now conjures up the image of a perfect nanny, a woman who sweetly charms and pacifies her charges. But children who read the Pamela Travers series know that Mary Poppins is, in fact, opinionated, sharp of tongue, and not always nice. That's not a problem since she is a good egg at heart and, much more important, a witch with a magic satchel and knowledge of secret doorways into the many enchanted places hidden in plain sight throughout London. (Sound familiar?)

Travers had a light touch for the supernatural: newborn babies who could converse with the wind, sunbeams, and birds; an ancient candy-store owner whose self-regenerating fingers are made of barley sugar. But Mary Poppins herself was the best magic of all. A free spirit ,who comes and goes as she sees fit; a well-traveled person with a fabulous past; an ordinary-looking woman who adores her own appearance and whose self-regard is as unassailable as the Himalayas: I didn't want Mary Poppins to be my nanny. I wanted to be her when I grew up.