About the Author
ESSENTIAL LIES
Beth Kephart, author of "Waiting for the Red Baron

Beth Kephart never intended for "Waiting for the Red Baron" and the other stories in her book, "A Slant of Sun: One Child's Courage," to appear in print. She says they were intended to be a "series of held memories" for her son Jeremy. "I wanted him to know how much he meant to us." "Waiting for the Red Baron" is a touching anecdote of an afternoon Kephart spends in the park with her son, Jeremy, who was born with an unusual behavioral disorder. The essay weaves between Jeremy's fantasy of seeing the Red Baron and Kephart's own understanding of truth, and the implications of that truth in the context of Jeremy's life. Beneath the story is a mother's struggle for a way to protect her son from the tragedy of his situation and keep his skies filled with hope. "The problem is, the reason I'm no good at this is that I'm afraid that my boy will believe me. I'm afraid that he will see, the way he has a knack for seeing, the violent, shattering end."

Kephart didn't think about genre when she wrote the pieces about Jeremy. When it became clear to her that it was a book, she thought: "Oh no. When the editorial world and the critics look at this they're going to dub it memoir." She did not intend to write memoir. "I think that there are amazing memoirs out there. What worries me are the books that exploit. Writers need to ask themselves: What is the universal good and purpose in memoir? Is it simply to air dirty laundry? Is it because I am angry and I want the world to know it? Or is it something that happens to us that transcends our own life story?"

In Kephart's case she chose to publish "A Slant of the Sun" because she thought it might ultimately help other people, and because she thought that Jeremy embodied a truth that she could not have learned without him. "I think that what I am interested in is memoir that slices out the mundane details of a life; in using myself as a foil against which I learn about and discern the most interesting and important parts of other people. I am not interested in telling my story. It is not my story that matters. It is the people that I have interacted with and what they have taught me."

When she writes, Kephart says she thinks about her subject, and about ways to give back. She does not think about publishing. She asks herself as a writer: "How can I bring the reader into the story in the cleanest way, the clearest way, and in the way that seduces them to transcend this story and think about their own lives?" She believes that the writer has a responsibility to make his or her writing as accessible as possible, and to make it something that touches others. Her first priority is to the truth and to using language as well as she possibly can. Kephart did extensive research on Manfred von Richtofen, also known as the Red Baron. She wanted to portray him accurately and give an historical anecdote. "I think it is very important to endow our personal stories with bigger bits of history and universe  that is what I was doing there and that is what I do with almost everything I write."

Of writing about other people, Kephart says "As long as you are being completely honest and as long as you are being completely respectful and as long as you are saying, 'here is what I learned from this and here is what they taught me,' I do not think that you are crossing any lines." Kephart doesn't go home at the end of the day at the park with Jeremy

and write down exactly what transpired between the two. She is more of a poet at heart. She puts fragments of words down on paper and when she has time to get back to it she easily recalls how it felt. "I don't go home and write in a journal and diary way. I put down the words that contain the experience." She can name no closer way to capture a moment and the heart when it happens, than with words.

"I always knew I wanted to be a writer but I knew I wanted to have something to write about." She studied the history of science, how cities evolved, Russian medicine, great inventors, new educational programs, the list goes on. "Have I used any of that? No. But I love learning." Until she was 29, she read only nonfiction-biography, history and science. She developed a love of fiction when she read authors like Louise Erdrich and Willa Cather. Now, she says it doesn't matter to her whether she reads fiction or nonfiction. She loves them both and writes them both. "I am interested in telling the most important stories and they might be real and they might be imagined."

Kephart believes there is no substitute for reading. "Reading is our instruction as writers. I am thrilled by good writing." After spending full days with Jeremy, Kephart found that she had an hour-and-a-half of free time a week. She had to decide whether she was going to read or write. "But I only write well after I've read well. And I had to figure that out. I'd realize that I wasn't writing well because I hadn't read enough good writers. And besides that there is no greater pleasure." Revision is critical. "Put down the best of what you can do and don't send it anywhere for a while because when you go back to it you're going to find out where you are sloppy or solipsistic or lethargic and you are going to want to slice in better language. You might find that the idea you had was a great idea and the story you are using to illustrate it is absolutely the wrong story. So you might have one good sentence out of your 3,000 words, but that is where you begin when you go back."

The first desire of a writer, Kephart maintains, should not to be published. "The first impulse should be 'I want to have the privilege of dwelling in language, and memory and idea. I think when you do that you are the most alive you are ever going to be."

Corinne Platt