Sarah Kaufman

The grace of Frank Deford

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You didn’t have to be a sports insider to love the work of sportswriter Frank Deford. You only had to appreciate drama and the human heart and expert storytelling. I’ve been thinking about him with a mix of sadness and profound gratitude since he died on May 28. Back when I was in college (ahem, decades ago) I started listening to his penetrating essays for NPR on the deeper meaning of athletics; moving meditations not only on great achievement but on great struggles. Such compassion came through in his voice and his words.

I saw another side of his extraordinary generosity when he gave me two of the greatest gifts an author can receive: early support, and a blurb.

Since it was clear that Mr. Deford had an eye for elegance of motion and for the inspiring grace that humans can achieve, I had hoped he might enjoy my book, “The Art of Grace,” especially given my focus on athletes. I wrote to him to ask if he would take a look at the manuscript.

Joy of joys, he quickly agreed, making my heart leap, and a short while after receiving the manuscript he followed up with my editor at W.W. Norton to say that he was “thoroughly taken” with it.  

“It’s not the sort of work that I’m usually sent,” he wrote in an email, “and I’m delighted to have had the chance to read it.” And he included the following endorsement:  
 
“So that’s it.  It takes only a short while in reading ‘The Art of Grace’ to realize that Sarah Kaufman has nailed it, that she has detected precisely what it is that has changed us so for the worse.  We are suffering what she calls, simply, a “grace gap” –– and it is not just that Cary Grant, her hero, has gone, with few enough Roger Federers left to remind us of that easy elegance.  Rather, grace in all its manifestations has given way to coarseness and impatience, and, for all our vaunted technology, she shows us to be a more diminished species. Ms. Kaufman’s book is itself most graceful, ever knowing.
 
Best,
Frank Deford”

Mr. Deford also suggested that he be identified on the book jacket not only as a sportswriter but as the author of “Alex: The Life of a Child,” the memoir he wrote in 1983 about his daughter Alexandra, who struggled with cystic fibrosis and died at age 8. Of the many books he’d written, he explained, this was the one that dealt with grace. The book is almost unbearably beautiful: the composure of a wise innocent, the helplessness of love, and the grace that endures. It’s no wonder he was so generous with others. I’ll always feel fortunate and so very grateful to have briefly crossed his path, and to have felt the lasting grace of his great heart.

For a good account of Mr. Deford’s life and a passage from “Alex: The Life of a Child,” read The Washington Post’s obituary.

For more about Alex and her father, read this Washington Post feature from 1986.

“The Art of Grace” Inspires a Dance

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dancer

I got the news in a tweet:

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With the huge debt of gratitude I owe the dancers and choreographers who have inspired me over the years, this is gorgeous icing on an already decadent cake. Here’s how choreographer Cherylyn Lavagnino, who created the piece, describes it: “‘Veiled,’ (2016), a new work for a female cast of seven, explores the idea of preserving physical and internal grace in the face of oppression of any kind. While Martin Bresnick’s ‘Prayers Remain Forever’ inspired the choreography, ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’ by Azar Nafisi and ‘The Art of Grace’ by Sarah L. Kaufman provided the initial creative research. Our daily process as dancers is centered around a quest for grace of movement and emotion.”

The other great thrill here, of course, is to be linked in this very cool way with Azar Nafisi’s beautiful book “Reading Lolita in Tehran.” Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance premiered the new work in June and reprised it today at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where Lavagnino teaches. Too bad I couldn’t make it!

There’s a piece on it in the Village Voice. And in Broadway World.

Photo credit: Australian dancer Irene Vera Young, from the collection of the State Library of New South Wales.

“The Peace of Wild Things”

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nighsky

My friend Rose sent me a poem titled “The Peace of Wild Things,” which was given to her by a bereavement counselor. The poet is Wendell Berry, a beautiful and prolific writer with deep ties to the land. Born in 1934, he has worked his Kentucky farm for most of his life. I love this poem’s meditation on the stillness and acceptance of the natural world. As Rose pointed out, the line about nature’s creatures “not being taxed by forethought of grief” reminds us that instead of worrying about what’s to come, we can enjoy the present moment instead. I find these words so consoling, especially the ending, that sense of a great soft power simply waiting, waiting, patiently watching as time and pain wash over us, and wash past. I’ve excerpted just a few lines below out of respect for his copyright, but you can read the full poem here:

From “The Peace of Wild Things”
BY WENDELL BERRY

“I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. …
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

Flickr Commons photo, from the book “In God’s out-of-doors” (1902) by William A. Quayle.