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WORK TITLE: Hap and Hazard and the End of the World
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Has worked as history teacher, tutor, and antiques dealer.
AVOCATIONS:Singing, gardening.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Diane DeSanders’s debut novel, Hap & Hazard and the End of the World, tells the story of a Texas family’s life in the years immediately after World War II, told from the viewpoint of the eldest daughter and structured as a series of vignettes. The girl, whose name is never revealed, is about six years old when her father returns to their suburban Dallas home, obviously traumatized by his combat experiences. In addition to his psychic pain, he is in physical pain from his wounds, and he sometimes has violent outbursts. While she adjusts to having her father back in the household, the narrator must also adjust to having two sisters, born in quick succession after his return and causing her to feel neglected. She deals with changes in the world as well, as there is a new awareness of the capability of nuclear weapons to wipe out life on earth. At the same time, she ponders some less existential questions, such as whether Santa Claus is real. The girl “struggles to understand what is really going on in the adult world, and the truth of how things work in the greater world, but since she hardly ever gets a straightforward answer about anything, begins to look outside in ways that aren’t always safe,” DeSanders told an interviewer on the Powell’s Books Web site.
Several reviewers found Hap & Hazard and the End of the World an engaging, moving tale. DeSanders “paints a vivid picture of childhood in postwar America, replete with all of the joys and sorrows that are part of growing up,” remarked Kristine Huntley in Booklist. A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted: “While it rings true, the novel’s childlike narration may be off-putting to some readers. Readers who can look past that will find a time capsule of American awakening.” A blogger at Me, You, and Books, however, thought the narration was a strength of the book, saying: “The genius of DeSanders’ writing is the way in which she brings adult readers into the remembrance of childhood vulnerability that continues to haunt us all.” Susan L. Jackson, writing online at Shelf Awareness, likewise praised the use of the child narrator. “Funny and nostalgic and occasionally unsettling, this child’s view of her own small world also provides a picture of the wider world at that time,” she commented. A Publishers Weekly critic observed that the character comes off as “curious and thoughtful,” making the novel a “smart and subtle debut.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November. 1, 2017, Kristine Huntley, review of Hap & Hazard and the End of the World, p. 30.
Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2017, review of Hap & Hazard and the End of the World.
Publishers Weekly, November 20, 2017, review of Hap & Hazard and the End of the World, p. 69.
ONLINE
Bellevue Literary Press Website, http://blpress.org/ (March 19, 2018), brief biography.
Me, You, and Books, https://mdbrady.wordpress.com/ (July 1, 2017), review of Hap & Hazard and the End of the World.
Powell’s Books Website, http://www.powells.com/ (January 9, 2018), interview with Diane DeSanders.
Shelf Awareness, http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ (February 6, 2018), Susan L. Jackson, review of Hap & Hazard and the End of the World
Diane DeSanders
Britney Young
A fifth-generation Texan, Diane DeSanders is a history buff, theater lover, poet, mother, and grandmother. Between careers as a history teacher and antiques dealer, she has worked in regional theater in almost every capacity. She now writes, gardens, and sings in Brooklyn, New York. Hap and Hazard and the End of the World is her first novel.
Quoted in Sidelights: “struggles to understand what is really going on in the adult world, and the truth of how things work in the greater world, but since she hardly ever gets a straightforward answer about anything, begins to look outside in ways that aren’t always safe,”
Q&AS
Powell's Q&A: Diane DeSanders, Author of 'Hap and Hazard and the End of the World'
by Diane DeSanders, January 9, 2018 11:49 AM
Hap & Hazard and the End of the World by Diane DeSanders
Describe your book.
The book I am promoting is my first novel. It is a coming-of-age story set in postwar Dallas, Texas. It’s the story of an upper-middle class family under the stress of a father with PTSD; a mother who struggles to keep everything under control and appearing normal; and an eldest child who struggles to understand what is really going on in the adult world, and the truth of how things work in the greater world, but since she hardly ever gets a straightforward answer about anything, begins to look outside in ways that aren’t always safe.
What was your favorite book as a child?
I had many favorite books as a child. There was no TV until I was about 10. The first book I read from beginning to end was Bambi. The shock that the mother is allowed to die caused me to push through all of Felix Salten's books in an attempt to understand. I was about seven then. After that I read Heidi, which annoyed me because she had to stay with those boring rich people. I loved all of the Black Stallion books, the dog books of Jack London and Albert Payson Terhune, the Oz books, and many more.
When did you know you were a writer?
I first knew I was a writer in sixth grade, when Mrs. Coleman had us keep observation notebooks and write poems. Mine came easily, and soon I was writing the poems for half of the girls in class to hand in. Of course Mrs. Coleman knew this. She was a wonderful teacher in a little country school. This was before teachers had to skim through mountains of prescribed material and could pretty much teach what and how they wanted. She would read out loud to us and cry — Evangeline, Caddie Woodlawn, Amos Fortune, Free Man, and I still remember her classes to this day.
I was already writing in a diary at that time, and soon after I tried to write a dog story patterned after Lad, A Dog, but I never finished it. But that was when I realized I could write.
What does your writing workspace look like?
My workspace is a small room off of my second-floor apartment in a 100-year-old house in Brooklyn that my daughter and I bought together about 10 years ago. There is a wall of bookshelves, a small desk, other walls covered with papers, photos, clippings, etc. There is a second-floor porch off of this room, so I can step outside for a few minutes, look at the big tree and the street action, and just think about everything.
What do you care about more than most people around you?
I care about ideas, logical thinking, and history a lot more than most people. I find it absolutely tragic that these subjects are being neglected.
Tell us something you're embarrassed to admit.
I am embarrassed to admit how serious my procrastination problem is.
Introduce one other author you think people should read, and suggest a good book with which to start.
Mars by Fritz Zorn. This is an amazing book, first published (scandalously) in Switzerland and later published in the US by Knopf. A furious indictment of the psychology of the upper-class social order by a young man dying of cancer. Everyone should read it.
Besides your personal library, do you have any beloved collections?
I have a nice, small collection of work by Texan artists. Having once been an antiques dealer, I collect too many things.
What's the strangest or most interesting job you've ever had?
I worked for a tutoring service in Chinatown in New York for a few years. That was incredibly interesting. Tiger moms galore! You were considered a “spoiled American” if you wanted a lunch break! I knew then that China would take over the world!
What scares you the most as a writer?
What scares me the most as a writer is either that I will be hated and punished, and someone will have a heart attack and die, or, I will be taken up and co-opted by someone else’s political agenda.
If someone were to write your biography, what would be the title and subtitle?
The Journey: She Did What She Had to Do.
Offer a favorite sentence or passage from another writer.
Just about any paragraph from Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, but especially one that I now cannot find describing the contents of a drawer and ending with “odd socks.”
I also love this quote from Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse:
Evil is never intended as evil. Indeed the contradiction inherent in all evil is that it originates in the desire to eliminate evil. "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." Evil arises in the honored belief that history can be tidied up, brought to a sensible conclusion. It is evil to act as though the past is bringing us to a specifiable end....It is evil for a nation to believe it is the "last, best hope on earth." It is evil to think history is to end with a return to Zion, or with the classless society, or with the Islamicization of all living infidels. Your history does not belong to me. We live with each other in a common history.
Share a sentence of your own that you're particularly proud of.
I’m proud of this one:
But I knew I wouldn’t think about it, but would wait until they were gone to their dinner party at some other ready-to-be-photographed-for-House-Beautiful-type house, me babysitting and waiting until dark outside — and all the Shasta daisies white ghosts of flowers in the dark — to go out and turn on the pool light, to there find a giant spotted-golden bullfrog come up from the creek where he used to swim flat out for miles, but now he was trapped in the glowing, undulating, bluer-than-blue pool, powerful legs pumping and stretching to coast the blue width and length — pushing off from one side and then the other, from one end and then the other, stirring the whole pool and all the leaves and doodlebugs into whirlpools on all sides of his repeated, frantic, trapped path, back and forth and up and down, with no place to get a leg up, banging back and forth — that bullfrog, leapfrog, frog-in-the-throat — pushing off the deep, then the shallow, then the deep, then the shallow, ranging the shape and size of the pool, being the shape and size of the pool, forgetting that there was ever anything else but the shape and size of the pool.
Describe a recurring dream.
My dreams are almost always a vivid technicolor, depicting an emergency that only I can solve. There are many obstacles and a time limit, and I wake up sweating before anything is resolved.
What's your biggest grammatical pet peeve?
My biggest grammatical pet peeve is incorrect use of apostrophe-s ('s), especially when used for a simple plural. This is rampant, even among the educated, even in scholarly or serious works, and is always shocking to me because I know there must have been an instant of uncertainty. Why don’t they just look it up?
Name a guilty pleasure you partake in regularly.
TV, ice cream, and funny videos of infant and/or animal behavior. I love to sing karaoke, but don’t feel guilty about that.
What's the best advice you’ve ever received?
Pay attention to the way a man talks to his mother, because that’s the way he’s going to talk to you. My mother told me that.
The man that you would want wouldn’t want you now. This was told to me in a letter from a Catholic priest when I was about 18. We had an ongoing correspondence for some years because he was always trying to convince me of the existence of God. And I liked him and enjoyed the argument. Of course back then I didn’t understand this and took it as a kind of insult, but now after marriages, divorces, children, etc., I certainly do get it.
Write a question of your own, then answer it.
Q: What drives you?
A: Two things: curiosity and the desire to make everything right for my children and grandchildren. And those two things have often contradicted one another.
Top Five Books That Have Been of Use to Me in a "Lifetime Journey" Kind of Way.
1. The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
2. Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse
3. The Loser and Yes by Thomas Bernhard
4. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
5. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
÷ ÷ ÷
A fifth-generation Texan, Diane DeSanders is a history buff, theater lover, poet, mother, and grandmother. Between careers as a history teacher and antiques dealer, she has worked in regional theater in almost every capacity. She now writes, gardens, and sings in Brooklyn, New York. Hap and Hazard and the End of the World is her first novel.
Quoted in Sidelights: “While it rings true, the novel’s childlike narration may be off-putting to some readers. Readers who can look past that will find a time capsule of American awakening.”
DeSanders, Diane: HAP AND HAZARD
AND THE END OF THE WORLD
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
DeSanders, Diane HAP AND HAZARD AND THE END OF THE WORLD Bellevue Literary Press (Adult
Fiction) $16.99 1, 9 ISBN: 978-1-942658-36-8
A child yearning for answers to adult mysteries comes of age in this debut novel about post-World War II
Texas.
DeSanders' unnamed child narrator misses the attention she got from her mother when her father was away
at war. He returned home, and two babies promptly arrived; she is displaced from the center of her mother's
life. Her father believes in American institutions, traditional family roles. "Daddy believes in General
Motors," she tells us, and "he wants to have things a certain way." The author captures the veneer of
simplicity that followed the second world war. Capitalism, family, and country reign, but DeSanders'
narrator wants to know why. What is truth? Is it built on trust? The author approaches these questions
through the eyes of a child who wants to know everything, from the truth about Santa to how the universe
works. "It seems like the main thing grown-ups want is for you not to find out anything about what's real,"
she laments. Unfortunately, her father suffers from PTSD and war injuries; his rage keeps his family on
edge. The narrator's world becomes about trying to anticipate the outbursts of a deeply troubled man while
helping her mother maintain the fiction of stability. "I decided then to at least go ahead and like Daddy," she
tells us after he is in a giving mood, "on a trial basis." As the novel progresses, her view of the world
eventually becomes predictably more shaded. "There is a change in the universe...," she says after an
altering experience. "The world is plain and flat now, more gray, the mystery and the brilliance gone out of
it."
While it rings true, the novel's childlike narration may be off-putting to some readers. Readers who can look
past that will find a time capsule of American awakening.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"DeSanders, Diane: HAP AND HAZARD AND THE END OF THE WORLD." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct.
2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A509244124/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=dd2113e9. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A50924
3/4/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1520205083766 2/3
Quoted in Sidelights: “paints a vivid picture of childhood in postwar America, replete with all of the joys and sorrows that are part of growing up,”
Quoted in Sidelights: “curious and thoughtful,” making the novel a “smart and subtle debut.”
Hap and Hazard and the End of the
World
Publishers Weekly.
264.47 (Nov. 20, 2017): p69.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Hap and Hazard and the End of the World
Diane DeSanders. Bellevue, $16.99 trade paper (288p) ISBN 978-1-942658-36-8
DeSanders gives readers a glimpse of postwar America through the eyes of a curious and thoughtful girl in
her smart and subtle debut. The unnamed preteen narrator lives in suburban Dallas and is stuck between
childhood, like her younger sisters (her parents' clear favorites, if you ask her), and the adult world, which
she is left out of and often doesn't understand. She relates a mix of lighthearted experiences--an almost
mythical appearance by the Easter Bunny, family dinner shenanigans, and her father's intense passion for
cars--and foreboding currents of darkness, as with the looming fear of nuclear annihilation and her father's
violent temper. The question of Santa comes up throughout, and the narrator's changing thoughts on the
possibility of his existence mark her growth toward adulthood. Although the narrator comes to life as she
works through the problems of young adulthood--learning about God, stealing for the first time, seeing her
mother age--it is the depiction of suburban life and the changes that swept through America after WWII that
bring the book to life. While more of a set of interconnecting sketches than a single narrative, DeSanders
book offers a modest but moving example of a family trying to make life work. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Hap and Hazard and the End of the World." Publishers Weekly, 20 Nov. 2017, p. 69. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A517262067/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d08501a7.
Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A517262067
3/4/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1520205083766 3/3
“curious and thoughtful,” making the novel a “smart and subtle debut.”
Hap and Hazard and the End of the
World
Kristine Huntley
Booklist.
114.5 (Nov. 1, 2017): p30+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Hap and Hazard and the End of the World.
By Diane DeSanders.
Jan. 2018.288p. Bellevue, paper, $16.99 (9781942658368).
DeSanders sets her debut novel in Dallas, Texas, just after the end of WWII. The precocious, six-year-old
narrator, who is never named, has to adjust to the return of her father, who fought in the war, as well as the
subsequent arrival of two younger sisters. Her father's reintegration into the family is far from smooth: his
feet, injured in the war, constantly pain him, and he flies into rages that are both frightening and frequent.
Her mercurial father seems to respond more favorably to her middle sister, Annie, so the narrator wonders if
her many quirks are to blame. After seeing the movie Miracle on 34th Street, she starts to fixate on the
question of whether or not there's a Santa Claus. Her other fixation is on Oliver, her grandparents' brooding,
adopted teenage son, an obsession that turns tragic. More a collection of linked vignettes than a fully
formed novel, DeSanders' first outing paints a vivid picture of childhood in postwar America, replete with
all of the joys and sorrows that are part of growing up.--Kristine Huntley
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Huntley, Kristine. "Hap and Hazard and the End of the World." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2017, p. 30+. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A515382996/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=93aa54c2. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A515382996
Quoted in Sidelights: “The genius of DeSanders’ writing is the way in which she brings adult readers into the remembrance of childhood vulnerability that continues to haunt us all.”
Hap and Hazard and the End of the World, by Diane DeSanders.
JULY 1, 2017
tags: Childhood novel, Dallas, Family relations, War
hap and hazard and the End of the World
Hap and Hazard and the End of the World, by Diane DeSanders. New York: Bellevue Press, 2018. FORTHCOMING
5 stars
A moving novel narrated by a young girl growing up in and around Dallas after World War II and recounting the fears and confusions adults all bring from their childhoods.
Diane DeSanders is a fifth generation Texan who writes with great awareness about what Texas was like immediately after World War II, at least for some members of successful Dallas families. She has spent much of her life teaching history and doing theatre, and this is her first novel. Her sensitive power of observation makes it an enjoyable and insightful book.
The story is told through a young, insecure girl just starting school when her father returns from the war crippled both physically and psychologically. The girl loses her monopoly on her mother’s love, and soon two younger siblings appear. Both sets of grandparents are comfortably well off, but for the narrator the world seems fragile. She doesn’t know whether or not to believe in either Santa Claus or God. Each chapter relates a separate incident, building to an understanding of why the girl feels so unworthy and unwanted. One is about Hap and Hazard, the family dogs, and “the end of the world” hovers in narrator’s stories throughout the book.
The genius of DeSanders’ writing is the way in which she brings adult readers into the remembrance of childhood vulnerability that continues to haunt us all. Her words are sparse, often understate, and powerful. For a sample of the story, go to http://centerforfiction.org/magazine/fiction/nip-and-tuck-and-the-end-of-the-world-by-diane-desanders/.
I didn’t grow up in Dallas, but across the Red River in Southern Oklahoma. Yet I recognized the places and the attitudes in this book. Perhaps most of all I belong to the same generation of women who grew up in the shadow of war, not directly hurt like many were, but shaped by it anyway. DeSaunders captures childhood in the shadow of war amazingly well.
The Bellevue Press which published this book is a small publisher associated with the NYC Medical School. They focus on books that bring together the humanities and sciences. Perhaps they chose to publish this book because of clarity and beauty with which it takes us into the mind of a child in such significant manner.
I strongly recommend this book.
Quoted in Sidelights: “Funny and nostalgic and occasionally unsettling, this child’s view of her own small world also provides a picture of the wider world at that time,”
Hap & Hazard and the End of the World
by Diane DeSanders
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Fifth-generation Texan Diane DeSanders's first novel, Hap & Hazard and the End of the World, perfectly captures life near Dallas after World War II, as seen through the eyes of a child.
The unnamed young narrator is the oldest daughter of Dick and Jane. Dick came home from the war with life-altering wounds, both in body and mind, and now works in his father's Cadillac dealership. Jane takes care of their three little girls with the help of their black maid, May-May. Life in this household is not easy, with depression, alcoholism and PTSD ever-present.
The little girl yearns for attention from her parents but, fortunately, she has warm relationships with her grandparents and other family members, some of whom are quite eccentric. Her constant questions lie at the heart of the story. There is so much she wants to know, but the adults in her life rarely give her a straight answer, whether she is asking about Santa Claus or why no one talks about the Jewish roots in their family.
At turns disturbing and hopeful, this immersive novel puts the reader in the mind of this confused little girl. She sees and experiences horrible things as the fabric of her life and sometimes enjoys the delights of a normal childhood, like running outside or sharing her best friend's clubhouse. Funny and nostalgic and occasionally unsettling, this child's view of her own small world also provides a picture of the wider world at that time. --Suzan L. Jackson, freelance writer and author of Book By Book blogDiscover: A little girl in post-World War II Dallas shares her life in this funny, nostalgic and sometimes disturbing story.