Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Goner
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.anngoette.com/
CITY:
STATE: VA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 92062095
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n92062095
HEADING: Goethe, Ann
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670 __ |a Her Midnight lemonade, 1993: |b CIP t.p. (Ann Goethe)
670 __ |a Contemporary authors online, 1999: |b “Ann Goethe” (Ann Goethe; b. Dec. 12, 1945, Baton Rouge, LA; periodical contributions as Ann G. Distler, Ann Goette)
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PERSONAL
Born December 12, 1945, in Baton Rouge, LA; married.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Playwright, poet, essayist, short story writer, novelist. Blacksburg New School, Blacksburg, VA, founder.
WRITINGS
Contributor of poems to literary journals, anthologies, and magazines, including Southern Review, Bark, Inkwell, Lowdown, Outerbridge, Inkwell, Clare, Third Wednesday, No Business Poems, Reflections on the New River, Arts Alive!. Contributor of stories and essays in the Crescent Review, Broken Plate, Love After 70, Southern Distinction, Half Tones to Jubilee, Slipstream, Rockhurst Review, New Orleans Review, Earth’s Daughters and ISBN. Wrote the libretto for the opera Travels performed by Opera Roanoke; wrote the musicals Coming of Age and Something in the Air Feels Like Tomorrow, under the name Ann G. Distler.
SIDELIGHTS
Ann Goethe (born Ann Goette) is a playwright, poet, essayist, short story writer, and novelist. She has published poems and short stories in various literary journals, including Southern Review, Bark, Inkwell, and New Orleans Review; wrote a libretto for the Travels opera performed by Opera Roanoke; and wrote the musical Coming of Age about middle school children, made by the National Association of Secondary School Principals. She is the founder of the Blacksburg New School and is active with the ReNew The New River Committee and the Giles Early Childhood Education Project.
Midnight Lemonade
Goethe wrote the novel Midnight Lemonade in 1993, which was a finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discovery Prize. In the story, sheltered and innocent Katherine Pierson is a good Catholic girl educated in a convent boarding school in Louisiana. In college, she has an affair with her professor, Eric, twelve years older, gets pregnant, and marries him. After they have three children and move to North Carolina, she becomes disillusioned with her life and Eric’s continued adultery, and they both become alcoholics. Katherine files for divorce, finds love with the married Ian, leaves the children with Eric, yet suffers guilt for abandoning her children.
In this absorbing and touching novel. Goethe is a confident writer with a distinctive voice who writes “with lyric intensity, tart humor and serious insight about a woman’s life and the difficult choices a mother must make,” according to a writer in Publishers Weekly. In a review in Library Journal, Denise Johnson noted that even though the characters and their situations are quite familiar, “This is enjoyable reading notwithstanding, and Goethe writes with style.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor said that the novel pushes all the right contemporary buttons and reaches an uplifting yet old-fashioned conclusion, and observed that the book is “Typical of the genre in which every mistake is forgiven if an allegedly strong, talented, and sexy woman finally grows up.”
Goner
In 2017, Goethe published Goner, about four sisters in the 1980s who keep vigil over their dying father and reminisce about their childhood in the 1950s and 1960s growing up in the Deep South. The sisters’ young mother Margaret from the North is a newspaper woman doing a story in 1943 Louisiana when she hastily marries Matthew Sobral, an older Southern man. After Margaret’s death, Matthew becomes despondent and is near death himself, when sisters Rebecca, Elizabeth, Kate, and Emily return to nurse their father and talk about their childhood liking Elvis, participating in the Civil Rights movement, and revealing family secrets. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the book “a moving, emotionally intuitive tale, littered with surprises, that brings a branch of the Sobral family tree vibrantly to life. An articulate and stirring Southern story written from the heart.”
In Goner, Goethe explores the relationships between family myth, truth, secrets, and reality. In describing the themes of the book, Goethe told Lisa Haselton in an interview online at the Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews website: “If your relatives weren’t the people you thought, would it change who you are? Or does family myth serve a larger purpose to cement us together? … childhood memories come flying back, along with secrets from their enigmatic mother’s past. And since where we come from says a lot about who we become, will these secrets bring the family closer together or tear them apart?” Goethe said she was inspired to write the book, because she grew up in the Deep South with a liberal mother from the North who participated in the Civil Rights movement, while her father embodied the Old South and romanticized the Civil War. Goethe and her sister grew up in the post-Civil Rights era and went to integrated schools.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2018, review of Goner.
Library Journal, April 1993, Denise Johnson, review of Midnight Lemonade, p. 107.
Publishers Weekly, January 25, 1993, review of Midnight Lemonade, p. 76.
ONLINE
Kirkus Reviews, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (February 1, 1993), review of Midnight Lemonade.
Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews, http://lisahaseltonsreviewsandinterviews.blogspot.com/ (June 8, 2018), Lisa Haselton, author interview.
At age fifteen, Ann Goette won second prize in the Louisiana State Poetry Contest with a cowardly poem about racism. She kept writing. Her first published poem, as an adult, appeared in the SOUTHERN REVIEW.
From age twenty to about forty Goette was Distler. Early works and two plays, Coming of Age and Something in the Air Feels Like Tomorrow were published under Distler.
In 1990, Goette's wonderful, brilliant (former) agent, Sandra Dykstra arbitrarily changed Goette to Goethe during the whirlwind bidding auction for her first novel Midnight Lemonade. Among the five or six serious bidders were Little Brown and Company, Delacorte, and Hyperion (a brand new publishing house). The latter two offered an almost unheard of amount of money for a first novel by a forty-five year-old female nobody. Goethe went with Delacorte and, to this day, suffers seller’s regret.
Goette to Distler then back to Goette and now Goette and Goethe. Notice, all this name changing doesn’t much come up for male writers; no whining intended.
Ann Goethe/Goette/Distler's poetry has been published in such journals, anthologies, and magazines as: THE LOWDOWN, OUTERBRIDGE, INKWELL, CLARE, THIRD WEDNESDAY, NO BUSINESS POEMS, REFLECTIONS ON THE NEW RIVER, ARTS ALIVE!, and BARK MAGAZINE. Finishing Line Press published her collection of Poetry, River Bow, in 2015.
Her stories and essays have appeared in THE CRESCENT REVIEW, THE BROKEN PLATE, LOVE AFTER 70, SOUTHERN DISTINCTION MAGAZINE, HALF TONES TO JUBILEE, SLIPSTREAM, ROCKHURST REVIEW, THE NEW ORLEANS REVIEW, EARTH'S DAUGHTERS and ISBN. Her novel, Midnight Lemonade, was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discovery Prize.
She wrote the libretto for Travels, an opera performed by Opera Roanoke. She has also written more than twenty plays for young people. The National Association of Secondary School Principals made Coming of Age, Goethe’s musical about middle school children, into a film.
Goette is active with the ReNew The New River Committee and the Giles Early Education Project. She was recently named “Outstanding Volunteer” for her region. She is a member of the performance group Web Six. She resides in Virginia, with her husband (of another name), on a peninsula encircled by the ancient New River.
Ann Goethe is the founder of the Blacksburg New School, which is celebrating its 45th anniversary. Her novel, MIDNIGHT LEMONADE, was a Finalist for the Barnes and Nobel “Discovery Prize” and was published in Germany, Sweden, Israel and Korea. She is a published playwright and her poems, essays and short stories have appeared in numerous journals and magazines such as The Southern Review, Bark, Inkwell, The New Orleans Review.
Goethe wrote the libretto for TRAVELS, an opera performed by Opera Roanoke, she has also written more than twenty plays for young people. The National Association of Secondary School Principals made COMING OF AGE, Goethe’s musical about middle school children, into a film.
Goethe is active with the ReNew The New River committee, and the Giles Early Childhood Education Project. She is a member of the performance group, “Loose Threads.” She resides in Virginia, with her husband, on a peninsula encircled by the ancient New River.
Lisa Haselton's Reviews and Interviews
Award-winning blog for book reviews, author interviews, and anything writing-related.
Friday, June 8, 2018
Interview with novelist Ann Goethe
Novelist Ann Goethe is here today and we’re chatting about her new southern literary fiction, Goner.
Bio:
At age fifteen, Ann Goette won second prize in the Louisiana State Poetry Contest with a cowardly poem about racism. She kept writing. Her first published poem, as an adult, appeared in the Southern Review.
From age twenty to about forty Goette was Distler. Early works and two plays, Coming of Age and Something in the Air Feels Like Tomorrow, were published under Distler. In 1990, Goette's wonderful, brilliant (former) agent, Sandra Dykstra arbitrarily changed Goette to Goethe during the whirlwind-bidding auction for her first novel Midnight Lemonade. Among the five or six serious bidders were Little Brown and Company, Delacorte, and Hyperion (a brand new publishing house). The latter two offered an almost unheard of amount of money for a first novel by a forty-five year-old female nobody. Goethe went with Delacorte and, to this day, suffers seller’s regret.
Goette to Distler then back to Goette and now Goette and Goethe. Notice, all this name changing doesn’t much come up for male writers; no whining intended.
Ann Goethe/Goette/Distler's poetry has been published in such journals, anthologies, and magazines as: The Lowdown, Outerbridge, Inkwell, Clare, Third Wednesday, No Business Poems, Reflections on the New River, Arts Alive!, and Bark Magazine. Finishing Line Press published her collection of Poetry, RIVERBOW, in 2015.
Her stories and essays have appeared in The Crescent Review, The Broken Plate, Love After 70, Southern Distinction Magazine, Half Tones To Jubilee, Slipstream, Rockhurst Review, Earth’s Daughters, The New Orleans Review, and ISBN. Her novel, MIDNIGHT LEMONADE, was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discovery Prize.
She wrote the libretto for TRAVELS, an opera performed by Opera Roanoke, she has also written more than twenty plays for young people. The National Association of Secondary School Principals made COMING OF AGE, Goethe’s musical about middle school children, into a film.
Goette is active with the ReNew The New River committee, and the Giles Early Education Project, she was recently named “Outstanding Volunteer” for her region. She is a member of the performance group Web Six. She resides in Virginia, with her husband (of another name), on a peninsula encircled by the ancient New River.
Welcome, Ann. Please tell us about your newest release.
About GONER: If your relatives weren’t the people you thought, would it change who you are? Or does family myth serve a larger purpose to cement us together?
Novelist Ann Goethe—whose first novel Midnight Lemonade was nominated for the Barnes and Noble “Discovery Prize”— explores the relationship between family myth, shadowy truths, and reality in Goner.
As four sisters gather at their father’s deathbed, childhood memories come flying back, along with secrets from their enigmatic mother’s past. And since where we come from says a lot about who we become, will these secrets bring the family closer together or tear them apart?
What inspired you to write this book?
Examining the custody of a story: who owns a story and how the story might change by virtue of that ownership, has always fascinated me. Also I grew up in a Deep South caught in the throes of great change. During my own school years black and whites attended different and very unequal schools. Black people couldn’t eat in white restaurants or use white bathrooms. The laws allowing those injustices were struck down in time for my two younger sisters to attend integrated schools. (Despite all the battles, the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, segregation remains tenaciously and covertly enshrined, not only in the South of course, but Southern racism is more prideful, traditional.) My sisters and I were always acutely aware of how we fit and did not fit into our beloved South. Though he was too kind and gentile to be a racist, our father embodied the Old South with his story telling and romanticizing of The Civil War. Our cerebral Northern mother was fast talking, fast moving and extremely impatient with the pace of change (or lack thereof) in the ‘backwards’ south. My sisters and I--both as natives and misfits--dipped our oars deeply into the waters of change. We were witnesses. In 2016, after two years of writing only poetry, I woke up on a New Year’s morning with the urge and resolve to lay all of the above down as a novel.
Excerpt from Goner:
These eager soldiers were no different than her father had been when he left for the “war to end all wars.” He had been one more bright, optimistic farm boy off to see the world and to defend innocent women and children from the evil Hun. He had returned home a different person, dark. Was Margaret’s father really the only dad who talked to his children about the last war? His stories of a comrade’s skull top sheared off, brains exposed like a bowl of cereal, and of another soldier trying to pack his own intestines back into his shattered torso were illustrations in Margaret’s childhood nightmares. Didn’t these boys—waving to get her attention, extending their clammy hands for rum Cokes and beer--know about the mud and gore, the boredom and horror? If they knew the stories, then they probably thought that this time would be different. Naturally, each generation thinks it is unique, and so the wheels keep turning. Boys go off to war, expecting to return as full men, brides ascend the altar sure they will be happier than their mothers—who had expected the same.
from page 3 of goner
What exciting story are you working on next?
The November elections!
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I was 14 and it was my third day at boarding school. Our brilliant, and intimidating, English teacher arrived in class enthusiastically waving an essay I had turned in the first day of class. She read it aloud to the class, praising every few lines, laughing out loud, and repeating lines she especially loved. I was a writer! When she handed the essay back to me, she had given me an F, alas. The paper was marked with A+++ for content & originality, F for penmanship, F for spelling F for neatness. Still, for the first time, I knew I was a writer.
Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
For over twenty years I rose each morning at 4 to grab a couple precious hours of writing time before jobs and children got their ‘pound of flesh.’ There have been periods—since the publication of my first novel bought me the time to write full-time—that I have, indeed, been a full-time writer, such a dream-come-true. Yet, the richness of having full days and nights unfold with unlimited writing time, and no one to answer to, came to feel excessive, selfish. Gradually, I’ve scattered those hours like coins into a wishing well and find I spend much more time on politics, community organizing, and sticking my nose into the lives of my friends, my children and their offspring. A day that I write all day makes me so happy, and now is so very rare.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
If I wake up with a writing idea, my self-imposed rule is that I stay in my nightgown until the idea is put down in a rough draft. The best thing about the writing profession is the dress code.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
From before the time I could read, I knew I wanted to be a writer. My mother was a journalist and my father was a storyteller; words were always an addiction and a wonder for me. When I was about ten I veered and wanted to be a veterinarian and a writer. After seeing a vet take our dog’s temperature, I decided that I would just stick to writing.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
I live beside the ancient New River in Giles County Virginia. Our County is beautiful, filled with amazing nature and good neighbors, but many of our people are poor; there are dark pockets of despair here. A small group of us decided that the best way to help change that culture of despair was to begin with our very youngest citizens. We think we have been making a difference. All the income from Goner goes to the Giles Early Education Project.
Thank you for visiting today!
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Print Marked Items
Goethe, Ann: GONER
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Goethe, Ann GONER 1948 (Indie Fiction) $15.99 5, 1 ISBN: 978-0-9995668-0-0
Four sisters keep vigil over their dying father and find themselves reminiscing over a bittersweet family
history.
Goethe's (River Bow, 2013, etc.) nostalgic and affecting novel is set in the Deep South and follows the lives
of Matthew and Margaret Sobral and their four daughters: Rebecca, Elizabeth, Kate, and Emily. The book
opens in the springtime of 1980 in south Louisiana. The girls' mother has recently died, and their father has
taken to his bed, stricken by a broken heart. As the daughters watch over their dying dad, they recall their
childhood growing up in a progressive family in the racially prejudiced South. Intertwined is the story of
their parents' meeting and courtship, she a plucky newspaper reporter and he a genteel headmaster. The
tale's timeline is tacked skillfully and accurately to key historical events of the era. For example, Margaret
and Matthew's lives are affected by a GI--who owns the home they are renting-- returning from war on the
same day that Margaret gives birth to their first child. Similarly, the emergence of Elvis Presley and the
John F. Kennedy assassination have significant impacts on the family, further enhancing the tale's vivid
realism. The sisters' conversations paint a rich and colorful portrait of growing up in the South, as they
recall playing "Devil in the Ditch" against a unique rural backdrop: "It was so scary, the scariest game I ever
played," Elizabeth asserts. And Emily replies, "Because the devil was alive to us....Whatever kid was in the
ditch trying to catch us, drag us down, while we jumped back and forth across the ditch, whatever kid that
was, truly became the devil." This capturing of childhood innocence is juxtaposed with deliciously
perceptive commentary from the narrator: "Later the sisters will blame their mother for almost everything
wrong about them, or their lives. The mothers are the easiest to blame...too meek, too cloying or--in the case
of Margaret Sobral--too remote. The mother tends to be the 'sitting duck' for the family shooting gallery."
The result is a moving, emotionally intuitive tale, littered with surprises, that brings a branch of the Sobral
family tree vibrantly to life.
An articulate and stirring Southern story written from the heart.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Goethe, Ann: GONER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525461342/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a54380bd.
Accessed 25 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525461342
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Midnight Lemonade
Publishers Weekly.
240.4 (Jan. 25, 1993): p76+.
COPYRIGHT 1993 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* MIDNIGHT LEMONADE
Ann Goethe. Delacorte, $21.95 (288p) ISBN 0-385-30807-8
An assured writer with an appealing, distinctive voice makes her debut with this absorbing and touching
novel, which will be compared to Sue Miller's The Good Mother. Goethe writes with lyric intensity, tart
humor and serious insight about a woman's life and the difficult choices a mother must make. The product
of a small Louisiana town and a sheltered convent education, Katherine Roberts is totally innocent of sex
and life when st 19, a college dropout, she is seduced by a professor 12 years her senior. She marries him
five weeks later. Three children and refuge in alcohol keep her from acknowledging her husband's
philandering until divorce is inevitable. Katherine's precarious existence as a single parent is bracketed by
the deaths of her own parents and estrangement from her sister. When a new lover entere her life, immediate
and ironic punishment follows, with agonizing repercussions. Irreverent and witty, Katherine is a
sympathetic heroine whose maturity reinforces her emerging feminine consciousness. But she is hampered
by an enduring guilt about her children, her parents and her need for sexual fulfillment. Goethe has a sure,
wry touch with scenes of domestic life, both hilarious and sobering, and her narrative hums with energy and
dramatic suspense. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Midnight Lemonade." Publishers Weekly, 25 Jan. 1993, p. 76+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A13414035/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1971af7e.
Accessed 25 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A13414035
By: Johnson, Denise. Library Journal. 3/1/1993, Vol. 118 Issue 4, p107. 1/8p. ,
Goethe, Ann. Midnight Lemonade.
Delacorte, Apr. 1993. C.312p. ISBN 0-385-30807-8. $21.95
Goethe's first novel concerns a nice, middle-class, Catholic girl and her disillusionment with the Prince Charming myth. In a fairly realistic story that is typical of postfeminist novels of the day, the heroine becomes infatuated with her college professor and gets pregnant. She drops out of boarding school and marries the professor, who lets her stay home and grow miserable while he chases new students. When they both become alcoholics and break up, she must slowly put the pieces of her life back together. This is enjoyable reading notwithstanding, and Goethe writes with style. Yet there is something naggingly familiar about the characters and situations she presents. The novel is recommended for popular fiction collections if only because, given the publisher's high expectations, it is being heavily promoted. Judgment is reserved until we see more of Goethe's work.
- Denise Johnson, Bradley Univ. Lib., Peoria, Ill.
MIDNIGHT LEMONADE
by Ann Goethe
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KIRKUS REVIEW
A first novel about thirtysomething Katherine, single parent and late bloomer, that breathlessly pushes all the right contemporary buttons--only to reach an uplifting, old-fashioned conclusion. Convent-educated in Louisiana, Katherine had wanted to be a poet so badly that she dropped out of college freshman year and returned to work in her beloved New Orleans. Katherine, a daddy's girl who grew up in a small town along the Mississippi, has been shaped by her Catholic education, especially in her attitude toward sex--which means that when she meets handsome English prof Eric, and they soon make love, marriage is obligatory. A daughter is born shortly thereafter, followed by a son, and soon Katherine-- overwhelmed by motherhood--finds herself drinking more and reading less. A move to North Carolina strains an already rocky marriage; and though there's a third baby, Eric's continued infidelities are too much. Katherine leaves, bravely makes a home for herself and the kids, and starts writing for the local paper. But the children are a problem, though she loves them intensely, and so is sex, for there's still all that lingering Catholic guilt. And despite a few affairs, including one with married Ian (who prefers her without her kids), Katherine's love life remains unsatisfactory. Then, just as her career begins to take off, her father's death and a near- fatal accident involving the youngest child precipitate the inevitable crisis. Tired of being simultaneously mom, lover, and career woman, Katherine hands the kids over to Eric and flees to California with Ian--but in an obligatory epiphany realizes that she has ``never truly dug in for a fight.'' Eventually, she'll head home to reclaim the children and save Louisiana from developers and pollution. Typical of the genre in which every mistake is forgiven if an allegedly strong, talented, and sexy woman finally grows up.
Pub Date: April 1st, 1993
ISBN: 0-385-30807-8
Page count: 312pp
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 20th, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1st, 1993