Hall, Sands
WORK TITLE: Flunk. Start.
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 4/17/1952
WEBSITE: http://sandshall.com/
CITY:
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | no 00094634 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no00094634 |
| HEADING: | Hall, Sands |
| 000 | 00557cz a2200145n 450 |
| 001 | 5242956 |
| 005 | 20020404053130.0 |
| 008 | 001120n| acannaabn |n aaa c |
| 010 | __ |a no 00094634 |
| 035 | __ |a (OCoLC)oca05360242 |
| 040 | __ |a MU |b eng |c MU |d OCoLC |
| 053 | _0 |a PS3558.A374 |
| 100 | 1_ |a Hall, Sands |
| 670 | __ |a Catching heaven, 2000: |b t.p. (Sands Hall) jacket flap (MFA in fiction, Iowa Writer’s Workshop; MFA in theater arts, Univ. of Iowa; teacher and actor) |
| 670 | __ |a OCLC, Nov. 20, 2000 |b (hdg: Hall, Sands Marybarbara; usage, Sands Marybarbara Hall [thesis]) |
PERSONAL
Born April 17, 1952.
EDUCATION:University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
- Home - CA.
CAREER
Writer, theater director, educator, and musician. Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA, associate professor, editor of F&M Alumni Arts Review. Has taught at workshops and conferences, including the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley conference.
AWARDS:Penguin/Random House Reader’s Circle Selection, for Catching Heaven.
WRITINGS
- Catching Heaven (novel), Ballantine Books (New York, NY), 2000
- Fair Use (play), The Author (Nevada City, CA), 2001
- Tools of the Writers Craft (essays and exercises), Moving Finger Press (San Francisco, CA), 2005
- Flunk. Start: Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology (memoir), Counterpoint Press (Berkeley, CA), 2018
Also, adapted Little Women for the stage.
SIDELIGHTS
Sands Hall is a writer, educator, musician, and theater director. She serves as an associate professor at Franklin & Marshall College and has taught at workshops and conferences, including the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley conference. Hall holds a master’s degree from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has published works in a variety of genres, including a novel, a memoir, a theater play, and a collection of essays.
Catching Heaven
Released in 2000, Catching Heaven is Hall’s first novel. The volume focuses on the relationship between sisters, Lizzie and Maud Maxwell. Lizzie, the younger of the two, is based in a fictional small town in New Mexico called Marengo. She is an art teacher and greeting card designer there. She also raises her three children, each from a different father, on her own. Lizzie had big dreams of living in Paris and becoming a successful artist, but her life took a different turn. Maud, who is forty-one, is an actress based in Los Angeles, CA. She appears in commercials and television shows. Lizzie has been jealous of Maud since they were children, believing Maud unfairly received more of their parents’ affection. Though Maud’s life seems glamorous to Lizzie, she is experiencing difficulty. Her career is going nowhere, and her relationship with her boyfriend, Miles, is stagnating. Maud upends her life and travels to Marengo to be with Lizzie. She rents a house there and begins performing at a local saloon and teaching piano lessons. Tensions between the sisters intensify when Maud becomes too close to two of Lizzie’s former lovers.
Writing on the New York Times Online, Kimberly B. Marlowe remarked: “What could have become an overcrowded soap opera instead becomes a realistic story of two women.” Cathy Burke, critic on the New York Post Online, suggested: “There is something achingly sad about these sisters’ realization that some things in life have simply passed them by. And it’s that simple truth that makes Catching Heaven a nice catch.” “This quirky, uneven first novel is laced with frequent flashes of brilliance and potential,” asserted Susan A. Zappia in Library Journal. Reviewing the novel in Booklist, Grace Fill commented: “This is a complex story, messy as real life, and told in a most compelling way.” A Publishers Weekly contributor opined: “Although frequently awkward in the telling, and spotted with clichés, the novel conveys the pathos of the middle-aged realization that some options … eventually expire.”
Flunk. Start
Flunk. Start: Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology is a memoir by Hall. In it, she explains that a romantic relationship with a devout Scientologist led to her decision to join the Church. Initially, Hall was ambivalent about joining an organized religion, especially the Church of Scientology. However, she eventually discovered certain aspects of the Church that she appreciated. The financial burden that being part of the congregation involved was ultimately disturbing to her, and Hall also chafed at some of the Church’s recruitment methods and efforts to manipulate members. She recalls the sessions she was forced to endure as a Scientologist and explains what led her to ultimately leave the Church.
Michael Friedrich, reviewer on the Nation website, commented: “With its keen attention to the language and tactics of the church, Hall’s memoir is unique among the assortment of Scientology reports and exposés, offering insight into the certainties that its subjects gain. Even more strikingly, though, her initiation serves as a symbolic social experience: It reminds us of the American bourgeois conviction, resurgent in our uncertain times, that we can purchase peace of mind—no matter the cost to companions, community, or open society.” Friedrich added: “One problem with Flunk. Start. is that, while Hall fitfully dissects her own shame and dependency, she often seems too enraptured by romance to make much sense of her journey. The problem isn’t just a deficit of irony or style; it’s the whole sentimental paradigm that the book suggests, whereby a momentary swoon, scavenged from the breathy bits of D.H. Lawrence, can soften a rash relationship of manipulation and abuse—the notion that romance is redeeming in itself.” Friedrich concluded: “In the end, Hall’s focus on this ‘cobweb’ of intimate entanglement is what makes Flunk. Start. compelling—and different from other, more extraordinary accounts of abuse in Scientology’s upper echelons.” “This is a thrilling story of one woman’s search for truth and her place in the world,” asserted Derek Sanderson on the Library Journal website. A Publishers Weekly critic described the volume as an “impassioned, wonderfully constructed memoir.” The same critic concluded: “Hall reflects with brutal honesty on her decisions throughout this meticulously crafted book.” “Readers will appreciate the author’s candor,” predicted Christine Engel in Booklist. A writer in Kirkus Reviews noted that the book included “frank and edifying information on Scientology from a woman who experienced it firsthand” and called it “a good complement to Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, August, 2000, Grace Fill, review of Catching Heaven, p. 2112; February 1, 2018, Christine Engel, review of Flunk. Start: Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology, p. 4.
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2018, review of Flunk. Start.
Publishers Weekly, June 26, 2000, review of Catching Heaven, p. 48; January 8, 2018, review of Flunk. Start, p. 57.
ONLINE
Community of Writers website, https://communityofwriters.org/ (June 19, 2018), author profile.
Fiction Writers Review, http://fictionwritersreview.com/ (September 22, 2011), Erika Dreifus, review of Tools of the Writer’s Craft.
Library Journal Online, https://reviews.libraryjournal.com/ (February 28, 2018), Derek Sanderson, review of Flunk. Start.
Nation Online, https://www.thenation.com/ (April 12, 2018), Michael Friedrich, review of Flunk. Start.
New York Post Online, https://nypost.com/ (August 20, 2000), Cathy Burke, review of Catching Heaven.
New York Times Online, https://archive.nytimes.com/ (September 10, 2000), Kimberly B. Marlowe, review of Catching Heaven.
Sands Hall website, http://sandshall.com (June 19, 2018).
Sierra Writers Conference website, http://www.sierrawritersconference.com/ (June 19, 2018), author profile.
- Catching Heaven ( novel) Ballantine Books (New York, NY), 2000
- Fair Use ( play) The Author (Nevada City, CA), 2001
- Flunk. Start: Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology ( memoir) Counterpoint Press (Berkeley, CA), 2018
- Tools of the Writers Craft - 2005 Moving Finger Press, https://smile.amazon.com/Tools-Writers-Craft-Sands-Hall/dp/0972722572/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527565053&sr=8-1&keywords=Tools+of+the+Writer%E2%80%99s+Craft+sands+hall
- Sands Hall - http://sandshall.com/
Sands Hall
is the author of a memoir, Flunk. Start. (Counterpoint); the novel Catching Heaven (Ballantine), a Penguin/Random House Reader’s Circle Selection and a Willa Award Finalist for Best Contemporary Fiction; and a book of writing essays and exercises, Tools of the Writer’s Craft (Moving Finger). Her plays include an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, which recently enjoyed its tenth production, and the comic/drama Fair Use, which explores the “was it plagiarism?” controversy surrounding Wallace Stegner’s novel, Angle of Repose. Sands is also a singer/songwriter; she recently produced her first CD, Rustler’s Moon, and performs widely. Also a theatre artist, her directing experience runs the gamut from Shakespeare to Giradoux to new works by new playwrights, and she has an extensive acting resume. A popular teacher, she leads workshops and lectures for such conferences as the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. Sands is currently an Associate Teaching Professor of English and Creative Writing at Franklin & Marshall College, in Lancaster, PA, where she is also the editor of the F&M Alumni Arts Review. She lives in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada.
Upcoming Events - Community of Writers - https://communityofwriters.org/bio/sands-hall/
Sands Hall
Sands Hall is the author of the novel Catching Heaven (Ballantine), a Penguin/Random House Reader’s Circle Selection and a Willa Award Finalist for Best Contemporary Fiction. Her plays include an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, which recently enjoyed its tenth production, and the comic/drama Fair Use, which explores the “was it plagiarism?” controversy surrounding Wallace Stegner’s novel, Angle of Repose. Sands is also a singer/songwriter; she recently produced her first CD, called Rustler’s Moon and performs widely. Involved with theatre for many years, her directing experience runs the gamut from Shakespeare to Giradoux to new works by new playwrights, and she has an extensive acting resume. She is also the author of a book of writing essays and exercises, Tools of the Writer’s Craft. A popular teacher, she leads workshops and lectures for such conferences as the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, She is currently an adjunct assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Franklin & Marshall College, in Lancaster, PA, where she is also the editor of the F&M Alumni Arts Review. Her memoir, Flunk.Start., has recently been purchased by Counterpoint Press for publication in January of 2018. www.sandshall.com
- Sierra Writers Conference - http://www.sierrawritersconference.com/p/2018-sands-hall.html
Sands Hall
SANDS HALL is the author of the novel Catching Heaven (Ballantine), a Penguin/Random House Reader’s Circle Selection and a Willa Award Finalist for Best Contemporary Fiction. Her plays include an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, which recently enjoyed its tenth production, and the comic/drama Fair Use, which explores the “was it plagiarism?” controversy surrounding Wallace Stegner’s novel, Angle of Repose. Sands is also a singer/songwriter; she recently produced her first CD, called Rustler’s Moon and performs widely. Involved with theatre for many years, her directing experience runs the gamut from Shakespeare to Giradoux to new works by new playwrights, and she has an extensive acting resume. She is also the author of a book of writing essays and exercises, Tools of the Writer’s Craft. A popular teacher, she leads workshops and lectures for such conferences as the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, She is currently an adjunct assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Franklin & Marshall College, in Lancaster, PA, where she is also the editor of the F&M Alumni Arts Review.
QUOTED: "frank and edifying information on Scientology from a woman who experienced it firsthand"
"a good complement to Lawrence Wright's Going Clear."
Hall, Sands: FLUNK. START
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 1, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Hall, Sands FLUNK. START. Counterpoint (Adult Nonfiction) $25.08 3, 13 ISBN: 978-1-61902-178-5
A former Scientologist examines why she entered the church and then left it.
Hall (English/Franklin & Marshall Coll.; Tools of the Writer's Craft, 2005, etc.) didn't intend to join with the Scientologists, but when she fell in love with a man who was deeply committed to the Church of Scientology, her resolve was slowly worn away. In this revealing memoir, the author explains her many conflicting emotions toward the religion before, during, and after her seven years as a Scientologist. Aspects of the structure appealed to her--e.g., the examining of words and the ability to work out problems so they didn't fester--but other parts deeply bothered her: the expenses involved in purchasing the books written by L. Ron Hubbard and of attending classes, the lifetime (and beyond) commitment required to reach a higher level, and some of the controversial tactics that she heard were used by some Scientologists. Throughout the book, Hall interweaves the story of her family, particularly of her older brother, Oakley, a wild child and wilder adult who eventually took one risk too many and suffered permanent consequences. The author is sincere and open about why Scientology appealed to her, and she effectively uses Hubbard's work to show the complexity and strangeness of thinking. Using the terminology of the Scientologists, she discusses the tactics of "auditing," or counseling, the training routines, the endless drills she went through to learn the Tech, and the anxiety she felt when she had to visit the "Ethics Officer." All of these tactics are used to drill into the minds of believers that Hubbard's version of reality is the absolute truth. Hall risks her friendships with Scientologists by revealing what she experienced, and her work serves as a significant behind-the-scenes look at this cultlike religion.
Frank and edifying information on Scientology from a woman who experienced it firsthand. A good complement to Lawrence Wright's Going Clear (2013).
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Hall, Sands: FLUNK. START." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525461319/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=5364aaee. Accessed 28 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525461319
QUOTED: "Readers will appreciate the author's candor."
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Flunk. Start: Report from a Former
Scientologist
Christine Engel
Booklist.
114.11 (Feb. 1, 2018): p4+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Flunk. Start: Report from a Former Scientologist. By Sands Hall. Mar. 2018.400p. Counterpoint, $26 (9781619021785). 299.936.
Media is rife with harrowing stories from former Scientologists detailing the myriad abuses of the organization. This memoir takes a more reflective approach and is less condemning. Though Scientology has a starring role, the story focuses on the author's life--beginning with her burgeoning doubts about her new faith but tracking back and forth between her childhood with her loving, artistic, and eccentric family and following her personal journey. As she tries to discern who she is and her place in the world, she falls into the welcoming arms of Scientology. Hall is honest about Scientology's appeal, elucidating many of the tenets that drew her in and kept her dedicated for so long. The book contains many details about the basics of Scientology, especially for newcomers; readers can empathize with why the author was drawn to it. But, like many former Scientologists, Hall is honest about the insidious ways it can capture and isolate its adherents. It's a memoir of a life filled with joy and tragedy, and readers will appreciate the author's candor.--Christine Engel Jesus of Arabia: Christ through Middle Eastern Eyes.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Engel, Christine. "Flunk. Start: Report from a Former Scientologist." Booklist, 1 Feb. 2018, p.
4+. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527771697 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=68d33319. Accessed 28 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527771697
QUOTED: "impassioned, wonderfully constructed memoir."
"Hall reflects with brutal honesty on her decisions throughout this meticulously crafted book."
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Flunk.Start.: Report from a Former Scientologist
Publishers Weekly.
265.2 (Jan. 8, 2018): p57+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Flunk.Start.: Report from a Former Scientologist
Sands Hall. Counterpoint, $26 (400p) ISBN 9781-61902-178-5
Novelist and actress Hall (Catching Heaven) probes her descent into Scientology in this impassioned, wonderfully constructed memoir. Raised in a creative, bohemian family, she felt tremendous pressure from an early age to live up to the artistic expectations set by her parents--a pressure that helped to drive her away from southern California and into anorexia, an ill-fated marriage, and, eventually, Scientology's promise of spiritual solace. In the first section, she weaves together parallel narratives that describe her childhood alongside fraught years in her 30s within Scientology, describing the psychological ideas and tactics pioneered by L. Ron Hubbard, such as the reactive mind versus the analytical mind and the interrogation practice of "auditing," and the fear that came from the intense culture of secrecy. In the second section, the two narratives combine as she recounts the dark period in her early 20s following the suicide of her brother. As her marriage crumbles and her career ebbs and flows, she turns to Scientology hoping to find answers. Instead, after seven years within Scientology, she concludes that she has made a serious mistake. Hall reflects with brutal honesty on her decisions throughout this meticulously crafted book, which explores her negative experiences with Scientology and how her desire to please led her to believe in the unbelievable. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Flunk.Start.: Report from a Former Scientologist." Publishers Weekly, 8 Jan. 2018, p. 57+. Book
Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A524503027/GPS?u=schlager& sid=GPS&xid=189334a5. Accessed 28 May 2018.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A524503027
QUOTED: "Although frequently awkward in the telling, and spotted with clich[acute{e}]s, the novel conveys the pathos of the middle-aged realization that some options ... eventually expire."
5 of 8 5/28/18, 10:31 PM
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CATCHING HEAVEN
Publishers Weekly.
247.26 (June 26, 2000): p48. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2000 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
SANDS HALL. Ballantine, $25 (352p) ISBN 0-345-43970-8
Hall's first novel meticulously details Southwestern life and the rancor of middle-aged sibling rivalry in a variation on one of Aesop's venerable fables. Lizzie Maxwell, a 39-year-old single mother, is the country mouse who once thought she'd paint in Paris, but now designs greeting cards and teaches art in the historic town of Marengo. Her 41-year-old sister, Maud Maxwell, is the city mouse who lives in Los Angeles and acts in TV dramas, sitcoms and commercials. The rivalry between the two dates back to childhood: Lizzie believes their parents always loved Maud best. Fed up with her fading career and her long-time lover, Miles, a musician who refuses to give her a child, Maud walks out on an embarrassing commercial audition, and on Miles, too. She drives to Marengo, where Lizzie and her three children (each fathered by a different man, none of whom Lizzie has married) have been living for 15 years. The tensions between the sisters, who envy each other's lives, escalate over a nine-month period. Maud finds a small house and a job as a saloon singer and piano teacher. She has brief affairs with Driver, a Native American activist, and Rich, an abusive young cowboy, and assumes an ever-larger role in the life of Lizzie's middle child, third-grader Summer. Lizzie's jealousy grows when Maud develops relationships with Sam, an elderly American Indian who is Lizzie's best friend and was her first lover in Marengo, and Jake Arboles, the father of Lizzie's youngest child. Although frequently awkward in the telling, and spotted with clich[acute{e}]s, the novel conveys the pathos of the middle-aged realization that some options -- including those of motherhood and artistic achievement -- eventually expire. Major ad/promo; 5-city author tour. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"CATCHING HEAVEN." Publishers Weekly, 26 June 2000, p. 48. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A63652608/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=43a1ffd2. Accessed 28 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A63652608
QUOTED: "This is a complex story, messy as real life, and told in a most compelling way."
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Catching Heaven
Grace Fill
Booklist.
96.22 (Aug. 2000): p2112. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2000 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Hall, Sands, Catching Heaven. Aug. 2000. 352p. Ballantine, $25 (0-345-43970-8).
This elegantly crafted first novel is the story of converging lives, each separating at a pivotal turning point. Maud, just over 40, leaves her boyfriend, her home in Los Angeles, and her dreams of being a Hollywood success. She packs her car and drives to Marengo, New Mexico, where her sister Lizzie lives with her three young children, each of whom has a different father. Jake, the father of Lizzie's youngest, has just returned from Nashville where he fled, searching for success and love, when he and Lizzie separated. This is a complex story, messy as real life, and told in a most compelling way. Maud's love of theater is infectious, and she finds success on a new level, different and more fulfilling than the stressful years she spent in L.A But a series of tragic family crises impacts the lives of Lizzie and her children, and she is forced to experience and express emotions that have long been buried. Eventually it is the tie of kinship and the value of connection that triumph.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Fill, Grace. "Catching Heaven." Booklist, Aug. 2000, p. 2112. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A65190052/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=0601ff78. Accessed 28 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A65190052
QUOTED: "This quirky, uneven first novel is laced with frequent flashes of brilliance and potential."
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Catching Heaven
Susan A. Zappia
Library Journal.
125.9 (May 15, 2000): p124. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Hall, Sands. Catching Heaven. Ballantine. Aug. 2000. c.352p. ISBN 0-345-43970-8. $25. F
This quirky, uneven first novel is laced with frequent flashes of brilliance and potential but often relies on cliches. Two sisters, New Mexico artist Lizzie and Hollywood actress Maud, slip and slide in the detritus of their very different childbearing decisions and life choices. Maud flees her L.A. television-commercial career and songwriter boyfriend and arrives in Marengo, NM, with a bruised psyche that even hard-nosed Lizzie is unable to mend. Lizzie, a college instructor and greeting-card artist, has purposefully woven a life with three children by three different fathers because she enjoys pregnancy and nursing far more than the complications of life with a man. Maud and Lizzie struggle for meaning and renewal in different ways, while an assortment of odd but mostly believable Marengo cowboys, Native Americans, impressionable young people, and Baby Theo's father, Jake, inhabit their worlds--sometimes comfortably, often painfully. For larger public libraries.
--Susan A. Zappia, Paradise Valley Community Coll., Phoenix
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Zappia, Susan A. "Catching Heaven." Library Journal, 15 May 2000, p. 124. Book Review Index
Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A62590838/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=14bb8cf6. Accessed 28 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A62590838
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- Fiction Writers Review
http://fictionwritersreview.com/shoptalk/under-the-influence-of-sands-hall/
Word count: 441Under the Influence… of Sands Hall
by Erika Dreifus
Image via author website
Image via author website
Immersed in a 9-to-5, year-round office job since early 2007, I haven’t led a fiction workshop for some time. But if I should inhabit that particular teaching role again, I’d want to remind myself how the job is best done. Ideally, I’d do that by sitting in on one of Sands Hall’s workshops.I met Sands when I enrolled in her “Tools of the Writer’s Craft: Novel” workshop at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in 1997. I subsequently returned to Iowa to take other workshops of hers. We’ve stayed in touch, and I’m proud to say that we’re friends.
In her fiction workshops, Sands excels at every staple that I’ve found scattered—all too often, all too piecemeal—in other instructors’ classes. She shares excellent reading lists and excerpts. She explains craft elements clearly. She assigns superb exercises. She provides extensive, incisive feedback on each manuscript in writing and in conference. And she negotiates the emotions and tensions that writers often bring to workshops with ease, equanimity, and kindness.
What makes Sands a writing teacher to emulate is not only that she offers her students all of the above, but also that she—atypically, in my experience—emphasizes another crucial element: how to read and respond to other writers’ manuscripts and prepare critiques. Back in 1997, she made a convincing case for the benefits of mastering the art and craft of the critique. Even better, she gave us the tools to begin doing so.
Our workshop packet opened with 14 typed pages on “The Workshop Process.” Pages five to eight bore the essential subtitle “Preparing a Manuscript for Discussion in Workshop.” Other subsections included “For the Writer Whose Work is Being Discussed,” “Regarding Novel Segments,” and “Regarding Workshop Leaders, and the Occasional ‘Bad’ Workshop.”
You don’t have to be enrolled in a Sands workshop to access all of this wisdom. Another version appears at the beginning of her 2005 book, also called Tools of the Writer’s Craft (and the subject of this Q&A on my website).
So if I were to begin leading workshops again, I could simply study my copy of Tools of the Writer’s Craft. But I’d much rather visit one of Sands’s classrooms and experience anew the magic of a workshop that “works” so beautifully. To be once again “under the influence” of the gracious, generous, and gifted Sands Hall.
- NY Post
https://nypost.com/2000/08/20/catching-heaven-by-sands-hall/
Word count: 534QUOTED: "There is something achingly sad about these sisters’ realization that some things in life have simply passed them by. And it’s that simple truth that makes Catching Heaven a nice catch."
News
“CATCHING HEAVEN” BY SANDS HALLBy Cathy Burke
August 20, 2000 | 4:00am
Sands Hall’s quirky debut novel, “Catching Heaven,” features two disgruntled sisters – one an actress, the other an artist – who each wish for what the other has in a sweet but often predictable story of middle-age angst and reconciliation.
The sisters, 39-year-old New Mexico artist Lizzie and 41-year-old Hollywood actress Maud, fuss and fret about their life choices, but their conflicts with one another seem no more sophisticated than a fight between 8-year-olds over which one Mom and Dad loved best.
Still, there are enough flashes of heart and soul in this hip Southwest-style soap opera to make the effort worthwhile.
The story begins as Maud bolts from her less-than-stellar TV commercial career and whiny songwriter boyfriend and heads for Marengo, New Mexico, where sister Lizzie lives.
“Lizard,” as she’s called – a college instructor and greeting-card artist – has problems of her own: She’s got three kids by three different fathers. Basically, she likes being pregnant and nursing but can’t handle relationships with men.
Through these two nutty ladies’ lives float an array of cowboys, Native Americans, starry eyed youngsters and Jake, an aging musician with middle-age issues of his own.
Now back home with her sister, Maud finds a small house and job as a barroom singer and piano teacher. She then throws herself into torrid affairs – with a Native American activist and a young cowboy. And she gets involved in the life of Lizzie’s middle child, a third-grader named Summer.
Maud also gets cozy with Sam, an elderly Native American who is Lizzie’s best friend, and Jake, who is dad to Lizzie’s youngest child, Theo.
With all these complications, it’s surprising “Catching Heaven” doesn’t sink from its own weight.
Yet there is something achingly sad about these sisters’ realization that some things in life have simply passed them by. And it’s that simple truth that makes “Catching Heaven” a nice catch.
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SEE ALL - New York Times
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/09/10/bib/000910.rv101355.html
Word count: 217QUOTED: "What could have become an overcrowded soap opera instead becomes a realistic story of two women."
September 10, 2000
By KIMBERLY B. MARLOWE
CATCHING HEAVEN
By Sands Hall.
Ballantine, $25.Sands Hall's first novel deftly reveals the push and pull between two sisters who love each other dearly, but who face new tensions when their lives collide in midcourse. When Maud, who longs for a stable partner and children, abandons her stalled acting career and empty relationship, she flees Los Angeles for the small New Mexico town where her sister Lizzie lives. Once a promising artist, Lizzie now teaches and paints pictures for a greeting card company to support the three children she has had by three different men. Despite her busy small-town existence, Lizzie is as lonely and unfulfilled as her sister. A vibrant supporting cast complicates and darkens the sisters' lives: Lizzie's alcoholic baby sitter; Maud's lover for one night, a Native American angry with whites who want to co-opt his culture; and the likable Jake, father of Lizzie's youngest child, whose return generates jealousy between the sisters. What could have become an overcrowded soap opera instead becomes a realistic story of two women trying to let go of old hurts and find love that will last.
- Library Journal
https://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2018/02/books/nonfic/soc-sci/memoirs-of-merit/
Word count: 223QUOTED: "This is a thrilling story of one woman’s search for truth and her place in the world."
redstarHall, Sands. Flunk. Start. Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology. Counterpoint. Mar. 2018. 400p. notes. bibliog. ISBN 9781619021785. $26; ebk. ISBN 9781619021808. memoir
Novelist Hall (Catching Heaven) has written a beautiful memoir about spending seven years as a Scientologist. What sets this account apart from so many recent “leaving Scientology” narratives is that the author has no ax to grind. Though Hall never felt comfortable as a member of the religion, she fell in love with the study of words and their meaning, which she says is an integral part of Scientology coursework. Hall still uses these methods as a teacher of creative writing. Although her experience in the religion was mild compared to others’, she was frequently pressured to “disconnect” from her parents, as they disapproved of her involvement in the faith and were thus considered “suppressive persons.” Hall leaves readers to decide, but few will close this memoir wishing to become Scientologists, hearing the author ultimately sound a clear warning to stay away. VERDICT An early candidate for memoir of the year, this is a thrilling story of one woman’s search for truth and her place in the world. (Memoir, 1/12/18)—Derek Sanderson, Mount Saint Mary Coll. Lib., Newburgh, NY
- The Nation
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-power-of-the-word/
Word count: 2331QUOTED: "with its keen attention to the language and tactics of the church, Hall’s memoir is unique among the assortment of Scientology reports and exposés, offering insight into the certainties that its subjects gain. Even more strikingly, though, her initiation serves as a symbolic social experience: It reminds us of the American bourgeois conviction, resurgent in our uncertain times, that we can purchase peace of mind—no matter the cost to companions, community, or open society."
"One problem with Flunk. Start. is that, while Hall fitfully dissects her own shame and dependency, she often seems too enraptured by romance to make much sense of her journey. The problem isn’t just a deficit of irony or style; it’s the whole sentimental paradigm that the book suggests, whereby a momentary swoon, scavenged from the breathy bits of D.H. Lawrence, can soften a rash relationship of manipulation and abuse—the notion that romance is redeeming in itself."
"In the end, Hall’s focus on this 'cobweb' of intimate entanglement is what makes Flunk. Start. compelling—and different from other, more extraordinary accounts of abuse in Scientology’s upper echelons."The Power of the Word
Scientology’s unique manipulations of language seduced the novelist Sands Hall and kept her bound to the church.
By Michael Friedrich
April 12, 2018
Blue Scientology building LAThe Church of Scientology in Los Angeles, California. (Reuters / Mario Anzuoni)
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In 1986, after years of illness, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard died, leaving the church to his key deputy, David Miscavige. Under its new leader, Scientology changed its image dramatically: Hubbard’s absurd cravats and trademark leer gave way to Miscavige’s gleaming business suits and beaming professional smile. Former leaders were euphemistically “rehabilitated.” Small and secretive gatherings blossomed into celebrity engagements in Sheraton Hotel conference rooms. In a word, the church went corporate.
One thing that makes Scientology uniquely American is its amalgamation of corporate and authoritarian modes of social control. “[P]art of what made me get out had been observing that increasingly corporate mindset,” recounts the novelist Sands Hall in her intriguing new memoir, Flunk. Start. Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology. “This is ironic, of course, considering the authoritarian mentality of the Church under Hubbard, but most of those years I managed to stay unaware.” How this combination attracts untold thousands of members—to what is, by most accounts, a cult—has received much attention in the decades since Scientology’s founding in the early 1950s.
Margaret Thaler Singer, an expert on the psychology of cults, believed that no one is impervious: “Any person who is in a vulnerable state, seeking companionship and a sense of meaning or in a period of transition or time of loss, is a good prospect for cult recruitment,” she wrote. Flunk. Start. concerns the way that one ordinary, wayward, middle-class kid found herself in just such a state. And with its keen attention to the language and tactics of the church, Hall’s memoir is unique among the assortment of Scientology reports and exposés, offering insight into the certainties that its subjects gain. Even more strikingly, though, her initiation serves as a symbolic social experience: It reminds us of the American bourgeois conviction, resurgent in our uncertain times, that we can purchase peace of mind—no matter the cost to companions, community, or open society.
The first section of Flunk. Start. moves, chapter by chapter, between the events that attracted Hall to the church and those that separated her from it. The form establishes the split consciousness that governs the rest of the book. Hall’s telling alternates between wisdom and cliché, between moments of avid awareness and banal bromide. When we meet her, in the early ’80s, she’s a “Course Supervisor” on Hubbard’s texts, albeit one with growing doubts about the church’s treatment of its members. “Flunk” and “Start,” we learn, are terms that the church uses to correct practitioners during training exercises: The instructor responds to an error with a dispassionate “Flunk,” while “Start” signals the student to begin again. These terms also come to represent Hall’s abortive search for a sense of purpose.
Hall’s search originated in the neuroses of her middle-class family. The Halls were special, they taught her; they were “proud artists: bohemians.” They were also irreligious. Sure, they filled their Squaw Valley, California, home with Tibetan Buddhist artifacts and Mexican milagros, but the message was clear: There’s “nothing there in which one actually believed.” Her father, Oakley Hall, was a prolific novelist, and according to his daughter, the family was “its own kind of cult.” Their literary life primed her for the power of the word. Culture was the Hall family’s creed: “Television was a waste of time; books provided all needed entertainment…. Theater was an excellent source of culture…but musicals were for underachievers. Tennis was a terrific game, but only morons watched football.” Hall’s mother bought her cans of meal replacement when she grew chubby; her father criticized the Christian allegory of her beloved C.S. Lewis novels (“Stop reading fluff!”). Confronted with this set of expectations, who could hope to measure up?
Nor were the mundane manipulations of family life much help for Hall, the second child of four. In the shadow of her eldest brother, Tad, a celebrated playwright, she adopted a series of identities: actor, folk singer, writer. Like so many twentysomethings, she struggled with a “base need for approval.” In college, Hall starved herself for a role in a musical: “for months I ate nothing but carrots and Juicy Fruit gum, farting all the while.” She dabbled, too, in harder stuff. Hall presents all this as symptomatic of her “pilgrim soul”—a restless search for meaning that animated her life. Tad, who “radiated brilliance, confidence, power,” was her sole semblance of an anchor. “I had shaped myself around his example—in some ways against it…. I was grateful for that lantern glinting ahead amid the looming trees.” Then, one drunken night, after a fight with his wife, Tad took a tragic fall—or perhaps a leap—from a bridge and suffered a debilitating brain injury. “I lost my brother, my leader, my model,” Hall writes, an event that “spun me directly toward the Church.”
Hall officially joined the Church of Scientology in the late 1970s, after moving to Los Angeles and beginning a relationship with Jamie Faunt, a jazz-fusion bassist who traveled among a circle of “Operating Thetans,” or enlightened beings in the church. If she initially wasn’t too keen on Scientology (or jazz fusion), she certainly was keen on Faunt, whose appearance afflicts her prose with gooey clichés. She first noticed his “full lips,” which over the course of the book never diminish in their fullness. And don’t get her started on his skin, which we learn—and relearn—was “smooth as marble.” Another person might have backed away slowly when Faunt began to drone on about his recent “intensive” (a rigorous counseling session) at Scientology’s “Advanced Org” (the church’s iconic blue building in LA), which examined his “Reactive Mind” (the part that’s filled with troubled memories). But Hall couldn’t keep her eyes off his “rock-star” looks.
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One problem with Flunk. Start. is that, while Hall fitfully dissects her own shame and dependency, she often seems too enraptured by romance to make much sense of her journey. The problem isn’t just a deficit of irony or style; it’s the whole sentimental paradigm that the book suggests, whereby a momentary swoon, scavenged from the breathy bits of D.H. Lawrence, can soften a rash relationship of manipulation and abuse—the notion that romance is redeeming in itself. Today, this view continues by way of commercial narratives that promise (and, of course, fail) to fulfill our desires for love and belonging and personal identity, if only we spend enough. An organization like Scientology can pick up precisely where such promises disappoint.
Scientology’s special manipulations of language seduced Hall and kept her bound to the church. Although, at first, she was skeptical of the “Standard Tech”—Hubbard’s official writings—it eventually came to shape her life. When Faunt’s friend explained the “thetan,” or spirit, as a being that is “aware of being aware,” Hall was intrigued: “I liked that very much. It tied in with my meditating efforts.” Later, Faunt introduced her to the concept of the “overt,” a transgression against the ethics of the church. “Not an adjective. A noun,” he explained. “This kind of clarity of language, common to Scientologists, I found very appealing,” Hall writes. Studying words during the church’s “auditing” process made language a “teeming garden of possibilities,” but she also saw the problem:
Language connects people, of course, binding us into a uniquely shared world, while also serving as a barrier, separating us from others. It would take a long time to realize how Scientology’s vocabulary, its nomenclature, abetted such binding, and how purposeful Hubbard had been in creating it. I knew then only that the orderly aspects of the religion were deeply appealing, helping me sort through a terrible, consuming confusion.
Reflecting on the way that Scientology’s language circumscribed her thought, Hall invokes 1984, but it’s more as though Orwell’s Newspeak had conceived a ghastly child with a Walmart employee handbook. Language is the vehicle for both the church’s tyrannical mode and its corporate flourishes. Consider this scene where Faunt, now Hall’s husband, drags her before an “Ethics Officer” named Marty to unspool their conjugal woes. Hall invests it with the same droll energy that makes the sci-fi dystopia of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We feel hilariously familiar to anyone who has ever endured a big-box retail training session, with all its bizarre jargon:
Marty looked grave. Jamie [Faunt] leaned forward. “It’s a classic case of Potential Trouble Source. She’s connected to people opposed to Scientology, she’s rollercoastering; she gets better, she gets worse. She’s got a Suppressive Person on her lines. Probably two!”
The phrase “on her lines” made me think of a cobweb, a spider crouched in wait. But it had to do with “comm lines”: those with whom I communicated.
Marty moved his concerned eyes to meet mine. “Who’s invalidating you? Who doesn’t want you to thrive?”
“Her parents!” Jamie said.
In the end, Hall’s focus on this “cobweb” of intimate entanglement is what makes Flunk. Start. compelling—and different from other, more extraordinary accounts of abuse in Scientology’s upper echelons. Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, for example, concentrates on the experiences of celebrities like the filmmaker Paul Haggis, who slowly became aware of the church’s sensational cruelties of forced labor and “disconnection” from family, and former church executives like Mike Rinder, whom Miscavige and his deputies routinely beat up when things went awry.
By contrast, Flunk. Start. is most revealing in its depiction of Scientology as just one of many expressions that the American search for selfhood can manifest. Sharing her experience with others convinces Hall that hers is “simply a version of a journey taken by most of us at some point in this life.” It’s not so different, she writes, from other sources of shame—“the decade in the terrible marriage, the years lost to Oxycontin, the time in an ashram agreeing to and participating in sexual coercion”—and “we wouldn’t be who we are without having had those years and learned those lessons in our particular underworlds.” Part of what makes Hall a sympathetic narrator is that she’s divided, ambivalent about the church’s teachings, always aching for an excuse to exit. She’s like a hostage holding herself at gunpoint.
Finally, she has to figure out her own escape. Miscavige’s corporate gloss provided the alibi she needed. A middle-class kid in a middle-class cult, Hall had middle-class resources at her disposal: a family to stay with, an inheritance to collect, the means to go to graduate school (rather than going through the “deprogramming” that others often require). She got an MFA from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The passion for language that the church inspired has found a deeper channel as she became a novelist and professor of writing. Her debut novel, Catching Heaven (2000), concerns two sisters who face their own transformative conflicts and emerge the wiser. Literature serves as the symbolic inverse of a system like Scientology, rewarding close reading with a multiplicity of understandings—rather than exactly one. Having “flunked” a period of life, Hall got a chance to “start” anew. Of course, she didn’t invent this cycle of unhappiness, self-indulgence, and redemption. More than anything, she’s a product of it.
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Close MeerkatMichael FriedrichMichael Friedrich is a writer, editor, and researcher based in Brooklyn, covering the intersection of art and social justice.
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