Contemporary Authors

• The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust Viking (New York, NY), 2018

1. The art of vanishing : a memoir of wanderlust LCCN 2018285009 Type of material Book Personal name Smith, Laura, 1986- author. Main title The art of vanishing : a memoir of wanderlust / Laura Smith. Published/Produced New York, New York : Viking, [2018] ©2018 Description 261 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 22 cm ISBN 9780399563584 (hardcover) 039956358X (hardcover) CALL NUMBER Not available Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• From Publisher -

  Laura Smith's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, and Mother Jones. She worked on The Art of Vanishing while on a fellowship at the Banff Arts Centre. She lives in Oakland, California.

• Laura Smith Website - https://lauraelainesmith.com/

  I’m a staff writer at Timeline with bylines from The New York Times, the Guardian, Slate, Mother Jones, and others. My nonfiction book, The Art of Vanishing, about my search for Barbara Newhall Follett will be out from Viking on February 6, 2018. My Timeline clips can be found here. Based in Berkeley, CA.

• Powell's - http://www.powells.com/post/qa/powells-qa-laura-smith-author-of-the-art-of-vanishing

  Q&AS
  Powell's Q&A: Laura Smith, Author of 'The Art of Vanishing'
  by Laura Smith, January 31, 2018 9:38 AM
  The Art of Vanishing by Laura Smith
  Photo credit: Mark Murrmann

  Describe your latest book.
  The Art of Vanishing is about my search for Barbara Newhall Follett, the child prodigy novelist who disappeared when she was 25. It’s also about my own marriage and search to reconcile my feelings of restlessness with family life. Barbara led a very unconventional life, and I related to her yearning for freedom. But there are many perils to these impulses. The book alternates between Barbara’s story and my own. Ultimately, both my story and Barbara’s ask if it’s possible to be bound to the people you love, but also free.

  What does your writing workspace look like?
  I wrote The Art of Vanishing in different cities and countries — New York, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Conway, Arkansas, Banff, Washington, DC, and Oakland, California, so my workspaces were constantly changing. In Mexico, my foster dog, an energetic Labrador-German Shepherd mix, lay at my feet as I wrote. After an hour and a half, he would bark until I took him for a walk or played with him. I tend to roll my eyes when writers are overly finicky about their workspaces. You could fiddle with your desk forever, trying to create the perfect environment for the divine muse and never write a word. I’m all for eliminating distractions and appreciate aesthetics as much as anyone (the view out the window at Banff was amazing), but at some point you just have to sit down (or in my case stand up) and do it. I have trouble sitting for long stretches, so I tend to alternate between standing and sitting. My standing desks are very DIY — usually a box on top of a desk, which probably isn’t great ergonomically, but I get along.

  I’d like to deconstruct the idea of a workspace entirely. Sometimes my workspace isn’t a desk at all. When I get stuck on an idea, I make a point of leaving my desk to take a walk. I spent a lot of time pacing around one particular block in the Roma Norte neighborhood of Mexico City, so those blocks pop to mind as a “workspace.” Sometimes I would try to sort through a writing problem as I walked and sometimes I wouldn’t. But I always found that when I returned to my desk, I could approach the issue with a fresh perspective and usually solve it. As I was writing, I also had experiences and conversations that informed my work as much as anything that I did at my desk. The cross-pollination of engaging with other people, places, and ideas enriched my writing — my life, really — enormously. The impulse to shut the world out so you can work can be dangerous. Isolation is an ideal breeding ground for ignorance.

  Share an interesting experience you've had with one of your readers.
  I’ve had so many interesting conversations with people about Barbara’s disappearance. Recently, a man emailed me with a document he had found that he thought might help in my search for her. We started sharing documents back and forth. I like that the search for Barbara has become a collaborative effort.

  Another interesting thing — my parents recently read my book. They were extremely supportive, but also quite shocked. The book contains very personal details about my life and marriage and they were surprised not so much by what they discovered as by the fact that I had written so openly about my life. They had considered me a very private person, and it’s true, I can be. But I felt very comfortable opening up in the book, partially because I worked very hard not to imagine my readers as I was writing. “You were fearless,” my dad said, which really touched me. But then I thought about it a little more, and said, “I think you mean shameless,” and we laughed and agreed that that was probably right. I do feel shameless about the book — and moved that the people in my life who could have rejected my shamelessness didn’t.

  Tell us something you're embarrassed to admit.
  I can barely spell. I want to blame it on spell checker and computers, but I didn’t have one until the fifth grade and I didn’t spend much time on the computer growing up. I think something may just be wrong with me.

  Introduce an author you think people should read, and suggest a good book with which to start.
  Elizabeth Flock’s beautiful nonfiction book, The Heart Is a Shifting Sea, is about three Indian marriages, but it’s also very much a captivating story about place. She reported the story over almost 10 years, and it feels both intimate and universal. Also, check out Lauren Markham’s The Far Away Brothers, which is about her twin students' harrowing journey fleeing from El Salvador’s gang violence to America. This is a deeply humane book about immigration that feels incredibly relevant right now. Both of these books are the authors’ debuts, so this is the only place to start.

  What scares you the most as a writer?
  I’m afraid of becoming isolated. I aspire to be the kind of writer who lives an eventful life and draws her material from being deeply engaged with the world — with current events, with my community, with friends and family, with the natural world. But writing is a solitary, mostly indoor activity, and nonfiction writers seem more cloistered than ever before, due mostly to money constraints. It’s hard to hit the pavement when people won’t pay you to do it. I freelanced for a long time and spent a lot of time by myself in front of a screen, and often ran out of ideas because I had no material to draw from.

  Offer a favorite sentence or passage from another writer.
  I just read Rachel Cusk’s Aftermath, a memoir about her divorce. She has so many stunning lines. Sometimes they’re just turns of phrase like “the swarming silence of experience” or “the gunpowder smell of personal truths.” But one of my favorite passages in the book is when she watches a family biking through a park wearing protective helmets and luminescent strips and she’s struck by how fearful traditional family life can be. She writes, “They seem to have taken all the fun out of life: Spoilsports! What happened to passionate conflict and reunion, the kinetic of man and woman that drives the lifeblood around the body? These men and women wear protective helmets to pass through a public park.” I admire Cusk’s literary viciousness.

  Do you have any phobias?
  I’m afraid of flying. I understand, in theory, how flying works, but as the plane takes off, I completely forget the laws of physics and think to myself, “How is this enormous metal plane staying up in the air? This is impossible!” Plummeting feels like a very real possibility to me during the entire flight. Katie Roiphe has this great line in The Violet Hour about Dylan Thomas being scared on an airplane not long before his death. She writes, “Many high-strung people panic on planes; if your life is at all fragile, airplane travel is one of those moments when you feel that fragility most acutely; any lack of structure, of solidity, any sense of the bottom falling out, makes itself felt as the plane rises into the air.” That rings so true to me. During takeoff especially, I feel vulnerable in a way that seems shattering. The problem is that I love to travel, and being afraid of flying doesn’t mesh with the person I like to believe I am, so I fly anyway, but I have to drink alarming amounts of booze to get on the airplane. Or take a Xanax.

  Name a guilty pleasure you partake in regularly.
  I’ve been having trouble sleeping recently, so I read cookbooks to fall asleep. They’re boring and comforting. I’ve also been listening to the 2 Dope Queens podcast a lot. I know it’s good because I laugh out loud when I’m listening to it alone.

  What kind of writing speaks to you today? What kinds do not?
  I’m very interested in genre-defying authors right now. I loved Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts. She seemed to invent a form all her own — part psychology, part literary and cultural criticism, part memoir. I love Zadie Smith’s nonfiction for the same reason. Sometimes an essay of hers will mix literary criticism with memoir, art criticism, and history. For me this mode is more intellectually honest and reflective of the cognitive process. I enjoy writers who are omnivorous thinkers, drawing on a mishmash of their own experiences and encounters with other thinkers from a variety of backgrounds.

  As for what is not speaking to me right now, I’ve been feeling the inadequacy of polemic to respond to this time we live in. In the wake of #MeToo, the steely certainty of that form doesn’t do justice to what’s going on. Of course, in theory, each polemic is advancing the conversation, hopefully making room for a wide variety of voices. But right now it seems like each author is sitting down hoping to write the definitive piece... to end the conversation. And it has become a vehicle for a lot of privileged white women to lash out at each other. I’ve occasionally felt myself wanting to write my own polemic, partially out of the misguided idea that this is the only way a writer can make a living today, that having some kind of “hot take” will launch your career or ensure stability.

  Recently, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m just not that kind of writer, and that realization has come as a tremendous relief. Perhaps I don’t have the stomach for the backlash, or perhaps I prefer to operate from a more flexible mode of inquiry — probing and asking, rather than stating. I find ambivalence to be much richer terrain for exploration. The experience of entering my 30s has been entirely humbling. Everything I thought was true has come undone, and I feel in awe of — almost grateful for — this fact. I realize the absurdity of this: I’ve just written a polemic against polemics.

  My Top Five List of Excellent Memoirs(ish).
  Darkness Visible by William Styron. It’s perhaps the most beautiful book about depression I’ve ever read.

  Henry and June by Anaïs Nin. This isn’t really a memoir, but her journals about the year when she fell in love with Henry Miller and his wife.

  Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde, a totally absorbing memoir about her childhood in Harlem.

  Fun Home by Alison Bechdel is an engrossing graphic novel about her upbringing. It’s an exploration of sexual identity, as well as family dynamics more generally.

  Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir is about this titan of feminism’s formative years.
  ÷ ÷ ÷
  Laura Smith’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, and Mother Jones. She worked on The Art of Vanishing while on a fellowship at the Banff Arts Centre. She lives in Oakland, California.

• Pacific Standard - https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-privilege-to-be-ambivalent-a-conversation-with-laura-smith

  QUOTED: "I heard about Barbara when I was exactly the age she was when she disappeared [25]. Her story really spoke to me. I started reading her writing and about the circumstances of her life: She was asking questions about how to live. I was asking very similar questions at that time. It felt like by figuring out what happened to her, I would somehow figure out how to live my life. But I actually figured out how to ruin my life instead. Not that my life is ruined, but—you know."
  "My marriage gave me a lot of security and a sense of a stable place that I could explore from. It emboldened me. I was so convinced that I was at this really great perfect stable relationship. Then, I injected a lot of chaos into it and am still feeling the ramifications from that."

  'THE PRIVILEGE TO BE AMBIVALENT': A CONVERSATION WITH LAURA SMITH
  The author of The Art of Vanishing discusses literary mysteries, monogamy, and the future of #MeToo.
  CANDACE BUTERAFEB 9, 2018
  20
  SHARES
  Appalachian Trail
  (Photo: Drew Geraets/Unsplash)

  In The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust—part memoir, part cultural criticism, and part historical investigation—journalist Laura Smith works to find out what happened to Barbara Newhall Follett, a child-prodigy novelist who disappeared at the age of 25 in December of 1939, leaving behind few traces, if any, to indicate where she'd gone.

  Follett was homeschooled throughout her childhood by her parents, both writers and academics, who idolized Barbara's curiosity and precocity, constantly re-affirming her brilliance. But her parents did not set the example of a conventional marriage: Barbara's father left the family when Barbara was a teenager, vanishing from her life for months or years at a time. After her father left, Barbara and her mother sailed together for a year to Barbados and around the Caribbean, both writing about the experience.

  Follett sought a life of perpetual motion—publishing a novel at age 12, sailing at sea for months at a time, and hiking the Appalachian Trail in the 1920s and '30s when, for women, that was not the norm—before suddenly finding herself stuck in a stagnant marriage with a desk job, and eventually "vanishing." Smith's book goes beyond murder-mystery luridness, taking an explorative, painstaking dive into the writings and letters of Follett and her family and acquaintances, to discover that the pressures of convention, and the pain of having to be a "proper wife," may have led Follett to prefer disappearance.

  ADVERTISEMENT

  Vanishing is not always physically disappearing; Smith's book also suggests that we sometimes long to "vanish" because we long for a jolt away from our current life path, perhaps out of claustrophobia or a fear of a life that struggles to go beyond merely satisfactory settling. That fear is something that Smith experienced herself: Leading up to her marriage, Smith worried that a marital routine would limit her ability to wander and approach life with a "free spirit." Something as simple as receiving a Cuisinart mixer, which she left in a box above the kitchen cabinets, set off deep anxiety: She hoped her marriage wouldn't be "that kind of marriage." She was afraid that a lifetime of material items would bog down her adventurous lifestyle. "The total lack of spontaneity was making me fidgety," Smith wrote, this restlessness setting in the year even before her marriage. Smith and her husband traveled abroad in Southeast Asia early in their marriage, and later returned to Brooklyn; still, their minds continued to wander. Soon, they discussed the possibility of benefits offered by exploring sexual experiences with other people. Smith began to see an open marriage as a potential way to combat a sedentary and mundane lifestyle.

  The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust.
  The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust.

  (Photo: Viking Books)

  She and her husband decided to put the "experiment" to the test while she was abroad reporting on Follett's story. But Smith found the open relationship caused pain and tension (even if it spurred some growth). The arrangement led to hurt feelings through a "tumultuous, transformational summer," resulting in a strained relationship with her husband.

  In The Art of Vanishing, Smith's devotion to finding Barbara is nothing short of obsessive, to such an extent that the two women's stories become eerily intertwined. Despite the 80-year gap, the jumps between Follett's narrative, Smith's investigation, and Smith's own "experiment" with her husband to test the waters of an open marriage, evoke a shared female desire to live beyond traditional roles created by marriage and conventional expectations.

  With refreshing candor and a deeply meditative storyline The Art of Vanishing brings the reader to question whether it's time to redefine marriage in ways that work best for individualistic women. Smith spoke with Pacific Standard on the phone to talk about the difficulty of candid writing and how her work fits into the idea of women's ability to combat complacency and challenge stereotypical family life.

  section-break
  While researching Follett's life, you were experimenting with your own, in both your relationship and your career. What was it like to embark on this project?

  I heard about Barbara when I was exactly the age she was when she disappeared [25]. Her story really spoke to me. I started reading her writing and about the circumstances of her life: She was asking questions about how to live. I was asking very similar questions at that time. It felt like by figuring out what happened to her, I would somehow figure out how to live my life. But I actually figured out how to ruin my life instead. Not that my life is ruined, but—you know.

  The memoir portions of the book offer a deep discussion about open relationships versus conventional marriage, including some personally difficult moments for you. What do you expect for the response from people who know you and are close to you?

  Most of the events that took place in that book happened a couple of years ago, so I've had the time to reflect. I didn't just write this book, I lived it. It was in a lot of ways a harrowing and all-consuming experience. It will continue to be an overwhelming experience as it comes out and people read it.

  I couldn’t imagine my family or friends reading the book [while writing] because then I would've been self-editing. It was hard to force that outside of my mind, and of course that's not entirely possible. It's been weird to give people a window into my life that I don't normally offer them. I was shameless in the book, and it's been affirming that people read the book and didn't reject that shamelessness.

  P.J., my husband, read it throughout [the writing process]. It was important to me that he be involved the whole way through because he's so written about in the book. I didn't think I could do it without him.

  There was one moment in your book where you talked about bravery, and about an inner voice you feared would scold you and haunt you later in life for not being brave enough. How did your relationship with your husband help you lean into this fear? What would this voice say now?

  This voice is a couple of years older now and it's saying things I didn't expect. It's really hard to anticipate what your regrets will be. My marriage gave me a lot of security and a sense of a stable place that I could explore from. It emboldened me. I was so convinced that I was at this really great perfect stable relationship. Then, I injected a lot of chaos into it and am still feeling the ramifications from that.

  But you found at points that this pain you felt from your relationships' challenges could bring clarification.

  There are a lot of different types of pain. There's trauma and that can destroy you, but then there are pain spots in which you're challenging yourself as a person to be a better person and to learn more about yourself and the world. And you can grow from it.

  I wanted the challenge, but I never wanted to be destroyed. The interest in vanishing was not a fascination of self-annihilation; it was a desire for challenge, and that's another thing I related to in Barbara. She said: "We want to sweat. We want to be cold. We want to be uncomfortable."

  I think that some discomfort can be good. It can force you to examine what you think is true and can put you to the test, but the line between those things is thin. It's easy to cross it.

  Laura Smith.
  Laura Smith.

  (Photo: Mark Murrmann)

  Do you think you'll continue to look for her?

  I can't help it. I got an email the other day from this guy who has been trying to figure out what happened to her, and then I was sharing my documents with him. I was talking to one of my co-workers today about the Social Security Administration. It takes a certain amount of time for a person's records to become public, and her records will be released in 17 years. We could know if she had earnings the day after she disappeared. In 17 years, I'll be close to 50 years old, but I cannot wait to know. It drives me totally nuts.

  I wonder if something will come out after your book comes out. It's not impossible.

  It's my hope. That would be amazing to me. I'm just one person. My background is in journalism. I'm not a private investigator, and my hope is that someone will follow a lead that I missed. There's a really big part of me that believes the answer is out there, whether it's on a piece of paper, a passport or a travel document, a death certificate, or something else. Maybe a newspaper article about an unnamed woman, who knows. A big part of me believes that there's information out there, but we're just not looking in the right places. My co-workers and I joke that she's going to show up at one of my readings and say, "Laura, you got everything wrong."

  That would be crazy. She's a hard person to track.

  Barbara, I tried to find you, but you obscured yourself.

  Originally, you didn't intend for this book to be part-memoir.

  The whole time I was writing about Barbara, I kept this journal to record thoughts of personal events I thought related to Barbara in any way, such as ideas testing domesticity, marriage, or whatever else. I would put little thoughts or murmurings not necessarily from her life, but from mine, which probably influenced the way that the book was structured.

  There is a growing conversation today about women seeking to redefine their conventional relationships. You talk candidly about trying out an open marriage, and I'm curious to know how you see your book fitting into this larger conversation.

  Marriage has always been in flux, but we are talking about it differently now and we are trying to find a mechanism that suits our time. This is a different moment for women to examine what they really want, and they're able to do it with candidness and without shame. What we're seeing now is an updating of the model. I think that there are things that people continue to like about marriage, and the things they don't they'll continue to tinker with probably forever. There is this spirit of experimentalism in the air, and it says something that now we're freer to explore what we think we really want.

  I suddenly became more conventional at the times when my marriage was the hardest. It was in those times that my marriage felt endangered that I felt leaning on conventional things. I think that's what really shook me about Barbara's story. The last five years of her known life were incredibly conventional, and in the end she was pleading for a conventional existence. She was doing housework to please her husband and that must have been really painful for her because it directly opposes the identity she had created, but also it seemed like what she wanted. She wanted her partner, and I understand that feeling. After having endangered my partner, I understand that feeling.

  It can be easier to think about taking risks when you're in a stable place.

  What we're really talking about is privilege. It's having the privilege to be ambivalent. I had those privileges and I endangered them because I could and that keeps me up at night.

  While trying to understand your fears and desires, you talk a lot about the benefits, and pitfalls of your decisions. Did you come to any conclusions throughout the writing process?

  There were some decisions where I should have stopped moving, paused, and thought about what the ramifications would be.

  I realized I wasn't really necessarily to get answers, I was writing to understand, and I think that's an important difference. There's not some large conclusion or big statement.

  This is pertinent now because I've really been feeling, with everything in the news about women and #MeToo or the shitty media men [list], I've been seeing so many polemics and so many tidy conclusions in all of them. Everyone argues different truths, and none of them really feel true to me. They all feel like they're missing something.

  I wonder if part of it is that we're really hungry for tidy conclusions. There are straightforwardly bad things but—sometimes there just aren't any conclusions.

  This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir Of Wanderlust
Ann Hulbert
The Atlantic. 321.3 (Apr. 2018): p38.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Atlantic Media, Ltd.
http://www.theatlantic.com
Full Text:
The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir Of Wanderlust

LAURA SMITH

VIKING

I READ THIS unusual book twice, and it only got better. First I rushed through it to find out whether Laura Smith had solved the mystery of Barbara Newhall Follett, whose prodigious early life and haunting end I've written about myself. Encouraged by her father, a Knopf editor and her idol, Follett published a novel at the age of 12, in 1927. Jazz Age readers were enchanted by her tale of a girl who runs away to explore a fairy-filled wilderness and then never returns home.

Smith is fascinated by the real-life story that unfolded. Follett's world was soon upended when her father abandoned the family for a younger woman. Follett "jumped civilization," as she put it, a phrase that speaks to Smith, a freedom-hungry spirit herself. The teenage Follett sought out adventures at home and abroad with a soul mate, whom she married at 20. Five years later, back in the United States and facing her own marital crisis, she disappeared one day without a trace. Or so everyone thought. But could Smith discover Follett's fate?

Smith--in her mid-20s when the quest gripped her, and recently married but far from ready to settle down--saw "both an inspiration and a warning" in Follett's trajectory. On second reading, I was drawn into her life story, told with real insight and remarkable honesty. Smith also felt the urge to wander and court risk, and found an ally in a restless husband. The two of them jumped convention. As Smith set off on a summer fellowship, pursuing her Follett project, they decided to act on an idea that had seemed far-fetched when they first dared to entertain it: They agreed to give an open marriage a try. Interweaving biographical portraiture that is urgently personal and memoir that is deepened by historical exploration, Smith pushes literary boundaries, too.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hulbert, Ann. "The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir Of Wanderlust." The Atlantic, Apr. 2018, p. 38. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534200137/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5c48247c. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A534200137

QUOTED: "Smith's narrative is a riveting journey mapping the route of two restless women and their search for fulfillment."

The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust
Publishers Weekly. 264.48 (Nov. 27, 2017): p48.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust

Laura Smith. Viking, $25 (272p) ISBN 978-0399-56358-4

Smith's seductive memoir interweaves her search for personal freedom with an account of a woman who abandoned her marriage and disappeared without a trace in the early 20th century. Smith feared that married life would be predictable and dull. In her mid-20s, Smith was told a story about Barbara Follett, who deserted her own marriage in 1939 and was never seen again. Intrigued, Smith began researching Follett's life. As a child of 12, Follett published a novel, The House Without Windows, that became a bestseller. Follett embarked on a life of travel and adventure, got married at 19, and then disappeared when she was 25. While digging deeper into Follett's life, Smith "began to feel an uncomfortable sensation: recognition." Smith then found herself testing the boundaries of her marriage. While at a writing retreat in Banff, Canada, she had an affair with another man. When she was about to sleep with yet another man at the same conference she stopped herself, realizing that she was "a monogamous adulteress." After this revelation, she began to reconsider her marriage and the course of her life. Smith's narrative is a riveting journey mapping the route of two restless women and their search for fulfillment. (Feb.)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust." Publishers Weekly, 27 Nov. 2017, p. 48. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A517575685/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cdb2ad03. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A517575685

QUOTED: "Both Smith and Follett will intrigue readers."
"those looking for a memoir with a twist."

The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust
Kathy Sexton
Booklist. 114.6 (Nov. 15, 2017): p14.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust.

By Laura Smith.

Feb. 2018. 272p. Viking, $25 (9780399563584). 818.

Days before her wedding, Smith begins to feel trapped. She loves her partner, P. J., and the adventurous spirit they share, but she questions whether marriage inevitably turns to monotony. This pull to create an autonomous life simultaneously fuels her research of Barbara Newhall Follett, a child prodigy who published her first novel, The House without Windows, in 1927 at age 12, and disappeared 13 years later. Smith is convinced that Follett vanished to escape a conventional life. Although part of Smith admires this possibility, she feels bound to friends and family in a way Follett may never have. Her solution is testing an open marriage: Could it afford her the perfect combination of stability and freedom? Though at times the dual stories beg to be told more deeply, and the theme of wanderlust is a tenuous link through the alternating chapters, Smith's candor is refreshing, and her search for Follett lends suspense. Both Smith and Follett will intrigue readers, and those looking for a memoir with a twist will find much to enjoy.--Kathy Sexton

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Sexton, Kathy. "The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust." Booklist, 15 Nov. 2017, p. 14. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A517441688/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8a4af3c5. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A517441688

QUOTED: "With alternating chapters that compare Follett's life, early adventures, and relational issues with Smith's, the narrative assumes an interesting mirroring effect."
"A bravely introspective tale of wanderlust and lustful wandering."

Smith, Laura: THE ART OF VANISHING
Kirkus Reviews. (Nov. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Smith, Laura THE ART OF VANISHING Viking (Adult Nonfiction) $25.00 2, 6 ISBN: 978-0-399-56358-4

One woman investigates the life and mysterious disappearance of the promising free-spirited writer Barbara Follett (1914-1939) while attempting to retain her own sense of freedom within her marriage.

As a young woman, Smith "was ambivalent about marriage." She was not ready to take on the domesticity, set routines, and stereotypical family life that she believed anchored one firmly to a place and responsibilities. Though she loved her fiance and shared his love of adventure, she wondered if there was a way to be together and yet still remain untethered enough to avoid the traditional roles she grew up with. While working on a writing project on Follett, Smith could not help but note the similarities to her own life's struggles and desires for freedom and adventure. The domestic life was not a good fit for Follett, either, and after months of struggling to win her husband back from an affair, one night she disappeared, never to be seen again. In seeking to avoid the predictability of a traditional marriage, Smith and her now-husband set out to see Southeast Asia for a year while she attempted to discover where Follett went after that night, with theories ranging from sailing abroad to murder. After returning to the U.S., Smith and her husband, appetite for adventure whetted, embarked on a different experiment: open marriage. She admits that "historical examples [of open marriage] hardly suggested it was a path to unalloyed bliss." In discussing this arrangement, Smith does not attempt to hide her longing for freedom and experimentation under the guise of excuses; rather, she looks deeply and unflinchingly at her motivations and the resulting consequences. With alternating chapters that compare Follett's life, early adventures, and relational issues with Smith's, the narrative assumes an interesting mirroring effect. However, where Follett chose to steal off into the night, remaining a mystery, Smith decided to be seen, blemishes and all.

A bravely introspective tale of wanderlust and lustful wandering.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Smith, Laura: THE ART OF VANISHING." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A514267683/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d675d3b2. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A514267683

Hulbert, Ann. "The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir Of Wanderlust." The Atlantic, Apr. 2018, p. 38. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534200137/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5c48247c. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018. "The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust." Publishers Weekly, 27 Nov. 2017, p. 48. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A517575685/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cdb2ad03. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018. Sexton, Kathy. "The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust." Booklist, 15 Nov. 2017, p. 14. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A517441688/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8a4af3c5. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018. "Smith, Laura: THE ART OF VANISHING." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A514267683/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d675d3b2. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018.

• San Francisco Chronicle
  https://www.sfchronicle.com/books/article/The-Art-of-Vanishing-A-Memoir-of-12773716.php
  Word count: 1141

  QUOTED: "a skillful braided narrative of memoir, biography and investigative journalism that is equal parts thought-provoking, brave and, at times, a little challenging and trying."
  "Smith does an admirable job of reflecting on her restless actions through the lens of Follett and her values."

  ‘The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust,’ by Laura Smith
  By S. Kirk WalshMarch 22, 2018

  0

  “The Art of Vanishing” Photo: Viking
  Photo: Viking
  IMAGE 1 OF 2 “The Art of Vanishing”
  With her debut book, “The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust,” journalist Laura Smith examines the abbreviated, illustrious life of Barbara Newhall Follett while scrutinizing the shifting fault lines of her own life and marriage. What results is a skillful braided narrative of memoir, biography and investigative journalism that is equal parts thought-provoking, brave and, at times, a little challenging and trying.

  MOST POPULAR
  Clean up San Francisco’s streets, tourist industry pleads A’s free promotion highlights team’s struggle to draw paying fans Swapping insults with Trump, Brown says agreement all but signed on sending National Guard to border Pricey retrofit proposed for sinking Millennium Tower in SF Fixing California’s housing crisis: What candidates for governor would do California community college students will be guaranteed admission to UC — if they meet requirements Willie Brown backs off renaming Lotta’s Fountain for Ed Lee after public outcry
  Born in 1914, Follett was a prodigy who published her first novel, “The House Without Windows,” when she was 12. Her publisher was none other than Alfred A. Knopf (where her father, Wilson, worked), and the novel received glowing praise from a multitude of publications, including the New York Times. “Reviewers and readers loved Barbara precisely because she was young,” writes Smith. “She was a pure conduit to childhood, unfettered by adult thinking. Her verbal precocity enabled her to speak the language of adults, but from another, long-forgotten world.”

  Two years later, a second novel was published, but at the same time, her beloved father betrayed his family and left them for a 20-year-old woman (who sat at a neighboring desk at Knopf). Understandably, this traumatic event reverberated throughout the rest of Follett’s life. In between her literary efforts, Follett sought a lifestyle of endless motion — taking to the seas on a three-masted schooner and later hiking the Appalachian Trail. Follett eventually married fellow adventurer Nick Rogers but ended up living a hemmed-in existence of working a secretarial job in Boston.

  Taken altogether, her unusual life offers a remarkable counterpoint to the more conventional path of marriage and children that most young women experienced during the 1930s. Much of the pleasure of reading this memoir is the opportunity to read Follett’s exuberant prose. “‘We’re all slightly rebels against civilization,’ Barbara wrote. ‘We want to go out in the woods and sweat honestly and shiver honestly and satisfy our souls by looking at the mountains, smelling pine trees, and feeling the sky and the earth.’”

  On Dec. 7, 1939, Follett left her Brookline apartment with a notebook and $30 in her pocket and little else — and was never heard from again. She was 25. At the same age, Smith learns about the mysterious life of Follett and marries her college pal, P.J. As her adult life begins to take shape, Smith does an agile job of drawing the parallels between her own self-inquiry and the enigmatic ending of Follett’s life. The author writes: “I was interested in a different kind of vanishing: the kind where you disentangle yourself from your life and start fresh. People would miss you. You could miss them. You could live at a peaceful distance, loving them in a way that is simpler than the way you love someone you have to deal with in everyday life. You hadn’t abandoned them. You were just gone. Mysterious rather than rejecting. Vanishing was a way to reclaim your life.”

  Smith begins to settle into the rhythms of adulthood yet yearns for something beyond her Brooklyn existence of coffee shops, food co-ops and runs in Prospect Park. As a result, the author and P.J. begin to talk about the possibility of having an open “arrangement” and agree that sleeping with other people is acceptable. “I knew that I was lucky to have found love at all, that I was lucky to have P.J., and it was perhaps ungrateful and greedy to want more,” writes Smith. “And yet to dismiss blossoming desire seemed a tragic amputation. I felt as though I had stumbled upon a whole new wing of my house. My world suddenly expanded.”

  That summer, Smith attends an artist residency in Banff and seeks out a heated affair with another writer. Post-residency, Smith and her husband reunite, but unease and strain dominate the tenor of their relationship. “Be warm to me!” Smith says to P.J. while they’re camping in the Canadian wilderness. Admittedly, it’s challenging to not critique this narrative without parsing the author’s intentions and needs for experiencing love in two places at once. During a recent interview with Pacific Standard magazine, Smith admits to privilege being at the center of her indecision: “It’s having the privilege to be ambivalent,” the author said. “I had those privileges and I endangered them because I could, and that keeps me up at night.”

  A reader can only wonder if Smith, who now lives in Oakland, might have found the tedium of adulthood and monogamous marriage more fulfilling if she had endured more hardships and difficulties in her life. At the same time, attempts at meaningful introspection during one’s late 20s — when life often hasn’t handed out many of its disappointments — is no easy feat. Smith does an admirable job of reflecting on her restless actions through the lens of Follett and her values. As Follett wrote, life is meant to be experienced fully — sweat, shivers and all. How does one arrive at this place? Does it require the chaos that comes with an open marriage? Do we need to travel outward in order to reach the center of ourselves? Or can these moments of satisfaction be achieved in other ways? In “The Art of Vanishing,” Smith attempts to answer these questions, and more.

  S. Kirk Walsh has reviewed books for the New York Times, the Boston Globe and other publications. Email: books@sfchronicle.com.

  The Art of Vanishing

  RELATED
  Fast-growing rodeo sport appeals to gun and horse enthusiasts Thousands gather for Greenwich St. Patrick’s parade Lost for decades, the Alcoholics Anonymous original manuscript will be auctioned for millions
  A Memoir of Wanderlust

  By Laura Smith

  (Viking; 261 pages; $25)

Word Count