Winterlong (56 page)

In her journal, Hand once wrote, “I am being haunted by a town.” The town was Katonah, New York, which she transformed into Kamensic Village, the setting or background for much of her fiction. This photo from 1975 shows the train station where characters Lit and Jamie Casson make their escape at the end of the novel
Black Light
.

Hand recalls: “In 1976, I was hitchhiking in Putnam County, New York, with my friend Katy. A guy our age picked us up, we drove around and hung out for a few hours, and he then dropped me back at my parents’ house in Pound Ridge. It was only after I got home that I realized I’d left my journal in his car.

Flash forward to 1999, shortly after
Black Light
was published. I was visiting my folks in Pound Ridge when the phone rang: I picked it up and a voice asked, ‘Is this Elizabeth Hand?’ It turned out to be the guy who’d picked us up—he’d seen a copy of
Black Light
in his local bookstore and remembered my name (which was in the journal). And, when he went back and read the journal again (which he’d done back in 1976 as well—hey, I would have, too), he realized that some of the people and places I’d written about in the journal ended up in
Black Light
.”

Hand in proto-punk mode with some friends at their second New Year’s gathering at the Hotel Empire in New York City —at the time a “total dump” (just the way they liked it). Left to right: Michael, Oscar, Julie, Elizabeth, and Steve. Hand says: “The red blodge by my nose is actually my crimson fingernail and a cigarette. I was a chain smoker, also an early do-rag adapter. Oscar inspired Oliver in Waking the Moon; the book was dedicated to him.”

Hand in the early 1980s.

Hand read Samuel R. Delany’s
Dhalgren
when it first came out in 1975, and it was a huge influence on her early works, such as
Winterlong
. In spring 2012, Hand visited Washington, DC, and saw her dear friend Rafael Sa’adah, who had an amazing surprise in store: one of the original manuscripts of
Dhalgren
, which he’d acquired from a book dealer. Hand says, “Raf unwrapped it for the first time and we went through it page by page. Like entering a literary Tutankhamun’s tomb.” Hand took many photos of the text, including this shot of the novel’s epigraph, which she has always loved.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following:

“Nick and the Candle Stick” from
The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath
. Copyright © 1966 by Ted Hughes; copyright © 1981 by The Estate of Sylvia Plath. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

“Let No Charitable Hope” from
Collected Poems
by Elinor Wylie. Copyright © 1932 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and renewed 1960 by Edwina C. Rubenstein. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

“The Hymn to Demeter” from
Homeric Hymns
translated by Charles Boer, 2
^nd
Edition, Revised, Spring Publications, 1980. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Court of the Crimson King” written by Greg Lake, Ian MacDonald, Michael Giles, Robert Fripp, and Peter Sinfield. Copyright © 1989

copyright © 1992 by Elizabeth Hand

cover design by Angela Goddard

978-1-4532-7891-8

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