Peter Orner Views Life Through Books - 'And Still No Word From You'

Author of two novels and three short story collections, Peter Orner, shares with us his new book, Still No Word from You: Notes in the Margin. Filled with personal essays and short stories, Still No Word from You was named after a line in a letter Orner found written from his grandfather to his grandmother. “It comes from my grandfather who was in the South Pacific. He was a ship captain in WWII and he…wasn’t drafted or anything. He was an insurance company executive who wanted to fight, he wanted to go to the war. So he signed up and they put him in the coast guard…They needed experienced sailors and my grandfather was that. So he spent two and a half years in the South Pacific as a captain of an LST…But after he died and after my grandmother died, I found a plastic bag… in the bag were letters that my grandfather sent to my grandmother literally dated consecutively every day that he was away at war, and something that I’ve never seen. Nobody ever showed them to me…One of the lines that he said in one of the letters was, “it’s been two months and there’s still no word from you…he was sort of left hanging out there…the idea of my grandfather sort of waiting for word and his words kind of going into the void.” Orner explained that while his grandfather was away, his grandmother was busy raising two kids and also worked as a professional dancer, so she didn’t have much time to write back. In addition, Orner pointed out that his grandfather chose to go to war. “He volunteered, he wanted to go…she was just somebody who was busy, and also frankly always had her own life. I’ve always admired that.”

Still No Word From You also contains a variety of other essays, from literary criticisms to Orner’s observations on life. One of his favorites is a piece about his mom written about the passing of her husband of forty years. He was 94 when he died and while his death wasn’t a shock, his mother was blindsided. “It’s been difficult. So what did she do? She ran for public office…she was 82 when she ran…my stepdad was a politician his whole life…he had a lot of talent, but it was really my mom…She just had a gift for politics and for government, for governing. But it wasn’t until my stepdad died that that kind of opened up for her.”