From a childhood in the 50s through an adolescence in the 60s and onward into the 21st century, Virginia Knoud Nalencz’s I See You: Stories from Life presents a collage of memoir and short stories “in some of which I, the writer, may appear in various guises,” the author says in the preface. The book questions the idea of change. The past is immutable, but the way we see it is not. Does writing a life story change the way we see ourselves, and those who affected us, for good or for ill? Might we grow happier, calmer, even wiser, as we grow older? From the sidewalks of New York to the squares of Philadelphia, I See You traces a Boomer-era Pilgrim’s Progress, with cultural touchstones ranging from the Beatles to Galileo, from Princess Diana to Benjamin Franklin.
Bio of presenter: Virginia Knoud Nalencz [who goes by “Jenny”] was born in New York City and educated in convent schools by the Ursuline nuns. She received a B.A. from Manhattanville College, an M.A. in History from Northwestern University, and an M.A. in English from Temple University. She has been a lab assistant in the physiology department at Hunter College of the City of New York and a staff writer at the alumni magazine of Temple University in Philadelphia. In Before Times, she published short stories in little magazines that are now extinct.For the past six years she has served as facilitator for the Penn’s Village writers’ group, whose members have read and commented on many chapters in I See You. Their life experiences have been particularly valuable in comments on the third section of the book, “In the Footsteps of Ben Franklin,” about moving to Philadelphia from a suburb on the Main Line.