I'm about to leave for a month's adventure in Umbria, Italy. I was lucky enough to receive a fellowship from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, which gives writers, artists, and musicians a chance to live for six weeks in an Italian castle in the countryside between Rome and Florence. You can check it out at: www.civitella.org
After working on a novel set in Berlin, I'm ready to begin doing a little groundwork for a new project set in Italy, filled with sunshine and pasta. However, writing an Italian story presents its own challenges, namely, that it's been done thousands of times before. Usually the story involves uptight fair-skinned people from northern countries coming to Italy and losing their inhibitions. I'll be looking for some way to give that story a new spin.
When I tell people I'm going to Umbria, they usually give me a blank look. Today, Umbria is probably best known for three things: 1) Perugia chocolates 2) the truffle 3) "Foxy Knoxy" a.k.a. American exchange student Amanda Knox, who was accused of murder and is right now languishing in jail while the Italian court system takes its summer vacation.
Sadly, my partner has to stay home for this trip, but his spirit will be with me, inspiring me, teaching me, encouraging me, as always. In the meantime, I'll be posting my impressions on this site, so stay tuned...
Friday, August 07, 2009
Monday, August 03, 2009
Shocking News
Last week, a madman dressed in black entered a gay youth club and began shooting. As a result, two are dead, including a sixteen-year-old girl.
It's heartening (if it's possible to use such a term in connection with such a tragedy) to see the uniform condemnation of this heinous act from so many different levels of Israeli society. I wish that the sources of some of these same voices, such as that of the religious Shas Party leader Eli Yishay, had thought about the consequences of their words when they earlier described gay people with words like "sick," "perverse," and "filth."
Many of the accounts of the tragedy describe Israelis' sense of shock in reaction to the shootings. In reality, however, there is nothing shocking about this story. It is in fact the logical result of a long history of hate, intolerance, and worse, indifference that has been taking place not only in Israel but around the world. It's gratifying that old prejudices of all stripes are on the wane, but tragedies like this one remind us they haven't died entirely, that in fact, hatred dies hard.
I'm not just talking about anti-gay prejudice. Think of some of the ridiculous amped-up rhetoric used lately to describe President Obama. (Glenn Beck, if you're listening, this one's for you.) Think of the insulting treatment of Judge Sonia Sotomayor before the Senate Judiciary Committee, during which Senator Lindsey Graham had the nerve to deliver a lecture on manners to a middle-aged woman based solely on anonymous comments about her made online. (Perhaps Senator Graham also ought to be held publicly accountable for every stray rumor about HIS personal life that have made online.) Think of Dr. George Tiller, assassinated for the crime of carrying out legal medical procedures.
When will we learn the difference between attacking ideas versus attacking people? The answer: when we learn that words matter. Rhetoric matters. Attacking people with words leads to attacking them with fists, knives, and as was so regrettably the case in Israel last weekend, bullets.
It's heartening (if it's possible to use such a term in connection with such a tragedy) to see the uniform condemnation of this heinous act from so many different levels of Israeli society. I wish that the sources of some of these same voices, such as that of the religious Shas Party leader Eli Yishay, had thought about the consequences of their words when they earlier described gay people with words like "sick," "perverse," and "filth."
Many of the accounts of the tragedy describe Israelis' sense of shock in reaction to the shootings. In reality, however, there is nothing shocking about this story. It is in fact the logical result of a long history of hate, intolerance, and worse, indifference that has been taking place not only in Israel but around the world. It's gratifying that old prejudices of all stripes are on the wane, but tragedies like this one remind us they haven't died entirely, that in fact, hatred dies hard.
I'm not just talking about anti-gay prejudice. Think of some of the ridiculous amped-up rhetoric used lately to describe President Obama. (Glenn Beck, if you're listening, this one's for you.) Think of the insulting treatment of Judge Sonia Sotomayor before the Senate Judiciary Committee, during which Senator Lindsey Graham had the nerve to deliver a lecture on manners to a middle-aged woman based solely on anonymous comments about her made online. (Perhaps Senator Graham also ought to be held publicly accountable for every stray rumor about HIS personal life that have made online.) Think of Dr. George Tiller, assassinated for the crime of carrying out legal medical procedures.
When will we learn the difference between attacking ideas versus attacking people? The answer: when we learn that words matter. Rhetoric matters. Attacking people with words leads to attacking them with fists, knives, and as was so regrettably the case in Israel last weekend, bullets.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Michael Jackson and Me
When I was nine, I remember a classmate of mine brought into school a 45 single of a song I'd never heard before by a singer I didn't know. The song was "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson.
My ignorance was soon rectified. Jackson's Thriller album was not just popular; it was a necessity like food, shelter, clothing. Or rather, a fact of life, like air, water, and earth. It was just there, inescapable, immovable, irresistible.
Though I knew the entire cassette by heart, and I had images of Michael Jackson on buttons and posters all around my room, had seen all of his videos several times and repeatedly practiced the "Beat It" dance moves in my backyard though never learned them, I knew almost nothing about Jackson the man. I had never heard his speaking voice. I had never listened to his previous solo record Off the Wall, and was only remotely aware of his career as a child star because a new group called New Edition was being touted as "the next Jackson Five." In fact, I knew almost nothing about him other than his image from his videos and megahit album. He wore sequined jackets. He sang and danced better than anyone alive. And he was shy.
Being shy myself, I became desperately infatuated with Jackson. I deeply coveted his zipper jacket from the Beat It video, which a lot of the boys in school were wearing. However, because it cost forty bucks, my parents were initially reluctant to buy it for me. Unfortunately, by the time they finally broke down and got me one, it had gone out of style. I wore it exactly twice. The second time, I was in a store and I saw two kids pointing at me and snickering, "Look, he's wearing the Michael Jackson jacket."
I dreamed of meeting Jackson, perhaps by writing him an eloquent fan letter that would so move him, that he would invite me to his ranch at Neverland to become his best friend. We'd watch movies together, go on rides, play with the animals in his zoo, have sleepovers. He'd dedicate a song to me. He would love me. I even wrote an unfinished story about our adventures called "Me and Michael," that I felt sure would get his attention.
Thankfully my fantasy never came true, as it did for other young playmates of a troubled grown man who'd formed a profoundly unhealthy attachment to childhood. Though never found guilty in a court of law of his actions, Jackson horribly betrayed the trust of these boys who looked to their idol for friendship and comfort. For this reason, much as I appreciate his music and career achievements, I cannot cry for the man who died yesterday or feel sad that he's gone. Furthermore, I find it nauseating that so many people, in their rush to participate in the orgy of celebrity glorification that defines our culture, are eager to whitewash this man's loathsome legacy. I wonder if these same people might also shed tears for the deaths of their local child molesters who aren't famous and don't have Grammys and gold albums to distract from their unsavory acts.
My ignorance was soon rectified. Jackson's Thriller album was not just popular; it was a necessity like food, shelter, clothing. Or rather, a fact of life, like air, water, and earth. It was just there, inescapable, immovable, irresistible.
Though I knew the entire cassette by heart, and I had images of Michael Jackson on buttons and posters all around my room, had seen all of his videos several times and repeatedly practiced the "Beat It" dance moves in my backyard though never learned them, I knew almost nothing about Jackson the man. I had never heard his speaking voice. I had never listened to his previous solo record Off the Wall, and was only remotely aware of his career as a child star because a new group called New Edition was being touted as "the next Jackson Five." In fact, I knew almost nothing about him other than his image from his videos and megahit album. He wore sequined jackets. He sang and danced better than anyone alive. And he was shy.
Being shy myself, I became desperately infatuated with Jackson. I deeply coveted his zipper jacket from the Beat It video, which a lot of the boys in school were wearing. However, because it cost forty bucks, my parents were initially reluctant to buy it for me. Unfortunately, by the time they finally broke down and got me one, it had gone out of style. I wore it exactly twice. The second time, I was in a store and I saw two kids pointing at me and snickering, "Look, he's wearing the Michael Jackson jacket."
I dreamed of meeting Jackson, perhaps by writing him an eloquent fan letter that would so move him, that he would invite me to his ranch at Neverland to become his best friend. We'd watch movies together, go on rides, play with the animals in his zoo, have sleepovers. He'd dedicate a song to me. He would love me. I even wrote an unfinished story about our adventures called "Me and Michael," that I felt sure would get his attention.
Thankfully my fantasy never came true, as it did for other young playmates of a troubled grown man who'd formed a profoundly unhealthy attachment to childhood. Though never found guilty in a court of law of his actions, Jackson horribly betrayed the trust of these boys who looked to their idol for friendship and comfort. For this reason, much as I appreciate his music and career achievements, I cannot cry for the man who died yesterday or feel sad that he's gone. Furthermore, I find it nauseating that so many people, in their rush to participate in the orgy of celebrity glorification that defines our culture, are eager to whitewash this man's loathsome legacy. I wonder if these same people might also shed tears for the deaths of their local child molesters who aren't famous and don't have Grammys and gold albums to distract from their unsavory acts.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
How Do You Write a Novel?
Gee, I wish I knew, so I could sell my advice in bottles. Still, in an attempt to answer that question, I'm going to be teaching a workshop addressing novel-writing at the Stonecoast MFA program next month.
The idea behind the class is that the traditional workshop, while good for getting at what's wrong with a story or an individual novel chapter, is not ideally suited toward fixing what can go wrong with a project that spans two to three hundred pages. A workshop can't usually handle manuscripts that are more than twenty pages. Consequently, workshopping novel excerpts tends to lead to somewhat frustrating conversations that usually involve the author chiming in, "Well, if you'd read Chapter Five, you'd know that..."
To get around this dilemma, I've asked the students to provide what I'm calling "samples" rather than excerpts from their work. The idea is to get a sense of the whole from a part, rather than examine the scenes at hand as if they were stand-alone pieces. I've also asked students to provide a description of their projects, an outline of the major plot developments organized under the rubrics of "Beginning," "Middle," and "End," and a list of their major questions. Finally, I've asked the students to read two short novels and think about how they're structured.
When we meet next month, my plan is to work with exercises that get students to thinking about their books as a whole, rather than a series of scenes. The course will be divided into four themed days, in which discussion of student work will be interspersed with exercises on Plot, Character, Line-Editing & Setting, and finally, Getting Your Work Out into the World. I'm also hoping that as we go along, students will give me ideas for teaching tools that suit the longer form of the novel rather than a story or a scene.
I'm excited about this new venture, which I hope may eventually provide a useful model for the future...
The idea behind the class is that the traditional workshop, while good for getting at what's wrong with a story or an individual novel chapter, is not ideally suited toward fixing what can go wrong with a project that spans two to three hundred pages. A workshop can't usually handle manuscripts that are more than twenty pages. Consequently, workshopping novel excerpts tends to lead to somewhat frustrating conversations that usually involve the author chiming in, "Well, if you'd read Chapter Five, you'd know that..."
To get around this dilemma, I've asked the students to provide what I'm calling "samples" rather than excerpts from their work. The idea is to get a sense of the whole from a part, rather than examine the scenes at hand as if they were stand-alone pieces. I've also asked students to provide a description of their projects, an outline of the major plot developments organized under the rubrics of "Beginning," "Middle," and "End," and a list of their major questions. Finally, I've asked the students to read two short novels and think about how they're structured.
When we meet next month, my plan is to work with exercises that get students to thinking about their books as a whole, rather than a series of scenes. The course will be divided into four themed days, in which discussion of student work will be interspersed with exercises on Plot, Character, Line-Editing & Setting, and finally, Getting Your Work Out into the World. I'm also hoping that as we go along, students will give me ideas for teaching tools that suit the longer form of the novel rather than a story or a scene.
I'm excited about this new venture, which I hope may eventually provide a useful model for the future...
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Kindling
A few years ago, when I met people and told them I was a writer, the first question they asked me was, "What have you written?"
Today, their face lights up with a big smile, and they say, "Oh, have you tried the new Kindle?"
The answer I say out loud is no. The answer I'm thinking is, completely not interested.
Somehow I have a feeling that the electronic revolution we've been promised in the book industry may be more of a whimper than a roar. It's not like digital music, where an iPod or digital music player improves upon the existing technology. Remember the days of carrying around a portable CD player? (Let alone a walkman!)
Books, by contrast, are a technology that's already been perfected. They never skip between tracks or run out of battery power. They're easy to carry (at least paperbacks are), the right size and shape to hold in your hand, affordable. If you lose one, you can easily buy another. The only advantage I can see to replacing an actual book with a Kindle is that the Kindle can hold many books at one time, replacing an entire library.
I suppose carrying a library with you everywhere you go is a useful thing when you're going about your day and you're struck by a sudden urge to check a passage in Howards End, and another from Ulysses, and another from Pride and Prejudice. Or maybe you're a voracious reader who likes to make sure to have a back-up book at the ready just in case you finish the one you're reading.
But I never find myself in these situations. If I want a book, I'm perfectly happy to stroll to my neighborhood bookstore and buy it or order it and wait for it to come later. I have time. I can wait. Reading is an activity that cultivates patience and quiet reflection. It is not like the quick fix of ordering a song on iTunes. In fact, reading a book is the perfect antidote to the extremes of our Internet-driven age, when we buzz about like electrons with our websites and text messages and all the rest.
For those of you who want or own a Kindle, God bless you. But as for me, I don't want to replace my library with a screen. The books on my shelves are beautiful. They are covered in thumbprints, scrawled notes, food stains. The pages are dogeared, the covers wrinkled. They sit above my desk and wait for me. And when I have a few moments, I choose one, sit in a quiet corner, open the covers, and begin to read.
Today, their face lights up with a big smile, and they say, "Oh, have you tried the new Kindle?"
The answer I say out loud is no. The answer I'm thinking is, completely not interested.
Somehow I have a feeling that the electronic revolution we've been promised in the book industry may be more of a whimper than a roar. It's not like digital music, where an iPod or digital music player improves upon the existing technology. Remember the days of carrying around a portable CD player? (Let alone a walkman!)
Books, by contrast, are a technology that's already been perfected. They never skip between tracks or run out of battery power. They're easy to carry (at least paperbacks are), the right size and shape to hold in your hand, affordable. If you lose one, you can easily buy another. The only advantage I can see to replacing an actual book with a Kindle is that the Kindle can hold many books at one time, replacing an entire library.
I suppose carrying a library with you everywhere you go is a useful thing when you're going about your day and you're struck by a sudden urge to check a passage in Howards End, and another from Ulysses, and another from Pride and Prejudice. Or maybe you're a voracious reader who likes to make sure to have a back-up book at the ready just in case you finish the one you're reading.
But I never find myself in these situations. If I want a book, I'm perfectly happy to stroll to my neighborhood bookstore and buy it or order it and wait for it to come later. I have time. I can wait. Reading is an activity that cultivates patience and quiet reflection. It is not like the quick fix of ordering a song on iTunes. In fact, reading a book is the perfect antidote to the extremes of our Internet-driven age, when we buzz about like electrons with our websites and text messages and all the rest.
For those of you who want or own a Kindle, God bless you. But as for me, I don't want to replace my library with a screen. The books on my shelves are beautiful. They are covered in thumbprints, scrawled notes, food stains. The pages are dogeared, the covers wrinkled. They sit above my desk and wait for me. And when I have a few moments, I choose one, sit in a quiet corner, open the covers, and begin to read.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
The Joy of Not Knowing Everything
I am in the not unique position of both teaching and practicing creative writing. An obvious questions emerges: Do I practice what I preach?
Almost every day when I sit down to write, I feel a heavy nostalgia for the days when I was in school and I had fellow students and mentors I could pull aside and ask for help whenever I felt stuck. (Of course at the time it didn't feel like nirvana. In fact, I felt anxious to get out of school and become a Published Author as quickly as possible.)
But then it occurred to me: I am a teacher. In numerous classes, I disseminate advice, exercise, quotes from famous writers on writing, anecdotes of my and other writers' experiences, all to encourage students. Yet there are times when I need a little encouragement too, and I'm currently writing without a teacher to guide me.
So why not be my own mentor and encourager-in-chief?
I began by doing some of the exercises I give others: character quizzes, freewriting on a theme, setting questionnaires. I plucked several of the craft guides on my shelf, which I bought to help me guide others, and reread the sections on character. As I read fiction by others (I've just finished three extraordinary new books: The Believers by Zoe Heller, Don't Cry by Mary Gaitskill, and Lake Overturn by Vestal McIntyre), I paid special attention to the way the writers constructed their stories, characters, and settings, even though I don't have a class to report back to about my findings.
The most important lesson of all that I've learned through teaching is to forgive myself for my mistakes, for my utterly wretched passages of ugly prose, for my laziness at times, for my stubbornness in refusing to confront a sticky paragraph or troubling feeling on the part of a character. Though we as writers have to play God, we are not God. Maybe it's that rude disjunction that makes every writer I know feel like an impostor.
Nowhere do I feel more like an impostor, however, in the classroom, where I sit mandarinlike at the head of a table and tell other people what they ought to do. In reality, there's so much left for me to learn about this business. And that comforts me, because in that knowledge gap, I know, lies the potential for my greatest achievements, the ones of which I don't yet know that I'm capable.
Almost every day when I sit down to write, I feel a heavy nostalgia for the days when I was in school and I had fellow students and mentors I could pull aside and ask for help whenever I felt stuck. (Of course at the time it didn't feel like nirvana. In fact, I felt anxious to get out of school and become a Published Author as quickly as possible.)
But then it occurred to me: I am a teacher. In numerous classes, I disseminate advice, exercise, quotes from famous writers on writing, anecdotes of my and other writers' experiences, all to encourage students. Yet there are times when I need a little encouragement too, and I'm currently writing without a teacher to guide me.
So why not be my own mentor and encourager-in-chief?
I began by doing some of the exercises I give others: character quizzes, freewriting on a theme, setting questionnaires. I plucked several of the craft guides on my shelf, which I bought to help me guide others, and reread the sections on character. As I read fiction by others (I've just finished three extraordinary new books: The Believers by Zoe Heller, Don't Cry by Mary Gaitskill, and Lake Overturn by Vestal McIntyre), I paid special attention to the way the writers constructed their stories, characters, and settings, even though I don't have a class to report back to about my findings.
The most important lesson of all that I've learned through teaching is to forgive myself for my mistakes, for my utterly wretched passages of ugly prose, for my laziness at times, for my stubbornness in refusing to confront a sticky paragraph or troubling feeling on the part of a character. Though we as writers have to play God, we are not God. Maybe it's that rude disjunction that makes every writer I know feel like an impostor.
Nowhere do I feel more like an impostor, however, in the classroom, where I sit mandarinlike at the head of a table and tell other people what they ought to do. In reality, there's so much left for me to learn about this business. And that comforts me, because in that knowledge gap, I know, lies the potential for my greatest achievements, the ones of which I don't yet know that I'm capable.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Some Good News about the Book Biz
It's so easy to feel gloomy about the prospects of book publishing these days, I thought I'd pass along a few notes of encouragement.
1. Apparently, while most other industries are tanking as a result of the Bush/Cheney Economic Depression, the book business has actually flatlined, having found its bottom a while ago. It seems that we've hit a bedrock of readers who despite the bad economic news aren't willing to give up their literary habits. Which is quite an inspiring and wonderful thing. Let's keep it up! (Indie Book-buying day is May 1st, by the way, which means everyone who reads this post should visit their local independent bookstore or online retailer and buy a book on the 1st.)
2. I was at a reading Sunday night featuring Ira Sher, Joanna Smith Rakoff, and Stacey D'Erasmo at KGB Bar. I was talking to D'Erasmo afterward, who reminded me that A) She and I were not the only two people on the planet who care deeply about books and reading. B) Publishing may be going through a painful period of transition, but it's a transition that could lead to some wonderful new way of getting books and writing into the hands of readers, a way that we hadn't previously imagined.
3. I was given an article by Robert Darnton, from the New York Review of Books, talking about the fate of libraries in the digital age. It pointed out that while the media for transmitting the written word have changed throughout the ages, the written word itself has not disappeared. Also, though books are increasingly being read in digital form, the sheer number of books that have existed and will exist over time is so vast that even the considerable resources of Google are not enough to encompass them all. Which means that the book still has an important and viable future.
It's rough out there, to be sure, but not apocalyptic.
1. Apparently, while most other industries are tanking as a result of the Bush/Cheney Economic Depression, the book business has actually flatlined, having found its bottom a while ago. It seems that we've hit a bedrock of readers who despite the bad economic news aren't willing to give up their literary habits. Which is quite an inspiring and wonderful thing. Let's keep it up! (Indie Book-buying day is May 1st, by the way, which means everyone who reads this post should visit their local independent bookstore or online retailer and buy a book on the 1st.)
2. I was at a reading Sunday night featuring Ira Sher, Joanna Smith Rakoff, and Stacey D'Erasmo at KGB Bar. I was talking to D'Erasmo afterward, who reminded me that A) She and I were not the only two people on the planet who care deeply about books and reading. B) Publishing may be going through a painful period of transition, but it's a transition that could lead to some wonderful new way of getting books and writing into the hands of readers, a way that we hadn't previously imagined.
3. I was given an article by Robert Darnton, from the New York Review of Books, talking about the fate of libraries in the digital age. It pointed out that while the media for transmitting the written word have changed throughout the ages, the written word itself has not disappeared. Also, though books are increasingly being read in digital form, the sheer number of books that have existed and will exist over time is so vast that even the considerable resources of Google are not enough to encompass them all. Which means that the book still has an important and viable future.
It's rough out there, to be sure, but not apocalyptic.
Friday, April 03, 2009
What's it All For?
One of my creative writing students recently asked me a very important question. In this age when fewer and fewer people are reading, when publishing only gets harder, and when writing doesn't get any easier, what's the point?
I often ask myself the same thing.
Recently the poet Patricia Smith came to visit my story writing class at Barnard, and she gave me a few ideas to help answer this question.
First, she said that in an increasingly chaotic and stressful world, the act of writing is the one thing she can trust, a life preserver that helps her to find comfort and guidance.
She also told the story of when she first began performing in poetry slams, when she would channel the voice of various characters from her life. After one of these performances, a member of the audience came up to her to say, "That was me! You got me!"
This made me think of David Foster Wallace, who said that the point of writing was that it helped people to feel a little less alone in the world.
My feeling is that the purpose of writing, if there is a purpose to it which is a debate in itself, is both inward and outward. When you write fiction, you take your innermost thoughts and feeling and try to communicate them to others. And yet the point of this process of clarifying yourself for other people is to get to know yourself. If other people benefit from it, great for them. It's an added bonus. The danger comes, however, when you come to count on others' approval and it becomes the motivation and guiding principle for what you do.
Sort of weird, but the best way I know how to put it.
I often ask myself the same thing.
Recently the poet Patricia Smith came to visit my story writing class at Barnard, and she gave me a few ideas to help answer this question.
First, she said that in an increasingly chaotic and stressful world, the act of writing is the one thing she can trust, a life preserver that helps her to find comfort and guidance.
She also told the story of when she first began performing in poetry slams, when she would channel the voice of various characters from her life. After one of these performances, a member of the audience came up to her to say, "That was me! You got me!"
This made me think of David Foster Wallace, who said that the point of writing was that it helped people to feel a little less alone in the world.
My feeling is that the purpose of writing, if there is a purpose to it which is a debate in itself, is both inward and outward. When you write fiction, you take your innermost thoughts and feeling and try to communicate them to others. And yet the point of this process of clarifying yourself for other people is to get to know yourself. If other people benefit from it, great for them. It's an added bonus. The danger comes, however, when you come to count on others' approval and it becomes the motivation and guiding principle for what you do.
Sort of weird, but the best way I know how to put it.
Friday, March 06, 2009
Those Weird Brits
The past week I read two weird works of literature by British authors: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh and The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnhim. Both are wonderful in their own ways, and deeply flawed.
Brideshead begins as a breathless love story between two Oxford students in pre-World War II England. Waugh, who was mostly known as a satirist, forsakes irony for lush, sensitive prose that details the blossoming relationship between Charles Ryder, an emotionally stunted man learning to love for the first time, and the free-spirited Sebastian Flyte, who increasingly depends on alcohol to help him escape the realities of life.
About midway through the novel, however, the story takes a strange turn as Sebastian drops out of it. We watch, confused, as Charles gets married, then has an adulterous affair with Sebastian's sister (who just happens to bear a resemblance to Sebastian himself). I kept wanting to ask, Waugh, what are you doing? You've just wrapped me up in this vivid story of first love, and now you want me to swallow this crap about Charles being in love with a woman without any explanation? Is this meant to be parable of sublimated male sexual desire? Clearly not, as Waugh simply moves Charles from man-love to woman-love like a chess player castling his king with his rook.
By the end of the novel, the meaning of it twists in on itself so completely that I felt angry as I read the book's bizarre, opaque last few pages. The only interpretation that makes sense to me is that Waugh didn't realize he was writing a love story between two men and that the conventions of the heterosexual love story just don't convince for the characters he'd created.
The Enchanted April takes a similarly strange turn. It begins as a wickedly witty satire of the lives of put-upon housewives in England. Their lot is so devastatingly well-rendered that when the housewives arrive in sunny Italy for a vacation from their husbands, we're thrilled... as well as mystified by their decision to invite their husbands to join them. Von Arnhim, I guess, is trying to make some kind of point about the redemptive powers of love and beauty, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not quite so forgiving nor so gullible to believe that if your husband's been treating you like shit for twenty years, a day in Portofino is all he needs to change his ways.
Perhaps the strangest thing about these two books is that in spite of (or perhaps because of) their flaws, I've been thinking of them since I put them down, which is more than I can say for a number of polite, nicely crafted works of fiction that have as much tang and bite as a bowl of melted jello.
Brideshead begins as a breathless love story between two Oxford students in pre-World War II England. Waugh, who was mostly known as a satirist, forsakes irony for lush, sensitive prose that details the blossoming relationship between Charles Ryder, an emotionally stunted man learning to love for the first time, and the free-spirited Sebastian Flyte, who increasingly depends on alcohol to help him escape the realities of life.
About midway through the novel, however, the story takes a strange turn as Sebastian drops out of it. We watch, confused, as Charles gets married, then has an adulterous affair with Sebastian's sister (who just happens to bear a resemblance to Sebastian himself). I kept wanting to ask, Waugh, what are you doing? You've just wrapped me up in this vivid story of first love, and now you want me to swallow this crap about Charles being in love with a woman without any explanation? Is this meant to be parable of sublimated male sexual desire? Clearly not, as Waugh simply moves Charles from man-love to woman-love like a chess player castling his king with his rook.
By the end of the novel, the meaning of it twists in on itself so completely that I felt angry as I read the book's bizarre, opaque last few pages. The only interpretation that makes sense to me is that Waugh didn't realize he was writing a love story between two men and that the conventions of the heterosexual love story just don't convince for the characters he'd created.
The Enchanted April takes a similarly strange turn. It begins as a wickedly witty satire of the lives of put-upon housewives in England. Their lot is so devastatingly well-rendered that when the housewives arrive in sunny Italy for a vacation from their husbands, we're thrilled... as well as mystified by their decision to invite their husbands to join them. Von Arnhim, I guess, is trying to make some kind of point about the redemptive powers of love and beauty, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not quite so forgiving nor so gullible to believe that if your husband's been treating you like shit for twenty years, a day in Portofino is all he needs to change his ways.
Perhaps the strangest thing about these two books is that in spite of (or perhaps because of) their flaws, I've been thinking of them since I put them down, which is more than I can say for a number of polite, nicely crafted works of fiction that have as much tang and bite as a bowl of melted jello.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
The Origin of Genius
This year, I've made a resolution to finally get to all those books that have been sitting on my shelf for years. At last, I've tackled Pnin by Nabokov, Shosha by Isaac Bashevis Singer, and a whole host of other curios I've been meaning to get to for ten years.
The latest book I've knocked off is a biography of Jane Austen by Claire Tomlin. I picked it up initially for the same reason I think most of us are curious about Jane Austen. We wonder, how is it possible that someone with so little experience of life, education, and romance could write such thrilling and perceptive works that rank among the greatest in our language? What's the secret?
After finishing the book, I got a better idea of Austen's artistic journey. Her private life was fairly uneventful, even typical for a woman of her class in 18th and early 19th century England. Her first novel, an early draft of Pride and Prejudice titled First Impressions, was turned down by a publisher after less than a week than it had been submitted. It took her a little less than two decades between the time she started writing Pride and Prejudice to get it published. After years of toil in private (which contrary to myth, she did not hide under blotting paper for fear that unexpected guests might discover what she was up to), Austen managed to find a publisher through a family connection, who grudgingly took Sense and Sensibility on commission. The modest success of that book started her career. However, even Jane Austen had to switch publishers; after the disappointing sales figures of Mansfield Park, the novel Emma was not considered justification enough for her first publisher to take a chance on one more.
Lessons here? Patience and perseverance foremost. Being a writer is an act of faith in any age, but even more so for a woman in Austen's time. Second, Austen's life and work proves Flannery O'Connor's observation that any writer has gathered enough "life material" for an entire career by the age of five. You don't need to have sailed around the world or hunted big game in Africa or any of the other things people do today to write great stories. Another observation: Rejection is the norm in a writer's life, and some cases, is mighty helpful. If rejection caused Austen to turn First Impressions into the masterpiece that is Pride and Prejudice, then what a fortunate rejection!
But perhaps the greatest lesson I take from Austen's story is that genius is just genius. Austen didn't need an MFA program to bring out her talent. She simply had a knack for putting words on paper in a way that made people want to read them for centuries. On the other hand, without her commitment to getting her work done and sticking to her dream of writing in the face of some pretty daunting odds, that genius would not have flowered into her six beautiful books.
The latest book I've knocked off is a biography of Jane Austen by Claire Tomlin. I picked it up initially for the same reason I think most of us are curious about Jane Austen. We wonder, how is it possible that someone with so little experience of life, education, and romance could write such thrilling and perceptive works that rank among the greatest in our language? What's the secret?
After finishing the book, I got a better idea of Austen's artistic journey. Her private life was fairly uneventful, even typical for a woman of her class in 18th and early 19th century England. Her first novel, an early draft of Pride and Prejudice titled First Impressions, was turned down by a publisher after less than a week than it had been submitted. It took her a little less than two decades between the time she started writing Pride and Prejudice to get it published. After years of toil in private (which contrary to myth, she did not hide under blotting paper for fear that unexpected guests might discover what she was up to), Austen managed to find a publisher through a family connection, who grudgingly took Sense and Sensibility on commission. The modest success of that book started her career. However, even Jane Austen had to switch publishers; after the disappointing sales figures of Mansfield Park, the novel Emma was not considered justification enough for her first publisher to take a chance on one more.
Lessons here? Patience and perseverance foremost. Being a writer is an act of faith in any age, but even more so for a woman in Austen's time. Second, Austen's life and work proves Flannery O'Connor's observation that any writer has gathered enough "life material" for an entire career by the age of five. You don't need to have sailed around the world or hunted big game in Africa or any of the other things people do today to write great stories. Another observation: Rejection is the norm in a writer's life, and some cases, is mighty helpful. If rejection caused Austen to turn First Impressions into the masterpiece that is Pride and Prejudice, then what a fortunate rejection!
But perhaps the greatest lesson I take from Austen's story is that genius is just genius. Austen didn't need an MFA program to bring out her talent. She simply had a knack for putting words on paper in a way that made people want to read them for centuries. On the other hand, without her commitment to getting her work done and sticking to her dream of writing in the face of some pretty daunting odds, that genius would not have flowered into her six beautiful books.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Bye-bye, Bush! 1.19.09
For almost four years now, since the depressing result of the `04 election, I've been wearing a pin on my backpack that says simply "1.20.09." Now that that wonderful day of liberation is finally at hand, I've been doing a few things to mark the occasion.
On Friday night, my partner and I hosted a Bye-bye, Bush party. We served pretzels, hung an image of Bush to throw shoes at, handed out Bushisms, offered guests the chance to write down their least favorite moments of the past presidency (to shred) as well as their hopes for the new Obama administration.
This weekend I also watched a documentary called No End in Sight, which lays out exactly how the Bushies got us into the quagmire of Iraq. What was so staggering about watching this film was to see obvious misstep after obvious misstep committed by the president and his top advisors, none of whom had actually served in a war. The incompetence was so pervasive, it was actually impressive. No wonder this is also the president who presided over the Katrina mess, the economic meltdown, the ballooning of the deficit, etc., etc.
And I read the novel Election by Tom Perrotta, which has no explicit link to this day, but is damned funny and a good read. (You may have seen the film with Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick.) Why is it that so many literary novels are written at such a soporific pace? Why can't they be bright, funny, and smart like Tom Perrotta's writing? Instead so many of these books have this somber, earnest tone, trudging from one carefully chosen word to the next. Nothing ever happens. Everything gets described. People, about whom we couldn't care less, say things. Ruminations unfold. You get the picture.
Finally, I made a donation to the Human Rights Campaign to help them fight for gay equality. Consider it my personal tribute to Rick Warren, Tim Kaine, and a host of others.
A few people I know have remarked on how silly the coverage of the transition has become. The Obama Express! The Obama concert! The Obama dildo! (No, I didn't make up that last one.) Well, maybe we're due for a little euphoria. It's been a long eight years of the American people having an enemy in the White House.
This weekend I removed the "1.20.09" pin from my backpack. I don't need to wear it anymore.
On Friday night, my partner and I hosted a Bye-bye, Bush party. We served pretzels, hung an image of Bush to throw shoes at, handed out Bushisms, offered guests the chance to write down their least favorite moments of the past presidency (to shred) as well as their hopes for the new Obama administration.
This weekend I also watched a documentary called No End in Sight, which lays out exactly how the Bushies got us into the quagmire of Iraq. What was so staggering about watching this film was to see obvious misstep after obvious misstep committed by the president and his top advisors, none of whom had actually served in a war. The incompetence was so pervasive, it was actually impressive. No wonder this is also the president who presided over the Katrina mess, the economic meltdown, the ballooning of the deficit, etc., etc.
And I read the novel Election by Tom Perrotta, which has no explicit link to this day, but is damned funny and a good read. (You may have seen the film with Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick.) Why is it that so many literary novels are written at such a soporific pace? Why can't they be bright, funny, and smart like Tom Perrotta's writing? Instead so many of these books have this somber, earnest tone, trudging from one carefully chosen word to the next. Nothing ever happens. Everything gets described. People, about whom we couldn't care less, say things. Ruminations unfold. You get the picture.
Finally, I made a donation to the Human Rights Campaign to help them fight for gay equality. Consider it my personal tribute to Rick Warren, Tim Kaine, and a host of others.
A few people I know have remarked on how silly the coverage of the transition has become. The Obama Express! The Obama concert! The Obama dildo! (No, I didn't make up that last one.) Well, maybe we're due for a little euphoria. It's been a long eight years of the American people having an enemy in the White House.
This weekend I removed the "1.20.09" pin from my backpack. I don't need to wear it anymore.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
That Thing You Do in Maine
For the past couple of years, I've been on the faculty of a low-residency MFA program in Maine called Stonecoast. The concept of a "low-residency" MFA has proven to be baffling to several of my family members and friends, who tend to refer to it as "that thing you do in Maine."
Actually, the whole concept of the low-res MFA is pretty straightforward and makes a good deal of sense given the solitary nature of the act of writing. Twice a year, students and faculty converge on the low-res program's headquarters (which for some reason often tends to be in New England). For about ten days, they engage in a mad dash of workshops, seminars, lectures, and readings. Then for six months, they return to their respective corners of the country and work on their own. This is done in conjunction with a "mentor" who once a month monitors their progress via the "packet," a compilation of that month's creative and expository output.
The low-res approach has its distinct advantages. First of all, a grad student is probably more likely to develop a close relationship with his or her faculty at a low-res program. Second, the costs of a low-res program tend to be less than in a traditional program (which for some reason is never referred to as a "high residency program"). Third, the sense of competition among students, which sometimes characterizes traditional programs with its weekly writing workshops, has less opportunity to develop in low-res programs. Finally, a low-residency option is a great vehicle for students who don't want to give up their day jobs to devote themselves exclusively to their graduate studies. (And given the current publishing climate, holding on to a day job sounds like a pretty smart idea.)
The downsides? In a traditional program, you may feel less connected to the faculty, but you may also develop a stronger bond with your fellow students. Also, if you go to a traditional program based in New York City, for example, you may have a greater opportunity to make connections and network with editors, agents, and writers. And then of course there is that sort of glazed look of misunderstanding when you try to explain the idea of a "low-residency" MFA to the uninitiated. To those who aren't in the know, the idea of the low-res MFA may sound like getting a degree from the Sears Roebuck catalog in days of yore.
As a teacher who dabbles in leading traditional workshops as well as mentoring, I find that students of each program are highly curious about their counterparts and what they're missing out on by choosing one route or the other. (Though I think that in reality, either approach is effective as long as your program has a strong faculty and you as the student are motivated to make the most of your experience by taking an active role in your education.) Which leads me to wonder, could it be that in the future, a hybrid low-residency-traditional MFA program that features the best of both worlds will somehow emerge?
Stay tuned...
Actually, the whole concept of the low-res MFA is pretty straightforward and makes a good deal of sense given the solitary nature of the act of writing. Twice a year, students and faculty converge on the low-res program's headquarters (which for some reason often tends to be in New England). For about ten days, they engage in a mad dash of workshops, seminars, lectures, and readings. Then for six months, they return to their respective corners of the country and work on their own. This is done in conjunction with a "mentor" who once a month monitors their progress via the "packet," a compilation of that month's creative and expository output.
The low-res approach has its distinct advantages. First of all, a grad student is probably more likely to develop a close relationship with his or her faculty at a low-res program. Second, the costs of a low-res program tend to be less than in a traditional program (which for some reason is never referred to as a "high residency program"). Third, the sense of competition among students, which sometimes characterizes traditional programs with its weekly writing workshops, has less opportunity to develop in low-res programs. Finally, a low-residency option is a great vehicle for students who don't want to give up their day jobs to devote themselves exclusively to their graduate studies. (And given the current publishing climate, holding on to a day job sounds like a pretty smart idea.)
The downsides? In a traditional program, you may feel less connected to the faculty, but you may also develop a stronger bond with your fellow students. Also, if you go to a traditional program based in New York City, for example, you may have a greater opportunity to make connections and network with editors, agents, and writers. And then of course there is that sort of glazed look of misunderstanding when you try to explain the idea of a "low-residency" MFA to the uninitiated. To those who aren't in the know, the idea of the low-res MFA may sound like getting a degree from the Sears Roebuck catalog in days of yore.
As a teacher who dabbles in leading traditional workshops as well as mentoring, I find that students of each program are highly curious about their counterparts and what they're missing out on by choosing one route or the other. (Though I think that in reality, either approach is effective as long as your program has a strong faculty and you as the student are motivated to make the most of your experience by taking an active role in your education.) Which leads me to wonder, could it be that in the future, a hybrid low-residency-traditional MFA program that features the best of both worlds will somehow emerge?
Stay tuned...
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
The Rick Warren Affair
A quick note:
I agree with Richard Cohen's column in today's Washington Post (12/23/08) that Obama's failure to cancel his invitation to Rick Warren to deliver the benediction at the Inauguration constitutes a moral failure. The reason people don't think it's such a big deal and want gays to "get over it" is that they think anti-gay slurs are more acceptable than anti-Jewish slurs or anti-black slurs or anti-almost anything slurs. Just to be clear, Rick Warren has repeated the age-old canard of comparing gays to pedophiles. If our future president wants to thank Warren for having him at his church, Obama could invite the portly evangelical to visit him for tea and sumptuous spread of doughnuts in the White House or he could visit Warren's church once more as president or better yet send him a note on pretty stationary. But he should not and must not defile the Inauguration ceremony, which as Rachel Maddow noted belongs to all Americans and not Obama personally, by honoring the unchristian pastor in this way.
I'm particularly disturbed by this choice because I am one of many gay Americans who voted with their money, time, voices, and feet for this man we so passionately believed was the correct choice in November (and in my case also during the primary season), only to see that in December Obama has displayed a striking and unfortunate tendency to reward his enemies better than his friends. (To those keeping score, number of Republicans in his cabinet: 2, number of gays: 0). Now I'm starting to wonder, maybe Hillary Clinton was the best choice after all.
To be continued...
I agree with Richard Cohen's column in today's Washington Post (12/23/08) that Obama's failure to cancel his invitation to Rick Warren to deliver the benediction at the Inauguration constitutes a moral failure. The reason people don't think it's such a big deal and want gays to "get over it" is that they think anti-gay slurs are more acceptable than anti-Jewish slurs or anti-black slurs or anti-almost anything slurs. Just to be clear, Rick Warren has repeated the age-old canard of comparing gays to pedophiles. If our future president wants to thank Warren for having him at his church, Obama could invite the portly evangelical to visit him for tea and sumptuous spread of doughnuts in the White House or he could visit Warren's church once more as president or better yet send him a note on pretty stationary. But he should not and must not defile the Inauguration ceremony, which as Rachel Maddow noted belongs to all Americans and not Obama personally, by honoring the unchristian pastor in this way.
I'm particularly disturbed by this choice because I am one of many gay Americans who voted with their money, time, voices, and feet for this man we so passionately believed was the correct choice in November (and in my case also during the primary season), only to see that in December Obama has displayed a striking and unfortunate tendency to reward his enemies better than his friends. (To those keeping score, number of Republicans in his cabinet: 2, number of gays: 0). Now I'm starting to wonder, maybe Hillary Clinton was the best choice after all.
To be continued...
Monday, December 22, 2008
Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of Other Writers' Books
Given the current state of publishing, the unofficial writer's commandment of only saying nice things about other people's books would seem more important than ever. Yet it's also a bit false to the truth of one's reading experience. For every book I read with excitement (which this year includes Someday This Pain May be Useful to You by Peter Cameron, several novels by Margaret Atwood, The Slave by isaac Bashevis Singer) there are at least ten more that were just so-so, or even dreadful.
My private benchmark for fiction is my limited bookshelf space. After moving from one cramped New York apartment to another several times, I realized quickly there was no point in keeping books that for whatever reason didn't mean something to me. So now as I read, I keep a pile of books to give away. Some of the books that make that pile aren't necessarily bad. In fact, a few might be fairly good, like Being Dead by Jim Crace, which I found well-written, sort of interesting, just a little glib, a bit too facile for my taste. I can't justify a place for it on my shelf between two gay writers named Cooper (Dennis and Bernard), each with dazzlingly original styles, and John Dalton's novel Heaven Lake, a fascinating trip to China.
Other books that weren't awful, but didn't make the cut: two Narnia books by C. S. Lewis, which I bought at a used bookstore after seeing the film version of Prince Caspian motivated me to reread the entire series. Lewis is a terrific writer and a lot of fun, though a bit creepy to read when you realize the religious propaganda going on in the background. All in all, good, but not necessary rereading like L. Frank Baum's Oz series or Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Prairie books.
I'm also shedding Le Divorce by Diane Johnson, a book with some scattered wit and a completely preposterous plot that was inexplicably nominated for a National Book Award. Speaking of award-winners, Johnson's in good company with the turgid Pulitzer-prize-honored Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I'm not quite sure what it is that people like about this book. It's flat, lifeless, written in the clean prose of a high school English textbook on composition. "But that's just the point!" exclaim the book's defenders. "It's a masterpiece of tone!" That's right, it's supposed to be boring. (Not that I'm against flat, dry affect, which works so well in the novels Stoner by John Williams, or Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell)
On the flipside, there's My Holocaust by Tova Reich, which suffers from the opposite problem. It's got too much going on. The book's characters are so cartoonish they might as well speak in balloons, kind of like the illustrations in Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, which also made my pile for being a one-note joke that got old after the first hundred pages.
Why take the time to speak ill of one's fellow writers, especially when so few people are buying books? First of all, it should not be bad form to say you didn't like or love another person's book. It's a necessary part of our cultural dialogue. Secondly, if we want to resuscitate the book business, encouraging people to buy any book that gets a good review or wins a prize is not the way to do it. Just as we passionately recommend the books we love, occasionally it's worth a little of our time to steer readers away from books we don't think can do them much good. Generally, I try to avoid negative critique (except when it comes to Republican politicians or so-called holy men like Rick Warren who espouse noxious opinions more worthy of Pontius Pilate than Christ). But every once in a while, a little venting helps to keep us honest.
My private benchmark for fiction is my limited bookshelf space. After moving from one cramped New York apartment to another several times, I realized quickly there was no point in keeping books that for whatever reason didn't mean something to me. So now as I read, I keep a pile of books to give away. Some of the books that make that pile aren't necessarily bad. In fact, a few might be fairly good, like Being Dead by Jim Crace, which I found well-written, sort of interesting, just a little glib, a bit too facile for my taste. I can't justify a place for it on my shelf between two gay writers named Cooper (Dennis and Bernard), each with dazzlingly original styles, and John Dalton's novel Heaven Lake, a fascinating trip to China.
Other books that weren't awful, but didn't make the cut: two Narnia books by C. S. Lewis, which I bought at a used bookstore after seeing the film version of Prince Caspian motivated me to reread the entire series. Lewis is a terrific writer and a lot of fun, though a bit creepy to read when you realize the religious propaganda going on in the background. All in all, good, but not necessary rereading like L. Frank Baum's Oz series or Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Prairie books.
I'm also shedding Le Divorce by Diane Johnson, a book with some scattered wit and a completely preposterous plot that was inexplicably nominated for a National Book Award. Speaking of award-winners, Johnson's in good company with the turgid Pulitzer-prize-honored Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I'm not quite sure what it is that people like about this book. It's flat, lifeless, written in the clean prose of a high school English textbook on composition. "But that's just the point!" exclaim the book's defenders. "It's a masterpiece of tone!" That's right, it's supposed to be boring. (Not that I'm against flat, dry affect, which works so well in the novels Stoner by John Williams, or Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell)
On the flipside, there's My Holocaust by Tova Reich, which suffers from the opposite problem. It's got too much going on. The book's characters are so cartoonish they might as well speak in balloons, kind of like the illustrations in Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, which also made my pile for being a one-note joke that got old after the first hundred pages.
Why take the time to speak ill of one's fellow writers, especially when so few people are buying books? First of all, it should not be bad form to say you didn't like or love another person's book. It's a necessary part of our cultural dialogue. Secondly, if we want to resuscitate the book business, encouraging people to buy any book that gets a good review or wins a prize is not the way to do it. Just as we passionately recommend the books we love, occasionally it's worth a little of our time to steer readers away from books we don't think can do them much good. Generally, I try to avoid negative critique (except when it comes to Republican politicians or so-called holy men like Rick Warren who espouse noxious opinions more worthy of Pontius Pilate than Christ). But every once in a while, a little venting helps to keep us honest.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
How to Survive the Economic Crisis
While we're all worried about our 401k's (if we have them) and the future of our jobs (if we have them), there's little we can do to affect the economic downturn. However, we can take steps to protect ourselves, specifically, by spending less on frivolous expenses, such as entertainment. Now's a good time to stop shelling out ten bucks a pop to go to movies, to cancel our netflix memberships, to stop downloading music from iTunes, to play the video games we already have instead of buying new ones, etc., etc., etc.
However, just as it's a mistake to stop investing for retirement when the stock market is low, it's also a mistake to stop reading and buying books to save money when times are tight. Now more than ever, we ought to turn to literature for inspiration and salvation. Watching a dumb action movie only leaves you worn out and numb. Listening to some pop song by the likes of Beyonce only reminds you of the difference between her lifestyle and yours. Reading a great work of literature, however, can make you smarter and entertain you at the same time. Supporting the publishing industry at this time can also help to ensure the continuity of our national culture and intellectual life.
Below, I've made a list of book recommendations that seem appropriate for our current recessionary conditions:
1. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. You think you've got it bad because you can only afford one new manicure a month instead of two? Read this guy's story and you'll never feel bad about yourself again!
2. Babbit by Sinclair Lewis. Money's not everything, you know, as this razor-sharp satire of the American bourgeoisie makes loud and clear.
3. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. In this novel, Atwood imagines the following nightmare scenario: America run by an oligarchy of right-wing religious whack-jobs. A bit like the Bush administration, only permanent and with no checks on its power. Thankfully, in real life, we had the good sense this time around to elect Barack Obama to fix what ails our country.
4. The Assistant by Bernard Malamud. This story of a hard luck grocer struggling to get by reminds us that as human beings, we can't escape suffering in our lives, but that suffering has the potential to enlarge and ennoble our spirits.
5. Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill. You know things are pretty tough when all you've got left to sell is yourself. These are fierce, sometimes brutal stories of sex and desperation.
6. Waiting by Ha Jin. As we wait for this economic downturn to pass, read this story about a guy who waits decades to marry, or even to have sex with the woman he loves. Now there's patience for you.
Other ideas? Let's hear them!
However, just as it's a mistake to stop investing for retirement when the stock market is low, it's also a mistake to stop reading and buying books to save money when times are tight. Now more than ever, we ought to turn to literature for inspiration and salvation. Watching a dumb action movie only leaves you worn out and numb. Listening to some pop song by the likes of Beyonce only reminds you of the difference between her lifestyle and yours. Reading a great work of literature, however, can make you smarter and entertain you at the same time. Supporting the publishing industry at this time can also help to ensure the continuity of our national culture and intellectual life.
Below, I've made a list of book recommendations that seem appropriate for our current recessionary conditions:
1. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. You think you've got it bad because you can only afford one new manicure a month instead of two? Read this guy's story and you'll never feel bad about yourself again!
2. Babbit by Sinclair Lewis. Money's not everything, you know, as this razor-sharp satire of the American bourgeoisie makes loud and clear.
3. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. In this novel, Atwood imagines the following nightmare scenario: America run by an oligarchy of right-wing religious whack-jobs. A bit like the Bush administration, only permanent and with no checks on its power. Thankfully, in real life, we had the good sense this time around to elect Barack Obama to fix what ails our country.
4. The Assistant by Bernard Malamud. This story of a hard luck grocer struggling to get by reminds us that as human beings, we can't escape suffering in our lives, but that suffering has the potential to enlarge and ennoble our spirits.
5. Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill. You know things are pretty tough when all you've got left to sell is yourself. These are fierce, sometimes brutal stories of sex and desperation.
6. Waiting by Ha Jin. As we wait for this economic downturn to pass, read this story about a guy who waits decades to marry, or even to have sex with the woman he loves. Now there's patience for you.
Other ideas? Let's hear them!
Friday, October 03, 2008
Reading Sarah Palin
For now, let's set aside the question of whether she's qualified to be president. What I'm concerned about is whether any candidate for public office ought to be allowed to get away with such atrocious grammar and syntax.
There was once a time in American life, both public and private, when the ability to speak clearly and coherently was considered a valuable asset, even a necessity. But in today's parlance of "OMG!" "BFF!" and the blood-curdling ":)," anything goes. It doesn't matter how you express yourself, it seems, as long as you, well, you know, kind of get across the sort of general idea of what you're trying to say, you know what I mean. Don't you?
But as George Orwell argued so persuasively in his essay "Politics and the English Language," how you say what you say is inextricably with what you mean. If you can't express your thoughts clearly, it's a sign that either A) you're not thinking or B) you don't want your listener to know what you're thinking.
In Sarah Palin's case, both interpretations are true simultaneously. Any human being with even the most rudimentary sensitivity to language who listens to her addle-headed patter ought to be able to detect the complete vacuity behind her words. Yes, I know, that big ole meanie Katie Couric made cute little Sarah all confused with all that grown-up talk. How spectacularly unfair. And John McCain's macho Washington insider handlers just wouldn't "let Sarah be Sarah." Yes, that's why in response to a question about which newspapers specifically Sarah reads, the good governor replied that she read any of them.
Last night in her vice-presidential debate, commentators commended Ms. Palin on her ability to form sentences. Nice work. I'm happy for her. But the question we need to ask is not whether she can form sentences, but what are the quality of those sentences, in terms of language used, the arrangement of that language, and finally the meaning behind that language. Yes, language was present last night, but what that language means in terms of specific policy, is anyone's guess. Which was exactly the point.
But goshdarnit, wasn't she a cutie-patootie!
There was once a time in American life, both public and private, when the ability to speak clearly and coherently was considered a valuable asset, even a necessity. But in today's parlance of "OMG!" "BFF!" and the blood-curdling ":)," anything goes. It doesn't matter how you express yourself, it seems, as long as you, well, you know, kind of get across the sort of general idea of what you're trying to say, you know what I mean. Don't you?
But as George Orwell argued so persuasively in his essay "Politics and the English Language," how you say what you say is inextricably with what you mean. If you can't express your thoughts clearly, it's a sign that either A) you're not thinking or B) you don't want your listener to know what you're thinking.
In Sarah Palin's case, both interpretations are true simultaneously. Any human being with even the most rudimentary sensitivity to language who listens to her addle-headed patter ought to be able to detect the complete vacuity behind her words. Yes, I know, that big ole meanie Katie Couric made cute little Sarah all confused with all that grown-up talk. How spectacularly unfair. And John McCain's macho Washington insider handlers just wouldn't "let Sarah be Sarah." Yes, that's why in response to a question about which newspapers specifically Sarah reads, the good governor replied that she read any of them.
Last night in her vice-presidential debate, commentators commended Ms. Palin on her ability to form sentences. Nice work. I'm happy for her. But the question we need to ask is not whether she can form sentences, but what are the quality of those sentences, in terms of language used, the arrangement of that language, and finally the meaning behind that language. Yes, language was present last night, but what that language means in terms of specific policy, is anyone's guess. Which was exactly the point.
But goshdarnit, wasn't she a cutie-patootie!
Monday, September 15, 2008
David Foster Wallace
Of the seven deadly sins, envy is probably the most common to writers. It's a condition that becomes particularly acute when one of us (usually young and cute) is anointed as the Next Big Thing in American Letters. Some recent examples: Jonathan Safran Foer, Curtis Sittenfeld, Marissa Pessl, Nell Freudenberger, the list goes on.
I don't remember much of this kind of griping, however, when David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest was released in the mid-nineties. Certainly there were a lot of jokes about the book's heft, as well as critical debate about just how successful the book was as a whole (as there would be about every one of Wallace's books). Yet there was no denying the guy's talent line by line. There was certainly no denying his intelligence.
And of course, the humor. There have been many postmodern writers who've exploded their prose with pictures, quizzes, footnotes, and any manner of non-traditional stylistic devices. But few did it with such charm and acute comic timing as Wallace, who in the end, may not have produced as seminal a work as the masterpieces of his idol, Thomas Pynchon, yet whose writing was a hell of a lot more fun to read.
Only a week ago, I was teaching an excerpt from Wallace's well-known essay A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, a satire of cruise ship culture, which embodied the best of Wallace's strengths (as enumerated above) as well as the worst of his weaknesses (chief among them, an almost pathological inability to restrain himself). In fact, reading Wallace's work is like being on a cruise: you can get pleasured to death. Or to use another metaphor I'm sure Wallace would have appreciated, immersing yourself in Wallace's work is like entering the Orgasmatron that nearly did in Jane Fonda in Barbarella. (Okay, I'll stop myself here. I could go on, but I'm not David Foster Wallace.)
I never met Wallace personally, but I've read him and heard him speak twice, and I couldn't help falling in love with the guy. I know I'm not alone in that sentiment. He described our culture with a unique blend of devastating evisceration and disarming sweetness, as seen in his brilliant device in Infinite Jest of renaming years after consumer products, notably "The Year of the Depend Undergarment." Any other writer might have chosen a whole other array of products. Yet the choice of that diaper was exactly what made Wallace Wallace: absurd, mocking to the point of snickering, yet also somehow tender and sad. Wallace's voice, of which we are now so cruelly robbed, made you sit up and pay attention, made you think, made you laugh, and above all made you want to give him a hug and tell him, it's okay, there's still hope. Yes, American life has become increasingly coarse and ugly and dumb. But there's still love, and where there's love, there's still hope.
I don't remember much of this kind of griping, however, when David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest was released in the mid-nineties. Certainly there were a lot of jokes about the book's heft, as well as critical debate about just how successful the book was as a whole (as there would be about every one of Wallace's books). Yet there was no denying the guy's talent line by line. There was certainly no denying his intelligence.
And of course, the humor. There have been many postmodern writers who've exploded their prose with pictures, quizzes, footnotes, and any manner of non-traditional stylistic devices. But few did it with such charm and acute comic timing as Wallace, who in the end, may not have produced as seminal a work as the masterpieces of his idol, Thomas Pynchon, yet whose writing was a hell of a lot more fun to read.
Only a week ago, I was teaching an excerpt from Wallace's well-known essay A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, a satire of cruise ship culture, which embodied the best of Wallace's strengths (as enumerated above) as well as the worst of his weaknesses (chief among them, an almost pathological inability to restrain himself). In fact, reading Wallace's work is like being on a cruise: you can get pleasured to death. Or to use another metaphor I'm sure Wallace would have appreciated, immersing yourself in Wallace's work is like entering the Orgasmatron that nearly did in Jane Fonda in Barbarella. (Okay, I'll stop myself here. I could go on, but I'm not David Foster Wallace.)
I never met Wallace personally, but I've read him and heard him speak twice, and I couldn't help falling in love with the guy. I know I'm not alone in that sentiment. He described our culture with a unique blend of devastating evisceration and disarming sweetness, as seen in his brilliant device in Infinite Jest of renaming years after consumer products, notably "The Year of the Depend Undergarment." Any other writer might have chosen a whole other array of products. Yet the choice of that diaper was exactly what made Wallace Wallace: absurd, mocking to the point of snickering, yet also somehow tender and sad. Wallace's voice, of which we are now so cruelly robbed, made you sit up and pay attention, made you think, made you laugh, and above all made you want to give him a hug and tell him, it's okay, there's still hope. Yes, American life has become increasingly coarse and ugly and dumb. But there's still love, and where there's love, there's still hope.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Joel Ivan Hamburger
I wanted to mark the recent death of my father, Joel Ivan Hamburger, who was 79 this year. But I don't know how. There are all kinds of rites and rituals that are possible, but none of them seem equal to the real and true experience of my late father and the facts of his going out of this world.
Perhaps the strangest part of it is the experience of death itself. It makes me think of being in New York during September 11th. While I was going through it, the truth and reality of the actual event kept me so grounded in the present, in every second of what was happening. And then immediately afterward, the memorialization of the event gilded the lily, transformed it from an experience to a narrative.
Lately I've been recounting the narrative of my father's death over and over, and each time I get more frustrated. "But this wasn't how it was," I want to say. The story is so puny next to the pain and sorrow of what I went through in life.
The first time I fell in love, I remember hearing a love song on the radio and thinking, "Oh, that's what they were talking about!" So too, with this, I now have a new understanding of what death means to the living who are left. It makes me hate war more than ever. It's horrific enough when someone dies of natural causes, but to plunge someone through this experience to make a political point is barbaric.
I also have a new appreciation for writers who can capture this rare, awful experience in their work. Lately I've been reading the poetry of Jeffrey Harrison, specifically his book Incomplete Knowledge, which delicately yet powerfully evokes the deaths of several friends and his brother. Perhaps poetry more than fiction is more suited to portraying the host of jumbled, jagged, and sometimes contradictory emotions called up by loss.
We'll see.
Perhaps the strangest part of it is the experience of death itself. It makes me think of being in New York during September 11th. While I was going through it, the truth and reality of the actual event kept me so grounded in the present, in every second of what was happening. And then immediately afterward, the memorialization of the event gilded the lily, transformed it from an experience to a narrative.
Lately I've been recounting the narrative of my father's death over and over, and each time I get more frustrated. "But this wasn't how it was," I want to say. The story is so puny next to the pain and sorrow of what I went through in life.
The first time I fell in love, I remember hearing a love song on the radio and thinking, "Oh, that's what they were talking about!" So too, with this, I now have a new understanding of what death means to the living who are left. It makes me hate war more than ever. It's horrific enough when someone dies of natural causes, but to plunge someone through this experience to make a political point is barbaric.
I also have a new appreciation for writers who can capture this rare, awful experience in their work. Lately I've been reading the poetry of Jeffrey Harrison, specifically his book Incomplete Knowledge, which delicately yet powerfully evokes the deaths of several friends and his brother. Perhaps poetry more than fiction is more suited to portraying the host of jumbled, jagged, and sometimes contradictory emotions called up by loss.
We'll see.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
The Truth about Short Stories
I was at a farewell party for an author-friend of mine, a short story writer who's leaving New York. While talking with his editor, the subject of short stories came up. "I love short stories," she said. "Everyone I know reads short stories. Why don't short stories sell?"
It's a refrain I've heard repeated all too often, not just recently, but ever since I came to New York and began meeting people who worked in publishing. Short stories don't sell. If you're going to try to write fiction, which is a silly idea to start with, at least try to write a novel. No one wants to read stories.
And in the meantime, some of the most notable books that have come out in the same period of time include Junot Diaz's Drown, Nathan Englander's For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Lorrie Moore's Birds of America, Annie Proulx's Wyoming Stories, Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth, Adam Haslett's You are not a Stranger Here, Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, several books by Alice Munro. The list goes on.
But short stories don't sell.
It's possible that the above are the exception to the rule. But I don't think so. I think the trouble publishers are having selling short stories is the same trouble they're having selling any type of fiction. Novels, novellas, story collections, no matter what the form, fiction itself isn't selling, with a few notable exceptions like Harry Potter or a few pop fiction sensations that you see at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Anyone who has looked at the numbers of copies sold by even some of our most prestigious authors knows that fiction is in a crisis in terms of sales.
As a friend of mine put it, "Fiction is the new poetry."
Why is this happening? The usual villains come to mind: the Internet and cell phones and DVD's for using up people's time that they might be spending in quiet reflection, the necessary state for reading. But I think there's more to it than that. We're living at a time when for some reason people do not want to stop and think and look and listen. Maybe it's the way we've been educated or coddled as consumers, but people are afraid to cut themselves off from the world and take a stance as a thoughtful observer rather than a commenting participant. Maybe that explains why even though the number of books sold keeps falling, the number of masters programs in creative writing keeps rising. We all want to be the star. But do we have what it takes to be a member of the audience?
It's a refrain I've heard repeated all too often, not just recently, but ever since I came to New York and began meeting people who worked in publishing. Short stories don't sell. If you're going to try to write fiction, which is a silly idea to start with, at least try to write a novel. No one wants to read stories.
And in the meantime, some of the most notable books that have come out in the same period of time include Junot Diaz's Drown, Nathan Englander's For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Lorrie Moore's Birds of America, Annie Proulx's Wyoming Stories, Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth, Adam Haslett's You are not a Stranger Here, Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, several books by Alice Munro. The list goes on.
But short stories don't sell.
It's possible that the above are the exception to the rule. But I don't think so. I think the trouble publishers are having selling short stories is the same trouble they're having selling any type of fiction. Novels, novellas, story collections, no matter what the form, fiction itself isn't selling, with a few notable exceptions like Harry Potter or a few pop fiction sensations that you see at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Anyone who has looked at the numbers of copies sold by even some of our most prestigious authors knows that fiction is in a crisis in terms of sales.
As a friend of mine put it, "Fiction is the new poetry."
Why is this happening? The usual villains come to mind: the Internet and cell phones and DVD's for using up people's time that they might be spending in quiet reflection, the necessary state for reading. But I think there's more to it than that. We're living at a time when for some reason people do not want to stop and think and look and listen. Maybe it's the way we've been educated or coddled as consumers, but people are afraid to cut themselves off from the world and take a stance as a thoughtful observer rather than a commenting participant. Maybe that explains why even though the number of books sold keeps falling, the number of masters programs in creative writing keeps rising. We all want to be the star. But do we have what it takes to be a member of the audience?
Friday, July 04, 2008
Recent Raves
I recently received a Barnes and Noble gift card for my birthday, so I went to a local branch to find the book Someday This Pain May Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron. After searching all through the new fiction releases and not finding it, I went to ask for it at the information desk. The store did have the book, under "YA" or Young Adult fiction.
It's a bit incomprehensible to me that a writer of Cameron's stature should have his latest release shelved under "YA" rather than general fiction just because the narrator who's just out of high school. It's a bit like putting The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, a book with a juvenile narrator, with the kiddie books.
But in fact, Cameron's publisher has put out the book through its YA division, and perhaps they feel that in today's shaky marketplace for fiction, this is the best economic strategy. A bit shortsighted in my opinion, because Someday This Pain May Be Useful to You is not only Peter Cameron's strongest book, but also one of the most compelling reads in contemporary fiction.
At the book's center is James Sveck, a shockingly self-aware and intelligent high school graduate who feels simultaneously above and left out of the mainstream world. With a minimum of fuss and a maximum of acute sensitivity for language, Cameron captures this young man's heartbreaking alienation with humor and depth. The result is the kind of book that disappoints in only one respect: it ends.
This is prime entertainment, not for kiddies, but for sentient and serious readers of literature. Miss this book at your own peril.
It's a bit incomprehensible to me that a writer of Cameron's stature should have his latest release shelved under "YA" rather than general fiction just because the narrator who's just out of high school. It's a bit like putting The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, a book with a juvenile narrator, with the kiddie books.
But in fact, Cameron's publisher has put out the book through its YA division, and perhaps they feel that in today's shaky marketplace for fiction, this is the best economic strategy. A bit shortsighted in my opinion, because Someday This Pain May Be Useful to You is not only Peter Cameron's strongest book, but also one of the most compelling reads in contemporary fiction.
At the book's center is James Sveck, a shockingly self-aware and intelligent high school graduate who feels simultaneously above and left out of the mainstream world. With a minimum of fuss and a maximum of acute sensitivity for language, Cameron captures this young man's heartbreaking alienation with humor and depth. The result is the kind of book that disappoints in only one respect: it ends.
This is prime entertainment, not for kiddies, but for sentient and serious readers of literature. Miss this book at your own peril.
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