November 14, 2009
Here’s something interesting: Tattered Cover is going to begin buying and selling used books.
Kind of gives their name a new, and perhaps more nuanced, meaning. I just hope it doesn’t hurt other local used bookstore sales (like Capitol Hill Books and West Side Books).
Of course, as a poet, I wish they would stock a better poetry section, like they used to, in the old days. (No one can be the Grolier, but a poet can still dream, can’t he?)
–mjh
November 6, 2009
Poetry: one of the oldest journals in the country from whom we steal our raison d'etre.
My new strategy is this: channel our inner Christian Wiman (inspiration for this diatribe a couple years back by yours truly), who wrote such a moving letter for Poetry’s “subscribe now” campaign that I nearly choked on my morning coffee. “Dear Reader,” he wrote:
These days it can seem that life consists mostly of being overwhelmed by life. The whirlwind of information, the economic shocks, the constant pressures on our time and minds–amid all this, it can become easy to ignore the call of our inner lives; so easy, in fact, that we hardly notice when that call goes quiet. The paradox is that when you stop engaging with your deepest being, you stop fully engaging with the world.
Poetry can be an antitode to this. It can cut through all the distraction and busyness, can help you seize your life and be more completely in it. Indeed, with its compression, concision, and intensity, poetry may be one of the best tonics for our times.
–from Christian Wiman’s “subscribe to Poetry” letter.
–aed
November 5, 2009
This, on a pretty neat blog, “How a Poem Happens”: http://howapoemhappens.blogspot.com/.
By the way, Tony Hoagland is a totally amazing poet.
And, someday, perhaps we’ll be lucky enough to snag him as a Writer’s Studio guest?
–mjh
October 30, 2009
Lorrie Moore speaks to a group of writers downtown
I’ve only been to three of the six Lighthouse Writer’s Studio events, but I think I can safely say that last weekend’s guest, Lorrie Moore, had the shiniest hair of any of them, and the most melodic voice. I know: I sound like Lenny from Of Mice and Men, but something about Moore’s thoughtfulness and good humor has me a little enamored. Not enamored enough to pet her to death in a barn, but enamored enough that I started drinking coffee again after a three-year hiatus just because she said, “What kind of writer drinks herbal tea?” Well, me. But not anymore. Now I wake up and hear Moore’s voice saying, “I like to get my first cup of coffee on the page.” And she doesn’t mean by spilling it. She means by writing. Which I’m doing nowadays, coffee in hand, optimism almost outweighing heartburn. But you didn’t come to this blog to hear about my heartburn. You came to this blog because you googled Corgis. (True story: a bootlegged photo of a Corgi once caused a major spike in our blog traffic.) Luckily, writers and dog fanciers alike can find solace in what Lorrie Moore had to say.
First, her visit illuminated one of those truths that can get lost in a writer’s eagerness to improve: there is no one way. There is no secret to being a great writer, no magic feather, no rusted key hidden under a rock somewhere. Every writer must find her own path. I first encountered Moore about a year ago at the University of Wisconsin, where a group of students and faculty members had gathered for a talk with the writer Ann Beattie. Beattie described her writing process as quite fast. For many years, she’d used a manual typewriter, and before making a keystroke, she formed each sentence in her head. In this manner she wrote stories for the New Yorker in about three hours. She also testified to never returning to anything—if a story didn’t work quickly and on the first attempt, she threw it aside. I sat in the second row, feeling awe and an acute mental oafishness. I can’t write a grocery list in three hours. I was distracted a little bit, too, by this woman in front of me who had really great hair.
The woman was Lorrie Moore, of course, and I know now that her process is rather different from her friend’s. Like Beattie, Moore writes stories for the New Yorker. But, perhaps unlike Beattie, Moore revises her writing “a million times,” and “tinkers endlessly.” She has never mastered that strict writing schedule prescribed by so many authors and teachers. In fact, when asked by a member of the audience for tips on developing such a schedule, Moore asked with sincerity if the audience had any tips. As a single mother, Moore writes when time allows, and tries to make it to the desk when inspiration strikes. At her Non-Crafty Craft Talk at the Tattered Cover, she described a palpable difference between pages written in moments of inspiration, and those written from obligation, and explained that even great books have a few of the latter. The key is to bring as much energy and enjoyment to your desk as you can, and hope that the number of inspired pages outweigh those necessary others.
“There are a lot of times you get stuck,” she said. “Sometimes you have to go for a walk. Sometimes for years. Other times, you have to force yourself to write something you know is wrong.”
Evident here is some of Moore’s distinctive humor. She finds humor in everything—sometimes so much that she has to cut jokes and digressions from her final drafts. Writing, she says, should be fun. But serious fun. And developing the craft of writing should come after finding the right subject. “If you’re writing about the wrong thing,” she said, “it doesn’t matter if you use adverbs in your dialogue tags.”
To illustrate this, she asked the 80-person audience at the Tattered Cover to write down a description of their latest fiction project, and pass it to the podium. Then, on a second sheet of paper, participants were asked to write down: 1) Something people always say you should write about; 2) the worst thing you can imagine happening in your life; 3) the best thing you can imagine happening in your life; 4) the most important relationship in your life; and 5) the biggest problem facing the world.
In many cases, there wasn’t much apparent overlap between the participant’s current project and his/her fears, desires, loves, and concerns. Several lists hinted at a riveting story that remained unwritten. While the demonstration wasn’t perfect (writers are notoriously bad at “pitching” their own stories, and perhaps many had written about the topics on their list at another time) it was a dramatic reminder of how often writers put the cart before the horse. Or perhaps beside the horse. I suspect that many participants found, as I did, that there were connections between their innermost concerns and the stories they were working on, but that they hadn’t been fully exploited, or that the story had begun to veer away from a potential power source. Moore went on to urge writers to use the illusion of fiction to be more honest than they might otherwise be, and to forget trying to please people. By reading from a snide deconstruction of John Updike’s prose (by Martin Amis, from The Guardian) she’d already illustrated the impossibility of pleasing people anyway, especially with anything as subjective as “craft.”
So write about what means the most to you, even if someone might disapprove, even if that someone is your Corgi (high-fives to the Corgi peeps who are still with us!) and don’t worry about how other writers schedule their time, or what they drink in the mornings. Unless it’s herbal tea. That stuff is for suckers.
October 20, 2009
Pushing that boulder up the hill.
On Oprah’s site, there’s a great essay on writing and stubbornness from Junot Diaz.
I remember reading his short story collection Drown years ago, and learning that he got a huge book deal to write a novel. And then: nothing. Not a word. Nary a peep. Not even some rumorish buzz.
Until I heard that he was incredibly blocked. Stuck. Seems as if that huge book deal kind of made the writing process a bit heavy.
The link: http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200911-omag-junot-diaz-writing. Hope you enjoy.
October 19, 2009
“Video Killed the Radio Star”?
Well, we’ve been talking for years about how the Internet, film, and television are hacking away at the already-fragile bindings of the book, and yet a quick glance at the new season of film, it seems that some of the best visual storytellers are still taking their inspiration from books. Perhaps this is as it’s always been–good films require good stories. Part of the mythology of writing a great story for film is that you don’t actually have to be a good writer on the sentence level (see The History of Violence’s Josh Olson’s hilarious demolition of that myth right here), but I was struck by the sheer number of literary masters whose work will be gracing cinemas in the next several months:
McCarthy's classic soon to hit the big screen.
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
I don’t know anyone who read this book who wasn’t completely absorbed by it, haunted, skittish, depressed, and, finally, exultant at reading such a good book. It’ll quickly skyrocket to the top of your favorite post-apocalyptic reads.
J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace
Another one of those books that I read so long ago that it would probably be new to me if I read it again: but I do remember this. It kicked arse.
Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are
Need I even say it? Let the wild rumpus start!
In the Lighthouse universe, we’ve heard recent news that our own Nick Arvin’s next novel, The Reconstructionist, has sold to Fox Entertainment for a dramatic TV series, and workshopper and board member Carleen Brice’s novel Orange Mint & Honey is to be made into a movie on Lifetime Movie Network. So it’s confirmed: video is not killing the writing star. Not yet, anyway.
There are a number of other examples, dear reader (I know you’re out there–I saw you that one time), so do edify the rest of us.
October 11, 2009
Just as Amanda needs a version the Misfit at her writing desk, threatening to make her a “good writer” by (metaphorically) shooting her every minute of her life, most writers, if we confess it, are paralyzed for minutes, weeks, months, or years by the question: Does writing matter? It’s not that we don’t believe in the art of literature, or that our allegiances waver, it’s that nearly everything in our culture has been mounting for years an argument against the indispensability of literature and the arts. We understand that what writers are left with, most often, is the notion that practicing their art is the height of self-indulgence. Sure, it can be pretty, but is it really necessary?
The other day, in preparing for a class I’m teaching at DU on Lorrie Moore (who–have I mentioned?–is coming to Lighthouse in a couple of weeks!), I assigned her story, “Dance in America.” The story follows a dancer who, through a grant, is visiting a school near an old, dear friend, Cal. His situation captures perfectly one of the truly human forces at work in our framing of the debate:
Cal’s son, Eugene, is seven and has cystic fibrosis. His whole life is a race with medical research. “It’s not that I’m not for the arts,” says Cal. “You’re here–money for the arts brought you here. That’s wonderful. It’s wonderful to fund the arts. It’s wonderful; you’re wonderful. The arts are so nice and wonderful. But really–I say, let’s give all the money, every last fucking dime, to science.”
(The rest of the story can be heard here, if you’re so inclined.)
We all know the emotional fuel here, and we quickly capitulate, most of us, to the notion that writers doing their work are most certainly not curing cancer. You could argue that the cultural shift away from, well, culture, has been evolving for years, and while we’re somewhat inured to it, I’ve sensed an uptick in worry over this trajectory lately. A sampling from the Dupree nightstand backs this up:
In one generation, then, the numbers of those majoring in the humanities dropped from a total of 30 percent to a total of less than 16 percent; during that same generation, business majors climbed from 14 percent to 22 percent. Despite last year’s debacle on Wall Street, the humanities have not benefited; students are still wagering that business jobs will be there when the economy recovers. (William M. Chace, “The Decline of the English Department,” from The American Scholar)
The “why” of this decline is addressed by Mark Slouka in a recent Harper’s article, “Dehumanized: When Math and Science Rule the School“:
Many years ago, my fiancée attempted to lend me a bit of respectability by introducing me to my would-be mother-in-law as a future Ph.D. in literature. From Columbia, I added, polishing the apple of my prospects. She wasn’t buying it. “A doctor of philosophy,” she said. “What’re you going to do, open a philosophy store?”
A spear is a spear—it doesn’t have to be original. Unable to come up with a quick response and unwilling to petition for a change of venue, I ducked into low-grade irony. More like a stand, I said. I was thinking of stocking Kafka quotes for the holidays, lines from Yeats for a buck-fifty.
And that was that. I married the girl anyway. It’s only now, recalling our exchange, that I can appreciate the significance—the poetry, really—of our little pas de deux. What we unconsciously acted out, in compressed, almost haiku-like form (A philosophy store?/I will have a stand/sell pieces of Auden at two bits a beat), was the essential drama of American education today.
It’s a play I’ve been following for some time now. It’s about the increasing dominance—scratch that, the unqualified triumph—of a certain way of seeing, of reckoning value. It’s about the victory of whatever can be quantified over everything that can’t. It’s about the quiet retooling of American education into an adjunct of business, an instrument of production.
The play’s almost over. I don’t think it’s a comedy.
And if this trend can and does leave us humorless, as we see critical thought sinking with its concrete feet to the bottom of the lake, we’re cowed when we think back to Cal and his son with cystic fibrosis.
I was mad at myself, when I went back and re-read it after ten years, for having assigned “Dance in America” to students for a session that was going to focus on narrative drive and central dramatic questions. The fate of Cal’s son, Eugene, is not in question in the story. It’s understood that the cystic fibrosis will ultimately win. There’s no central dramatic question for the dancer–or at least that’s what a first scan of the story would tell you. She swoops in, teaches a few dance workshops with the students, sees the heartbreaking plight of her good friend Cal’s family, and leaves. Crap, I thought.
But then I thought again. The story ends in a moment that absolutely captures what the arts have to contribute to life, even the life of someone whose survival relies on science. After dinner each night is “dance time,” in which the family moves into the other room and dances until Eugene is tired enough to go to sleep. The story ends triumphantly (Kenny Loggins soundtrack notwithstanding):
“Come here, honey,” I say, going over to him. I am thinking not only of my own body here…. I am thinking of the dancing body’s magnificent and ostentatious scorn: this is how we offer ourselves, enter Heaven, enter speaking. We say with motion, in space, This is what life’s done so far down here, this is all and what and everything it’s managed–this body, these bodies, that body. So what do you think, Heaven? What do you fucking think?
“Stand next to me,” I say, and he does, looking up at me with his orange warrior face. We step in place: knees up, knees down. “This is it! This is it!” Then we go wild and fling our limbs to the sky.
Ultimately we meet a dancer who’s negotiating the same doubts as most writers: how has she spent her life? And through the action of the story, the connection between the dancer and this sick boy, we get our answer: science is not going to save Eugene. Art is helping him live the life he has. Our dramatic question, a philosophical one, is answered with four pairs of arms flung toward the heavens.
October 7, 2009
Many times I’ve said that I needed a man with a gun to stand behind my desk and keep me writing (also to chase me around the park when I’m out for a run, as I tend to run for a minute, then walk, then walk more slowly, then lie down in the grass).
Now someone has invented a Web version of my dreamy gunman! Check out the Write or Die Web site. It’s an application that keeps you writing by punishing you (to the extent that your computer can) when you start to lag. As long as you keep typing, you’re fine, but (depending on the level you’ve chosen) overlong pauses will be punished by: 1) gentle reminders to get at it; 2) a most unpleasant sound; 3) the gradual deletion of what you’ve just written.
Haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but it looks like some scary writing fun!
-AMR
September 30, 2009
When I started reading War and Peace, I only had two reasons. The first had to do with superstition. A few years before, I’d been reading Anna Karenina when I had one of those creative bursts a writer doesn’t fully appreciate until it’s over. Then, after the muse had retreated, I began to entertain various gambits: combining ginseng and Red Bull; downing cups of strong coffee (with handfuls of antacids); reading books about creativity; ordering illegal brain stimulants on the Internet; and finally, embarking on War and Peace, a book nearly as heavy as my asthmatic cat, at around 1400 pages. Tolstoy, I’d decided, was my magic feather.
My other reason was less complicated. War and Peace is like the Mount Everest of books. I wanted to be able to say I’d read it.
As it turns out, Tolstoy is not my magic feather. Alas. But the experience of reading War and Peace is worthwhile, and for more than just the bragging rights: (more…)
September 28, 2009
…or at least that reports of the demise of the short story are greatly exaggerated: the National Book Awards are going all democratic in chosing the “best NBA winner of all time.” You can vote on the expert-whittled list here, but take note: four of the six choices are story collections. Which of the six did you vote for?
I love all of these writers, but I have to confess that after a bone-chilling, absorbing, fanfreakingtastic reading of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by actress Lauren Klein this weekend at Stories on Stage, I have Flannery O’Connor on the brain. And if it’s on my brain, I vote it. I wouldn’t be disappointed if any of these writers or books won, though I might arch an eyebrow at Gravity’s Rainbow (love love love Pynchon, but really?).
–AED
