Stunning
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30 July 2009
Some wonderful things happen when you teach; as do terrible ones.
Terrible: had to ask a student to withdraw from class (my boss did this, with grace and kindness, God bless him) for a variety of reasons. It was one of those “for the good of the whole” decisions, and not an easy one. I’m generally a believer in the wide gate when it comes to The Writing Life.
Wonderful: I suppose “wonderful” isn’t quite the right word. Stunning, maybe. In both senses. Let me back up a little.
Back in April, I wrote about a class I was hoping to teach, called “Writing Self/Writing Other.” My interest was in proposing an alternative to the memoir and autobiographical fiction craze. I love writing characters (and settings, and events) that have nothing to do with my personal experience; I love the exploration, the research, and the process of connecting with a character or place or time that is “other.” I love how this process is almost always, ironically, a process of self-discovery.
That class has not yet materialized, but I’m still working on it.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Sarah Palin and empathy (or, her apparent lack thereof). The gist of that post was that the artist’s vocation is an empathic one, requiring the development of an essential compassion; and that I’m glad to take part in this work, to the best of my ability.
Recently, I assigned a class a writing exercise, wherein the students were asked to write a letter, from one friend to another, at mid-life, after the experience of a great difficulty. It was an exercise in Voice. One student wrote a letter in which the narrator described the aftermath of her child’s tragic death.
The Voice in this piece struck me as a bit too breezy, perhaps a bit too articulate. As if the loss were not nearly as bizarre and incomprehensible as I imagine such a loss would be. There is no experience further from my own — not only do I not have children, but I’ve yet to lose someone close to me to death — and so I treaded lightly as I provided comments. ”It seems like something that would live more in the subtext of a voice,” I wrote. ”That it would be unspeakable for quite a long time.”
The student wrote back to me (this is an online class) to let me know how much she appreciated my comments. ”That’s exactly it,” she wrote, and went on to tell me that her daughter and son-in-law were killed in a plane crash some five years ago, leaving three little boys.
I can’t tell you what a gift this was, this student’s generosity and trust. Life is hard, and we put on our armor to get through — layers of cynicism, irony, and stoicism. It would be easy to lose our compassion, our empathy. I am deeply grateful to know, in this small way, that in the midst of life hardships and learning to buck up where I am perhaps over-sensitive, I am also somehow managing to be a human being; and am more convinced than ever that our efforts to develop empathy are at the heart of our human-ness.
27 July 2009
I’m only just now beginning to seek out counsel and talk to other writers about their experiences in publishing. And I’ve noticed that people often couch their counsel in terms of the one thing I’d recommend, which is usually born of either a very good, or very bad, experience they had, and learned from.
Right now I’ve got two of those one things on my mind, and it occurs to me that it’s good to have two — one that helps you manage the big-picture, and one that provides a concrete, short-term action you might take.
The big picture piece comes from independent publicist Lauren Cerand, from an interview at Three Guys One Book:
The authors that I see consistently lining up the best gigs and getting enviable exposure are not the ones with the most money to burn or endless time to spend but rather the ones that take the long view of their careers and keep a sense of perspective on things. Fiction takes a while to get going.
Cerand goes on to talk about historical trends in cultural consumption, how writers like Melville and Whitman did not “sell” well in their time, how a once-popular and still-vibrant art form like jazz can become sidelined from the mainstream; but cautions against resigning oneself to irrelevancy. “A healthy outlook is somewhere in the middle,” she says.
This counsel seems sound and wise to me; but I can’t help but worry its realism. What I mean is that, from this writer’s perspective, the messages are mixed: novelists are made acutely aware of the fact that much of their careers rides on how the first novel is received. There is less forgiveness than ever for a first novel that doesn’t sell well, an all-or-nothing short-term menace hovers. We understand that our publisher is not committing to developing and supporting our writing careers over time, but rather calibrating the cost-benefit with each individual work. I don’t lay any blame or judgment here, I recognize that editors hate this possibly as much as writers do. (I would hope that the cost-benefit of this larger systemic shift is also part of the discussion in publishing right now, but I don’t know that to be the case.)
So the second one thing came from a fellow novelist, who published her first book a few years ago. She advised: for your first novel, hire an independent publicist. Because, she reasoned, you only have one first novel; and this is the moment when people might just be paying attention.
Funny that the publicist would be the one to say, Take the long view; and the novelist the one to say, Make sure you focus on this short-term moment. It gives you a sense of the potential for how tense and fraught this whole process might get.
My six-months-before-release promotional push for Long for This World will begin in a month or so. Stay tuned: we’ll see if/how well my two things materialize. Once again, I seem to be seeking that middle path.
23 July 2009
I’m over at The Millions blog again, chewing over the idea of “free” — featuring an ensemble cast: Toni Morrison, DH Lawrence, Chris Anderson, Adrienne Shelley, Jozef Czapski. Click on over (your views, links, and comments most welcome).
20 July 2009
I’ve just picked up Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer, a book I’m considering assigning for a fiction class I’m teaching this fall. A quick flip to an appendix in the back entitled, “Books To Be Read Immediately” has me hyperventilating. There are 117 books on Prose’s list.
All the more reason why last week’s “Fired From the Canon” — The Second Pass’s list of 10 supposedly must-reads that TSP’s editors have deemed skippable (which I linked to in my “Off the Hook” post) – is, if not in actuality, in terms of the editors’ specific recommendations, then at least, in the abstract, a momentary therapeutic antidote. You must read these balanced by You won’t be dealt a literary GoDirectlytoJail Card if you pass over these.
Where does my sense of a literary Angry God, who delivers fire-and-brimstone commandments – Thou Shalt Read These – from on high, come from? From starting late — in my mid-20s — as a serious reader, I suppose. And my resulting slow-reader handicap. Parents among you, here is your Thou Shalt for the day (from someone notably unqualified to deal out anything resembling parenting advice): forget the potty training, give your child a book (if you’re using Prose’s list, maybe start with Huck Finn, and by pre-school your little one will be ready for William Gaddis).
18 July 2009
I can’t stop thinking about this haunting, lovely story by Sergei Dovlatov from the New Yorker fiction podcast. Have a listen. Beautifully read by David Bezmozgis.
Audio: Fiction Podcast: David Bezmozgis reads Sergei Dovlatov: newyorker.com
16 July 2009
Eric Obenauf has written an impassioned take on “the death of print” over at the Brooklyn Rail. Print is not dead; it can and will thrive, he says. The piece is a kind of ode to the vibrancy of small and independent presses, and a celebration of the bursting of the corporate book bubble.
Click here to read the full article. Some highlights:
Since large publishers affect the flow of the market by sheer mass, the media seem content to regurgitate this overly hyped sea-change in corporate mentality and declare the death of print. However, the reality of the situation is much less dramatic: there is space for print not only to exist in modern society, but to thrive, if undertaken on a realistic scale…
The goal for book publishers, most simply put, should not be to undertake a virtual arms race of developing technology with both the Internet and media, or to try to compete on a bloated scale with music and film, or even to translate a work to conform to an undetermined potential future model. The mission for book publishers and print media at large should be to create a product that is irreplaceable and indispensible…
I believe that book publishing will re-generate in the near-future into two separate models: the corporate model, which strives to attain the widest possible “readership” in as short of a time-span as possible by use of electronic devices, interaction, and gimmicks; and the print model, sustained by independent, university, and re-branded imprints of large houses, that believe as [Dave] Eggers, in reading as a “beautiful rich tactile experience,” and who are satisfied with a book selling five thousand copies…
The corporate ideology has run its course in book publishing, which spells the death of print to many. But as evidenced by the bevy of awards (including Nobels and Pulitzers), the best-sellers, and the critical acclaim of the work being done consistently by independent presses, print can succeed on a responsible scale. These are the small, spunky houses unafraid to publish new ideas and new writers and work of substance, holding steady in their responsibility to the reading public as purveyors of culture. While this seems revolutionary in modern times, it was the dominant manner of thinking a half-century ago. It could be so again.
Bookstore Yogis
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15 July 2009
Two heart-warming bookstore stories at a time when the not-so-slow and ugly death of independent bookstores often seems a foregone conclusion. Viva bookstores!
From Books on the Nightstand’s Ann Kingman: click here.
From The Stranger, Seattle’s alternative weekly (thanks for the link, LNR): click here.
14 July 2009
From a dusty piece of ruled notebook paper found at a bus stop in the South Bronx:
If there was a new continent named Hollys and we couldn’t find the old continent we would worship the King Hollys and I think like everything should be fair like prices of objects in stores, fair laws, greater jobs and greater movies and that’s what will happen if there was a new continent named Hollys and we couldn’t find the old continents. –Salman
