October 2008 Archives
"Regional Writer": Bane or Boon?
U.S. writers have been debating this since at least the nineteenth century, but I recently got to hear two writers discuss whether or not it's necessary to be in a cultural mecca to promote one's books and further one's career.
One writer described the beneficial contacts made over the punchbowl, the serendipitous connections that lead to opportunities when writers mingle among people with cultural power: editors, artists, agents, other writers, and so on.
The other writer thought that plenty of writers were doing just fine out in Montana.
"Yeah," said the first, but she quickly noted that they're always giving panels about how they're labeled, defined, and confined by being just that.
It got me to thinking, because I was recently invited to contribute to a special "Texas Writers" issue of a journal I admire. I was really psyched and pleased that I somehow got on the list of invitees; I loved being in Texas, and I spent important, formative time there, going to school, dropping out of school, waitressing, having my son, going to graduate school, getting a clue, falling in love, and so on. I chose Texas, and I was in Texas for thirteen years; it's where I feel like I really grew up. I planted a lot of crape myrtles and honeysuckle vines in Texas soil--and watched a lot of ill-fated tomatoes blister on the vine. Probably fifty percent of my fiction is set in Texas; one story, "Liking It Rough," is due out soon from Texas Review. And I've admired wildly for years so many Texas writers, like Naomi Shihab Nye and Sandra Cisneros. Who wouldn't want to be in that club?
So it was an honor to be included in the category "Texas writers."
But I was born in Miami. Part of the reason I got to read at the Miami Book Fair International last year is because of that, and because of the part of my book that deals with Miami and Key West. Am I a Florida writer? I'd be honored to be one; my family roots are there.
But what about West Virginia? From fourth grade to high school graduation, I lived in various small towns in the Appalachian highlands. That's where I moved from school to school, where I lived through the difficult years that form the centerpiece of The Truth Book. What could be more foundational to a person's social psyche than fifth grade, or middle school, or senior year? Am I a West Virginia writer?
On the other hand, as a recent resident of Nebraska, I've been placed on a website of Nebraska writers, which is a warm welcome and awfully nice publicity, but I feel like I've just landed here. I definitely don't have the grit of the Sandhills in any of my work. I'm teaching fantastic graduate writers who've lived here all their lives; their work is about Nebraska in fundamental, important ways. How can we be part of the same group?
Who decides? The Nebraska Arts Council says you need to be a resident for two years (and prove it with an affidavit) before you're eligible for their fellowships (so I encourage all you Nebraska writers to apply--though creative writing grad students aren't eligible, I'm afraid). Is two years enough? Does that make you a Nebraska writer?
And Indiana? I didn't start to set creative work in Indiana until I'd been there for several years. And I don't, even now, think of myself as an Indiana writer, though I spent ten years there and initially thought I'd be there for my whole career. I tried to settle there, but I never really felt congruent, at home. I felt like I never really got Indiana, despite wanting to. Sometimes I'm not sure I get the Midwest--until I go to Manhattan or Boston and feel like a complete country mouse.
I don't know yet whether I'll come to feel at home in Nebraska. And even if I do, will I write from there, from that place inside that identifies with the landscape, the ecosystem and geopolitical system, as a place? I've been dinking around with a just-for-fun murder mystery set in downtown Lincoln. (There's a great place for finding a dead body--I'm not saying where, but every time I walk past it, I hear the opening bars of Law & Order in my head.) Would setting it here make me more authentically a Nebraska writer?
If so, what does it mean that my novel-in-waiting is set in New Orleans? I've seen panels of New Orleans writers at AWP who are so protective of their status, especially after Katrina, that they'd (likely, and justifiably) run me off with pitchforks if I tried to claim the title.
Elizabeth George is a Californian; all her novels are set in England. Is she regional? Would she count as a California writer, when her imagination lives across the ocean?
Does it even have to do with the literary work and how a writer's reputation is configured, or is the issue of regionalism merely a pragmatic matter, an issue of connections and grant eligibility? Is it just about access to tangible resources? Would it be better to move to New York and transcend my regional ties, which are kind of tenuous anyway?
Do New York writers and L.A. writers and Boston writers transcend regional ties, or do we simply norm their work, dropping the "New York" prefix, like whiteness or heterosexuality usually get normed and invisibilised? (Okay, invisibilised is not a word, but you know what I mean.) Is their work, which is often deeply about New York or L.A. or Boston--not just the landscape but the cultural assumptions of that environment--somehow just writing, transferable, "universal," while a novel set in Montana always gets talked about and circumscribed in terms of its landscape? It's seen as rugged, or quaint. (Does this split echo the urban-rural, coastal-landlocked political divide, the difference between urban experience and what McCain-Palin describe as the "real America"?)
Is this just another set of boxes writers get slotted into--like genre, and race, and gender? Is it just another way of marginalizing people who operate outside the centers of cultural power? And what about migrant writers, who don't feel more of an allegiance to one place that's held part of their life than another? How do they fit? If I'm personally post-nationalist, how in the world can I take seriously the idea of being affiliated with a single state or city?
I'm just wondering in print here. If you have reactions, I'd be so grateful for any thoughts that could help me develop my own thinking about this issue.
One writer described the beneficial contacts made over the punchbowl, the serendipitous connections that lead to opportunities when writers mingle among people with cultural power: editors, artists, agents, other writers, and so on.
The other writer thought that plenty of writers were doing just fine out in Montana.
"Yeah," said the first, but she quickly noted that they're always giving panels about how they're labeled, defined, and confined by being just that.
It got me to thinking, because I was recently invited to contribute to a special "Texas Writers" issue of a journal I admire. I was really psyched and pleased that I somehow got on the list of invitees; I loved being in Texas, and I spent important, formative time there, going to school, dropping out of school, waitressing, having my son, going to graduate school, getting a clue, falling in love, and so on. I chose Texas, and I was in Texas for thirteen years; it's where I feel like I really grew up. I planted a lot of crape myrtles and honeysuckle vines in Texas soil--and watched a lot of ill-fated tomatoes blister on the vine. Probably fifty percent of my fiction is set in Texas; one story, "Liking It Rough," is due out soon from Texas Review. And I've admired wildly for years so many Texas writers, like Naomi Shihab Nye and Sandra Cisneros. Who wouldn't want to be in that club?
So it was an honor to be included in the category "Texas writers."
But I was born in Miami. Part of the reason I got to read at the Miami Book Fair International last year is because of that, and because of the part of my book that deals with Miami and Key West. Am I a Florida writer? I'd be honored to be one; my family roots are there.
But what about West Virginia? From fourth grade to high school graduation, I lived in various small towns in the Appalachian highlands. That's where I moved from school to school, where I lived through the difficult years that form the centerpiece of The Truth Book. What could be more foundational to a person's social psyche than fifth grade, or middle school, or senior year? Am I a West Virginia writer?
On the other hand, as a recent resident of Nebraska, I've been placed on a website of Nebraska writers, which is a warm welcome and awfully nice publicity, but I feel like I've just landed here. I definitely don't have the grit of the Sandhills in any of my work. I'm teaching fantastic graduate writers who've lived here all their lives; their work is about Nebraska in fundamental, important ways. How can we be part of the same group?
Who decides? The Nebraska Arts Council says you need to be a resident for two years (and prove it with an affidavit) before you're eligible for their fellowships (so I encourage all you Nebraska writers to apply--though creative writing grad students aren't eligible, I'm afraid). Is two years enough? Does that make you a Nebraska writer?
And Indiana? I didn't start to set creative work in Indiana until I'd been there for several years. And I don't, even now, think of myself as an Indiana writer, though I spent ten years there and initially thought I'd be there for my whole career. I tried to settle there, but I never really felt congruent, at home. I felt like I never really got Indiana, despite wanting to. Sometimes I'm not sure I get the Midwest--until I go to Manhattan or Boston and feel like a complete country mouse.
I don't know yet whether I'll come to feel at home in Nebraska. And even if I do, will I write from there, from that place inside that identifies with the landscape, the ecosystem and geopolitical system, as a place? I've been dinking around with a just-for-fun murder mystery set in downtown Lincoln. (There's a great place for finding a dead body--I'm not saying where, but every time I walk past it, I hear the opening bars of Law & Order in my head.) Would setting it here make me more authentically a Nebraska writer?
If so, what does it mean that my novel-in-waiting is set in New Orleans? I've seen panels of New Orleans writers at AWP who are so protective of their status, especially after Katrina, that they'd (likely, and justifiably) run me off with pitchforks if I tried to claim the title.
Elizabeth George is a Californian; all her novels are set in England. Is she regional? Would she count as a California writer, when her imagination lives across the ocean?
Does it even have to do with the literary work and how a writer's reputation is configured, or is the issue of regionalism merely a pragmatic matter, an issue of connections and grant eligibility? Is it just about access to tangible resources? Would it be better to move to New York and transcend my regional ties, which are kind of tenuous anyway?
Do New York writers and L.A. writers and Boston writers transcend regional ties, or do we simply norm their work, dropping the "New York" prefix, like whiteness or heterosexuality usually get normed and invisibilised? (Okay, invisibilised is not a word, but you know what I mean.) Is their work, which is often deeply about New York or L.A. or Boston--not just the landscape but the cultural assumptions of that environment--somehow just writing, transferable, "universal," while a novel set in Montana always gets talked about and circumscribed in terms of its landscape? It's seen as rugged, or quaint. (Does this split echo the urban-rural, coastal-landlocked political divide, the difference between urban experience and what McCain-Palin describe as the "real America"?)
Is this just another set of boxes writers get slotted into--like genre, and race, and gender? Is it just another way of marginalizing people who operate outside the centers of cultural power? And what about migrant writers, who don't feel more of an allegiance to one place that's held part of their life than another? How do they fit? If I'm personally post-nationalist, how in the world can I take seriously the idea of being affiliated with a single state or city?
I'm just wondering in print here. If you have reactions, I'd be so grateful for any thoughts that could help me develop my own thinking about this issue.
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Lovely and Amazing
The lovely and amazing Tayari Jones read to a bumper-crop crowd at the
Great Plains Art Gallery last night. One hundred and seventeen people
turned up on a windy, rainy, cold night to hear her read from The Untelling
(the prologue, pp. 1-11, and the costume/pumpkins scene, 95-top of 104,
if you're curious) and give thoughtful, witty answers to the several
smart questions the audience posed. Then an endless line of folks
waited to have their books signed.
And would you believe that the caterers included tiny red velvet cupcakes with the desserts? I did not plan that. How did they know?
I still remember the homemade red velvet cake Tayari sent me after she visited Wabash College. Nice and moist. The woman can bake. The woman can write. The woman can give a great reading. I'm predicting more great things coming soon!
The painting is by singer-songwriter-musician Gillian Welch. Such a cheerful embrace of the deep end seemed just right for a Friday. (Thanks, Maija, for the link!)
And would you believe that the caterers included tiny red velvet cupcakes with the desserts? I did not plan that. How did they know?
I still remember the homemade red velvet cake Tayari sent me after she visited Wabash College. Nice and moist. The woman can bake. The woman can write. The woman can give a great reading. I'm predicting more great things coming soon!
The painting is by singer-songwriter-musician Gillian Welch. Such a cheerful embrace of the deep end seemed just right for a Friday. (Thanks, Maija, for the link!)
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Tayari's Here!
Hurray!
Straight from the airport, Tayari wanted to head out to Pioneers Park to check out the elk and the bison--to see some real Nebraska-y stuff. (When she saw the large, anatomically correct statue of a bison at the entrance, she said, "Ooh! He's a boyffalo!")
She reads tomorrow evening at the Great Plains Art Gallery. It's at 7:30 p.m., and the desserts, coffee, and decaf (I asked for the decaf, special) are free afterwards for the taking, so you can stand around and nosh and chat and schmooze with the author. Stephanie Udall from the UNL Bookstore will be there, gracious as ever, to sell Tayari's two novels to anyone who's interested. The whole event should take about an hour, total, so if you can tear yourself away from your usual Thursday-night delectations, come on down,
Straight from the airport, Tayari wanted to head out to Pioneers Park to check out the elk and the bison--to see some real Nebraska-y stuff. (When she saw the large, anatomically correct statue of a bison at the entrance, she said, "Ooh! He's a boyffalo!")
She reads tomorrow evening at the Great Plains Art Gallery. It's at 7:30 p.m., and the desserts, coffee, and decaf (I asked for the decaf, special) are free afterwards for the taking, so you can stand around and nosh and chat and schmooze with the author. Stephanie Udall from the UNL Bookstore will be there, gracious as ever, to sell Tayari's two novels to anyone who's interested. The whole event should take about an hour, total, so if you can tear yourself away from your usual Thursday-night delectations, come on down,
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Race and Gender, But Class, Too
One of the things I like about Tayari Jones's novels is that they're not about race and gender only, though they do explore both of those things, and explore them well. They're also about class issues within the black community and how differences in income, options, and social capital inflect people's interactions with one another. We see this clearly in the different households of Tasha, Rodney, and Octavia in Leaving Atlanta, and it's also an important factor in The Untelling, as blogger Anne Fernald writes:
Class is such a key issue in how we relate to one another, and I know I've had those moments Anne Fernald describes, when "we skate along assuming equality and suddenly someone mentions their sailboat, or that they’ve reached the time of the month when it’s down to Ramen and tuna, and we’re brought up short—or, worse, see that we’ve brought someone else up short." These moments are often so memorable--and sometimes painful. I remember once in graduate school a fellow student described a neighborhood she'd decided she'd never rent in. She and her mother had driven through it and agreed, No way. It looked too dirty, too rundown. Too dangerous, even? It took me a while to realize she was talking about where I lived with my son.
And that was in graduate school, where everyone makes a pittance! Clearly, the assumptions and expectations we bring with us have to do with much more than the bottom line on our paycheck.
These moments of class friction can often spiral outward into interesting analyses. My friend Lorraine López is currently editing a collection of essays by women writers from poverty and the working class, and one of them, written by the inimitable Heather Sellers, is named "Sails with Good People," after the way her dean introduced one of her colleagues to her. "He sails with good people," the dean said, and Heather spun off into the myriad associations about the poverty, instability, and mental illness that dominated her childhood and that make her essay about working in the academy so riveting.
The book's coming out in 2009 from University of Michigan; I think the working title is An Angle of Vision. Full disclosure: I have an essay in it, too. So does Dorothy Allison, who'll be here at UNL next week (yay!).
Tayari Jones reads this Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. at the Great Plains Art Gallery here in downtown Lincoln. Everyone's invited. It's free, and her books will be available for sale and signing afterwards. And Tayari's super-nice, too, so come meet her and say hello.
Ariadne, the protagonist with the burdensome, ambitious name, is a young Spelman grad, drifting through her twenties. She doesn’t really know herself if her job teaching literacy for a community organization is a testament to her commitment to social justice or a symptom of her lack of ambition. She has a nice boyfriend, a locksmith and this character, Dwayne, is one of the book’s real pleasures: a lovely, lovely, settled young man, utterly confident of himself and his place in the world in all kinds of ways that unsettle Aria.It's great that Anne Fernald is writing about this; I think some reviewers (white reviewers, maybe?) focus exclusively or predominantly on racial issues in books by writers of color because those are the issues that are most different and striking for them. Class differences tend to get elided, smoothed away, as they read about "black women"--as though that group were monolithic.
Tayari is really genius in writing about class: the scene in which Aria sits and watches as the pregnant teen from her literacy class does calligraphy to address envelopes for her roommate's wedding invitations is so rich. A regular middle-class girl, newly graduated from college but without family money to draw on, Aria looks in wonderment at both women and sees clearly how strange each is to the other, and, most distressingly, how far she is from either. This seems utterly right to me: so often, we skate along assuming equality and suddenly someone mentions their sailboat, or that they’ve reached the time of the month when it’s down to Ramen and tuna, and we’re brought up short—or, worse, see that we’ve brought someone else up short. Again and again in The Untelling, Tayari captures those economic complexities and brilliantly articulates the specific prism of the young, gifted black women who’ve gone to Spelman and remained in Atlanta, expecting their Morehouse man, expecting a lot of themselves, and caught in a richly conflicted relationship to all the various neighborhoods of their city—this one too bourgie, that one too ghetto, this one uneasily gentrifying, that one stubbornly down at the heels.
Class is such a key issue in how we relate to one another, and I know I've had those moments Anne Fernald describes, when "we skate along assuming equality and suddenly someone mentions their sailboat, or that they’ve reached the time of the month when it’s down to Ramen and tuna, and we’re brought up short—or, worse, see that we’ve brought someone else up short." These moments are often so memorable--and sometimes painful. I remember once in graduate school a fellow student described a neighborhood she'd decided she'd never rent in. She and her mother had driven through it and agreed, No way. It looked too dirty, too rundown. Too dangerous, even? It took me a while to realize she was talking about where I lived with my son.
And that was in graduate school, where everyone makes a pittance! Clearly, the assumptions and expectations we bring with us have to do with much more than the bottom line on our paycheck.
These moments of class friction can often spiral outward into interesting analyses. My friend Lorraine López is currently editing a collection of essays by women writers from poverty and the working class, and one of them, written by the inimitable Heather Sellers, is named "Sails with Good People," after the way her dean introduced one of her colleagues to her. "He sails with good people," the dean said, and Heather spun off into the myriad associations about the poverty, instability, and mental illness that dominated her childhood and that make her essay about working in the academy so riveting.
The book's coming out in 2009 from University of Michigan; I think the working title is An Angle of Vision. Full disclosure: I have an essay in it, too. So does Dorothy Allison, who'll be here at UNL next week (yay!).
Tayari Jones reads this Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. at the Great Plains Art Gallery here in downtown Lincoln. Everyone's invited. It's free, and her books will be available for sale and signing afterwards. And Tayari's super-nice, too, so come meet her and say hello.
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Cover Girl is Coming to Town!
I'm as excited as Snoopy when he jumps around (you know, when his feet paddle the air?), and here's why: Tayari Jones, whom the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called "one of the most important writers of her generation," is coming to Lincoln this week!
She's a phenomenal writer, and I'm hardly the first to say so: Leslie Marmon Silko, Robert Olen Butler, Paule Marshall, and Jewell Parker Rhodes number among her fans, and she's won slews of awards for her lovely novels Leaving Atlanta and The Untelling, which are closely observed, sensitively drawn, innovatively structured works of contemporary realism.
I can't wait for her next novel to come out (I hear it's almost finished).
She's giving a reading Thursday, October 23 at 7:30 p.m. in the Great Plains Art Gallery at the corner of Q and 12th. The reading is free and open to the public. Tayari will read for about half an hour, after which she'll do Q&A. Then there'll be books available for signing (and cookies available for eating). High school students as well as adults seem to be particularly drawn to her work, which is elegantly literary yet still hits the heart, so if you know some young people, invite them along.
Tayari's a dynamite performer, and her work is terrific. I've seen her read three times and teach twice, and I've always been wowed. If you can make it, please come!
She's a phenomenal writer, and I'm hardly the first to say so: Leslie Marmon Silko, Robert Olen Butler, Paule Marshall, and Jewell Parker Rhodes number among her fans, and she's won slews of awards for her lovely novels Leaving Atlanta and The Untelling, which are closely observed, sensitively drawn, innovatively structured works of contemporary realism.
I can't wait for her next novel to come out (I hear it's almost finished).
She's giving a reading Thursday, October 23 at 7:30 p.m. in the Great Plains Art Gallery at the corner of Q and 12th. The reading is free and open to the public. Tayari will read for about half an hour, after which she'll do Q&A. Then there'll be books available for signing (and cookies available for eating). High school students as well as adults seem to be particularly drawn to her work, which is elegantly literary yet still hits the heart, so if you know some young people, invite them along.
Tayari's a dynamite performer, and her work is terrific. I've seen her read three times and teach twice, and I've always been wowed. If you can make it, please come!
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Categories:
Art, Craft, and Ethics
Debby Applegate won the Pulitzer for her biography The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, which Publishers Weekly called "an insightful account of a contradictory, fascinating, rather Clintonesque figure who, in many ways, was America's first liberal." Debby is here at UNL today, and before her big lecture tonight, she was kind enough to join several locals for a panel, "The Art, Craft, and Ethics of Biography and Autobiography: A Conversation."
Professor Melissa Homestead put us all together--Walt Whitman scholar Ken Price, Native American historian Victoria Smith, awesome grad student Madeline Wiseman, about whom you've heard before, and me--and gave us some juicy questions, which we round-robinned. We talked for an hour and a half (patient audience!) about issues that overlap for biographers and memoirists.
I got to sit next to Debby (below), who was very interesting and animated. Her doctorate's from Yale, and she's taught at Yale and Wesleyan, but she managed to be broadly accessible to the broad range of faculty and students who came from English, history, and other disciplines to hear her.
It was a good chance to think about the issues--and a nice opportunity for me and Madeline to dry-run some thoughts for our AWP panel next February in Chicago.
And hey! Last night's reading at UNO was great, y'all. Great turnout, great audience, great dinner beforehand with creative writers. I really like what they've got going on over there in Omaha.
Professor Melissa Homestead put us all together--Walt Whitman scholar Ken Price, Native American historian Victoria Smith, awesome grad student Madeline Wiseman, about whom you've heard before, and me--and gave us some juicy questions, which we round-robinned. We talked for an hour and a half (patient audience!) about issues that overlap for biographers and memoirists.
I got to sit next to Debby (below), who was very interesting and animated. Her doctorate's from Yale, and she's taught at Yale and Wesleyan, but she managed to be broadly accessible to the broad range of faculty and students who came from English, history, and other disciplines to hear her.
It was a good chance to think about the issues--and a nice opportunity for me and Madeline to dry-run some thoughts for our AWP panel next February in Chicago.
And hey! Last night's reading at UNO was great, y'all. Great turnout, great audience, great dinner beforehand with creative writers. I really like what they've got going on over there in Omaha.
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Horror Fans, You're in Luck!
And not just because the final presidential debate is tonight.
If you're a fan of horror and of indie publishing, check out the new anthology Alone in the Dark. Featured in the collection is "Carl," a terrific story by my former student, Austin Crowder, who turned it in to our creative writing class at Wabash College a few years ago. It's sad, funny, a little creepy, and moving, and it turns out to be Austin's first paid publication. Woo-hoo, Austin!
Here's Austin's elevator-description of his piece:
Which brings us back to tonight's debate. Alas, whether it's a wooden rehash of earlier debates or it turns nasty, as threatened, I won't be able to watch it live, since I'll be reading from The Truth Book at UNO.
For a beautiful overview of election events, see "The Choice" in The New Yorker's recent Politics issue. It's so solid, thorough, and elegantly written; it may not tell you much you didn't already know (if you're a politics junkie), but it organizes a welter of detail into a coherent, lovely package. I plan to quote from it at length when next asked what I think about the election (in order to sound much, much brighter than I actually am). Try it. You'll like it.
That is, if you're an Obama supporter. If you're a McCain supporter, it will make you rend your garments, gnash your teeth, and rip the hair from your scalp. It'll give you that end-times feeling.
If you're a fan of horror and of indie publishing, check out the new anthology Alone in the Dark. Featured in the collection is "Carl," a terrific story by my former student, Austin Crowder, who turned it in to our creative writing class at Wabash College a few years ago. It's sad, funny, a little creepy, and moving, and it turns out to be Austin's first paid publication. Woo-hoo, Austin!
Here's Austin's elevator-description of his piece:
"Carl" is the story of an android created to serve the needs of big box giant Floor-Mart. Carl is reaching his seventh year of service, and is in line to be recycled. It's too bad that Carl doesn't know that he's supposed to die. The story is told from behind the gauze of Carl's faded, idealistic memory as hard work and corporate devotion start to take their final toll.Not only is it a great story, but there's nothing like getting a little political relevance in your indie-horror fiction!
Which brings us back to tonight's debate. Alas, whether it's a wooden rehash of earlier debates or it turns nasty, as threatened, I won't be able to watch it live, since I'll be reading from The Truth Book at UNO.
For a beautiful overview of election events, see "The Choice" in The New Yorker's recent Politics issue. It's so solid, thorough, and elegantly written; it may not tell you much you didn't already know (if you're a politics junkie), but it organizes a welter of detail into a coherent, lovely package. I plan to quote from it at length when next asked what I think about the election (in order to sound much, much brighter than I actually am). Try it. You'll like it.
That is, if you're an Obama supporter. If you're a McCain supporter, it will make you rend your garments, gnash your teeth, and rip the hair from your scalp. It'll give you that end-times feeling.
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Funking, Reading, and Musing about the Nobel
Looking alarmingly cute in a cocoa guayabera, my husband James played his first public gig last night with the new funk band Spyboy at Duggan's Pub. With Tom Martin on guitar, Stan Martinez on drums, and Tory the 17-year-old wunderkind on bass, Spyboy rocked the house--or so I hear. I had to miss it due to a family commitment, but I'll be catching their next show at Duggan's, which is tentatively scheduled for October 30th. Maybe we'll see you there?
This Wednesday evening, if you're in Omaha, swing by the Missouri Valley Reading Series at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and say hello. My reading will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Dodge Room in the Milo Bell Student Center on campus, and I'm excited about what will be my first public reading in my new home state of Nebraska. Many thanks to UNO faculty member and poet Miles Waggener, who made it happen.
You probably heard that the Nobel was awarded last week to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio of France. You may not have heard of Le Clezio, but for me, that's always the fun of the Nobel: learning about someone wonderful, usually from another country, whose work I might not otherwise have heard of.
Or sometimes not so wonderful: I remember immediately ordering three Elfriede Jelinek paperbacks (I fell in love with her because she said openly that her social anxiety prevented her from making the trip to Stockholm to accept the Nobel in person) but only making it halfway through the first--Wonderful, Wonderful Times (no truth in advertising in that title, believe me)--before deciding I'd need to go on antidepressants to read any more of her work, and quitting. (I'm weak, weak.) And then there was José Saramago's Blindness, which was hailed as a penetrating depiction of social breakdown in a crisis, but which bored me as all predictable allegories do, and which has now been made into a major motion picture, etc.--I guess it comes as no newsflash that Hollywood's okay w/clichés. (And hey, at least I got to read a copy that didn't feature Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore, Danny Glover with a black pirate's patch--heaven and saints preserve us--and Gael Garcia Bernal staring blankly from the cover.) Plus, maybe I'm too much of a literalist, but as a childhood devotee of the 1976 chapter book Follow My Leader about a boy and his seeing-eye dog, I didn't really buy it that becoming blind would, in and of itself, turn people into rampaging savages. Turns out, neither did lots of blind people, who are protesting the film.
Anyway, I stray. For me, the fun of the Nobel is sampling new writers. Whether their topics and worldviews are to your taste or not, reading their prose broadens your sense of what can be done on the page, and most of the time--since the Nobel Committee has a great big world full of writers to choose from--it jolts you out of your own American narrowness.
But apparently, not all Americans feel that way. Rather than reading Le Clezio's work and entering the conversation about him, David Orr in this morning's New York Times fretted about whether the Nobel was fair to American poets in "Yet Once More, a Laurel Not Bestowed." (Maybe poets would get farther in the world if their supporters avoided musty phrases like laurel not bestowed. Just a thought.) In a piece bluntly called "Le Clezio--Who's He?," David Ulin in the L.A. Times grumbles:
Ulin quotes Adam Kirsch in Slate: "Unless and until [Philip] Roth gets the Nobel Prize, there's no reason for Americans to pay attention to any insults from the Swedes." Ah, nothing like a little hubris. Mmm-mmm, delicious. It's done Americans so much good recently. Ulin then waves away the other significant U.S. contender, Joyce Carol Oates, "because, to be frank, she's just not good enough." That's it. No explanation, no support. She's "just not good enough." David Ulin has spoken. So let it be written; so let it be done.
¡Hijole! This all strikes me as bizarre. As a dreamy postnationalist aware that the U.S. has consumed its share of the world's goodies and then some, I have no stake whatsoever in ensuring that my countrymen (and women, if they're "good enough") get Nobel recognition. And to assume that one is worthy of the Prize, and then stomp around angrily when one doesn't get it--or lobby for it, as Roth has done--reminds me (in an admittedly reckless leap of logic) of the spoiled American teenagers profiled in today's NYTimes Sunday Styles. These teens, accustomed from birth to having their every desire sated, their every whim indulged, are throwing fits when faced with their parents' recent belt-tightening measures to cope with our failing economy:
But maybe the same thing will eventually happen with the Nobel. Maybe American authors and their indignant supporters will stomp off, permanently disenchanted with the Nobel: "That's gross! Non-Americans won it!"
But oh, wait! Roth-supporter Kirsch already has:
I also have to wonder about the way in which so many disgruntled commentators keep pointing back to Toni Morrison's Nobel win in 1993, saying varied versions of, Has there been no one that good since then? Um, how about contemplating this answer: Maybe not.
It reminds me of conversations with more than one highly educated white man who's been very angry about the fact that neither Philip Roth nor John Updike has won the Nobel, while Morrison has. "And we all know she's just not that good," one kept saying. "We all know why they chose her." He never said race. He never said black. He never said woman. He didn't have to.
I wonder if the recent rash of irate, nationalist Nobel commentators feel they don't have to, either--if they feel that their affirmative-action insinuations about literary merit don't need to be articulated. Maybe they intuit that the majority of their readers share their assumptions.
Or maybe that's just me being paranoid about the presence of deep racial politics, preferences, and prejudices still at play in the United States. Maybe I'm too suspicious, too skeptical.
But you know, just watch the campaign coverage.
~
Many thanks for the Ulin link to Julie Holden, who coined the term Amerocentric for the occasion!
This Wednesday evening, if you're in Omaha, swing by the Missouri Valley Reading Series at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and say hello. My reading will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Dodge Room in the Milo Bell Student Center on campus, and I'm excited about what will be my first public reading in my new home state of Nebraska. Many thanks to UNO faculty member and poet Miles Waggener, who made it happen.
You probably heard that the Nobel was awarded last week to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio of France. You may not have heard of Le Clezio, but for me, that's always the fun of the Nobel: learning about someone wonderful, usually from another country, whose work I might not otherwise have heard of.
Or sometimes not so wonderful: I remember immediately ordering three Elfriede Jelinek paperbacks (I fell in love with her because she said openly that her social anxiety prevented her from making the trip to Stockholm to accept the Nobel in person) but only making it halfway through the first--Wonderful, Wonderful Times (no truth in advertising in that title, believe me)--before deciding I'd need to go on antidepressants to read any more of her work, and quitting. (I'm weak, weak.) And then there was José Saramago's Blindness, which was hailed as a penetrating depiction of social breakdown in a crisis, but which bored me as all predictable allegories do, and which has now been made into a major motion picture, etc.--I guess it comes as no newsflash that Hollywood's okay w/clichés. (And hey, at least I got to read a copy that didn't feature Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore, Danny Glover with a black pirate's patch--heaven and saints preserve us--and Gael Garcia Bernal staring blankly from the cover.) Plus, maybe I'm too much of a literalist, but as a childhood devotee of the 1976 chapter book Follow My Leader about a boy and his seeing-eye dog, I didn't really buy it that becoming blind would, in and of itself, turn people into rampaging savages. Turns out, neither did lots of blind people, who are protesting the film.
Anyway, I stray. For me, the fun of the Nobel is sampling new writers. Whether their topics and worldviews are to your taste or not, reading their prose broadens your sense of what can be done on the page, and most of the time--since the Nobel Committee has a great big world full of writers to choose from--it jolts you out of your own American narrowness.
But apparently, not all Americans feel that way. Rather than reading Le Clezio's work and entering the conversation about him, David Orr in this morning's New York Times fretted about whether the Nobel was fair to American poets in "Yet Once More, a Laurel Not Bestowed." (Maybe poets would get farther in the world if their supporters avoided musty phrases like laurel not bestowed. Just a thought.) In a piece bluntly called "Le Clezio--Who's He?," David Ulin in the L.A. Times grumbles:
Last week, Engdahl, the Swedish Academy's permanent secretary, called American literary culture "too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature" -- comments widely seen in the United States as evidence of the insularity of the Nobel itself and proof that American writers would be shut out again. . . .
It's hard to say where Le Clezio fits into all this; I've never read his books. In fact, until Thursday morning, I'd never heard of him -- and I'm not alone. Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the National Book Foundation, which administers the National Book Awards, said the same thing, as did David Kipen, literature director of the National Endowment for the Arts.
On the one hand, that might seem to support Engdahl's claims of American isolationism and insularity, but I'd suggest this unfamiliarity cuts both ways. How do we make the case for Le Clezio as representative of the best that literature has to offer when so many are unacquainted with his work?Oh, Mr. Ulin, have you "never read his books"? Have your very important literary friends never read his books? Is it merely coincidence that your two big guns administer the National Book Awards and the National Endowment for the Arts? Might this mean that they have to be fully immersed in and fully knowledgeable of the national scene, which might not leave them tons of time to rove through world lit?
Ulin quotes Adam Kirsch in Slate: "Unless and until [Philip] Roth gets the Nobel Prize, there's no reason for Americans to pay attention to any insults from the Swedes." Ah, nothing like a little hubris. Mmm-mmm, delicious. It's done Americans so much good recently. Ulin then waves away the other significant U.S. contender, Joyce Carol Oates, "because, to be frank, she's just not good enough." That's it. No explanation, no support. She's "just not good enough." David Ulin has spoken. So let it be written; so let it be done.
¡Hijole! This all strikes me as bizarre. As a dreamy postnationalist aware that the U.S. has consumed its share of the world's goodies and then some, I have no stake whatsoever in ensuring that my countrymen (and women, if they're "good enough") get Nobel recognition. And to assume that one is worthy of the Prize, and then stomp around angrily when one doesn't get it--or lobby for it, as Roth has done--reminds me (in an admittedly reckless leap of logic) of the spoiled American teenagers profiled in today's NYTimes Sunday Styles. These teens, accustomed from birth to having their every desire sated, their every whim indulged, are throwing fits when faced with their parents' recent belt-tightening measures to cope with our failing economy:
"I tried to tell Kaitlyn, 'We'll get the Hollister jeans at a thrift store,'" Mrs. Postle recalled. "She got angry and said: 'That's gross! Other people wore them!'"My, my, my. (If you're a parent, you've got to read the piece. If you were an indulged teen, brace yourself. Your kind doesn't come off pretty.)
But maybe the same thing will eventually happen with the Nobel. Maybe American authors and their indignant supporters will stomp off, permanently disenchanted with the Nobel: "That's gross! Non-Americans won it!"
But oh, wait! Roth-supporter Kirsch already has:
The Nobel committee has no clue about American literature. America should respond not by imploring the committee for a fairer hearing but by seceding, once and for all, from the sham that the Nobel Prize for literature has become.Sigh. Nothing like calling an institution a "sham" when they don't pick your guy. Well, the rest of us can keep being grateful for and interested in the news the Nobel brings.
I also have to wonder about the way in which so many disgruntled commentators keep pointing back to Toni Morrison's Nobel win in 1993, saying varied versions of, Has there been no one that good since then? Um, how about contemplating this answer: Maybe not.
It reminds me of conversations with more than one highly educated white man who's been very angry about the fact that neither Philip Roth nor John Updike has won the Nobel, while Morrison has. "And we all know she's just not that good," one kept saying. "We all know why they chose her." He never said race. He never said black. He never said woman. He didn't have to.
I wonder if the recent rash of irate, nationalist Nobel commentators feel they don't have to, either--if they feel that their affirmative-action insinuations about literary merit don't need to be articulated. Maybe they intuit that the majority of their readers share their assumptions.
Or maybe that's just me being paranoid about the presence of deep racial politics, preferences, and prejudices still at play in the United States. Maybe I'm too suspicious, too skeptical.
But you know, just watch the campaign coverage.
~
Many thanks for the Ulin link to Julie Holden, who coined the term Amerocentric for the occasion!
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M.I.A. No More
James and I went to Oberlin to visit Grey, and what a wonderful time we had! Grey's friends are lovely, and the campus is idyllic--a sort of little Hogwarts, especially when seen from the rooftop of one of the buildings at night, where his friend Aries took us to stargaze. It was our first visit to the school since he started, so we were really excited to see everything and to celebrate Grey's 20th birthday with him. Happy Birthday, Grey!
Speaking of Hogwarts, former single-mom-on-welfare J.K. Rowling was the highest-earning author in the world last year. According to Forbes, here's what she and the others in the top 5 raked in:
J.K. Rowling $300 million
James Patterson $50 million
Stephen King $45 million
Tom Clancy $35 million
Danielle Steel $30 million.
The other earners in the top ten are John Grisham ($25 million), Dean Koontz (also $25 million), Ken Follett ($20 million), Janet Evanovich ($17 million), and Nicholas Sparks ($16 million--and if you recently retched over Nights in Rodanthe, a.k.a. Katrina for Rich White People--oh, you didn't know a catastrophic storm was a catalyst for hot middle-aged sex?--you've got to wonder who's slurping up what Sparks is selling. What's he selling? Sparks, I guess. Fantasy sparks.)
Notes on race and gender: all 10 top-earning authors are white, and 7 out of the 10 are men.
I've heard that only about 400 writers in the U.S. are able to earn their entire livings by writing. Most writers--even successful, award-winning literary types--keep their day-jobs.
And in an economy in which food stamp participation rates are at their highest since Katrina and Rita, we're lucky to have them. I don't know about you, but I just watched my 401K lose a chunk of money. I'm going to be hanging on to my day-job as long as possible, and with job loss like it is, I'm going to feel grateful just to have the chance to work.
Speaking of Hogwarts, former single-mom-on-welfare J.K. Rowling was the highest-earning author in the world last year. According to Forbes, here's what she and the others in the top 5 raked in:
J.K. Rowling $300 million
James Patterson $50 million
Stephen King $45 million
Tom Clancy $35 million
Danielle Steel $30 million.
The other earners in the top ten are John Grisham ($25 million), Dean Koontz (also $25 million), Ken Follett ($20 million), Janet Evanovich ($17 million), and Nicholas Sparks ($16 million--and if you recently retched over Nights in Rodanthe, a.k.a. Katrina for Rich White People--oh, you didn't know a catastrophic storm was a catalyst for hot middle-aged sex?--you've got to wonder who's slurping up what Sparks is selling. What's he selling? Sparks, I guess. Fantasy sparks.)
Notes on race and gender: all 10 top-earning authors are white, and 7 out of the 10 are men.
I've heard that only about 400 writers in the U.S. are able to earn their entire livings by writing. Most writers--even successful, award-winning literary types--keep their day-jobs.
And in an economy in which food stamp participation rates are at their highest since Katrina and Rita, we're lucky to have them. I don't know about you, but I just watched my 401K lose a chunk of money. I'm going to be hanging on to my day-job as long as possible, and with job loss like it is, I'm going to feel grateful just to have the chance to work.
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