In Which Our Hero . . .
Saturday, July 16, 2005
A Book To Read Again And Again
Ed Schwarzschild's debut novel is one I loved so much I read it twice. Through clear and precise prose, Schwarzschild manages to examine moral struggle on many levels. On the first read, I was swept away by the challenge of a character to make a new start after a dark past. To see a person in such a trap--driven by honorable intentions, yet haunted by a life of dishonor--was truly heartbreaking. Yet the book, on closer examination, also works on familial, historical and philosophical levels. And the more I read, the more I understood its sly humor. This dynamite books defies easy comaprison and must be taken on its own terms. If only all books created, animated and inhabited their own universes the way Responsible Men does.
Monday, July 04, 2005
The Australia Stories: A Novel
I read this wonderful book when it was first released, but something--summmer weather, I thought--made me pick it up again. Quickly I realized the book had been with me the whole time, and within a few pages, Pierce's voice had lulled me again into a state of high suggestibility where landscape, history and dream comingle. At first the novel seems fragmented, but soon you realize that Pierce's characters, especially Sam Browne, move according to their own timelines. Trauma, uncertainty and loss guide this book on a scavenger hunt of meaning that lead to the Blue Mountains of Australia, a setting that, like an astrological chart, casts its fortune on three generations of soon-to-be wanderers. Todd Pierce's The Australia Stories is just as timeless and influential.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Bring Me Your Saddest Arizona
I got an advance copy of Ryan Harty’s forthcoming collection Bring Me Your Saddest Arizona and was blown away by the stories. The pieces in this collection hail from the other side of the emotional train tracks, a place where chaparral and saguaros fill the lots where homes and families should be. With subtlety and control, Harty makes arroyos run with missed opportunity and sunsets burn red with loneliness. Yet these stories are far from empty—through them cruise rock stars, Kachina gods and a robotic boy who’s more real than real. In one story, a friend wads up another’s wedding vows, while elsewhere, a brother sends his dead sister’s cats scurrying into a Vegas night. Harty knows the way young lovers stumble toward one another, and he knows the phantom pains of separation. As one character points out in “Between Tubac and Tumcacori,” “At a certain point in your life country music is all you want to hear.” While the eight stories in Bring Me Your Saddest Arizona lack the twang and swagger of western tunes, they contain the same essential tales of love and loss, and they stick in your head just as long, rolling around for days and days.
Check it out on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Monday, June 27, 2005
Bookmark Now
Here's an essay I have in Kevin Smokler's anthology Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times. You may be a follower of Kevin's blog "Where There's Smoke."
A Call for Collaboration
You know the myth of the young writer: hands in jeans pockets, he (invariably it’s a he) wanders the quais of the Seine before dawn, absorbing the hollow desperation of the city. His collar is up, his cigarette dim, and he stops to pass a bottle with homeless men whose faded French prison tattoos will certainly show up in his novel. The novel in question (about a guy like himself) is written on a roll of bathroom towels in his backpack. He doesn’t read, lest it corrupt his voice, and though he doesn’t speak much, he sees everything. He’s so outside he’s inside, which is why his novel will shine the excruciating light of truth back into the souls of average folks. Or he’s in an all-night diner outside Seattle, scribbling notes on placemats while salty eggs cool on the plates of truckers. This writer’s wearing and oilcoat and his novel’s about hitchhikers—he thinks it will probably end violently in Alaska. Or perhaps the writer we’re thinking of is in the Mission district, something terribly ironic printed on his shirt. His glasses are purposefully thick, and he’s somebody that looks so nobody that he’s obviously somebody. This novel’s about the underbelly of the underbelly, and man it’s raw.
Okay, I’ll stop there, you get the picture. Unfortunately, some version of this is what inspires many young writers, and I wish it wasn’t so. Not that I’m against aggrandizing artists into romantic figures—it would just be nice to have some variety in the models. How about mythologizing “The Generous, Friendly Dude Who Writes Every Single Day” or “That Softspoken Religious Lady Whose Prose is Dark and Mesmerizing”? Mostly I’m against the image of the writer as a lone, edgy brooder not so much because it’s inaccurate but because it’s of little use. Writing is hard work, and if anything’s true about the process, it’s the fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper. What’s less romantic than staring alone at a blank screen? And edgy? I’ve changed the cat litter because I didn’t know what my characters were going to say next.
The urge to create a fictional narrative is a mysterious one, and when an idea comes, the writer’s sense of what a story wants to be is only vaguely visible through the penumbra of inspiration. A good story feels both surprising and inevitable, fresh and familiar. When starting a story, it seems as if there are a million possible first lines, and if things go right, only one possible last one. Eventually, once the tumbling inertia of scene sets in and characters begin impose their own will on events, the story begins to dictate its own direction. But how to get from nothing to something? With so many elements outside the writer’s initial vision—where to open, what to show, where to go—how does the story get from uncertainty to inevitability?
A writer’s “toolbox” is one weapon against the unknown. While the myth of the lone-wolf writer gets much mileage from the noirish struggle with the creative process, most writers arm themselves with a knowledge of narrative tradition and convention. Instincts, even those amped by sangria and Marlboros, can only take a story so far. For a young writer, a grasp of fiction technique—things like perspective, point of view, tense, narrative distance, point of narration, and so on—should be worth way more than a Eurorail pass to Pamplona. Other, less-flashy qualities like patience, endurance and effort don’t hurt, either. I’m a pretty big believer in loyalty, and I try to treat my stories with the kind of commitment I’d show real people. The best new story ideas tend to come along just as a current one seems to be foundering, but it would be like cheating on a story to turn my gaze to a tempting new thing. Trekking through a novel, new story ideas are like those distant mud cities that appeared to Spaniards as bathed in golden light. At times like that a writer’s greatest tool is perhaps fidelity.
I’d like to propose adding collaboration to the writer’s toolbox, an idea that strikes at the core of popular culture’s conception of the writer as a lone saddleman of the literary prairie. Artists collaborate in music, cinema, theater, dance, and so on. But only one hand can hold a paintbrush or pen, most people would counter. Writers already work together in many ways—workshops, salons, editors, reading groups—yet true collaboration is considered outside the process. Is that because collaboration is in opposition to where stories come from and how they get on the page, or is it because it threatens our idea of what a storyteller is?
Somehow it’s fine for people to collaborate on a musical or an action movie, but the American novel is off limits. Rabbit, Run wasn’t written by Updike & Sons and The Joy Luck Club didn’t come from Tan and the Gang. The place where most interaction is seen between writers on their texts is in the workshops of the university MFA programs. Much vinegar is spilled over the “MFA story,” which is supposedly competent yet uninspired. By competent, it’s commonly thought that the writer’s toolbox is full, and by uninspired it means they’ve never seen a bullfight. That portrait’s just the opposite of our mythic would-be Kerouac, who is highly inspired, yet incompetent. Personally, I believe the proliferation of MFA programs is a good thing—more hounds to the hunt—and what’s wrong with learning the skills of writing first, so that when an important story comes along, it has a game author?
Every writer is given a gift or two—not much more—and his or her job is to learn the rest of the skills, so form and voice can be given to any character that comes along. One beginning writer will have an ear for dialog while another is mellifluously lyrical. So it goes for description, humor, voice, etc. Every writer can track his or her progression from leaning on the crutch of one skill until a new one was acquired. My first stories were all about setting, and then came stories that were pure action, and then I got point of view happy for a while. And then comes the day—often in an MFA program, sometimes in an old folks’ home—when all the skills have to be put together into organic storytelling. The key to learning is maintaining a repose of humility, and it is for posturing against this that I most fault the myths of being an artist. By telling artists-to-be to seek the mystery of writing, rather than the knowledge of it, they are doomed to be baffled and unable when they find it.
The great criticism of the MFA workshop is that in discussing any story, a committee will seek the consensus of a middle opinion, thus rounding off any highly original or risk-taking elements, leaving a capable but safe piece of art. Groupthink is a genuine danger in workshops, especially when short stories are under consideration. Novels are somewhat different. While a writer can be a little dictatorial in terms of imposing a will upon a short story, novels are political entities. By political I mean that competing concerns are subject to negotiation and compromise. If, for instance, an author wants to add some extra access to a character’s thoughts in a given chapter, the writer will gain a thoughtful, contemplative feel that invites the reader closer to the character. That extra internal narrative, however, is going to come at the expense of pacing, which will then alter the tone, which will then change the mood, and so on. Novels are so complex and interdependent that, like the dialectic of a workshop, every suggested action has to be weighed against many outcomes, some unintended and unforeseen. In that way, a central part of the process of writing a novel is a conversation about the process.
Which brings me to the notion of collaboration. My wife is a novelist, and beyond reading each other’s work editorially, we discuss our novels all the time. While writing my last novel, I asked her to help me with an element, and for several days, she roamed through my nearly completed book, typing here and there. A friend recently described making a change in her almost finished book as skipping a rock across the pond: the rock only touches water four or five times, though each one sends rings of concentric circles reverberating outward. So my wife skipped a rock through my book, and it was the better for it. Partly based on that, we decided to collaborate on a project that lasted nearly a year. The work was both wholly thrilling and often maddening. I don’t know if what we wrote will ever be published, but I feel like I did my best work under the influence of a peer, and I’m twice the writer for having done it. Here are a couple things I learned:
The mysterious charge of creating a character-driven narrative was no less hypnotic, though our ability to capture it on the page was doubled. We simply had twice the creative abilities. My wife has a strong sense of voice. I’m good at details. My dialog is suggestive; hers is smart and sassy. The simple truth is we were able to say and convey twice as much. When I was at a loss, she had a solution, and visa versa. When we both had solutions, we debated. When my precious lines and jeweled descriptions got tossed, it hurt. Sometimes it was simple necessity: we had two good lines and one had to go. Other times, I saw she was approaching a scene differently, striking a different note than I would have or revealing a different facet of character. Those were humbling and valuable looks at another writer’s process. Very rarely is one author allowed to enter another’s creative space, but once there you realize the range of ways to evoke character is far greater than you knew. Usually, the only option for understanding a writer’s intentions is to interpret the published work. But when you collaborate, you can ask her as she types.
Commitment became an important aspect of the work, and soon the story was more important than its authors. With ownership less of an issue, the focus moved away from us and toward the characters. One result of this is the fact that we rarely lost control of the narrative, by which I mean we tended not to go off on tangents that suited and authorial fancy at the expense of the characters’ progression. Writer’s block seemed like less of an issue as we inspired each other and fed off one another’s ideas, though we did lose productive days to debate and sometimes argument.
Finally, the conversation about the novel became one of my favorite aspects of the collaboration. Wittgenstein said to measure a thing is to change it. I think that’s why humans rarely take stock of their own lives and instead evaluate art. Collaboration somehow made it feel like we were managing to do both. Leaving no narrative move unquestioned, our decision making became focused on how we could reveal character on as many different levels as possible. The challenge was to demystify the act of writing without demystifying its inspiration. So, like jurists, we sought the truth of our characters’ experiences by arraigning their perceptions before the bar of human behavior. I know that sounds like a tall order. It was, and it didn’t always work, but if I was to set an ideal model for writing, with the best possible intentions, it would have been this one.
I wish I would’ve been asked to collaborate on just one story for a workshop back in my MFA program. I would have hated it, of course, because it would’ve meant that I’d have to question all my instincts, that I’d have to get off the crutch of my limited skills, and that I’d have to write a true character for once, a fictitious person that wasn’t a guised version of myself. I would have had to ask, out loud, questions like: What is this story about, what is this scene trying to show, and what’s at the heart of this character? And I’d have had to listen to another writer answer. For once it would have been about writing and not “being a writer.”
I’m not suggesting that there should be two names on every book, and I’m sure that, years from now, young writers will still turn to the Bukowskis and Keroacs for models of how to tell stories that matter. It would be nice to think there was another model, though, one that could inspire a pair of young, edgy writers to walk along lonely railroad tracks, kicking rocks and running dialog back and forth for the story they were writing. Or better yet: a husband and wife team in Nikes, debating about how to close a novel chapter as one folds laundry and the other changes a diaper.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Great Documentaries
I've been watching a lot of great documentaries lately; here are a few of them: American Movie, Hands on the Hardbody, Speedo, Faster, My Flesh and Blood, Capturing the Friedmans, Kon Tiki, Grey Gardens, Sherman’s March, Devil’s Playground, Lost in La Mancha, OT: Our Town, Bus 174, Super Size Me, Buena Vista Social Club, Crumb, Last Days, The Fog of War, Dark Days, Into The Arms of Strangers, Mr. Death, Murder on a Sunday Morning, One Day in September, When We Were Kings, Spellbound, Stevie, Best Boy, American Pimp, Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, American Dream, Berga, Celluloid Closet, Bowling for Columbine, Brother’s Keeper, Choke, Comedian, Endless Summer, Dogtown and Z Boys, Cinemania, Eyes of Tammy Faye, Daughter from Danang, Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, Keep the River on Your Right, HellHouse, The Iceman Interviews, Home Movie, Kurt & Courtney, The Long Way Home, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, Pumping Iron, Roger & Me, Rolling Stones: Gimme Shelter, Trekkies, Scratch, The Smashing Machine, Southern Comfort, Startup.com, Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator, Touching the Void, The Trials of Henry Kissenger, Waco: The Rules of Engagement, Biggie & Tupac, Control Room, Hell’s Highway, Running on the Sun, The War Room, Harlan County USA, Hoop Dreams, The Jaundiced Eye, The Thin Blue Line, 4 Little Girls, The Civil War, Fahrenheit 9/11, The Kid Stays in the Picture, Gates of Heaven, Vernon Florida, Wadd: The Life and Times of John Holmes, Salesman, Paragraph 175, Cane Toads, Hearts of Darkness, Some Kind of Monster, The Farm, Streetwise, eDreams, Standing in the Shadow of Motown, The Nazi Officer's Wife, Children Underground, I am Trying to Break Your Heart, The Young and the Dead, Rites of Passage, Smothered, Sing Faster, Uncovered, Go T igers! Billabong Odyssey, Be Good Smile Pretty, Fullframe, DiG!, 28Up, Outfoxed, Overnight
Friday, June 17, 2005
A Kind of Flying by Ron Carlson
I’ve always loved endings. I’m fascinated by the way a story becomes itself, gathers force, and then, just as critical mass is reached, powers down. My favorite stories crimp like that, right as their full trajectories become visible; like being in a car that’s just screeched to a halt, a good story leaves you rocking in your seat, armhairs on end from unrealized intertia. So, by mathematics alone, I’m a sucker for story collections: with a novel, you only get one ending; with a collection, you get the whole quiver. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy the grand vision of the novel, and it’s true that a story collection will never have the voltage of novels like Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy or Beloved by Toni Morrison. But remember: it’s the amperage that kills. Pure electricity are stories like Stuart Dybek’s “Paper Lantern,” Lorrie Moore’s “People Like That Are the Only People Here,” Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain,” Robert Stone’s “Helping,” or Charles D’Ambrosio’s “The Point.” You could light the sky with the story-power of Robert Olen Butler or Alice Munroe, two of our best practitioners. And with Tobias Wolff’s prose, you could weld. But the writer who first influenced me, and has continued to influence me most through my career is Ron Carlson, a true writer’s writer. His first three short story collections—The News of the World, Plan B for the Middle Class and Hotel Eden—have recently been published in one volume, A Kind of Flying.
For a book to take up residence inside of you, so that it influences you from within, it’s either got to hit you at the right time in your life or be rich enough that future readings reveal new, deeper meanings. For me, Ron Carlson’s stories did both—his work became that length of rope you tie around your waist before entering a cave: no matter what adventures or perils awaited, everything would lead back through that safety line to the place you started and the sense of security that allowed you to take a risk. Carlson’s stories were my permission, my proof of possibility and my way back when I got lost.
I first came across Carlson’s stories in the late 80s. I’d been playing hooky from life—working construction, hanging out with people who took Jimmy Buffet literally—so when I finally decided to grow up and go to college, I had to face some of the reasons it had been appealing to lead an incurious life of worktrucks and weekends in Mexico. This is when I came across Carlson’s story “The Governor’s Ball,” about a man who voluntarily does dirty work so he can avoid the emotional work of connecting to his wife. Instead of joining her for an important function, the narrator spends the evening taking a mattress to the dump, and the whole time he drove around his fictional town, I was thinking, I know what’s eating at that guy, I know what he’s not talking about! Then I stumbled upon “DeRay” in GQ. Here the narrator covets the life of his neighbor DeRay, a man the narrator perceives to possess far greater abilities than himself. I looked up from my magazine in quad of Arizona State and studied all the students who had been intimidating me. I said to the narrator, Man, why can’t you see all the good things you’ve got going on. Perhaps these sound like naïve reading experiences, but a good story, one that points out personal truths, always makes a child out of me.
I suddenly wanted to write a story, too, one in which the character doesn’t have to say what he’s feeling because it’s obvious in his decisions, observations, descriptions. If only everyone could be read that way, I thought. If only I could read myself so easily. So I took a fiction workshop (I also needed an easy “A”) and I had a surprising experience: all of my supposed flaws—daydreaming, rubbernecking, pointless lying, compulsive exaggeration—combined to make something good: storytelling. It was one of those rare moments in which I knew what I wanted my destiny to be. I wanted what Ron Carlson had: the ability to tell a story deeply enough that every reading yielded something new. That kind of story didn’t have a single ending, but many of them. The secret ingredient, I think I’ve figured out, is wisdom. I don’t think I have that kind of large understanding of human behavior yet, but it’s a pretty good destiny to aim for.
I recently picked up a book that had spoken to me as a teenager. But perusing its pages again, I was left flat. The young man who’d loved that book was no more, and the book had little to offer the person I’d become. It’s true that I couldn’t have encountered Carlson’s stories at a better time—I soon tore through everything he’d written, relishing other stories like “Blazo,” “Nightcap” and “Oxygen”—and I realized that his work has such a scope that there couldn’t be a better time for anybody to encounter his work. His stories are so agile of voice, broad of heart, and deeply layered, that there’s something in them for everyone. You couldn’t bearhug stories like “The Hotel Eden” and “Dr. Slime” into the same pages of another author’s book, but Carlson does it again and again. The deluded whimsy of a story like “Bigfoot Stole My Wife” somehow fits next to the deflected seriousness of “Life Before Science.”
Carlson’s stories are famous among writers for their humor, warmth and relentless attention to the human heart. In his narrator’s voices, you can hear exactly what they wish they could tell you. In their actions you can see what they truly yearn for. Carlson just seems to know about people, real and invented. He knew me as a lost construction worker, though he’d never met me. And he knew me as a college student, a struggling writer, and now he knows what I’m experiencing as a full-fledged grown up. It turns out the first story I read by Carlson was “Milk,” in which a new father must confront the vulnerabilities of becoming a parent in a dangerous world. I reread that story when my son was born and again this summer when my daughter arrived. Like all of Carlson’s work, when I read it at different points in my life, it had a different ending: mine.
