October 16, 2008
I didn't find out that Joe Hill is giving a reading at the South Portland Borders until after my review of his 20th Century Ghosts ran in the Phoenix a couple weeks ago. So I used the news as an excuse to provide you all with more coverage of this smart author. This afternoon, I did a short phone interview with Hill, who lives near Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We touched on a variety of topics, including typewriters (he plans to write his next novel on one), genre fiction, comic books, and Sarah Palin (I mean, really, it's unavoidable these days). Here are some highlights.
On the connection between words and writing implements:
"The typewriter is a forward-motion machine," he says. While today's writers can use word processers to "endlessly tweak" their sentences toward "intricate beauty," the typewriter fornces you to "just plunge forward." Some people might find 1960s and '70s stories (written primarily on typewriters) "less lyrical" he admits, "but they kind of thrash along in an exciting way." That's why, when he finishes his last book (a supernatural thriller to be called Horns) for William Morrow, he plans to write his next novel on a typewriter.
On crossing over between genre and literary fiction:
"For me as a writer, I love an exciting concept. I still have something of a comic book imagination. But for whatever reason, after a couple of days I need a character, someone with secrets and regrets. If I don't have that, it doesn't matter how good the concept is, it'll end up in the trash can."
On horror fiction's role in society:
"One of the things that horror fiction's always done is provide a safe place for society to explore what they're really scared of," such as nuclear annihilation (a la Them!) or communism (a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers).
When asked what he thinks is scary:
"I think Sarah Palin's a little scary."
Joe Hill will read at the South Portland Borders on October 28 at 7 pm.
Psst -- sneak preview -- He'll be reading a complete (and forthcoming in 2009) short story called "The Devil on the Staircase."
October 07, 2008
Congratulations to Bostonian Sue Miller, this year's winner of the Kate Chopin Award, bestowed each year to an author who embraces the feminist themes of Chopin's best-known work, The Awakening.
When I wrote about Miller's 2008 novel, The Senator's Wife, in January, I spoke to her about the complicated feminism of one of the book's two main female characters, Delia. Here's an excerpt:
The women and their husbands all have their
flaws. “Some people see Delia as a sap,” Miller says on the phone from
the West Coast, where she is starting her book tour. It’s true that the
sophisticated title character takes her philandering husband back time
and again, but “I’m not sure that’s a great failure on her part,”
Miller says. In fact, Delia is remarkably self-aware, and any
forgiveness happens on her own — if indistinct — terms.
The St. Louis Dispatch had an interview with Miller in Sunday's paper. She'll accept the award on Thursday in St. Louis, Chopin's hometown.
October 06, 2008
Did you catch Steven Millhauser in yesterday's NYT Book Review, musing on the value and ambition of short stories? It's lovely.
October 02, 2008
Nina wrote this piece about Kelly Link's new book of short (YA?!) fiction, Pretty Monsters. (NMac's written about Link's stories before.)
I wrote this about Joe Hill's not-so-new book of short fiction, 20th Century Ghosts.
Both writers combine "real-life horrors...with others less real," as Nina puts it. Both are worth reading.
September 30, 2008
Organizer and businessman Michael Ansara had been clandestinely writing poetry for years when his friend (and former congressman, but not the guitar player) Chet Atkins encouraged him to start the Massachusetts Poetry Outrach Project, aimed at bringing poetry back into the mainstream (or at least out of the back of the bookstore). It wasn't long before a series of MassPOP roundtables, funded with a seed grant from the state's Foundation for the Humanities and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, birthed the idea of a statewide poetry festival, which will become a reality over Columbus Day weekend.
The first-ever festival will take place in Lowell from October 10-12, and will feature readings, workshops, performances, and more. I reached Ansara last week via email; here's an edited version of our interview.
PHX: What of the three-day festival
are you most excited for?
MA:
Frankly just that we are having it at all. There has been nothing like this –
there have been bits and pieces here and there – but nothing that attempts to
spotlight the deep talent of the poets in this Commonwealth; nothing that can
grow and bring together not only much of the disparate poetry community from
across the state but also, slowly and over time, bring families and younger
people and older people and various communities together to celebrate and
experience poetry. This year we have no idea how many people will attend this
very first ever festival – 500? 1000? 1,500? We really do not know. But we are
committed over the coming years to building this into an event that will draw
first 2,500 people and then 5,000 and someday 10,000. The fact that we have
made this first event happen – that we have launched this brand new
Massachusetts Poetry Festival and gotten the participation of so many poets and
poetry groups and raised $50,000 from so many donors and sponsors – well I
think we are launched and that excites me no end.
The
other thing that excites me is how much program content we have for so many different
people – we have program for teachers, for high school students, for younger
kids ( including a poetry detectives program) , for people who want to learn to
write poems for the first time and for those who have been writing for years.
We have poetry with music. We have a panel on spiritualism and poetry and poets
who want to deal with the facts of our time. We have movies. We have
performance and slam poetry. Readings
in restaurants. We have [Phoenix writer] Lloyd Schwartz on [Elizabeth] Bishop. And we have XJ Kennedy and a
group of poets reading humorous poetry. We have amazing headline readings
with poets who all in their different ways will shake your spirit [including Nick Flynn, Robert Pinsky, and Marjorie Agosin]. We really
have something for almost everyone.
PHX: Why was Lowell chosen as the location for the festival?
MA:
We chose Lowell
for two reasons. One is that we didn’t want the Festival to be in Cambridge or Back Bay, or even Somerville . No knock on any of those
communities each of which I frequent often. But we wanted some place that was
unexpected. Secondly and much more importantly, Lowell has an amazing, deep and collaborative
set of institutions and organizations and people that really take seriously the
notion of the “creative economy.” When you look at the Lowell Folk Festival,
the Kerouac celebration, the Cambodian Opera, and the many other events and
ongoing efforts, Lowell
is right at the top of a place that is using the creative economy to drive real
development. I think some places and Western Mass.
and Lowell have taken the concept the furthest.
PHX: You’ve been writing poetry for 4 ½ years – what’s that creative process
like?
The
creative process is primarily – as you undoubtedly know—hard work. The
challenge for me was to write many poems and then rewrite them. Not once, not
10 times but literally 40 to 50 times. Also as I am older – I will be 62 this
January I found a real change in my learning process. In many ways I find it
harder to learn the intricacies of craft than I think I would have in my 20’s.
On the other hand I bring all the experience and confusions of my almost 62
years of living into what I write about. But I feel as if I am very much a
young – no really an infant – poet. I am learning every day and have so much
more to learn. I am really not ready to call myself a poet yet nor to have most
of my work published – the work is simply not good enough yet. I do some
reading a couple of time a year because I find that I learn a lot doing them.
I
do believe that the creative process is in large measure both that hard work I
mentioned above and then some element of ,mystery and spiritual experience. I
do not know where many of my ideas for poems come from – and when I am revising
them, often the fact that I am focused on words, sounds, beat, etc
somehow allows me to lose myself and suddenly find words and images that I
don’t really know where they came from – and then it’s time to revise, revise
and revise.
PHX: How is poetry relevant in
today’s society?
MA:
Most people do not think it is relevant. Most remember having to memorize
Evangeline or some other too long poem in the 7th grade. And now
think of poetry as not only separate from their lives but also the property of
abstruse people whose lines are impossible for most of us to understand. So
poetry seems distant and no longer accessible. And so many Americans don’t even
think about poetry. That is until there are moments of exquisite joy or deep
sadness or great trials.
Google "poetry and funerals" – over 7,000,000 links come up. Google "poetry and weddings"
– over 4,000,000 links come up. Why ? Because poetry remains our deepest song.
It is the sound and imagery and lyrics of our souls. It teaches us to look at
the smallest moment and the details of life and learn from them. It can inspire
us when we are heavy with grief. It gives voice to all the most important parts
of being human – and it helps us struggle with the mysteries and with the awful
facts of being human in this awe-inspiring chaos of the universe. Is it chance
that most religious texts incorporate poetry?
Of
course it is true that much of modern poetry is not accessible. There are poets
who disdain being part of the popular culture. There are many poems you would
not want students to spend their time studying. But there are so many contemporary
poets along with the great poets of the past who can still sing to us, who can
still help us make sense of the paradoxes of living, who can inspire, comfort
and stretch us. That is why when we bury our loved ones we want poetry. Now we
have to bring the great poets and the great poetry of our day out into the
light and bring it to people rather than asking them to find it in some cramped
back room of a bookstore. Hopefully, the Festival will be a small first step
toward that.
September 26, 2008
In this week's Portland Phoenix, I write about Abortion and Life, a new book by feminist author Jennifer Baumgardner. In the book, Baumgardner suggests that by ignoring or simplifying the emotional nuance of a decision to terminiate a pregnancy, we do a disservice, both the women who make that choice, as well as to the movement that protects our right to do so.
In her book, Baumgardner writes about Exhale, an after-abortion counseling service whose founders are "part of a growing group of primarily young abortion supporters who believe that the way we practice and talk about unplanned preganancy and termination has to eveolve, or we risk alienating more women, including those who've had abortion experiences."
Now, in collaboration with the RH Reality Check Web site, Exhale is lauching Pro-Voice in '08, a video campaign that asks women to post a one sentence response to the question: What should the next president say to convey
his support and his respect for your personal experience with abortion?
(The RH Reality Check Web site appears to be experiencing technical difficulties right now, so sorry for the lack of link.)
Here's Exhale co-founder Aspen Baker's You Tube call to action:
September 25, 2008
Two days after Jon Papernick told me that "I'm not certain that literature plays any role in the evolution or
resolution of international conflicts" (a statement with which I largely agree, though I also concur with his assessment that "literature can hold a mirror up to the world and
reflect it back in a more human and less biased way than one might see pictured
in the media"), I get an email about the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which will be bestowed this Sunday in Dayton, Ohio.
"Celebrating the power of literature to promote peace and non-violent conflict resolution," the prize has been in existence since 2006 and is an outgrowth of the Dayton Peace Prize, created to honor the peace accords that ended the Bosnian war. This year, Junot Diaz will get the fiction award for The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, and Edwidge Danticat will get the non-fiction prize for Brother, I'm Dying. Taylor Branch, who wrote about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement in the trilogy America in the King Years, will get a Lifetime Achievement Award.
September 23, 2008
Here are some excerpts from an email conversation with
Tova Mirvis, who lives in Newton Centre and is the author of two novels about Orthodox Jewish society. She's also appearing at the Get Lit 2008 event.
On Thursday, she'll discuss the "liberating" effect of reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter in high school -- here's a preview:
"But for me, reading it as a student in
a tiny Orthodox Jewish school in Memphis, steeped in religious rules and texts,
the book had a huge impact on me.
Somewhere during one of those high school
years, I read The Scarlet Letter. Here was blustery New England; here were other
people’s rules which were so strict that they made my own seem giddily
free-spirited. The distance from that world to mine: here was escape. Suddenly I
could be here and yet not here. It didn’t matter, at least not quite as much,
that I was in a school of eighteen girls, six in my class, most of whom I’d
known since nursery school; it didn’t matter as much that I was already feeling
an exhilarating, terrifying restlessness that I tried to hide as best I
could. But I have to think that I loved this book not just for its
distance to my world but also for its proximity. Hester Prynne, I
felt like I knew her. Here, finally, was the experience of someone living inside
such strict laws, bound by them, marked by them, yet oddly sustained by them.
Nothing was stripped away, nothing made nice for the sake of restoring the
semblance of piety. Here was sin, but also belief, doubt, compassion and
vengeance."
I also asked her what she thinks authors get right (or wrong) in their characterizations of Jewish women.
"I think that authors get it right when they stop thinking
about the fact that they are writing about Jewish women, (or any member of an
ethnic group,) and think about the individual. The pitfalls in writing about a
member of an ethnic group are to exoticize, to see them as other, to focus
solely on membership to the group, rather than the individual who lives inside
that group. Underneath any semblance of sameness, inside tights systems of
shared beliefs and lifestyle, there are individuals lurking, with the usual mix
of doubt, fear, passion, ambivalence and contradiction. Sometimes people who’ve
read my work will say, “are you saying that all Jewish women do this?” And I
just laugh. Of course not. There’s never an “All Jewish women,” just as there is
never an “all women.” What I love about writing fiction is that my job isn’t to
write about what everyone does. It’s to hew one character from the larger mass
and to make them as specific and as real and as alive as I can."
September 23, 2008
This Thursday, in Newton Centre, the Jewish books Web site JBooks will team up with JVibe, a magazine for Jewish teens, to present Get Lit 2008, a literary event in Newton Centre. The event, which will take place at the Union Street Restaurant and bar, will feature conversations with several Massachusetts-based authors, including Jon Papernick, the current writer-in-residence at Emerson College.
I reached Papernick, author of the novel Who by Fire, Who by Blood, by email yesterday, and asked him a couple of questions.
PHX: Obviously the ethnic and political
conflicts in the Middle East and in the United States heavily inform your work.
What role do you think art – specifically, literature – plays or can play in the
evolution (or resolution) of international conflicts?
JP: I'm not certain that literature plays any role in the evolution or
resolution of international conflicts. It's hard to imagine that those holding
the reins of power have any idea that most of us writers exist, and they
certainly don't have the time to read our works. I think it's a little vain to
think that a book can change the world, particularly considering that readership
in North America is in the midst of a slow and steady decline.
On the
other hand, I think that literature can hold a mirror up to the world and
reflect it back in a more human and less biased way than one might see pictured
in the media. In that sense, I think that literature represents a truer history
of the world we live in than many of the media accounts.
PHX: Are you looking forward to critiquing your published work in front of an
audience? What are you most nervous about? What do you think the audience can
learn from that experience?
JP: Actually, I
am not going to be critiquing a published work in front of an audience on
Thursday, but something I self published when I was 19 years old, and that is
truly more terrifying than sharing anything that was ever published
legitimately.
I'm really most nervous about showing how terrible a writer
I actually was at the age of 19. In fact, many of my students Emerson college
are significantly better writers than I was at that age, and that is what I
think people can learn from this: Stick with it and hone your craft and don't
give up, and one day, your work may be published.
Coming up -- a similar short Q&A with another author who'll appear at Union Street: Tova Mirvis.
September 08, 2008
Via the NYer's Book Bench blog.
September 03, 2008
No pun intended! In advance of her appearance in Portland later this month, I purchased Elizabeth Royte's Bottlemania today (it also has a Maine connection). I hope Lisa Margonelli's description of it as "undoctrinaire" is accurate.
August 28, 2008
Alright. So I was about to write a long post about using literature as a romantic litmus test, pegged to a press release I received earlier this week about the launch of the UK's Penguin Dating, powered by match.com. More on that later, perhaps.
But I took a break to wander up to the Portland Public Library, and scored this treasure from the Free Books pile: Health and Hygiene for the Modern Woman, by Leonard H. Biskind, MD, published in 1957.
Amazing; I love this stuff. Among the "22 Factual Chapters" are gems like: "Emotions and the Female Pelvis," "Little Girls' Problems," and "The Overweight Problem." Indeed! I must get to reading. Updates to come. For now, I'll leave you with this:
"The close relationship between emotions and so-called 'female trouble' has long been known, but its acceptance has been delayed for a variety of reasons. Now we speak not only of 'female trouble' but of 'troubled females.' There are a number of emotions which, when unrealistic, can cause symptoms of female trouble or aggravate obstetric and gynecologic conditions."
I can so picture Betty Draper reading this book.
August 22, 2008
Even in her unbridled fantasies, happiness had been difficult to conjure.
The Anna (Roitman) K. of Irina Reyn's new novel What Happened to Anna K. (Touchstone)
is doomed from the start. Literature and movies have blurred her
conception of reality. She wants Heathcliff and Darcy, romance,
Dostoyevsky-esque intensity combined with fairytale endings. But she
recognizes that even in her romantic imaginings, there's always a tinge
of sadness, of unresolved conflict, of stormy situation. It's as though
she needs to exist at the apex of every story, unable to move toward
the denouement. And in this modern re-imagining of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina that takes place within New York City's Russian immigrant community, Anna's intellectual depressiveness is her fatal downfall.
August 14, 2008
The folks over at The Millions have posted their responses to the question: What was the book that started it all for you? They've encouraged lurkers to post responses either in the comments or on their own blogs; I'm taking the second route.
Blogger Edan and I have a lot in common. Here's her entry:
"According to my mother, I could read novels before I
was potty trained. I'm not contesting that mythology, but the first
time I remember being totally enamored with a book was later than that,
at about age 8, when my mother bought me Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery. I'd read and liked other books - The Babysitters Club series, of course, and nearly everything by Judy Blume - but Anne of Green Gables
felt more magical, and more mature. It took me to a faraway world,
specifically, to Prince Edward Island in the early 20th century, and
used big, unfamiliar words (I remember asking my mom what the word
"abundance" meant on the ride home from the bookstore - I had a small
tingling of fear - or was it excitement? - that this book would be
difficult). I loved that the story's protagonist had carrot red hair,
and, even better, freckles like mine! I took to calling people "kindred
spirits" and wondering if I could pull of puffed sleeves. I spent the
next couple of years reading Montgomery's entire oeuvre, and I started
taping the following warning into my inside book covers:
This book is one thing
My fist is another
You take this
And you'll get the other"
I never threatened physical violence on book theives, but everything else she writes is accurate -- I'd gorged on Judy Blume, Little House on the Prairie, the Babysitters Club, Nancy Drew, and even Sweet Valley High, but nothing touched my imagination like Anne, Gilbert, Marilla, and the rest of the Prince Edward Island gang. I plowed through all eight books (through Rilla of Ingleside, about Anne's daughter), as well as the spin-offs about Avonlea. They were magical.
Other seminal books in my early literary life include Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy (note my earlier post about literary tattoos; this book convinved me that being a weird weirdo was okay), Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (which instilled an unnatural belief that every romantic relationship is passionate, fiery, and depressing), and Elizabeth George Speare's The Witch of Blackbird Pond (which made me run around my backyard pretending to be a spunky Colonial girl accused of witchcraft). Throw in The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin for entertainment value. And of course, To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, and that other Bronte's Jane Eyre (although I hate the anti-feminist ending). And Roald Dahl's Matilda (a clever girl who reads a lot -- what better role model?!), and My Side of the Mountain (I find that young men generally prefer Hatchet, but MSOTM is inexplicably more gender-neutrally inspiring -- also, Jean Craighead George lives in my hometown).
But this isn't supposed to be a list of "the best books I read when I was young," it's supposed to be an identification of "the book that started it all" -- and I interpret that as: the book that opened up the world of words and made me love reading. And for that I have to go back to Beverly Cleary's Ramona the Pest, which I vividly recall reading in bed with my mother at a very young age. Ramona was a champ.
August 05, 2008
Yesterday, Maureen Dowd compared Barack Obama to Jane Austen's prideful Mr. Darcy, and took the metaphor farther by claiming that we Americans are collectively his Elizabeth Bennet. Fine. Dowd also casts John McCain as Wickham, the manipulative lying cad who somehow pulls the wool over even an intelligent person's eyes.
I've spent some part of the last 24 hours brainstorming how I would fill out the cast...But found it more difficult than I'd anticipated. Any help?
Mr. Collins (the gross and annoying cousin who fawns over Elizabeth, only to be spurned): I wanted to say Mitt Romney, but he's simply too handsome to play a simpering fool. Guiliani is too strong-willed, and Kucinich didn't fawn either (though they are both slightly troll-like).
Jane (Elizabeth's kind, beautiful, and rather dull older sister): The America of four years ago (the one that let G-Dubs get re-elected).
Bingley (Jane's kind, handsome, and rather dull suitor): I would say Karl Rove, but he's not very handsome...Or very kind. Or even very dull. But he did help woo America, four years ago. Here's a better idea: John Kerry or John Edwards -- they're both handsome, kind, whatever, and did, in fact, "win over" the America described above, by virtue of pushing more than half of the electorate away.
Mrs. Bennet (the overbearing, abrasive matriarch that often ruins everything): Dick Cheney
Mr. Bennet (the intelligent, bemused, somewhat detached father who puts up with everyone else's crap): Sweden? Canada?
At some point I ceased caring if these make sense in a political context; I just like thinking of Dick Cheney as Mrs. Bennet.
