This morning I’m reading the stories from Mark Richard’s book The Ice at the Bottom of the World. I’m doing it because Amy Hempel advised us to do it in her summer workshop and because it came in the mail last week–usually I try not to read so much when I am revising. My first thought, the syntax is unique and rough to get through but the language so unique. Also I love the stories of childhood told in a present tense. Uncle Trash reminds me of Lolo and should get me through the day of sitting and revising.

Photos: Kristen Stewart’s ‘On the Road’ movie set in Gatineau.

A student mentioned to me this term that On the Road was being made into a movie. I think he also mentioned the movie would be directed by Francis Ford Coppola. But I have some time on my hands as I am motivating and resting myself up to grade this next week, so I’ve been reading IMDB and found that Walter Sayles is directing currently in Canada. I do remember Sayles directing Motorcycle Diaries about Che Guevara’s youth. And I thought that film was very thoughtful and filmed well when I watched it from Netflix last year.

 And I have to say the photos I found look interesting. Choked me up a bit to see Sal and Dean. I don’t recognize any of the actors which I think is a positive for the movie–using unknowns, I mean. But this book that I teach in my novels class means so much to me–not as much as Dharma Bums or Desolation Angels which are books I read in the lowest point of my life and such a nice contrast to the hard-boiled Lost Generation books I was reading in highschool. But On the Road means so much to me–Kerouac who I’ve written quite a bit on this writing blog–means so much to me I almost don’t have the words as I watch some of the photos. I do hope they handle the material with care.

I’ve been obsessing over the novel Fat City and the film Fat City over the last couple of days. I should be reading So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell. I should be grading my Lit students’ second formal essay. But instead I am rereading scenes and watching scenes from the film. The film follows the novel so closely. And I even went so far as to copy ch 19 for my creative writing students because I believe it represents exactly what Tracy Daugherty advises in his essay “A Character’s Skin”. And I know I’ve written about this book before–many times. And I’ve written about the Denis Johnson essay about Leonard Gardner and his fine novel and his fine screen play that John Huston turned into a very understated film–understated is how Netflix describes the film and you can watch it immediately if you have a Netflix account. The film is very subtle and slight in its meanings/themes. And I’ve taught this book in a couple of my novels class and right now I regret not having it on my reading list for next Fall but perhaps next Spring.

What I love about the book is the third person narration and the very concise/brief chapters–also the very precise narration. Denis Johnson in his essay admits to obsessing over Gardner’s paragraphs and the form–something I can’t but obsess over myself. I rarely read books that I obsess over as much as ch 19 of Gardner’s book–the interactions and the shifts into omniscient narration. The achingly beautiful relationships between Billy Tully and his doomed relationship with Oma. Like Johnson, as soon as I read I picked up my notebook and drafted the Notorious Cornbread Baca and the places of my youth in Colorado–imagining the places from Baca’s youth.

Now I obsess over the film and the locations and the peripheral players–showing Huston’s keen eye.

Some random thoughts on Bambara: I haven’t been able to teach an ethnic lit course for a while but I am glad to have the opportunity again. After Tancredo’s ridiculous call for literacy tests this last week and also the crazy comments I hear from my students in the hallways I can’t think of anything more important at my school. Sadly we only have one ethnic lit course a term offered though I wish there were more. Also to spend three hours a week talking about Sherman Alexie and Luis Valdez is an incredible opportunity. Shared experiences I admire so much.

The demographic of my school does not quite match the demographic of the town of Springfield and so I feel the course is necessary. Crucial for more aware and well rounded students. Recently I read that only 9% of college professors are Latino and so I feel needed somehow. Like my degree is needed too. Hard to explain. I rarely feel needed in my work. But I feel I have a perspective somehow needed in the midwest.

And because of this course I have been able to return to the writing of James Alan McPherson and of course Toni Cade Bambara. I think I first read Toni Cade Bambara at Colorado State in an intro to lit course. The first time I read the short Gorilla, My Love was in that course. I’ll never forget how it reminded me of my sister and how we always felt duped by the adult world around us. The way I always distrusted adults who seem to throw us away as kids. And as I revisit Bambara’s work I am more and more impressed by the use of dialect and of course the resistance her characters have to institutional education and the seemingly false reputation of institutional education. The idea that school and college will save us somehow.

And of course the dialect and the aesthetic of presenting such a real-world language matches concerns I have of representing the spanglish or mix of english and spanish I grew up with. I obsess over this in my own work. The risk of pushing away an audience. I can’t get out of my mind an editor who wrote me the following: You can’t expect our readers to know what this means. No one I knew spoke the spanish I learned in spanish class and like Richard Hugo suggests that language means more to me than it ever could to a reader. It has to. It also reminds me of how no one spoke correct grammatical english at school or at home.

This perhaps illustrates the connection between Latino representation and the representation that occurs in African-American authors’ books. Representation and even a celebration of how people actually speak. I talk about representation that occurs within the literature more than I talk about the stories. I can’t help it I like form. The voice is so unique to me and so real. Very similar to the voice that happens in Junot Diaz’ collection Drown and of course the voice within Susan Lori Parks Top Dog Underdog. I’m talking about creative literacies that represent how language is much richer in neighborhoods than in schools. 

Also maybe I love the work because of her focus on the oppression of youth as in Salinger’s work. As in Tobias Wolff’s non-fiction work. I also like the way her characters–always young girls–don’t take shit off no one.

Dana Gioia writes that as teachers we should be honest about what we read and what we love. To be honest about what speaks to us as writers as well as readers. And I have to say her stories speak to me more than Hemingway, Woolf or even James Joyce.  The so-called classics.

This morning I’m thinking about the essay “Finding the Place: a Migrant Childhood” by Wallace Stegner. I’ve gone on about how much I admire Stegner’s writing style focusing on nature and also his use of long, complex sentences–these remind me of Richard Hugo–and this essay was from a book of essays I bought in Colorado Springs last year I’ve just gotten around to reading. In the essay Stegner recounts how he grew to be a writer and also a writer of place. He writes on how while growing up he was unaware he was a writer of the west–that’s just where he grew up. Like anyone, he had no sense of it ‘while it was happening’, he recounts. And reading I was surprised just how many cities he’d lived in at such a young age. He writes: I was born on wheels. And he lists how he lived in twenty houses between the ages of twelve and twenty. Amazing.

And mostly I read Stegner’s fiction and mostly I read fiction in general choosing fictive places created by real events. Though it is funny how I think of my family and my own upbringing in Colorado when I write fiction. And I have this thought quite often when I think of my own work–just how much of my own life I bring to fiction even though the characters are not real. I sometimes write on this weblog how I feel imaginary voices are calling to me but they aren’t imaginary. My Tio is real and my Abuelito is real–the conversations are fake but the people and places are real. As real as I can make them anyway from my imagination.  That paradox drives the prose.

Like Stegner I feel I can’t forget where I came from. I think about this when I buy a four dollar latte and how my Grandfather would lecture me. Or even the idea of becoming a teacher or a writer was sensible and the man approved in a way I was never comfortable with. As if I was choosing job security over creativity. I think about that all the time when I feel teaching is consuming my time.

Anyway, I admire how Stegner believes he returned to the west both literally and of course he returns figuratively in his work–in the descriptions of place and the in the creation of prose spaces. I also think I return to the small places of Colorado where I grew up when I write but also the past and also to all those unfinished or perhaps non-existent conversations I should have had in my youth.

I could go on all day about my love for Kerouac–the first time I found his books but you get the idea. Anyway I’ve been reading his Belief and Technique for Modern Prose as well as his collected notebooks Penguin published last year and I am continually amazed at his obsessions. Hugo says that’s what we pick up first–we notice other writer’s obsessions and they perhaps give us insight to our own. I think Kerouac’s obsessions are for the writing itself–he is possessed with the idea of being a writer. In all of his notes there is never a hesitation to call himself a writer. His work ethic is indomitable.  

Other obsessions of course are with the country and with travel and with capturing and remembering–turning the everyday into folklore of the self–all in the daily practice of writing.

Of course spontaneous prose and the idea of not censoring one’s expression. I like the debate in Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch between the Ginsberg character and the Kerouac character. Ginsberg was a relentless reviser of work nd Kerouac wanted to sit and get it down–I know some writers like that. I find myself taking on both points of view–take it as it comes or form it up constantly.

Anyway I love his ideas on his own personal aesthetic:

Yesterday I obsessively watched David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch and found the film not to be about the bookas much as entirely about Burroughs and all of his writing–it seems as if scenes were taken from every short story and novel–Naked Lunch and Queer.

I was particularly interested in the scenes witht he writing machines as bugs or focuses of addiction. I was amazed at how the dirctor–and of course Burroughs–sees language or writing as a disease or addiction. The conflict came from the lack of typing machine or loathing of particular bug-like typing machine. Now that I think of it there were kinds of writing or word machines inthe film–British and American. At one point Bill Lee trades in his gun at a pawn shop for a typewriter and so I satarted to think of all the machines I have had. I remember using the Abuelitos old type writer for high school papers and also for college papers when I went away to school. I bought an electric typewriter back in the day until I bought a clone computer the size of a dresser. Then I had a Mac laptop that was given to me at work until finally a Dell laptop. I have always been lugging something around to bang words off of.

I was interested because I have a typing machine in every room of the old apartment now and at work and in all the classrooms I work in. I wonder what Burroughs is trying to tell us about the sensuality and the viscerality of words and language and how we possibly fetishize our own complex reading and writing–to the point of self destructive addiction. The creative literacy feeding on itself.

In this scene, Bill Lee seems to be introducing drugs to author Jane Bowles and having some sort of shared experience with drugs and writing.

PS: I sent out Farmhouse in the Lanes–to TinHouse– and Rabbit Story–to Glimmer Train.

I first read Yates’ Revolutionary Road years ago–maybe back at Colorado State. I had been reading as much Richard Ford as I possibly could after reading Rock Springs and Independance Day and in one of those books–in the forward–he lists Yates as the most underappreciated writer in America and I wanted to see if this were true and so I picked up his collection of short stories and Rev Road at the bookstore. I remember I read them outside of assigned reading. I had finished reading a bunch of Salinger and also Cheever and Yates was in that post-war style yet the novel Rev Road is wider in scope and breadth. The writing is less romanticized than Salinger and perhaps more crafted and layered than Cheever. At least in my small reading view.

In between prep time for school and my own research of Cornbread I’ve been reading Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels. I like to read at it slowly before I get to sleep at night–keep it close to the bed. I found the book in Barnes and Nobles, not in non-fiction, but in the special interest section–not biography–which I find odd. And I was surprised to see how Hunter S. sympathizes the subjects of the book. Seems odd because in the documntary of Hunter S. I watched a few months ago called Gonzo: the Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson, Hunter S. discusses the person/mythos of the gang and the sensationalizing going on in the press at the time–this reminds me of Didion and her analysis of the youth in San Francisco of 1966. Yet unlike Didion, Thompson sees a movement and a positive note/experience.

And I also see how the writing is so much more straight than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or even Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail–those books seems like such craziness of form and analysis. So much making up of characters and observations–but in Hell’s Angels the reporting is straight-forward and dare I say objective. More of what I think of straight recording or reporting rather than creating story–more capturing than distorting. Hunter is not the story and the subjects are his story and that is odd compared to later books. I guess he learned to push the perception or the persona further.

And I was able to bring up Hunter S. in my Comp class this term. Specifically ‘the wave speech’ from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. In comparison to Slouching Towards Bethlehem the wave speech is such a contrast to how Didion viewed San Francisco in 1966. I wonder if Hunter S. romanticized the experience the way he fictionalizes all of his subjects or did he just enjoy it more on drugs. I mean in Slouching, Didion repeatedly turns down weed and acid whiel I can’t imagine Hunter S. turning down anything.

Those of us without strong family ties or inspiration look for wisdom or guidance from wherever we can find it. And those who read usually find escape or motivation from texts–and that would be a success. I mean I have been writing about failure on this site quite a bit but finding a text or manuscript that motivates and kick starts our own projects can be the only success perhaps to speak of that is pure and true. And Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow has been one of those books for me. What a gem of a book. I find myself returning to it again and again for inspiration and guidance. But not just as a writer.

Not just in writing but in memory and strength in facing the past. And this is where I will be cheesy and cliche’d and state that this text is a friend. And I have only seen interviews with Maxwell–his reflections on Salinger are also very interesting to me– and I have read few of his books but I remember the day I read the book in Oregon, for Marjorie Sandor’s novella course, I thought–I want to write a book like that. I want to have visions of the past like that.

And the prose style so clear and simple and yet speculative and uncertain of the truth and of the reality of the past. So dream-like and airy. Maxwell’s work is so amazing and his death was such a loss to the literary world.

And I taught the book a term ago in a novels course and of course the students hated it. They thought it was good literature but not a good read–as one of my students put it. I always hated that phrase–it’s a good read. Like a page turner you buy at the airport that is the literary equivalent of a burger shake and fries. The fast food version of a book–just to pass the time. A book you take someting from in a short term manner instead of a meaning that grows and mul;itplies as you grow. But I do feel I am learning from this book and my understanding of it. This book I return to and return to.

And maybe if I had an Abuelito like Maxwell who had coffee with me, or listened to me or wanted to call me up and ask me about my life, I hope it would have Maxwell’s head and perspective–or at least the literary face I see when I return to the book.

I was surprised to read BR Myers review of Denis Johnsons latest novel in the Atlantic. I cannot comment on the accuracy nor can I refute any points Myers makes because I am only around a hundred or so pages in to the book.

Myers writes: “When a novel’s first words are “Last night at 3:00 a.m. President Kennedy had been killed,” and the rest of it evinces no more feel for the English language and often a good deal less, and America’s most revered living writer touts “prose of amazing power and stylishness” on the back cover, and reviewers agree that whatever may be wrong with the book, there’s no faulting its finely crafted sentences—when I see all this, I begin to smell a rat. Nothing sinister, mind you. It’s just that once we Americans have ushered a writer into the contemporary pantheon, we will lie to ourselves to keep him there.”

Ouch! I mean not only is Myers attacking the book–and I didn’t think the article was that persuasive in its critique–but Myers also attacks Phillip Roth’s and Jonathon Franzen’s blurbs.

He writes: “The “application of word to thing” has been rotting for some time now, and in the very terms described. The social and political consequences are all around us. Literati who contribute to the rot—whether to preserve a writer’s reputation, to stimulate the book market, or simply to go with the flow—have no right to complain about incoherent government. The next time they want to praise a bad book, they should rave about the plot instead.”

So it seems his criticism is of those who praise Johnson and do not criticize the book’s form and plot. There is even a funny cartoon lampooning Johnson’s characters from the book like a political cartoon. Now, again, I have not read all of the book. I do think, though, that Johnson is not as strong with longer narratives than he is with sprinting but Myers admits to only reading one book from Johnson and that book is Tree of Smoke. So, since I have read all of Johnson’s 15 books–the poetry and the non-fiction as well as the fiction, I do agree with the blurbs. Johnson’s voice and sensibility is noteworthy. I read him for the craft so I guess I am saying he is a writer’s writer. But I don’t believe Roth and Franzen are bad readers; I don’t believe I am a bad reader.

And yet Myers calls Franzen a lunatic and writes Roth should “know better.”

Again, ouch! And I assume I should wait until I finish the book before going further with my defense. But so far I am engaged and entertained as the Vietnam War is something I am interested in and I am enjoying how Johnson brings Vietnamese perspectives into the story–something Tobias Wolf in his non-fiction does not do and something Nicholas Delbanco never did. But, again, I am not done and should wait and hold my judgment..

Date Fail:
I just read the correct date on this article. It was not published in the Dec 2008 issue of the Atlantic but rather the 2007 issue. I am right on the cutting edge of what’s going on, you know.

I am lucky because I am able to teach Factotum by Bukowski this spring–along with On the Road and Oscar Wao. Each one of these books focuses on a writer’s creative literacy and also their individaul failure and successes.

And I am always inspired by Bukowski’s words on writing as creation and failure: “If you are going to try, go all the way.” This clip from the film adaptation by director Bent Hamer shows how well done the movie was–the broken down locations and look of the film is amazing. And I worried about the choice of Dillon–especially since I did not enjoy Barfly and the choice of Mickey Rourke. And from what I read neither did Bukowski–I think that came up in the documentary Born into This.

But the poem roll the dice ends the film so eloquently.

I finally have a break from the incredible work of teaching and grading. Just last week I felt the great pressure of lesson-planning and grading taking over my life. Teaching affords me the luxury of a writing life and I am so grateful but sometimes you need time to do your laundry and take your dog for a walk. I read and teach composition and literature for a living and I am allowed to create curricula and assignments with such freedom but sometimes you need a window to climb out of. (That is a line from my favorite Richard Yates short story.)

But I finally have a break for Thanksgiving and now I have a chance to read some newer books I have had on-deck for weeks. I finished the Pollock and now I can finish the daunting book Tree of Smoke by one of my favorite writers Denis Johnson. Another writer I mentioned in my own thesis defense. I have been waiting to read this book for months it seems–waiting forthe paperback because I hate to read hardback but I’ll save that discussion for another post. But I do admire his work and recently I found the book was a National Book Award winner and at the awards ceremony his wife received the award for him as he was in Iraq on assignment.

I have admired all of Johnson’s work–his creative non-fiction, poetry, plays and fiction. He is another in a list of writers who I enjoy their authorial voice and not just the genre they work in. I feel Johnson excels in many genres and thrives within his creative literacy no matter the form. Sam Shepard is another who has stated his work just comes out and he rarely forces the genre–the authorial mind and voice chooses the form.

Anyway, I remember the first Johnson book I read. It was in New York State on the 8th floor of the dorm/housing I was living in. My friend Hanvey from California lent me the book Jesus’ Son for an afternoon and I devoured it. I remember Hanvey had his books in a cardboard box in his trunk and he had just driven across country to attend the writer’s workshop. He gave it to me as if it were a treasure he was sharing with a fellow writer. It made me feel good to connect with another writer in that way.

And I have read all of Johnson’s work since then. Angels created the same tragic lives as in Jesus’ Son; Resuscitation of a Hanged Man was such a departure from what I thought his work was–a real shift in narrative; Already Dead was so funny and mysterious and showed me a real scope to his storytelling. More of a test with means of perception; Stars at Noon reminded me of Didion’s Salvador even though that was non-fiction; and his non-fiction in the book Seek showed me that he has a feel for narrative form and creativity in approaching literary journalism or creative non-fiction–whatever you want to call it. I also found his poetry so interesting and full of interesting leaping–it should be of no surprise since his prose is so poetic and imagistic at times.

Recently, I even toyed with the idea of a Playboy subscription because of his essays out of Iraq. I’ll have to wait for the collected work for those I guess since I don’t have the time or patience or nerve to hunt those back issues down at the public library or on the Playboy website–yes, for the articles. I pretty much chickened out asking about the issues at the local newstand and Barnes and Noble.

But I am looking forward to getting away from the brain of schoolwork and the tedium of interoffice politics in exchange for the time to read this novel and follow his characters’ journeys. The book is about 600 pages so I have a chore ahead but I enjoy the task. I feel like I am learning from him as I read.

It would take all day and night to explain how I feel about Kerouac and his book Visions of Cody. I read this book for the first time during a very dificult time in life–and really the Dharma Bums was the first book of Kerouac I ever experienced even though critics consider it the lesser novel in comparison to On the Road. I’m not about to go on about those times here when I first picked up these books, but I can write that the legend or romanticized version of Neal Cassady is something I am more and more obsessed with. And my thoughts on Kerouac and this book go way past admiration or scholarship–the study of form or prose models which I feel is so important for the writer. But I connected with Kerouac in a way I’ve not connected with many living writers. Including my beloved Salinger and Crane.

Perhaps I feel like Kerouac at the end of On the Road and it is as simple as ‘I think of Dean Moriarty.’ Because I do think of Dean Moriarity and Cody much more than I think of Neal Cassady. In fact from Carolyn Cassady’s books Neal was a horrible role model and was perhaps a horrible person not quite living up to the persona developed by Kerouac. But I love the character Kerouac builds in the work much more than the person I research.

And as I sit and write this I think of the last time I spoke with Lolo–my unofficial obsession in fictive spaces. So perhaps I am in love with the fictionalized Lolo the way I have always been taught to love my characters. The love that is needed to follow them and create their lives in prose and narrative.

For example, here is an example of the care and eye that Kerouac has for Cassady from Visions of Cody that is my thoughts tonight: ‘Oh life, who is that? There are some young men you look at who seem completely safe, maybe just because of a Scandanavian ski sweater, angelic, saved; on a Cody Pomeray it immediately becomes a dirty stolen sweater worn in wild sweat.’

I think of this quote as I write about Lolo and his blue worn t-shirt and his sunglasses and cigarettes in the torn pocket over his big heart. How hard I try to get the detail right so people can see the Lolo I have seen and experienced. Like Tracy Daugherty writes–I want the readers to experience the character alive in the fictive space as they would the real person. I think of the love I have for Lolo and Ricardo and people gone from my immediate life who live on in fictive spaces. Who live on in the old neighborhood of my head. I get to meet them there and love them in a way the real world won’t allow me to.

But also I think Lolo and Cassady as real mean and not the fictionalized characters have so much in common. They are both legitimate psychopaths as Norman Mailer I think wrote about. They both capture the illigitimate and the failure to create a understandable life for themselves and those around but also they represent a wildness and an enviable lack of respect for authority and order that I feel is healthy in moderation. I think this because Cassady like Lolo did try and better himself at one time. The failure or toughness that comes from excessive failure caught up with them and perhaps that is what I fear and what I obsess over.

I finished the book Knockemstiff the other night and I wanted to write notes on these stories I am admiring more and more.

I am also interested in the story behind the story “Knockemstiff”–almost as interesting as the stories and I assume that is why this book has gotten quite a bit of press and reviews.

According to his book sleeve and this video from Ohio State’s web site, Pollock was a factory worker before quitting to attend the MFA program. He published several stories and was successful enough to quit his job. His book has received much acclaim. I first heard about it on the Chuck Palahniuk web site–one reason I go there because Palahniuk is always pointing out new writers and writers that have influenced him in some way. (That was how I found Amy Hempel.) But in fact, Palahniuk wrote “Pollock gives us the saddest people we’ll ever meet in fiction.”

This made me think of Lolo and the failure of my own writing!

What attracted me and hooked me into these stories was the sense of place and indirect communal relationships–also the peripheral relationships. Pollock writes about Ohio and the little town of Knockemstiff–and he knows place so well and I am envious. In fact, place doesn’t quite capture what I mean; I guess I mean the landscape. And I would like to know Huerfano or at least the Pueblo County and the Huerfano County I grew up in and match Pollock’s knowledge of place.

The title story “Knockemstiff” is so memorable for me. The story follows a character who has had several false starts leaving Knockemstiff, Ohio and has come to the realization he will not leave Ohio even though his highschool love is about to leave town. There is such a feel of small town blues and hurt. Pollock draws his characters failure to move forward or beyond the small town as such a loss the effect is heartbreaking.

Those are meaning thoughts though and so my thoughts on form are that he is doing something pretty complex with these first person stories. A student and I sat in my office just last week discussing the differences of third and first person stories and the advantages of different means of perceptions. Third person omniscient and even roaming third or third objective seems like such a wide scope and according to my student was the only thing he ever wrote in. I tried to convince him that first person can be ust as evocative in capturing not just thought process but also consciousness. My student was just informing me of preference but again I think there is much about first person that works so well–like in Johnson’s Jesus’ Son or in Diaz’ Drown.

We talked about the risk of being the character and also being the author and trying to interject meaning or theme instead of character rather than more subtleties. But writing from a certain pov is about practice and challenging the individual.

But Pollock seems to do that so well–he knows place and character of his small towns but he also knows when and where to direct reader to theme and meaning without being too overt as some of my first person stories become.

Once in Tracy Daugherty’s office he pointed to a moment in one of my stories and said “here it is. Right there.” I asked him “what?” And then he explained that at that moment in the story and scene where the character is disconnected from the author and being fully utilized–fully created. Meaning the voice is a character rather than just the author pretending. he said, “Your character has no idea what is going to happen or cannot see past his own nose like real life and that is good.” I have been searching for those moments in my first person stories and trying to capitlaize on them as much as possible.

And this is what Pollock is doing so well in his stories. Capturing character in first person rather than just capturing his own voice just telling stories.