Writerly Quote of the Day

"Storytelling reveals meaning
without committing the error of defining it."

--Hannah Arendt

Read Some of My Stuff at Gather.com

I just happened to have a 70,000 word manuscript haunting my every free moment. So I entered a novel competition thing, kind of an American Idol for authors at Gather.com as mentioned in Write Now: American Idol for Authors. (I blush.) When you need to revise, you can either clean the toilet or splash your literary innards online. The toilet already sparkles. So. Go see my first chapter. You can read other manuscripts. Vote for me. Or not.

Warning: they messed up my formatting. I have little vignettes within the chapter with titles, but the titles are not in bold (as they should be); and my numbered list appears sans numbers. Oh well. The whole manuscript is still very in-the-rough. Now the world can see it.

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976903485

You can read the submission by clicking on the above link. If you want to rate my submission, you have to join Gather.com (free and easy).

UPDATE: The link to my chapter is dead. The contest posts each entry for two weeks of voting and my two weeks have passed!

Dave Eggers in South Bend for Notre Dame Literary Festival

Dave Eggers, author of the best selling memoir "Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," will be in town for Notre Dame's literary festival. He is scheduled to speak on Thursday, February 8th, 8 pm in Room 101, DeBartolo Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

While his memoir was overhyped for me, his other literary and social ventures have earned him my respect and admiration. (He founded McSweeney's. Check out the link in my sidebar.) His newest book, "What is the What," is fiction that tells the all-too-true story of one of Sudan's Lost Boys. (See review below.)

This is well worth risking your extremities on a cold February night!

Other authors at Notre Dame this week:

Poet Lolita Hernandez, 10:30 am Monday in room 210, McKenna Hall and 8 pm Monday in LaFortune Student Center ballroom

Palestinian poet and playwright Nathalie Handal, 7pm Monday in LaFortune ballroom

Poet Hal Sirowitz, 8 pm Tuesday in the Oak Room, South Dining Hall

Essayist and humorist David Rakoff, 8 pm Wednesday in LaFortune ballroom

Freelance writer Anne Elizabeth Moore, 6:30 pm Thursday in room 129, DeBartolo Hall

Mining the power of fiction Eggers' novel
tells story of a 'Lost Boy' of Sudan

by Bob Thompson

WASHINGTON POST

Here are a few things we can say for sure about Dave Eggers' latest book:

It's not a satire of political correctness in the English department of an elite liberal arts college. No publisher is betting that it will be "the next 'Da Vinci Code.' " Judith Regan had nothing to do with it.

Oh, and it's a safe bet that Eggers didn't consult any marketing types about the title.

He called it "What Is the What."

Which means ...

Well, maybe we should save that for later. Because right now the writer best known for his arrestingly titled memoir "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" is sitting in a newspaper conference room with Valentino Achak Deng, the Sudanese "Lost Boy" whose life story he's undertaken to tell. And he's talking about one thing readers of "What Is the What" can't say for sure: How much is fact and how much is fiction.

Why the line-blurring? The explanation goes like this: Introduced to Deng in early 2003 and deeply engaged by his story, Eggers set out to write a conventional biography. But he kept getting stuck.

"I didn't know how to do it," he says. "I didn't want my own voice in there."

Despairing, he was ready to give the whole thing up. Then it occurred to him that "all the books that we remember about war and about the biggest events of the 20th century are novels." Think of "The Naked and the Dead," "Catch-22" and "all Hemingway's stuff."

More important, think of the ways fictionalizing Deng's story could solve narrative problems. By labeling the book a novel, Eggers says, he freed himself to re-create conversations, streamline complex relationships, add relevant detail and manipulate time and space in helpful ways -- all while maintaining the essential truthfulness of the storytelling.

There was only one hitch.

"I was so afraid to ask Valentino," Eggers says.

Author and subject grin at the memory. Eggers, in a white shirt and a sport coat that's seen better days, is the shorter and more intense-looking of the two. Deng, in a black shirt and jeans, is tall -- as the Dinka people tend to be -- with a warm, gap-toothed smile.

They call each other "Dave" and "Val," but Eggers, who's 36, has had the luxury of keeping the same name all his life. Deng, who's a decade or so younger, has been known as "Achak" (the name his parents gave him), "Valentino" (a baptismal name), "Dominic" (from a teacher in a refugee camp), "Gone Far" (a nickname alluding to his long trek out of war-wracked Sudan) and, most poetically, "Sleeper" -- bestowed by a girl who found him lying in the road one day, half-blind and longing for death.

Here's how Eggers, in Deng's voice, describes the moment:

"I conjured my mother as best I could. I pictured her in yellow, yellow like an evening sun, walking down the path. ... When she came up to me I told her I was too tired to continue, that I would suffer again, and would watch others suffer. ... Then I washed her from my mind. It seemed to me that to die I needed to clear my mind of all thoughts, all visions, and concentrate on passing on."

You look like my dead brother, the girl said. She lifted him up and got him walking again.

Lost Boys is a name attached to thousands of young refugees from the civil war in southern Sudan, which broke out in the mid-1980s and continued until peace was finally negotiated in 2005. "It is not a nickname appreciated by many in our ranks," as Deng the book character puts it, "but it is apt enough."

These days, Deng and the roughly 4,000 other Lost Boys who were resettled in the United States often find themselves confused with victims of more recent savagery in Darfur. But while the atrocities committed by government-backed militiamen have been similar -- "the difference is just the name they're using to describe the militia," he says -- Darfur is in western Sudan. Marial Bai, the hometown from which Deng was driven in fear of his life, is farther south.

His journey began in the mid-'80s, when, as a 6-year-old, he was still young enough "to be weak and melt into his mother's arms." Trouble had been brewing between the African peoples of southern Sudan and the Arab-dominated government in the north. But the boy knew nothing of the complex history behind the conflict.

"I couldn't understand," he says. "There was me in my town, my father was doing well -- why do we want to go to war? No reason."

Reason or no, war came.

Arab militiamen on horseback overran Marial Bai. Deng saw his hometown burned, his friends and neighbors killed or abducted. Not knowing his parents' fate, he fell in with a group of similarly displaced boys. An adult leader set them walking toward Ethiopia, where they were told they would find a haven, despite having no idea what "an Ethiopia" was.

The horrors of that walk cannot be easily summarized.

In "What Is the What," there are scenes of famished boys ripping the flesh off a dead elephant; of a boy dragging a stick as he walked, "making a line in the dirt so he would know his way home"; of land mines, ravening lions and exhausted, starving "sleepers" who gave up and died along the way.

Once across the border, a refugee camp became a recruiting ground. Rebel leaders told the boys, many destined to become child soldiers, that they were "the seeds of a new Sudan." Driven out, eventually, by the Ethiopians, the boys escaped across the Gilo River in a hail of gunfire -- except for those who got shot or were intercepted by crocodiles.

Reaching safety in Kenya, they found themselves trapped in a bleak refugee camp called Kakuma for -- in Deng's case -- 10 years.

How he finally got to the United States is an epic in itself. Being scheduled to fly on Sept. 11, 2001, did not help. Plunked down in Atlanta, he got to know the founder of a nonprofit called the Lost Boys Foundation. Her name was Mary Williams, and she came to view him as an especially articulate spokesman for his Lost Boy peers.

One day, he says, Williams asked about his long-term goals. "I would like to be able to document my story," he told her, "in a written form that generations will have access to."

OK, she said, she'd find somebody to help.

Mary Williams didn't know Dave Eggers, but she'd happened to pick up his memoir once when she needed airplane reading.

"The title was just hilarious," she says.

"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" is the saga of how, when Eggers was in college, his parents contrived to die of cancer within five weeks of each other, leaving Dave and his sister to raise their 7-year-old brother. The memoir's out-of-nowhere success left Eggers with enough cash to fund a variety of literary and philanthropic projects, among them the tiny independent publishing house McSweeney's and a literary magazine, the Believer, as well as a writing workshop and tutoring center in San Francisco.

Williams read up on Eggers and was impressed. He's "kind of like a Lost Boy himself," she says. So she wrote and asked if he'd like to get involved.

The idea was a long shot. How many name-brand authors would drop everything to tell a Lost Boy's story? But Eggers, as it happened, was already intrigued by the long march of the Sudanese refugees.

So he flew to Atlanta to check things out.

He bonded with Deng right away and began taping interviews. Later, they wangled their way onto a plane delivering aid to Sudan -- "we sat in the cargo hold with the grain and the bicycles and stuff," Eggers says -- to do a little firsthand research. In all, they spent thousands of hours together. It took him that long, he says, "to be able to see through Valentino's eyes."

As for the fiction decision: When Eggers raised the idea, he feared that Deng would angrily reject any reimagining of his real story. But "right away he was like 'What? Do whatever! Do anything you want!' "

"Dave is an artist," Deng says. "I'm not only about myself in the book." The idea was to tell the most accessible story possible about the devastation so many had endured.

Back and forth they go, deferring to each other, holding forth on their shared narrative.

They talk about how the original idea was to tell just the African part of Deng's life, until Eggers realized that his subject's struggle to adapt to the United States -- and the numerous disasters he has experienced here -- had to be part of the story.

They talk about their plan to use profits from the book to fund Deng's education, aid other Sudanese refugees, help rebuild Marial Bai and promote peace and justice in Darfur.

What does the future hold for Deng? Will he stay in his adopted homeland, where he is attending Allegheny College?

"I would like to bring up my kids here," he says. "But then I also, at the same time, want to make differences in Sudan."

"What Is the What" was published by McSweeney's, which allowed Eggers the total freedom he likes but means there's no marketing machine behind the book. Nonetheless, it's picked up some terrific reviews and made it to No. 25 on the New York Times' extended best-seller list this week.

As for that mysterious title: It's taken from a creation story Deng remembers hearing as a child.

God, it seems, made the first Dinka man tall and strong and the first Dinka woman beautiful. When he was done, he offered his creations a gift. "You can either have these cattle," he told them, "or you can have the What."

"What is the What?" they asked. But God refused to answer. The choice was a test. The Dinka could go for the cattle, which they knew would allow them to live well, or they could take a chance on the unknown. They chose the cattle, which, as the story's moral had it, proved the wise thing to do.

Except ...

The stable, solid universe in which that decision made sense is gone. And in the Lost Boy world of strife and stress and endless change that has replaced it, embracing the unknown -- as Valentino Achak Deng can tell us better than anyone -- looks like the only choice there is.

American Idol for Authors

This is it: Gather.com is sponsoring an author's showdown. Post your novel on the their site and it might just be voted the next American Masterpiece. Or even nail you down to a publishing contract. Doubt your deft handling of plot and characterization? Harbor illusions of literary genius? Don't spend another moment in a dither. Take it to the readers.

The way it works: Forget about that dented manuscript scattered in chapters around your house, in your car, and at the bottom of your to-do list. You won't even need to print off a fresh hot-ink perfumed version. E-mail your full-length commmerical fiction manuscript to Gather.com. You must be 17 (or older) to submit yourself to your reading audience.

They will publish your novel online one chapter at at time. And the reading public will vote to keep you alive (or vote to eliminate you, I mean your novel). If you survive three rounds of voting and are chosen the next American Author-to-be-published, you will receive assorted cash prizes AND a publishing contract. Beware: by entering the contest you agree "that if you are selected as the Grand Prize Winner, you will sign Simon & Schuster’s standard publishing agreement within five days of receipt of the agreement."

Read all about it in The New York Times

Gather.com First Chapters Writing Competition

Argh

I am going through the I-have-too-much-to-write-about-and-
so-I-will-just-be-lame-and-engage-in-avoidance-behaviors-such-
as-contemplating-baking-instead-of-writing script.

Can you say, "Precipice"?

Although I had a serious case of carrot-cake-baking between the ages of 14 and 15, in general I cook because people need to eat these days. Cooking for the pleasure of it? I have realized that the cheery kitchen fairies who left nary a shoe print one night as they scraped my crusty pans are not REAL, after all. Damn. That means if I dirty it, it stays dirty and slowly--with appropriate sun and moisture--moves into the science experiment phase. I have taken the only measure possible and ceased and desisted from anything resembling a culinary act. Thus, if baking a cake seems more appealing than writing OR reading, then I am teetering on the edge.

This entry is me forcing myself to write. something. anything. Other than what I write for my students. Cryptic notes about MLA requirements do not count as poetry.

I have been reading lately. Even reading in the service of my writing. L. recommended a new title that sounded similar to my work. I just finished it and am working through a love/hate reaction. The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits twists and turns around the life of a young narrator whose coming of age entailed an elaborate act of narrative fiction. Mary disappears from field hockey practice and then reappears weeks later. The story revolves around the truth about the events during her absence. Was she abducted? She did purposely hide herself away? Was she raped? She was a virgin, but returned not a virgin. I enjoyed Julavits uses of language and her inventive plot. In the end, however, I just didn't buy into the narrator.

The narrator of my own novel-in-languish is also a young woman still in high school. Julavits' s character narrates the experience from about ten years later, which allows her a level of retrospection that my character doesn't have. Julavits writes in the third person. My choice to tell my character's story in the first person is feeling more and more like a cage instead of a podium. Hhmmmm...to rewrite entirely from the third person? Argh.

In other reading, I also recently finished Eve Ensler's new book, Insecure at Last: Losing it in our Security Obsessed World. Her blunt declarative sentences are brutally honest about her life, her political views, and her various states of insecurity. By the end of the short work, you want to join her movement and give up security in order to allow peace to take hold. If security (think personal integrity AND national security) becomes our first priority, then our stance toward the world is by default a posture of defense. This is the antithesis of peace, which is fundamentally empathic. You can't build walls and dish up bowls of soup at the same time. If you are curious about Ensler's work, read or see The Vagina Monologues. Then read her latest book. It will make you want to be honest with yourself; it may even help you say "Vagina" in unexpected places. Like to your priest. Trust me, he needs to hear it, especially if he is under 40.

(Speaking of Eve Ensler, Me, and Priests. . . remind me to write about that trinity sometime. I've got loads of material.)

Eve. . . and. . . C.S. Lewis. Currently I am reading, really re-reading, Lewis's Till We Have Faces, which retells the Cupid and Psyche myth. I was entranced by this book's exploration of the sacred v. profane theme the first time I read it (maybe ten years ago?). Sacred v. Profane: a false dichotomy! Repeat after me: false dichotomy. That is right. A binary opposite that serves only as a rhetorical flourish! (Hear me rant.) I look forward to our Book Club discussion in December where I promise to try and not interupt others.

And, finally, a note for the anonymous reader who wants to know why I durst to resent a statue. . . I'll post a reply in the comments on that original post. Soon.

How Alfred Brendel Changed my Life

When I was younger and abroad for a year of studies in Rome, Italy, the arts--opera, dark churches with Michelangelo's statues lit up with a handful of lira coins, Italian fashion, the Renaissance streets of Florence, the endless hallways of the Louvre in Paris--overwhelmed me.

I worshiped at the feet of the David, succumbed to Verdi's Macbeth, and penned dribble in my journal surrounded by Monet's Water Lilies.

For Christmas, my traveling companion and I had purchased "limited view" tickets to see the Nutcracker in Paris. We stayed up for midnight mass at Notre Dame on Christmas Eve. It was cold, Paris quiet beneath snow, on Christmas morning. We bundled up, groggy and without a cafe in sight open, and headed into the postcard-perfect streets toward the theater.

"Limited view," we found out, translates to entirely-blocked view except for the thrilling bit of tulle gone airborne in the far, far, far left corner of the stage. (Needless to say, I have never been lured into "limited view" tickets again.)

Despite not being able to see the Nutcracker, a highly visual show, my friend and I were ecstatic with joy. We could hear every luscious note. We basked in the joy of the warm theater. (As student travelers in Europe during the winter, cold weather was a constant drag. Yet, of course, blustry winds gave the perfect incentive to stay in cafes or museums, feeding our caffeine and art addictions, respectively).

My year abroad in college was filled with art and conversation. We could pursue our passions with abandon and be rewarded with even more existential questions, a deeper thrill for life with a capital L.

Then life (with a very lower case l) intervened. Years pass. I was still in love with art, still in love with conversation. But life has a way of taking you along, taking you out of yourself. Perhaps this is called adulthood. The escape from constant (sometimes debilitating) self-awareness and longing for meaning with a M.

At any rate, my worship of art and artists remained, unexamined. I play chess like a fourth-grader, because that is when I learned to play. I played intensely and then moved on to other things, like four-square and dodge ball. In much the same way as I am still a fourth-grade chess player, my notion of the arts and artists got frozen in my college era.

Until. No single ah-ha moment to report here. Actually, still in college, I forced myself to read a biography of Rothko because I wanted to "get" modern (i.e. beyond the Renaissance) art. I fell in love with his work, much as I fell in love with just about everything I studied in college. I was an easy girl back then. Give me a book, an idea and I will love it. Period.

Since college I have met modern art fans. I started to go to modern art museums. (Gasp.) I saw a lot of stuff that irked me. I am tired of art that requires me to read the paragraph of drivel (sorry!) that explains it to me, the viewer. I grew tired of video installations that demanded my attention for (long) minutes of time with zero payoff. But.

But, some stuff has blown my mind. Hermann Nitsch, recently, for example. Or made me see the world and its truths more clearly, even when they are uncomfortable truths.

Somewhere along the way, I died my hair deep blue. (It only lasted a few months, but still.)

Then I read the biography of Marcel Duchamp. If you don't know his work, you can not understand modern art--both the Good and shockingly mediocre varieties.

I met some living, working artists. Saw their stuff. Visited studios. I debated with them about "art" and the role of the artists. We drank beer and doodled on napkins.

And finally I got a really whacked idea: write my own novel. And perhaps it is this last endeavor that really changed my relationship with art.

And I suppose I did have one ah-ah moment. It was last weekend in Vienna, over soft-boiled eggs, ruminating on the symphony's performance we had seen the day before. As I worked my way through a monologue about the experience of watching Alfred Brendel work the piano keys for Mozart (no problems with limited view tickets this time!), I put it all together for my patient brunch buddy between bites of yolk smeared on bread, for the first time:

When I was younger and being overwhelmed by art, I thought that superhuman geniuses had created art. (Of course, in some cases, this may be true. I believe in genius.) But now I see that art--painting, sculpture, collage, writing, poetry--is made by humans. Humans in touch with being alive in a fundamental, radical way. And so, I write. I write (create art) and teach because I am compelled by human nature to make art. To consume art. Or at least, the very least, die trying.

(Whew. That was long. I feel better now.)

Writerly Quote for the Day

"In your writing, be strong, defiant, forbearing. Have a point to make and write to it. Dare to say what you want most to say, and say it as plainly as you can.
Whether or not you write well, write bravely."

--Bill Stout

Bush Taps Jesus

WASHINGTON DC--USA Today reported last week that President Bush wiretapped American phone lines to investigate terrorist activity. Capitol Hill sources revealed today that Bush has also tapped his direct phone line from Jesus the Christ.

Bush has maintained a direct line to Jesus throughout his presidency, despite drastic hikes in long distance, to better serve the American people. Initially Bush was able to accept collect calls from the Christ. After 9/11, however, the Lord gave 24/6 (Sundays excluded) access to Bush in an effort to aid Bush fight the good fight against terrorism.

Bush apparently tapped the phone line due to increased suspicion regarding the Lord’s calls into the United States. Increased chatter indicated an imminent in-breaking of divine intervention in American politics. Bush upholds the legality of his actions to monitor Jesus’ phone activity. He did not seek a warrant due to the high probability that Jesus would observe the court proceedings and take preemptive action. The Lord is known to protect his existence at all costs--giving out revelation as he sees fit despite human suffering and global warming. His followers operate in separate enclaves and often do not communicate as they work to transform the word according to their leader's specifications.

Bush is committed to protecting the American people. Jesus is being held in a top-secret facility pending official charges.

Good to Hear

"You can't have three people looking over your shoulder, and you have to make sure not to censor yourself. You have to be willing to be wrong and you have to be risky. You have to take a certain amount of abuse, and the reason you're willing to do that is because you love the truth."

-- Grace Paley

Things I Know

Last night as I tossed and tried not to toss in order to let L. sleep, images and characters and entire plots raced through my head. I am terrified about taking a novel writing course. I can handle a month’s investment into a short story that goes nowhere. Somehow, a semester for a novel that may flop seems scandalous.

Yet, here I am, on leave in Boston. Isn’t that already scandalous enough? I may as well climb all the way up to the high dive and take the plunge. I am not going to save the world or reach nirvana in the next few months. I might as well try and write a novel.

The wise ones who plan such a class know that it is impossible to complete a novel in one semester. Thus we are expected to have a working outline and bring in three chapters for review. I know the professor. I should not be a lily-livered quake. But I am.

A rakish young man once rashly told me that you should do the thing that scares you the most. (I’d love to check in with him and see how that advice has governed him.) So, with one week left until the class begins: I remain on the roster.

Okay, so the title of my entry is “Things I Know.” People always say: write what you know about. This is useful, especially in terms of landscapes and politics, but requires the gumption to bald-faced lie when you do if what you know happens to reveal deep dark secrets about those you love, or those who love you or those you once loved or, even worse, your inner ruminations about near-total strangers who share your dinner table on occasion.

Last night, per usual, my mind raced along the Things I Know. None seemed to bear fruit when placed under the microscope of a novel’s strange and provocative distortion. Then I had a mini-revelation: It is not the THINGS I Know but perhaps the things I KNOW that matter. In other words, I know a lot of stuff (who doesn’t), but I think that I should write about the things I KNOW emotionally. This is why we read fiction after all. We read novels to watch other people make decisions and empathize with them. Empathy is the novel. So I have to start with emotions to get at emotions. Now I am thinking like a writer.

Welcome to G-Match by J.K.Kelley

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Testimonial: We used to rely on our keen sense of smell to attract or be attracted. Imagine how shocked I was to learn that over half of human smell receptors are broken! Humans lost the scent for pheromones somewhere around 1986. I am not saying it had anything to do with deep fat fryers, but I do think it is telling that my parents—who met in 1993—were a mess. Two sets of genes less likely to trip the right wires would have never met before the breakdown of the genetic family in charge of half our nose. So I tested myself, then my girlfriend. Let’s just say it was a close call. She had all the brains, but was a few genes short of a happy g-match for this lucky bachelor.

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World's Shortest Stories

This morning I am treating myself to some fun little writing exercises, namely I have finally sat down and tried my hand at a 55 word short story ala Steve Moss' s The World's Shortest Stories. Ms. M. told me about this idea--short, short stories or sometimes called nanofiction--last year or the year before. I have had Moss's little book on my shelf for quite a while. Today, my last day of being 30 years-old, seemed like a good time to try my hand.

I prepared my morning coffee and reread the rules for the game in the back of the book. I won't bore you with an account of all the rules, basically the story must be 55 words (or less, but why less?) excluding the title, which can only be up to 7 words. Numbers (42, for example) count as a word. It has to be a story: characters, conflict and resolution (not to mention setting).

You must have a clear focus, a sharp idea. Once I got my first little story going, I quickly had over 100 words--yikes! Then I whittled and carved and threw articles out the door until I ended up with something that delighted me. Beware: I literally just penned this short, short story this very morning and so it is very rawish:

Poet Wields Metaphor

“Honey, where is the extra salt?” he implored from his study.

“Kitchen, second shelf,” she mumbled and ratcheted up the TV’s sound.

“Butcher knife—the good one?”

“Bottom drawer, inside the leather box, but what on earth for?”

“Salt and a razor edge: the stuff of poetry, my love. I’ll just open your mind, finally.”

by J.K.Kelley

This first attempt was such a good time that I wrote two more, but with less zing I think:

Wifely Duties

“Mrs. Wiggenstein, it’s about your husband.”

“Come in, and let’s talk inside. Tea?”

Too late she regretted her neighborly impulse. The Mrs. hustled her through the door and shoved her down the basement steps.

This one worried Mrs. Wiggenstein. Reginald had forgotten to fix that broken step, it seemed. She must increase his medication again.

by J.K.Kelley

And finally this last one seems pretty bad, but here goes:

Spare Some Change, Mister?

Two goddesses patrolled Newbury Street, swiveling their hips toward likely suitors.

One goddess slapped a young man. He cried out, but she left him there, a sniveling mess.

The other goddess smirked. “Tightfisted, couldn’t spare a few coins. Boys mistake confusion for suffering.”

They continued to beg down the street, one mortal at a time.

by J.K.Kelley

Here a few I have copied from Moss's book (he is the editor) to give you an idea of his collection:

Bedtime Story

"Careful, honey, it's loaded, "he said, re-entering the bedroom.

Her back rested against the headboard.

"This for your wife?"

"No. Too chancy. I'm hiring a professional."

"How about me?"

He smirked. "Cute. But who'd be dumb enough to hire a lady hit man?"

She wet her lips, sighting along the barrel.

"Your wife."

by Jeffrey Whitmore

Guitar

He'll never hold me as he holds that guitar. Hasn't touched me that way in years.

I'll get inside the guitar, to be in his arms again.

She spent all day, sacrificing shape, voice, everything but desire to be held. Finally inside, mute, invisible, she waited.

"Honey, I'm home! I bought a new guitar! Honey...?"

by John M. Daniel

I Want to Report An Accident

"Celia, it's all your fault. You'll find my bloated body in the pool. Farewell. Umberto."

She stumbled out, the note in her fist, and saw me, floating face down, like a giant fly marooned in Jell-O.

When she leapt to rescue me, and remembered she couldn't swim, I got out.

--Convict 338412

by Tom Ford

The Ordeal

She hated them! All of them! Their masks hid not their glee, as their groping hands held her down--for him.

The pain and the blood were unbearable. Still, he persisted, forcing her.

Her screams only encouraged him. She knew not to deliver meant certain death.

Finally, satisfied, he said, "It's a boy."

by Tom McGrane

Lecture: Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad

Last night L. and I attended a reading by Margaret Atwood. I first read her novel, Cat's Eye at the suggestion of my book club. I quickly followed up with The Handmaid's Tale and then The Blind Assassin. These three books are just the tip of an impressive iceberg—she has many novels, books of poetry, essays and children’s literature as well.

The event was organized by Newtonville Books and held at the New Art Center, both in Newton. The venue was sold out, but it was an intimate space with about one hundred folding white plastic chairs in front of a raised stage. A heavy navy curtain hung at the rear of the stage and tiny white holiday lights adorned the arch. Hardwood floors tripled the excited chatter in the room.

I had dashed off to Newton a few weeks ago after an email update from the bookstore announced the event. Tickets were not available online or by phone. Rather they requested a visit to the bookstore and the purchase of her new book, The Penelopiad, and a surcharge to cover our entrance fee. The twenty minute drive took me nearly an hour and a half—due to faulty directions I swear! The bookstore, which has an enormous presence online and through its weekly author readings, is a relatively unassuming and cozy place. Since I had scouted the route, our trip there last night was in due time.

I had strong-armed L. to arrive quite early. I hate to be in a rush and I did not want to arrive late or even slightly harried to the event. The cocktail hour began at 6:30, and we arrived closer to 7:00. The reading began promptly at 7:30 and lasted almost exactly one hour, including the question-and-answer session.

The audience was mostly women, but there was a smattering of men and all ages were represented, though the average attendee was over thirty, well-healed and artfully coiffed. There were a few stunning crones who were given a helping hand and moved through the crowds on their own (well-deserved) red carpet.

After a brief welcome by Eric Phelps, director of the New Art Center, and by Betty from the Bookstore, Atwood took the stage. She wore a wide-collared coral button-down shirt beneath a black shawl with simple black pants. Her fringe of silver curls framed her face. She appeared elegant, but unpretentious when her cutting wit began to sizzle across the podium as she discussed the content and the genesis of her latest work.

In Homer’s Odyssey Odysseus' faithful wife Penelope does a lot of weeping, weaving and waiting. Atwood set out to retell the myth through two narrators: Penelope herself and the Twelve Maids, who are hanged upon Odysseus’ return to Ithaca. Atwood noted that Homer’s work (or work that has been attributed to Homer) is an epic poem that draws on some, but not all, of the oral myths of his time. In fact, there are stories and more information about Penelope in other ancient sources that didn’t make it into the Odyssey. Atwood made use of these.

For example, in the Odyssey Penelope weeps often and is famously chaste. Other sources reveal that she had one lover or perhaps made lovers of all one hundred suitors. It is also learned that Penelope’s father was Icarus, who tried to drown her when she was a child, and her mother a Naiad—a water nymph. Thus Penelope weeps because she is half-naiad, not necessarily because she pines so deeply for her long-lost Odysseus. Also revealed is that Helen of Troy is Penelope’s cousin, which creates all kinds of family tension between the beautiful Helen and the clever (but less pretty, damn it) Penelope.

The mythological sources do attest that both Odysseus and Penelope were renowned liars, that famous guile. The sources all agree that Odysseus had short legs. Thus he needed his guile even to win Penelope, whose hand in marriage was given to the winner of a foot race. Odysseus had actually tried to win Helen’s hand first, and when he lost he made a deal with Helen’s new husband (or her father?) that he would help him win Penelope by cheating at the foot race. He had to cheat due to those famously short legs. Perhaps he put a drug in the other runners’ wine. Penelope used her guile to either hold off the suitors or to keep them secret as her lovers. She also outwitted them with her ploy to weave a death-shroud and she set up the contest of the bow at the end. Finally she even tested Odysseus at the end with the secret of their marriage bed. Atwood takes these details and uses them to paint a more complete picture of clever Penelope.

Atwood read from the novel, a hilarious section in which Penelope and Helen meet in the underworld as Helen is about to take a bath. The entire novel is narrated from the afterlife, by the way, where Helen of course does not have a body that needs bathing. But she bathes to afford a glimpse of beauty to the hordes of men who follow her every ethereal move.

It was a short reading but very lively as Atwood took up the coy voice of Helen and the witty responses of Penelope as she read.

Atwood then took questions. I will try to tease out some of her responses here, as she really came to life with clever replies that the audience heartily loved.

She was asked about the genesis of this work. She told us that she was at a book fair in Edinborough and was having breakfast with a young publisher who set forth his plan for a series of re-told myths. He laid out his ambitious plans before she had had her coffee. She agreed to do one in his proposed series--having no idea what she was going to write—a bad idea, she noted. All the writers in the series would receive the same page allotment, a rather small number (which was attractive), as well as the same fee, a “paltry sum,” she laughed. But, as she said, “It was Help a Young Publisher Day,” and so she gave herself, reluctantly it seemed, to the task.

As a North American writer, she first attempted to re-tell a myth of her region. She found this impossible after several false starts. Finally the deadline loomed and she fumbled around and hit upon the Odyssey. She commented that while Penelope had never gotten much press in the modern world, since she read the Odyssey in school at age fifteen she had always been disturbed by the hanging twelve maids. “So much of writing,” she said, “is unfinished business.”

An audience member asked Atwood to talk about her own reading pleasures. Atwood was quick to say that she will read anything—even airline magazines or the back of the cereal box. She buys magazines in airports—news, science and commented that she had read two interesting pieces in Gentlemen’s Quarterly. She admitted to reading the equivalent of Harlequin romances to check out how things are changing—years ago the women were allowed to be governesses, nurses or art restorers. Men weren’t allowed to say much—just look sufficiently brawny. Now the women get to be doctors and lawyers and the men get complete sentences! She mentioned that she likes to read Stephen King, comic books and advertisements—although today’s advertisements have fewer words and more images.

She told a quirky little anecdote about reading an advertisement for the old Old Dutch cleanser (I’m not familiar with it myself, but here is a link with some images--none of which seem to be the one she described) when she was young—maybe five years old. There was a Dutch maid who had a broom to scare away the dust in one hand and in the other a can of the cleanser. But on the can in her hand there was the exact same picture of a maid with a broom in her hand and can of the cleanser. She noticed the infinite regression and wondered at it—what it meant for the poor maid, and perhaps for all women. The costumes for the women in “The Handmaid’s Tale” were inspired by that ad, except that she made them red.

She was then asked about how she started to write science fiction. She discussed her childhood growing up in the 1940’s in the golden age of “Flash Gordon” and coming of age with Ray Bradbury as her influences. She also quipped that science fiction “is where theology went after Milton.” It is where we set forth our ideas of how the world should or could be organized and governed. She noted that humans, Hitler, for example lay out their plans for the future well in advance, but that he was not believed. She cautioned belief when we read of diabolical plans that may seem like science fiction at the time.

For the most part the remaining questions had to do with her work as a writer. One young woman writer asked her for advice for an aspiring novelist. Atwood replied with a question, “To what does the young novelist aspire?” After a round of laughter, the young woman (not me, by the way!) said that she aspired to publication. Atwood did have some practical wisdom:
1) write the novel;
2) get an agent that loves you and understands your work (rather than a “big name”);
3) you are own your own; and, somewhat kindly,
4) good luck.

Another aspiring writer, I assume, asked her about her writer’s habits. Atwood said that she had always admired those who had a routine. She couldn’t handle it. She writes when she writes, in bursts, but not at a regular time each day. In the beginning, she would have long panic attacks and then end up at a movie after having written nothing. Now she has managed to compress her panic attacks into five minutes of sheer terror and then she gets on with the writing. She used to be a night time writer, but switched to writing in the day when she was caring for her daughter. One thing she knows for sure, if she would have waited for a routine, she never would have written a thing. I liked this last bit of advice. I have tried to discipline myself to have a set writing time in the mornings and feel terrible when I can't make it happen---perhaps I shouldn’t be so rigid with my practice after all. Perhaps.

When asked which of her many, many works is her favorite, she launched into a very funny comparison of a parent having to choose which of their children they love the best. Impossible to do—they each have their own gifts—and fatal because the others would certainly hear about it.

One of the last questions asked if she was working on something new. “Yes I am. Will I tell you? No.” She laughed at her emphatic response, but explained that she never talks about her new works. If she talks about them, she doesn’t write them.

A round of warm applause closed the Q & A and then the small mass that we were tried to arrange ourselves in an orderly fashion—we had been encouraged twice by the director to be civilized. He must have had experience with the bookie enthusiast crowds—things got a bit tense as people jostled for places in line to have Atwood sign precious copies of her new book or treasured well-worn classics. Luckily we all settled down and decorum reigned.

As I have written before, having an author sign my book always makes me uncomfortable. First of all, it is a strange kind of autograph seeking, which I find a bizarre custom, a slightly repellant longing. Then there is the impossibility of saying anything of consequence to the author who is churning out his or her signature. The whole thing is a bit sticky and stomach-churning for me. Getting so close and personal, but not really having a real encounter seems so sad. A bit. Is that just me? But she was as gracious as could be and I thanked her at least four times (I had three books signed). I am proud to say, I did not blather at all. Just smiled and glowed and tried not to stall the line.

I had briefed L. about Atwood herself and her newest book. I think he enjoyed the evening—the art, the sold out venue, Atwood’s aura and her wit. It was good to have his company. As we headed back to the car, the November air was chilly and suddenly we realized we were hungry. We had eaten a rushed dinner in order to make it on time, but after the excitement had ebbed we needed ice-cream calories. We contemplated stopping to buy a carton of Ben & Jerry’s. Right then we passed the huge glass windows of Cabot's Ice Cream & Restaurant filled with a lively crowd. We had never heard of the place, but it was clearly a beacon in the night. The sundae we shared was enough for four people—we couldn’t even finish it all! There is something singular about dipping your spoon into a mess of ice-cream, syrups and whipped cream—knowing there is more in your dish than you could possibly ingest, but the pleasure of trying is sweet indeed.

Carol Mulroney: Review and My Response

Here is the review posted in today's Boston Globe about the play I blogged, Carol Mulroney. Let me just say, I thought the review was off the mark. Way off. So, for the first time, I emailed the reviewer my thoughts. I have pasted my email below. I know that most of you have not seen the play, but alas, for posterity.

Here is the review:

STAGE REVIEW
Up on the roof
In 'Carol Mulroney,' actors reach heights the script can't match
By Louise Kennedy, Globe Staff October 28, 2005

Stephen Belber's ''Carol Mulroney," in its world premiere by the Huntington Theatre Company, has many clever lines, an ingenious structure, thoughtful acting, solid design, and the kind of commitment and backing from a significant company that most playwrights only dream of. It is painful, therefore, to report that the play has a hollow core where its heart ought to be.

Belber, whose credits include ''Match," ''Tape," coauthorship of ''The Laramie Project," and multiple episodes of ''Rescue Me" and ''Law & Order: SVU," has said that he wanted to write a play about ''someone with a sort of inexplicable sadness."

Carol Mulroney, who spends most of the night on the roof of her urban town house, is indeed inexplicably sad. Belber gives us some of the reasons -- a troubled marriage, a childhood tragedy, a complex relationship with her father, an untrustworthy friend -- and has the characters around this young woman spend a lot of time describing her sadness. He also has them talk about her other qualities, and we see her in a variety of moods. Clearly, he wants to depict a complicated person whose motives and desires are often mysterious, even to herself.

But there's a difference between mystery and confusion. In plays, if not in life, we look for some kind of exploration of the mystery -- not a tidy resolution, but a coherent, emotionally satisfying narrative that, by the end, makes us feel that we have walked a path with a real human being and gained some insight into her sorrows and joys. What ''Carol Mulroney" gives us instead is a collection of monologues and images, some wonderfully intelligent and some depressingly crude in both language and thought, that leave us, 90 minutes later, struck mainly by the observation that Carol's most typical line is ''I don't know."

As Carol, Ana Reeder manages to inflect this line with various shadings of puzzlement and wonder; she speaks and moves like an exploring, tentative child, which feels right. Like the other gifted actors onstage with her, however, Reeder is hamstrung by a script that at once under- and over-explains. Belber's speeches can run almost shockingly long, and they're full of literary-sounding phrases. But somehow you can't quite get a grip on who these people are; it's as if the language obscures, rather than clarifies, their true natures.

Would Carol's blustery salesman of a father, for example, really say of the women's cosmetics that have made his fortune, ''It's the face we put on to face the folly; it's our savior, our Apollonian veil spread delicately across the void"? Would Carol's complicated best friend, a smart and apparently feminist artist, really use the most hateful word for female genitalia, repeatedly and bizarrely, in a strange and nasty soliloquy that winds up with her imagining her ''spores" being inhaled by a despondent Turkish sailor?

Belber is lucky to have fine actors -- Larry Pine as the father, Johanna Day as the friend -- bringing as much nuance and dimension as possible to such speeches. Tim Ransom and Reuben Jackson also do what they can with the thankless roles of Carol's husband, Lesley, and rival salesman Ken. And if Lisa Peterson's direction sometimes veers too far toward cheap laughs at the expense of character, it's only partly her fault. The script is already tilting in that direction, with its persistent favoring of clever phrasing or neatly worked-out structure over believable human feeling (as when the characters joke at the most unlikely moments or repeatedly mention the time in order to clue us in to how the narrative timeline is circling back on itself).

The Huntington has been working on ''Carol Mulroney" with Belber since 2003, when the play received a staged reading in the company's ''Breaking Ground" program. Its designers have given it their all, particularly in the multilevel set by Rachel Hauck that evokes Carol's rooftop. So much effort; so little reward. It's enough to make a person explicably sad.

Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com.

And my email response to her:

Dear Ms. Kennedy,

I have never responded in writing to a review of any sort, but I have been moved to respond to your scathing review of Carol Mulroney.

I recently saw the play myself and found its raw, yet poetic language effective. I loved the cunt spores.

I also recently saw Stoppard's play, The Real Thing, and it helps to draw a comparison between the two in terms of language use.

When I leave a Stoppard play, my cerebral g spot is in a tizzy from all the clever language and multi-layered meanings. I feel smart because I get some of his allusions and excited to go out and better educate myself to understand more of his allusions next time.

Belber's language, especially the self-justifying histrionics of the self-deluded father "Apollonian veil spread delicately across the void" juxtaposed with the cunt spores dissolving on the tongue of a strange man as her salvation for the bitch-feminist friend made me walk out of the theater knowing that I am human. And, unlike Carol Mulroney, still alive. True, my brain didn't sizzle, but my heart did.

After a Stoppard play, you have little to discuss. You feel that you need to see the text, underline the clever bits and discuss it in a Socratic Seminar to uncover its meanings.

After Belber, my boyfriend and I hashed out the characters and the ways they interacted with fervor and energy.

Yes, I thought there were weak moments in the play, but it was hardly the failure you present in the the Globe.

This is a play that my generation can really get. We make jokes at the "wrong time." We have grown up with The Vagina Monologues and are not afraid of cunt spores on stage. Belber is a fresh new voice. What is sad about the play is that your voice might prevent Belber from the audience who can appreciate his work.

Just my thoughts,

J.K.Kelley

My First Post

I must give credit where credit is due. Due to a long chain of circumstances, I chanced to meet R. Beyer as he was passing through Indiana on an epic journey. A mutual acquaintance brought us together in a computer lab at the University of Notre Dame. Within five minutes we had established all the basic facts about our similar life timelines and I had foisted upon him my latest piece of writing. I hope you are ready to sign our secret pledge, R.B! He in turn shared with me his blog. I had sworn that I would never have a blog. Never. How public. How pathetic to place my ramblings on the web and leave them there for all to peruse. As if anyone out there would want to read my thoughts. Oh well. One turns 30 and suddenly it becomes crystal clear that my prerogative matters. So come along, read along, and see the world through my descriptive narrative, poetry and occasional blather.