The Electronic Forum

Much as you admire biographies, particularly if wrought by such splendid historians as Doris Kearns Goodwin or Robert Caro, when it comes to writers' lives, you grow leery, bordering on stubborn. To the extent that something about craft can be learned from an author's autobiography--see for instance Graham Greene or some of the notebooks and reminiscences of Somerset Maugham--even these rarely find a permanent place on your keep shelves.

The best way to get some inner vision of the writers whose works move you is to stumble upon a well-edited collection of their correspondence and, in recent years, to sped some time on a writer's blog, home page, or both.

A visit with archaeologist/lecturer, professor emeritus.author Brian Fagan, (see my list at the right of the screen and down just a tad)for instance, produces an account of what it was like to appear as a guest on the John Stewart show. 

 A stopover at Sue Grafton's site contains valuable information for writers of all stripes, and coincidentally brings me into contact with her webmaster, Barbara Touhy, whom in another life you served as acquisitions editor and content editor for a book she'd coauthored. A visit with Jerry Freedman serves as an introduction to a no-nonsense pro who has eight titles on The New York Times Best-Seller List.

In your opinion, the more proficient among writers tend on their blogs or home pages to sound much as they do in real life; there is a notable conflation of the manner in which they talk and the manner in which they write. You can almost hear Sue Grafton's wry tinge of Kentucky as you read through the features on her page, the east coast of England still very much resident in Brian Fagan's prose even after nearly forty years in this country; the no nonsense Baltimore slap-down from Jerry Freedman even after his years in the film industry in Southern California and his long-term residence in Santa Barbara.

Some writers, particularly older ones, still approach the Internet, the blog, the public appearance with a certain rectitude, as if fearful of volunteering much less revealing too much of themselves, but the electronic forum has become increasingly a means of achieving what many writers yearn for--selling books in sufficient quantity that they are able to secure a living from their writing. 

 Electronically, we who set our own courses of navigation by books, publication, commentary about writing, and to some degree teaching about writing are better able to keep in touch, with the conventional markets, with publication sources, and with our scattered friends who fish the same waters as we do.

Writers are frequently drawn at various times in their life to loci such as New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other venues thought to be friendly to them. More for consequences of climate, than publishing houses, schools, motion picture or dramatic facilities, Santa Barbara has also become a hub of writerly activity. 

 There are a few good book stores, a world class writers' conference, and some reasonable dramatic sites, but it is mostly the way of life and the convenience to Los Angeles and San Francisco that account for the draw. Writers also like to be at some remove from these places and make their homes in the likes of LaConner, Washington (Tom Robbins); Archer City, Texas( Larry McMurtry); Portland, Oregon(Charles D'Ambrosio), and in the case of Clive Cussler, Reno, Nevada.

Other still, such as Don DeLilo and Thomas Pynchon, tend to move about in cautious secrecy, and Richard Russo takes refuge in the upper reaches of New York State.

The contemporary unifying theme is an extended version of the infamous Algonquin Hotel Round Table, the Internet, The Electronic Forum, where there is something to be said by them and/or about them. Google is a good place to start, a friendly url is another help. Writers may of fear, necessity, or idiosyncrasy choose to hide, but not for long. You can escape a number of things, but not Google.

April Fuel

April 1 comes to us with a cachet unlike any other holiday; it arrives bringing the glorious sense of anticipation that we acting as the individual I will be however momentarily led to believe something that is not true. Perhaps close enough to the truth to be plausible, perhaps so preposterous that the belief in it's plausibility makes us--I, me--the quintessential April Fool.

Built into the news reports or an otherwise no-nonsense political blog this morning was such an attempt at April Fool hoax, something of the order one might expect of The Onion, which is balanced on the fulcrum of irony and satire. The gist of the hoax had the effect of shooting fish in a barrel; it involved the incumbent president of the United States who, for some of us, each day of the past seven years could be seen as April 1.

My own favorite hoax was perpetrated by Mark Twain in what purported to be a new story, describing a scientific discovery, that of the human remains of a man, discovered in the tailing's of a mine operation. The subject of the story was described in some objective detail, a limb here, a digit there. 

 Only when taking in the entire set of circumstances was the reader able to piece together the remarkable fact that this petrified man, this relic of the past, lay in repose with the thumb of his right hand joined to his nose, the fingers of his right hand splayed to the full, the little finger of the right hand joined to the thumb of the left hand, the fingers of the left hand splayed. Thus was the petrified man discovered, thumbing his nose at those of us who waited for and were willing to accept this miraculous discovery.

It is no small thing to await, seek, embrace the miraculous, to have faith in the possibilities of remarkable discovery or invention. It is no small thing to believe in the collective mind of mankind as the most remarkable bit of machinery ever evolved from the more primitive guidance systems. It is no small thing to be able to look through some lens, whether it be the lens of the Hubble Telescope or the lens of a poet's imagination.

One of the more immediate responses to being the butt of a hoax, to be seen as having bought into something of utter preposterousness of nature, is indignation and the admittedly human reflex of swatting back with insult and self-assertion, as indeed we sometimes swat at flies, who are, after all, merely doing what they were designed to do. We invoke the awe and wonderment of the young, with their love of fantasy, stuffed animals, imaginary friends, and dreams come true, as though these had been denied us by the hoax that had so recently claimed us. 

 Yet we view these same young sensitivities with a patronage that borders on self-congratulation. Just wait, we say. They'll find out. Thus do we make cynicism a rite of passage. Welcome to the world of the ordinary, where there are no miracles. Or worse--where the miracles adults believe in have rendered them so defensive that they strike out at every permutation of the true miracles about us, which miracles open the potential for human experience rather than limit it.

It is fast moving toward noon. I have as yet not done my notes for today's lecture. Much less have I looked at student papers. Nor have I, to my knowledge, bit on an April Fool's hoax. But in that sense, the day is still young with possibility. Sally, who enjoys burying things, has made a claim on an April 1 joke by burying a piece of turkey skin given her for breakfast between the cushions of the living room sofa. Her 3 a.m. barking may have been a warning of real danger, or an early start on a hoax. Both events are good reasons for having a dog about, and good reminders that no matter if you are the target, the innocent bystander, or the launcher of the missile, the arrow of hoax is one of the keys to survival in this world where the President of the United States reminds us with some regularity of how easy it is for us to be had.

Icons

For some recent years, various branches of the scientific discipline have been not only making history but investigating it at first hand by means of the core sample. With a device similar to a drill, scientists are able to dig deeply into some point on the earth--including ocean floors--there to extract a segment of information to which accurate measurements may be applied. Core samplings show layers of sedimentary deposit, layers of lava, even such tidbits as pollen and seed samples. Thus they are able to tell who lived when, what they ate, which continents were at one time connected, what the weather may have been like, and what areas were once under water. Such indexes as tree-ring dating, enamel on teeth, even mummified human remains, and conditions of camp sites and butchering sites emerge as crude in comparison to the technologies for dating, measuring, and analysis.

This technology applies to the tangible and the sense that is to be made of it. I propose here a different type of core sampling, a cultural core, a generational core. Accordingly, here and no doubt in entries to follow, a core sampling of my generation, replete with icons of the blessed and the damned, the things worth saving and the things we could have done with out even though in actual practice, they too contributed to our evolution and contributed to us, all of us, being what we are on the last day of the third month of 2008 of The Common Era.

Here, in no particular order, are the layers of a generational core sampling:

Take the A Train, by Edward Kennedy Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.

Frenisi by Artie Shaw.

June Allison, in the bio-pic Words and Music, singing Thou Swell by Rogers and Hart.

C stickers on windshields of civilian automobiles during World War II, denoting gas rationing.

Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin and DuBoise Heyward.

Any lyric by Lorenz Hart, notably My Funny Valentine, and Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered, but not to forget Ten Cents a Dance, and the gritty, evocative Zip, a song sung by a stripper as she divests herself of her clothing.

Concerto in F by George Gershwin.

Over the Rainbow by E. Y. "Yip" Harburg.

Jess Stacy's piano solo on Sing, Sing, Sing, at the 1937 Carnegie Hall concert featuring the Benny Goodman band.

Nat Cole's 1949 piano solo on Body and Soul at the 1949 Shrine Auditorium Jazz at the Philharmonic concert.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.

How to Write a Short Story by Rheingold "Ring" Lardner.

The John O'Hara short stories in The New Yorker.

The John Cheever short stories in The New Yorker.

White Castle hamburgers.

The Andrews Sisters, Maxine, Patti, and LaVerne.

John Coltrane's soprano sax solo on My Favorite Things.
Charlie Parker' changes on Back Home Again in Indiana, rendering it as Donna Lee.

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

Doris Day, before she became a virgin, singing Sentimentl Journey with the Les Brown band.

Miles Dewey Davis.

Joe DiMaggio.

Thurgood Marshall, associate justice, United States Supreme Court when that body stood for something.

The Douglas DC-3.

The Heathkit.

Quaker Oats.

The Saturday Evening Post.

The Saturday Review of Literature.

Lux Radio Theater.

The Green Hornet.

Krazy Kat.

The Lone Ranger.

Isaac Sidney "Sid" Cesar, and Your Show of Shows.

Fibber McGee and Molly.

George Burns and Gracie Allen.

Train leaving on track five for Anaheim, Azusa, and Cuckamonga.

I'm thinking...I'm thinking. (Jack Benny)

Fred Allen and Portland Hoffa.

William Randolph Hearst.

Julia Morgan.

Burma-Shave signs.

Drive-in restaurants.

Drive-in movies.

Deanna Durbin.

Margaret O'Brien.

John Garfield.

Lassie.

Somerset Maugham.

Sid Grauman's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.

The Holland Tunnel.

Hire's Root Beer.

Orange Julius.

Walter Winchell.

Herb Caen.

Marianne Moore.

Henry Miller.

Gloria Swanson.

Mars bars.

Necco Wafers.

Penny candy.

Three Musketeers.

Cantinflas.

Coca-cola original bottles.

Ovaltine.

Webber's Bread.

Wonder Bread.

Red Ryder.

Prince Valiant.

The Mills Brothers.

Amos and Andy.

The Super Chief.

Edmund Wilson.

F. Scott Fitzgerald.





Bob's Big Boy.

The Enemy Within

Who is your enemy?

Who nips your practice, your attempts at originality, your enthusiasm in the bud?

Who whispers Can't be done, making it seem a prophecy?

Who reminds you of the great poets, novelists, essayists, short story writers of your own discovery? How would she do it? How would he have handled that scene? Would she have even left it in, allowed it to stand in the first place?

Is it your enemy who has made you practical? Is, indeed, practicality the worst of enemies?

Who has betrayed you the most--you or others?

Whom have you betrayed the most--yourself or others?

Q: Is there some philosophy, science, religion, formula, advice, approach that is so comprehensive, it works every time?

A: Yes, but no one knows what it is.

It is just after midnight and you are, like Bernardo in Hamlet, patrolling the upper reaches of the castle. A ghostly apparition appears, gestures to you to follow it. What does it want from you?

Is this the way a story comes to you? I am thy story's ghost.

What do your enemies want from you?

Which is the more difficult, beginning a story or ending it?

The To-Do List: Ave Atque Vale

In his comments about another writer's work in progress, read today in my Saturday workshop, one of my long-term regulars, a garrulous, balding ex-Marine owner of an insurance agency advised the author from whom we'd just heard to compile a list of generalized things always to keep in mind when setting forth to write fiction. By all accounts a caring man, the Marine Corps tattoos on his biceps notwithstanding, he has a heart of pure marshmallow; his concerns are rarely if ever bordering on meanspiritedness or self-importance. Some of the Things to Keep in Mind he uttered were similar to a Ten-Step Plan that I discovered earlier this morning on a newsletter from my department at the University.

Define your audience.

Create a persona/narrator

Cull the Facts

Stay on the Spine of the Story...

...and six other things that were well-intended, each containing a modicum of common sense.

So that by the time I heard my ex-Marine, long-term regular advising another to keep a list handy at each writing session, I bristled inwardly but was more impressed by the fact that I held my tongue.

One of the last things I want when I have time to devote to writing is a modicum of common sense or, in fact, even the merest hint of common sense. I do not want all my ducks in a row nor do I wish to mind my p's and q's. I am, on the other hand, quite willing to count my chickens before they are hatched; I frequently judge books by their covers, I judge other persons without having walked a mile in their shoes, I leap before I look, and I put all my eggs in one basket.

The point here is that I like being lead off on wild goose chases, snipe hunts, excursions down the garden path; I often read with the expressed hope of being drawn into a false conclusion and/or having one of my multifarious prejudices revealed to me by my willingness to believe something patently untrue, poorly reasoned, or rooted like a perennial in some bigotry-like soil.

I itched this morning to say that the time for staying on the spine of the story or culling excessive details or defining my audience is not in the instant draft but rather later on down the line, when I am involved in the process of revision. Things being what they are, I might even consider in revision running my longer sentences through the shredder, producing instead of the one, as many as three or four stories.

I want to be as unfettered by common sense as possible, as open to strange and wonderful connections and associations as I can achieve, the better to make something textured and tangible. I want to be dazzled, hit by falling stars, struck by lightning, awed by sunrises and sunsets, reduced to wordlessness by a smile, done in by a birthday cake, transported to other realms by a gaze, set into being a kaleidoscope of emotion by a few bars of music. None of this comes to me as a result of keeping a list or agenda.

The way to manage creativity is to leap off the side of an idea, flap your arms as though they might be wings, then note the results as you go spiraling downward in the manner of Wile E. Coyote. Mr. Coyote is irony in the flesh. His creators have conspired against him and let us in on the secret. We know he cannot succeed in his goal, which is making Roadrunner the breakfast of champions, but we are drawn into his orbit because we know his common sense will not prevail and because ours has prevailed perhaps a bit too long already

Writing the Muscle Memory Way

Pairs of opposites:
1. The plot-driven story, perhaps well exemplified by almost anything you pick up to read by Harlen Coben. Thanks to Barnaby Conrad, you have CD versions of at least six Coben novels, most of which hold up quite well until the point where they stay on beyond the ending, like a sloshed guest at a party, wanting to finish his drink...and have another...and another. Characters in plot-driven stories quite often behave in a plausible manner, but they are equally given to strange behavior you don't immediately grasp until you realize that they do what they do or do not do what they should because they are following the pole star of the plot.

2. The character-driven story, well exemplified by E. Annie Proulx or Richard Powers, or William Trevor, or Alice Munro, and yes, your great favorite through the years, Muriel Spark. Character-driven fiction turns your head, wrests you away from work and into the roughhouse of the splendid play of things happening because the characters have no control over their deeper wishes and ambitions. Ah, the years you spent trying to learn how to plot, admiring such pals as Day Keene and Bob Turner, Steve Fisher, and Frank Gruber, not to forget Dorothy B. Hughes and Tom Dewey. You even had Day Keene's agent, Donald MacCampbell for a time, and it was nice to spend that time thinking you could live in comfort if not opulence with a novel every month or six weeks. And how that scenario played out when as an editor you "acquired" MacCampbell's memoir, Don't Step on It--It Might Be a Writer, and later still, Gruber's The Pulp Jungle. In some ways, your trying to write plot-driven material and not being able to with any notable skill pushed you toward learning what only you could learn for yourself, how to write like yourself, how to leave it in the hands of who the characters were, what they wanted, and what they were willing to do to get what they wanted.

Another great schism:

1. The outline: a detailed map of design, a kind of Navajo rug of literary pretension, setting forth such time-worn terms as goal, reversal, rising action, falling action, denouement, closure. From about age fifteen onward until your thirties, you devoured exegeses of such terms and concepts, one of your favorites being by a man named Stanley Vestal, who in a real sense herded you toward early pulp successes.

2. The flashlight-in-the-dark approach, which some one of your early writing heroes set forth, meaning you wrote in the dark, your curiosity a flashlight getting you through the unfamiliar terrain of a darkened room with only a small flashlight to guide you.
Suddenly, well along in the game, it comes to you that this is indeed your approach, sometimes being satisfied with a line or two of keepable text a day instead of the twenty pages of outlined diktat.

And yet another:

1. Outer conflict: an interesting or appealing character needs to battle the equivalent of schoolyard bullies to get through the day.

2. Inner conflict: an interesting he or she who needs to battle his or her internal schoolyard bullies to get at his or her talent. The monsters are inside, keeping the character on a tight leash.

And this just in, as they say on TV:

1. Proactive, which is to say going at story as a means of advocacy.

2. Reactive, which is a response to some injustice or as a rebuttal.

In a real sense, it--the process--is all the above, which is to say writing after having at one time or another doing all of the above, leavening it now with that greatest process of all, muscle memory. Doing it without thinking. Which in its literary way, is taking on literature, any kind of literature, as though still a teen-ager, without fear of failure much less death.

Obits and Pieces

In an admiring and comprehensive obituary of actor Richard Widmark, dead at age 93, in today's New York Times, the author quoted a remark Widmark once made about the craft of acting. The older one gets, Widmark said, the less one knows about acting and the more one is able to recognize the truly great actors.

Indeed, one of the living greats, Paul Schofield, left us not two weeks back, and today's Times carries notices of yet another, Patrick Stewart, maintaining that his current rendition of Macbeth is an opportunity of a life time.

All this as prologue to my conflating Widmark's observation about actors to writers. There are times just before I enter a class room or workshop venue when I am struck by my audacity in presuming to present information to students about writing. Saving grace and salvation appear almost immediately with the reminder that I am not entering with notes written on stone tablets nor am I speaking entirely of my own beliefs but rather am using examples and visions of women and men whose works cry out for recognition because of their ability to transport, transpose, dignify, explain, and evoke.

You can tell the great ones by the stature with which their words appear on the page, neither overdone nor timid, rather confident of the vision they impart to the story they wish to share.

Some days back, I was slathering at the prospect of the new collection of stories by Tobias Wolff, which arrived yesterday and into which I fell with reckless tantivy. He has become, I argue, the American version of William Trevor, a storyteller so sure of himself that he is able to move us, no, more than move, to transport us to places we thought were beyond our frame of business. Such is Wolff's approach to storytelling, however, that he is able to make it our business by including us and them--his characters--in the rubric of shared humanity.

The new stories are featured in a section at the rear. Many of the earlier stories, taken from earlier collections, appear first, prefaced by a brief note from the author in which he confesses to having tweaked some of them in the service of making them more accessible. What a lovely word, accessible. I have a suspicion of writers who opt for the murkiness of obfuscation rather than the target of at least transparency on the way to pellucidity.

Sure enough, he tweaked the opening of one of my favorites, In the Garden of American Martyrs, which made me resolve to revisit that in its entirety. But for the moment, the lure of the new was strong and so I began with the first, something that seemed so bland on the surface as to give me pause, induce me back to the beginning again for a closer look. All I will say of it is that the strategy was worth the effort. I was made to think, yanked from one place where, in many ways, I'd been myself, to a new kind of awareness that is the kind of awareness not arrived at with ease, at least not by me. I was made, in a sense, to grow up. In actual chronology, I'm probably more grown up than Wolff, but remember, he is a gifted writer who has worked at his gifts and by no means squandered them.

Thinking back on it, I realize I became caught up on reading to be transported to times and places where things were happening that made what was happening in my young, routine-filled life seem bland. Now, what I read and write makes me anxious to return to those days, filled with the techniques of masterly men and women who taught me over the years to look for and find the miracles buried in the terrain of the ordinary.