Summer Reading: Bonnie Jo Campbell & Moby Dick

Last night I finished American Salvage, Bonnie Jo Campbell’s collection of stories, and it was amazing. One of the few collections that I read in entirety, in order, and in spite of myself: I’d only planned to read one or two stories now just to get the flavor. Set in working class Michigan, these stories are about people skulking along the fringes of society—which doesn’t diminish their stories or make their lives less worthy of exploration. Meth addicts (and the people who love them), survivalists, salvage yard workers, silent children, the PhD in agriculture who knows she can improve her husband’s family farm…all are treated with compassion and humanity and dark, emotional honesty.

Here’s the opening paragraph of “Bringing Belle Home”:

“A man who trusted himself to own a gun could walk into the place and shoot these guys, one after another, watch the glass fly: Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Yukon Jack, Johnny Walker Red. The bartender pocketed a dollar-fifty tip and smiled. Thomssen grinned and saluted, but he felt the grin pull tight across his face like a scar, and he might have been saluting the liquor army. He could resist coming here most days of the week, and he rarely came when his son was visiting, but on nights like tonight when he dropped Billy off at his ex-wife’s, when he couldn’t face his own empty house, he allowed himself a few hours. He was tall enough to see everyone in the place, and he told himself he was glad Belle wasn’t there to complicate things.”

Here’s an excerpt from a starred review in Booklist:
“Campbell’s busted-broke, damaged, and discarded people are rich in longing, valor, forgiveness and love, and readers themselves will feel salvaged and transformed by the gutsy book’s fierce compassion.”

As you may recall, this was the small press book (originally published by Wayne State University Press) that was seemingly plucked from nowhere and announced as a finalist for the National Book Award in 2009. I had to look up which book actually won the award—(Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin, which is I guess a fine book—but I can imagine that in the stacks of books under consideration that the overwhelmed judges were trying to hone down to five, American Salvage had to be un-ignorable and unforgettable; surely this one leapt to the top of the pile and absolutely could not be dislodged.

This one is going straight to my “favorite books shelf.” Buy this book!

Scroll down to the May 3 entry of this blog for an amusing (and helpful) list of writing advice Bonnie Jo Campbell has given writing students over the years.

***

And now that I’ve finished American Salvage, I’m free to embark upon my big summer reading goal: Moby Dick. I’m on page 52—only 450 more to go!—and so far I’m loving it.

I’ve even laughed out loud a few times, which I wouldn’t have expected—though it’s hard not to when we’re told of the “savage” Queequeg: “His greatest admirer could not have cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast [at the inn] with him, and using it there without ceremony, reaching over the table with it, to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks towards him. But that was certainly very coolly done by him, and everyone knows that in most people’s estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly.”

Disclosure per the FTC overlords: American Salvage was a birthday gift, and I bought Moby Dick at a used bookstore, confident I wasn't cheating Herman Melville's family out of any royalties.

Split This Rock Poetry Contest

Here’s an announcement from DC’s Split This Rock poetry festival (again, a lot of lead time, so no excuses for missing this deadline!):

Split This Rock 2011
Fourth Annual Adult Poetry Contest

Benefits Split This Rock Poetry Festival - Washington, DC

$1,000 awarded for poems of provocation and witness
Jan Beatty, Judge

Submission Guidelines:

--Send up to 3 unpublished poems, no more than 6 pages total, in any style, in the spirit of Split This Rock (see below).

--Postmark Deadline: November 1, 2010

--Include one cover page containing your name, address, phone number, email, and the titles of your poems. (This is the only part of the submission that should contain your name.)

--Enclose a check or money order for $25 (made out to "Split This Rock") to:
Split This Rock Poetry Contest
1112 16th Street NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036

--Simultaneous submissions OK, but please notify us immediately if the poem is accepted elsewhere. For more information, info@splitthisrock.org.

Prizes:

First place $500; 2nd and 3rd place, $250 each. Winners will receive free festival registration, and the 1st-place winner will be invited to read the winning poem at Split This Rock Poetry Festival, 2012.

Winning poems will be published on http://www.splitthisrock.org/.

Reading fee of $25 supports Split This Rock Poetry Festival.

Details:
Submissions should be in the spirit of Split This Rock: socially engaged poems, poems that reach beyond the self to connect with the larger community or world; poems of provocation and witness. This theme can be interpreted broadly and may include but is not limited to work addressing politics, economics, government, war, leadership; issues of identity (gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, disability, body image, immigration, heritage, etc.); community, civic engagement, education, activism; and poems about history, Americana, cultural icons.

Recommended Reading: Susan Coll's Beach Week

My writing group has been especially productive, and I’m happy to bring to your attention the hilarious new book by Susan Coll: Beach Week, which deserves to shoot to the top of your summer reading list. Susan swooped through our group, bringing in chapters that made me laugh out loud, then totally rewriting them, turning them sharper and making me laugh even harder. It was a joy to watch this book unfold and to watch these D.C. suburban parents get skewered.

Here’s the book description from Susan’s website:

"Ah, “beach week”: a time-honored tradition in which the D.C. suburbs’ latest herd of high school grads flocks to Chelsea Beach for seven whole days of debauched celebration. In this dark comedy, ten teenage girls plan an unhinged blowout the likes of which their young lives have never seen. They smuggle vodka in water bottles and horde prescription drugs by the dozen. Meanwhile, their misguided, affluent parents are too busy worrying about legal liabilities to fret over some missing pills or random hookups.

"Susan Coll satirizes a new teenage rite of passage, in the process dismantling the lives of families in transition. Beach Week is a hilarious, well-observed look at the end of childhood and the human need to commemorate it—expensively."

She has a number of readings at the beach (lucky duck!) and an upcoming reading in DC, where I will be, sitting in the front row, laughing:
Thursday, July 8, 7 p.m.
Politics and Prose
5015 Connecticut Ave., NW
Washington, DC
Details here (scroll down).

Here’s a funny piece Susan wrote about her fear of Facebook.

And here’s Susan’s blog about…parking! (Yes, also funny!)

Until Next Week...

I declare today a birthday holiday from blogging…and now, let the wild rumpus start!

Three Things: Bret Easton Ellis Reading, Plot & Structure, Silence & Writing

I picked up this link off Facebook; it’s a great, basic explanation of structure for novels and stories: http://www.arghink.com/2010/06/21/the-basics-of-fiction/

Excerpt:

“I. The Central Conflict

Every story is a battle.

(P)________must have (G)_______

(A)________must have (G)_______

The story is launched when the protagonist pushes to achieve her goal.
The story is shaped when the antagonist pushes to achieve his goal.
The back-and-forth cause-and-effect pushing and blocking of goals is the fuel for the story.
For the story to have a tight structure and focused central conflict, the actions of both the protagonist and antagonist must directly block their opponents’ pursuit of their goals.”

***

Another pick-up from Facebook (I promise I’ve been working, honest!): this excellent article in The New Republic about the need for silence while writing, not sound-wise, but time-wise:

“Writing, before it is anything else, is a way of clarifying one’s thoughts. This is obviously true of forms such as the diary, which are inherently solitary. But even those of us who write for publication can conclude, once we have clarified certain thoughts, that these thoughts are not especially valuable, or are not entirely convincing, or perhaps are simply not thoughts we want to share with others, at least not now. For many of us who love the act of writing—even when we are writing against a deadline with an editor waiting for the copy—there is something monastic about the process, a confrontation with one’s thoughts that has a value apart from the proximity or even perhaps the desirability of any other reader.”


***

I went to the Bret Easton Ellis reading on Monday night and am glad I did. Packed house, and after a horrifying introduction (the woman started out by bragging about how her women’s studies class included Ellis’s name on a list of “people who should be removed from the culture”…it got better, and I’m sure I’m just too old and not hipster enough to “get it” but I thought the intro was off-putting and tacky). Ellis read a very short section from Imperial Bedrooms and took questions from an audience who was quite knowledgeable about his work.

A few interesting points (paraphrased; I didn’t take notes):

--American Pscyho came from Ellis’s own feelings of alienation and isolation and disappointment in the world. He called it (and the others) a “personal book.”

--He doesn’t show his work to anyone—anyone!—before sending it his agent. He noted that his editor was the main person who made suggestions/comments on the work. I was shocked. I can’t imagine what it would be like not to have early readers to bounce ideas off and to see what is/isn’t working (thank you, writing group!).

--Major influences: Hemingway, Didion, Carver.

--He doesn’t wear the designer clothes that his characters wear (I knew you were wondering).

There was a tremendous line for signing, and even so, Ellis personalized books and took a moment to chat, so lots of points for being gracious. And something must have worked, because I came home and read the book immediately.

Even so, after finishing it, I’m not sure what to say. It was both tedious (passive people who don’t communicate can be frustrating!) and yet compelling (short, quickly paced, with deep paranoia and a definite narrative pull). The female characters were shallow and ludicrously undeveloped (but, I guess, so were the male characters). The violence was horrific. The ending was wretched and hopeless and upsetting (though not surprising). Noir to the nth power. And yet: something about this dark, disturbing book is sticking with me. Is our culture really as bad as this? I hope not…but I’m not convinced that Clay’s heart of darkness comes from thin air.

More about Imperial Bedrooms—including an excerpt—here.

Jenny McKean Moore Free Community Workshop: Creative Nonfiction

NOTE:  If you're looking for information on the Fall 2011 workshop, go here: http://workinprogressinprogress.blogspot.com/2011/08/my-biannual-post-about-jenny-mckean.html

I don’t know why the George Washington University can’t put this information on a WEB SITE like everyone else…but here it is, information about the next Jenny McKean Moore Free Community Workshop, typed by my own fingers. I participated in this program way back when and highly recommend the experience. Deadline for applications is August 30, but since when is planning ahead a bad idea?

Jenny McKean Moore Free Community Workshop
Fall 2010—Creative Nonfiction: Biography and Autobiography
The George Washington University

Tuesdays, 7—9 PM
September 14—December 7, 2010

Led by Tilar J. Mazzeo

Come and take part in a semester-long workshop in creative non-fiction—the art of using the strategies of fiction to tell true stories about history, place, and biography. To apply, you do NOT need academic qualifications or publications. The class will be a craft-based workshop that focuses on different approaches to writing biography and autobiography, and it will combine readings, writing exercises, and peer-review of the writing of participants. There are no fees to participate in the class, but you will be responsible for the costs of some photocopies. Students at Consortium schools (including GWU) are not eligible. The Workshop is not open to those who have participated in more than one Jenny McKean Moore Free Community Workshop.

To apply, please submit a letter of interest and a 5-10 page sample of your writing. Make sure you include your name, address, home and work telephone numbers, and email address. If you wish to have your sample returned, please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Applications must be received at the following address by close of business on Monday, August 30, 2010.
JMM Creative Nonfiction Workshop
Department of English
The George Washington University
801 22nd Street, NW (Suite 760)
Washington, DC 20052

Tilar J. Mazzeo, an associate professor at Colby College, is the Jenny McKean Moore Writer in Washington for 1010-2011. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling biography The Widow Clicquot and The Secret of Chanel No. 5.

Bret Easton Ellis Reading Tonight

I may haul myself off to Politics & Prose to listen to Bret Easton Ellis read from his new novel, Imperial Bedrooms, the sequel to Less Than Zero.

Reading details are here.

Or, maybe this book description from the Politics & Prose website gives us the general gist of how those characters turned out: In this sequel to Less Than Zero, Ellis explores the lives of Clay, now a screenwriter; Trent, a producer, married to Clay’s old girlfriend; and Rip, who runs an escort service. All are hurtling out of control in the fast lane of Los Angeles, with its deals, drugs, and sex.

I guess I wasn’t assuming they’d all live happily ever after, but this sounds pretty bleak!

Official website—including an excerpt—is here.

I can’t quite decide if I should go or not; will this reading be worth braving rush hour traffic for?—

Pro: (from an interview with New York Magazine)
When he was outlining Imperial Bedrooms, Ellis was reading Raymond Chandler. “I was thinking about the Hollywood novel, and the Hollywood myth of exploitation. People using each other.” As he sees it, the issue with Clay “has to do with narcissism. I was very interested in the question of what happens when a narcissist hits the wall? And what happens when all the tricks he’d been using, or all the things that were fulfilling, were feeding his narcissism, weren’t working?”

Con: (from the same interview)
Ellis has always been seduced by money and fame, and that hasn’t changed. “Maybe it’s a weird strain of anti-intellectualism,” he says, but if given a choice he’d rather “hang out with Rob Pattinson than Richard Ford.”

Pro: I can get my hardcover of Less Than Zero signed.

Con: It's not a first edition.

Pro: I can weasel out of cooking dinner for Steve...decided. See you there.