Fine, this is what it looks like.

It took me forever to get this review written.  I bought Blue Nights, Joan Didion’s latest work, in November, soon after it came out.  It’s a small book and I figured I could read it in a day and get to work. I started it pretty quickly and read 40 pages.  And then it sat on the night stand by my reading chair in my bedroom.  I took the cover off, and the back photo haunted me every time I saw it—Didion’s daughter, young, sitting on a chair, elbows on knees with towhead in hands, too serious. And I couldn’t read it.  I knew it was about mortality, and as Didion says “When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.” I knew her daughter, so ill in the first memoir, was going to die, had died, and so I spent a lot of time not reading it.  And when I went back to Blue Nights in January, I opened my reading journal to see what I’d written, to remind me.

“There’s a sense of clinging about this…it’s humbling and haunting and it makes me want to stop reading it and go read a book or play a game with my kids.”

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Early in the new Murakami novel, a young writer named Tengo edits/rewrites a novella, originally written by a teenage girl, to win a debut literary prize.  As the novel progresses, the world he lives in changes to resemble the world Tengo embellished/ created in his work.  Notably, he describes two moons in the novella, and lo and behold, eventually he notices there are two moons in his world, and the second moon looks exactly how he described it.

On occasion, I’m struck by the similarity of something in the real world to something in a story I wrote.  Am I special person, like Tengo?  (I’m aware Tengo is a fictional character) Or did my sub-conscious give me the idea, which I used in the story, and then noticed in the real world?  I lean toward the latter.

I tried NaNoWriMo this year.  I failed.  I wrote about 1,500 words my first day, but decided they were so bad, and I mean really bad, that I couldn’t bear the thought of pounding out 48,500 more terrible words.  (NaNoWriMo seems to work for some people and that’s great)  I share this because in those first few pages, my main character hits a little girl with his car on his way to work.  It’s not his fault.  The girl darted out in front of him, but he feels guilty, and wonders if he could have prevented it had he been paying more attention.   Read more »

What stayed with me was the strangeness of it. Sarah’s story wasn’t especially well-written. There wasn’t much in it that was novel except the act of writing it down, heavy with mystery and a sense of loss, and sending it out into the world rudderless. It was like stumbling upon something secret, and I wanted to know more. To enter further into that mystery. So, naturally, I turned to the internet.

Last month, I wrote about Sarah’s story, which I found handwritten on the flyleaves of a used book I bought online. That post includes a transcript of what little she left for the amateur internet sleuth, so I won’t belabor the details here. But there are a couple highlights that, if this were a TV mini-series, would surely appear in the “Last Week on…” montage that rolls before the theme song:

1. Sarah met and fell in love with a man named Mike. Mike was a park ranger who, according to Sarah’s friend Stu, had started an Outward Bound program in Seward, Alaska, where Sarah’s story takes place. According to Sarah, Mike was “her second half.” He “changed [her] life… gave [her] pure love.”
2. Sarah misspells his name when she writes it out. Instead of Michael Adrian Vanbeek, the standard spelling of the two given names, she writes “Micheal Adrain Vanbeek.”
3. She writes in vague terms about the loss of the relationship. Twice in the draft, she approaches this subject and then jerks away from it, like she has accidentally brushed against a wound.

Mike Vanderbeek is the one who looks like he's being attacked by the guy in the jean shorts.

Since I didn’t have any helpful information about Sarah, I began by googling Mike. I made the rookie mistake of starting with his full name, both Sarah’s rendering and the spelling-corrected version. Of course, this yielded no real results. Then I tried “Mike Vanbeek”—too many results. Then I tried searching “Mike Vanbeek” and “Outward Bound” together. Here where it got interesting.

Google suggested that maybe I meant “Mike Vanderbeek” and Outward Bound, and it showed me what I would find there. Mike Vanderbeek, as it turns out, started Outward Bound’s Alaska program in Seward. He was indeed a park ranger, an advanced mountaineer, and he would’ve likely been in Seward in the summer of 1997, when Sarah sets her story. All of this fits, but all of this information is found around the edges of the articles. For Google, the thing you need to know about Mike Vanderbeek is that he is dead. Read more »

No one likes to be misunderstood.

At least I’m assuming, and shamelessly projecting upon others the alienation that I myself do not savor…

The fact is — as I write whatever I write — I do not really know what I’m intending to mean, and therefore appreciate another soul making the effort to comprehend that proposition or observation or truth claim around which my words take tentative and perhaps over-confident stabs in the dark.

This, I’m afraid, is the best any reader or any literary critic can offer by way of definitive credentials.   “Ours is in the trying,” muses T.S. Eliot (italics mine).  We put our stuff out there and hope for a dialogue partner, and at our best, do not react with a hyper-critical defense which degenerates into the slinging of mud or jello…  Or even the defense which ostensibly folds its arms and snickers in condescension.

Daisy Fried, in her New York Times articles and in her Poetry Foundation commentaries, has exercised her readership’s cerebral capacities for over a decade now.  I love that about the poetic graduate of Swarthmore College — that she pushes and prods and gets our synapse connections firing on all cylinders.   And I want her to know that I used to ride my bike through that upscale campus and pick up, as through osmosis, the academy’s deepest thoughts.   I did this, however, not for the sole purpose of one day asserting that  William Carlos Williams is the Dante of the American twentieth century (a comment that makes me want to dig further into the Inferno and perhaps learn the epic in the original Italian).  But I thought those thoughts, which were clearly above my blue-collar rank, because it seemed to me then, and seems to me now, that no one owns this dialectic terrain… that intellectual property is nothing more than a cold, stony seat in the amphitheater where scholars and non-scholars may cool their heels, listen and perhaps chime into the conversation.

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I had never heard of this brand until recently.

About a week ago, I spent a Saturday evening drinking scotch, telling stories and having some laughs with a small group of people who all happen to be smarter than I am. Our hosts had some music on in the background, and I recognized a particular piece. In my typical self-deprecating manner, I pointed out how I loved the piece (Ravel’s String Quartet in F major), but my primary association with it was that it signified the title sequence of The Royal Tenenbaums. So as opposed to, you know, being a genuinely cultured person and knowing specific compositions by name, I only recognized the piece because of a movie. I didn’t have to make that connection out loud for everyone– as I said, they’re smart people– so our host, being a good natured person, smiled at my idiocy and proceeded to tell us a bit about Ravel’s history, alluding to some criticism he’d received as a composer and telling us that he’d died a virgin. Which was cool– I love that she knows stuff like that.

When I think about the evening, I think about it in two ways. First, as I said, it was lovely, and I went home glad I’d chosen to go. It was warm and cozy, the conversation was good, I laughed a lot, and I got to know one of the people a little better. But now that I’m writing about it, it’s changed. That’s what happens, right? We make decisions about how to convey scenes. As I’m thinking about the night through the filter of the music conversation, I can point to the various moments that exemplify my opening comment about the others being more intelligent than me. Two people were bantering in Russian, someone alluded to their time teaching at an Ivy League school, someone quoted an obscure passage from a Vonnegut novel I’ve never read, so on and so forth. Now, that doesn’t mean there weren’t penis jokes– even classy people like those– but as I drove home, the moment of noticing the music, and particularly noticing why I noticed the music, caused my mind to travel down a little rabbit hole and land in a room where all I could think about was why I like the art and pop culture that I do.

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“Once someone passes away they’re open to interpretation.”

So says Daphne Williams Fox, the grand-daughter of William Carlos Williams, as she responds to the new Herbert Leibowitz book on her famed ancestor.   Leibowitz suggests that the Rutherford physician had an unconsummated affair with a Dadaist artist, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven — and with names like these their mere introduction to one another probably sucked all the oxygen from the room.   And can you imagine what might have passed for flirtatious chatter between the two poets, The Mind’s Games?

If a man can say of his life or
any moment of his life, There is
nothing more to be desired!  his state
becomes like that told in the famous
double sonnet — but without the
sonnet’s restrictions.  Let him go look…

Looking, of course, is always an option, and Williams undoubtedly engaged in the activity a lot.  His optic nerve never grew tired.   A coastline?   “Today small waves are rippling…”   Tomatoes?  “Green/ in one basket and, in/ the other shining reds.”   Violets?   “Once in a while/ we’d find a patch… big blue/ ones in/ the cemetery woods…”   An old brownstone church?   “Among a group/ of modern office buildings…”   Look!  Look!  Look!   And finally–Look!

But what happens when someone looks back?   When the writer as observer or as imaginator becomes the one who is seen and known and, as Daphne admits, “open to interpretation”?   My sense is that creative writing, as a discipline, has no clear-cut answer.   Nor does the practice of crafting a simple declarative sentence that is true come with an operators‘ manual.   No safe place exists for us — not even the library, not even the local delicatessen.   Those people behind the reference desk are always watching.  Those slicing lunchmeat have built-in baloney-detectors.   And so, the conundrum that fascinates Leibowitz in telling the tale of William Carlos Williams is also the issue that Leibowitz himself may encounter some day.  (He can only hope!)
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… I’m trending.

How Did Poe Trend?

So, as far as my participation in this barking.com blog goes, I’m noticing a trend.

It’s nothing overt or thunderously apparent.  It’s comprised of no damning data.  It’s unlikely to make a dent in the Internet reading habits of emerging generations.  It’s neither a threat to national security, nor a subject of prurient interest that might be ruled on by the Supreme Court… It does not resemble the plain nose on your face…

It is, however, near and dear to my face, which has no business being saved from even the slightest of humiliating experiences.   But I have observed that for several weeks now, my unintelligible musings have received zero comments.   That is, 0.

Now, whether or not this lack of cyber-dialogue corresponds to a blanket dismissal of my prowess as a writer or of my genius as an aspiring artist — Ahhh! – that is beyond the scope and the purpose of this brief soliloquy.   In essence, all I have to say can be summarized with a modest paraphrase of Rene Descartes:  “I write, therefore I am.”   Or, to embellish on this purloined dictum just a bit, there’s no one better than the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton.   After turning away from a potentially lucrative career as writer, Merton became a priest, who morphed into a mystic, who eventually, in Seeds of Contemplation, understood his vocation like so:

“If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men–you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while. If you write for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted that you will wish that you were dead.”

Merton fans, of course, may speculate regarding the sequence of their hero’s syllogisms.  Why does he start with “God,” move to “men” (and presumably women), go to “world” and then to “self”?  And might there be a way of doing all of the above simultaneously?
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While I was in Seattle last month, a friend lent me two books: Tweak by Nic Sheff and Beautiful Boy by David Sheff. Tweak is Nic Sheff’s memoir about his crystal meth addiction. Beautiful Boy is a companion piece of sorts – it is Nic’s father’s account of the same events and the impact Nic’s drug use had on him and his family. Beautiful Boy covers a much larger swath of territory than Tweak. It begins when Nic is born and follows him all the way to his last stint in rehab, whereas Tweak is really only concerned with two years in Nic’s early 20s. But, as one might imagine, there’s a lot of overlap, content-wise. Both books were published in 2009. My friend recommended I read one right after the other.

My first instinct, prior to having read the books, was that my friend’s instruction was spot-on. In fact, I thought, all memoirs should come with a secondary account that can be held up next to the original to provide outside insight and perspective. After all, we never see ourselves clearly, and therefore never write ourselves clearly. Plus, debunking memoirs is almost a literary sport. Readers of nonfiction seem very much to enjoy speculating about what may or may not have actually happened in any book that claims to be a “true story.” In Tweak’s case, the friend who gave it me offered the caveat that she knew someone who had gone to college with Nic Sheff for a year and said while he was a thief and a liar, she never saw him on drugs and thought his account of his using at that time was very much inflated. So this method – reading two books about the exact same thing, one right after the other – seemed like a good way to get around that trickiness of memoir. How much the son’s story should I trust? Daddy will clear that right up.

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Probably my favorite book read this past year, though it's always hard to choose.

Here’s a quick recap of the book I read this past year, and those that I’m looking forward to reading this year. Only new reads listed (I’m a big rereader).

Top five favorite books of 2011 (in no particular order):

• Room, by Emma Donoghue
• My Happy Life, by Lydia Millet
• Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff
• Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson
• You Know When the Men Are Gone, by Siobhan Fallon

Five most disappointing books of the year (not necessarily ones I disliked but rather ones that I expected more from)

• The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender (loved it, but the ending disappointed)
• People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks (great premise, but short on character development)
• Cathedral, by Raymond Carter (I struggled to get through this one, honestly)
• The Next Queen of Heaven, by Gregory Maguire (just not that much to say about it, and overly quirky)
• Inheritance, by Christopher Paolini (too much introduced, not dealt with, cliched characters and situations, etc.) Read more »

On Christmas Eve, after a lengthy service at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral (very nice FYI), we arrived home at approximately 12:20 and I lit a fire outside.   This last activity, I think, will be our new family ritual — sitting in the cold, shivering by the flames, sipping something smooth, nibbling on fudge… and…

And, right in the middle of my reading of Thomas Merton:   “Into the world where there is no room Christ has come to those for whom there is no room…”  (Raids On The Unspeakable).  Right there, on the second “no room” we heard a howl in the distance.  We heard either coyotes or wolves… or a quartet of genuinely harmonic terriers.   Yes, in the wake of all the pageantry,  both high church and low church, there came late the sound of the canine other.   Hoooowl…  (No Allen Ginsburg in sight!)  And all during the assembly-process of my 17 year old son’s used Everlast punching-bag apparatus, I could not help but think of that passage in which the Canaanite woman approaches Jesus and leaves him speechless.   She says, after the Anointed One issues the exclusive caveat — that “the Son of Man” has come only to the house of Israel:  “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat crumbs that fall from their master’s table!”

Nice, come-back.  Eh?

I don’t know why these problem verses flash into and out of the sieve of my mind, but they do.   And when these sacred texts are somehow bracketed or emphasized or enjoined by the grunts, snorts, rooster-crows, bird-chirps and, in this scenario, the stylistic howlings of some far-off, somewhat distressed beast in the dark — it’s important that we take notice.   These moments are perhaps the temporal version of what the Ancient Celts refer to as “thin places” between worlds, places where we might inadvertently punch through a wall.   For me though, with my holy-day antennae up and fully functioning, the metaphor might be extended.   Whether a pack of pesky coyotes, one of the three mating pairs of wolves which are permitted to roam eastern Washington, or the 101 domesticated dalmatians with a Disney contract — it’s so clear that the neighbors are noisy.

I’ll say it again:  the neighborhood — as in the entire creation — as in the Ever-Expanding Universe – as in every sink hole that opens up in the  spring, every worm-hole that sucks down a morsel of dark matter and every blessed and bruised bending of the space-time continuum — ALL THIS — cries out.

You may wonder, at this point, two nights later, if the mechanically-challenged poet (me) figured out the punching bag apparatus and the answer is happily, yes.   At precisely 2:30 in the morning (PST), Christmas morning, I finished tightening the last bolt.   But I had been helped by the lingering howls.   The cries in the night haunted me like either Charles Dickens‘ Scrooge, or like Martin Bell‘s Barrington Bunny…
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