“I don’t like science being used to manipulate people,” one of my Russian students said about the reading we had done from The Culture Code, by Clotaire Rapaille.

Rapaille, who is French, has a doctorate in psychology and was working as a psychoanalyst before being invited to help Nestlé market coffee to the Japanese. What Clotaire found in his first focus groups was that Nestlé needed to create a positive coffee imprint in Japanese children in order to create a viable market for instant coffee. In response to Clotaire’s discovery, Nestlé began selling caffeine-free, coffee-flavored sweets to children. These sold well and eventually the instant coffee market also increased.

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Get Lit! was an amazing experience, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t help this quiet ennui that’s crept up on me since it ended. I met and heard some spectacular authors, writers who who’ve inspired me, artists that I never dreamt could all inhabit the same 30-mile radius without imploding or summoning the four horsemen of the apocalypse. And it’ll take me at least a fortnight to absorb all of the wisdom I gained during the past few days. I learned so, so much.

It’s like seeing your favorite band for the first time live. Leading up to the event, you’re a manic wreck, sporadically blurting out the band’s name in daily conversation, listening to their records over and over again, making sure that you’ll know all of the words so you can sing along and not miss a beat or a word. You become what Steve Almond calls a Drooling Fanatic. You start to lose your grip on time. The closer the event comes, the faster time goes. And then it’s here. Your favorite authors, the people who inspire you, the books you owe something to, they’re all around you and it’s tough to take in. You don’t realize what’s just hit you. Read more »

In which I speculate about the subject matter of books I have not read using only their cover art as the basis for said speculations.

Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon

Two men get lost in the Palouse in summertime. One of these men is a Seattle Seahawks linebacker and the other is a retired circus clown. Just when they think they are going to die, lost and dehydrated among the wheat, they are rescued by a herd of domesticated, free-range elephants who recognize the clown from his circus days. The linebacker, clown, and elephants start a new life together in Northern Idaho where they purchase a Del Taco franchise.

Dubliners by James Joyce

A series of stories about people who live in the vibrant and prosperous city of Dublin. Some of these people wear hats. Others ride in trolley cars. Surely, these are stories that will make readers pine for the good old days and for simpler times.

The Age of Grief by Jane Smiley

One morning, a negligent housewife forgets to clean the Cheerios and crayons off her kitchen table and, as a result, her entire family die horrifying Cheerio and crayon related deaths. It’s pretty sad.

Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth

Some guy named Portnoy visits a psychiatrist three times a week to complain about how mad he is that his parents named him Portnoy. The psychiatrist is, coincidentally, also named Portnoy. However, this detail has little bearing on the plot.

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Poster Design by Michael Goldkamp

Check out some great interviews with festival authors by The Inlander.

Check out more interviews and kind festival coverage at the Spokesman-Review.

For the official word on times, locations, prices, etc., please check out ewu.edu/getlit or pick up a festival guide at your local Inlander rack.

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend/The brightest heaven of invention!/A kingdom for a stage, princes to act/And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

–Prologue, King Henry V, William Shakespeare

If I have a muse, she’s a bit of a strange one. She doesn’t whisper things in my ear too often or write my words for me; her favorite method is to get me reading the right books. She’s of the teach-a-man-to-fish variety, I guess, and lately, she’s been on a roll. I say to myself, Where are all the books about actors? and she tells me to read Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea, which I purchased at the used bookstore a year ago because of the kitschy 1970s cover and a previous positive experience with Murdoch’s work. Turns out, it’s about a retired actor/director/playwright. I wonder about the intricacies of rewriting a Shakespearean play as a contemporary novel, and she sends me to my bottom shelf, where Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres sat unread for goodness knows how long, thinking I’m reading it because it’s about family. About a paragraph in, I realized I’d read about this family before.

At first, I thought A Thousand Acres might only incidentally reference King Lear Read more »

If I see you carrying this, I will probably talk to you.

1) It was like fun-dip for my brain
It’s spring break. I’m finally done with my first & only graduate level fiction class that, even though I loved it, had me reading a novel a week. I felt literarily fatigued. I know how lucky I am to be doing what I’m doing, but it was hard for my ADD poet-brain. I was craving something fun & easy for my brain. The Hunger Games delivered.
But it wasn’t just fun, it was FUN. The plot (though not the newest of themes – think Lord of the Flies, Gladiator, any old love triangle) feels freshly handled. The characters are easy to connect with. And the constant threat of bludgeoning kept me turning the pages. I found myself smiling in the airport, walking around PDX grinning like an idiot, wanting to shout to the people around me “this book is so much fun!”

2) I’m bonding with strangers
I couldn’t have picked a better week to finally give in to my friends who have been telling me to “read it, you’ll like it.”  People are talking about the books and movie everywhere I go. And it makes me happy. I was in a small store in San Luis Obispo, CA and overheard the bow-tie wearing cashier say “… futuristic coal miners…” and I whipped around to ask if he was talking about The Hunger Games. We became giddy. He joked about not seeing daylight for a few days when he read them, and I joked about how we should start calling ourselves “Gamehumpers.” We wished each other well when I finally left the store.

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What? I just wanted to beat the Millions to it.

I’m not really reviewing the year in anything. Don’t worry.

Here’s my thought: It seems about time for a check-in regarding what books have knocked you flat on your back lately. I want to know what you’re reading and loving, and by extension what I should read this summer as I attempt to pretend I’m a writer again, if only for a short while.

I thought I’d offer a brief rundown of (some of) what I’ve been reading, in case you’re not in the mood to read whatever is stacked on your shelf. My bookmarks reside in various places in these books, so don’t expect cogent analysis. Just some general thoughts. In no particular order:

The Intuitionist, by Colson Whitehead.

Here’s what I know of Whitehead’s work thus far: he loves world-building. Which is great, because he’s good at it. I am engrossed in the world of elevator repair and the great divide between those who intuit mechanical problems and those who have to see/feel the problem themselves, and our protagonist is smart, tough, ambitious and emotionally unavailable. I think I love her.

Green Girl, by Kate Zambreno

I began this post by talking about books that knocked you flat on your back, and ladies and gents: BOOM. This is the book. I finished this novel and immediately wanted to read it again. Whenever anyone at AWP asked me what I’d read and loved lately, I talked about this book until either their eyes glazed over or they asked me to write down the name of it, mostly to get me to shut up. I can’t do it justice in a few sentences here, though I’ve been wanting to do a full-fledged post about it. The novel is structured unconventionally; we have an unlikable protagonist; one could argue there is almost zero plot; Zambreno is playing (brilliantly) on the line level with repetition and rhythm; and the narrator of the novel, whose voice comes in suddenly and only a few of times, speaks about the the protagonist Ruth in an alternately maternal and violent manner. 2011, Emergency Press. Go. Right now.

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Being Flynn is a newly released movie, based upon the best-selling memoir by Nick Flynn, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.   At some point over the next few weeks, I plan to see this film.  But before I do, I wanted to write a review so as not to be over-influenced by the subjective experience of it.

First of all, Nick Flynn is a poet and prone to madness.  That is to say, he’s genetically predisposed to delusions of grandeur, which is the non-technical name of the condition suffered by Nick’s father, Jonathan Flynn.  Plus, and this truly sucks, the mother of the writer committed suicide when he was 22 years old.

Second, Robert DiNero plays the part of Jonathan Flynn, which is reason enough to fork over the funds for a $9 matinee viewing.  Spoiler alert:  it’s his best role since playing that scary father-in-law in Meet The Fockers.

And third, I’m now officially wondering (and worried about) what my children, presently ages 17 and 20, may write about their dear ol’ M.F.A. student Dad.   I mean… don’t misunderstand:  I would be proud to have the same thespian who honed his craft on “taxi driver” interpret my curiously complex personality in his dotage.  There are things far worse than having your own chromosome-kin write something like  Cartoon Physics, Part 1, only to then revisit and rehash your own life’s closing chapters:
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If you’re a writer looking to submit work to a literary journal, let me tell you a small story and you can take from it what you will: Often in Willow Springs selection meetings, we have an argument about whether or not a poem is accessible to a wide audience. We argue over whether the poem uses references in a way that is helpful to the meaning or if instead,  the obscure references narrow down who would enjoy what the poem is trying to do. We call the latter “Poet’s Poems” and the decision we make about accepting one varies each time but more often than not, the poem is rejected.

         I tell this story, not because I write poems with specific literary or artistic references but because I enjoy poets who do, poets like Major Jackson and Melissa Kwasny but I had to learn to enjoy them. I have to thank Christopher Howell for introducing me to Melissa Kwasny. Last year during workshop he taught us how to read her book  The Nine Senses. I’d read the book before class and had been thoroughly unimpressed, frustrated even. A year later, I know why I was unimpressed: I was an idiot. I saw a book full of prose poems that seemed to be about trees and leaves and birds and I took every phrase LITERALLY.

The Nine Senses by Melissa Kwasny

 Now, I read The Nine Senses with respect and concentration because it requires both to be appreciated. These are not poems to be read idly while also watching the television. Kwasny’s poems move so quickly and leap so deftly, it’s the reader’s responsibility to commit to her level of intensity. Here I’ll show you: Read more »

“I think the guy in the hat did something awful.”   –William Hurt as Nick Carlton, character in The Big Chill [1983]

Are the categories of good guys and bad guys always clear?   Any literary aficionado would know the answer to that question automatically.

For characters to be interesting they must be complicated and nuanced in their motivations.   And to be complicated and nuanced in their motivations, they require a backstory.   And to have a backstory, they must have an opportunity to be understood — either as protagonists or as antagonists, or as heroes or as villains, or as some convoluted amalgamation of virtue and vice.

I am no fiction writer, and perhaps no writer to speak of, or to be spoken of at parties, where publishers glad-hand and editors wash their hands like Pilate, but I am aware of myself as someone who has not been imagined within the confines of an author’s repertoire of intriguing personages.   I am not written.   And the downside of that should be obvious.

Unlike Captain Ahab the villainous things I manage to accomplish will never be understood.  Not everyone will care to read very far where there is no threat of a breaching white whale.

And likewise, if Owen Meany (at the Christmas pageant of A Prayer…) has embarrassed his parents, never fear:  John Irving has promised his fans a moment of lucid and forthright altruism.  We’ll get Owen.  We’ll get Owen by unraveling the sordid religiosity that has been wrapped around his backstory like swaddling clothes around his erection.

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