Conference Notes

As the reader(s) of this blog probably know(s), next week is the annual conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs in Boston.  I'm probably not going this year-- I don't have an airline ticket, a hotel reservation, or professional development money left over after MLA.  So you may think, "Well, then you're definitely not going, right?"  To which I say again... probably.  If somebody calls or emails me in the next couple of days to say, "We want to interview you for a job," I'll get in the car, make the seven hour drive, and stay with some nearby relatives (whether they like it or not), but that's not looking too very likely.

I attended my first AWP in 1999.  The conference was smaller then-- it could be held in Albany, which I doubt could accomodate the conference now, which is typically held in cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago these days.  I had mixed emotions about that conference-- as a 23-year-old undergrad, I definitely felt dumber and less-well-read than everyone else there.  I kept listening to people who struck me as pompous, but that might have just been my own insecurity causing me to hate anyone who seemed intellectual.  I did get to talk to-- and embarrass myself-- in front of Maxine Kumin.  So that's a story, at least.  Maybe I'll blog about it sometime.

I've attended-- and presented at-- other AWP Conferences since then, and I've found them both rewarding and exhausting.  I've been able to listen to David Shields, Phillip Lopate, Ann Beattie, Dinty Moore, Lee Gutkind, Cornelius Eady, Kristen Iversen, and the late Frank McCourt, among many others.  I've been able to have drinks with good friends I don't get to see very often.  I've been able to find really good magazines and small presses at the book fair.  So that's all cool.

There are those who really dislike the AWP Conference.  Just this morning, I saw a friend of a Facebook friend complaining that the conference is so expensive, it winds up excluding working writers who lack an institutional affiliating to provide them with professional development funds.  He has a point, of course, but I'm not quite sure what can be done about it-- hotels in big cities are expensive, and the AWP does at least try to keep membership costs for students down.  I don't have the impression that anybody is getting rich off of the AWP Conference.  And as an organization, they do provide valuable services to writers-- a job list, contests open to members and non-members alike, information on where to submit work.  So I don't think the president of the AWP has a Scrooge McDuck-esque vault of gold coins to swim in.

As at any academic conference, there are a few poseurs-- maybe more than is typical, because the conference is so big and there's a certain type of writer who fancies himself iconoclastic when in fact he's just annoying.  A stranger at a conference once asked a friend of mine who had just secured a tenure-track job, "So where did you publish your book?"  When the friend replied that he didn't have a book yet, the guy replied, "Oh.  Then I guess they like you... for some other reason."  I once overheard a guy bragging (and hopefully lying): "Joyce Carol Oates had security remove me from her reading!  I got beef with Joyce Carol Oates!"  And of course, there are the people who treat writing as performance-- the people who sit at the hotel bar or in the lobby, scribbling in moleskin notebooks or clacking away on their laptops, furtively looking around to make sure people can see them being Writers.

Maybe that's not fair.  Maybe some people are more comfortable writing in a crowd.  I've just never met anyone like that.  

And in all honesty, I usually find myself wiped out after AWP, and I frequently find myself, on the last day, wishing I could be home.  I'm not sure that's the fault of the conference, though-- the truth is, the older I get, the less I like being out and among people.  I get grumpy.  I find that I have nothing to say to people.  I suspect you could tell me, "Hey, we're having a three-day celebration of creative nonfiction, comic books from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and your cats.  The booze is free, and-- as our keynote speaker-- you get a hot tub and a flat screen TV in your room" and my response would be "Why can't this be done in two days?"

Grumpy as I can be sometimes in social situations, I do kind of wish I was going to AWP this year.  I mean, certain panels look interesting, as they always do, and it would be cool to get to hear Alison Bechdel, Vivian Gornick, Seamus Heaney, Tracy Kidder, and... wait.  I'm looking at the AWP website now.  Richard Russo's going be there?  Aw, man...

Honestly, though, the reason that I kinda wish I'd decided to go to AWP this year is because in the past year, I've really begun to identify with and appreciate the larger community of writers in this country.  As Emily and I were trying to figure out what to do with our careers-- and our lives-- some of these writers were tremendously helpful and supportive.  Mark Scroggins, Steve Gehrke, Dinty Moore, Patrick Madden, Dave Griffith, Mike Kardos, Katie Pierce, Matt Roberts, Bob Cowser, Natalia Singer, Jill Talbot, Maureen Stanton, and many others all deserve to be thanked in person (some of them have been, of course, but it would be nice to see them regardless).  Michael Piafsky and Ned Stuckey-French, in particular, have earned a drink or two on me.

Of course, not all of those people will be at AWP, I'm sure.  But still, that's the one place I know where, every year, I can count on seeing some of the most talented and kindest people I know.  On Facebook this morning, Dinty posted "The AWP annual conference charged my batteries when I was an unpublished grad student (sleeping six to a room) and it charges my batteries now. Lots of good support and friendship happens, plus books get sold, magazines garner subscribers, plus people at all levels learn new ideas which inform their writing. All good."  I can't really improve on that, so I don't think I'm going to try.

So have a good time in Boston, you who are going.  And remember that if I could be there, I'd be saying, "Let me buy you a drink.  No, wait-- you have the tenure-track job.  YOU should buy ME a drink."

(Oh, and if I do get a job interview, can I crash on the floor of your hotel room?  Those relatives I mentioned?  They don't exactly agree with my politics.  Sometimes, that can be... problematic.  So if you could just, you know, let me have the floor.  A pillow might be nice, too.  I don't snore, unless I've been drinking.  I will have been drinking.)

On Teaching and Learning

It's a lovely winter day here in Canton.  There's snow on the ground, but it's not terribly cold out.  From my office window, I can see the path leading from Richardson Hall to Park Street-- the path I used to walk every day, when I was a student here.  I've been feeling just a little nostalgic all day, likely because Inside Higher Ed published my essay "Once More to the Quad" this morning.  Check it out, and if you like it, check out my previous column about the beloved Alma Mater, and this profession, "The Admiring Ignorant."

Okay.  Enough lollygagging.  Back to reading.

(Reading is "work" in this profession.  Once again, I'm reminded that this is the coolest job in the world).

Make Mine Montaigne!

I apologize in advance.  This is really stupid.

Last summer, I woke up one morning with the idea of translating Michele de Montaigne's "Au Lecteur" ("To the Reader") into the type of English employed by legendary comic book creator/ oversized personality Stan "The Man" Lee.  For those of you who don't know much about Stan, he co-created some of Marvel Comics' most popular superheroes, including The Fantastic Four, X-Men, Spider-Man, and The Incredible Hulk.  He's also famous for his rather bombastic manner of writing and speech when he promotes Marvel Comics.  You can find plenty of videos of Stan on YouTube-- I recommend the "How to Draw Comics-- The Marvel Way" video from the 80s, if only to watch Marvel artist John Buscema actually do all the instructional work while Stan mugs away and waxes hyperbolic.

This "translation" work took a lot more time than it should have, and-- of course-- in the end, the result was way too esoteric to be published (although the one editor I sent it to told me he liked it, personally, but just couldn't imagine the audience for such a thing).  I wound up posting it as a Facebook note back in July, but it dawned on me that if there is an audience for a Montaigne/ Stan Lee mash-up, that audience would be the reader(s) of this blog.  So, here it is...

**

True believer, you can bet your greenest gamma rays that what old Michele the Man is about to tell you is as reliable as Spider-Sense.  I’m telling you from the get-go that these words profoundly penetrate the personality of yours truly.   I remain as humble as Cap on the Fourth of July, seeking neither the glory of Asgard nor the approval of a world that hates and fears me.  Who do you think I am, Terrax the Tamer with the Power Cosmic?!  I scribe these words for the sole benefit of the Merry Marvel Marching Society, so that when I have joined Bucky and Gwen Stacy in the realm of Thanos’s would-be lady-love, I will remain somewhat like Immortus!!!

You know your ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Montaigne wouldn’t write for his own benefit—why, if he had, he would make himself look like a brilliant Tony Stark or Reed Richards-type.  I want you, the reader at home, to see me as transparently as the Invisible Girl, for that is The Mighty Montaigne Manner!  Heck, if it wouldn’t get us in trouble with the Comics Code Authority, I’d present myself as naked as The Silver Surfer!!

So, True Believer, this book is about Michele the Man.  Face front!

Excelsior!

Montaigne, March 1, 1580 (cover date May, 1580)

The Next Big Thing

My most excellent colleague and friend Jill Talbot tagged me in this meme, "The Next Big Thing," which asks writers to reflect on work that they've recently finished or that they're working on now.  The deal is, you're supposed to answer these questions, then pass the thing along by tagging five other people.  I... uh... couldn't find anyone else who would agree to be tagged.  So I broke the chain. Sorry.  I suck.

Still, Jill is awesome.  You can find information about her books (Metawriting: Towards a Theory of Nonfiction, The Art of Friction: Where (Non)fictions Come Together, and Loaded: Women and Addiction) here.  You can find her answers to these questions here.

What is your working title of your book (or story)? 

I’ve got two book projects going on right now—one is the essay collection that I’ve been working on for, like, years—that’s called Cells, at this point.  The newer project is a mixed-genre collection co-authored with Emily Isaacson called The Heretic in Exile. 

Where did the idea come from for the book? 

Cells began life as my dissertation, a memoir about having had cancer.  But since then, it’s mutated into something else—an essay collection that’s concerned more with relationships among people, about trying to develop the capacity to love the world and those who inhabit it.  As I get older, I become more of a recluse and a curmudgeon, so “loving thy neighbor” doesn’t come easily for me.  But it’s important to keep in mind our common humanity—particularly when other people are being hateful or annoying.

The Heretic in Exile began with my wife and me talking about our own long distance relationship.  She’s living in North Carolina this year, in the house we’ve lived in together for the past several years; I’ve taken a job in upstate New York-- basically, our jobs compelled us to live apart.  For a variety of reasons, this was the right thing to do, but she and I have missed each other terribly.  Anyway, this book is about love too, but it’s also about loneliness, and thinking about how and why we share a life together.  Emily and I decided that the best thing we could do, while physically separated from each other, is to turn this pain and sadness into something that’s, hopefully, beautiful.

What genre does your book fall under? 

Cells is an essay collection; creative nonfiction.  Heretic is a mixed bag—Emily has written several poems and has taken several photographs, I’ve written a few essays, a short story, and a short play.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? 

I’m not sure either of these projects would really be filmable, although with Cells, I could imagine someone approaching it the way Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini approached American Splendor—actors playing the parts of Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner, spliced with footage of the people themselves directly addressing the audience, the way an essayist does.

Who would those actors be?  Well, when I was younger—in the 90s—a woman once told me I kinda look like Ethan Hawke.  If I’m honest with myself, though, I’m totally aging into Louis C.K.  Without the wit.

Stephen Root as my father, definitely—he could basically just play the same character he played on News Radio.  My wife kind of looks like Aimee Mann, when she’s wearing her glasses.  Plus, Aimee Mann is awesome. Although she is almost twenty years older than my wife.

I don’t know who would play my mom.  How about Glenn Close?  She’s pretty great.  Meryl Streep is also awesome in everything.

If someone were to make a movie out of The Heretic in Exile, I think the best approach would be to just make it totally weird and nonsensical.  Stop-motion characters reciting poetry while a lonely man catches Bigfoot in a bear trap; animated figures who don’t realize they’ve run over the cliff until they’ve been suspended in midair for several seconds.  Maybe puppets interacting with real actors, like Sesame Street After Dark.  Although for the short play—where my current miserable slob self meets my cooler, more put-together alter-ego—I’d cast myself as the sullen me and Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic as the me who has it together.  I saw some documentary not too long ago about Nirvana, and I was struck by how, as he’s gotten older, he seems like a totally normal, psychologically-healthy guy who is losing his hair and wears sweaters and knows a lot about current events.  Like somebody’s dad.  And I thought, “That guy’s so cool, he doesn’t even need to try anymore.” 

But I think I should probably focus more on finding someone to publish these books first.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? 

Cells—“In a series of essays on subjects as diverse as love, marriage, literature, violence, and death, a former cancer patient reflects on his own cynicism and endeavors to become a more patient and tolerant person.”

Heretic—“Two people explore love, anger, and loneliness in a co-authored collection of prose, poetry, and drama; also, Bigfoot is in it.”

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 

Probably neither.  I imagine they’ll find a home with a small or university press.  Although if you know of anyone who is looking for a co-authored multi-genre meditation on love and loneliness, please send them my way.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? 

With Cells, I can’t really say.  It’s existed in a variety of permutations over the years.  Heretic is coming along much more quickly, though—I suspect we’ll have a draft of that one done by the beginning of March.  It’s been a lot of fun—if you’re looking for a way to strengthen your relationship, I heartily recommend co-authoring a book about that relationship.  Lots of good conversations, and I feel like we understand each other better now than we ever have before.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? 

I think Cells has some stuff in common with Patrick Madden’s Quotidiana, Steven Church’s The Day After The Day After, and Bob Cowser’s Scorekeeping.  These are essay collections written by guys of a certain age that all display humor even as they reflect on serious stuff.  Although I would say we all approach this stuff differently—Church has a bold, kind of experimental style, whereas Madden is much more of a classicist—a Thoreauvian thinker-on-the-page.  My style is definitely influenced heavily by Cowser, who kind of taught me this form, but I think his “voice” is a bit more serious, whereas mine embraces self-effacing humor.  I guess what I’m saying is, I see these connections, but I don’t think we’re writing the same stuff by any means.

I don’t know what I’d compare Heretic too.  Maybe a really sad Mark Leyner…?

Who or what inspired you to write this book? 

The answer to that question would require an essay or two.  I’ll simply say that my desire to be a better person than I actually am tends to inspire almost everything I write.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

Well, I mentioned Bigfoot, right?  Did I mention that Bigfoot followed the Grateful Dead around the country and has an excellent vegetarian chili recipe?  And did I mention that he’s hounded by torch-wielding villagers?  And did I mention that the Bigfoot story is semi-autobiographical?

As far as the other book goes, there’s a pretty neat essay about soap operas in it.  As well as All-Star Family Feud and William Hazlitt’s “On the Pleasure of Hating.”  Some of the essays have been nominated for awards—in fact, one was listed as a Notable Essay of 2005 by Robert Atwan in The Best American Essays 2006.  

**

Okay-- thanks Jill!  And what the hell, let's tag Emily Isaacson, if only to see how her answers to these questions differ from mine.

Those of you interested in seeing some of the work we've been producing lately should check out The Pacifica Literary Review, a new-ish magazine that has published my essay "Life on Mars" and Emily's poem "Devil's Race Track" in their online edition.  

The Ways We Were

As I've gotten older and more confident in myself as a writer, scholar, and teacher, I've found myself less and less interested in criticizing other people in public-- particularly other writers. Early in my career, I felt sort of obligated to talk about why I thought some work was Bad for Creative Nonfiction (as if a single fraudulent memoir could threaten an entire literary genre), or perhaps discuss why so-and-so's essay "doesn't work." In private conversations, I still do this-- I've had lots of discussions with Bob Cowser, Michael Kardos, and Emily Isaacson about works that have bored, irritated, or even angered me. But that doesn't seem to me to be a productive use of my writing or blogging time. If someone else insists on enjoying a book that I think is utter shit, it doesn't really affect me. And I'm starting to become persuaded by the argument that, in our current culture, we can't afford to be too critical of the written word-- even when the written word is being employed to write unintentionally funny "erotica" for suburban moms too uptight to buy real porn. I've got my own stuff to write and try to publish, after all. Bagging on the work of other writers is a distraction.

This is why I'm not going to be blogging about Susan Shapiro's recent New York Times blog post about teaching nonfiction, or the discussion the blog post has spawned on Facebook, on blogs, and in other online publications. Sure, I have my opinions. And sure, my opinions are doubtlessly the correct opinions. But there's no reason to force them on anyone, or to criticize others for their points-of-view. Uninformed as those points of view might be. No, no. Let's keep things positive. Live and let live. To each her own.

Right?

Okay, okay.

Look, Shapiro's initial post had some good, but ultimately very flawed, ideas. She talks about an assignment from her feature journalism class, writing that "the first piece I assign my feature journalism classes is something a little more revealing [than 'what I did on my summer vacation']: write three pages confessing your most humiliating secret." She goes on to say:

Over 20 years of teaching, I have made “the humiliation essay” my signature assignment. It encourages students to shed vanity and pretension and relive an embarrassing moment that makes them look silly, fearful, fragile or naked.

You can’t remain removed and dignified and ace it. I do promise my students, though, that through the art of writing, they can transform their worst experience into the most beautiful. I found that those who cried while reading their piece aloud often later saw it in print. I believe that’s because they were coming from the right place — not the hip, but the heart.

Many Facebook friends immediately pointed out that this seems less like a journalism assignment and more like a plan to write a contrived, sensational piece of memoir that reinforces the idea that this form is for people who can shock us with outrageous tales of trauma and shame. It's possible, of course, that writing about something humiliating could produce sublime work; it's at least equally possible-- in fact, I'd argue, far more likely, that the work would wind up being less-than-literary. All shock and no substance, drama without reflection, situation without story.

I also have to admit, I was pretty pleased with the title I came up for a hypothetical textbook inspired by this post: Premature Ejaculation, Getting Caught Masturbating by Your Girlfriend's Dad, and Shitting Your Pants at the Prom: A Guide to Nonfiction Writing.

The thing is, I like some of what Shapiro has to say here. I can agree with the idea that nonfiction students need to find subjects they feel conflicted about, that they can explore in nuanced and complicated ways. And I like the advice to "question, challenge and trash yourself more than anyone else." Too many students resist reflection, revelation, and self-incrimination. They're too concerned with justifying themselves, or turning themselves into heroic characters. And honestly, it's not just students who do this. I think those of us who have immersed ourselves in this fourth genre have probably, at some point or another, finished somebody's memoir or essay collection and thought, "Well, here's a writer who thinks very highly of himself." The writer's ego is a big obstacle to overcome when we try to write nonfiction. So I can understand the desire to tell a student to "give us something that makes you look kinda bad."

But you know, I've also found that far too many nonfiction students think "The most interesting thing about me must be the thing that causes me the most pain." This isn't the case-- it's like the fiction student who thinks that conflict can only occur when two desperate people are aiming guns at each other. The idea that compelling nonfiction only occurs when an author has "coughed up [her] deepest dismay" is fundamentally wrong, I think, and suggests a misunderstanding of what makes nonfiction attractive to serious writers and readers.

Even more importantly, I think it's a mistake to ask students to write about their most humiliating moments, for a variety of reasons. I don't think it's particularly good for a person to cry in a writing workshop-- this isn't group therapy, and I'm not a trained mental health professional. Twice in my career, I've had students break down in tears while a class discussed word choices and scene-building in pieces concerned with traumas the author clearly wasn't ready to write about. It was awful, and I doubt either of those students look back on the experience fondly. I know I don't.

Good nonfiction can come from places of heartbreak and humiliation, but heartbreak and humiliation are not prerequisites for good nonfiction; similarly, having a really tragic situation doesn't guarantee a compelling story. But I guess even more important than aesthetics is the fact that I wouldn't want to give my students an assignment that actually caused them pain. That seems cruel to me, even if the intentions are to get students to approach their writing in a new way.

Having said that, though, I have to tell you that I found Hamilton Nolan's response in Gawker fairly obnoxious. Nolan's objection to the Shapiro piece isn't really about pedagogy-- except to the extent that he doesn't think writing about the self is appropriate for feature writing-- and it's not really about aesthetics either-- except for the fact that he seems to presume from the outset that memoir and essay writing are inherently narcissistic endeavors.

Nolan has titled his response "Journalism is Not Narcissism," which I think is obviously true. However, I think it is equally true that memoir and essay writing are not narcissism either-- a distinction that he doesn't bother to make. Instead, he simply employs exclamation points within parentheses to express his incredulity over the fact that Shapiro has written nine works of first-person nonfiction and three memoirs. The implication-by-punctuation is that devoting so many pages to the self is prima facia evidence of narcissism.

Such a claim would likely surprise Montaigne. Or James Baldwin. Or Joan Didion. Or anyone who has spent any time at all studying nonfiction forms.

What's frustrating to me, is that I can see how both Shapiro and Nolan are very close to expressing something useful and true about nonfiction writing, but that both of their pieces jump off the rails eventually. Shapiro's advocating of "humilation-based nonfiction" would seem to encourage tawdry and sensationalized (that is to say, bad) memoirs; if Nolan had limited himself to saying that journalism students shouldn't be trained to write nonfiction that reads like a made-for-TV movie, that would be fine. But instead, he gives us ill-advised gems like "Left unsaid in most discussions of this sort of writing is the fact that most people's lives are not that interesting."  That's so... wrong.  And completely misses the point.  

We don't read Joan Didion's "In Bed" because Joan Didion has led an exciting life-- we read it because she is able to turn her migraines into literature.  We don't read The Accidental Buddhist because Dinty W. Moore followed up his career as the most popular rock star of the 70s and 80s with studying with and learning at the feet of the Dalai Lama-- we read it because Moore has an insightful, reflective mind and something to say about the culture we live in.  Eula Biss is not a great nonfiction writer because she goes on adventures or cures diseases in her spare time-- she's a a great nonfiction writer because she has a unique point of view and an eloquence that can result in an essay as magnificent as "Time and Distance Overcome."

Narcissism, in fact, is the enemy of successful memoir or essay writing. The worthwhile piece of first-person nonfiction is, I think, an attempt to connect with other people. It's not navel-gazing, and it's certainly not solipsism, the way I think Nolan suggest that it is (although, to his credit, Nolan does allow that some works of what most of us call creative nonfiction "offer some amount of insight learned through experience"-- although he follows that up with the wrong-headed "advice" that "By plundering your own life for material, you are not investing in yourself as a writer; you're spending the principal. Soon, it will all be used up." That's simply not true, as plenty of nonfiction writers have demonstrated throughout the centuries that people have been exploring the self through writing). The act of writing-- and reading-- this type of nonfiction is an act of communion with another human consciousness. I can't really say it better than Scott Russell Sanders, who wrote in "The Singular First Person" that "I choose to write about my experience not because it is mine, but because it seems to me a door through which others might pass."

As teachers of nonfiction forms, I think this is far more useful wisdom to impart to our students than "catch the reader's attention quickly with a shocking image or line," and as critics or scholars, I think this is more valuable-- and true-- than the admonition that "You're not interesting enough to write about yourself."

Anyway.  It's January 8th.  My anniversary.  We've been married for eight years, and I think I'm going to take a break from outrage and creative nonfiction scandals in order to make my bride some dinner and drink some champagne.  Happy arguing, friends.

Maybe I'm Crazy to Suppose

Well, my plans to throw myself back into blogging this semester didn't really come to fruition, did they?  My last post was September 26th.  In my defense, I did write several essays, a short play, and a short story since then.  The short story has even been accepted for publication-- it will appear in the forthcoming issue of Bluestem.  I'm sure you'll like it-- it's got torch-wielding religious fanatics, vegetarian cooking, and Bigfoot.  It's sort of a Carver-esque dirty realism kinda thing, obviously.

I've collected a fair amount of rejections since we last spoke, too.  Nothing to weep over.  That's part of the whole process.  I'll be sending the book-- which is now titled Cells-- out to a few places in the next few days.  I'm also now working on a new book project-- a mixed-genre thing co-authored with Emily Isaacson called The Heretic in Exile.  I'm really excited about that one.  If you're looking to really improve your relationship, I heartily recommend co-authoring a book about that relationship with your significant other.  We've been having a really good time with this, and we're hoping to have a first draft done in the early months of 2013.

2013.  I wasn't sure we'd get here, to be honest, but as a drunk guy I was talking to at the Hotel Bar in Madrid, New York shrewdly observed (on December 22nd), "Those Mayans didn't know what the fuck they were talking about."

I've written before about how New Year's Eve is my favorite holiday.  As a day that lends itself to reflection, it seems like a holiday specifically for essayists.  I find, this year, that my reflection isn't quite as pleasant or positive as it has been in recent years.  2012 kinda sucked in a lot of ways, to be honest.  I'm not one to complain too loudly, and I don't want to risk repeating myself here, but the first six months of this year were lousy.  And though things got better when I changed jobs and excised the truly toxic people from my life, that did mean having to live apart from Emily, who I've concluded is the only person I really, really want to be around.  So though the new job is the best job I've ever had and I no longer find myself surrounded by hateful people, it comes at a cost.

In the past, I've spent New Year's Eve reflecting on what I've accomplished, and what I still have to do-- most often, that's involved counting publications and vowing that the new year will be the year I finally publish a book.  I can't quite bring myself to care very much about these things.  I mean, I'm thankful for all of the publication opportunities that came my way in 2012, and that are coming in 2013, and I do plan on getting my book accepted this year (honestly, I do), but those things aren't highest on my list of priorities, the way they have been in previous years.

As much as I love my job and my friends at St. Lawrence, I've learned in these past few months that a life without Emily doesn't quite feel like life as I've known it for the past ten years.  Yeah, we Skype every night and call every morning and text each other throughout the day, but it's just not the same as reading in bed next to each other or sitting in front of the TV and watching Barbarella together (as we've recently done).  When Emily's not around, my hypochondria-- which is always a little out of control, because, you know, it's hypochondria-- really goes into overdrive.  Heartburn becomes a massive coronary, every aching muscle is a sign of cancer.  In recent months, I've thought a lot about mortality, and about the passage of time, and I've concluded that, whether I have another fifty years or another fifteen minutes, I don't have time to waste.  And time spent living apart from the person you love is not time spent wisely.

Don't get me wrong-- taking the job in New York was the right thing to do for the 2012-2013 academic year.  I just wish she'd been able to come with me, and my resolution for 2013 is that, by June, we'll be living in the same house again, full-time, and it will be that way for the rest of my life (Emily, of course, will out live me, because she's filled her spare time without me with exercising and vegetarian cooking, whereas I have filled my spare time with Canadian beer and General Hospital).

Nobody's likely to ask me to give a toast at tonight's New Year's party, as I am pompous and long-winded, but if they did, I think it would go something like this:

"2012 was a mixed bag for everyone-- every year is.  Some of us lost people we loved very much; some of us welcomed new life into the world.  Some of us thought, at one point over the course of the year, that we stood to lose everything, only to discover that what truly matters can never be lost.  I wouldn't be so foolish as to wish that the coming year be free of suffering-- everyone on earth suffers, every single day.  But I will wish that, in the coming year, the joy outweighs the hardship, and that we're all able to remember how fortunate we are to have friendship and love in our lives."

Something like that, anyway.

"And now," as Lamb wrote, "another cup of the generous! and a merry New Year, and many of them, to you all, my masters."

Patrick Madden's New Column in McSweeney's Internet Tendency

If you follow this blog, chances are you're already a big fan of Patrick Madden, the author of the excellent essay collection Quotidiana and the creator of the indispensable online compendium of classical essays, also called Quotidiana.  But in case you don't know his work, Patrick is one of the smartest essayists out there, and his stuff is really worth your time.

You might start with his new column, "Dispatches from Montevideo", which will chronicle his family's adventures in Uruguay for the next several months.  The first entry is up, and it's terrific.  Funny, thoughtful, and really reflective.  I'm looking forward to reading this regularly in the coming weeks, and I suspect you'll enjoy it too.  That is, if you like essays, travel writing, writing about family, or just good writing in general.  So check it out.

Some Notes on "How We Got Our Dog"

"How We Got Our Dog" began early one Sunday morning.  I tend to wake up before Emily does on the weekends-- not always, but usually-- but I'll frequently stay in bed, thinking and occasionally dozing, until she wakes up.  On this particular Sunday, for whatever reason, the memory of the angry man who painted the swastikas on our house came back to me.  It occurred to me that I had never told Emily that story, despite the fact that we've been together for close to ten years now.  It then occurred to me that I'm not sure I'd ever told anybody that story.  Not because I was embarrassed or anything, but it just didn't seem all that interesting, until I woke up that morning and realized, "Of course it's interesting."  And as soon as I started thinking about those events, I realized I had the perfect title-- a title that sounds cute and sentimental but that's actually quite dark once you've read the essay.

This was one of those pieces that came relatively quickly.  I got the first draft written that afternoon, in fact.  I knew it wasn't quite ready, so I tinkered around with it for a little bit.  When I showed it to Emily, she liked it, but didn't love it.  She appreciated the reflection on my love for my dad-- I haven't really written much about my family, so this was somewhat new material-- but she also felt like something was missing.  So I showed it to my friend Michael, who agreed with her assessment-- something wasn't quite clicking, at the very end.  "We go from your dad trying to give the autobody shop guy money to the line about getting the dog-- there needs to be something in between."

As soon as he said it, I saw it, and I knew that I'd accidentally left out the most important paragraph in the piece-- the paragraph wherein I connected myself to the man who vandalized my parents' house, compared my simple and pure love for my dad with his destructive hate.  I managed to get that paragraph written pretty quickly-- once I realized it was missing-- and I sent the piece off a day or two later.

Lania Knight-- who has a new book out, by the way-- had asked me to submit something to Bluestem a year before, and I had told her that I had something I was finishing up that I would send to her as soon as it was ready.  Well, it's still not ready.  But I got back in touch with her after I submitted "How We Got Our Dog" through their online submission system.  Part of me wanted to reassure her that I wasn't blowing her off-- she's a really nice person, and it's always flattering to have someone solicit work from you.  But I was also hoping that Lania might look at it right away, like it, and agree to publish it.  Bluestem is a good magazine, and I was pleased to see the essay find a home there.

My dad insists that the newspaper was the San Francisco Chronicle and not The Sacramento Bee, for those of you hoping to catch me in a creative nonfiction scandal.

Still Alive

So it's been several months since my last blog post.  Sorry about that, gentle reader.  As I mentioned before my hiatus, I have been really busy recently.  I had a piece published in Inside Higher Ed.  Another appeared in Bluestem Magazine.  I'm also featured in the latest issue of Creative Nonfiction in a "roundtable discussion" with Dave Griffith, Bob Cowser, and Steve Church concerned with writing nonfiction about violence (I highly recommend checking that one out-- those guys are really smart and talented, and the piece was edited in such a way that I sound like I'm in their intellectual and artistic ballpark).  I've also been writing the occasional book review, blogging for Bedford/ St. Martin's, reading for River Teeth, and working on The Book.

Oh, and I also dissected a frog and worked as a waiter for an evening.  Essays on those experiences to come.

So I'm still pretty busy.  Why start blogging again now?

Well, mostly because I miss the sense of engagement and connection with the larger Creative Nonfiction Community this blog provided for me.  Yeah, I'm friends with a bunch of people on Facebook, but somehow Facebook comments and "likes" don't provide the same opportunity for nuance and reflection.  Facebook comments are to blog posts as blog posts are to essays, you might say.

There's also the fact that when I suspended my blogging, I wasn't completely honest about my reasons for doing so.  And that's been weighing on me.  If you've been reading this blog for any significant length of time, you know that I try to be as honest as possible in my nonfiction writing.  The word "ethical" appears in the blog's title because I believe that a sense of ethics matters when you purport to be telling (admittedly subjective) truths.  I no longer believe that I have the authority to impose my own sense of ethics on others (when I published the article that inspired this blog, "The Ethical Exhibitionist's Agenda" in College English, I was a much more arrogant man), but I do feel that it's important that I avoid distortion or evasion or any other type of dishonesty in my writing.

The truth is, I didn't stop blogging back in January just because I was busy.  I stopped blogging because I was under tremendous stress and felt like my public identity as an essayist and a blogger was making my life significantly harder.  I don't really want to say too much about it, but I basically found myself the target of some pretty hurtful gossip, and I became aware that there were some people who were using the stuff I write in order to attack me.  I know, I know.  I write personal essays for a living.  I voluntarily blog under my own name.  You'd think people searching for information about my life wouldn't get under my skin.  But it did.  I can only say that it's one thing to think that people are reading my essays to have an artistic or literary experience, and quite another to know that they're just looking for dirt, something to use against me.

I know-- that's vague.  That's kind of how it has to be.  I want to move on with my life and not dwell on what has disappointed or frustrated.  In a nutshell, 2012 hasn't been my best year.  It probably wasn't as bad as having cancer, but it was significantly worse than getting mugged, which really only took a few minutes.

But I do want to assure you all, friends and family, that things are going quite well now.  I have a new job at my alma mater in upstate New York.  I'm working with dedicated, talented people-- some of whom I've known and loved for close to two decades.  Wife and cats are fine, although we're now separated by about 700 miles.

But we're not separated, if you know what I mean.  That's a rumor I heard shortly before I headed up north-- that I was leaving Emily because she is so difficult to be around.  As if.  Anyone who knows us knows that I'm the one who is difficult to be around.  Duh-doy.  The truth is, I'll be seeing Emily in five days.  And I've been seeing her via Skype every night.  The recent pressure has, in a sense, really solidified our commitment to each other.  I've never been as certain that this is the person I'm going to spend the rest of my life with.  In fact, shortly after I decided to accept the new job, we renewed our wedding vows in a simple ceremony in the backyard, surrounded by friends and loved ones.  So haters to the left-- Team BrIsaacson is indestructible.

So now I'm blogging again.  I don't know how frequently, but it does seem to me to be something worth doing.  I've got some new essays to talk about, and it seems like there's some issue or scandal rockin' the CNF community every day-- those are always worth a post or two.  Most important, though, I'm glad to be reconnecting to this community of wonderful, supportive people.  We may disagree amongst ourselves about James Frey or David Shields or John D'Agata or whether the term "creative nonfiction" best describes what we do, but in the end, I feel like we're able to come together to promote this oft-maligned and misunderstood genre and its practitioners.

I was talking about nonfiction with a new friend and colleague last night, and I said in an off-handed way, "Of course, I always hate my own work."  That's the sort of flippant thing I say to try to avoid talking directly about my own frequently ambivalent feelings regarding the stuff I write.  But she pressed me on it.  "Do you really hate your work?"  I had to think about it for a second, but the answer-- for the most part-- is no.  There are some pieces I'm more proud of than others, but I don't really hate anything I've published.  And I certainly don't regret any of the work I've done as an essayist.  This is an exciting form, and I'm glad to be a part of this community.

Some Notes on "ABVD PGA Champ"

Yeah, yeah-- I haven't updates this blog in months. To be honest, it may be some time before I update it again. The good news is, I've found myself doing a lot more "serious" writing lately-- actual essay and book projects. I haven't had much time or inspiration to blog. That's not to say that I'm giving up on the blog entirely-- I just don't think I'll be updating with anything that even resembles regularity. At least not for the time being-- if, tomorrow, the book gets accepted by someone, I'll probably start blogging like a madman in order to drum up interest and remind people that I exist. I'm such a jerk like that. But for now... well, if we're not already friends on Facebook, why don't you send me a friend request, if you want to make sure we stay in touch?

This morning, though, I woke up thinking about "ABVD PGA Champ," my second publication (right after "The Bald and the Beautiful"). I have no idea why this essay popped into my head this morning. Maybe the new year inspired this reflection. These events happened almost fourteen years ago. I wasn't supposed to live this long-- at one point, the doctors gave me a 40% chance of surviving for five years. But here I am. I'm guessing that the old man in this essay has been dead for quite some time, but sometimes the miraculous can happen.

I don't usually like essays that are entirely scenes, with the reflection left understated (or even unstated). I don't usually like essays that are written in the present tense-- that strikes me as sort of a fiction-y gimmick. "Yeah, we're gonna make believe that this is happening right now, even though it's clearly in my past." So this piece is pretty far from being my favorite piece of my own work.

Nevertheless, as I thought about this essay this morning, I realized that, in a lot of ways, this essay sort of laid the groundwork for my entire writing career. What I mean is, "The Bald and the Beautiful"-- my first published essay, which people seemed to genuinely like-- doesn't really read like much of the work I've produced since then, in the sense that its focus is entirely on me. My cancer. My love of soap operas. My relationship with Emily. Towards the end, obviously, there's a bit about Emily in there, but that's not really what the essay is about. "ABVD PGA Champ," on the other hand, concerns itself with my attempt to understand another human being.

Memoirists and essayists are frequently accused of self-centeredness and narcissism. Sometimes, these accusations of "exhibitionism with an agenda" (to borrow the language that inspired this blog) are well-founded. Often, they're not. But when I think about my own work, I think most of my best pieces are essays and memoirs that are somehow concerned with other people-- frequently people who are not like me at all, but who I struggle to find some common ground with. "Chrononaut" is about family, but other essays-- "Julio at Large", "Force", "Scene from the Arterial Lanes Bowling Alley: Gloversville, NY, 1994"-- are about people I don't know at all, and about my attempt to forge some type of relationship (even if only in my own mind) with these people-- some of whom seem to be quite different from me.

Montaigne's reminder that "Every man has within himself the entirety of the human condition" has sort of become a spiritual mantra for me. I'm no theologian, but it reminds me of the lessons I learned in my catechism classes-- "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." There's something special, intangible, and-- dare I say it?-- divine in all human beings. Even the ones who seem degenerate or despicable. And I guess I've come to believe that it's my job as an essayist to locate that common humanity and describe it to the best of my limited abilities. There are so many forces in our culture that try to tell us that we're under siege by the sinister other-- the liberal, the conservative, the Occupier, the Tea Partier, the Mexican immigrant, the Catholic Bishop, the people who don't express the holiday greeting we want to hear expressed, the gay foster parents. It seems to me that the most important thing I can do, as a writer, is try to destroy these Manichean binaries-- especially the ones that exist in my own mind-- by endeavoring to illustrate our spiritual likenesses, that human condition that is shared by all who have ever lived on this planet.

I didn't realize that's what I was setting out to do when I wrote "ABVD PGA Champ", of course. I thought I would just sort of make fun of how my own knee-jerk college boy liberalism almost led me to deny the humanity of a dying man. But in hindsight, this essay is like a fractal, or DNA, or a cell... or something. It's this small imperfect thing that represents the larger imperfect thing that is the body of work I've produced over the course of the past seven years.

Anyway. Whoever and wherever you are-- whether we're friends who generally agree, friends who frequently disagree, or complete strangers who nonetheless agree or disagree-- Happy New Year to you and yours. "And now another cup of the generous! and a merry New Year, and many of them, to you all, my masters!"