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by Elissa Minor Rust, January 13, 2006 11:30 AM
My kids learned a hard truth yesterday after lunch: Darth Vader is Luke's father. They've been dying to see Return of the Jedi for months. After spending the morning in my daughter's kindergarten class (twenty-six five- and six-year-olds in the same room equals migraine), I finally relented and put the movie on so I could take an Imitrex and nurse my headache. I don't know why I've been so reluctant; my son Elias has only seen Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, say, thirty times or so. He took it hard. At three and a half, he is absolutely in love with "bad guys." He spends more time each day ransacking our house, hunting for Darth Vader with his lightsaber, than I do sitting in front of this computer. Elias doesn't want Darth Vader to "turn into a good guy." He wants the bad Vader. Bad Vader is so much more fun. It's a lot harder to play Luke now: who wants the complexity of having to hate your own father? So now they know. It's not the same story once you know the truth about Luke and Leia's biology. Surprising plot twists make us re-evaluate every aspect of the way we feel about a story. The Vader twist is right up there with finding out that there is no Santa Claus, that Mr. Rochester has an insane wife locked in his attic, that Buffy wasn't really dead after season five. Or how about this one: James Frey fabricated much of his memoir. The moral? People are never as they seem. Talk about spectacular plot twists. I tried not to weigh in on the Frey controversy. I really did. But who can resist? First, I find it slightly amusing that this man writes a book about what a destructive, outrageous, horrible person he has been through much of his life, and now everyone's surprised that he's a liar to boot? My favorite Frey quote as he tries to dig himself out of his hole: "The book is about drug addiction and alcoholism. The emotional truth is there." Is this is a phrase I should understand? What exactly is "emotional truth"? And when did it become more important than ? well, than whatever his book is not. Actual truth? Literal truth? Journalistic truth? Seems to me the "emotional truth" here is that James Frey saw a way he could sell a book and went with it. There are two things that bother me most about the James Frey issue. The first is the role Oprah plays. From an AP article in yesterday's news: "Publishers, writers and readers have offered their opinions, but none mattered so much as Winfrey's... She might have fatally ruined Frey's reputation by condemning him." Does anyone else find it strange that Oprah has become the voice of expertise when it comes to literature? Oprah loves a book and the world loves it. Oprah backs a writer and the world will, too. Second: I'm disturbed by Frey's insinuation during the Larry King interview that people don't necessarily expect the truth in memoirs, that as long as the "embellishment" (which is, lets face it, a nice word for "lie") serves the story, then there's no problem. As a fiction writer, I often weave events that actually happen with events that are entirely the figment of my imagination, depending on how they serve the story. In fact, my book is one hundred percent "emotionally true." Does this mean that I can market it as a memoir? Heaven knows I'd make more money. Maybe Oprah would make it next month's book club selection
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by Elissa Minor Rust, January 12, 2006 10:20 AM
I came across an article yesterday written by one of my graduate school peers, Papatya Bucak, in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It's a funny piece about the role of jealousy in the writing world, and the fact that it does have its upside: it can spur you to work harder and accomplish more. Simply put: everyone needs a nemesis. Seinfeld had Newman. I need a Newman. So, in the spirit of jealousy, I thought I'd list the top five books I wish I'd written. Ron Carlson used to paraphrase Edward Abbey and assert that if you want to read a good book, you're going to have to write it yourself. As much as I admire both Abbey and Carlson, I'm not sure I agree: there are plenty of good books out there, most of them I'd love to have written. Without further ado: 1) Plainsong, Kent Haruf: I shouldn't have to explain this one. A novel that takes my breath away, almost literally, every time I read it. 2) Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen: I love this book, but it doesn't hold a place on my list of favorites. The reason I'd love to have written it is that it has remained so popular and moving for so long. For a work written in Austen's day ? by a woman, to boot ? to have since spurred a miniseries and multiple movies and yes, even a play, is something to be admired. Talk about standing the test of time. 3) The Harry Potter series: Okay, so I've never actually read the series, but who doesn't wish they'd come up with that jackpot of an idea? Rowling is the Cinderella story of the publishing world. I could use the Scottish castle she purchased with her royalties as much as anybody. And I have to admire any book that has kids so pumped up about reading. 4) Sunday in the Park With George, Stephen Sondheim: Okay, so it's a play and not a book, but you'll forgive me because I'd give anything to have created something this amazing. If you consider yourself an artist and don't own the DVD version with Bernadette Peters, shame on you. This is a masterpiece. 5) The Darkness around Us Is Deep, William Stafford: This book got me through college and every year since. I think Stafford's poetry holds a place above almost any other written thing, and I return to it again and again. This book, though, could do without the Robert Bly introduction ? but that's just
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by Elissa Minor Rust, January 11, 2006 9:59 AM
I ran into an acquaintance today at the grocery store (clichéd, I know; you could never write that scene into good fiction) who had seen some of the recent reviews of my book. His comment? "You'll be rolling in the dough soon, right?" Um, yeah. This is clearly not somebody who understands the state of the current publishing industry in this country. When it comes to money-making books, a collection of literary short stories is pretty much on the bottom of the heap. This has me thinking today about why, exactly, that is. Truly, it seems to me that short fiction fits the modern American lifestyle almost better than anything. Don't we have shorter attention spans? Hasn't the television industry shortened the length of the average television scene and commercial because of our complete inability to stick with one thing for too long? At a time when blogging has gained massive momentum and handwritten letters have become all but obscure in the face of email, one would think the popularity of other short forms of written communication would follow suit. Who among us hasn't complained that we don't have time to read as much as we like? A good friend of mine recently admitted that she hardly reads at all anymore, because as soon as she's sucked into a good book, she ignores everything else in her life and things just pile up. It seems to me that the short story is the perfect form for this frenzied new American lifestyle. Stick a collection of stories in your bag and you can whip it out when you have ten minutes in the waiting room at the dentist's office, or read just one quick story before bed. It's less of a commitment, certainly, than a novel; or, at least, a commitment of a different kind. You can put down a collection between stories and pick it up a few days later without worrying about forgetting something vital to the book in those lost days. Maybe that's part of the problem, though. Yesterday, I mentioned my tendency to stay up all night reading a good book. I have to admit that although I love the short story form almost more than any other, I don't think I've ever stayed up all night with a collection of stories. Once a story comes to a resolution, it's easy for me to put it down and pick it up again the next morning. But there's something intense and magical about those nights with a good novel that you just can't put down even though you're so tired it's hard to read through your blurry eyes. Too, part of the problem might be the nature of modern short stories themselves. I have to admit I winced when I read Peter Manseau's blog post last month as he summarized Tom Wolfe's "assertion that American fiction had been poisoned by the standing waters of MFA programs, where, he said, all manner of writing diseases were bred." I winced for two reasons: 1) I am a graduate of an MFA program myself, and 2) there is probably some truth in what he says. Fiction writing workshops have become, out of convenience, almost entirely about the short story. It's far easier to workshop multiple short stories a term than novel excerpts. I taught a creative writing workshop at ASU with Jay Boyer that has forever changed my notion of the short story. When we sat down to work out the syllabus, Dr. Boyer listed more novels than short stories. I had never been in a writing workshop in which the reading list including anything other than short fiction. What I learned in teaching that class is that it is impossible to write a good short story without being intimately acquainted with its opposite: the novel. Short fiction is as much about exclusion as inclusion, as much about what you don't include as what you do. This is the genius of a really good short story, the thing that makes short fiction among the most powerful of literary forms. Unfortunately, many stories written today don't seem to take this into account. Too many short stories do feel like the result of a pat formula learned in an MFA workshop. Some of the modern short story collections I most admire: A Kind of Flying (Ron Carlson), Elbow Room (James Alan McPherson), The Necessary Grace to Fall (Gina Ochsner), Friend of My Youth (Alice Munro), and A Stranger In This World (Kevin
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by Elissa Minor Rust, January 10, 2006 9:40 AM
It's late Monday night and, in keeping with my current modus operandi, I'm wide awake. There isn't much more frustrating in this world than lying sleepless in bed next to both a snoring partner and a snoring pug. Tonight I blame widdershins. The word has been running laps in my head since early evening; longer than that, really ? I've been obsessed with it since I came across the word in something I read about a week ago. (I can't even remember what it was I read. That's the mark of a good word, isn't it, if the word sticks but the piece in which it appears does not?) My head hits the pillow and the only thing I can think about is how to appropriately work widdershins into a good sentence in my novel-in-progress. Counter-clockwise, it means, though when I've heard it in the past, it held connotations of witchcraft, of menacing magic. A quick Google search tells me that walking widdershins three times around a church is a great way to summon a demon. None of this is good fodder for my current project, of course. It's a lovely word, but in the case of what I'm working on now, it just doesn't fit. That's the thing about insomnia, about late night thoughts. I've heard tales of artists who wake from an almost prophetic dream with pencil and a paper bedside for those ideas that rouse us from sleep, ideas that would make us kick ourselves if we woke in the morning having forgotten what they were, remembering only their brilliance. None of this is true for me. I can quite confidently attest that if something brilliant occurs to me in moments of insomnia, or waking from a dream, it's complete crap. It will seem brilliant at the time, make no mistake, but always disappoints in the light of day. Case in point: before I gave up the futile quest for sleep and came downstairs to write this, I had concocted more than five different novel titles, all of them including widdershins, all of them frighteningly bad. Walking Widdershins. Waking from Widdershins. Widdershin Dreams. I think you get the picture. A good friend of mine, the daughter of a poet, once told me that during her childhood, her mother spent one night each week without sleeping, in order to sneak in eight extra hours of work time. As a writer and a mother of young children, I understand the sentiment completely. But not only would I likely be less than productive as I worked through the night, I'd be the bitch-mother-from-hell the following day. My children can attest. I'm the queen of sleepless nights, not only because of chronic insomnia, but because I lack the self control to put down a really good book. In my other life, the one before children in which I could sleep in if need be, reading through most of the night was a weekly occurrence. Since becoming a mom, this is the single most accurate barometer of how good a book actually is: how much sleep am I willing to lose over it? How miserable am I willing to be the following day to know what happens next tonight, right this instant? In the past year, my all-nighter list includes Leif Enger's Peace Like a River, Kent Haruf's Plainsong, Julia Glass's Three Junes, and Carol Shields' Unless, among many others. Unfortunately for me tonight, it isn't a good book keeping me awake. Maybe walking widdershins three times around the house is a cure for insomnia. Maybe the pug has stopped snoring. Here's
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by Elissa Minor Rust, January 9, 2006 10:06 AM
Although I spent the last few days reading Joan Didion and David Maine (loved them both), I have to be honest and say the best literary experience I had all weekend took place in my daughter's pink canvas playhouse. It's just large enough for two people to fit snuggly, and we have it permanently positioned above one of the heating vents in the living room, so it's like a wonderful little sauna. My daughter, Chloe, had stockpiled her favorite books into the sauna, and she invited me in (along with the cat and the pug) so we could do some reading. We read all of Horton Hatches the Egg before she pulled from her stack her favorite series of all time: Junie B. Jones. Okay. A little on Junie B. Anybody who shares a home with a kindergarten-aged girl is probably also intimately acquainted with Junie B. Jones. She's your typical five-year-old protagonist, cute and endearing on a first read, but by the time you've progressed to, say, books ten and up in the series, all the books start to feel exactly the same to an adult reader. Chloe has been on her Junie B. Jones kick for about a year, and it must be said that a chapter a night of the same spunky five-year-old gets a little old. I can hardly handle my own five-year-old night after night. Frankly stated, if I have to read Junie B. Jones one more time, I'm sure I will vomit. I've been occasionally successful in getting her to read other books, but the number of non-Junie B. Jones chapter books we've read in the past year I can count on one hand (The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Little House on the Prairie ? breaths of fresh air!). My husband and I have a tradition of taking both our kids downtown to Powell's and letting them pick out one used book to buy. Chloe always chooses one of the Junie B. series. If you've ever walked past the children's section in Powell's and overheard a desperate-sounding mother literally begging her child on both knees to choose a different book for heaven's sake, then you and I have crossed paths. You'll understand, then, why this weekend in the playhouse/sauna, when Chloe pulled Junie B. Jones from a whole stack of perfectly good literary offerings, I finally posed the question: "Sweetie, why, exactly, do you like these books so much?" I wasn't expecting the answer she gave me. "I like that the book talks to me," she said. When I probed her further I realized that she really does have that exact experience with the book: not only is Junie B. Jones a fantastic first person narrator, she often veers into the realm of second person as well with little asides aimed straight at the reader. And she speaks just like a five-year-old would, rotten grammar and misguided word usage and all. My kindergartener had just summed up in one sentence the only honest way to answer the question about why we like to read good fiction, and how we choose the fiction we do: because it speaks to us. Because the characters draw us in. Because even though we know they aren't real, they almost are. I promised her I'd stop griping about Junie B. Jones. And deep down, I'm thrilled that she has a love affair with books. I live with constant guilt that my love of both reading and writing often makes me ignore my kids. A few years back, some expert came out with a study that the more your kids see you reading on a daily basis, the more likely they are to do better in school and become readers themselves. I want to find whoever did that study and kiss them, hard. I use it as a daily excuse. When I let my kids watch three videos in a row so that I could finish Gilead last month, I was really doing it for them. It's a sacrifice, for sure. And when I set them up with something to play with "quietly, because Mommy's working," and cordon myself off in my office to get my writing fix for the day, I have to hope it does the same thing for them. I can't bear the thought of them growing up to resent the fact that I spent too much time in front of the computer, that I ignored them for my books. This morning, from Chloe, a small gift: when I unzipped her backpack to toss in her weekly folder, I found a newspaper clipping. It was the story our local paper ran on my new book, next to the strange photo of me holding an umbrella, standing in the rain. She had carefully cut it out (a newly acquired kindergarten skill), folded it in half, then quietly slipped it into her backpack. When she saw that I discovered her secret, she smiled and said, "I want to show everyone in my class. I want to take your book, too." A strange feeling: my daughter is proud of me. Good luck getting a review that satisfying from the New York Times. I think I'll buy her another Junie B.
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