What I’ve Been Reading - January 2008

February 10, 2009


Books Acquired:
Unaccustomed Earth – Jhumpa Lahiri
Home – Marilynne Robinson
ABC3D – Marion Bataille
Watchmen – Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
Liar’s Poker – Michael Lewis

Books Read:
Watchmen – Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
Alphabet Juice – Roy Blount Jr.

Etymology
From the Greek for “the true sense of the word.” That goes back to what roots showed through a lot more than they do today. But just as you appreciate a vegetable more if you know how it grows, you have a better hold on a word if you use it in acknowledgment of its roots, its background, some of the soil still attached.

I flagged this definition from Roy Blount Jr.’s Alphabet Juice because it summed up my thoughts about words themselves this month, both how they work in a literal sense and how they relate to the actions of our nation, to life, to all aspects of art – not simply literature, but graphic mediums as well.

Of course, I’m late in writing about these words. Again. To be honest, I haven’t finished Alphabet Juice – a book I began before 2008 was distant memory. There are excuses, which I’ll get into. Because that’s what I do. I get into my excuses.

My first excuse was a magazine. I received a subscription to The Atlantic for Christmas from my mother. A subscription that I asked for out of the blue, actually. It just kind of popped into my head, like Ralphie’s football in A Christmas Story. Yet, in my case, the instant thought was valuable.

I had always wanted a magazine like this – not simply Sports Illustrated or Time, but something with a little traction. Something I could look forward to reading every month, cover to cover, in an effort to become more knowledgeable about life.

I thought I had that magazine with The Believer. (I didn’t. In that case, I wanted a fiction magazine, but realized I couldn’t handle the weekly onslaught of New Yorkers.) Now, I see that I finally do with The Atlantic. It gives me a wider view of the world – one that isn’t digested into bite sized chunks.

I don’t trust magazines. I’ve written about that before. But here I am, reading The Atlantic, literally from cover to cover. “Is this it?” I thought. “Is this the death knell to my reading habits?” Given the opportunity to read a heavy, solid book or the flimsy magazine on my bedstand, I chose the magazine every night until it I had completed it.

I’m an adult. I enjoyed it. Every word. I learned. Like taking short catnaps all day long, my eyes were opened without the grogginess of eight hours of straight sleep.

What I found was, in this time of political rebirth, I’m more receptive to news – to the news cycle, to my place in its coverage and, even more, its effects. I’ve taken the words that crop up from each article - each in depth hearing and each critical analysis – and discovered that their strength comes from deep in the roots of democracy, that these words are important not just because they are information, sweet information, but also because they are the very foundation of what makes this country great. Communication. A free transfer of ideas about any aspect of life.

A lot to learn from some liberal pinko news rag.

So there’s one distraction. A week of magazine reading. The other, I’m afraid, was a comic book.

Watchmen, which many may recognize as a big-budget blockbuster on its way to theaters sometimes in the near future, is more than a comic book, to be honest, much in the way Chris Ware’s sprawling masterpieces are more than just circles and squares.

Drawn in what I consider to be typical superhero style (but, let’s be honest, what do I know – I snobbishly read these for the art), Watchmen didn’t impress me with its visual aspects. This is, no doubt, because I am unaware of the skill needed to render a comic book – especially one of this size.

Instead, it was the writing that moved me. It was superhero done with a realistic slant – realizing full well that superheroes don’t really exist, and that if they did it would occur with real life consequences. Think Fortress of Solitude without the magic ring – instead, these superheroes go all out with gadgets, a keen mind or genetic manipulation. They exist as society allows them to.

Society isn’t really crazy about them, though. “Who Watches the Watchmen?” they ask. Superheroes have been banned for years, and only a rash of violence on those who used to be masked brings them back together. For one goal.

Save themselves.

It’s a feat of writing to take a jaded anti-superhero mind like my own and convince it that superheroes can be a fascinating subject. I love that Watchmen reads like a philosophical and psychological assessment of what superheroes would be if, in fact, real. And, I love the suspense, the twists, the characters. I love the allusion of more famous superheroes. (Night Owl is most certainly Batman, by my estimation.)

Most of all, though: I may have simply enjoyed reading a comic book.

Of course, there was the book I actually read (am still reading): Alphabet Juice, Roy Blount Jr.’s amusing romp through the English language. It’s a look at why words matter; at why I love them so much, despite my utter hackery at times. It covers syntax in a way that seems so blatantly obvious, causing me to rethink everything I knew about how I write. It covers rare words that I’ve never heard, and will promptly forget, but feel all the more blessed to have knowledge of no matter how fleeting.

Above all, it covers the peculiarities of our language, and how those peculiarities are part of what makes it so wonderful. Words are sonicky; they are verbal interpretations of what we’re experiencing. And some songs just seem to have a sonic connection. Other times, the roots are weird, the roads they’ve traveled long and winding, until the word isn’t even aware of it’s original home, like a seventh generation immigrant who can no longer remember where his ancestors came from.

It’s a love letter to English, really. Blount Jr. takes his dry delivery and crafts it lovingly into a tribute, checking each pretension and putting forth an amazing display of honor at being associated with the language.

And all parts of language, too; what I love about this book is that the wit stretches across the landscape of language. ROFL, teh and other newfangled slang mixes with discussions about syntax and grammar and proper writing. It’s the entire span of English, good or not. Origins to usage to trends. Txt to Texan to Tennyson.

Which gives me hope for the future. I can butcher the language all I want, and I can put off the What I’ve Been Reading recaps to my heart’s desire, but English will always be there. Language and words – the roots of our verbal communication – will forge along, subtly changing, but always moving forward.

It gives visual masterpieces a unique voice. It gives us the basis of communication that helps build a free society. And, at times, it just stands on its own – a testament to its own strength and a tribute to every word that’s come before, either lost or passed from use.

Each word, I’ve learned, is sacred. And I should never consider letting one go unwritten.

Tags: Books, Journalism, Literature, What I've Been Reading, Words, Writers, Writing |

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John Updike (1932-2009)

January 28, 2009


It’s yesterday’s news, but a sad farewell to John Updike, of whose Rabbit Angstrom books I found to be brilliant. So brilliant that they came in Runner-Up in the Great WIBR Championship Tournament.

I didn’t know him. I didn’t read a lot of his writing outside of the Rabbit books. I wasn’t an expert - can’t anoint him the greatest of all time or any other hullabaloo. I won’t blather on with some ham-handed tribute because, let’s face it, I’m unqualified to do that and hundreds of others will tackle the task with much more insight.

But I do think he was great. And anytime a great writer passes away - whether you care for his or her writing or not - the literary world and those who follow it understand that an amazing amount of creativity and spirit has passed away as well.

See also: What I’ve Been Reading - April 2007 and an offshoot of that article, my Corey Vilhauer Book of the Month for May 2007.

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What I’ve Been Reading - December 2008

January 8, 2009


Books Acquired:
McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #29 – Dave Eggers (editor)
Alphabet Juice – Roy Blount, Jr.
Obama – David Mendell

Books Read:
McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #29 – Dave Eggers (editor)
Paul’s Boutique – Dan LeRoy
Doolittle – Ben Sisario
Murmur – J. Niimi (not finished)

Well, Christmas has come and passed, and our New Year’s trip rode by quietly, at least in terms of Black Marks on Wood Pulp coverage, so I suppose it’s about time I tackled those books I read last month.

Our book collection grew thanks to a healthy helping of Christmas cheer. Kerrie’s parents added a biography of Obama by the Chicago Tribune’s David Mendell, who covered Obama from the beginning of his first Senate campaign. The book runs from that point until his announcement that he was running for President, and comes highly recommended.

On the other side of the family, my mother brought me Roy Blount, Jr.’s Alphabet Juice, which I have begun reading and absolutely love. More next month.

Of course, as I do quarterly, I received (and read) the newest edition of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern – Issue 29 this time around. I’m sure I’ve exhausted my word count on this series, so I won’t go into it aside to say that it was as good as always, though there were no stories that made me sit up and say “OMG THAT WAS AMAZING” like Stephen King’s story from Issue 26 or Dan Chaon’s “The Bees” from The Better of McSweeney’s.

There were disturbing stories (Laura Hendrix’s “A Record of Our Debts” hit me hard enough to wish I hadn’t read it) and cute stories (Blaze Ginsberg’s “My Crush on Hillary Duff”) but nothing that stuck with me.

(Yeah, I just said it. “Cute.” As in, “oh, that’s cute, why don’t you stop back when you’ve started writing like a big kid.”

Ugh. I hate it when people call my stuff “cute.”)

This stuff was all secondary, though. The bulk of my month, in terms of both reading and writing, was devoted to my very first book proposal, a 3,000 plea to allow me the freedom of writing about something I probably was ill-equipped to write about yet feel completely convinced that I can do regardless. (Though I’ll never get approval with sentences like that.)

The subject is Continuum’s 33 1/3 series, a fun collection of books written by very fancy musicians or music expert, all focused on one classic album. The catalyst was an open call for proposals. The brewing idea was my plan to write a collection of short stories based on the 16 songs on Ween’s Chocolate and Cheese. The revelation: why not combine the two?

I’ve kept this quiet from you, dear blog reader. I didn’t mention this beforehand for a few reasons; mainly that I’ve tried as hard as I can to stop writing about writing. Or blogging about blogging. Or going too meta on your ass in every sense of the word. It’s hard, though – I love writing about myself. I really enjoy it. I like talking about myself too, in case you’re ever in a room with me and don’t have anything to say.

So I sort of hid the proposal, though I tweeted about a billion or so times – enough that what was supposed to be a subtle plea for assistance turned into a handful of great examples. (Thanks, Deane!) I kept the proposal in my head. I held back on writing it. I wanted it to be good, done a bit at a time, developed and rewritten until it was perfect; not a frantic race to the finish like most of my projects end up becoming.

To prepare, I purchased four 33 1/3 books, thinking that buy the time I was finished with the fourth I’d be fully prepared to begin. The books are short – they took only a day or two to read – and would give me a little insight on what the crew at Continuum was looking for.

I breezed through Dan LeRoy’s Paul’s Boutique, enjoying the chance to get a behind-the-scenes look into a classic album. A classic album that almost wasn’t, I learned; it was a hit with those who wrote about music, but commercially panned because it wasn’t License to Ill. In other words, it was critically revered, but no “Paul Revere.”

(Ahem.)

Ben Sisario’s Doolittle struck a similar chord. Instead of a straight forward history, Sisario went driving with Pixies front man Frank “Black Francis” Black, a rambling remembrance of one of indie rock’s most famous groups and albums. I didn’t see behind the curtain as much as into the living room of a “dysfunctionally brilliant” family.

After finishing one of the books, I’d find myself obsessed for days with the namesake album. I listened to Paul’s Boutique more this month than I had my entire life, and Doolittle finally broke out of the “one song wonder” pile and into a full rotation.

I got ready for more of the same with R.E.M.’s Murmur.

Alas, something had to give. My attention wasn’t what it should have been, maybe. Or perhaps I had soaked in all of the research I could handle and needed a break. Whatever it was, I never finished Murmur. I will (after all, I only have 25 pages left). But I didn’t.

J. Niimi’s Murmur wasn’t horrible, it just wasn’t written for me. It was written for a music geek who thought too long and too deep about his album of choice. Paul’s Boutique and Doolittle didn’t try to make the albums more than they were in real life – they just honored them, told the story and let the reader understand the thought process behind it. Murmur, on the other hand, from the first pages, took its album topic to another level, placing it high above everything else, as the savior of alternative rock. It outlined every detail of the recording to a level that only the most seasoned audio geeks would understand, and waxed poetic about the often incomprehensible lyrics.

Murmur’s not a bad album. But I don’t think I like it that much. Which made this book hard to swallow and, unfortunately, boring.

Though when I think about it, I may have learned more from Murmur than I did the others. I understand the power of knowing my audience. It might so happen that the Murmur audience is into that stuff, that I got caught with the wrong author and the wrong album. Murmur isn’t the same as Automatic for the People – the two albums come from nearly completely different bands. I shouldn’t have expected something that connected with me, because Murmur as an album doesn’t connect with me.

If I’m lucky enough to have my proposal approved – lucky enough, that is, to write a 30,000 word book on Ween’s Chocolate and Cheese for a modest advance and little to no royalties, a project done for the sake of doing it, for the idea of having a book published with my own ISBN number – I’ll hopefully capture the right mood. My audience is Ween fans and those with a passing interest in goofy, yet brilliant albums. I can’t take the subject too seriously because, let’s face it, that’s not who I’m writing for.

In school, we all learn how not to write. In doing so, we’re really learning how to write for a select audience – teaching professionals, those who are defined by rules and structure. It’s not until later that we realize that we can write for other people. That every audience deserves a different voice.

For some of us, it takes a lot longer.

Tags: Books, Literature, Music, What I've Been Reading, Writers, Writing |

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What I’ve Been Reading - The Best of 2008

December 31, 2008


Did I even read 10 books total this year?

(Barely.)

As always, this spans from December 2007 through November 2008.

Fun HomeAlison Bechdel – Fun Home (2006)
Reviewed January 2008

This year’s graphic novel inclusion has a lot of ground to make up in order to be considered in the same league as last year’s Jimmy Corrigan, but Fun House was a legitimately good story – touching and raw and real. Best of all, it was the perfect tonic for a few breathless months of low reading output. (In other words, I should probably grab a graphic novel with my Christmas money to knock me out of these doldrums.)

HeatBill Buford – Heat (2006)
Reviewed November 2008

What began as curiosity after reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential turned into all out longing with Heat. I was a fan of cooking, but now I feel like I’m ready to become a critic – a paid columnist for Top Chef Times or a program director for Food Network. I mean, if either of those positions actually existed.

DeadwoodPete Dexter – Deadwood (1986)
Reviewed November 2008

Pete Dexter is the only repeat author from last year’s list, and there’s a good chance that next year could make it a three-peat. (Admittedly, the book I have wanted to read the past two years – Dexter’s Paris Trout, his award winning and most critically renowned book – has always been curiously absent from the sales tables at the South Dakota Festival of Books. Probably chance more than blacklisting – I always end up buying my books too late.)

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007Dave Eggers (editor) – The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007 (2007)
Reviewed January 2008

I bought this because Conan O’Brien had a commencement speech included. It directed me to Fun House (an excerpt was also included) and led me to strike into the world of essays and short stories again (though only for a few weeks).

Free Darko Presents…Free Darko – The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac: Styles, Stats, and Stars in Today’s Game (2008)
Reviewed November 2008

I heart basketball, and I heart this book. It’s a brilliant combination of design and quality writing: one of those books that you’re proud to have read and proud to have displayed. Seriously. If you’re a basketball fan and you haven’t picked this up, you’re a moron, and you should have your NBA Season Ticket privileges revoked.

Fortress of SolitudeJonathan Lethem – Fortress of Solitude (2003)
Reviewed December 2007

I had forgotten all about this book until I went back through the books I’ve read. And that’s a shame, because this might qualify as the best novel I read all year. Now, I can’t hear about the gentrification of Brooklyn – or about music criticism – without thinking of this novel. I’d read it again if I wasn’t so far behind already.

The Wind-Up Bird ChronicleHaruki Murakami – The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1992)
Reviewed September/October 2008

Murakami was on my list of “Essentials,” back when I was paying attention to that sort of thing (so was the next book, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried) and I feel like I really accomplished something by finally reading it. And I say “finally” in two senses – it took me a while to pick it up, and once I did it took me two months to finish it.

The Things They CarriedTim O’Brien – The Things They Carried (1990)
Reviewed April 2008

I’m always surprised at how powerful Vietnam stories can be, no matter how many times it seems like I’ve read the same recount. O’Brien adds something different, however: the recollection of someone who may not be proud of what happened, of the ghosts still hanging over his head and of the difficulties in revealing the stories that he would just as soon forget. It’s the aftermath of war, the humanness of suffering and the agony of secrets, all rolled into one.

1 Dead in AtticChris Rose – 1 Dead in Attic (2007)
Reviewed May 2008

Speaking of suffering, if 1 Dead in Attic doesn’t get your blood boiling about the botched rescue efforts following Hurricane Katrina, or about the inhumane living conditions, or about the massive loss – of both life and livelihood – than I don’t know if you’re human. It’s even more striking knowing that, for me, New Orleans represents one of the happiest moments of my life – our honeymoon – and that in the very places these people continue to suffer lies a small section of my happiness.

And that’s it. Nine. Not ten (plus a handful of honorable mentions) like years past. Just nine.

No Michael Chabon (I found The Yiddish Policemen’s Union to be kind of a drag with a lame-o ending, though I’m excited to see the Coen Brothers treatment). No Special Topics in Calamity Physics (too cute, Marisha) or Divided Kingdom (too forgettable). I didn’t add my McSweeney’s Quarterly Concerns because none of them really stood out.

The problem is that any of those books could have taken the 10th spot, but none of them deserved it. In a year with a higher reading output, I doubt any would make it further than the Honorable Mention, if even. Given more choices, they’d have been pushed down.

It was a down year in terms of reading. But the books I enjoyed, I really enjoyed.

Quality over quantity, right? Have I said that before?

(Yes.)

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What I’ve Been Reading - October 2008

November 3, 2008


The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Books Acquired:
Deadwood – Pete Dexter
The Space Between Us - Thrity Umrigar

Books Read:
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami

Incredibly, while I found this month’s reading to be sprawling, at times pointless and often confusing, I was completely sucked in. Completely. It was typically exhaustion that led me to put the book down, not boredom; my eyes unable to hold any more words and my brain threatening to crash. It was as if I was able to see the white words on the back of my eyelids, glowing on a field of blue as my book faded away and all systems prepared for the Blue Screen of Death.

(What? No. Not now.)

Thankfully, I gained some inspiration from the South Dakota Festival of Books – enough, at least, to put a dent in the book budget (however small it’s become) and set me back another several hundred pages. The inspiration didn’t really help me understand the book any better. The inspiration simply reminded me that, sure, I could take forever on this book if I wanted. But that would be silly. Especially since I had just purchased twice as many books as I had read in the past month.

The fact is, a book list never fades. It only grows. You can never catch up, and the faster we all come to that realization, the easier it will be to continue with our egregious hoarding tactics. For instance - I didn’t even read the One Book South Dakota (Louise Erdrich’s The Master Butchers Singing Club) but her discussion on Friday night led me to desperately want the new Marilynn Robinson novel (Home). By not reading one book, I found another to buy. Perfect.

Sometimes it seems like the South Dakota Festival of Books serves more as an excuse to add to my library than an exhibition of authors. The more speakers I see, the more books I purchase. This year, finally, I was able to keep it down to just two, and all were more or less directly influenced by seeing the speaker firsthand. So there you go, aspiring authors. The audience you reach at a book festival is a buying audience.

(Can this wait? We’ll talk about it later.)

It was an audience like this that first steered me toward Murakami, and most specifically, to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I didn’t know much about it aside from the fact that a lot of very intelligent authors thought it to be a masterpiece and an old colleague (who majored in both business and philosophy, as if the two could logically coexist) thought it to be better than, well, anything.

That should have been my first warning. Never trust the high-falutin’ authors and especially never trust a philosophy major (with special apologies to philosophy majors and high faluters.) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle caters to minds that are at ease with that feeling of floaty questioning, like debating in a vacuum – no one can hear you, so you make up your own answers and, most of the time, they are weird and silly.

(Seriously? We have to talk about this now?)

(Fine. Yes. It’s true. I didn’t post a September What I’ve Been Reading. There wasn’t a September What I’ve Been Reading because I didn’t really read anything. I mean, I didn’t finish anything. I read, yes. But finish, no.)

(I can’t blame anyone or anything but myself. I knew it would be difficult to get it done this month – after all, I did choose a 600+ page book. No, it was all me. I just couldn’t do it. Can we drop it? I feel bad enough as it is.)

Ahem.

Where was I? Oh, yeah – I was preparing to take a dump on a book that a lot of people love.

That wouldn’t be fair, though. Because, for all of it’s weirdness, I really really enjoyed The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. In the way that I enjoyed Twin Peaks. It’s weird, but there’s a creeping believability to it all. You start believing your own dreams and imagining alternate realities (both play big parts in the book, as do cats, wells, the mundane trivialities of life and prostitutes named after islands). Weird things start making sense. Cats and dogs, living together … you know the rest.

I should make two quick clarifications. I enjoyed Murakami’s style immensely. I think he’s great, and there seems to be little awkwardness in the translation. Also, this isn’t the first time I’ve compared a book to Twin Peaks. The first, Other Electricities by Ander Monson, reminded me through location and characters – winter-dwellers who mourn the loss of a beauty queen by separating themselves even more from reality than they had before. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle reminded me through pure weirdness and dreamy confusion.

There’s no easy way to explain the story of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle except to say that the protagonist’s wife disappears by choice (or not) and a series of chance acquaintances, fortune tellers, war veterans and 16-year-old girls attempt to help him out. A lot of time goes into the set up. You learn everything about both the man and his wife. Then, you learn a lot about the war veteran’s history. And then, you learn a lot about a zoo, and a woman/son team that runs some weird energy/relief/voodoo type of business.

With 450 pages completed, I still hadn’t run into any sort of clear picture. And that’s my biggest complaint. I’m sure there’s a whole ton of intelligent debate about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and maybe I’m missing some incredibly important theme that would wrap everything up, but it all seemed like a lot of preparation for a 50 page buzz kill. It’s beautifully written, and it’s creative and clever and all of that, but it’s still a disappointing finish for a tome of its size.

It took me nearly two months to read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. That’s just what happens nowadays. And what is most frustrating is that I wasn’t sure what direction I was facing for the first month or so in regards to this story.

Which is too bad. I mean, I should have thought of that at the time.

At least then, I’d have something on which to blame the lack of a September article.

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Welcome, L.A. Times readers

October 16, 2008


My post on Five Parenting Books was picked up on Carolyn Kellogg’s Jacket Copy blog on the Los Angeles Times Web site.

From the post:

Litblogger Corey Villhauer recommends Marilynne Robinson’s first novel, Housekeeping, as an atypical favorite parenting book. He read it, he writes, when his daughter was very young.

In the weeks after Sierra was born, I would spend a lot of time rocking her to sleep. Long after she was out, I would continue to rock, back and forth, back and forth, simply holding her and feeling her warmth and weight and being amazed that she was real; a fully conscious part of our lives, not going anywhere any time soon.

So welcome, anyone coming from there. I rarely write about books anymore, but it’s good to get a little sugar from the MSM blogs.

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Thoughts on the 2008 SD Festival of Books

September 29, 2008


This year’s South Dakota Festival of Books landed during a busy time of weddings and prior engagements, so I was unable to make the most of the weekend. However, in addition to the Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me taping, I was able to ramble around downtown Sioux Falls enough to gather a few thoughts on writing, publishing and new books to read. (I’ll bold the authors, so you can skip to what you care about.)

Friday Night

Friday night’s panel featured Carl Kasell as moderator to Louise Erdrich, Kenneth Davis, Otto Penzler and Spring Warren as they spoke about the writing process and how they found their way into writing and reading in the first place. Several mentions of the importance of Bookmobiles led to each author (and editor – Otto Penzler is the Grand Puba of mystery/suspense literature) talking about their favorite books.

The thing I always forget is that writing is storytelling. It’s that simple. It’s not just writing, it’s animating and creating. The language of life. Spring Warren put it simply by explaining that when you’re young, you don’t think of authors as storytellers. You just think of the stories. The authors are invisible – they’re not writers as much as they’re just a name on the book. The stories are all that matters, and the style of writing is transparent, revealing the characters and plot and action in a way that seems natural, like each story was just sitting there in nature and someone found it, picked it up and published it.

Saturday Morning

Saturday morning’s breakfast featured Kim Ode, author of Breakfast with the St. Paul Bread Club. She talked about bread – both the art of baking and the pull of community that occurs as a result – and it was inspirational in the way that everyone probably ran to the store (as Kerrie did the next night) to purchase wheat germ and rye flour. But what stuck out wasn’t the speaker, but the way everyone in the audience had their own story, their own techniques and history. Every baker is touched in some way by the calming nature of kneading and mixing and baking. It’s a true community event.

We headed over to the Orpheum to catch Carl Kasell again, who hasn’t written a book but writes news every day. He talked about his life, we asked some questions, and that was that. He’s a humble man with ties to some major players – he gave Katie Couric her first job. Most surprisingly, South Dakota Public Broadcasting introduced him with an excerpt of my post on Kasell, without my knowing ahead of time. As in, “Here’s a post by Corey Vilhauer…” (I sheepishly raise my hand) “Oh! He’s here!” Weird, kind of cool, very humbling in its own right.

Thrity Umrigar’s break out session on finding the root of the story turned into more of a discussion on how she writes about what she knows. As a woman from India now living in the United States, she has seen her focus go from primarily Indian characters to fully American characters, her time away from her native country leading her to lose confidence in the validity of her characters. As for tips, she said that her career as a journalist helped her write on a deadline and write concisely. She has a sense of ethos on writing – it’s a job, not an art form (admittedly, an artistic job that requires creativity, but not the artistic mindset of “I’ll get to it when I’m inspired”) so roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Saturday Afternoon

A panel of authors (Brian Bedard, Ron Carlson and Kent Meyers) gave suggestions on how to stay on track when writing short stories. First, know the forms. Know what can be made into a short story, and what needs a full novel. It’s intuition and instinct, the natural ability to know what is valid. Surprise or reversal is a key element in a short story – you have short time span, and readers come into a story with expectations. Don’t meet those expectations. Do something different, and it will be remembered. Finally, reading is not writing. Reading is turning on a light. Writing is being in the dark, where you’re unsure of the final destination. Stay committed, and you’ll make your way through the dark.

Finally, I had the honor of seeing Pete Dexter again. He’s a kind, big-hearted man with a subtle, sarcastic sense of humor. He’s a weird guy at first glance, one of those eccentric author types, but he’s straight forward and grounded in what can seem like an industry filled with egos and pretentiousness. Dexter talked extensively about how Norman Mailer had the gall to claim righteous damnation on whichever writers he felt were “minor writers” (Mailer, of course, is a major writer, in his humble opinion). Dexter also took several questions about his screenplays, both those that were successful and those that seemingly took years off of his life through stress and Hollywood politics.

Overall, another success for the South Dakota Humanities Council, with everything coming together in an organized manner and a wide array of interesting authors and events. The Festival of Books has certainly come a long way from five years ago, when I first saw it as a bunch of tents in the middle of the street. It’s legit, now – an event worth waiting for.

And I’m not just saying that because I’m supposed to.

Tags: Books, Journalism, Literature, Sioux Falls, Writers, Writing |

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