The Roads Oft Travelled: SD Highway 14A

September 30, 2007


Highway 14ARoads like this – Highway 14A between Deadwood and Sturgis, South Dakota – are a prime example of why vehicles can be fun.

It’s a chilly windy day. My Jetta, after slumbering for two days in a parking ramp, is prepared to face the marathon of South Dakota Interstate that separates Sturgis and Sioux Falls, sucking in and blasting cold mountain-like air into my face like a runner downing in a power bar. The car is fun to drive – small, well handled and gutsy, like a scrappy fighter no one is giving a chance to.

I begin winding through the hills. From Deadwood, the road seems to deliver a driver back into the real world. It’s a wake-up call from the excesses of Deadwood, a letting down, a gradual release of whatever you experienced, a preparation for your stories and memories, a time allowing for a mental checklist and gentle remembrance before facing the monotony of 80 mile-per-hour hell.

The sides of the road are red, rocky and clay-like. Speeding past, it looks as if the road settled into place like hot steel melting through an ice cream cake, the layers of earth, eons in the making, standing in stark contrast to the grey asphalt. The sides of the road are littered with a river of rocks, a shallow representation of what once held water, flowing, always turning and moving, never leaving the winding path. Stones stand in like understudies, trying hard to recreate the water, ultimately failing.

It’s officially autumn and the trees are slowly changing accordingly – a background of conifer green splashed with deciduous yellow, red and orange; delicate trunks holding tightly to small fragile leaves until they’re forced to let go, allowing the leaves to fall back into the earth from which they came.

This is the perfect time to drive this stretch, in the autumn, in the morning. It’s just cold enough to recognize the bite of western trailblazing, windy enough to bring whiffs of pine and smoke, as if the settlers were still in the hills, among the trees, searching for a new life in a new land. It’s this combination – the cold, the wind, the smell – that delivers me back in time, to Jackson, Wyoming, to times I never even had a chance to experience, my life still decades in the future.

I roll down the window to breathe in the experience.

I’m too focused to even change the radio station, barely recognizing Gwen Stefani’s voice urging me to go to the back of the bar. The final turn disappears and I arrive in Sturgis, the road leveling out and turning back into the endless ribbon I’m used to. I pull over to catch one last breath, staring at the landscape, marveling at the beauty.

I get back in the car. The morning sun is bright, covering the windshield like a blanket. I look in the rear view window, silently wondering why the hell I continue to live on flat land.

Tags: Travel, The Roads Oft Travelled |

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Festival of Books - final inspirations

September 30, 2007


Last night’s capstone event - a greatest hits of the Festival, it seemed - left a lot to be desired. However, the desire to be in the company of great writers never waned, and the weekend overall was an incredible success despite the disappointment.

It was supposed to be billed as a “Reading for the Ages,” a title I could only figure came from the fact that a Pulitzer Prize winning author and a children’s author would share the stage and read together. The panel had little in common aside from the fact that they had been the most popular writers and biggest names at the festival: Pete Dexter, Sonia Manzano, Terri Jentz.

Our Pulitzer representative didn’t show for whatever reason, and his spot was filled in by the always popular Bill Holm, a Southwest Minnesota State University teacher that I recognize from going to school there, though I never took any of his classes. Had I known my place in life in college, I might have taken writing classes from him. Instead, I just admired his bushy beard from afar.

Organization was not at its best, and our moderator seemed to enjoy his own voice more than the voices of the scheduled speakers. The authors all read, and then a series of odd, incredibly thought provoking (and therefore, conversation killing) questions like “What is Grace?” followed. The authors were all visibly tired from a long day and the reading suffered. Bill Holm discovered that, since he had arrived just a few hours earlier, he had no hotel. He abruptly left. After one question from the audience, the panel was cut short, 40 minutes early, and book signing began.

It left a bad taste in my mouth, I’ll admit - this was the key event of the day, the panel that wraps everything together, the embodiment of the Festival of Books tagline, “Where Writers and Readers Rendezvous.” I had looked forward to seeing Richard Ford. He wasn’t there, and one thing led to another.

But what it lacked organizationally, it made up for inspirationally.

The entire weekend was a case study in immersing a body in a desired trait in order to soak up its magic. And if there’s anything I learned this weekend, it’s that I have no greater desire at this point in my life than to become a writer. Not just an advertising writer, or a blog writer, but a published author, to be invited to book festivals and go on tours and have that one defining work, that novel that unfairly justifies an author’s existence.

I have everything I want in life. Except this. And the desire is so strong that I’m nearly bursting at the seams - like seeing a gorgeous girl from across the room and instantly knowing that there’s a connection, yet being unable to garner the nerve to talk to her. The vision keeps me awake at night. And I still continue to search for the answer even though I know it’s obvious. I know exactly what I need to do.

This weekend taught me one lesson. Shut up and write. And I thank the entire Festival for that.

As I fell asleep in my fourth flour suite - a room overlooking downtown Deadwood in an exhilarating Swearengen sort of way, I kept coming back to one thing that was said during the reading. When answering the question, “Why do you write?” Pete Dexter summed it up perfectly by saying, “You can’t hide who you are.”

If you’re born to write, you just have to go do it. And all of us who were inspired this weekend can’t hide it any more.

Tags: Books, Writing, Writers, Literature |

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Festival of Books - Saturday afternoon

September 29, 2007


The afternoon. The onset of a headache from too little water and too much walking. And, of course, more authors, starting with Lunch with Lucia, a demonstration and question/answer session over lunch with famed chef and cookbook author Lucia Watson.

Watson, who owns a very successful restaurant in Uptown Minneapolis and a home in France, believes in the integration of locally-found foods and classic Midwestern fare - the type of food that often brings to mind mashed potatoes and pot roast.

Watson doesn’t just get fresh veggies. She widens the scope of locally grown - allowing a locally-grown menu to flourish year round, even during the Minnesota winters - by not focusing solely on in season fruits and vegetables. Because fruits and vegetables are so seasonal, Watson feels a greater impact can be made by finding locally-grown and produced dairy products, meats and nuts.

I’ll admit I’ve always been stuck to the conventional wisdom. I’d never even thought of this, always favoring the idea of local fruits and vegetables as the true test of locally-centered restaurants.

The irony in this is that, here in Deadwood, it’s more difficult to get locally grown foods than in Minneapolis - not because of location but because of a lack of vendors willing to on a limb in order to supply low-quantity, high-spoil special orders. The restaurants are unable to afford the special stuff. So while you’d think the closer you are to ranchers and other sources the better your locally-grown foods, that’s not the case - in fact, it’s the opposite.

Lunch was wonderful, though I had to rush out early to reach the next set of speakers: Rob Fleder, Pete Dexter and Marilynn Robinson. Fleder and Robinson are married, and Dexter is a close friend. All three started their careers in more of a journalistic position, and the discussion focused on the fine line between journalism and literature.

Fleder made a great point about halfway through the presentation, saying that great journalism is literature - that people like Truman Capote or Hunter S. Thompson took journalism to a new level, using literary techniques and treatments to make their stories more real. Really, there is no fine line - journalism and literature overlap, the labels not doing them justice.

There’s also a disconnect. Robinson talked about how much more difficult it is to get credentials if you’re not a part of the journalism community - books are seen as more permanent and more threatening, perhaps - but Fleder countered with the notion that having a book is seen as more impressive and honorable than being a newspaper journalist or magazine columnist. He recalled a time when he had asked Tim O’Brien to autograph a magazine article he had written and the look of bewilderment as O’Brien said, “No one has asked me to autograph a magazine before.”

Robinson wrapped up with something I’d never thought of - the ability to make an anthology flow just right as an editor is just as hard as writing itself. She likened it to the 26th poem in a 25-poem anthology - the careful arrangement to make each individual piece look like part of the whole.

(And yes, Dexter talked. But he was more of a humorous connection between serious topics, the jester, the class clown of the discussion. It was welcomed.)

I scooted over to watch Terri Jentz again, who was joined by Jonathan Cohn. They talked about social justice (in Jentz’s case) and the broken health care system (Cohn). Most of the discussion was focused on the idea of women’s rights falling away and how it’s a trend that needs to stop - and stop soon - before the feminist movement of the 60s and 70s is completely wiped out. Today’s women are standing on the shoulders of those who came before, and little is being done to continue the fight.

Finally, I listened to Marilynn Robinson again (along with Debra Magpie Earling and Deb Marquart) for an informative little session on writing and publishing your first book. Several points were brought up:
1. Join a writer’s group. It will help you see the scope of your writing in a new light and bring a feeling of support, as well as create obligatory deadlines.
2. It’s much easier to publish non-fiction. That’s just the direction of books these days.
3. Expect disappointment. And don’t blame it on the editors, even though you’ll want to strangle them.
4. Organize your thoughts and grasp the entire picture before jumping head first into something.
5. Persevere. Talent can only get you so far. The rest is a little luck and a lot of perseverance.

In other words, there’s hope, but you have to search for it. And when you don’t find it, you can’t give up. It’s there. Somewhere.

I’ll keep that in mind when I start trying to shop the Black Marks on Wood Pulp Anthology to various publishers.

That’s a joke. You know that right?

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

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Festival of Books - Saturday morning

September 29, 2007


The morning sessions for the South Dakota Festival of Books spanned nearly every corner of the published word: fiction, non-fiction, children’s, writer’s support - you name it, it was offered, from native voices to first-time fiction, graphic novels to illustrators.

I began the day by seeing Terri Jenta’s presentation on “Telling Difficult Stories,” a talk I hoped could illuminate a professional need to convince an advertised public to adopt non-profit and difficult concepts. That’s the company line - admittedly, I thought she seemed like a pretty cool person and a great talker.

She was. Her story is phenomenal - a vicious attack in the middle of the night nearly 30 years ago led her to seek out the culprit, research the story and find closure.

The attack occurred outside of a small town in Oregon on a planned cross-country biking trip with Jenta and a friend. Both women suffered severe injuries; Jenta was so beat up she couldn’t move her arms and her friend Jenta was found a few yards from their tent with a crushed skull. Jenta ended up okay. Her friend woke up with amnesia, blind. Jenta spoke about how writing straight from the heart, telling everything to everyone, is a release - a healing activity. Her friend still refuses to talk about it.

When Jenta returned to the place of the assault, she was surprised to find that the town mourned with her. They were horrified by the attack, felt responsible and scarred. They were trying to heal as well. Jenta said that the attack was like the day JFK was killed for the town.

The book, Strange Piece of Paradise, is graphic and disturbing, and many are turned off by its truthfulness.

Admittedly, there’s a fine line between telling the whole story in a way that is healing and going to far, in spite of what the audience is comfortable with. It’s this fine balance that I find in creating a message for drunk driving, or the United Way - you need to tell the story well enough to tug at heartstrings and raise awareness and promote healing without scaring them away.

It’s a fine art, and a study in the psyche of the human mind. How much is too much? Jenta relayed a piece from her story that she cut out - a horrific scene in which the attacker, long after Jenta had gone on her way, had taken his stepson’s kitten and killed it in front of him. On Christmas morning. It’s horrible, but I’d have put it in. Jenta did not, knowing that sometimes the whole story is too much. I’m still learning. Jenta has it mastered.

I walked across the street to hear Ivan Doig and Kent Meyers (2007 and 2005 One Book South Dakota authors, respectively) talk about Doig’s The Whistling Season. It was a simple question and answer session. What wasn’t simple was Ivan Doig’s presence - a brilliant writer, a perfect gentleman and a product of Montana homesteading. He filled the room, despite his small stature. I found myself thinking I could go up and strike up a conversation easily. I didn’t - I had to run to Exhibiter’s Hall and buy the 2008 One Book South Dakota selection from Louise Erdirch. But while I was there, I found myself entrenched in an inspiring writers workshop. Doig and Meyers went from talking about education and the current state of it to homesteading and Latin, and I sat thinking about the novel I’ll write someday and what I’d say in this situation. I’m sure most of the people at this heavily attended event felt the same way.

I’m now waiting for Lunch with Lucia - a lunch catered by cookbook author Lucia Watson. It promises to be good. After that, it’s back to work as a host and greeter.

It’s a beautiful day in Deadwood. All in all, it’s a perfect day to discuss books.

Tags: Books, Writing, Writers, Literature |

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Festival of Books Literary Feast

September 29, 2007


Feast on this.

Here’s what I’ve noticed about book fans. They’re idolatrous. They search out their favorite authors and gawk and gush and spill out everything they want to say. They see authors as celebrities, albeit awkward ones.

I have a hard time doing this. I can’t just go up to an author and start talking to them without some sort of mediation. Part of it is that I don’t want these people to be idols. I want them to be equals. I want to be where they are, and I know I would be awkward and clumsy in these situations. So I assume they all are.

Sometimes, however, an intimacy with authors can come without even standing face to face with one of them. Tonight’s Literary Feast was one of them.

Pardon me for gushing. It was a great experience. Some of it was dry and boring, but most of it was genuine. Fun. Exhilarating. One of those events that makes me want to grab a notebook and start writing that story I can never seem to get started on.

The South Dakota Festival of Books Literary Feast was a first in the festival’s five-year history, though it’s not a completely foreign idea. After all, all readers dream of that perfect dinner conversation - that flurry of book talk that accentuates the meal and drives thoughts of reality television and Britney Spears from our heads, creating a sense of intelligence - whether true or faux. Eating and reading, in my world, are one and the same - both as essential and as savored as anything else.

So to grab eleven authors together in the spirit of literary readings over a catered dinner is a fusion of great things. Having only been to one literary reading before in my life, I was excited to sit down and listen - to discover new writers and to revel in the voices and the humor and the feeling of those I already knew.

It was good. Scratch that - it was great. A well varied cast of characters made their writings come alive, transformed from black marks to live action; each word coming alive in the voice that penned it, the inner thoughts breaking through the membranes and striking the dining crowd with aplomb.

Pete Dexter’s meek voice didn’t stand up to his brilliant writing, a short story just the way I like them - a slice of simple life filled with the complexities we all take for granted.

Rob Fleder - editor for Sports Illustrated and the guy I followed around during last year’s Festival - helped the cause by reading another of Dexter’s stories, his voice resonating with confidence where Dexter’s sat silent as most writers’ do. Fleder and Dexter are great friends, and Fleder edited a collection of Dexter’s old newspaper columns recently (Paper Trails) - choosing a hilarious romp through the trivialities of breasts to bring the dining crowd to a roaring standstill. No more dinner was eaten - we couldn’t dare eat without fear of shooting it out our nose. I’m not speaking hyperbole - it was really funny enough to cause that fear.

David Romtvedt read a poem about the polar opposites of a daughter’s love - the steadfast adoration for daddy dearest mixed with an almost sadistic defiance - that made me instantly miss Sierra. Meanwhile, Deb Marquart read a piece of her own memoir, playing the opposite side of the card - the rough girl in search of life. They work together often, and came together as a pair of musicians to play an accordion-fueled song about writers called “Monkey with a Typewriter,” a play on the infinite monkey theorem.

Non-fiction struck a chord as David Laskin read a great piece about weather from his book The Children’s Blizzard, and Joseph Marshall III read from The Day the World Ended at Little Bighorn. Marshall made us all stop and think, both lightheartedly (as he discussed how white culture forced the Indians to create words for time - a concept completely foreign to their culture) and seriously (as he talked about the 17 honor medals awarded to white soldiers for their merciless killing of innocents at Wounded Knee.)

Some writers weren’t as dynamic, but they added to the diversity of the night. Carolyn Conahan looked out of place, but as the only non-writer (she’s an illustrator) we all wondered why she was there in the first place, not why she was doing such a poor job. Nyla Griffith read fast enough to be forgettable and Susan Power unfortunately didn’t even show up.

My crowning achievement of the night was introducing myself and shaking Ivan Doig’s hand. I’m nearly finished with The Whistling Season, and the book is wonderful. I’ll save it for the end-of-month column, but I can say he read the opening scene brilliantly, bringing them alive in a way that was so incredibly natural.

And poor Cathie Draine - she came after Pete Dexter and before Ivan Doig, so she was easily forgotten. Her book of her grandfather’s letters was introduced through a very funny poker story, the type of story that brought to light the real voices behind the long lost true cowboy days - open land, cows, boozin’ and gamblin’; the stuff that all of those western movies were about.

The night was begun and capped off by Ken Davis - author of the Don’t Know Much About… books - our Literary Referee for the night. He did a fine job of both announcing the writers and commenting on their validity to the night. He also thanked me (well, all of us) for reading and keeping them (the writers) in business and enjoying their jobs.

The capstone was Sonia Manzano - Maria from Sesame Street. She’s written some children’s books, but all of that was lost as her voice - a voice so familiar I’d have thought it was a long lost relative - came barreling at me over the speakers. I was transported back to my youth, wallowing on the carpet as I watched Maria talk and direct and help me understand everything that was happening on that Muppet-infested street. Her books were good, and she read them well, but it was the voice that did the most for me.

With all of that behind me, I had to come back to my hotel room and get it on the site before I lost the magic of the night. It was a wonderful time - filled with a closeness not seen in a lot of big-time reading venues. And even though I’m alone in Deadwood on a Friday night, not bothering to venture out into the streets in order to live life to its fullest, I still know that I had an experience that I hope will occur again next year in Sioux Falls.

Until then, we’ll just content ourselves with what tomorrow will bring.

Tags: Random, Books, Writing, Writers, Literature |

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