A young city bandit

I don’t know if this is a universal experience, but back when I was in the early years of high school I remember having to dismantle various fragments of literature and scrounge in their remnants for “literary elements.” This term was a loose euphemism for things like metaphors, similes, etc. – basically any concept that could be easily defined and tested on the state Regent exam. As ‘teach explained it, if the selected passage we were given employed enough of these syntactical devices, it must be considered advanced literature. I mean, come on, just look at that enjambment!

I don’t know though. I mean, what if you brought this exercise to bear on something other than fragments of Macbeth? How about, oh, Nas’s seminal rap album Illmatic (1994). Would it past the test? Is it “literature”?

Let’s see.

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I just taught creative writing for a summer session to a group of very bright and talented 11th and 12th graders. It was a very intensive program, a five-day-a-week gig for three weeks, in which the students studied and wrote poetry, short fiction, dramatic scenes, and long prose (both fiction and nonfiction).

It was very rewarding but also absolutely exhausting.

I got to teach the students a variety of forms, which reminded me that I need not pigeonhole myself only as a nonfiction writer (I started a short story yesterday!). I also got young writers excited by new genres and authors (they loved the idea of prose poetry!). That was totally gratifying.

I would love to teach creative writing at the high school or university level as a career in the future. However, this teaching position took up all my time even though I was only teaching for about an hour a day. My personal projects got pushed to the backburner. I was tired after leading class and trying to remain energetic all the time and then prepping for the next session each afternoon.

This got me thinking about the future again. Since I’m going to need a day job after I finish graduate school (no $200,000 book deals in my future), why not teach creative writing and do journalism to keep my mind involved in writing-related tasks and exercise my writing muscle? Read more »

Last night, I saw Edith Grossman, writer, translator, and critic, speak in conversation with Mary Ann Caws. The talk was fascinating–it was on the occasion of Grossman’s recent book “Why Translation Matters,” a collection of essays on the practice of literary translation. (Grossman has translated “Don Quixote,” many of Gabriel García Márquez’s works, and much more.)

The most interesting conversation of the evening came from a question posed by Kamy Wicoff, author and founder of the website SheWrites.

Wicoff talked about being stumped at how works have many lives–many iterations–in translation, while the original work in the original language doesn’t get revisited or updated for contemporary readers in that original language. Jane Austen will never be translated into contemporary English while there is probably a new Spanish edition every generation.

I think Wicoff has a great point. And one that I can’t quite wrap my head around.

I think it’s awful strange that non-English readers may have a better sense of Shakespeare than I do. They read translated versions that may be written in a contemporary version of their language, one that doesn’t sound foreign to them. I, on the other hand, read Shakespeare in Early Modern English, which means that as a high schooler, it was like reading a foreign language. Perhaps international readers can have a greater appreciation of Shakespeare than I can.

What does it mean that literary works (and plays, and poems, and memoirs for that matter) are resuscitated and revised and revisited only in translation while they only have one form, one life, in their original language? Should we be updating Old English texts into Modern English?

I have a friend who’s read almost every classic piece of literature there is, on her own.  A few of them we had to read in school, but all those others…yeah, she read them on her own time.  For enjoyment.

I hear a lot of people do this sort of thing; pick up an old, thick book that’s been embedded in the literary canon for centuries and read it in a hammock or by the fire, soaking up the famous words for their own benefit.  It sounds impressive.  Especially to me – because almost every classic novel I’ve read has bored me into a coma.

It occurred to me that this was going to be an issue among my peers as soon as I hit high school.  While all my other writing / book nerd buddies found Jane Austin to be a delightful romp, I had to virtually skim the chapters because it annoyed me too much to read slowly.  And while they were all recieving A’s on their essays about The Awakening, I was busy getting the lowest essay grade of my life, because all I could stand to write about was how much I hated the protagonist and good lord why was she so selfish?!  My teacher told me I missed the point of the story.  Maybe I did.  But whatever.  That book pissed me off.  Big time. Read more »

I just finished my first year of creative writing graduate school (cue exhausted applause), and now I’m facing the prospect of a semi-unstructured summer in which I need to: a.) earn money, b.) continue to write my thesis manuscript, c.) do research for my thesis, d.) sit in the sun a lot and have picnics, e.) recuperate from the stress of school.

To that end, I’ve secured a part-time job and have applied to a bazillion writers retreats, conferences, and residencies.

Here’s the problem, though. Read more »

Dak so bodeut, so dak bodeut

There is little more harrowing, more ecstatic or strange, than to find oneself plunged into a world in which words—-which had hitherto been so prized, so steadfast (perhaps), which could be trusted to bubble up to the surface of the mind’s pool in those moments of dire necessity and slip as spindrift from the tongue’s crest to fall, with variable accuracy, upon the ear of a listener, and to often be understood in some half of their intent—-become utterly useless.

Nothing so starkly brings out that grunting, that gesticulating and speechless animal, lying seemingly clothed within language, yet pulling always nakedly the body’s strings beneath, as this.  I am become prehistoric man, stubbled, scrawling hieroglyphs of lamps and computer adapters, modems and cooking pots, among intelligent, effortlessly communicable individuals, gripped again by that frustration, that immediacy of thought and absence of object, which led us first to construct signs to describe our common experience of this place…

For in April—-which is, of course, intolerable—-when the trees (which I have no way to describe save by pointing, so look, if you will, at the trees!) when the trees have gone from bare to a fire of blossom to bare again in a matter of some two weeks, and the trunks and branches rouge slightly with a blush as if of blood from heat returning and days of rain and the tiny leaf buds and every limb upraised and waving—-what word is there between us to describe what moves them?  What sound but the close-cropped mane of every hill a horse’s neck bowed running?

Even with a common tongue their are vast discrepancies in our understanding.  Imagine if I were from Gansu, China, and you from the Great Gold Plains, and we two stood suddenly in an immense and empty whitewashed room with no paper or pen between us, how quickly we would exhaust our conversation.  There is a saying here:  Dak so bodeut, so dak bodeut (”as a chicken looks at a cow, as a cow looks at a chicken”).  We would be as two animals, mute, occupying space.  Perhaps we would mumble something unintelligible now and then, gesture with our arms, begin to talk eventually to ourselves, but the rift between us would be impassable.

That is until we began to construct a new system of signs.  For our old ones would be impotent here, in this space bereft of referential objects, from which our strange words could bounce and become illumined to the observer.  Here, however, if I crook my right arm, and splay my fingers perpendicularly to the incline of my forearm, it means the Ga Chi bird will bring a welcome guest.  It means my neck aches; the floor is hard.  And if you distend your stomach, grinning foolishly, stand on your right leg, and wave your left arm in circles above your head, index finger alone extended and pointing down, you are telling me the ornamental rug has been misplaced, and the walls are caving in.

This is all just to say how wonderful, how positively improbable it is, that you have some idea what I mean when I say, “I’ve dropped my notebook”, “My glass is empty”, “I will see you at 5:00″.

Allow yourself to lose yourself, be it at your lamplit desk, or your moon-washed backyard.  Find us out there, mumbling aloud, wandering around, asking to listen.

I’ve had a weird few weeks.

I’m nearing the end of my first year of graduate school, where I’m getting my M.F.A in writing. Needless to say, I have lots of reading and writing to catch up on. My long-distance partner is gone for three weeks, which is the longest we’ve ever been apart (I know, we’re terribly spoiled). My refrigerator is broken so I haven’t been doing my beloved nightly routine of relaxing through cooking. (I know, I know, you’re wondering why all this has anything to do with literature. Patience.)

So what does this all mean? It means that for the last two weeks, I’ve been spending a lot of time alone. I’ve been eating mediocre take-out. I’ve been ending my nights without my partner. I’ve been catching up on tons of reading and writing as I near the end of my semester.

And I’ve been wildly productive. My to do lists have been shrinking as I check off items that had been stagnant for weeks: do taxes, fill out the FAFSA, revise my workshop submission, pitch my story idea to a local magazine, read for my Russian poetry class, write a response to Wolff’s memoir for my family matters class, the list goes on.

All this and I should feel great. But, honestly, I don’t. Read more »

In honor of April Fools’ Day, I was going to write about (in)famous literary hoaxes: historic incidents of made-up memoirs when an author manages to trick the entire reading public.

There are already a number of Top Ten Lists of these kinds of hoaxes, including one from the Guardian and another from ABC News. They include a handful of Holocaust memoirs and James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces.”

But then I started to think more about it.  What is a hoax, anyways, when dealing with literature?  Why do people allow themselves to feel betrayed by an author?  I’m going to hesitantly posit an idea:  The whole concept of a literary hoax is a dying one because of the advent of postmodern literature.

Okay, bear with me here. Read more »

I’m a pretty easy-going person.  It takes a lot to bother me and even more to piss me off completely.  But there is one issue that gets me every time.  Every. Single. Time.  What’s that issue?  Excitement.  No, not the actual emotion.  The over, and downright wrong, use of the word.

How many times, during a 24-hour period, do you hear people say “yeah, I’m excited about this” or “yeah, I’m excited about that”?  Probably a lot of times, right?  But here’s the thing, are these people really excited to do whatever they’re going to do?  Or are they just looking forward to it?

Webster’s defines excitement as exhilaration: the feeling of lively and cheerful joy and the state of being emotionally aroused and worked up.  When you or someone you know says you’re “excited to talk to so-and-so tonight,” are you in a state of lively and cheerful joy?  Most likely: no.  We all feel exhilarated once in a while, but anyone who’s emotionally aroused and worked up on a daily basis needs to check their prescriptions.

So yes, it really, truly bothers me when someone says they’re “excited,” when what they really mean is that they’re “looking forward to it.”  Why are my feathers all ruffled?  Mostly, it’s because the word excited has become so common, we don’t even think about what we’re saying when we say it.  And speaking without real thought – well, that irks me. Read more »

I’m about to start teaching creative writing and composition once a week to a group of 11th and 12th graders in Harlem.  Many of them will struggle with basic reading and writing comprehension, but my goal is to get them excited about telling their own stories, but also to respect the craft: to understand that editing is an important part of any artistic process, that attention to details helps the final product, and that constant practice (via writing and reading regularly) can only make their own creative and academic writing better.

So what kind of stuff do I want to encourage them to read in order to get excited about books and about writing their own stories?  My mind automatically goes to “the classics,” a list of books many of which I haven’t even read myself (cue the guilt).  But are these the best works to get them excited?

The bigger question is this: Is a classic work of literature (fiction and nonfiction included) always “good” writing?

Read more »