I've been to Cleveland and back with the novel, a reading at Case (formerly Case Western Reserve, where I was officially a student at Flora Stone Mather College for Women). I read in Guilford Hall, once my dorm, in a parlor with colorful period wallpaper and heavy woodwork, very much as I remember it. Visited my darling room, the one with a walk-in closet and a dormer window. There are no longer phones on the stairwells. The view from the porch is crowded with the Gehry building, but otherwise much is the same: the wonderful trees are still there, color fading this time of year.
In the audience was a former colleague of Louis Masotti, the professor who led the investigation of the Glenville firefight (or rebellion or insurrection, depending on how you saw it) July 23, 1968. Originally, I told the audience, I was going to write something close to what happened on campus the following spring, as the word leaked in to students: Ahmed Evans, on trial for killing policemen, was almost certainly innocent, whereas the police themselves were culpable. We also learned that the Masotti report, written for the National Commission on Civil Disorders (I think that's the correct name) had accurate details that were NOT being admitted as evidence. Injustice had never come so close. We wrote broadsides, demonstrated, occupied Adelbert Hall, and talked incessantly; I'm glad I didn't write this version.
For the novel, my protagonists had to come close to the action, so I put them on the scene in Glenville; the Masotti report (a paperback titled Shoot-Out in Cleveland) was a key source. It is indeed full of relevant details. The scenes I wrote are accurate, except for the presence of my characters, and pretty gripping.
Masotti's colleague remembered with dismay the furor on campus, including the trashing of Masotti's office; we guess activists were hunting the report. That must have happened in the fall of '69, after I'd left Cleveland. The other professor moved all his research home. Masotti's two student assistants, both brilliant and energetic, both headed for Harvard, both ended up badly: one ran afoul of the law. The other went "off his rocker," wrote an incendiary anti-Obama book and is now in Kenya causing trouble. Nothing ends once and for all.
A woman in the audience was a nurse on July 23, 1968, in an emergency room dealing with a wounded policeman in one bed, a black nationalist in the bed next to him. She and her husband were stopped as they tried to drive home to their apartment on Superior hill. Like the professor, she is still traumatized by the memory; her body was rigid with it.
I loved being there close to those memories, one of those gray afternoons with the leaves in their last throes of being incandescently golden. Listened to Joan Baez on the way home: "... we both know what memories can bring; they bring diamonds and rust."
Friday, November 19, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
The situation then, the situation now:
Writer Patricia Hampl says, of the impact of the Vietnam War: “We had lost the national connections and were heartsick in a cultural way.” I learned this from reading an interview in the current Writer’s Chronicle.
It’s worse now, she says, “the problems have leached into a much larger part of the society. Not just the culture, but also the economy.” And she adds, “I mean, think about it. Guantanamo?”
I think how it’s become difficult, lately, to pay attention to the news, how economics and politics have become interlaced, and it’s too easy to become incensed at the Corporatocracy (or the Republicans). I don’t want to be incensed, not all the time. Fury prevents thought.
Hampl says, “The draft in some ways made it easier for us to protest the Vietnam War. I sometimes have thought of Iraq as the credit card and Walmart war because a lot of the people joined the National Guard in order to improve their lot in life. … There’s a quality of life that they wanted to achieve, and they bet on the odds.”
Patricia Hampl makes more sense to me than articles about the political scene or “the economy” (where does it end? Not at the U.S. border.) Hample cares about language, saying, for example, “mercenaries” rather than “independent defense contractors.” All this is from page 22 of the Chronicle. On page 23 she says, “Remembering is a political act.” Then she takes the thought further: “Is an act of the imagination not the real resouce for one’s ethics? The imagination is where empathy happens. If I can imagine that you might be pained, wounded, harmed, by something I would do or say, and if that has meaning for me, then that’s the beginning of empathy.”
Good reading. Patricia Hampl’s words fill in the blanks and the cloudy wordless spots in my mind – about language, about empathy, about why I think certain kinds of literature and film get too much attention, even in the Think Magazines, and about why I wrote a book about 1968.
It’s worse now, she says, “the problems have leached into a much larger part of the society. Not just the culture, but also the economy.” And she adds, “I mean, think about it. Guantanamo?”
I think how it’s become difficult, lately, to pay attention to the news, how economics and politics have become interlaced, and it’s too easy to become incensed at the Corporatocracy (or the Republicans). I don’t want to be incensed, not all the time. Fury prevents thought.
Hampl says, “The draft in some ways made it easier for us to protest the Vietnam War. I sometimes have thought of Iraq as the credit card and Walmart war because a lot of the people joined the National Guard in order to improve their lot in life. … There’s a quality of life that they wanted to achieve, and they bet on the odds.”
Patricia Hampl makes more sense to me than articles about the political scene or “the economy” (where does it end? Not at the U.S. border.) Hample cares about language, saying, for example, “mercenaries” rather than “independent defense contractors.” All this is from page 22 of the Chronicle. On page 23 she says, “Remembering is a political act.” Then she takes the thought further: “Is an act of the imagination not the real resouce for one’s ethics? The imagination is where empathy happens. If I can imagine that you might be pained, wounded, harmed, by something I would do or say, and if that has meaning for me, then that’s the beginning of empathy.”
Good reading. Patricia Hampl’s words fill in the blanks and the cloudy wordless spots in my mind – about language, about empathy, about why I think certain kinds of literature and film get too much attention, even in the Think Magazines, and about why I wrote a book about 1968.
Report from Cleveland Heights Oct. 6th
A bookstore-sponsored reading! Two small independents, Macs Backs and Apple Tree, combined for a session with cider and ginger snaps at the Coventry branch of the public library, a wonderful old-and-strong place of dark wood shelves and big windows. With its books, it’s been there for longer than I’ve been alive and could stay just as long into the future. There was a “discussant,” Joyce Kessler (a professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art), who teaches a course on novels of the sixties.
Had no one else shown up, Joyce and I could have talked for a long time, but people came – including a contingent of Cleveland Movement people who remember the historical events in my book. The conversation veered into what had been accomplished by the Movement, lasting contributions such as a Food Co-op, a Free Clinic, and the Welfare Rights Handbook published and used well into the seventies(in Riders on the Storm, Jane is working on it). In comparison to the work of these people, which continues, anything I may have done was small.
The next morning I woke at 5:00, remembering questions I should have asked, comments I should have made. A reason to write the book was the deeply disturbing SDS split of '68 and '69. The organization imploded with the Weatherman expulsion of Progressive Labor in July '69, but in Cleveland we saw the beginning with a paper named after a Bob Dylan song shortly after Chicago. Distrust built, along with the sense of violence as both seductive and terrifying. Decades later I was still in anguish as violence encroached from within as well as outside, but even more as language increasingly corrupted thought. So I wrote about the Movement with mixed feelings, and was very glad to see good folks keeping up the struggle uncorrupted.
Next reading Thursday, at the University of Findlay. Who knows what new concerns will rise?
Had no one else shown up, Joyce and I could have talked for a long time, but people came – including a contingent of Cleveland Movement people who remember the historical events in my book. The conversation veered into what had been accomplished by the Movement, lasting contributions such as a Food Co-op, a Free Clinic, and the Welfare Rights Handbook published and used well into the seventies(in Riders on the Storm, Jane is working on it). In comparison to the work of these people, which continues, anything I may have done was small.
The next morning I woke at 5:00, remembering questions I should have asked, comments I should have made. A reason to write the book was the deeply disturbing SDS split of '68 and '69. The organization imploded with the Weatherman expulsion of Progressive Labor in July '69, but in Cleveland we saw the beginning with a paper named after a Bob Dylan song shortly after Chicago. Distrust built, along with the sense of violence as both seductive and terrifying. Decades later I was still in anguish as violence encroached from within as well as outside, but even more as language increasingly corrupted thought. So I wrote about the Movement with mixed feelings, and was very glad to see good folks keeping up the struggle uncorrupted.
Next reading Thursday, at the University of Findlay. Who knows what new concerns will rise?
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Link to a Book Newsletter
Found a smart, literate newsletter to recommend, Meredith Sue Willis's BOOKS FOR READERS: http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/booksforreaders.html Latest isssue has a discussion of DANIEL DERONDA, one of my favorites. Earlier issue includes a review of RIDERS ON THE STORM.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Art Historian's thoughts on The Thinker
Allen Farber, a fellow student at Case Western Reserve, was an art history major when the real bombing of Rodin's Thinker took place in March 1970. Now a professor of Art History at SUNY Oneonta, he has written about seeing the fallen statue and the damaged entrance on his way to class as part of an on-line essay on Politics and Art. Most interesting to me, he offers a way to understand why people (say, the fictional Ivy Barcelona, who loves art) would participate in the bombing. Ivy's little explanatory note (see below*) is written with the limited vocabulary and reflection of a stressed out 20-year-old in a hurry. Allen Farber discusses (among other things) a selection from Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation (a BBC series and THE authoritative text on Western culture, published in 1969).
Some changes in the past forty years: I can't use the word "civilization" (or the British spelling with an s) without putting it in quotation marks. I can't believe I took Kenneth Clark's version of the world for truth.
Here is Prof. Farber's website. Read. http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth200/art_politics.html
*What Ivy wrote, in the heat of her moment, from page 371 of Riders on the Storm:
Did people really write like that in 1968-69? I'm afraid so.
Some changes in the past forty years: I can't use the word "civilization" (or the British spelling with an s) without putting it in quotation marks. I can't believe I took Kenneth Clark's version of the world for truth.
Here is Prof. Farber's website. Read. http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth200/art_politics.html
*What Ivy wrote, in the heat of her moment, from page 371 of Riders on the Storm:
Rulers know who they are, and they can no longer deny they are complicit in the oppression of a majority of people throughout the world. The Art Museum, its very size and shape based on centuries of European imperialism, its marble walls, staircases, and statues asserting the insidious principle of white supremacy and the power of the ruling classes, can no longer pretend to be benign. We repudiate cultural elitism.
Did people really write like that in 1968-69? I'm afraid so.
Seasonal change
Back at the college with a schedule of classes and four rosters of students:
Did I really mean to write for months about the storms of becoming a novelist with a book titled Riders on the Storm? No wonder there's been no news since July. Had I written in August I could have told you that thunderstorms on the Colorado Front Range inspire mostly joy, and that there are two new novels in the works if you picture "the works" down in the basement of the psyche.
The published novel is in fact getting some road time (see website list of events) and some on-line time:
There's a short version of the Yellow Springs News review published on Meredith Sue Willis's Books for Readers -- a wonderful newsletter: http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/booksforreaders.html . I'm not just saying it's wonderful because my book is mentioned; all of Books for Readers is a pleasure to skim, with delicious bits to bite into.
The first blog interview is published by Case Western Reserve (okay, the English Department of my Alma Mater) and you can read it here: https://sites.google.com/a/case.edu/department-of-english-the-annex/alumni/carpenter-interview.
AND I found more on the Thinker. See next post.
Did I really mean to write for months about the storms of becoming a novelist with a book titled Riders on the Storm? No wonder there's been no news since July. Had I written in August I could have told you that thunderstorms on the Colorado Front Range inspire mostly joy, and that there are two new novels in the works if you picture "the works" down in the basement of the psyche.
The published novel is in fact getting some road time (see website list of events) and some on-line time:
There's a short version of the Yellow Springs News review published on Meredith Sue Willis's Books for Readers -- a wonderful newsletter: http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/booksforreaders.html . I'm not just saying it's wonderful because my book is mentioned; all of Books for Readers is a pleasure to skim, with delicious bits to bite into.
The first blog interview is published by Case Western Reserve (okay, the English Department of my Alma Mater) and you can read it here: https://sites.google.com/a/case.edu/department-of-english-the-annex/alumni/carpenter-interview.
AND I found more on the Thinker. See next post.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
From the Emporium in Yellow Springs
The steel-drummer plays a Baroque tune on the sidewalk outside the Emporium, and I’ve just had a drink and a conversation with filmmaker and friend Julia Reichert, who bought a copy of my book next door at Dark Star Books. I’m at the Emporium (officially Emporium Winds and the Underdog Café: http://www.emporiumwines.com/ ) with coffee; I come here often in Yellow Springs because the coffee’s good, because there’s wifi, and because I see people I know, from Julia to Ed Davis (http://www.davised.com/ ) whose most recent book is The Measure of Everything, a story based on how Yellow Springs citizens saved a farm and stopped urban sprawl. We just talked for a couple of hours. Twice in the last ten days Dave Chappelle has shown up, parked his motorcycle, come into the Emporium and played part of Moonlight Sonata (Beethoven) on the piano here. Interesting, but not as nice as the woman whose name I don’t know (she has gray hair and a pretty face and goes barefoot often) who played piano rather well for about half an hour one Sunday morning while I had breakfast and read The New York Times with Jeanne Lemkau (http://www.lostandfoundincuba.com/ ) whose website is named after her memoir, Lost and Found in Cuba.
Well well. I started out to write about the pleasures of vacationing in my home village and ended up social networking! They say you must learn to navigate Facebook and “the blogs” (Which blogs? As many as you can find!) to sell your novel, so I’m doing the best I can. Hence the epithets and the links above (I suppose I should have added Julia Reichert http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0717064/ and Dave Chappelle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Chappelle ) and now this blog is looking like I’m in a cyber-space hot spot.
Which is not true. I’m in a little village café with battered furniture, yellow walls, and a show of with ceramic art. When Jeanne was in Cuba, her friends posted a map of the country on the wall here so they could follow her travels when they met over coffee. One half the ceiling is painted black. The other half is painted blue and white – clouds in blue sky. I sold one copy of Riders on the Storm in the parking across the street and another at the Farmer’s Market. Both copies went to friends. The book is in Dark Star Books, a couple of doors south of here, along with Jeanne’s and Ed’s and a thousand other authors. (http://www.darkstarbooks.net/ )
End of social networking for the day. I’m leaving for the house, where the maples are full and shady. Deer cross the yard often now that the apples are beginning to fall. We’re invited to friends’ this evening; they want to hear the book read aloud. That’s a form of off-line social networking.
Friday, July 2, 2010
The Thinker Lives
Couldn't resist adding the cartoon that came in the mail from my friend Meredith (thank you!).
Learning to get images and links into this blog, I've added to the informational post on the Cleveland Museum of Art's damaged Thinker, below, in the May archives. Check it out, for those interested in the known facts of the case and some good photos of the real thing.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Book Report
Just finished reading Chris Hedges' Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. It's a smaller book than its title would suggest. It also stirs up anger: I had to take breaks from reading (especially after the chapter exposing the porn industry). Not a page-turner, a mind-turner. Hedges is a journalist who's written from fiery centers in Gaza, Eastern Europe, and Central America.
I'm writing here because Empire of Illusion reveals what my 1968 people called "the system" and what other more current writers call "corporatocracy." We weren't sure what the system was; we felt it. A young reader said, of Riders, "When they talk about The System I think of The Matrix."
Hedges writes, "Power no longer lies with the citizens of the United States, who, with ratios of 100 to 1, pleaded with their representatives in Washington not to loot the national treasury to bail out Wall Street investment firms. Power lies with the corporations. These corporations, not we, pick who runs for president, Congress, judgships, and most state legislatures." This is a conclusion at the end of many pages of information. Does it still seem too general? I think so.
I'll keep the book for its bibliography, for its researched details on Halliberton, NAFTA, Andover, and many other works of "the ruling class" -- another term of my 1968 characters.
I'm writing here because Empire of Illusion reveals what my 1968 people called "the system" and what other more current writers call "corporatocracy." We weren't sure what the system was; we felt it. A young reader said, of Riders, "When they talk about The System I think of The Matrix."
Hedges writes, "Power no longer lies with the citizens of the United States, who, with ratios of 100 to 1, pleaded with their representatives in Washington not to loot the national treasury to bail out Wall Street investment firms. Power lies with the corporations. These corporations, not we, pick who runs for president, Congress, judgships, and most state legislatures." This is a conclusion at the end of many pages of information. Does it still seem too general? I think so.
I'll keep the book for its bibliography, for its researched details on Halliberton, NAFTA, Andover, and many other works of "the ruling class" -- another term of my 1968 characters.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
For Writers -- novelists, especially
Interactive!
What is the absolute best moment of writing a novel?
Is it, as many have said, the moment when it's finished and on its way to the publisher, the blissful experience -- not of writing, but of having written?
Or for you was it something else? Several different moments, perhaps?
Add to the list!
Friday, June 4, 2010
Report on NY Bookstores
So far we've visited four:
1. Spoonbill & Sugartown
Wonderful name, and besides it's around the corner from Chad & Kara's apartment in Brooklyn, not far from the subway entrance. Small, with a large stock of used books. A lot of illustration and design books (picture book for adults? Great browsing!).
2. Idlewild Books
The idea is to specialize in travel. They're located near 5th Ave. on a second floor; the wood paneling smells wonderful as you climb the stairs. Lots of travel books, of course, and books from many countries, some in their original languages. I looked briefly at the section from Scotland (the Other country I know most about): two shelves, with new editions of Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Trainspotting, and a couple of histories, no poetry (Burns? Maybe), no other novels. Sparse.
3. McNally Jackson
in Soho, between Lafayette & Mulberry Streets. Big: approaching the size of a local Barnes & Noble, with two floors and a coffee & pastry section. Substantial fiction section, but I couldn't find anything by Sigrid Nunez, whom I get to meet at the Antioch Writers' Workshop in a month.Found and bought John the Revelator by Peter Murphy. With coffee, looking out a window, I saw two women: One (straw hat, stocky) was going through trash bags for aluminum cans. The other (stick-thin legs, hair colored white/black/blue/magenta) was doing a little slinky dance for someone who had a camera, presumably showing off the black suit she wore. I know who earns more, but I suspect the other is more useful to the neighborhood, in the long run.
4. Revolution Books
on West 26th, between 6th & 7th Aves. Here are my ideological friends: Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges (bought Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle). The store was recovering from the previous evening event: An Emergency Forum: Condemn the Israeli Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. The crowd was so large they had to put speakers outside so everyone could hear the panelists, including Hedges.
Also: here I met Clark Kissinger, a former SDS Leader and still working on The Revolution, I learned from the store's paper, which has the revolutionary rationale spelled out by Bob Avakian, owner of Revolution Books. More than I could take in.
Revolution Books was the most interesting store, and Kissinger (no relation to Henry) was a pleasure to talk with, and is the one most likely to read my book and stock more.
EACH OF THE FOUR BOOKSTORES ACCEPTED ONE COPY. So, New York friends and visitors, I urge you to go to one of the stores and ask for it. The other buyers were "busy," hesitant and a little grudging; authors apparently troop into bookstores all the time these days expecting their books to be snatched up with welcoming hands. I didn't think I expected that, but I left with the sense that the independent bookstores are struggling, maybe three steps away from people I also saw who were selling books from tables they'd put out on sidewalks.
One more thing: Up front in all four bookstores was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (and two more by Stieg Larsson) which is also paired with mine on Amazon. Clark Kissinger explained that publishers are paying bookstores for the space. WARNING: My book is not like Stieg Larsson's. None of my characters resembles a tormented, vengeful grown-up Pippi Longstocking or a methodical investigative journalist, and my book has no sadistic sex or torture.
Enough for now.
1. Spoonbill & Sugartown
Wonderful name, and besides it's around the corner from Chad & Kara's apartment in Brooklyn, not far from the subway entrance. Small, with a large stock of used books. A lot of illustration and design books (picture book for adults? Great browsing!).
2. Idlewild Books
The idea is to specialize in travel. They're located near 5th Ave. on a second floor; the wood paneling smells wonderful as you climb the stairs. Lots of travel books, of course, and books from many countries, some in their original languages. I looked briefly at the section from Scotland (the Other country I know most about): two shelves, with new editions of Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Trainspotting, and a couple of histories, no poetry (Burns? Maybe), no other novels. Sparse.
3. McNally Jackson
in Soho, between Lafayette & Mulberry Streets. Big: approaching the size of a local Barnes & Noble, with two floors and a coffee & pastry section. Substantial fiction section, but I couldn't find anything by Sigrid Nunez, whom I get to meet at the Antioch Writers' Workshop in a month.Found and bought John the Revelator by Peter Murphy. With coffee, looking out a window, I saw two women: One (straw hat, stocky) was going through trash bags for aluminum cans. The other (stick-thin legs, hair colored white/black/blue/magenta) was doing a little slinky dance for someone who had a camera, presumably showing off the black suit she wore. I know who earns more, but I suspect the other is more useful to the neighborhood, in the long run.
4. Revolution Books
on West 26th, between 6th & 7th Aves. Here are my ideological friends: Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges (bought Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle). The store was recovering from the previous evening event: An Emergency Forum: Condemn the Israeli Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. The crowd was so large they had to put speakers outside so everyone could hear the panelists, including Hedges.
Also: here I met Clark Kissinger, a former SDS Leader and still working on The Revolution, I learned from the store's paper, which has the revolutionary rationale spelled out by Bob Avakian, owner of Revolution Books. More than I could take in.
Revolution Books was the most interesting store, and Kissinger (no relation to Henry) was a pleasure to talk with, and is the one most likely to read my book and stock more.
EACH OF THE FOUR BOOKSTORES ACCEPTED ONE COPY. So, New York friends and visitors, I urge you to go to one of the stores and ask for it. The other buyers were "busy," hesitant and a little grudging; authors apparently troop into bookstores all the time these days expecting their books to be snatched up with welcoming hands. I didn't think I expected that, but I left with the sense that the independent bookstores are struggling, maybe three steps away from people I also saw who were selling books from tables they'd put out on sidewalks.
One more thing: Up front in all four bookstores was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (and two more by Stieg Larsson) which is also paired with mine on Amazon. Clark Kissinger explained that publishers are paying bookstores for the space. WARNING: My book is not like Stieg Larsson's. None of my characters resembles a tormented, vengeful grown-up Pippi Longstocking or a methodical investigative journalist, and my book has no sadistic sex or torture.
Enough for now.
Report on the NY subways
The system works, in spite of the crowd. People flow down stairs and through turnstiles, rivers of people of all kinds -- such variety of people that they can't be classified, not by race, not by the languages they speak, not by clothing, not by age, though I keep trying, a foreigner's need to make sense of new experience perhaps. Disembodied announcements say what's coming, but noise from the human bodies muffles the loudspeaker's words. But the signs are clear; we figure out which train to take, wait till it stops, crowd in and hang on to bars if we can. Standing so close to strangers feels like intimacy; I get more interested in them than I want to be. A baby wants to climb out of her carriage and play, refuses to be amused by her plastic music-machine, so her parents are friendly to my effort to interact with her. She keeps all three of us busy for a few minutes, until a seat is vacated and she can climb on Mama's lap. A pregnant woman beautifully outfitted -- the gray stone in her ring perfectly matching the translucent gray in her tunic, her toenails silver, her black hair feathered and shiny -- moves to the corner of her seat, to get away from me or to rest her head as best she can; she looks miserable. The word "devastated" comes to mind. My sense of sympathy rises instinctively. I mustn't say anything, not even when we get off the subway and walk next to each other.
Next day: among the men are two who look to me like indigenous Central Americans (how do I know? Pictures in National Geographic, probably). Something about the large features, the sharp lines defining nose & mouth, the stockiness. One has the saddest face I've ever seen -- yes, sadder than the face of the elegant pregnant woman. It seems to me all the sadnesses I've ever heard about, especially those in Central America, are gathered in this young man. I know better than to make assumptions, much less say anything. But I manage to move my hand so he can grab the bar on his way out, and our eyes meet; there's a slight smile.
Next day: among the men are two who look to me like indigenous Central Americans (how do I know? Pictures in National Geographic, probably). Something about the large features, the sharp lines defining nose & mouth, the stockiness. One has the saddest face I've ever seen -- yes, sadder than the face of the elegant pregnant woman. It seems to me all the sadnesses I've ever heard about, especially those in Central America, are gathered in this young man. I know better than to make assumptions, much less say anything. But I manage to move my hand so he can grab the bar on his way out, and our eyes meet; there's a slight smile.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Invitation to readers
INTERACTIVE!
What do you remember about the summer of 1968?
Perhaps you have a memory about something that seems like it should have happened in 1968?
Add your comment to those below.
Perhaps you have a memory about something that seems like it should have happened in 1968?
Add your comment to those below.
Memory and history
Memory is much messier than history.
Memory is a trickster, like Coyote, Raven, Brer Rabbit, or Jack the Giant Killer. Some stories say Coyote created the world; some say he burned it. Certainly he made stuff up to suit his own ends. Memory operates with a self-indulgent instinct, creating a world to suit its own needs, often making a mess. So don't trust it.
My memories of the summer of 1968 include the Movement office basement, fund-raising for the SCLC march on poverty using tactics that seemed shady to me, and eating a big dinner for $1 at the Crystal, which some people remember as the Crystal Grille. I don't remember the "Grille" part. I remember snatches of Chicago: the bandshell, Grant Park at night. I went to see Rosemary's Baby and found out afterward about the shootout in Glenville.
In The New York Review of Books last year, journalist Janet Malcolm wrote this:
"Memory glimmers and hints, but shows nothing sharply or clearly. Memory does not narrate or render character. Memory has no regard for the reader. If an autobiography is to be even minimally readable, the autobiographer must step in an subdue what you could call memory's autism, its passion for the tedious. He must not be afraid to invent."
That seems true to me. So does the first line Chapter 1 of Fugitive Days, Bill Ayers' memoir:
"Memory is a motherfucker."
I remember Bill. I probably saw him in the summer of 1968. But nothing is sharp or clear. There's no incident in the novel sparked by something he did or said -- at least I don't think so. He wrote a good memoir, though, a book I'm grateful for.
Memory is a trickster, like Coyote, Raven, Brer Rabbit, or Jack the Giant Killer. Some stories say Coyote created the world; some say he burned it. Certainly he made stuff up to suit his own ends. Memory operates with a self-indulgent instinct, creating a world to suit its own needs, often making a mess. So don't trust it.
My memories of the summer of 1968 include the Movement office basement, fund-raising for the SCLC march on poverty using tactics that seemed shady to me, and eating a big dinner for $1 at the Crystal, which some people remember as the Crystal Grille. I don't remember the "Grille" part. I remember snatches of Chicago: the bandshell, Grant Park at night. I went to see Rosemary's Baby and found out afterward about the shootout in Glenville.
In The New York Review of Books last year, journalist Janet Malcolm wrote this:
"Memory glimmers and hints, but shows nothing sharply or clearly. Memory does not narrate or render character. Memory has no regard for the reader. If an autobiography is to be even minimally readable, the autobiographer must step in an subdue what you could call memory's autism, its passion for the tedious. He must not be afraid to invent."
That seems true to me. So does the first line Chapter 1 of Fugitive Days, Bill Ayers' memoir:
"Memory is a motherfucker."
I remember Bill. I probably saw him in the summer of 1968. But nothing is sharp or clear. There's no incident in the novel sparked by something he did or said -- at least I don't think so. He wrote a good memoir, though, a book I'm grateful for.
history & fiction: The Thinker
Most of the historical events in the book are dated accurately: students took over Columbia on April 23rd; Cleveland police and Black nationalists had a deadly shoot-out in Glenville on July 23rd; the Chicago police charged the bandshell audience on August 27th. But dates don't make fiction.People want to know the history behind the novel's account of blowing up the Thinker at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The plaque under the statue states it was the work of "vandals" at about 1:00 am March 24th 1970, and states that the vandals were never found. An Art Museum staff person told me they used a nine-inch pipe bomb. Until she did, I was imagining a bundle of dynamite sticks. Wrong. Explosives stuffed into lead pipe with a ten-foot fuse did plenty of damage.
I've found The Thinker fascinating since I was small. Look at him, a giant man pondering all the trouble in the world -- and he's naked, completely exposed!
It made sense to include the Thinker in a novel of 1968, the year so much exploded. For the first couple of drafts the actual explosion was in an epilogue, because the book had to end in December '68. I was sticking close to historical fact, and my characters were stewing around like real people do; the plot wasn't working, however. One of the jobs of fiction is to transform inner stewing and sensations we live with all the time into events, dramatic and decisive. Vague longings become action. The novel still lacked that inner engine that a novel has to have, thrumming along with the pulse of the reader. I talked about the difficulties with writer Rodger Kamenetz, who suddenly said, "Ivy gets to blow up the Thinker." Gets to.
When I swallowed and digested that enormous idea, I realized I could put the bomb in Ivy's hands at the beginning of the book and move the explosion back sixteen months (what's sixteen months, after all?). And suddenly the book had a solid shape and an image of the naked giant permanently changed and pondering empty space. In deciding to keep the statue the way it was, Sherman Lee had recognized The Thinker as Cleveland's icon for the era. How could I not use it?
Sunday, May 16, 2010
anniversary at the height of spring
Just got back from Cleveland, where my sister showed me some of the recent Plain Dealer coverage of the fortieth anniversary of the Kent State shootings May 4, 1970. I was not there, but I have friends who were, and I remember calling one of them during that scary time (maybe May 5th?). The news focused on new analysis of a reel-to-reel tape: chanting, gunfire, screams. It was all over ("four dead in Ohio") in less that 20 seconds. For the first time (oh, what computers are able to do with sound these days!) analysts were able to pick out a command to fire -- which explains why sixteen national guardsmen dropped to their knees and fired M1 rifles simultaneously.
At the time there was an investigation and a trial; no one could be found at fault. Now of course it would be difficult if not impossible -- and maybe pointless -- to re-open the case.
The PD articles are interesting but not surprising. We lived in a polarized country where soldiers perceived demonstrating students as dangerous & menacing and the anti-war movement perceived the soldiers as mindless and eager to kill. Both groups had evidence, and both were utterly wrong. That's how polarization works: we divide an issue into Two Sides, theirs and ours, and they become demons.
I saw some demonization close-up/first-hand during the last election. It's as dangerous now as it was forty years ago.
At the time there was an investigation and a trial; no one could be found at fault. Now of course it would be difficult if not impossible -- and maybe pointless -- to re-open the case.
The PD articles are interesting but not surprising. We lived in a polarized country where soldiers perceived demonstrating students as dangerous & menacing and the anti-war movement perceived the soldiers as mindless and eager to kill. Both groups had evidence, and both were utterly wrong. That's how polarization works: we divide an issue into Two Sides, theirs and ours, and they become demons.
I saw some demonization close-up/first-hand during the last election. It's as dangerous now as it was forty years ago.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Practice Blog #2
Tuesday I gave my first public speech about the novel. Next Tuesday I'm scheduled for the second one. I'm being hosted by the Bluffton Library, which means I'll be among friends. The stakes are slightly higher: Among friends are people who care a lot that the work is good, that what I say is honest, and that the book does the university proud.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
First Post (experimental)
So I’ve figured out that every author’s website needs a blog. I don’t know how to write a blog. I regularly scribble in my journal (hardback spiral bound, fountain pen, corner of the couch, coffee) which nobody reads. Once every couple of months I write something in a box on my Facebook site. But a blog? In verb form, “to blog” means to produce a particular kind of fresh, smart, friendly prose that must seem to be written quickly. (Okay, I have ten more minutes.) The blog (noun) should be personal, off the cuff, and full of interesting detail. I have friends who blog, brilliantly. I enjoy reading their blogs. I wish I had their panache.
This blog must be public, and it must connect to Riders in the Storm, a novel I’m proud to have written and extremely glad to have finished. There are eight complete versions on my computer, many versions of each chapter, and several file drawers full of notes. And, I suppose, there’s a lot to say about it. I’ve written a “sixties novel” not because I wanted to, but because I’ve known I had to write about 1968 ever since January 1969, and once I figured out how, in 2002, I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I had hopes that it wouldn’t be “just another sixties novel” – because it takes place in Cleveland, the year before the river caught fire, and because it deals with a current question: how do you handle becoming an adult in a world full of cataclysmic events, including an overseas war that’s doing a lot of damage, an increasingly unfair and exploitative division of wealth, and a good deal of injustice?
Ten minutes is up. More soon, as I get the hang of this.
This blog must be public, and it must connect to Riders in the Storm, a novel I’m proud to have written and extremely glad to have finished. There are eight complete versions on my computer, many versions of each chapter, and several file drawers full of notes. And, I suppose, there’s a lot to say about it. I’ve written a “sixties novel” not because I wanted to, but because I’ve known I had to write about 1968 ever since January 1969, and once I figured out how, in 2002, I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I had hopes that it wouldn’t be “just another sixties novel” – because it takes place in Cleveland, the year before the river caught fire, and because it deals with a current question: how do you handle becoming an adult in a world full of cataclysmic events, including an overseas war that’s doing a lot of damage, an increasingly unfair and exploitative division of wealth, and a good deal of injustice?
Ten minutes is up. More soon, as I get the hang of this.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)