A Writing Life

Oh, okay, so it's not Willliam Carlos Williams, but there it was.  When the weight of life is huge, a few words are enough.  So there you are.

The difficulty, of course, is balancing the needs and wants and art of the writing, with the cravings of the marketplace.  I had this idea to write about women and horses, specifically this woman and her horse;  as I drove to Indy yesterday, the idea rattled around in my head and felt like a good one.  But then, as I sat in the waiting room while Dick had his knee tinkered with, there in Oprah magazine was a little blurb about an upcoming book on...yes...women and horses.  Or, apparently, one woman, somehow abused I think, if I read the opaque prose correctly, and one horse, also abused.  Sigh.  If I decide to write a book about women and horses now?  Guess what, kids: it will get cast into the wide void, ignored or sneered at because there is suddenly a glut of books about women and horses.  Thanks a lot, Oprah.

So now what?  Write what you know, they say.  Maybe life in the Midwest at the turn of the century isn't such a bad idea.  There's a lot of material here.  A lot of really weird material.  Stuff you just can't make up. 

If I were a careerist kind of writer, I would take this idea of writing about the Midwest and run with it, writing essays that make fun of the Midwest, poking at the mores and habits, revealing the really bad food (I'll admit: biscuits and gravy is something I just can't do.  Nope.  Can't do it.); I would make jokes at the expense of the conservative religious right, the underemployed, the overweight, the corn, the soy, the one stoplight towns, all that.  If I were a careerist kind of writer, I would do this because I know that the big publishers are on the east coast and the west coast, and both coasts peer at the Midwest with a mix of scorn, disbelief, fear (yes, fear), and derision.  If I were a careerist kind of writer, I would play right into that, and write a snide book that would get attention from the east coast and the west coast, one that liberal smartypants reviewers would love. 

I could do that.

I try to imagine myself as a careerist kind of writer.... if I promoted myself, hit the conference scene and shmoozed with abandon; if I wrote something hot and trendy, got a big deal agent...oh, my, yes: then I could have a different kind of life.  A life on one of the coasts, maybe teaching at a smart little school, probably with a lighter teaching load, definitely a bigger salary.  A place where I could wear black and no one would ask "Honey, you goin' to a funeral?" (Serious.  That happened.)  A place where the biggest church in town would be Unitarian.  (Sigh.  I wish.)  A place where biscuits and gravy would never be on any menu.

Yup.  Well.  Guess what.  I can't do it.  Writing is a way of life.  Not a career.  I don't view the words I put on the page as some kind of currency which I will exchange for a "better" way of life.  No.  Writing is a habit of thinking, a means of expression, a frank and honest and honorable transaction between writer and reader.  I'm not impressed with the current trends in writing -- glittery language, pseudo-academic explorations of past trauma(s), excrutiating revelations of the self and/or the body, treacly stories about person and dearly departed pet; opaque exercises in formalism.  Writers writing to other writers.  No thanks.   

I'd rather write for readers.  Real people who are interested in stories.  Who want to find out something.  Who want to peer into another's life.  Who want to go on a little journey on the page.  And if writing that way means I can't break through to the big show, that I can't get the big advance, the big agent, the hot shot teaching job, well so be it.  In thirty or forty or fifty years I will be dead, and all of that won't matter.  What will matter is what I leave behind: the words on the page.  Write what you believe in.  Write what you care about.  Write what matters to you, not the marketplace, not the current fashion or trend.  The only trend I care about is shoes.  Right.  Shoes. 

So.  Here we are.  What do you think of this, then: a book of stories about life in the Midwest at the turn of the 21st century.  These would be true stories, nonfiction, but I'm not going to call them essays.  They're stories.  Stories about living in the country.  Living in town.  Teaching.  Dogs.  Horses (dammit).  Food.  Politics.  Grocery shopping.  The slant would be: I've been in Indiana for 14 years, and I'm still a kind of foreigner here: the food and the language and the politics and the religion and the land and the sports are still really weird. But, surprisingly enough, sometimes even against my own will, I'm starting to like it -- who knew -- and here's why.

So.  Would you read this book?  Think about it. I might just write it...

But fortunately... to paraphrase Monty Python...I'm not done yet.  I will go home tonight, stare vacantly at the telly (please let there be a Red Sox game), pat the puppy, eat a bowl of really salty popcorn, have a glass or two of wine (well, darnit, I've earned it) and then go to bed.  When I awake tomorrow, I will remember the other person I am three or four months out of the year --  not Jean the teacher who is pretty good at what she does because she works so bloody hard at it -- but instead, Jean the writer, who is sometimes not bad at what she does because she too works pretty hard at it.  The harder I work, the more I live.  So.  A night off, and then back at it.  I can't wait...

PS: Note to Denise and Dan: Congratulations!  Raise one for us Friday at Mahoney's!!! 

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeooooooooooooooooo.  Sirens.  Big lights.  Bambambam.  Open up kid.  We've got you surrounded.  Yeah you -- kid. You with the big advance.  Put down that pencil and step away from the pad of paper.  Nice and slow.  Hands on your head, kid.  That's it.  We're goin' downtown.  Yeah.  When the boys are through with you, you're not even gonna write for Hallmark.

Okay, anyway.  Two things wrong with the literary picture:

1 - First of all, high school kids should not be given half-million dollar advances. Good lord.  This is the literary equivalent of the NBA draft coming to your high school gymnasium and picking out the tall junior center and offering him a chance at insta-stardom with the Celtics.  Uh uh.  Wrong-o. 

2 - Second, I'm not entirely convinced that anyone should be given a half million dollar advance.  I deeply believe in support of art and literature, but a half million bucks?  Is this really an advance?  Or is it a prize?  Or some kind of extended salary?  I suppose if you're really frugal and invest well, this is something you could live on for, oh, twenty years or so.  Yes, you're right, I do live in the Midwest, and it is cheaper here than, say, Hollywood.  Okay, so maybe you can live off the advance for fifteen years.  Ten.  Whatever.  Anyway, here's the thing: the point of the mega-advance is not to provide you with a living wage so you can be a working artist.  It is a kind of perverted prize, one designed to make you an instant star.  Look at you, you big time writer you.  You're a star, and stars attract attention.  And attention sells books. That's your advance, baby.  Money for the publisher. It's marketing.  Right. Is that how we want to treat literature?  Or so-called literature?

Maybe this is now a new measuring stick, one to be wielded judiciously of course: the bigger the advance, the poorer the literary quality of the book, or books, in question.  Maybe so.  And if so, take heed you starving artists and writers out there: if you get a small advance, a little grant -- display it with pride. You and I, my friends, we are the true artists. Our work is its own reward.  As it should be.  Ha!

 Anyway...for more on the kid who stole the plot and then got caught, read on below ...

Random To Press Plagiarism Claims
by Rachel Deahl and Jim Milliot, PW Daily -- 4/25/2006

An apology by Kaavya Viswanathan, author of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life and a promise by publisher Little, Brown to immediately begin revising sections of Viswanathan's book that closely resembled portions of author Megan McCafferty's Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings will not be enough to end the dispute over Viswanathan's "unintentional" copying from McCafferty's work.

While McCafferty publisher Crown is expected to issue more details about the issue later today, Random House spokesperson Stuart Applebaum called Viswanathan's explanation about how she came to use passages from McCafferty "at best disingenuous and at worst literary identity theft." He noted that there are approximately 40 cases where Opal mirrors passages from McCafferty's works. Although Applebaum declined to comment if Random will file a lawsuit against Viswanathan, he said "Crown and Random House support our author in seeking a proper and full resolution to this matter." McCafferty is one of Crown/Random's rising stars. After releasing her first two books as trade paperbacks, Crown/Three Rivers has just published Charmed Thirds in hardcover. There are about 350,000 copies in print of the three books.

The story of Viswanathan's copying first broke in The Harvard Crimson and has been picked up across the country. Late yesterday, Little, Brown issued a statement in which Viswanathan apologized. She said she is "a huge fan" of McCafferty's books, but that "any phrasing similarities between her works and mine were completely unintentional and unconscious," Viswanathan goes on to say: "My publisher and I plan to revise my novel for future printings to eliminate any inappropriate similarities. I sincerely apologize to Megan McCafferty and to any who feel they have been misled by these unintentional errors on my part."

Senior v-p and publisher of Little, Brown, Michael Pietsch, echoed Viswanathan's statement with a release of his own; he described the author as a "a decent, serious, and incredibly hard-working writer and student" and added that he is "confident that we will learn that any similarities in phrasings were unintentional." LB gave Viswanathan a $500,000 advance for Opal when she was still in high school.

No Encore for 'Opal'
By Rachel Deahl [Publisher's Weekly 5-2-06]

Readers who have a copy of Kaavya Viswanathan's How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life may want to hold on to it, as the book is now a collector's item. In a statement issued from Little, Brown, the publisher finally said that it will not be releasing a revised edition of the book. And Viswanathan's second book in that two-title deal she signed with LB is dead too. The brief announcement came this afternoon from LB's senior v-p and publisher, Michael Pietsch.

While LB would not comment on what this means for the highly publicized $500,000 advance the young author received, agent Robert Gottlieb told PW that it's certainly possible the imprint could request that the money be returned. Explaining that every author signs a contract stipulating that the work they're submitting is wholly their own, Gottlieb said in cases of plagiarism an author is always breaking this legal agreement. "Technically the author is in breach of her contract," Gottlieb said, referring to Viswanathan's plagiarism. "If the publisher decided that they wanted to demand the advance back, they could."

The F.O.P. sale itself was far less impressive than the thirty families touted in the newspaper.  A half dozen card tables with collections of stuff -- baseball cards, old video tapes, and one guy selling about twenty-five different varieties of dog chewy treats. 

We passed it all up and headed off to the next sale.  An indoor sale at the First Presbyterian church.  A jumble sale.  "Church sales are the best," I said.  Dick looked a little dubious.  "Okay," he said.  "Let's go."

At the church, we were not disappointed.  Upstairs in what I suppose is a recreation hall, there were dozens of tables just overflowing with stuff.  Dick trudged along behind me, a bit bored...until: a box of cameras.  "I've got to look at this," he said.  I left him with his cameras, and poked through the array of stuff laid out on table after table.  There were three tables of glassware, a display of furniture, an entire table of old jewelry, tables of clothes, old tools, bakeware, Christmas stuff, doo dads, books, videos, and several boxes of old records.  I considered a copper lawn ornament shaped like a snail, made out of copper piping with holes in it -- a decorative sprinkler.  I held it up for Dick to see.  No.  He shook his head.  No, you don't need that.  But I did need the wooden shoe stretcher, ladies size large (for five cents), and the wooden folding ruler (also for five cents), and the wooden box of shoe shining tools complete with the stand to put your foot on (for two dollars). 

And most of all I needed the six LPs of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, featuring the prize of the day, Whipped Cream and Other Delights.  There it was, that icon of the 1960's, featuring lovely Delores on the album cover, clad in a mountain of whipped cream.  This album, which shot to number one on the charts in 1965 and stayed on the charts for three years, launched the career of Alpert, as well as the fortunes of A& M records.  I remembered it from when I was a kid, seeing it in some friend's brother's bedroom.  A racy item back in the sixties; rather tame by today's standards.  I also remembered reading the New Yorker piece on the album a few weeks ago, where the cover is described this way:

"In the picture [the model] sits holding the stem of a rose in her left hand, above which the inner portion of a bare breast protrudes from the foam.  She is licking cream from the index finger of her right hand, and a dollop of the stuff rests atop her forehead, like a tiara.  (This is the only real whipped cream in the shot.  The rest is shaving cream.)  The image still seems a little raunchy, in a home-movie kind of way, but in the virtually pornless atmosphere of the suburban mid-sixties it was -- and we're relying on the testimony of our lders here -- the pinnacle of allure.  The Whipped Cream Girl, as she came to be known, helped make Alpert and his Tijuana Brass even more famous than his loungy arrangements, smooth trumpet work, and suave song production destined them to be.  The album shot to No. 1 and stayed on the charts for more than three years. Alpert would say, when performing live, 'Sorry, but I can't play the cover for you.' "

And there it was, this album, at the jumble sale for fifty cents.  And now it is gracing the walls of our kitchen. Delores presided over breakfast this morning, smiling knowingly down on us, like some latter day Mona Lisa.  The Whipped Cream Girl has a new home.

"Here is a story told to me lately by a man named John Cronin, who is the director of the Pace Academy for the Environment, at Pace University.  Cronin has known Seeger for thirty years. 'About two winters ago, on Route 9 outside of Beacon [NY], one winter day, it was freezing - rainy and slushy, a miserable winder day - the war in Iraq is just heating up and the country's in a poor mood,' Cronin said.  'I'm driving north, and on the other side of the road I see from the back a tall, slim figure in a hood and coat.  I'm looking and I can tell it's Pete.  He's standing there all by himself, and he's holding up a big piece of cardboard that clearly has something written on it.  Cars and trucks are going by him.  He's getting wet.  He's holding the homemade sign above his head - he's very tall, and his chin is raised the way he does when he sings -- and he's turning the sign in a semicircle, so that the drivers can see it as they pass, and some people are honking and waving at him, and some people are giving him the finger.  He's eighty-four years old.  I know he's got some purpose, of course, but I don't know what it is.  What struck me is that, whatever his intentions are, and obviously he wants people to notice what he's doing, he wants to make an impression -- anyway, whatever they are, he doesn't call the newspapers and say, "I'm Pete Seeger, here's what I'm going to do."  He doesn't cultivate publicity.  That isn't what he does.  He's far more modest than that.  He would never make a fuss.  He's just standing out there in the cold and the sleet like a scarecrow.  I go a little bit down the road, so that I can turn and come back, and when I get him in view again, this solitary and elderly figure, I see that what he's written on the sign is Peace.' "