near wild heaven

This is now, this is here, this is me, this is what I wanted you to see.

I got fired from The Writer's Almanac. I've known this for some time, nearly a month, and I have meant to write an entry about this, but like most of us, I'm in a big hurry to chronicle my successes, and somewhat less eager to share failures. The reasons for my firing are somehat mysterious, but I do know that GK decided that he wanted all writing done in-house, nixing us freelancers. His reasons for doing so are unclear; apparently he's done this before, then switched to farming out the work to freelancers. Anyway, the producer had hired us two freelancers to help defray the many demands of her job--she produced not only the Almanac, but had a hand in every major project GK has going, from A Prairie Home Companion to books and anthologies. By all accounts, it's a demanding position, incredibly demanding, and the producer also has three children. But because GK wanted it in-house, meaning that the producer and one other in-house writer do all the scripts, and because the producer said she liked having us freelancers because she couldn't really keep up with the somewhat unreasonable demands of the position, he apparently fired her. All this is second-hand, of course, so I should caveat and say that I don't know any of this first-hand; it's somewhat cloudy, cloistered. This necessarily led to my dismissal, which pales in comparisin to the firing of the producer, for whom this was her "real" job, with which she fed her children.

Sometimes it's best to know the persona, and not the person.

posted by: zithereen at April 27, 2005 23:53 | link | comments (1) |

Recently finished: The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud

Just began: City of Night by John Rechy

On the nightstand (for bedtime only): Moby Dick by Herman Melville

I've been reading a lot. By "a lot" I really mean "steadily," because I have a short attention span. Steadily means that I read every day, at least a story or a couple chapters from a book, and on some days that a particular book grabs me, or I find myself able to concentrate for many hours, I am able to spend many hours with a book. Honestly I find that I am unable to get that sort of momentum with a short story collection, unless, of course, we're talking The Things They Carried. I really need to process collections, and digest them slowly. Novels come in all shapes, and I read them accordingly. That said, I should add that I have lately developed a taste for hefty novels. I think I'm trying to build on the momentum from The Grapes of Wrath, which I read during the winter, which is itself no short book. So, the Melville, for example, is a book I've owned for almost nine years and never read, and I was looking for a book to read at night before I go to sleep--which is itself a custom of mine that has lasted some eight years now--and it is a big book. Very big. And a challenge. So I'm surprised that the writing has been so engaging. Moby Dick is gothic, and I love the gothic: Poe and Mann are two of my favorites. Last week Michelle from Irvine sent me the reading list from a class she taught in the fall--after I'd left--of good first novels. I was relieved to find that I had read a handful of them, and had in-house several others. I spent about twenty minutes in the used bookstore this afternoon, which always makes me happy and provides me with a sense of purpose, even on chilly days like today, and picked up the Rechy (see above), Buddenbrooks by T. Mann and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. They are all very long books. But I'm ready. Thanks to those of you who read all the way to the end of this particular entry. It can't be that interesting to anybody but me.  

posted by: zithereen at April 25, 2005 23:25 | link | comments (4) |

Today, for the first time, I felt like an old hand at the university. I was sitting in my office, making the final few preparations for class, when an undergraduate who works in the writing center down the hall came into my office. She has just been admitted into Iowa State's M.A. program, and just like I did when I was a student there, she is emphasizing creative writing. She'd heard from a professor that I had earned my M.A. from ISU, and she wanted to ask my advice about a few things, and to hear my impressions of Ames, of the Iowa State campus, and just how terrifying it can be the first time you stand before a room as a teacher.  It was very nice, because it brought about good memories, solid and hopeful memories, and I was glad to know that I think good thoughts of that place. And then I realized: I had seen professors of mine smile and nod, just as I was nodding, when they were asked about their graduate school years. And then I remembered how I started at Iowa State nearly five years ago, and all that has happened in that time, and I felt a great distance between myself and that moment, August 2000, pulling into Ames for the first time. I had become somebody who had gone to that program awhile back.

Then, later in the day, while teaching, I was observiong one of my female students, a really attractive young woman. She looked up at me the way you might look up at a teacher, the way I must have looked at all my teachers before I became one myself, and again I felt a great distance--not between me and this student, because I do not really desire my students in that way, but between me now and me when I might have made a play for a 19 year-old college freshman, when doing such a thing would have been normal. It was like standing beside myself, acting as my own eclipse.  

posted by: zithereen at April 15, 2005 00:56 | link | comments (5) |

Currently reading: Maupassant still, and Ararat by D.M. Thomas

I'm awash in uber-masculine writers these days--Dubus, Maupassant, and now D.M. Thomas! Plus I picked up a book by Malamud, and of course my interest in Saul Bellow is piqued now that he's dead. I read Thomas's The White Hotel last fall, liked it a great deal, and found another by him in the dollar bin of the same bookstore where I found the beautiful edition of Maupassant's stories. It's unbelievably fucked up. Masculinity exhausts me sometimes--my own, that of others. It seems like such a painful posture to hold for an entire lifetime, all that worrying.

Speaking of worrying, here's where I need advice, Last Thursday, a student of mine came to class with a kitchen knife tucked into his boot. He's a weird kid, weirdly smart, dresses in black...I'm sure you know the type. What do you all make of this?

posted by: zithereen at April 11, 2005 23:52 | link | comments (1) |

Currently reading: selected stories by Guy de Maupassant

Actually, if the truth be told, I have one more Dubus story to read (there's a novella, too, but I'm not going to read it). I think I've had my fill of Dubus, at least for a while. He presents a kind of bleak, inarticulate masculinity in his work, and while this is certainly a legitimate view of the world, it can't hold my interest for very long. Dubus relies, heavily, on the metaphor to resolve--or at least to close--his stories: the characters, driven by passions for which they can find no words, find ineffable solace in the ocean, or in a river, or in a long, silent drive to San Antonio. Always there is the wanting to be elsewhere, but just as often there are no words for the desire. But because Dubus is a skillful writer and can make us understand what the characters want, I was sometimes left feeling like I understood the character better than he knew himself, which is an interesting and relevant kind of irony...I'm just glad fiction offers more than this. Maupassant, for example, has more precision, power, adheres more to plot, and even uses humor. And! I bought the book the same day I got the Dubus with the ancient boarding pass. It's a beautiful hardcover, printed in 1950. The intro reads: "More than fifty years have passed since the beath of Guy de Maupassant..." He died in the late 1890s. And, this book is in excellent condition, with penciled illustrations and everything. Total cost: seven dollras.

I promise, eventually, that I'll stop panting over my books some day soon. Really, I am more interesting than this, I think...

posted by: zithereen at April 08, 2005 00:47 | link | comments (1) |

Currently reading: Finding a Girl in America by Andre Dubus

Any good reader knows the many and varied joys of a used book store. Any city worth its weight--that is to say, any city that has not yet thrown up its arms, shrugged its shoulders, and become a neverending ribbon of modern development, by which I mean franchise restaurants, strip malls, multiplexes, and overpriced homes--any city concerned about its own integrity will have at least one quality used book store. It may be small, but any avid reader can find a quality used book store, even if it is not advertised and exists in the darkened basement of a house. Old books have a smell; we can follow that scent, wherever it may lead us.

I picked up the Dubus collection today at such a bookstore. Here is a varied joy. Inside this book, printed in 1985 (twenty years ago!), was a boarding pass addressed to a Mr. Dennis Horton, who travelled Northwest Airlines from Minneapols to New York's Laguardia Airport sometime in the past twenty years. On the back of the boarding pass is a map of the United States. Written on that USA: "This is our no smoking section." Above that, the following pledge:

"Northwest was the first U.S. airline to clear the air on all flights in North America. We are committed to giving you the service you want. Unlike other airlines who prohibit smoking on flights under 2 hours, we want you to have a smoke-free environment on all flights in North America."

The boarding pass has become my bookmark, and I love it. I like to find small slices of the past, and not just the grand gestures of the past, the ones we can learn from books. I have the tiniest glimpse into where this book has been, what was done with it, and the modest news of a journey that took place so long ago,  when I was a boy and this book was already out there, waiting for me to find it.

posted by: zithereen at April 02, 2005 02:39 | link | comments (3) |