TinyLetter: Rising Rejections

I just posted my first TinyLetter, a slightly rambling introduction to what I hope to accomplish with (hopefully) weekly letters and updates.

From now on, I'll just share the URL whenever I do a post, but for this first one, I'll share it here in full.

If you'd like to subscribe, you can do so here: https://tinyletter.com/jyatesLA

Even though I haven't posted here with any frequency, I'll still have original content that I'll update on this blog for the sake of variety. I like using social media in various forms, as in: not excessively cross-posting for one blandly unified collection of feeds.

Hi there, and welcome to my first TinyLetter.

I'm still figuring out how to navigate this space, and while I do have ideas on how I want this to take shape, there may be stumbles and hiccups along the way. So bear with me.

I first mentioned writing a TinyLetter a month or so ago. What I hope to accomplish is straightforward. After a year living in Lafayette, Louisiana, I want to document how my writing has changed after Southern immersion. Do I call myself a "Southern writer?" Is such a label necessary, and if so, what claim do I have? Just because I've eaten a ton of po' boys and I'm a writer, should I worry about how my new environment has shaped me? My last published story ("Love Bugs," Split Lip Magazine, December 2016) was explicitly Southern, and my latest WIP is heavily immersed in a Southern landscape. So am I a Southern writer? I don't know, but that's something I can explore later on. I'm concerned with how using my surroundings in fiction translates into honesty and reality, especially when faced with Southern stereotypes that I had in my head upon the move down here, and when famous Southern writers tend to form a small sect that is influential, both positively and negatively.

For now, as my bio suggests, I want to talk about anxiety, depression, and rejections. I hesitate to describe myself as depressed, because it's the kind of word that can be thrown around easily, and I've never been diagnosed with it, or treated for it. But my last several months were a spiral of negative feelings. After working as an adjunct instructor last fall, the university I worked for wasn't able to offer me any courses. I found myself dangerously unemployed for months, trying to find work in an area that had a) doesn't have a wealth of jobs available, and b) tends to give openings to family and friends in need of work. My girlfriend carried the financial weight, and I applies for dozens and dozens of jobs, with almost no return calls or emails. I was scared, depressed, and didn't know what to do. Between worrying about money and feeling isolated, my motivation to write was nonexistent, which led to even MORE writing anxiety: writers are supposed to write, no matter what. But I felt guilty and nervous carving out writing time when I didn't know what the future was going to hold.

I got damn lucky. A full-time management position was offered to me at the bookstore. I interviewed, got the job, and I'm now on better financial footing. And now I'm trying to get some long-simmer writing projects dusted off. I'm not entirely out of the woods. I still have anxieties and problems. And this is where writerly, geographic labels come back into play. I'm trying to be more brave, to write more openly about my problems. My reluctance to do so is a Midwestern trait (or, given my words above, a stereotype). I keep my fears bottled up.

And this is where this TinyLetter swoops in. I want to be more open, and I genuinely hope my own stumbles are reassuring to other creatives. This is a terribly simple hope, one I'll return to later.

Let's get back to rejections. Here are concrete numbers, presented as accurately as possible. Since January 2017, I've received:

16 short story rejections
14 novel rejections (both agents and presses)
1 fellowship rejection
1 essay rejection
1 poem rejection

I started submitting work back in 2012. I'm fully prepared for this to be the first year since then that I haven't had a single piece published. Of course, I still have many pieces both long and short floating around various journals and presses. These could be future rejections or acceptances. In addition to feeling like I wasn't a writer for most of this year, I've also dealt with the steady onslaught of rejections. Therefore, my anxieties have been twofold: "Writers write (which I struggled to do, given job woes and depression), and "Writers write to write, not to be published." I've struggled to accept this To borrow a phrase from writer Tasha Coryell, I think my post-MFA crisis year is this year, not last year. I had ups and downs last year, but I still ended 2016 with four publications.

I'm not treating this first entry as a full-fledged essay. I'm not going to say I've overcome the aforementioned obstacles, nor am I going to give any sappy notes to anyone who might be reading this, platitudes along the lines of "Hey, our struggles are the same!" We're not the same, you and I. I'm not going to assume that my being fairly open about my issues is going to make someone sit back, slap their forehead, and think "I'm not alone!" The psychology of writers and writing advice deals far too heavily in absolutes. I stop reading when I see phrases like "all writers must" and "real writers to do this." So if my future letters end up being looks at craft and process, I won't present them as set in stone. What works for me might work for you, but most likely not.

But here's the thing: you're not alone. Whatever you're dealing with, we all do. Am I being hypocritical? Yes, just as I'm hypocritical with my own creative struggles in the face of life struggles. Writing highs and lows are the same and different for everyone. But if my laying this out here offers you solace, I'm happy to do so. However, the last thing I want this TinyLetter to be is a sad sack diary entry. I want the majority of my messages to be detailed unpackings of current WIPs, readings, and entries on what it means to be Southern when one is a transplant (I plan to propose this as a presentation for next year's Deep South in the Global South conference).

I've been editing this over the last two days, but I'm going to stop for now. Thank you for reading these initial ramblings. And welcome.

-James Yates
August 28, 2017

TinyLetter Debut

I've let this site lag quite a bit lately, but I've started something that might help me jump start some new posts and ideas.

I have a TinyLetter account now. You can subscribe here: https://tinyletter.com/jyatesLA

Here's a brief synopsis of what I hope to accomplish with this new platform: "I'm writer based in Lafayette, Louisiana, originally from Chicago (and, in a roundabout way, Lynnwood, Washington). In addition to my very sporadically updated blog, I want to use this TinyLetter to work through some forthcoming projects and ideas. Also, as I come out of a very long personal/creative funk, I hope my notes and thoughts help other creatives know they're not alone."

Once I get the posts up and running, I'll copy and paste them here as well.

Happy reading and writing, y'all.

Chicago Flashbacks: A 2013 Interview with Ben Tanzer

Two weeks ago,my girlfriend and I moved from Chicago to Lafayette, Louisiana, as she prepares to embark on her PhD studies at the University of Louisiana. While this is an exciting new phase, in a fantastically different landscape from the Midwestern lives we've been used to, there's also the challenge of immersing myself in a new literary community, one concentrated in what feels like a small town (in reality, Lafayette is the fourth biggest city in Louisiana, I believe; in addition to the University, there's a beautiful downtown and fantastic restaurants sprinkled in unexpected areas off the main roads).

I'm going to be teaching two English composition courses at the university, and once I get into that groove, and once we explore the city (and hopefully nearby New Orleans in due time), the transition will feel more complete. For now, though, I still feel pang of homesickness, and I remember why I started this blog in the first place: back in 2008, I impulsively moved to Washington state, and thought this would be a log of new landscape experiences. Instead, it turned into a film and book review blog, and the upkeep of this site led me to renew my focus on creative writing. Eight (!) years later, I have my MFA, I have a novel draft that's almost ready to send out (Hi agents! Hi publishers!), and I'm about to start teaching at the university level.

Where am I going with these ramblings? I've neglected this space pretty heavily over the last three years, updating sporadically, mainly showcasing my publications when they happen. I don't want to make any goals on how I'll dust off this blog, but I'd like to start with a piece of writing I recently unearthed. Back in 2013, I had to do an interview as part of a creative nonfiction assignment, and I reached out to Chicago writer Ben Tanzer. I'd read his work, loved it, and found him to be gracious and hilarious on social media. To my surprise, he readily agreed to take time and meet with me. Little did I know that I'd end up doing readings with him, and fostering what became a genuine friendship. In 2015, we read together for the book launch of Steve Karas' Kinda Sorta American Dream. After, we went out for drinks, and Ben insisted I ask him whenever I had questions about publishing, writing, or life in general. It doesn't matter if I end up moving back to Chicago or just end up visiting sporadically. Ben will always be a warm link to Chicago for me, and I'll always be grateful for his guidance as I stumble toward life as a professional writer (whatever the hell that means). So here's the transcript of my first meeting with him. I've edited parts (mainly to clean up some bad writing of mine), but almost three years later, I think this reveals some good ideas. Thanks, Ben.

Also, Ben has a new book out: Be Cool is now available from the great people at Dock Street Press. So if you'd like, read this and then order the book from your favorite independent bookseller.

Ben Tanzer Interview: October, 2013

The rise of social media has made it possible to blur the definition and distinction of "stranger." Last fall, I became acquainted with Chicago writer Ben Tanzer after I read and reviewed My Father's House, a novella published by Main Street Rag. Mr. Tanzer shared my review on his website and his social media feeds and sent me a thank-you email for my review. Since then, we've followed each other on Twitter and have been Facebook friends without actually meeting in person; however, I've met him twice in the last week.

I attended a book launch last Saturday at City Lit Books in Logan Square for Friend.Follow.Text., a collection of stories about digital culture, and Tanzer read his excerpt. The previous week, he agreed to meet with me as the subject for this interview, and I talked to him after the reading. We finally introduced ourselves, and actually had proper faces to put with our social media handles. We met the following Monday at the Starbucks on Wabash and Jackson. I wanted to interview Ben for a variety of reasons. In my opinion, his fiction explores contemporary masculinity in complex ways, not shying away from negative aspects. This is a subject I want to explore more in my own fiction and creative nonfiction writings.

Tanzer is interested in twenty-first century men, but he explained to me that he wants to write stronger female characters. This is yet another idea that I've been conscious of in my own work. With Tanzer, he explained this need not with any grand social meaning, but out a necessity for male writers to make sure they're not just exploring their own views and sensibilities.

Tanzer is very active on Facebook and Twitter, which ties nicely into his inclusion in the Friend.Follow.Text. anthology. He also maintains a blog and website, devoted to publicizing other writers and books, in addition to sharing reviews of his own work. However, he maintains a strict distinction between marketing and writing, saying "I would never market [myself] instead of write." I also asked him about his online persona. His blog is called This Blog Will Change Your Life, and online, he maintains a steadily sarcastic, hop voice. In real life, however, he's polite and expansive in his answers. He started the blog back when, in his words, "nobody was blogging," and he wanted to create a mini-universe and tongue-in-cheek "media empire," making it a fake corporate blog. This backfired on him at one point: an unnamed writer, upon reading Tanzer's debut novel, was disappointed that the book didn't literally change his life. He wrote a long complaint to Tanzer, who was perplexed that anyone could confused a literary work with an obviously satirical website.

My work with Longform.org has helped me familiarize myself with small presses and independent journals; that's how I discovered Tanzer in the first place. I stumbled upon his short story "The Gift," published in The 2nd Hand, after a random Google search for local journals. I asked him how he views the sheer number of places for writers to publish their work, both in print and online. He believes it's very good for writers, since it gives them wider audiences and readers. For readers, however, Tanzer maintains that the volume is good and bad. There are a lot of journals that publish work of poor quality, and the amount of reading available is such that one can never read everything.

This brought me to the final question of my interview. Tanzer is married with two boys, works full-time doing social media work for a nonprofit, and finds the time to write a variety of stories and novels (Orphans was released this week, with a starred review in Publisher's Weekly), in addition to reading a staggering amount of outside fiction. He's very strict about his time.

"If my wife and kids go out unexpectedly, I never look at it as 'oh, I have half an hour to myself to sit on the couch and watch TV.' I made it my writing time. I strip the fat out of my day." I asked him about this because I find myself daunted with my school activities and my day job, but Tanzer believes that, no matter how busy one is, there is more time in the day than most people realize. He makes his day segmented, balancing his outside responsibilities with his duties as a reader and writer.

This interview wasn't conducted out of a need to research a specific topic, but it was done because Tanzer represents so many intangible ideas that come up in my writings and research. I wanted to get his opinion on these ideas-masculinity, time management, and independent journals- because, combined, these make up the vast majority of my interests. For as familiar as I am with independent journals, I wanted to hear a new take on their numbers and qualities. And most importantly, I believe this interview has given me a new contact within the literary world; while Mr. Tanzer and I have been in touch over the last year, he's always been quick to answer my messages and questions.

He closed the interview by insisting that I email him with any further questions or to set up times to meet for coffee and more discussions. This was a genuine offer, and I'm confident that, should I need an outside opinion on creative matters or subjects, I have someone I can reach out to for insights and guidance. This will prove to be very valuable during the course of my MFA candidacy. So while I'm still considering various creative nonfiction projects, this interview provided me with an excellent face-to-face with a writer who touches upon my concerns.

Chicago Ex-Patriate: Now on Instagram!

Before 2011, I used to scoff at the idea of Twitter. Now, as you can see from the widget to your right, I'm pretty damn active there, and I've found it to be enjoyable and beneficial.

I haven't scoffed at Instagram, but I never saw the point of it. My thoughts were: "I can already post photos on my blog, Facebook, Twitter, what-have-you. Why in god's name would I need another site, another screen name, another password to remember, just to share photos? Well, here we are. I have an Instagram account. If you're so inclined to follow me, here's my link. I assume you can just search by my handle: @chicagoexpatjy; alas, I'm still getting used to the ins and outs of sharing, posting, etc. I only have two images up, with more to follow.

With how busy I've been with school, I didn't think I'd have time to update it, let alone consider the kind of images and photographs I want to post. But as I spend a good part of my day commuting from home to work to campus and back again, I've seen little moments that I wouldn't mind snapping. Some of these images are obvious: glorious sunrises from the train. Some of these are lesser known: next to the beautiful facade of Roosevelt University, there's a covered alley next to it. There are loading docks, boxes, and a general atmosphere of the industrial side of progressive education. Or something like that. Granted, I haven't photographed it, but I'm sure it'll be next on my list. I've toyed with the idea of doing a photo per day. But, as I've said too many times, no promises. The more I promise, the less my immediate vision translates to what I actually do. And a note to actual, real photographers: I'm using the word "photograph" lightly. I know that whipping out my phone and hitting "click" isn't the same as actual, artistic work. I salute real, dedicated photographers. I'm not cutting into your world, I'm just interested in documenting little things.

Overall, this could be a good writing exercise. By accumulating images that I see in passing, or seeing infrastructures that strike me as odd, I hope to think critically and see how I can use my writing to uncover some of these smaller, tender moments. Perhaps I'm being too grandiose: so far, I have photo of Chicago's Rainbo Club and one from the interior of a CTA train. But hopefully this will make sense as I go along.

I'm only human, and this is the internet. So while I want to shy away from the obvious, I can't promise there won't be the occasional photo of (pick one or all of the above): a.) cats, b.) beer steins, c.) full whiskey glasses, or d.) plates full of food.

So follow me if you wish. And if you're aware of any accounts that specialize in urban visions, by all means let me know.

A Brief Dispatch From MFA Land

Why, hi there.

It's been over two months since I last updated this blog. One of my last posts explained this: I'm currently in my first semester at Roosevelt University, on the first leg of my MFA candidacy in Creative Writing. While I had hoped to do little "snapshot" updates over the course of these months, that hasn't happened. But I wanted to write something, for god's sake. I was honest when I said I wasn't giving up on this blog, just that doing five book reviews/personal essays a month was impossible, given my jam-packed workload of reading, class writings, workshop editing, and edits, edits, edits. On top of that, I'm one of the student editors of Oyez Review, the MFA program's literary magazine (issue #40 is above; I'm currently editing and reading submissions for #41, coming this spring).

I'm also going to be doing two blog posts for the Oyez website. I'll update those here when they're published. A slight preview of my first blog post: after reading submissions for a solid month, I want to find the editors who sent me detailed, kind rejection letters. And I want to hug them profusely. With a small team of student readers, the workload has been immense. I can't imagine the work that goes into reading for a journal that publishes all year. So when I received rejection letters accompanied by kind notes, I was appreciative, but now, I'm even more touched. The unpaid hours are really, truly done out of love and dedication. So to take the time to send a small, personalized note when time is precious shows just how dedicated the editors of my favorite journals really are.

Some other notes:

1.) The new director of Roosevelt's MFA program is writer and novelist Christian TeBordo. When I found out he was coming to the program, that's what sold me, and I'm pleased to note that his writing skills and personality are in equal abundance. He's nicer than I could have imagined, and he really, truly wants to make the program as good as it can be. So I feel like I've started at the perfect time.

2.) My fellow first year MFA candidates are talented people. There's no competition, but rather a true sense of community and a shared goal of helping each other become better writers. We're very honest with each other, and there are never any hard feelings. And even though we've been together just over a month, there's been a marked improvement overall. I'm sure there will be steps back and steps forward for all of us, but for an opening month, this has been a terrific experience. And for fuck's sake, I need to stop using passive voice. That's been one of my biggest problems as a writer, and seeing this pointed out consistently has helped.

3.) On Monday, October 7th, Lindsay Hunter gave a reading at Roosevelt. As anyone who knows me can attest, I'm a serious fan of her writing, and I was beyond excited about this opportunity. Not only did I get to meet her and hear her read (if you ever have the chance to attend a Lindsay Hunter reading, go. Just go. Her performances are equally stunning and hilarious), but she sat in on our Fiction Workshop. She offered assessments on my story, was encouraging and honest, and she's a very careful reader. To have one of my favorite contemporary writers discuss my own work with me was unexpected a few weeks ago and a reality just this past Monday. I was honored. The photo below was taken for the Roosevelt Creative Writing MFA blog.

4.) I won a $1,000 spring semester scholarship for the above story. An organization called Friends Of American writers offers this scholarship every year to a first year MFA candidate. I was humbled. I guess in a way, it's the first time I've been paid for my writing, in a roundabout way. Actually, not really, but every little bit of cash helps right now.

5.) Two classmates said my story reminded them of George Saunders. I was touched and deep down wanted to say "easy there, tone it down. I'm not even within a couple galaxies of his talent." But it was just an overall assessment on tone and style, and I was touched, even though I was heavily skeptical.

So this is just a random smattering of what I've been up to as of late. I don't want to promise more consistent updates, because whenever I make any kind of promise via this blog, that's a virtual guarantee that said promise won't be kept at all. But I'm happy, a bit overworked and dazed, but overall on the way to where I want to be as a person and as a writer. And the ultimate catch-22: I'm making progress on my writing but have no time to work on things not related to school. I better keep my ass moving during Thanksgiving and Christmas break, yeah?

More updates soon! Just not sure when, exactly.

Some Notes On the Present and Future Of This Blog

I'm going to open with a statement, just to get it out of the way, since what follows might sound like I'm signing off on Chicago Ex-Patriate: I'm not at all giving up on this blog. To be very honest, the thought of stopping my postings makes me emotional. As I've mentioned a handful of times, this site had very hazy, different origins. I had just moved to Washington state after a much too dragged out breakup, with no real prospects or knowledge of what I wanted to do with my life. My first instinct was to write a cute travelogue of sorts--documenting Seattle and its suburbs as I discovered what it had to offer. I was unemployed, living off the charity of my older brother, and living in a place I had never even visited before moving. If you'll glance to your right, I've already explained the (now embarrassing) origins of the blog's name, and the subsequent handle I adopted. Before writing any thoughts on the West Coast, I ended up reading a bunch of Italo Calvino works and thought it would be cool to do some literary criticism. After that, the book essays started flowing. I was slowly reading in a much more intelligent way than I used to; for an undergrad English major, I spent the majority of my twenties bar hopping and reading and writing very sporadically. The last five years' worth of essays and reviews are a noticeable culmination in my maturity and dedication to literature, literary studies, and my own fiction writing.

Because of this blog, my first college English teacher (Jeremy Bushnell) reached out to me to contribute to a music collective, and that led to joining him as he founded Instafiction. Through Instafiction, I had a very short piece published in The Chicago Reader. I've always looked up to Jeremy over the years, and we grew from old acquaintances into close friends. And not long after, he shared some great news: we were offered positions as the Fiction Editors of Longform. Around this time, after reading hundreds of short stories, I rekindled my early desire to write fiction. Taking cues from some masters both old and new, I started churning out new material. Most of it was shaky, a lot of it has been rejected, but I did have my first piece published in April, in, of all places, Hobart, one of my absolute favorite literary magazines. Where am I going with these haphazard reflections? None of it would have been possible had I not started writing my book reviews here, doing a lot of reading and dusting off the skills I had let slide after graduating from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Also, my writing has improved to the point that I'm weeks away from beginning my MFA candidacy in Creative Writing at Roosevelt University. Therefore, much of my time will be devoted to classwork, and while I plan to keep up on outside readings and Longform work, I won't be able to consistently churn out five or six full length book reviews every month. I also need to start submitting my reviews elsewhere. As much as I love having this site as my home, where I'm free to post and muse on whatever I'd like, I want to start putting my reviews in different journals. You might find that most of the upcoming book reviews might be for older backlist titles; the new books that I read will be written about and sent elsewhere, hopefully increasing my number of publications.

I may post book and writing news, but I haven't decided--most of what I discover and learn comes from writers, bloggers, and literary journals with great reputations, so it's not like I have an inside scoop. Any news I post will probably have been documented far and wide by the time I get to it.

I do have some essays in the works before I begin my first semester, but I wanted to take a moment to explain all of this, in case anyone checks this out even semi-consistently and doesn't see as much updating. I'm never getting rid of Chicago Ex-Patriate; it'll just be taking a different form while I work for my Master's Degree. And I'm hopeful that I'll have many publication updates in due time, as well as notes about my time at Roosevelt. I'm often staggered by how much I've grown since starting this space back in 2008. I never thought I'd be at this point, with the maturity I have now, and the dedication to make myself a serious fiction writer. I'm a drastically different person now, and the ups and downs of my writings here show that. And I can't wait to begin even more discoveries and growth as I have my writing praised, derided, ripped apart, and analyzed within a graduate setting. I know I'll be learning and growing so much over the next two years.

Thanks for reading. Much love and respect to everyone who has helped me grow.

-James Yates

The Nature Of the Beast: "Tampa" by Alissa Nutting

(The novel Tampa, and some of the related subject matter discussed in this review, is pretty NSFW.)

"A very guilty pleasure indeed. The heroine is an obsessed, masturbating, child-molesting, somewhat homicidal sexual sociopath. Think of a female Dexter but without the redeeming social value. And you'll be cheering for her every step of the way and eagerly awaiting a sequel."

In a very basic nutshell, this assessment, quoted from a Barnesandnoble.com customer review, manages to sum up the fascinating double standards that abound in Tampa, Alissa Nutting's debut novel, in addition to getting a few details drastically wrong. Nobody can read this novel and not feel guilty. It's narrated by a physically attractive young teacher with a sexual and psychological attraction to fourteen year-old boys. There are many extremely detailed sex scenes, rife with slang and clinical terminologies, and when the novel is on the cusp of one of these luridly detailed interactions, the reader is at least subconsciously eager to read what the teacher has in store for her student. But just as quickly, the reader has to blink and remind him/herself: the unfolding act is pedophilia and molestation, not an enjoyably raunchy interlude in a very good book. Tampa isn't a twisted Fifty Shades knockoff, it's an accomplished, scary novel by a very talented writer. While I had my own issues with the novel's ending, I came away with the belief that this really is one of the better novels of the summer. It reads very quickly, but is crafted with a terrific emphasis on the main character's mental problems. While it's based on research of actual crimes, it's not some tawdry, "ripped from the headlines" cash-in. And most importantly, it positively thrives on making the reader confront its many double standards and notions of the differences between male and female sexuality.

Celeste Price is blonde, taut, and married to a wealthy cop. She's beginning her first school year teaching English in a junior high school, but she's there for one reason: to pick the perfect male student to seduce and have sex with throughout the school year. Her criteria is meticulous for a variety of reasons, and she settles on a boy named Jack Patrick:

"But despite the pleasant view, I saw few real options. Goody-goodies like Frank would deny me, and the overly confident type would find it impossible not to brag. There was only Jack--my second choice, Trevor Bodin, had a vast assortment of imperfections; deciding between the two of them was like being asked to pick a dance partner and given the option of a trained choreographer or an epileptic with a wooden leg. Trevor was an artsy sort whose hair was a wiggish crop of curls. A pensive journaler, he'd already asked if I'd look at some of his poetry. Since he walked home from school and didn't have to rush to catch a bus, he often came up to talk books and writing with me after class. But he had a girlfriend; most of his poetry was devoted to professing his love for her--Abby Fischer in my second period, memorable for her chunk of dyed purple hair. Being the romantic type, if Trevor ever did stray, he'd undoubtedly confess to her minutes after the act, likely through a series of frantic text messages that peppered statements of regret with frown-faced emoticons. He also came off as clingy, which could prove to be downright toxic. Trevor seemed like the type who would be ever more demanding, who would accept nothing less than symbiosis (Nutting 53-54)."

Jack Patrick is attractive, not too socially awkward and not too gregarious, and Celeste learns that he lives with his father, who often comes home late from work. These realizations, like everything else in Celeste's life, are analyzed and mentioned solely in relation to how she can feed her addiction and desires. As she states, her marriage is a sham, and her husband's wealth fulfills every need except her sexual ones. She has no hobbies, no outside interests, and no goal except maintaining her appearances (physical and perceived) to indulge her desire for underage males. This puts a strain on her sex life at home, giving her husband only occasional moments of sexual release, with the unspoken realization that it's best (in her mind) to project to others that they have a fantastically happy marriage and sex life, even though this isn't the case. At first, I thought the easy comparison novel would be Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, with the roles reversed. However, Humbert Humbert's seduction of Dolores Haze, for all of its horrifying realizations and implications, is actually an absurd comedy and commentary on youth and desire. Celeste Price is no Humbert Humbert. She's a cold, manipulative criminal, with terrifying sociopath tendencies.

That's not to say that Tampa doesn't dive into sociological and cultural ideas. In a wonderful interview with the website Jezebel, Nutting states that her goal was to explore female sexuality. She says "I think female predators tend to be sexually objectified and obtain a sort of celebrity status. I can’t remember the specific names of a single male-teacher/female-student case that got national attention off the top of my head. It’s not sensationalized or sexualized in the same way." There's a fantastic double standard at play. The awful consensus that many people have is that sexual abuse of a boy isn't as bad as sexual abuse of a girl; in addition to being wrong, it's also a shameful, sexist mentality of our times. Nutting carefully shows that Jack is a child. His actions, from the initial seduction to the aftermath, are those of someone not in control of his sexuality or maturity.

"'That was the best sex of my life, Jack.' He smiled; his eyes bashfully dodged my own but his face held a definite glow of pride.
'Mine too,' he said, then realizing his own joke, began to giggle. Now that it was over, the lust no longer there to suppress his modesty, Jack seemed embarrassed of his body--he'd lifted his knees up to his chest.
I reached up into the front seat and turned the key, blasting a cool stream of air-conditioning back onto us, and looked at the clock. It felt like we'd been there for hours, but it had only been twenty minutes.
'Are you hungry? Do you want to go through a drive-through?' Jack nodded (Nutting 113)."

While looking online for reaction to Tampa, I stumbled upon an excerpt in, of all places, Cosmopolitan Magazine. The introduction to the excerpt (which details Celeste and Jack's first round of sex) is "This summer's baddest, buzziest novel—about a hot young teacher who seduces her student—has enough biting humor and sexually graphic detail to make our Cosmo editors blush. It's also a brilliant commentary on sex and society. Here's your sneak peek." There's no mention of Jack's age, and the snippet makes Tampa sound like a dirty, acceptable beach read. I can only imagine the outrage and backlash had this appeared in GQ or Esquire, with the book being about a grown man who seduces a fourteen year old girl. I highly doubt the editors of Cosmo had this in mind, but perhaps that's another layer to the double standard. In society, it's more or less accepted that a young man would want to have sex with his attractive teacher, therefore making the act "less scandalous" than the male teacher/female student dynamic. Elsewhere in her Jezebel interview, Nutting says:

"I do feel like there are rigid boundaries for sexually explicit female characters (and for females in society in general), and when you cross them or go beyond those prescribed confines people are quick to devalue the book. I think one of the reasons that Fifty Shades was able to be such a commercial hit with its female-driven sexual content is because it’s ultimately an extremely traditional love story. As a culture I’d say we’re most comfortable talking about female sex when it’s in the confines of romantic love.

There are very, very few sexually explicit books about female sexual predators, which is part of the reason I felt the need to write Tampa. There’s a way to write a novel about a female sexual predator that would be quite accepted—to do so the same way the issue is largely discussed in the national media: talk about the ways or reasons the woman herself is a victim (which we care about far less, if at all, when the offender is male), show her being contrite and ashamed, take the focus off the sex or belittle its harm and violence. But that all goes back to precisely the reason that it’s hard for us to see females as sexual predators with male victims in the first place in our society."

I've barely scratched the surface of Tampa's other elements. Celeste's marriage reaches a breaking point long before the cracks in her "relationship" with Jack surface; a tired, demoralized teacher at her school becomes an unexpected ally; and unexpected people, from Jack's father to another lover, appear to dangerously send Celeste's private world into chaos. For as much as she plans, she cannot account for these detours. Jack becomes more mature and demanding, and the reader can see how the sexual relationship is wearing on him. Again, Nutting pays very careful attention to even the smallest details. Nothing is gratuitous, and Nutting manages to illuminate even the smallest ideas and consequences.

"I tried having him wear his old Halloween costumes and sports equipment while I pleasured him--a favorite of mine was the now-too-small cup that had been part of his junior soccer uniform. It barely held him; his genitals spilled out from its edges, like a snake-in-the-can practical joke that had been halfheartedly pushed back inside after popping open.
But nothing seemed to nudge Jack back into the mode of abandon I was searching for. The problem, I soon realized, wasn't simply between us. The way Jack would flinch at the slightest noise when we were alone, the moments during sex when I'd open my eyes to find that Jack's gaze wasn't trained on me at all but on his closed bedroom door, make it clear he couldn't let the catastrophe of Buck finding us together go: it had left Jack with a post-traumatic stress disorder that was heartily interfering with my getting off (Nutting 176)."

I had some issues with some of Nutting's craft choices: Celeste is an English teacher, leading to some stretched metaphors between her situation and the novels being discussed in the classroom. Some of the events (I'm being vague to avoid spoilers) seem too dramatic, especially given how detailed Celeste is in her manipulations. The novel, for the most part, is chilling in its depiction of Celeste as a sociopath. Toward the end, the revelations and domino-effect actions veer the novel into summertime melodrama. As for the commentator I cited at the beginning of this piece, the reader should not be rooting for Celeste. She's not committing these acts for any greater good; she's a pedophile. And as she starts a new chapter of her life at the novel's end, there's no hope for a sequel. She's still very damaged and in need of psychiatric help. How anyone could view her as a cheer-worthy hero is beyond me.

But again, these are the questions raised by the novel, and it forces everyone to have, at the minimum, an internal conversation about how male and female sexuality and perversions are viewed. While these potential conversations can be hazy or downright uncomfortable, Nutting should be commended for putting them out there in the first place. She's a wonderful writer and, most importantly within the context of Tampa, fiercely honest about what goes on in certain places. Some will laugh, some experience dirty thrills, but overall, these discussions are needed. We still live in a heavily patriarchal society that is able to turn an eye to male sexual abuse. In a way, fiction can sometimes be the only way to trigger these discussions. Nutting isn't out to shock, but to say "This happens. How do we feel about this? And how can we change these expectations and gut reactions?"

Work Cited:
Nutting, Alissa. Tampa. Copyright 2013 by Alissa Nutting.

Nothing But the Sky: "The Avian Gospels" by Adam Novy

As I went into my reading of Adam Novy's The Avian Gospels, I had no idea what to expect. Recently reissued by Hobart as a single edition (after its 2010 publication as a two volume set), it was gifted to me by my friend Jeremy. At the 2011 AWP book fair, I happened to make a mental note when he bought himself the two editions, and I looked up Novy's novel online. I had a very basic understanding of the plot and virtually no knowledge of Novy as a person or as a writer. Seeing that it was published by one of my favorite lit journals/publishing houses, I figured it was worth the time, sight unseen. Without having read any other short fiction by Novy, and since the book has always been in at least semi-limited availability, I was able to dive into terrific reading sessions without any outside influences, unless you count some of my favorite writers and readers praising the work over the last few years. After reading the first few pages of The Avian Gospels, I was expecting a fairly standard plot infused with experimental and magical influences. While this held true, it turns into a complex package of many themes and unexpected turns. There are love stories. There is political drama and violence. There is an intentional muddling of place and time. Family relationships and identities are explored, questioned, and ripped apart. There are double-crosses and thriller sequences worthy of the "keeps you on the edge of your seat" cliche. Last but certainly not least, there is a heavy influence of religion as a personal and social construct, befitting the novel's tassel and black leather composition, making it resemble a bible (last week on the train, a passenger asked me if I was reading the Torah). As I'm fond of saying, these descriptions form a summary and not a spoiler. When I was finished, I was taken aback at how many ideas Novy was able to pack into the narrative without making it messy.

The Avian Gospels takes place in a truly strange world (there are mentions of Norway, Hungary, and Oklahoma being within the same area). A Swede named Zvominir, known as the Bird Man, loses his wife during childbirth; the son, Morgan, survives and is referred to as the Bird Boy. The father has the power to manipulate and control birds, and his son is also born with the same powers. Their land, a destitute place with mixed poverty and scores of abused Gypsies, is dominated by millions of birds.

"Seventeen years later came the strange and extravagant birds' nests, the heaps of sticks and bark and rocks like haystacks in the trees. Then the flicker of larks and sparrows, the profusion of mergansers, terns, auks, shorebirds, hummingbirds, ospreys, magpies, chickadees, blackbirds, bluebirds, orioles, buntings, grosbeaks, waxwings, warblers, mockingbirds, wrens, thrushes, juncos, coots, cuckoos, kingfishers, doves and owls, bending our branches and spattering the air with their songs as we pushed our baby strollers down the boulevards, we had so many children then, the cemeteries' tumult had gone silent. We had never given too much thought to birds until that Sunday on the Steps, when a pulsing flock of hoopoes blotted out the sun, a hundred thousand cardinals in the Square like a sea of dried blood. They overflowed our city in a day (Novy 18)."

The city is ruled by a despot named Judge Giggs. He lives with his family in opulence and controls the RedBlacks, a military/police force. When it's known that the birds can be controlled, Zvominir is "hired" to control the populations, even though he's often crassly mistaken for a Gypsy. The Judge's family is aware of his power: his son Mike, being trained as a RedBlack, is a dimwitted punk no better than the average high school bully. His youngest daughter, Katherine, is the most level headed, offended by her father's control and secretly attracted to Morgan. The family and political dynamics are dangerous, but oftentimes ludicrously silly. Even in the face of extremes, the novel's narrator is always ready with an aside or a random observation that lends an air of thoughtfulness to the destitution and power struggles.

"A group of RedBlacks stood guard by the high stone gate of the Giggs house, surrounded by thousands of giant and laconic birds of prey, confident and taut in their power, like the Judge himself. They may have chosen his house because of him, though perhaps we only think that to inject coherent themes into the nothing of the everything (Novy 37)."


The Bird Man and the Bird Boy perform elaborate shows with the birds, controlling them into shapes, performances, and, in some instances, weapons. When some of his favorite birds are killed, Morgan finds himself at odds with his father and part of a revolution. He teams up with a Gypsy girl named Jane, secretly engaging in acts of violence against the persecution. This leads to secrecy, defiance, a love triangle between himself, Katherine, and Jane, a murder, and escalating double crosses from people on both sides of the war. The violence depicted is brutal, but never gratuitous; there are so many passages when one expects Novy to unleash a firestorm of stomach-clenching details, but it never becomes as intense as expected. However, this makes the violence that much more intense. The scenes he does share are terrible, but only hints at what more is happening behind the camera, so to speak:

"Shrugging, the soldiers struck the Swedes with their gun-butts, wrestled them onto their stomachs and kicked them, emptied their pockets of lint, debris, rags, calling them Gypsies, pickpockets, thieves, accusing them of stealing, subversion, black magic, spells to dupe the charitable, well-meaning populace, stomping on their knees and their ankles and their softer parts as Zvominir begged for Morgan's life, even as the soldiers picked the boy up by his feet, dangling him upside down to shake loose any contraband he might've swiped as he trawled through the suburbs with their charitable millionaires so naive to a Gypsy beggar's wiles; tore off the rags of Morgan's shoes and searched them, ransacked his body and squeezed his prostate, and his father's...(Novy 57)."

There are a seemingly equal number of beautiful passages, too. Novy's descriptions of the bird shows are stunning, and he creates some of the most visually compelling imagery. Even as the novel progresses down darker paths, passages like the one below pop up, and they are truly awe-inspiring:

"Morgan used ring-billed gulls for Katherine's face, cardinals for freckles and chiaroscuro hawks, curlews for her hair--their red bending beaks broke the picture-plane, illustrating wind--eyes of green ducks and raven-colored pupils, the shadow of her nose a parallelogram of plovers, nightingales, and parakeets for pigment, every bird a spot within a massive field of color-clusters, which all made Katherine Giggs. We know he selected birds for their brilliance, a repertory company of colors. We would like to show you Katherine's face, but we can't see it for ourselves, a madman sought her portraits and destroyed them (Novy 214)."

So far, these passages are stressing the balance between magic and horror in The Avian Gospels, but in hindsight, Novy never makes anything as simple as it seems. The novel's heroes have terrible habits and impulses, and the villains are sometimes presented in a sympathetic light. For example, the Judge is a monster, but there are stories of a personal loss that don't absolve him from his tyranny, but at least add some complexity to his dominance. Morgan wants to do good, but he's prone to lashing out and alienating the people close to him. He's young and selfish, and sometimes unable to see the bigger picture. This personality forms the basis for what was probably my favorite line in the novel, assuming I had to pick one of many: "The only thing I care about is birds, Morgan said, I'm a patriot to nothing but the sky (Novy 233)." These dual natures snowball, and as the novel concludes, the rampage and unexpected actions and deaths are nothing short of biblical. The Avian Gospels has probably the most depressing, abrupt ending in contemporary fiction, but somehow, it's oddly fitting. Nobody is truly redeemed, and the aftermath of the aftermath, left to the imagination, is probably more staggering that was was presented in the pages.

Adam Novy is almost frighteningly talented. There are so many young writers who could attempt a novel like this and end up creating an overwrought melodrama. Novy, however, makes the themes explicit and lets the reader make his or her own judgement. There are countless moral dilemmas, but the author never shows his hand to subconsciously make the reader think one way or another. And in a way, The Avian Gospels rides on the strength of both its prose and the conflicts. There are many examples of nature vs. infrastructure, peace vs. violence, family vs. country, and the obvious life vs. death. Are Zvominir and Morgan prophets, or merely humans caught up in their singular ability to manipulate a force of nature? And, to keep the idea of opposites intact, I believe The Avian Gospels is a combination of classic and contemporary. Novy blends ideas as old as humanity with experimental flourishes that eliminate any true sense of time and space, and in doing so, has created a work that can illuminate and compare to so many events and struggles. This novel is ambitious in so many ways, but manages to be a rollicking adventure through these complex questions. I very highly recommend this to anyone who ever claims there's nothing out there to read.

Work Cited:
Novy, Adam. The Avian Gospels. Copyright 2010, 2013 by Adam Novy.

A Stasis Of Secrets: Matt Bell's "In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods"

Even before the publication of his debut novel, it was hard to imagine what else writer Matt Bell was capable of doing. His short stories are diverse, often complex studies of religion, history, and interactions, freely moving themselves in and out of a variety of genres. 2012's Cataclysm Baby took this even further. It's a small novella packed with creepy, post-apocalyptic and/or historical stories by twenty-six fathers beset by mutated, demonic offspring. The recent release of In The House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods was preceded by a stunning array of praise, so much that anyone unfamiliar with Bell's work would likely lump it into the "over-hyped" category. Booksellers and writers took to social media after reading their advanced copies and called it the best novel of 2013. Publisher's Weekly featured the novel on a previous cover issue. And Soho Press, the publisher, took out a full-page ad in Harper's. As I wrote in my review of Cataclysm Baby, I almost wish that Bell would write a poor story or piece of fiction; as much as I support and admire him, I wouldn't be afraid to constructively criticize a piece of his that I found lacking. However, I recently finished In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, and my assessment is pretty much the same as everyone else: this is really one of the best books of 2013, and on top of that, it's one of the most original pieces of fiction in recent memory.

I say this as someone who doesn't read much fantasy/fabulist/magical realist fiction, but In The House Upon.... is a stunning, contemporary fable, and works along the same lines as shorter, classical fables: it tells so much with such basic information, and allows Bell the room to create a staggering array of possibilities. The story centers on a recently married couple: the wife is unable to birth a son (or any child), and the husband, a fisherman/hunter, grows increasingly angry and grave. The wife has magical powers through the strength of her songs, the ability to create and conjure anything except the child. There are miscarriages, false hopes, and disappointments. The husband begins to spend an increasing amount of time outside.

"My wife frowned but did not deny me, for in those days we refused each other nothing. She created and created, and when I could not abide any more of her objects--shapes meant for a once-expected childhood, now only mocking, robbed of any right utility--then I began to take more of my hours outside the house I had built, inhabiting instead the lake and the woods, whose strange failings could not be laid so squarely upon my deeds, nor the body of my wife (Bell 16-17)."

In the process, the husband becomes the host of a fingerling--a spirit/entity, representing a lost child, swimming throughout his body and speaking to him. In a sense, the fingerling represents his darker thoughts, his doubts, and the urges he seeks to repress:

"I circled round behind the house, and there I discovered the garden already unmade, its dank sod overturned, the many buried objects of baby raising now ripped anew from its earth so that they might be reinstalled in the house, each useful at last.

And then to have to look back at the house I had built, filled now with what I had not.

To have to listen to the fingerling say, I TOLD YOU SO, I TOLD YOU SO TOLD YOU SO.

To have to have him be right, and yet to not yet know what that meant (Bell 37)."

As time passes, the husband notices a large, menacing bear around the property, and the wife finally has a baby. However, the husband doesn't approve of the child and doesn't believe that it is truly his own offspring. He names the child "the foundling," and his interactions with him are either nonexistent or grim. This isn't just a case of absent or unwilling parenting--along with the voice of the fingerling, the husband finds himself in a complex, mystical game between his wife, the child, and increasingly, the bear. Bell's writing manages to go down two very different paths at once: it relies on what appears to be simplistic storytelling, the kind found in historical fables and fairy tales, but at the same time, like those tales, there is so much happening. The metaphors come slyly and forcefully. The father's narration is sometimes uncomfortable.

"For that foundling, our false son, my wife and I played at parenting together, and in those early years we learned him in the ways of our family, and also the first four of the elements, dirt and house and lake and woods: Cross-legged upon the fur-covered floor, we told him what we had been taught, that those four aspects were all we were--but then my wife said there was another, a fifth, and that this element was called mother, that it was her mothering that made the foundling, more so than any other. I thought this to be a lie but said nothing, kept silent my concern at her greedy deception--and then as I withdrew I came as well to discern elements previously unknown (Bell 41)."

The synopsis above and the cited passage could be viewed as spoilers by readers whom have read the novel. However, even while hinting at the looming outcomes, it says nothing while, in hindsight, saying much. These dynamics hold steady for several pages before stunning revelations and further plot developments arise, including a mysterious world both similar and different from the house upon the dirt to the father's communication with the bear and the ability to take other forms. Bell highlights these fantastical developments by playing with the novel's format. Some chapters are barely a page long, and others are broken up by stanzas and brief, staccato paragraphs. The mysteries and forms sometimes reminded me of a nineteenth-century novel written by experimental writer Blake Butler. I'm not alone in noting thematic similarities between Bell and other writers; Brooklyn-based writer Tobias Carroll said In The House... reminded him of Angela Carter and Cormac McCarthy. However, Bell isn't copying anyone else. It's unique writing that wonderfully evokes what has come before it.

"And in this room: The voice of the foundling as I had rarely heard it, as he talked to my wife when they were alone. A voice high and eloquent, curious and questioning, so different from the silence that blanked his wild face whenever I appeared.

And in this room: the number of times my wife hurt the foundling, even accidentally. A number so close to zero.

And in this room, the number of times the foundling touched me without fear, counted up and counted through, each enumeration instanced, made distinct. Here was the foundling, wiggling his tiny fingers in his crib.
Here him clutching my then-offered finger, here him putting that finger into his mouth, biting hard (Bell 118)."

There is really no tidy way to summarize this book, or to place it in any true time period. There are elements of history, but also no real references beside the house, the woods, or the lake, save for the mysterious place resembling them. At times, I found myself imagining the family as an isolated frontier settlement, but there are references to a watch and photographs. The novel doesn't need a definitive place or setting--again, like other fairy tales, the emphasis is on the immediate happenings, morals, and identities. Also, there are so many themes to consider that it sometimes becomes delightfully overwhelming--to name a few, Bell writes about family, marriage, parenting, masculinity, humanity's relationship to nature, and the consequences of assuming new forms and identities. The reader will also find him or herself amazed at some of the sentences. As Bell as consistently proved, his writing and imagery are beautiful and rife with layers. In this novel, there are so many unique paragraphs and sentences worth underlining and quoting. The passages I've shared in this review are for context, and I haven't even come close to highlighting my favorites:

"The days were thieves, and the happier ones the worst, their distractions allowing the hours to pass unnoticed, allowing the minutes to be snatched away without knowledge of their passing (Bell 57)."

And this passage below has been shared countless times via social media, with emphasis on its killer final line:

"That was the question I worried at, that I gnawed at like a bone, a cast-off rib too stubborn to share its marrow. And when at last that bone broke, what truth escaped its fracture, was by it remade: for even our bones had memories, and our memories bones (Bell 26)."

I very nearly didn't write this review, since so many other outlets and readers have shared much more eloquent assessments of the text. Also, having followed Bell on Twitter and Facebook, he's allowed people to share glimpses of the creative journey, from outlines to excerpts to last week's publication. But In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods truly is one of the best reading experiences I've had, and writers like Bell are showing glorious new avenues for the novel, a constantly eulogized format. If anything, I hope that someone stumbles upon this review and decides to pick up a copy. I've spent years writing about old and new literature, and this is one of the best works for someone to buy or check out on a whim and be vastly entertained by great fiction. As I mentioned in regard to Cataclysm Baby, there are so many books and writers worthy of being discovered and enjoyed by newer, bigger audiences. In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods is not only no exception, but a shining example of this.

Work Cited:
Bell, Matt. In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods. Copyright 2013 by Matt Bell.

Older, Wiser: A Delayed Appreciation Of Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood"

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Ramona Ausubel's A Guide To Being Born, and in the review, I had to offer an apology. Two years ago, I read and dismissed one of her stories, only to read it again and be enthralled. The change in my reading skills and styles always changes for the better as I get older, and I feel a strange disconnect between who I am now, and the kinds of books I read (and the quality of my critical readings) years ago. Of course, I'm being very harsh on myself--everyone goes through adjustments, changes in taste, and develops a better eye with more learning and much more reading. However, I'm still on my little self-critical soapbox. During the summer before my senior year in high school, one of the required books was Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood. I have some memories of reading it and coming to a seventeen year-old assessment that it was "weird." I've owned the book since then (part of an out-of-print trilogy of her work, including Everything That Rises Must Converge and The Violent Bear It Away, both of which are on my list). It's graced several bookshelves and book piles from Chicago to Seattle back to Chicago and in various apartments. However, it was only recently that I decided to give it another look, and I'm still amazed. O'Connor's strikingly modern prose, her scary, unrepeatable characters, and her intense looks at philosophy and religious fervor are just as fresh now as they were in 1952. Of course, I'm not even close to being the same reader at thirty that I was at seventeen. However, I'm shocked that I wasn't even remotely as hooked as I should have been. I can't imagine that anything I think about Wise Blood hasn't been thought or written countless times, but I want to do so anyway. In a way, this is a celebration of my growth, and a meaningful apology to a writer who died nineteen years before I was born.

Wise Blood follows the humorous and grotesque interactions of Hazel Motes, a World War II veteran determined to start an atheist movement of The Church Without Christ. His dark clothes and hat give people the assumption that he's an actual preacher, and he comes from a lineage of holy men ("His grandfather had been a circuit preacher, a waspish old man who had ridden over three counties with Jesus hidden in his head like a stinger"). After shacking up with a prostitute, he meets the acquaintance of a crazed zookeeper named Enoch Emery. Enoch, despite his nonstop attempts, fails to forge any kind of friendship with Hazel, who keeps rebuffing him. The obsession is very likely a repressed attraction, and the two men's personalities bounce off each other. This is evident even in the most basic dialogues, and Enoch's fascination/obsession becomes more disturbing than Hazel's steely resolve to be left alone with his goals.

"'I'll look after him,' Enoch Emery said, pushing in by the policeman. 'He ain't been here but only two days. I'll look after him.'

'How long you been here?' the cop asked.

'I was born and raised here,' Enoch said. 'This is my ol' home town. I'll take care of him for you. Hey wait!' he yelled at Haze. 'Wait on me!' He pushed out of the crowd and caught up with him. 'I reckon I saved you that time,' he said.

'I'm obliged,' Haze said.

'It wasn't nothing,' Enoch said. 'Whyn't we go in Walgreen's and get us a soda? Ain't no night clubs open this early.'

'I don't like drug stores,' Haze said. 'Good-by.'

'That's all right,' Enoch said. 'I reckon I'll go along and keep you company for awhile (O'Connor 22-23)."

Enoch and Hazel meet Asa, a corrupt, blind preacher and his innocent daughter, Lily. As a reader will quickly assume, their public personas are lies--Asa isn't blind, and Lily is very sexually confident, leading to a series of sexual tensions and games between her and Hazel. Enoch, consumed with the idea of "wise blood" and being more noble than he really is, takes it upon himself to serve Hazel, and eventually his "church." All of these characters and their missions lead to a series of mishaps, some that are natural plot progressions, and some that seem to come from nowhere. Enoch, despite being a supporting character, drives the developments with his creepy obsession. He steals a mummy that he hopes will be an idol or prophet for Hazel's mission; this mummy eventually causes the biggest clash between Hazel and Lily. Hazel's preaching gains no attention or followers, until another corrupt preacher appears out of the blue, claiming to the crowds that Hazel has "saved" him.

"'Then I met this Prophet here,' he said, pointing at Haze on the nose of his car. 'That was two months ago, folks, that I heard how he was out to save me, how he was preaching the Church of Christ Without Christ, the church that was going to get a new jesus to help me bring my sweet nature into the open where ever'body could enjoy it. That was two months ago, friends, and now you wouldn't know me for the same man. I love ever'one of you people and I want you to listen to him and me and join our church, the Holy Church of Christ Without Christ, the new church with the new jesus, and then you'll all be helped like me!'

Haze leaned forward. 'This man is not true,' he said. 'I never saw him before tonight. I wasn't preaching this church two months ago and the name of it ain't the Holy Church of Christ Without Christ (O'Connor 77-78)!'"



I'm trying to tread carefully in my plot summaries--while the statute of limitations on spoilers has passed, each of the developments and characters are so ripe for analyzing and quoting that virtually every one is worthy of multiple essays on their symbolism and personalities. Also, a summary without context wouldn't hint to half of what truly happens. For example, the gorilla scene, which leads to Enoch's final, desperate acts, is one of the more unique scenes in literature, and is only truly appreciated and understood in the context of how Enoch gets to his current point. The scene is exactly what I described as "weird" in high school, and today, I'd describe it as "weird" in a positive way. It's suspenseful and absurd at the same time, as Enoch is driven to madness, not out of religious or anti-religious desperation, but out of an insult by a man in a gorilla suit.

"There were only two children in front of him by now. The first one shook hands and stepped aside. Enoch's heart was beating violently. The child in front of him finished and stepped aside and left him facing the ape, who took his hand with an automatic motion.

It was the first hand that had been extended to Enoch since he had come to the city. It was warm and soft.

For a second he only stood there, clasping it. Then he began to stammer. 'My name is Enoch Emery,' he mumbled. 'I attended the Rodemill Boys' Bible Academy. I work at the city zoo. I seen two of your pictures. I'm only eighteen year old but I already work for the city. My daddy made me com...' and his voice cracked.

The star leaned slightly forward and a change came in his eyes: an ugly pair of human ones moved closer and squinted at Enoch from behind the celluloid pair. 'You go to hell,' a surly voice inside the ape-suit said, low but distinctly, and the hand was jerked away.

Enoch's humiliation was so sharp and painful that he turned around three times before he realized which direction he wanted to go in. Then he ran off into the rain as fast as he could (O'Connor 92-93)."

In the end, Hazel opts for a drastic action that, despite its hinting at a serious mental illness, proves his conviction to his cause. It leads to him being subjected to yet another con, which then turns into a hazy, strangely genuine death, as he suffers for his personal shortcomings and sins. When the novel concludes, the reader is swamped with almost too much sensory and tangible information to process. A simple "What is the moral of this story?" is almost an insult to ask, since O'Connor leads us down so many paths. Religion and its negative effects is an overriding part of the narrative, and I can only imagine the backlash it received. In a way, the novel shows how any fundamentalism, from extreme religious belief to extreme distancing from religious beliefs, can have harmful outcomes for an individual, and therefore society at large. Corruption in various forms is so rampant that the reader becomes jaded, insofar as any emergence of a new, minor character toward the end immediately puts us him or her on alert, since a con or some form of violence is likely near. All of the characters have their own innate views of salvation, even if said salvation is some grotesque, surreal closure. Hazel is at odds with the world, and even the most basic actions exasperate him. Early in the book, the simple act of buying a cheap car puts him up against two strange characters selling the automobile.

"He bought the car for forty dollars and then he paid the man extra for five gallons of gasoline. The man had the boy go in the office and bring out a five-gallon can of gas to fill up the tank with. The boy came cursing and lugging the yellow gas can, bent over almost double. 'Give it here,' Haze said, 'I'll do it myself.' H was in a terrible hurry to get away in the car. The boy jerked the can away from him and straightened up. It was only half full but he held it over the tank until five gallons would have spilled out slowly. All the time he kept saying, 'Sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus.'

'Why don't he shut up?' Haze said suddenly. 'What's he keep talking like that for?'

'I don't never know what ails him,' the man said and shrugged (O'Connor 37)."

There are so many small subtexts as well, as Wise Blood truly demands multiple readings. While flipping through after my reading, I discovered this passage:

"Hawks kept his door bolted and whenever Haze knocked on it, which he did two or three times a day, the ex-evangelist sent his child out to him and bolted the door again behind her. It infuriated him to have Haze lurking in the house, thinking up some excuse to get in and look at his face; and he was often drunk and didn't want to be discovered that way.

Haze couldn't understand why the preacher didn't welcome him and act like a preacher should when he sees what he believes in a a lost soul (O'Connor 74)."

Haze rebuffs and dismisses every shred of Christianity and religion, yet feels confused when salvation isn't offered to him. Of course, Hawks is hiding a big secret, and Lily's presence in the sexual dynamic is a delicate balance in the power struggle between her father and Haze. Haze is new to sex, but not inexperienced; he knows that sleeping with Lily right away will give Hawks the upper hand, even though he knows he's a con man. In a way, Enoch is the least corrupt of the characters. He's very likely bipolar, he's alienating, yet tries to be pure in his own misguided way. Mrs. Flood, Haze's landlady at the end, schemes a plan to steal from him, yet ends up with her own form of peace and salvation. Long studies of even the most minor characters could take up several pages. Getting even a simple grasp on them is complicated.

However, with all these forms of symbolism and sociology, Wise Blood is a fantastically entertaining novel. Without resorting to stereotypes, it explores the Southern relationship to religion in a way that sociologists and historians could likely glean major parallels between sects and actual preachers and the way religion permeates the book as a whole. Corruption and dishonesty are expected from leaders, but O'Connor doesn't go for obvious examples or actions. Even from the start, the reader has an idea that unsavory ends are going to meet the characters, but the climaxes come in very unique ways. In the end, we have to wonder who is truly saved or at peace when the novel reaches its end. This very well may be one of my more scattered book pieces, but I kept thinking about so many of the nuances and imagery that O'Connor kept putting into the text. There is so much that I missed in my early reading years ago, and today, this has taken a place as one of my favorite novels ever. I'm very excited to read Everything That Rises Must Converge and The Violent Bear It Away. I have a tendency to state reading goals that don't always come to pass, but I'll be finishing this trilogy, hopefully by the end of the summer. I have no ideas or synopses of the other two books, but I'm eager to see what else O'Connor's works can do. Wise Blood 's imagery is going to stay with me for awhile, and the fact that this is a debut novel is even more astounding. I hope I've somewhat atoned for my high school transgression.

Work Cited:
O'Connor, Flannery. Wise Blood. Copyright 1962 by Flannery O'Connor.

Altered State: Laird Hunt's "Indiana, Indiana"

My reading of Laird Hunt's 2003 novel Indiana, Indiana made me think about the idea of "Midwestern literature." Generally, there isn't much of a niche genre for Midwestern lit, whereas there's long been a fascination with Southern Gothic and certain pockets of West Coast writing (I'll leave Brooklyn and New York out of this due to sheer obviousness). Of course, there are many, many books set in the Midwest, yet there doesn't seem to be any overt designation for the literature set in the area. This even goes for Midwestern writers--for example, as much as David Foster Wallace is loved, and for the amount of his writing (fiction and nonfiction) focused on central Illinois, he's generally not referred to as a Midwestern author. I'm mentioning these ideas because as I read Indiana, Indiana, I kept having a general feeling of "this is a wholly Midwestern novel," and not just because of the title and setting.

The novel tells the story of Noah Summers, a simple Indiana man with traces of paranormal senses, who longs to have his wife Opal returned home from her stay in a mental institution. Opal is a pyromaniac, and evidence is given for this trait being literal as well as supernatural. Noah lives his life, stays in touch with Opal via letters, and engages in various interactions with his parents and the occasional acquaintance. He's very much a product of his upbringing on an Indiana farm, yet his visions, which he takes in stride, hint to a much more complex mentality. In Hunt's writing, these visions are intense metaphors but could also be taken literally. The reader sees and feels what Noah sees and feels, even if there's obviously much more to explore and examine than what's presented.

"For many years, Noah saw things, all kinds of things, had visions, dreamed things while he was awake. Now, if he sees anything worth mentioning, he generally sees it, like most people, when he is asleep, but for a long time when he was wide awake interesting things would appear. Once, out in the south field, for example, Noah saw a clock. He did not ask Virgil, who was driving the tractor, if he could see it--he knew he couldn't--but he did ask him to stop.

What is it?

A clock.

What kind of clock?

It's tall. Old looking. Flowers carved into it. It's got one of them things. It's moving back and forth.

A pendulum.

Must be.

You say it's moving back and forth?

Virgil stopped the tractor and Noah jumped off and walked over to the clock, which Virgil could not see and which, Noah told him, was standing taller than either of them at the edge of the field.

It's ticking, said Noah.

Virgil nodded. Virgil smiled. What time does it say (Hunt 49)?"

Opal appears in the occasional flashback, but for the most part, she's presented from the letters she writes to Noah. At first, these messages are beautiful, innocent, and sweet, but once more examples are given as to her mental state and obsession with fire, they take on a spooky atmosphere. The letters are amazingly detailed and evocative, and it's a challenge to assess the complexities behind them. We're not meant to question whether her memories are real or not, but how they fit into the context of her sometimes dangerous personality. This takes on an even more heartbreaking atmosphere as the reader finds out just how devoted Noah is to her. He knows she has problems, but in his mind, she's his wife and should be with him no matter what. Opal's letters are full of images and an imagination that one can easily fall in love with, despite the outside problems.

"Dear Noah,

Do you remember when we went to the cave? Do you remember how we walked down into the ground and the ceiling dripped and part of the time it was stone? I like how a drip can come up out of the floor. I know it doesn't really. But I like how it can. Do you know what I pretended? I told the doctor I was pretending. I pretended we were in the cave. I pretended I was on the ceiling and you were on the floor. I smiled and the smile dripped onto your head and stretched me and you grew. Then I grew and you stretched. I told the doctor. I said our heads had dripped into each other. He wrote this down on a pad. He said there was nothing wrong with this and had the nurse give me a glass of milk. He asked me if such thoughts made me happy or sad. I laughed. I told him I wanted to stand up and dance. I told him we were a single column now.

Love, Opal (Hunt 31)"




What makes Indiana, Indiana such an amazing reading experience is its balance of the literal and the symbolic. Hunt is a storyteller as well as an artist. His style is painstaking and unique, with beautiful, very carefully written and edited sentences. Some writers make the reader aware of the structure in a distracting manner; with Hunt, you take note, but it only adds to the amazing storytelling. Some of the passages are mini poems, but he's not showing off. The entire novel is so structurally sound that I never paused and wonder where he was going or what he was doing. So when a chapter opens with a poetic format, it's accepted as part of the longer narrative.

"Sometimes, as he sits in the shed, as he does now, Noah closes his eyes and listens, and, after a moment, though he has not stopped listening, the sounds of the shed, of the surrounding night, of his own faint, rough breathing fall far away, and every sound he hears is remembered.

rain

rain like cold ropes

rain in later winter cold

rain

Or spring. Spring and the rain falling

was rain they wanted and they would stop what they were doing every now and again and say

listen

Noah would listen (Hunt 85)"

As original as Hunt's writing is, I couldn't help but be reminded of another favorite, Ben Marcus, and I mean that with all due respect to both writers. Whereas Marcus goes all out for surreal symbolism and reinvention to create plausible worlds, Hunt's Indiana is a wholly real place that gets reinvented by the surrealism. The novel doesn't namedrop any specific Indiana locales or citizens (save for the fictional family members and neighbors), nor is it any kind of love letter to the area. However, we're so drawn into Noah's world that his Indiana becomes unique and mystical without any sentimentality. In my mind, this is a landmark of Midwestern literature, whatever that means or encompasses. At the same time, Hunt's minute details are just as evocative as the bigger landscapes. Even a seemingly random (again, nothing is random or thrown in here; Hunt sets up every chapter with almost religious meticulousness) paragraph about food is written in such a stunning format that it becomes intensely realistic.

"It suddenly occurs to Noah that he is hungry, that he can't remember when or what he last ate, that the situation should be dealt with as quickly as possible. He would like to eat some corn, or peas, though not the frozen kind that sits in small plastic boxes in the deep freeze. What he wants is an ear of sweet corn, its kernels bursting with moisture and sweetness, or a tomato so ripe it has split in two or three places, or a fistful of raw snow peas with their ends snapped off. A melon would be nice. A juicy muskmelon pulled out of the garden that morning and setting in the refrigerator all day to chill. Or spinach. Huge sweet leaves of spinach tossed into a salad. Noah has the fixings, he must have, somewhere in the kitchen. Even a carrot would do. Not some wilty old thing that's been sitting in the crisper next to some played-out celery and apples for weeks, but an honest to goodness garden-fresh carrot ready to scrub and peel and eat (Hunt 145)."

As I tend to do in some of my reviews, I've been so focused on the smaller details that I've left the more concrete aspects of the plot untouched (for example, I've only casually mentioned Noah's relationship to his parents, and I haven't mentioned whether or not he sees Opal again). These details can be easily ascertained through a reading of the novel, but the real highlight were the smaller, more technical parts of Hunt's prose. I follow many writers who speak of Laird Hunt in almost reverential tones, and I've been aware of his gift as a sentence craftsman for some time. I've read two or three of his short stories and was impressed, and I checked out Indiana, Indiana on a whim. I was in the middle of other projects and getting ready to move, and I didn't think I'd have the time to devote to a reading. But I was hooked immediately and finished the novel very quickly. And now, I can't wait to read more. The novel showcases Hunt's complexities in ways that his excellent short stories can't do. I'm almost positive that I'll end up counting him among my favorite writers, and in a way, he already is: this slim, out of print novel from 2003 is one of the best reading experiences I've had in 2013. I'm glad I listened to my whim.

Work Cited:
Hunt, Laird. Indiana, Indiana (the dark and lovely portions of the night). Copyright 2003 by Laird Hunt.

"Hands of Grace" Now Live on Hobart

Well, I'm very excited and humbled today. Aaron Burch and the editors of Hobart published my first short story this morning. It's a feature for their April-long baseball feature, and it's called "Hands of Grace." The story went through multiple drafts and even started as something completely different from the finished piece. It's a story about an unhappy marriage and a man's obsession/crush with former Chicago Cubs first baseman Mark Grace. I'm also thrilled that it's accompanied by the terrific illustration above, by New York-based artist Katie Gross. She's a Phillies fan, but I won't hold that against her. Yet. But seriously, thank you, Katie!

Back in 2008, I remember making this ridiculous declaration to a friend of mine, claiming I'd have my first story published by the end of that year. Well, here we are, five years later. I've gone through a lot of changes since then, yet I kept focused, understood the rejections, and now I can say I've had a story published. There will be many more rejections to come, but also more publications. This is a great way to lead into my MFA Candidacy this fall.

Okay, I'll stop rambling now. Here's the story:

September 13, 1998


Murphy's was packed beyond any regard to occupancy regulations, and this made Evan both grateful and concerned. (Okay, that was just a teaser. To read my whole story, click here. And click HERE for a roundup of Hobart's superior baseball pieces that have been published this month.)

God Is In the Details: Jamie Quatro's "I Want To Show You More"

I'm going to open this piece with a terrible pun on the book title. After reading and loving Jamie Quatro's "The Anointing" (published last fall in Guernica), I wanted to see more of her fiction. That story, which happens to be included in I Want To Show You More, was a stunning, uneasy exploration of a crumbling family paired with complex issues of religion as a functional and social tool/problem. It was beautiful, upsetting, and wholly original, and I made a point to read her debut story collection. "The Anointing" wasn't just a flash of brilliance, but rather one of many pieces that are unafraid to get into unsettling subject matters in weird, sometimes brutally honest ways. Now that I've read more of Quatro's work, I'm amazed at how diverse her stories are. She moves seamlessly among tales of infidelity, crisis, and small worlds of suspended disbelief. Some of the characters appear in multiple stories, creating a wider arc of interactions across various time periods. And she explores religion in a way that few contemporary writers can match, deftly balancing the subject with all of its complications, showing how it can be essential and disappointing. I Want To Show You More is that nearly perfect combination of entertaining storytelling that forces the reader to pay attention and weigh various possibilities.

Almost all of these ideas are on display right away in the opening story. In the span of a couple pages, "Caught Up" tells the story of a woman's childhood memories (a combination of celestial awe that turns into complicated ideas of god in adulthood), a casual affair, and honesty. I was very tempted to scoff at copyright law and transcribe the entire story, since taking one passage as an example leaves out bigger parts of the entire narrative. But the passage below is a decent sample size that manages to pack in various ideas.

"This time, in the vision, the other man was with me. I would like to say he was standing beside me--that we were equals--but he was the size of a toddler. I was holding him. He was limp and barely breathing, his skin gray, the color of my two-year-old son's face the night we rushed him to the ER for croup, and I knew the reason I was about to be caught up was because I was supposed to carry the man to God and lay him in His lap so that God could...what? I didn't know.

Bullshit, the man said when I told him about the vision. I'm already there (Quatro 3)."

In the next story, the reader is then thrown into similar circumstances with one of the creepiest, weirdest plot devices I've ever encountered in a story. With "Decomposition," Quatro gets into another saga of a family torn apart by infidelity, but this time, the lover's body is a constant, physical presence. The body lays on a couple's bed, and evidence is given for it being either an actual body or a wax figure. The reader weighs both of these possibilities, but the focus remains on the collapsing marriage outside of said physical manifestation. Also, Quatro is deftly playing with a big metaphor. Any writer of her stature can work with careful metaphors, but in this piece, the act of the metaphor being an unavoidable, essential piece of the narrative adds even more texture to what is already a tense unfolding. Upon a second reading, it's even more amazing combined with Quatro's beautiful descriptions and minute details. It's a combination of classic storytelling with modern, experimental twists.

"In the front yard you pick clusters of holly and magnolia to arrange on the pillow around the man's head, thinking the least you can do is create a little beauty around the edges of death. But when you enter the bedroom you notice the man's skin has turned the color of wet newspaper. You smell menthol and burnt plastic and something like rotten Nilla wafers. You hold your breath and close your eyes while the word inaccessible lights up against the backs of your eyelids--the thing you wanted there in front of you but also as far away as the bottom of the ocean--and you remember how your husband said, when you were pregnant with your first child, inches from us but she might as well be on another planet, and it is perhaps this realization--you are shut out--that makes you drop the leaves onto the wood floor, grab the bedpost and hold on, and say, to your husband, still curled up on his side of the bed: But I wanted him.

I checked the body out, your husband says. It's fucking wax (Quatro 8)."

I Want To Show You More has some pieces that are scaled back, yet no less powerful. "1.7 To Tennessee" tells the story of an elderly woman's dangerous walk along a highway to get to a post office. She lost her son in Vietnam and is determined to send a letter to President Bush in protest of the Iraq War. It's a small, personal narrative with hints of a much bigger backdrop. It's as much about the woman as it is about the people she encounters along the way, in addition to the having a link to worldwide protests (on a tinier scale). By having the main character be an elderly woman, Quatro is able to add careful touches: Eva needs help writing the letter, yet is sharp, feels responsibility, and pushes herself into what turns out to be her final act.

"In her pocket was a letter, addressed: Pres. George W. Bush, Penn. Ave., Wash. D.C. Seven envelopes she had thrown away before she felt her handwriting passed for that of an adult. The letter itself she dictated to Quentin Jenkins, one of the McCallie boys who went down the mountain for her groceries. Quentin wrote in cursive on a college-ruled sheet of paper. She preferred he type it, and considered offering to pay him an extra dollar to do so, but when she finished her dictation and Quentin read the letter back to her, she grew excited and snatched the paper from him, folding and stuffing it into an envelope. Then she realized she hadn't signed the letter, so she had to open the envelope and borrow the boy's pen. Quentin offered to mail it for her but she had made up her mind to deliver it to the post office herself. She took great pride in the fact that she, an eighty-nine-year-old woman, still had things to say to the President Of the United States. It was a formal letter, protesting the war. She felt it her duty to place it, personally, into the hands of the government (Quatro 67-68)."



Another aspect of Quatro's writing that I love is her joy in truly challenging the reader, not on an emotional level (although there is plenty of that), but on a tangible one. Some of her longer narratives are complicated, multi-layered sagas that require rapt attention, especially since they draw you in so casually before going off into unexpected directions. "Ladies and Gentlemen Of the Pavement" explores marathon running in which the participants are required to carry heavy, cumbersome statues; "Sinkhole" takes place at a religious camp and unfolds adolescent sexual attraction on the backdrop of various kinds of fervor; and in one of my favorite pieces, "Demolition" starts off as the story of an unexpected church patron, then becomes a staggering exploration of loss, strange ceremonies, and the actions of a small town congregation. Although stylistically and thematically different, it reminded me of one of my all-time favorite stories: Matt Bell's "His Last Great Gift," another complicated mystery with religion at its core.

"Unwilling to abandon the church, the remaining leaders--an elder, the organist, and Robinson himself--formed a Committee for the Reestablishment of Order. Their first recommendation: the immediate removal of Sunday services to the windowless Fellowship Hall. But we refused to move. For the first time we could see each other worshipping in the natural light. Breezes fluttered our skirts and chucked our collars up under our chins. Through the empty lead cames drifted scents of honeysuckle and wisteria, mown grass, grilled fish. We could hear weed trimmers, children's laughter; the whir of a moped, the drone of an airplane.....

....Without the support of the beams, the roof, too, would have to go. But this was no great loss. Many of us--though we'd never said so to one another--had begun to long for total open-air worship (Quatro 168)."

As I have a tendency to stress in my reviews, the small sample citations are no match for the collection as a whole. I Want To Show You More demands to be read, since there are so many other details that I've neglected to mention, and I'm sure once I post this, I'll think of other, better avenues I could have explored here. But this was one of the best reading experiences I've had in quite some time, and in a year dominated so far by terrific, heralded story collections (George Saunders, Manuel Gonzales, Karen Russell, etc.), it was exciting to be so enthralled by a writer whom I didn't know about until a few weeks ago. I was challenged, vastly entertained, and definitely felt like I was discovering someone who needs much more recognition. Jamie Quatro really transcends genres and manages to do something that many writers attempt, but few can accomplish: she completely upends a reader's expectations, and does so intentionally and intensely.

Work Cited:
Quatro, Jamie. I Want To Show You More. Copyright 2013 by Jamie Quatro.