Thanks to Full Stop for inviting me to contribute to their series The Situation in American Writing, and to comment on things it’s entirely possible I have no business commenting on. While you’re over there, don’t miss the rest of the series and everything else Full Stop offers.
Also, thanks to Karen Lillis for inviting me to suggest a few books for her Best of the Small Press 2011 series.
This essay was originally published at the now-defunct website BlackFridayWatch.com in 2005. I considered updating it with the post-2005 contexts of bailouts for the automotive and financial industries, the collapsed housing and debt markets, and everything else that’s come since, so I might be able to republish it in a new venue. But there’s something endearingly, even nostalgicly, pre-crash in the piece as it is, so I left it alone and just shared it here.
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By 1980, years of corporate hubris had delivered Chrysler Motors to the brink of bankruptcy. Chairman Lee Iacocca went to Washington with his tin cup in hand, and painted Congress a picture of the automaker as a vital beacon over the darkened economic landscape, and of American manufacturing as a bastion of our national values and virtues. In the process, he convinced legislators to pass the Chrysler Loan Guarantee Act to bail the company out. The familiar mantra that what’s good for car makers is good for America had been taken to heart as never before: Congress’ decision told the country that Chrysler, in a sense, was America, a source of identity as much as of wealth.
My essay Monster Mashups: The Recurring Horror of Mary Poppins is up at The Millions today. Here’s an excerpt:
It always began as an ordinary dream. But at some point Mary Poppins would fly overhead on her umbrella, look toward the “camera” of the dream to deliver a cackle, then fly off, turning whatever pleasant fantasy I’d been having into terrifying chaos. Everything in the dreamworld became darker; trees died, I got lost and left behind in a grim landscape, and I fell victim to all sorts of other horrible things I’ve managed, thankfully, not to remember so clearly.
My review of Terese Svoboda’s novel Bohemian Girl is up at Necessary Fiction.
My essay “‘I am the turnstile’: Roaming with Tomas Tranströmer” is up at The Millions. Writing about poetry is a bit outside my comfort zone, and I’m far from an expert, but he’s a poet who has meant something to me for a long time.
My story “Burnt Words” is the featured fiction at The Good Men Project this weekend. Thanks to editor Matt Salesses.
My first novel (~2001) was awful, but I didn’t know it so I sent queries and samples to a whole bunch of agents. Over 100, at least, in the end. Almost all of them requested the manuscript, and some of them — even, one evening, a Very Big Deal agent at William Morris! — called me at home to discuss it. None of them offered representation, of course, it being awful and all.
~ Mark Tansey, “Doubting Thomas”
For years, I railed against the idea that we write from our wounds. It makes all writing sound autobiographical. It seems to discount the imagination, and imply that writers simply bleed onto the page. But I’ve come to see that wound is just another word for obsession, and obsession is just another word for theme, or subject matter. We cannot get away from what obsesses us. Why would we even want to? Those of us who write are enormously lucky to have something to do with our obsessions, a craft, an art, that turns what haunts us into something that (hopefully) resonates for others.
~ Dani Shapiro
I’m very pleased that my essay “Making Room For Readers” is up at The Millions today. Here’s the start of it:
One recent morning, my almost four year old daughter started crying out of the blue. I asked her what was wrong, and she wailed, “I don’t have a library card!” So with a proud paternal bibliophile’s heart swollen in my chest, I strapped her into her car seat and we set off for the library in search of a library card and — at her request — in search of Tintin books like those I’d told her were my favorite stories at the library when I was young.
Also, I reviewed Stacey Levine’s fine recent collection The Girl With Brown Fur over at Necessary Fiction this week.
A couple of short pieces were published recently, outside my usual fiction. First, Miss Liberty kindly invited me to share some thoughts about my writing space at Write Place, Write Time.
Second, a short piece about watching soccer with my daughter appeared at The Good Men Project this week.
Finally, Colin Marshall interviewed for his radio show/podcast The Marketplace of Ideas (here’s a direct link to the episode). I really enjoyed the chance to have such a long, thoughtful conversation about The Bee-Loud Glade, and I hope you’ll enjoy listening, too.
And with all three of those sites, please take some time to enjoy their archives, too — there’s lots of great reading or listening available at each of them.