Nonfiction
November 2, 2007
Greetings from Iowa, Again
I'm currently in the library of my second favorite alma mater (I only have two), the University of Iowa. I'm here for a conference called NonfictioNow, which I attended two years ago. I can't believe how hip Iowa City has become! The university and the city are clearly awash in money, in ways they just weren't in the 90s. There is lots of new construction and the whole place reeks of affluence (which of course smells much better than poverty). In addition to the Java House, there are other coffee houses everywhere.
I'm not as excited about the conference this year--it hasn't been quite as magical as it was last year, perhaps because the amazing Pico Iyer isn't here there year. Not that it has been bad, by any means.... The first conference just had so much energy, was such a pleasure to attend. I'm enjoying myself and have heard some great panels, but it's not, well, magical like I said. And I am a little freaked out by how much Iowa City has changed. I lived in the most wonderful house when I was here, a marvelous arts and crafts home on the edge of downtown, and while it's still there, three houses on the block have been torn down to make way for a parking lot, and the garden I so lovingly planted is a hideous mess of weeds.
I'm writing this after ditching out on a panel that turned out to be a disappointing and boring account of stuff I already knew. But lunch is coming up, so I will head off for that.
Posted by Holly at 11:45 AM | Comments (1)
November 14, 2005
My New Boyfriend
I'm totally in love with my brand new boyfriend.
OK, this guy I'm in love with isn't REALLY my boyfriend--not yet, anyway, because we've never had a conversation. Not only that, but after the events that made me fall in love with him, I ran into one of my friends, who said, "Wasn't he GREAT? All the women at my table decided we were going to marry him."
Which made me feel better, sort of: at least I'm not some overwrought, self-deluded stalker, assuming after one utterly charming performance by an utterly charming man that he and I were going to spend our entire lives together: No, I was a NORMAL and REASONABLE groupie, the kind of woman who thinks, "I really, really, really want to spend some quality time with that man, so that he can decide ON HIS OWN that we are destined to live out the rest of our lives together, in noisy, intellectually stimulating, conjugal bliss."
But it also made me feel worse because I realize just how much competition I have: the world's majority of literate straight women.
I'm talking, of course, about the INCREDIBLE Pico Iyer, who gave a lunchtime talk on Friday and a Saturday night reading at the NonfictioNow conference I recently attended in Iowa. (I am happy to report that conference organizers promised it would be held again in two years--I can't wait!) Pico claimed his talk was impromptu, but it was more coherent and eloquent than many well-revised speeches I've heard. His reading was equal parts fascinating unrehearsed reflection and well-crafted prose: he read four short pieces, including an excerpt from an essay about losing his home and everything in it to a devastating fire (the first essay from the collection The Global Soul.)
Mr. Iyer is a slender gentleman in his late 40s, of Indian descent, who speaks with a slight British accent and incredible graciousness. He is particularly well known for his travel writing and has called himself "a global village on two legs." I admit I didn't bother to introduce myself to him--I couldn't think of anything to say that wasn't fawning and obvious--but I know that if I had, he would have shaken my hand and smiled at me with genuine beneficent warmth as he listened to me tell me how much I admired him and his writing.
I will admit as well that I've never read a single one of his books, a problem I intend to rectify very, very soon. But I have been a fan of his work for a good long time nonetheless. In the summer of 1988, on the final page of the June 13 issue of TIME magazine, I found a marvelously wrought essay written "In Praise of the Humble Comma," arguing that "punctuation, in fact, is a labor of love." I tore it from the magazine and have saved a copy for 17 years. This was my first introduction to Pico, and, I think, the first time I sensed how utterly captivating prose nonfiction can be: All those lovely phrases he used! The range of knowledge he could marshal in supporting and explaining his ideas! The care and refinement with which that acute sensibility probed, keenly and widely and deeply, a subject as commonplace as the comma! Nothing but a love letter had ever brought me so much pleasure in the course of one short page--though of course the essay was a love letter, not to me, but to good writing. But it felt like a love letter to me, because I love good writing myself, love to encounter it, love to hear it praised.
I now believe that essay is one reason I eventually wound up studying and teaching nonfiction. Whenever I have come across Pico's name in a magazine since then (and it has happened countless times, because he writes so well for so many publications) I read the article no matter what its topic, because I know it will be good. I can't believe I haven't bothered to buy and read all his books, but at least I have recognized the error of my ways while there's still plenty of time for correction.
For the record: I'm not a jealous lover: my adoration for Pico is not the selfish type that wants to keep the best of him for me and me alone. No, I am a generous disciple, wanting others to experience the rapturous pleasure of knowing my beloved. So LISTEN UP: If you EVER get a chance to hear this man speak, TAKE IT! I predict you'll fall as thoroughly in love as I and the other women at this conference did. Watch for his names in magazines and newspapers, and BUY HIS BOOKS! You won't be disappointed by anything, except the fact that he's not already your best friend.
Posted by Holly at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)
September 2, 2005
I'm Curious
Sometimes people complain to me that they find it difficult to have "important and meaningful conversations" as part of their normal, daily interactions with people. This often surprises me. I feel I manage to have important and meaningful conversations with Tom's five-year-old daughter (whom I'll call Princess, because she wants to be one), though they're of a very different nature from my conversations with Tom, which of course are among the most important and meaningful--not to mention entertaining and enlightened--conversations ANYONE could have.
Sure, there are conversations that bore me. I don't give a shit about football, for instance. I can talk about Barbies (I had plenty as a little girl) but I can't play them any more, not with my nieces, not with Princess–I can't become the consciousness that animates and moves a Barbie, which is what playing Barbies involves; I just can't make myself do it. And I don't pay much attention to the details of most people's jobs, since they're usually not interesting. Once I was talking to my mom about one of my oldest and dearest friends, and she asked what he did for a living. "He works in a bank," I said.
"Doing what?" she asked.
"I don't know," I said, shrugging in impatience. "Something with money."
Except for people who work in academia in the humanities or social sciences, so that I have a pretty clear grasp of what their jobs are like, I can't be bothered to remember most people's job descriptions, unless they're easy like "doctor" or "high school biology teacher," and even then I get sketchy on the details. But ask me about a traumatic breakup someone endured, or what religion they were raised and how they feel about it, or what their dietary quirks and preferences are, or when their birthday is and what their sun sign is, and chances are good I know.
I'm curious about what it feels like to be other people, and how we make sense of the workings of our minds. I ask what could be considered snoopy questions, but it's because I'm interested in the answers. And for whatever reason, people are usually pretty good about responding. They tell me stuff. I'm not just sitting at my computer blogging because I'm self-obsessed (though certainly that's part of it) but because I am interested in how we manage to communicate what it means to be US, our unique, individual, common, collective, human selves.
And it's one reason I love nonfiction. What does it feel like to be captured by Narragansett Indians and dragged around the vast and howling wilderness of a seventeenth-century New England winter, as we learn Mary Rowlandson was in Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson? What does it feel like to be a 21-year-old Marine private in the front lines of combat in the Pacific during World War II, a story E.B. Sledge relates in With the Old Breed? What does it feel like to be a Black Boy in the south in the 20s and 30s, as Richard Wright describes in his stunning memoir? What does it feel like to lose a third of your jaw to bone cancer when you're nine years old and spend the rest of your life dealing with profound questions of ugliness, shame and beauty, the story Lucy Grealy tells in Autobiography of a Face?
And what does it mean for the rest of us that these things are part of human experience? How do we make sense of the suffering, the joy, the humanity and the inhumanity of others?
Since I walk around thinking about these things a good deal of the time, I end up talking about these things a good deal of the time.
But the conversations that make me craziest, that I most want to avoid having ever again in my life, are arguments about religion. I love discussing religion; I HATE arguing about it. Almost nothing in the world interests me more than the question of how we rise above the defeats, defects and disappointments of our early religious training, to remain engaged in a search for the numinous, the transcendent, the divine, and committed to a quest for a spiritually inspired ethos of compassion and love.
But almost nothing in the world interests me less than trying to convince someone to join or leave a particular church. Having done my stint as a missionary, I cannot bear to listen to that kind of proselytizing, though somehow I got sucked into doing it again recently--"sucked" being the operative word, because that's what it did: IT SUCKED.
You can't bludgeon people--including yourself--into enlightenment, though god knows I've tried.
A few years ago I had a conversation with my mother that went like this:
Me: "I think the Mormon church is evil."
Mom: "It's not evil."
Me: "I think it is."
Mom: "It's not evil."
Me: "Mom, do you see how we're kind of at an impasse here? I'm not asking you to accept that it IS evil; I'm merely asking you to accept that I think it is."
Mom: "It's not evil."
This conversation reminded me that a frontal attack someone's most beloved institution is not particularly persuasive. I mean, yeah, I think that ultimately, the Mormon church sucks, and I'll be happy to provide anyone who asks with an entire catalogue of reasons as to why. But chances are, that won't be an especially meaningful or important conversation, because psychologically it's like kicking a miserable, skinny dog I've got chained up in some corner of my psyche; and politically it's like shooting rubber bands at an elephant's ass from a distance of 200 yards; and spiritually–-spiritually it's like drinking half a liter of Jack Daniels after someone really, really hurts you instead of just going to bed, so that you compound your original misery with a day or two of alcohol poisoning. (And yes, I've done that.)
I'd rather explore the range of possibilities I've got now that I've left the church. What gifts did the church give me? (And it did give me plenty, including an understanding of the art of exegesis and an ability to keep my cool in front of a very large audience.) How do I deal with the limitations it imposed on me? (There are plenty of those too.) How do I find compassion if not respect for those who are still dealing with those limitations--who, in fact, don't find them limiting at all?
That's a meaningful and important conversation I want to have both with myself and with other people. And I manage to have it, because I insist on it. If the people I'm talking to don't want to address questions like that, I leave them to discuss whatever they want, and I go talk to someone else.
Posted by Holly at 9:35 AM | Comments (0)
August 29, 2005
Without You I'm Nothing
I like to sit around my motel room after my show in my bra and panties and I’ll say to somebody, “Get me a Remy Martin and a water-back, goddamnit!” -- Sandra Bernhard, WYIN
At some point during the summer of 1990, I went to the Catalina Theater on the corner of Campbell and Grant in Tucson, Arizona, to see the film version of Sandra Bernhard’s smash one-woman show Without You I’m Nothing. I went by myself; I know people who won’t go to movies alone, but I’ve always kind of liked it, liked sitting wherever I want and being able to watch every last credit without someone saying, “Can’t we just go?”
I remember sitting in the theater, my jaw slack with wonder, my stomach clenched like a fist with envy. How does someone work up the audacity to do a performance like that? I knew I didn’t have a personality that would let me dance around on stage to “Little Red Corvette” in pasties and a sequined g-string bearing the stars and stripes, but I did decide that I wanted to use my life as the basis for my art, just like Sandra did, and that I was willing to bare almost every crevice, crack and contour of my soul.
In 1990, Sandra was best friends with Madonna, which is why she gets to deliver the great lines
And while we’re being really honest here, now that we’re not together, here’s her number. Call Madonna and f*ck the bitch! And while you’re at it, f*ck Martika!
Martika is one of those one-hit wonders who simply couldn’t go away soon enough in my book. And it was lines like that that made me write in my journal that WYIN is “full of very timely jokes and references, so I wonder if it will age well.”
A book I teach often is Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, about which I have mixed feelings. I love the preface; I find it witty and engaging and I love Eggers’ defense of why he wrote the book as a memoir rather than a novel. But other parts of it are boring and annoying, and it’s not at all surprising, given his admission in the postscript, “Mistakes We Knew We Were Making,” that there are long passages he wrote hurriedly and never revised because he just wanted to get the damn thing to the publisher.
I continue to teach it because it lays out a lot of the intellectual and aesthetic issues involved in writing and reading nonfiction, and because students generally love it. One semester they were all admiration for the fact that Eggers writes about the television show American Gladiator without actually referring to the title of the program, which went right over my head, because I never once saw the show. “It’s so cool that he includes the lyrics to a Journey song!” the students enthused. “It’s so cool that someone is writing about pop culture this way and that it’s so relevant to our lives!”
I turned to study something going on outside the window so they couldn’t see me roll my eyes. When I turned back to them I said, “You think it’s going to stay relevant?”
“Of course,” one of them said. “I mean, he’s writing about stuff that’s a part of our lives. It’s not like we’re going to forget this.”
“Maybe...,” I said. “Maybe you won’t forget it, but will it mean anything to anyone else?”
“Why not?” one of them asked.
“Why don’t you just tell me if you have any idea who I’m talking about.” And I straightened my back, spoke from my diaphragm, and said:
I dedicate this song to Apollonia! To Sheila E! To Vanity! To Lisa and Wendy on their own! To all that the glamorous life implies.
I looked at them. It was a small class, only half a dozen students. All six of them were staring at me in rapt alarm. “Know who I’m talking about?” I asked. They shook their heads. “Then I’ll keep going.” And I continued:
But above all I want to dedicate this song to the purple paisley god himself, to the little man who chooses to sit all alone, naked, under a cherry moon, love sexy! It’s the sign o’ the times, it’s the sign o’ the times, it’s the sign o’ the times.
Then Andy, very tall, very talented, very smart, and the front man for a band, said, “Oh, uh, Prince. It’s Prince.”
And I explained that yes, the whole riff was about Prince; the list of women were his musical proteges and in a few cases his lovers. But none of them shone much in her own right, as any brilliance they might have possessed (and I’m not sure Sheila E had much to begin with) was eclipsed by the glory his astonishing genius.
“Those references were current in 1989 or ‘90,” I said. Only fifteen years and they’re almost incomprehensible.” I picked up my copy of AHWOSG. “Because this is print, I’ll bet it ages twice as well--I bet it’ll be 30 years instead of 15 before it’s thoroughly dated.”
They didn’t want to believe that something truly inspired and relevant could become so dated so fast. So to prove it, I brought in my VHS copy of WYIN (a gift from my friend Wayne) and showed it to them.
When I mention this to colleagues, they are often shocked. “You didn’t!” said a colleague who shows some pretty outrageous movies himself. But like I said, it was a small class and I also prepped the students repeatedly, told them that there was nudity and a graphic (although brief) sex scene and that it was weird and they’d be annoyed and they had to give me their permission to show it to them and not report me for subjecting them to indecency--but hey, it meant classtime would be devoted to a movie instead of a discussion, so of course they said yes.
The movie ran a little longer than 75 minutes allotted for class, so I didn't ask for comments until the next class meeting, two days later. One of the students was planning to go to graduate school in film studies. Even though 48 hours had passed since he'd seen the movie, he said, “I’m not ready to talk about that movie. I still don’t know what I think about it.” The other students had even less to say.
Without You I’m Nothing was released on dvd on Tuesday, August 23, 2005, so if you haven’t seen it, put it at the top of your Netflix queue! You may or may not get a lot of the references, but even still, there’s just so much going on in that movie. And if you have seen it, please leave a comment telling me about one of your favorite scenes.
And don’t forget:
If you should wake up one long, lonely night and feel that you’re all alone, remember: YOU ARE.
Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)