thank you, Alexander Chee

Part of the problem is that "the reading public" is likely unaware that even "successful" authors who have mainstream bookstore exposure may have extremely limited income from their writing and support themselves through some combination of adjunct teaching, freelance writing, and other gig-economy "opportunities." Authors are well represented among the millions who have lost their income and are navigating a "new normal" of heightened insecurity.

Clemson Literary Festival

The Clemson Literary Festival came and went, and as best I can tell, it was a huge success. For me, highlights were hearing U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Tretheway read her own poems, and then driving three other talented poets--Denise Duhamel, Natalie Shapero, and Craig Morgan Teicher--to or from the airport, and exchanging thoughts on topics ranging from writing to survival to teaching to raising kids.

Why did I drive writers to the airport?

Boredom, procrastination (instead of grading or writing), and making effort to keep my job count, but I was mainly inspired by some short pieces by Jonathan Ames, where he takes on various roles for the sake of adventure, and also by John McNally's After The Workshop, whose main character survives by driving writers around Iowa City. The driving seemed to go well, and I'm rather proud of the fact that with passengers in the car, I miraculously avoided one of my usual highway routines of suddenly and desperately pushing it to an exit whereupon I park in a gas station and dash for the men's room.

In fact, just a couple weeks ago, this was exactly what I was doing when Alexander Chee's voice came on NPR to further discuss the writers residency he invented for Amtrak. Alas, then, I missed most of the train talk as well as the delicious fried chicken that Travelers Rest gas station is known for. Although I have begun to swim laps again, I'm in no condition to order fried chicken.

So that's the news. . .

alice munro

A facebook tip from the talented and kind Alexander Chee led me to read my first Alice Munro short story. "Dimension" offers craft and sadness and a breath or two of unexpected life at the end. I was happy to spend some time with it.

In another version of the writer's life, one that doesn't include a Nobel Prize, a "body of work," or even an expectation of being alive past 70, I took my daughter to a used bookstore to read her stories and stumbled upon two "near fine" first editions of Munro's books, no remainder mark or any significant blemish. So along with a sticker book and a few Berenstain Bears that we couldn't resist, I left with these two hardcovers in hopes of selling them to you.

A Day Later: Alas, in these trying times, it appears the Munro market is not quite what I'd hoped for, and that the books I purchased are selling in similar price range at many locations. Of course, because they most likely won't live up to my expectations as objects of speculation, I'm free to crack them open and read.

Steve Almond for POTUS

While one Wesleyan writer carts her son off to college, another brings the heavy metal back to the Oval Office. As usual, Steve Almond is passionate and funny, if in a somber way, but as for the former, I found her NYTimes Op-Ed to be interesting writing but also couldn't help contrast how her life experiences with her partner have differed so greatly from the women filmed in this CNN video on food insecurity and hunger. It seems as if Americans are still voting for lifestyle issues and between competing "moralities" and yet the issues of economic injustice remain, at least to me, so much more significant. Of course, the two sets of issues should not be forced to compete with each other.

And in other news, hundreds of thousands of jobs were reportedly added to the economy and the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared higher today, so to an extent, I'm drawn to doubt all this downer talk of downturns and economic despair. My students though, at least the ones who expressed a view, are under the impression it is extremely difficult to get a career-type position, and almost all the jobs we see advertised are the ones college students don't want.

So we did the whole "except for nursing and engineering" thing and then moved on to the stories.

April 18 (drizzling Kunderas)

It's drizzling outside, a fitting complement to this evening's early a.m. insomnia. Earlier in the evening (in the yesterday part of tonight), I scribbled a few pages of the rough stuff and called it "My Life as Kundera" although I may ultimately use "Think and Grow Kundera" as the title, taken from my earlier tweet in support of the idle twoughts of Alexander Chee. Anyway, the topic was my meandering musing on the Kudera-Kundera likeness, my father's interest in Milan's writing, me not being him, etc. It could become a section of The Book of Jay (see bottom links for rough-draft excerpts), but of course, I'll have to improve it a lot before it becomes anything at all.

It passed the time, though.

Speaking of J. Robert's engagement with the K., here's a photograph of some of my father's Kunderas, the paperback copies he discovered in bookstores decades ago:

The photograph is from earlier today, or I should say yesterday, but this copy of The Joke as a Penguin edition (1970) was his purchase decades ago and is the one I read when I finally read a Kundera novel in 2004. It's the third English translation of the book, but not the "definitive" one that includes Kundera's criticism of the previous translations of the book. That would be the Harper Perennial edition originally published in 1992. In the "Author's Note" at the end of the HP ed., Kundera's main expressed criticism of the Penguin edition concerns the editor's efforts at sabotaging the writer's punctuation.

Milan I feel your pain and I must confess that I have had similar feelings that I've never expressed formally in any Author's Note not yet and I've also tried to come to terms with allowing for such differences over commas and periods and even the possibility that the author does not and cannot know what is best in every way for his completed book while also recognizing that it is not only the apostrophe and the semicolon that must all be part of the joke

or no?

alexander writing on annie

I enjoyed skimming Alexander Chee's personal essay on writing classes at Wesleyan University. I did not take creative writing classes at Wesleyan as an undergrad, but I did know the names of the somewhat famous writers he speaks of--Annie Dillard, Kit Reed, Phyllis Rose, et al. Follow this link for the essay in full: http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/personal_essays/annie_dillard_and_the_writing_life.php

The closest I ever got to Annie Dillard, discounting selling her books after college while working in a Borders Bookshop, was seven years after graduation, where on a whim, I drove up to Middletown, CT for the Nietzsch Factor Alumni Ultimate Frisbee game. As it turned out, Annie Dillard had become a fan of Ultimate and in fact was the lone fan in attendance at the game. We gave the current undergrad team our best player and then played to fifteen. It was early spring, I had a common cold and was out of shape, but somehow I managed to leap into the air to snag the game-winning goal. If I'm not mistaken, the extra strength sudafed had gotten to my head, and I yelped at the extended defender whose dive had just missed blocking this catch, "Just another a scrub." I think that guy became a star, maybe even a captain, of New York club ultimate, and I more or less retired any dreams I had of playing serious disc. Because Annie was the only fan, and the only woman's voice, I know that her final words on this alumni game were, "At least it was exciting until the end," or something to that effect. I hope Professor Dillard has a chance to one day witness Nietzsch's return to glory and a trip to College Nationals.

As for the writing, it looks like Alexander Chee, Annie's writing student, has done very well. He is a visiting writer in Emily Dickinson land, at none other than Amherst College, and his novels are published or forthcoming.