The Morning Reading: Jennifer Egan on the Importance of Writing Groups

from The Days of Yore: an interview with Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize:

excerpt:

...But another critical thing I realized after the debacle of the novel I wrote in England was that I can’t actually work in a vacuum. I need to know on a more regular basis if whether what I am doing is landing or not. So ever since then, I’ve had a writing group that I’ve been a part of. The personalities change over the years, but basically, by the time I show anything to anyone, it’s been vetted to some degree by these folks.

And how did you find that writing group?

One woman in the group, Ruth Danon, is a poet whom I had met at Yaddo. It started out as a class that she was offering. Then it evolved into a group doing it together. Again, the personalities change, but the feeling is the same. The way we do it is, we read work aloud. We don’t actually look at anything on a page.

It’s a very trusting environment, but also a very rigorous environment. Because you want to know that everyone is on your side, but if they just tell you it’s great, they’re not doing you any favors. That part about everyone being on your side is really critical too. There’s nothing worse than not knowing whether their criticism is motivated by some sort of internal or external wish to undermine or whether it is valid.

But it can be hard in, say, a writing workshop, to shut out the choir of voices and hear your own voice.

Yes. But what I lose by not listening is much greater than what I lose by listening to bad advice. Because I think I can sort of sort through with my gut what is useful and what is not useful. Whereas if I hear nothing, I know vividly what results. I am never going to let that happen again.

I think people feel somehow that they can be hurt by hearing the wrong thing. I am not convinced that is true. We might get our feelings hurt, but I don’t think there is any actual damage done. What’s bad falls away.

One thing I often say to students is, “I am not interested in hearing solutions.” If people give me solutions that are cockamamie, which they often will, forget that! But take a step back and look at the problem they are identifying with that solution. That is useful to know.

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To read the interview in its entirety, click here.

PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship

Emerging Voices Fellowship

Emerging Voices is a literary fellowship program that aims to provide new writers, who lack access, with the tools they will need to launch a professional writing career. Over the course of the year, each Emerging Voices fellow participates in: a professional mentorship; hosted Q & A evenings with prominent local authors; a series of Master classes focused on genre; and two public readings. The fellowship includes a $1,000 stipend.

The Mentorship Project grew out of PEN USA’s forum “Writing the Immigrant Experience,” held at the Los Angeles Central Library in March 1994, which explored the issues, problems and challenges faced by first and second generation immigrant writers. It was evident from the forum that many of the culturally diverse communities of writers in Southern California have special needs and are often isolated from the literary establishment. In the fall of 1995, PEN USA initiated Emerging Voices as a literary mentorship designed to launch potential professional writers from minority, immigrant and other underserved communities.

Participants need not be published, but the program is directed toward poets and writers of fiction and creative nonfiction with clear ideas of what they hope to accomplish through their writing. There are no age restrictions.

Applications are due no later than 5PM on August 15, 2011.

For more info, click here.

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The Morning Reading: "He came home as quiet as the evening"

Youth
by James Wright

Strange bird,
His song remains secret.
He worked too hard to read books.
He never heard how Sherwood Anderson
Got out of it, and fled to Chicago, furious to free himself
From his hatred of factories.
My father toiled fifty years
At Hazel-Atlas Glass,
Caught among girders that smash the kneecaps
Of dumb honyaks.
Did he shudder with hatred in the cold shadow of grease?
Maybe. But my brother and I do know
He came home as quiet as the evening.

He will be getting dark, soon,
And loom through new snow.
I know his ghost will drift home
To the Ohio River, and sit down, alone,
Whittling a root.
He will say nothing.
The waters flow past, older, younger
Than he is, or I am.



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Laguna's Latitude 33 Bookshop to close

Nick Shou reports the sad news in the OC Weekly:

UPDATE, JUNE 8, 11:30 AM: I've been out of town the past few days, so I just heard the bad news: Laguna Beach's beloved Latitude 33 Bookshop is closing. There's a letter on the bookstore's website from owner Tom Ahern that pretty much makes clear there's no hope the store will be sold in time to prevent its closure. "I tried hard to find a buyer for the store, to keep a good bookstore in Laguna," Ahern wrote. "Nineteen parties expressed interest, but none came through with an offer. It is extremely painful for me, but I have concluded that the only choice is to close Latitude 33 Bookshop before the end of August."

Ahern's letter notes that there's a 20 percent-off sale going on, and even the store's custom wood bookshelves are up for grabs. "We hope that you will come back in and take advantage of the sale," he continued. "We'd love to sell our entire stock sooner than the end of August. We will both win. Thanks for supporting Latitude 33 over the past 15 years."

Store Hours:

Mondays through Saturdays: 9 AM to 6 PM
Sundays: 10 AM to 5 PM

(Closed July 4th)

311 Ocean Avenue, Laguna Beach, CA 92651
949-494-5403

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Author and OC local Scott Martelle also blogged about the closure and what it means.

excerpt:

When you go to Amazon to find a book, almost invariably you get just what you're looking for because you went to the web site with a title, or author, in mind. You find that item, click a few times and are done.

When you go to a bookstore, you find the book as well, but you also have serendipitous encounters with other books and writers, encounters that you miss by buying from your living room. Yes, it's faster, and you save money (lord knows I've done my share of the damage by doing just that). But you also miss that chance encounter with the new. It's like reading a newspaper online versus in print, where every page turn brings you something unexpected, instead of a curated set of headlines and links on a home page.

As a result, our lives, and our engagement with the world around us, slowly become more insular. We get challenged less, so believe in what we believe with more fervor. Something akin to intellectual torpor sets in as we keep returning to the same shelves in the marketplace of ideas. And we, as a society, are worse off for it, another stroke of damage from his secular religion of ours, the quest for a bargain.

To read the rest, click here.

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The Morning Reading: "take this flag"

The Lowering
by May Swenson

The flag is folded
lengthwise, and lengthwise again,
folding toward the open edge,
so that the union of stars on the blue
field remains outward in full view;
a triangular folding is then begun
at the striped end,
by bringing the corner of the folded edge
to the open edge;
the outer point, turned inward along the open edge,
forms the next triangular fold:
the folding continued so, until the end is reached,
the final corner tucked between
the folds of the blue union,
the form of the folded flag is found to resemble that
of a 3-cornered pouch, or thick cocked hat.

Take this flag, John Glenn, instead of a friend;
instead of a brother, Edward Kennedy, take this flag;
instead of a father, Joe Kennedy, take this flag;
this flag instead of a husband, Ethel Kennedy, take this flag;
this 9-times-folded red-white-striped, star-spotted-blue flag,
tucked and pocketed neatly,
Nation, instead of a leader, take this folded flag.
Robert Kennedy, coffin without coverlet,
beside this hole in the grass,
beside your brother, John Kennedy,
in the grass,
take, instead of a country,
this folded flag;
Robert Kennedy, take this
hole in the grass.

The Morning Reading: "I should not be encouraged to grow tomatoes"

Vespers [In your extended absence, you permit me]
by Louise Glück

In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer. All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines.

The Morning Reading: "each lettuce a heart"

In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden
By Matthea Harvey

Last night the apple trees shook and gave each lettuce a heart
Six hard red apples broke through the greenhouse glass and
Landed in the middle of those ever-so-slightly green leaves
That seem no mix of seeds and soil but of pastels and light and
Chalk x’s mark our oaks that are supposed to be cut down
I’ve seen the neighbors frown when they look over the fence
And see our espalier pear trees bowing out of shape I did like that
They looked like candelabras against the wall but what’s the sense
In swooning over pruning I said as much to Mrs. Jones and I swear
She threw her cane at me and walked off down the street without
It has always puzzled me that people coo over bonsai trees when
You can squint your eyes and shrink anything without much of
A struggle ensued with some starlings and the strawberry nets
So after untangling the two I took the nets off and watched birds
With red beaks fly by all morning at the window I reread your letter
About how the castles you flew over made crenellated shadows on
The water in the rainbarrel has overflowed and made a small swamp
I think the potatoes might turn out slightly damp don’t worry
If there is no fog on the day you come home I will build a bonfire
So the smoke will make the cedars look the way you like them
To close I’m sorry there won’t be any salad and I love you

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