Trendy But Casual

New book

Last year, when I was holed up in the little flat on Albert Park in Auckland (courtesy of the very generous Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship), I worked on four big projects. One of them is published this week.

This is my YA novel, and it's published here in the US by Scholastic/Point. It's already selling on Amazon in various countries, as well as on other sites and in numerous US independent book stores like the great Lemuria in Jackson, MS. If there's a teenager in your life interested in a mystery involving ghosts, curses, murders, carnival/Mardi Gras parades, yellow fever, voodoo, New Orleans (especially the Garden District and Treme), Haiti, cemeteries, Roman society, high school shenanigans, or any of the above, please consider buying this for him or her. I'd like to crack the top 100,000 on Amazon!

If you need more persuasion, here's the starred review from Publishers Weekly:

"With this haunting love letter to New Orleans, Morris makes her YA debut, telling the story of 15-year-old Rebecca Brown, a proud New Yorker sent to live with a family friend while her father travels overseas. Ostracized as an outsider, Rebecca struggles to fit in and cope with her new surroundings. When she befriends Lisette, a ghost who has haunted the cemetery ever since her mysterious death 155 years earlier, Rebecca is drawn into an eerie story of betrayal, loss, old curses and family secrets. As Mardi Gras approaches, so does the culmination of something dark and angry that has been brewing for decades. This moody tale thoroughly embraces the rich history, occult lore and complex issues of race, ethnicity, class and culture that have defined New Orleans for centuries, turning the city into a character in its own right. Rather than shy away from the shameful or tragic moments of the past, Morris uses them to capture the city's essence. From Mardi Gras rituals to voodoo spells, Hurricane Katrina to jazz, this is a story that could only be told in New Orleans."

Note: I just checked on Amazon, and I've already cracked the top 25K - maybe I should aim higher (or lower)? Say, top 10K?

Misadventures in Literature

I’m en route again: this is my habitual state, I think, on my way somewhere else. It’s hard being away from T. Middy. After three weeks apart when I was in New Zealand, we’re now facing another four weeks on opposite sides of an ocean. This time it’s the Atlantic. I have six weeks in (or near) London to get a lot of work done, and to take the short screenwriting course at the National Film and Television School. This latter I’m excited about, and dreading, in equal measure.

There’s also a wedding to attend, and friends to see – including the long-threatened Virgin Classics reunion. TM arrives at the end of June for two weeks, and we already have numerous theatre tickets sorted out, and various social plans in place. Before he arrives, I’m off to Luxembourg with my friend Sarah for a couple of days, to see fireworks and a parade. And this weekend I’ll be in Wales, which always makes New Zealand look a paler shade of green, at the home of my good friend, Deborah Keyser. She tells me her daughters associate my visits with gin & tonics, and the excessive watching of property-buying shows on the computer (Location x 3, Property Ladder, Streets Ahead, etc). I’m glad to provide such an educational, non-Welsh-speaking presence.

My trip home to New Zealand earlier this month was great in many ways, in no small part due to my niece, who is very funny, and excellent company. The visit was marred by two things. I’m the editor of the new issue of Landfall. Here’s the cover. It’s called “Flung”, and it’s an expatriate issue, of sorts.

I’m very happy with this issue, but regret soliciting submissions by email. I did this to make it as easy as possible for people overseas to submit; it also meant that I could get submissions directly, rather than waiting for daunting, fat envelopes from the OUP office in Dunedin. (Although these arrived, in large numbers, as well.) 

But it also meant that I needed to send out rejection emails personally, rather than relying on standard letters sent out by the OUP office. This task took me much longer than it should, and the final emails were only sent out a week or so ago. And the fake intimacy of email meant several people wanted to prolong the correspondence, requesting more detailed opinions; announcing their profound disappointment or ongoing frustration with Landfall; and, in one bizarre and semi-coherent case, abusing me for perceived crimes against the New Zealand literary canon, the healthy development thereof, etc. At the airport last Sunday, it was hard not to feel … hmmm, how about: glad to see the back of them?

The other disappointment was courtesy of my publisher, Penguin. Forbidden Cities was one of the few short-story collections that made it onto a Commonwealth Prize regional shortlist.  I was hopeful that it might also wriggle onto the shortlist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. That’s a shortlist with potential career-changing ramifications; the FOC is also one of the few international awards for which obscure short-story collections published only in New Zealand can qualify. But Penguin forgot to submit the book in time, and now it’s too late. I’m upset, and very disappointed, but there’s nothing I can do about it. It looks as though Forbidden Cities will just get to fade away. I know: I need to make much more effort trying to sell my books overseas. Writing them seems like enough of an effort, but clearly I have to hustle harder, become a squeakier wheel. Invest more money and time in getting the books to agents and rights sellers and publishers overseas.

Exhausting just to think of it. I’d rather think about my flimsy tissue of a screenplay outline, sure to be shredded next week at the NFTS course. (Or what movies I’ll be sleeping through on the plane tonight.) Wish me luck.

Literary, sort of

Another week begins at the Sargeson flat. Monday mornings mean the homeless guys disappear and the Language School students return. Determined battalions of marauding ants trek their way across my walls and into the pantry: I kill them, and remove everything in their path. I have a mysterious pinch-shaped bruise on my left calf. The water that disappeared from the taps yesterday is flowing again.

Alex (dentist, Brazilian) calls me. Last week he rang to see how I was adjusting – emotionally, physically – to the tooth splint. When I called him back on Friday, he was in the car driving down to Ruapehu to go snowboarding. I told him that the splint was bearable, but one of my lower wisdom teeth, embedded within my gum, was hurting. Basically, I needed to disrupt his happy weekend in some way. If I must suffer with the tooth splint of discomfort and unattractiveness, so must he! Today he told me (“Hello, Miss Paula!”) that he’d checked my X-rays, and I don’t have any wisdom teeth, embedded or otherwise.

I remember getting a tooth or two out at some point in my early 20s, involving an ugly yellow bruise across my jaw, but I’d thought I still had some wisdom teeth lurking. Obviously not. Now Alex must think I’m insane. This is why I tell my students not to drink too much in their 20s: their brain cells will dissolve, and they won’t be able to remember whether they had their wisdom teeth removed or not.

To distract him from my non-existent medical complaint, I asked Alex if there was anywhere good in Auckland to hear Brazilian music. He said he doesn’t know: he just stays at home watching shows on Animal Planet. Last time when I went into the surgery, I told him I listened to a lot of  Brazilian music. He asked me who I liked, and I said Marcio Faraco (who I’m listening to right now, actually). The look on Alex’s face suggested I had just named the Brazilian equivalent of Kenny G. Though he WAS wearing a dental mask at the time, so maybe I’m misreading his expression.

This weekend I stayed at my sister’s to avoid the noise in the park. I had two literary-ish events to attend. On Sunday, I spoke to the Auckland Literary Society at Kinder House in Parnell. Everyone was extremely nice, though I find that after thirty minutes of listening to myself talk, I start to feel sorry for the audience.  One of the English names I was researching in Birmingham, Sneyd Kynnersley, popped up in a picture on the wall of the Kinder House, so I have some other leads to pursue now.

On Saturday night, I ate at Chow down at the Viaduct, invited by Susanna Andrew of the New Zealand Book Council. Susanna is extremely nice, though – as I later discovered – she drives like a nut. The dinner was for the visiting Australian writer, Arnold Zable; also in attendance were the poet Denys Trussell, who was interviewing Arnold the next day for a Book Month event, and Denys’s very nice wife, Hilary, who’s a drama teacher.

Dinner was good and the discussion was lively. The vodka martinis at Chow are too small and weak, in my opinion, especially given their excessive cost, and the unfortunate insistence of the bar staff in referring to the drink as a “kangaroo.” Towards the end of the meal there was an odd incident, which involved someone walking towards the table, pointing at us, and saying “Susanna Andrew! Paula Morris!” in an accusing voice. It turned out to be Holly from Third Party Productions, the TV company that makes Talk Talk. Holly has to call us both this week, apparently. She reminded me that when I was interviewed for Talk Talk I had a really bad cold.

After dinner the real fun began. We all piled into Susanna’s mini-van and roared off to Queen Street; Arnold was staying at the City Life Heritage Hotel. But when we pulled up across the street, we could see that the hotel’s grate was down, and no means of entry was at all apparent. Susanna drove up Victoria Street and along Albert Street, but we couldn’t see any obvious door. So she called the Heritage number on Arnold’s card key, and the person on the other end started giving her confusing directions, involving wild U-turns. Susanna lives in Wellington, so I took over the phone to apply my native Aucklandness to the navigation.

The guy on the phone kept insisting we drive up Victoria Street past Sky City – i.e. away from Queen Street – to Nelson Street. This made no sense at all. How big was this hotel, I asked Arnold? Did he have to walk for miles from the Queen Street entrance? No, he said; he’d just gone upstairs. The Heritage employee was unmoved. Past Sky City, madam, he told me, and right on Nelson Street. I was imagining a warren-like underground bunker hotel stretching for blocks and blocks, but no: when we pulled into the Heritage on Nelson Street, the guy on reception told me we were at the wrong hotel. Duh!

Susanna and Arnold stayed in the van, but Denys and Hilary had accompanied me into the lobby. I’m not sure why. It was a confusing evening in many ways. The receptionist told me the night entrance for the City Life was just around the corner from Queen Street. Drive back there, he said, and then take the first right on Albert Street. We then had the following exchange.

Me: But Albert Street isn’t off Queen Street.

Him: Yes, it is.

Me: No, it isn’t.

Him: Yes, it is. It’s just past the hotel.

Me: Albert Street runs parallel to Queen Street.

Him: No, it doesn’t.

Me: Do you mean Victoria Street?

Him: No.

Me: Do you mean Wellesley Street?

Him: No. It’s Albert Street, just off Queen Street.

[And so on, for several minutes, involving him drawing me a map in which Albert Street leads off Queen Street, and me asking him to get an actual map.]

Me: Look – here is Albert Street!

Him: [silence]

Me: See? It runs parallel to Queen Street.

Him: Then I don’t know what the name of the street is.

At this point, we returned to the mini-van. Hilary and Denys seemed convinced that the street in question was the entrance to a parking garage on Wyndham Street, but we finally ended up on Queen Street again. The street turned out to be Durham Lane, just past the hotel, and Susanna obligingly turned into it despite the “no right turn” sign. I could see the hotel’s night entrance on the right, but not everyone in our van was persuaded. Denys suggested we keep driving around some more to find it, but luckily Arnold made his escape from the vehicle before confusion enveloped us again.

Some time later, after we took Denys and Hilary home to Eden Terrace – around the corner from the home of my BFF Don McGlashan – Susanna dropped me off at my sister’s place in Mt Albert. When I opened the front door, Marilyn the cat shot in and spent the next twenty minutes eluding capture and expulsion.

A suggestion for the Heritage Hotel: find employees who have a clue about Auckland. A suggestion for Chow: make your martinis bigger and stronger, or else much, much cheaper.

Tomorrow I fly to Wellington to attend the Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement. (I won’t be getting one: I’m just a hanger-on.) The next day I fly to Los Angeles to meet with a writing client, then it’s back to NOLA on Thursday for a short visit. Hurricane Ike seems to be heading for Texas, thank god – sorry, Texas, but I can’t face evacuating this weekend. TM has just unfinished unwrapping all the plastic.

When I’m back in ten days, I intend to start having dinner parties in the Sargeson flat. We’ll call them “salons,” perhaps.

Reading, writing

Today I haven't done enough of either, but was interested to read about Penelope Fitzgerald, after taking her name in vain yesterday. The Guardian is celebrating forty years of the Booker Prize by asking a judge from each year to dish the dirt, and Fitzgerald's name comes up several times. Apparently she was horrified to discover her Booker winner, Offshore, was everyone's second choice, picked because the judges were squabbling over Naipaul's A Bend in the River. But Susan Hill complains that the omission of Fitzgerald's last novel, The Blue Flower, from the 1995 shortlist was "quite inexplicable"; Francis King calls it "the best of all the novels that ought to have won the Prize but failed to do so." Paul Bailey agrees, hoping that "the judges for 1995 are blushing now to be reminded of their grotesque oversight." Fitzgerald was also shortlisted in 1978 and 1988.

I wonder if the judges of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards would agree to a similar dirt-dishing, or if they would choose to be as tight-lipped in public about debate and disagreement (in a po-faced, above-the-fray manner) as this year's group. A publicity opportunity missed, I'd say.

This morning when I went out, I said hello to one of three homeless guys sleeping next door. He was lying there in the sun, reading his book. Later, when I came home, he was writing in his notebook. Apparently, the Auckland City Council wants to rid our streets of the homeless. Louts can move freely about the city, shouting and drinking and having a street party in the middle of the night, but we MUST get rid of the homeless. I don't know where the homeless will be driven, exactly. Somewhere tourists can't see them, perhaps.

My ploy with the wheelie bins worked a treat last night. I heard some cars drive up, but nobody stuck around, and nobody moved the bins, and nobody ran them over. They were still in place this morning at eight, when I went out to drag them away from the lane. And I got a good night's sleep.

 

The Literary Life

I’m in New Zealand, here for the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival. Things I have bought since arriving in New Zealand (not counting bottles of wine in Duty Free): Codral, Robitussin, Fortacold Throat Lozenges. In other words, I am really sick.

Yesterday this contributed to the farce at my first event, an hour-long on-stage interview with Peter Ho Davies. I was trying to carry on so many tissues, lozenges, and other appendages of illness, as well as books and notes, that I kept dropping everything backstage. The sound guys couldn’t get the headset mike to stay on my head (apparently, my ears are too small), so at the last minute gave me a lapel mike with the power pack hastily clipped onto my skirt. Just as Peter and I were striding onto stage, the power pack clanged to the floor: I had to retreat backstage to be reconnected, while Peter wandered on alone. The audience seemed torn between laughing and clapping.

Once I’d run onto stage and sat down, the power pack now in my lap, and arranged my vast array of accessories on the low table, I was quite flustered, managing to bumble half the introduction. My throat was so croaky, I was probably unintelligible anyway.
Luckily Peter was extremely articulate and generous, talking away while I guzzled my green tea, stuffed lozenges in my mouth, and squinted stupidly into the audience trying to identify question askers. We talked about his novel, The Welsh Girl, and his two story collections. He’s really a fantastic writer and a very nice person. He also seems very dedicated to his students at the University of Michigan.

This topic, by the way, led to an exchange in the lobby after the event, an exchange that pretty much summarizes my glorious returns home to attend literary events. While Peter was signing books, I was lurking nearby, with various members of the audience wandering over to tell me I did very well Despite Everything. One man came up to ask whether I thought Peter would give up teaching if he had loads of money, and I said no, I suspected he wouldn’t because he seemed to like it so much, and that he seemed to have a really great attitude towards student work and, unlike me, doesn’t resent the time it takes away from his work.

Man: Do you teach at a university too?
Me: Yes.
Man: Oh, are you a writer?
Me: Ah … yes.

I mean, he could have read that in the program while he was waiting for me to bumble my way onto stage. This reminds me of last year at the festival, when I was talking with an audience member about Pico Iyer, and mentioned that I’d just interviewed him. The audience member said: I knew I’d seen your name somewhere – you write for the Listener!

Indeed I do.

I also found out last night that my second novel, Hibiscus Coast, from which I was planning to read at an event today, is being reprinted right now, and that the festival book seller could only get her hands on one copy.

Now I must go and get ready, buy ginger tea and more tissues, and gather my thoughts for my morning event: these thoughts appear to have been sprinkled over the Pacific on my flight over. At least I haven’t bumped into anyone who wants to box my ears yet, but there are still three days of the festival to go.

Catching Up

I've been a lax poster of late, I know, partly because my head is too full. The semester is nearly over, and I have 24 student portfolios to read, plus three honors theses and two independent studies. If any students happen to read this: no, I have not completed these tasks yet.

Actually, I've been hard at work finishing up my short story collection, Forbidden Cities, which was due c. 1000 years ago to Penguin New Zealand. I've really enjoyed writing and revising stories for this, after a long break in which I wrote very little new short fiction.

Four of the thirteen stories are unpublished. The others have all been published and/or broadcast in various forms in New Zealand and in the US, but I've substantially revised all but two of them for this collection. (Those two were just perfect, of course!) One I re-wrote in the second person, and I think it's much better now. I gave it to my advanced students to read, as we'd been discussing second person, and - as usual - it was like dropping a pebble into the eternal void. Who knows what they thought of it?

Some I restored to their original settings. "The Party" was set at a house party on Georgica Pond (on Long Island) originally; I'd moved it to New Zealand for a NZ magazine, but I never thought it worked as well. Another I moved back to England, where it belonged.

After a fairly last-minute decision to make some characters in one story investment bankers, I must give thanks and praise to my good friend SER, who answered all my annoying questions in brilliantly useful and thorough detail.

I'm still fiddling with three of the short new pieces, but I'll be finished with these soon as well. Deadline aside, I have to be: there are the portfolios mentioned above, and a doctoral thesis from another university; I'm finishing up reading and writing comments on another novelist's MS; I have to conduct and write up an interview with Emily Perkins next week and prepare for the four sessions in which I'm taking part at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival in mid May.

There are other writing deadlines, of course: a ghostwriting project and my New Orleans YA novel. When I complete this latest ghostwriting project, it'll bring my tally for the past year to six - four novel drafts and two novel re-writes for other people. That's a hell of a lot of words.

You know, I'm thinking of sending my short story MS to my agent here. He's sure to be despondent at my insistence on being uncommercial under my own name.

The good news: I've officially passed my third-year review at Tul.ane, which means I'm off until next January. And after the festival in Auckland, I have to go down to Wellington for a reception hosted by the nice Buddle Findlay people, at which the Prime Minister will be present. The bad news: this means I have to go to Immig.ration on Monday, cap (and passport) in hand, to persuade them to allow me to leave the country. My Gr.een Card has expired, but my citizensh.ip test is still a month away. (The last time I went, I was turned away and told to come back exactly one week before I intended to travel.) Will they let me out of here?

Rushdie

Since I last posted, much has happened. Nothing world-media-worthy, of course.

Over the last week, several people at various social events have told me how much they hate blogs, and how blogs exemplify everything that's wrong with America, culture, youth today, our narcissistic society, the West, the new century, etc. Because I am a coward, I nodded/sipped my drink, while thinking: I must post something soon, other than a fascinating up-to-the-minute status update on Facebook, or a quick addition to our new Tulane creative writing site.

Be that as it may - as I think Tennessee Williams said, when he discovered his mother had been institutionalized on charges of hysteria and superficiality - here are some of the things that have been going on.

My stint as a panelista at the TW Festival was relatively horror-free, though I did have one of those moments, midway through the panel, when I realized that all my questions were pretty much used up, and that the panel members were all sitting in silent expectation, waiting to be fed another line. I didn't agree at all with some of the things declared by panelists, but - because I was chairing - opted not to squabble. We had a full room - around a hundred, perhaps - despite our sequestered location on the third floor of the Cabildo, and I heard that festival attendance was way up this year.

At Tulane that week, we had an excellent turn-out to the third event in the Rushdie Reading Series, which was a discussion of The Satanic Verses. I'd invited four faculty members with expertise on the book and/or Islamic politics/history to lead the discussion; my colleague Joel Dinerstein was moderator. One lesson I should have learned by now: when you ask faculty members to make short statements or give short lectures, they don't listen. They try to tell you everything they know about the subject. So forty minute lectures last for an hour, and five-minute overviews stretch to 15 minutes. I'm not talking about Joel here, by the way: he does pithy well. (He does loud voice well too, and he theorizes this is one of his strengths as a teacher.) All our experts were great, of course, but by the time we got to (and through) the actual discussion part, the vast quantity of Indian food we'd ordered was starting to get cold. This did not deter the 60 or so students from chowing down - despite the dire warnings from another student, not present, that nobody non-Indian liked Indian food.

Between that event and Rushdie's visit was a quick trip to St Louis. It takes almost 11 hours each way to drive there, and only since I moved to the US would I even consider making such a trip for what was basically a day's visit. (We were going to a wedding.) Highlights: being called "the one with the hat" by the photographer; scooping up someone else's child and inserting him forcibly into the photo tableau, from which he was intent on wandering away; experiencing the usual St.Louis car-trouble, though this time it was T. Middy's parents' car, en route to the reception, rather than our own Otto Von Bismarck; and, of course, the customary visit to a Cracker Barrel in Mississippi, located with the help of our trusty Cracker Barrel Map of the USA.

Rushdie's visit to Tulane was amazing. Word to everyone who said we should have booked McAlister, which seats 1800, rather than Dixon, which seats 1000: I KNOW WE SHOULD HAVE BOOKED MCALISTER. I wanted to book McAlister, but by the time I persuaded the powers-that-be, McAlister was booked, allegedly. (Though some of you, perhaps, should have turned up earlier than 6:55, when every seat was taken, and people were illicitly sitting on the stairs and lining the walls.)

This year I had 15 excellent interns (from my Literary Event Management indentured servitude program) to act as ushers and crowd control, so I thought that - unlike at the Toni Morrison reading last year - this meant I would not spend the half-hour before the event started running up and down the aisles hustling people into spare seats and feeling frantic. I was wrong. The ushers did a great job, despite trying events like a belligerent alum threatening one of them with physical violence if he was made to leave the seats reserved for English faculty and creative writing students, and the insistence of the Tulane cop that the four ushers who'd gone outside (to close the doors and tell the 100+ late arrivals that there was no room left) could not re-enter the building. "If you were real ushers," he said, "you'd be inside." Luckily I went out and managed to retrieve them.

The behavior of the desperadoes outside was something. Things said to me: "We drove here all the way from Illinois!" "Will you let me in? I HAVE to come for class." "You should have had this in McAlister." An hysterical woman was screaming and crying in the lobby because the cop wouldn't let in the photographer from her school, so I said he could come in. Then she continued screaming and crying, because her teenage son had just turned up and he was locked out as well. At this point it was seven o'clock and we were supposed to be starting, so I just ran off. (You see: cowardice is an ongoing theme in this post.) I ran down the aisle, and the President walked onto stage to welcome everyone, and I had about five minutes to catch my breath before it was my turn on stage to introduce Rushdie.

Later, at dinner, he told me he liked the introduction very much, but not a single one of my students have mentioned it at all to me. Actually, one of them said this: "Were you worried about speaking right after the Chair of the English department? He was SO funny." Maybe they didn't recognize me (I was wearing a skirt), or maybe they thought they whole thing was too embarrassingly awful to acknowledge.

The Q&A wasn't too crazy, and later we had a great dinner at Emeril's. Those of us who had dinner with Morrison last year were determined not to sit there like overawed toddlers this time, so conversation was lively. I got to ask SR all the things I wanted to ask him when he came to the party at our house in Iowa four years ago. Then, I was so busy filling his wine glass and discussing Nigella Lawson that I didn't get around to talking about his more literary acquaintances.

After dinner, Joel and I took him for a wander along Frenchman Street, and we called into the Apple Barrel for a drink and to listen to some music. The next day I drove him to the airport. He was charming, funny, engaging, intelligent, honest - ie, still the boyfriend I knew and loved.

The event made a big splash on campus and beyond: we even made the lead story in our student paper, The Hullabaloo. The story was fine, though it would have been better, perhaps, if - when citiing SR's anecdote about Saul Bellow - the report had not twice referred to the writer in question as Saul Bellows. Maybe they were confusing him with the doctor in I Dream of Jeannie?

After Rushdie: recovery, and work, work, work. Portfolios loom, as do honors theses and independent studies. I'm working every spare minute revising my short stories to make my (already extended) deadline. It's balmy spring here in New Orleans. Taxes are due tomorrow. Today I have to go to the Immigration Office to beg permission to leave the country in May. I hope they don't give me on-the-spot testing of my knowledge of the national anthem. I still don't know what those bombs bursting in air prove.

All Quiet on the Midwestern Front

I'm back in New Orleans - which is not in the Midwest, I know; all will be explained later - and overwhelmed by everything that has to be done/prepared for/attended/completed/
written/revised/commented on, etc ... by Monday. It's the Tennessee Williams Festival this weekend, and I'm convening a panel on the short story on Sunday; Louise Gluck arrives in town on Sunday night: there's a dinner that night, and then her reading at Tulane on Monday. My boyfriend Salman Rushdie is here in a week and I have to write something sensible for the introduction at his lecture. Meanwhile, there's an MS of a book to be revised this weekend, and students clamoring for references, etc. (By "etc" I mean "for me to read their work and give them written comments.) This isn't unreasonable on their part: it's my own fault. I fell behind during my travels to London, New York, and Easton, PA, where I was the visiting writer at Lafayette College. So now there are considerable chunks of two honors theses and an independent study to read, plus six short stories and a stack of exercises. I also need to write a review of the new Hanif Kureishi novel, Something to Tell You, by yesterday. And finish re-reading The Satanic Verses by Wednesday, when we have our final event in the Rushdie Reading Series.

Of course, I would have more time if I was not wasting it a) playing Klondike on my Nano; b) storming around campus in a rage when I see that the Info Desk workers in the LBC have not bothered to put in place all 80 of our Louise Gluck tent cards, preferring instead to leave them stacked behind the Info Desk where no one can see them; c) annoying the clerks in the campus book store by asking them if they are handing out our Rushdie book marks with every purchase (I'm going to be banned soon, or at least told to stop inserting bookmarks into every book piled on the front table); d) waiting on hold to speak to someone at our webmail "Help Desk", which ultimately results in the diagnosis of "I don't know"; e) watching a video of Paris Hilton trying to belly dance; f) lying awake at night wondering why, when I tell the students at our last meeting before Spring Break that our next meeting will be at 11 AM on March 26, only a handful of them WRITE IT DOWN, resulting in some students turning up at 6 PM on March 26, and others appearing at 11 AM today, March 28, all seething with resentment because I neglected to remind them, or because the reminder I e-mailed on Monday did not, apparently, reach anyone (see item d); g) trying to complete Tulane's Digital Measures Online Annual Report, which took HOURS and made me feel as though English was my second language; and h) thinking about the beautiful weather outside, and wishing that the Brazilian Studies conference, Arabic Film Festival, and Tennessee Williams Festival were not all scheduled for this weekend.

Whatever!

Here is the Midwestern portion of this post, about online access to MFA theses. This is the word from the University of Iowa. An about-face, of sorts.

Statement from the Provost Concerning MFA Theses

"In recent days a number of people have been upset about what they believed was a plan by our library to publish the creative thesis work of students in our writing programs on the internet without their permission. Let me say as simply and clearly as I can, there is no such plan nor will there be. I regret sincerely that we did not convey this message when students and faculty first voiced their concerns.

For some time now our library, like most major academic research libraries, has been exploring ways to make its collections more accessible by digitizing some materials. As part of that process, there has been discussion about the possibility of making graduate student dissertations and theses available in electronic format. But any such process must be preceded by developing policies and procedures that allow authors to decide whether and when to allow distribution.

On Monday, March 17, I will begin pulling together a working group with representatives from the Graduate College, University Libraries, our several writing programs, and all other constituencies who wish to be part of the process. Under the leadership of Carl Seashore in 1922, Iowa became the first university in the United States to award MFA degrees based on creative projects. Although this has been a rocky start, I like to think that Iowa will again lead the way by developing policies and procedures that safeguard intellectual
property rights while preserving materials for the use of scholars in generations to come.
--

Lola L. Lopes
Interim Executive Vice President and Provost
The University of Iowa

Universities Gone Wild

In the past week, I've heard from contacts at both Victoria University in Wellington (where I did my MA in Creative Writing) and the University of Iowa (where I completed my MFA) that the universities want to publish creative theses online. In fact, in the case of Iowa, students won't be able to graduate without agreeing to this.

Like every other writer I've heard from about this issue, I'm opposed to this - and opposed to the high-handed manner in which the universities are acting.

Of course, I know that my MA thesis - the draft manuscript for my first novel, Queen of Beauty - is already available to the public in the Victoria University library. Similarly, my thesis for Iowa - a collection of short stories, which forms the basis of the book I'm currently working on for publication by Penguin - is available in the University of Iowa library. Someone could, in theory, photocopy either MS, but it would be cheaper for them to buy an actual copy of the book in question.

Electronic circulation is quite a different matter. If anyone in the world is able to access and download the MS to a computer, then they're essentially able to get either of these books free of charge. While neither thesis is a final draft, there's not a vast difference between draft and published product. There would be little reason for anyone to buy an actual copy of the book if the same content was available online.

Student writers will have to be much more circumspect. When Penguin agreed to publish my first book, I had the chance to work through it page-by-page with an editor, preparing it for publication. If I'd been conscious that the thesis with all its rough edges, meanderings, failed scenes, extra characters, ugly lines, etc, would be published online, I'm sure I would NOT have handed in so much work. I'd still be agonizing over every line! Student writers will have to waste time obsessing over legal issues - eg use of song lyrics, the names of places and characters, inadvertent plagiarism, the potential for defamation suits - rather than focusing on writing their MSS. Are these universities willing to accept the responsibilities and liabilities of a publisher?

I'm sure, also, that I would have submitted quite a different creative thesis at both places. If I had to sign up now for online publication by the university, would I think twice about including the complete novel in my MA thesis for Victoria? Absolutely. Would I submit the minimum number of pages for my MFA thesis for Iowa and possibly include old/already published rather than new work? Absolutely. This way, I would know that the WHOLE book was not available to the public until I sold it to a publisher - and readers could buy it in a book store.

By the way, the Graduate College at Iowa is refusing to bend on this, and within two weeks current MFA students will have to sign their "First Deposit" form or be prevented from graduating.

As Kembrew McLeod explains, this "First Deposit" form "contains brand new language that can be construed as a license that hands over student thesis publishing rights to the University of Iowa -- unless an embargo form is signed, and that embargo only lasts two years ... The language of this new Graduate College form would allow for MFA theses deposited this year to eventually be posted on Google Print, which is a reminder that we need good university policies regarding copyright protections and exceptions. I highly recommend UVA Prof. Siva Vaidhyanathan's blog The Googlization of Everything, for more info about the broader implications of the Google Print project."

If I was arriving at Victoria or Iowa now, and was forced to sign such an agreement, I would hand in a completely different creative thesis, just to protect my own future interests. The idea that a university would impose this kind of restriction on our creative freedom - and creative property - is astounding.

March 2008

It's the first of the month, so I attacked T. Middy with the traditional pinch and punch today: he's unfamiliar with this tradition, and therefore an easy target. Unfortunately, his unfamiliarity with the etiquette of the greeting means he doesn't respect the "no returns" part either.

February overwhelmed me with work, hence the lack of posts. Here are some updates on various industrious and accomplished friends.

The excellent Ginger Strand has re-invented her web site to include information on her forthcoming book, Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power and Lies, additional images and information, tips on travel to Niagara Falls, etc. My favorite section is Lost Niagara. Ginger, who's a frequent contributor to The Believer also has an article coming up soon in Harper's, I believe.

(Another, shorter Strand has been busy with her Harry Potter site, The Three Broomsticks Inn, which entertains and informs visitors from 63 countries ...)

Kevin Rabalais, a native of Louisiana now resident in Melbourne, Australia (why, Kevin, why????), has published his first novel, The Landscape of Desire, about the disappearance of the explorers Burke and Wills. We were excited to get our copies in the mail this week, and to read this interview with The Australian online today. Kevin's book has been blurbed by David Malouf and Colum McCann: Malouf calls it "lyrical, precise, mysterious" and McCann compares him with Ondaatje - "daring, musical, intelligent and out on the edge."

Hopefully we'll see Kevin (and Jennifer Levasseur, the co-author of Novel Voices) later this year. I'm going to be spending quite a lot of time in the Southern Hemisphere, thanks in part to a Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship. I've been applying for this since 2003, so I'm delighted that it's happening at last. The fellowship provides a flat on Albert Park in downtown Auckland: my tenure there is from the beginning of July through the end of November. This will be the first time I've lived in a place of my own (sort of) in Auckland, apart from my short residency in the beautiful Michael King Writers' Centre last year. I can't tell you how excited and happy I am anticipating the fellowship this year, especially now I've recovered from the shame of writing on my own wall on Facebook. (Don't worry: I deleted it right away!)