It’s Easter
Monday, which means no classes at Tulane and no classes at McMain High School
either. The street’s been very quiet today, which I like. Today was the first
morning in a long time when I haven’t woken up feeling manic in some way. Maybe
our long weekend in Oaxaca just wore me out: it was a stimulating place,
especially with all the various Easter pageants and processions, and then there
was the heat, and the dust, and the drinks. The delicious food.
And all the
writer visits with which I’ve been embroiled this semester, in small and large
ways, for better or for worse, are over: Francine Prose, Claire Messud, Billy
Collins, Joan Didion. The Didion Reading Series of three events – two lectures
and a round-table discussion, which involved much hand-wringing and bullying on
my part – is over. There are still a few classes left, and presentations to
assess, and portfolios to read. I have three honors students with theses to
submit. My two classes will come over here for dinner; on another night, the
three faculty will take all graduating seniors out, if I can get around to
organizing this. This year I’ll only be able to work the first weekend of Jazz
Fest, because on May 2, after our final salon for the spring
(we’ll resume social activities in September), I fly back to New Zealand.
I’m
conscious that this blog, of late, has been more about omissions rather than
inclusions. It’s been a busy and difficult semester. Perhaps that’s the reason.
I’ve been to Chicago and Boston and the U.K. and Mexico. I’ve spent too much
time waiting to change planes in Houston and Washington DC. The writer visits
have been inspiring and energizing, in different ways, but some have been
extremely stressful too, because of the level of organization and planning
involved. Just walking past McAlister Auditorium makes me slightly anxious
these days: I start counting people. In my sleep I count programs.
It’s late
afternoon now. Now that parade season is over, there are no band rehearsals in
the schoolyard across the street. The students next door are lying low, though
by dusk they’ll be out on the porch smoking and conducting loud conversations
on their cell phones.
This is my
favorite time of day for writing – after four PM. I’m a cocktail-hour writer, I
told an interviewer once, and that’s true (unlike half the things I say in
interviews, which fool nobody). The day seems to grow more quiet around now, as
though the energy’s seeping from the day. When I worked in an office, I liked
this time. Nobody wanted to have meetings; the phone wasn’t ringing so
incessantly. Some people were getting ready to rush to catch trains, but I
never had to rush to leave. That became a problem – the never rushing to leave
– but it lent a certain calm to the late afternoon that I’ve carried with me to
other places, other desks.
I really
liked spending time with all our visiting writers, and I may never get over the
thrill of driving Miss Didion. I liked drinking at The Columns with Claire
Messud, gossiping over the racket at Cochon with Francine Prose, taking Billy
Collins to see Fats Domino’s house in the Ninth Ward. I like getting the chance
to ask lots of direct questions of these other writers when I got them alone in
my car. I like the things they tell me that are not for publication, which is
perhaps why I include nothing of their visits at all here.
This blog isn’t of much use or interest to writers, in fact, though I
hope it occasionally entertains my friends. (My students, of course,
despite evidence to the contrary, don’t see me as a writer, just as someone there to crush their dreams and
curtail their adverb usage.)
I’ve been
feeling down about my writing of late, in a sort of vague and existential way.
Writing the novel seems an overwhelming task at times, and I keep looking,
without success, for ways to lessen the challenge – unsurprising, given that
the challenge is the thing.
Visiting branches of Waterstones in the U.K. is not the pleasure it used
to be: it’s all stationery and giftwrap, and tables piled with
three-for-the-price-of-two paperbacks. To insist upon your own book as a
contender, to demand space and attention for it, seems desperately
narcissistic. Blind, and tone-deaf too. There are too many books; perhaps I’ve
written too many already – four published since 2003, with the fifth coming out
this August. A week ago, a video crew
spent six hours filming me talking on and on about the new book. We filmed in
my office at Tulane, and at Lafayette cemetery. The highlight of the day for me
was, of course, getting my make-up done by the super-artful Kisha from The Make-Up Lab.
It’s easy on
a blog like this, with its original purpose of self-promotion, to accentuate
the positive and eliminate the negative. But that’s hardly the whole story for
any writer. I’m delighted when Forbidden Cities is shortlisted for the
Commonwealth Prize in my bizarrely vast region (SE Asia/Pacific), and
unsurprised that my short story collection is swept aside, inevitably, by one
of the rampaging Australian mega-novelists: it’s still a disappointment,
though, however expected. A rejection letter arrives from a journal almost a year
after I mailed the story in question; this year Yaddo, which has waitlisted me
for the past two years, simply says no. Someone at our salon tells me how much
she loved Trendy But Casual, which she’d just finished and passed on to her son
in New York; a friend emails me from London to say how much he’s enjoying the
stories, noting that it’s the first time he’s ever seen an O-card mentioned in
fiction. (That’s one for the record-company old-timers out there.) But none of
this changes the fact that these books are not stacked
three-for-the-price-of-two on any table north of the Equator.
Some good
news from Geoff Walker at Penguin Books today: a book called Floating Worlds: Essays on Contemporary New Zealand Fiction has just been published, and it
features an essay on my second novel, Hibiscus Coast. Not only that, but the
title is a quote from Hibiscus Coast. I knew it was coming, because one of the
editors emailed me earlier this year about some bibliographical information,
but I’d forgotten about it. I like the company Hibiscus Coast is keeping in
that book. I like Hibiscus Coast, and I want more people to read it. People
north of the equator, too. See, there’s the narcissism returning.
The amazing
Grendel over at Earthgoat was asking me about the Scudder Road Circus recently, and I realized it could start
earning its keep on this blog by giving travel tips. It could rival Fodor’s and
the Rough Guide online, particularly as neither of those competitors are
circuses. Now travel tips: these I can write. Watch this
space.
