Trendy But Casual

Christmas 2014: An Apology

Usually, the Scudder Road Circus sends out a lot of Christmas cards – more than a hundred, I’d guess, to family and friends all over the world – and we start writing them in November. I really like getting cards (especially if said cards are glittery), and I’ve always been a big advocate of Christmas cards as a way of staying in touch with people who have shown you kindness or hospitality or generosity at some point in your life, people whose friendship made a difference in your life. Every year I urge my students to send at least one card to an elderly person of their acquaintance – a family friend, former teacher, relative, or neighbour. One of them asked me, last month, if I counted as sufficiently elderly.

I do not.

This year I’m letting the side down by sending just a handful of cards. It’s not been a ‘usual’ year in any way. We’ve had some fantastic and productive excursions to other places – to the Lakes, to Denmark, to Italy, to Berlin. (Even to Brussels.) But we’ve also had a lot of upheaval, like my radiotherapy earlier this year, and sadness. My mother died in August, and Tom’s younger brother died, quite suddenly, at the end of November. We didn’t have the heart to write cheery cards.

This year has been too strange, perhaps. On some days in Svendborg, I felt an almost perfect happiness, content with every simple pleasure, every small thing. In Bellagio we felt lucky – absolutely lucky – just to be there, every day. But there have been too many days this year rotten with sadness or tiredness, or a combination of both.

We have just a month or so left in Sheffield, then the Scudder Road Circus is on the move again. In February, we pitch our tent in Auckland, New Zealand, my home town, and I start teaching at the university in March. We have more travel planned next year, of course, including a stint teaching in Iowa City in July, and a month-long residency in Latvia starting in mid-November. But for much of the year we’ll be in the southern hemisphere, hoping to stay for a while.

Happy Christmas from me and Tom Moody. We’ll be back in Christmas-card action next year, I promise. The post offices of Latvia are bracing themselves for the onslaught.

Resolution

New year, new intentions. Or old intentions (get more work, do more work, earn more money) dressed up in optimistic spring shades, swishing their skirts. Plus some abandoned intentions from last year, of course. My short-story-a-day promise collided with my post-surgery indolence, and that was that. I managed to scrape to 236:

226: ‘Music in the Bone’ by Tomas Mac Siomoin
227: ‘The Colonel’s Daughter’ by Robert Coover (2013)
228: ‘A Few Problems in the Day Case Unit’ by Georgina Hammick (1986)
229: ‘My Heart’ by Semezdin Mehmedinovic (2011)
230: ‘Crazy in the Stir’ by Chester B. Himes (1934)
231: ‘Before the Breakup’ by Balla (2005)
232: ‘The End of the Party’ by Graham Greene (1929)
233: ‘When the Glasses are Lost’ by Zrko Kujundziski (2011)
234: ‘The Face’ by Dragan Radulovic (2007)
235: ‘Sugar Cane’ by Derek Palacio (2013)
236:  ‘Last Summer in Marienbad’ by Kirill Kobrin (2011)

Not quite the 365 I intended, but 236 new stories isn't too bad.

Maybe that was the story of 2013 for me: not quite, but not too bad. We got to travel to Hamburg and Berlin and Rome again, to Monterrey for my nephew's wedding, and to Spain for Tom's birthday. I went to Tulsa, Oklahoma, courtesy of a Carnegie Grant, to research Jean Rhys for a play I want to write. In May I went home to New Zealand for the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, and we spent Christmas in Tom's hometown of St Louis. I attended the Man Booker Prize in London. We visited friends there, and in Wales, York, and the Cotswolds; we met up with my English cousins in Newcastle, Sheffield, York. With Tom's mother we went back to Whitby and to the Lake District. The Devlin sisters stayed with us (without parents) for the first time. Other firsts: Rievaulx Abbey, Fountains Abbey, Haddon Hall, Bakewell, the top of the Shard. We spent our anniversary in Liverpool, one of our favourite places.

In 2013 we flirted with insolvency; I flirted with cancer; we both got very cosy with the NHS. I escaped the worst colleague ever and a job that pushed me to the edge. We made the happy move to a new job in Sheffield and a flat in an old cutlery factory alongside a noisy little river. In Glasgow I hosted a baby shower for my friend Doris; in Auckland I co-hosted a bridal shower for Martha, now married to my nephew. At the University of Sheffield, Tom took (and survived) a CELTA course in a long, hot July, and I studied Spanish this autumn. We saw more plays than movies. We watched almost all of BREAKING BAD. (The last few episodes have been saved as a new year's treat.)

Two new books published: a YA novel and my first children's book. Two stories commissioned, and a few poems published. A little manuscript fixing and ghostwriting. Too many false starts, conference calls and proposals that went nowhere in particular. Rejections and acceptances. Literary festivals, school visits, and talks via Skype. Interviews with Donna Tartt (phone) and Carlos Ruiz Zafon (in person). Self-doubt, despair, bursts of enthusiasm. Stories and schemes jostling in my head.

Two sparkling friends no longer here: Sarah Mohl and Sarah Doerries. It still feels implausible and wrong to write those words. They're ahead of me now, with my cousin (and godfather) Laly Haddon, and my mother's dear friend Cron Crosby, two towering men who didn't see out 2013.

This year I wasn't planning to make any new resolutions, but today a name swirled into mind: Graham Greene. I'd like to read more of his work, and I'd like to try my hand at writing every day, as he did - though I won't stop mid-sentence when I've reached 500, his usual goal.

So that's my 2014 resolution: Graham Greene. It's all I can manage, given that ongoing resolution - write, work, earn - mentioned above.

Tom Moody and I ended 2013 by getting very dressed up in Mexico. We may not look so well-groomed in 2014, and I will almost certainly not be wearing false eyelashes again at any point. But we'll keep on being happy, and trying to make something of ourselves, in our own haphazard way.

 

November

Despite the short days, I usually look forward to November. November in the UK has good things (no Thanksgiving, a holiday I never really enjoyed - no presents, pumpkin pie) and not-so-good things (random fireworks going off at all hours, anti-Catholic bonfires). But Christmas is coming, bringing with it the chance to festoon everything in sight. It's still sort-of autumn here in the northern hemisphere. The long nights feel cosy rather than oppressive, the way they start to feel in, say, February.

Three of my family have birthdays this month: my father, who turns 80 on Friday; TMiddy, whose age cannot be listed for legal reasons (i.e. he will instigate a law suit); and my niece, Rebecca, who will be 23 at the end of the month. I think it's 23: I was living in Vauxhall and watching CLARISSA on TV the night my mother called with the news, so that sounds about right. Last week in my Spanish class I had to pose as a twenty-nine-year-old, as we were only doing numbers up to 30. My conversation partner (hola, me llamo Paula, tengo una hermana y un hermano, etc) told me I looked younger, but I think he doesn't understand numbers in Spanish yet.

This November there are some other good things happening: we're going to Barcelona at the end of the month to celebrate Tom's birthday. My sister and brother-in-law will be flying in from New Zealand on Tom's birthday itself, and then we're going to the coast for a week, to stay in a house owned by friends in a village by the sea. Lots of other friends are flying in - mostly from Britain, but some from Belgium and Switzerland, and maybe from Luxembourg - and we're having a party. The details of this party are still vague, but TM has declared it will have a 60s theme, and involve some games, including charades. TM alleges that he has only played charades once before in his entire life. How is this possible? His life is still very mysterious.

Despite the prospect of a fine time in Spain later in the month, I'm feeling quite low - still trying to wish our friend, Sarah Doerries, back into the world of the living, and recovering from two recent operations, with the prospect of radiotherapy and endless medication looming. These surgeries were nothing to do with my foot, which continues to look and feel strange, though it's slowly improving. Maybe soon I'll be able to wear high heels again. That will make me feel much better.

A lot of people have been in touch since Sarah's death. I think the news shocked a lot of us into being much more open about how much we all mean to each other. This reminds me of the maudlin song I liked when I was a little girl, Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World" - 'I see friends shaking hands, saying how-do-you-do/They're really saying: I love you.' I'm not someone who says 'I love you' very much, except to TM, who demands it. I guess I just hope that people know. It's why I send Christmas cards, even - especially - to people I haven't seen for years. They're really saying: I love you.

TM is pacing the floor, complaining that he's shocked every time he looks in the mirror because his hair has turned an unrecognizable colour. He claims that this colour is "tan-brown." Clearly his eyes are going, along with his mind. Perhaps if I tell him that I'm twenty-nine, he'll accept it without question, even if I say it in English. It's really hard to say in Spanish, in my opinion, because a v is a b, or something along those lines. Between that and all the lisping, I'm making slow progress. In Barcelona I'll be able to tell people that I'm twenty-nine and live in Sheffield; I'll be able to spell out my name, observe that I have los ojos marrones, and say "Me doy" if I'm asked a perplexing riddle or held in a wrestling grip. Unfortunately, everyone around us will be speaking Catalan; they'll probably pretend not to understand.

Some of you have asked about my evening at the Man Booker Prize, which was great but feels like a hundred years ago. I was there to tweet and blog for the Listener, and you can read my blog posts (in reverse order) here. My interview with Donna Tartt is in the print edition, hidden online behind the pay-wall, as is my review of Joanna Trollope's take on Sense and Sensibility. Another good thing about November: I have nothing to review, and I'm not teaching. I can read whatever I want.

Mystery, Manners, Mississippi

August this year was a strange month for me – two surgeries, a lot of lying around, interviews via Skype, a ceremony at the Town Hall, my first children’s book published, a new – fake – blog (Everybody Needs Two or Three Friends), and a trip to Wales. (Wales is a strange country: let’s admit it.) The months in my life, like the days of the week, can blur sometimes, especially when I’m not leaving the house much, and my day is structured around reading, writing, and gorging on episodes of BREAKING BAD.

Much of the first week of September was spent reading Donna Tartt’s new novel, The Goldfinch, in preparation for interviewing her for the Listener. I loved the book, and I loved talking to her – perhaps because I’m such a shut-in right now, and miss conversation. (You can talk all you like to the mothers in TODDLERS AND TIARAS, but really, they’re not listening.)  So poor DT had to listen to my Leontine Price anecdote, and discuss the McDonald’s in Grenada, Mississippi, just off the I-55.

Reading the novel got me very excited about writing again, about the possibilities of story and setting in my own novel. And talking to DT about the notion of mystery sent me back to Flannery O’Connor’s essays in Mystery and Manners. I think I’m going to get my students this year to read “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,” at least:

“The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and you cannot appeal to the senses with abstractions. It is a good deal easier for most people to state an abstract idea than to describe and thus re-create some object that they actually see. But the world of the fiction writer is full of matter, and this is what the beginning fiction writers are very loath to create. They are concerned primarily with unfleshed ideas and emotions. They are apt to be reformers and want to write not because they are possessed not by a story but by the bare bones of some abstract notion. They are conscious of problems, not of people, of questions and issues, not of the texture of existence, of case histories and of everything that has a sociological smack, instead of with all those concrete details of life that make actual the mystery of our position on earth.”

At the end of the essay, she also talks about what writing classes can and can’t do:

“[So] many people can now write competent stories that the short story as a medium is in danger of dying of competence. We want competence, but competence by itself is deadly. What is needed is the vision to go with it, and you do not get this from a writing class.”

This is the hard thing to explain to some students – and clients, and people who ask you to read their manuscript and give them honest feedback. (FYI: what this latter group really want is your agent’s phone number and a fast track to the Pulitzer or Booker: anything approaching honest feedback will displease or outrage them and they will dismiss it as evidence of your jealousy, profoundly limited imagination, and overly commercial – or overly literary – frame of reference.)

I think that in order to write a story – short or long – that transcends competence, you need talent, a story to tell, and enough grasp of the possibilities of language and technique to get the story onto the page in a way that is true to your vision of it. And that’s the key thing: you need some kind of vision. Other readers – teachers, editors, classmates, etc – can help you identify weaknesses and maybe even help fix them. But we can’t supply the vision for your novel or story. Nobody else knows the path through your own particular wilderness. That’s the challenge of art: looking around, learning from other’s examples and experiences, and then forging ahead.

Sometimes people talk to me about their manuscripts, complaining about conflicting advice they’ve been given, and throwing up their hands in despair about working out the best way forward. But that’s the thing about writing – about creating any art, I would imagine. Finding the way is the thing.

As readers of this blog know, I like puzzles – jigsaws, crosswords. I like to hold up the cracker/hat ritual at Christmas by trying to guess the answers to the stupid riddles. (They’re just puns: we can all do it!) Writing fiction is the most interesting puzzle of all to me, because there aren’t clear parameters or start/end-points. It took me several years to work out how best to tell the story in Rangatira: I think it came about when I saw the date “1886” on a photograph of Paratene Te Manu, read about the eruption of Mount Tarawera that same year, and remembered the conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. There are hundreds of ways to tell the same story. At some point, you have to pick one that excites you, one that cracks the story open for you and leads you somewhere unknown and intriguing.

I’ve read lots of competent manuscripts written by people who are deeply frustrated by rejections – from writing programmes, agents, publishers. The thing is, there are a lot of great manuscripts that get rejected too. Even published great books may be rejected by the majority of readers (not to mention reviewers, if the book gets reviewed at all); the writers may remain obscure to the world at large. Other people may not like you, or get you. There are so many writers, and so many books. Don’t do it to get love or acclaim or prizes or money. And don’t pretend, like the mothers on TODDLERS AND TIARAS, that you’re doing it because it’s just a lot of fun, fun, fun.  

Time for a story update:

196: ‘Territory’ by David Leavitt (1982)

197: ‘Oil Field Vignettes’ by Jim Thompson (1929)

198: ‘Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip’ by Charles Bukowski (1944)

199: ‘April in Paris’ by Ursula Le Guin (1962)

200: ‘The State of Grace’ by Harold Brodkey (1954)

201: ‘The Geranium’ by Flannery O’Connor (1946)

202: ‘The Debutante’s Return’ by Jay McInerney (2008)

203: ‘A Day in the Open’ by Jane Bowles (1945)

204: ‘Tam-O’-Shanter’ by Donna Tartt (1993)

205: ‘Housebreaking’ by Sarah Frisch (2012)

206: ‘Yellow Woman’ by Leslie Marmon Silko (1974)

207: ‘The Use of Force’ by William Carlos Williams (1938)

208: ‘Happy Endings’ by Margaret Atwood (1983)

209: ‘My Life with the Wave’ by Octavio Paz (1949)

210: ‘An Act of Vengeance’ by Isabel Allende (1990)

211: ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ by Angela Carter (1979)

212: ‘La Sainte-Vierge’ by Daphne Du Maurier (1959)

213: ‘Charisma’ by James Salter (2013)

214: ‘The Country of the Blind’ by H. G. Wells (1904)

215: ‘The Sailor-Boy’s Tale’ by Isak Dinesen (1942)

216: ‘This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen’ by Tadeus Borowski (publ. 1967)

217: ‘The Assistant Producer’ by Vladimir Nabokov (1943)

218: ‘The Overcoat’ by Gina Berriault (1991)

219: ‘Where the Tides Ebb and Flow’ by Lord Dunsany (1910)

220: ‘Boys’ by Rick Moody (2000)

221: ‘Tell the Truth’ by Nicholasa Mohr (1975)

222: ‘Mines’ by Susan Straight (2003)

223: ‘Guests of the Nation’ by Frank O’Connor (1954)

224: ‘The Chrysanthemums’ by John Steinbeck (1938)

225: ‘Meet the President’ by Zadie Smith (2013)

The usual rules apply, by the way – only stories that are new to me, and no repeated authors. Of late I’ve been leaning a little hard on a few anthologies. Though I’m chafing at my own restrictions, I feel honour-bound to stick with them (at this late stage, as Kath and Kim would say).

I’m also worried that my home-bound recuperation means TMiddy is spending too much quality time in my presence. He’s starting asking me things like: “Did you know that Chad Lowe is Rob Lowe’s brother? Did you know that Zooey Deschanel has a sister?” Normally, his points of reference are Scientific American and the TLS. I may be a destructive influence on his mental development.

Please visit my alter-ego, Jane Shore, over at Everybody Needs Two or Three Friends. And please remember that it’s satire, and an invented character, and American spelling. The opinions expressed are not mine, or those of any normal person. For example, I would never get inspiration for a wedding from Paula Abdul (her marriage #2), even if autumn is my favourite season.

David Sedaris is a Good Guy

One of my former students, Eddie Brennan, sent me this story today. Eddie was on the postgrad (MLitt) program I set up in Stirling, and is a very accomplished comedic writer. David Sedaris is one of his big heroes and influences, so recently Eddie went to hear him read at the festival in Edinburgh.

Eddie reports:

"I met David Sedaris again on Saturday and had an amazing ten-minute chat with him before his show. We were talking about the MLitt and he was really interested in it so I gave him one of my stories, Poseidon. Would you believe it, he shook my hand and thanked me for it! 

It's the last story in my dissertation and suitably crude and silly. I told him it was a sort of homage to one of his stories called Big Boy. 'Oh! That sounds fun,' he said, laughing. 'Seriously, I'll read that later.' That was 40 minutes before the show.

After his reading he always holds a Q&A session with the fans. Someone asked him if he'd learned any new interesting Edinburgh words this time in Scotland. Sedaris keeps a little notepad in his shirt pocket and he pulled it out. I nearly wet my pants when he consulted it and said, 'Yes I have. I just learned the word "jobbie!" That's a turd, right?' Jobbie was in the second line of my story! Isn't that just amazing! 

Then, when I read how he signed my book, he had written, 'Eddie, we meet again, author.' How cool is it when your hero is just actually so decent, so down to earth and so worthy of being your hero?"

I like David Sedaris.

Some new posts up on Everybody Needs Two or Three Friends, y'all. I'm much more assiduous over there.

 

Shouting

Two nice shout outs this week - one from Brando over at cjsd about his recent visit to New Orleans with TLB. The other is from Bookman Beattie, who has posted one of the rudest bits from Trendy But Casual on his blog.

In less happy news, New Zealand music icon Neil Finn is in hot water back home for daring to criticize Prime Minister Helen Clark's behavior at the local music awards. Check out the outraged readers responding in the Herald. They include Trish from Phoenix, Monsta from Valencia, Chris from Invercargill, and Ray Columbus (OBE, CM) of Matakana. If you're a New Zealander, you'll know that Ray Columbus is a national treasure. If you're not a New Zealander, click here to listen to "She's a Mod". Ray says: Helen Clark is "The Minister of Rock 'n Roll in my book. God help Kiwi Music when she retires!"

My favorite of the comments, by the way, is from one Nick (no known location) who contends "Kiwi music is not worth the CD that its recorded on! Apart from Neil Finn and a few others many NZ groups and singers are a joke and will never make it anywhere not even in a Solomon Island bar!"

Now Neil Finn knows how book reviewers in New Zealand feel.

Despite my heretical dislike of live music, we went to see Neil and Tim Finn perform at the House of Blues here in New Orleans in 2004, just weeks after we arrived. They were fantastic. After he heard them perform Six Months in a Leaky Boat live, T.Middy discovered why it's such an anthem at home. Once I even persuaded my mother to work lyrics from that song ("Aotearoa, rugged individual/Glisten like a pearl/At the bottom of the world") into one of her ITC speeches.

At the brilliant NZ History web site, you can also listen to one of my favorite songs from 1974 - "Join Together," the official theme for that year's Commonwealth Games in Christchurch. Although I haven't heard this song very often, if at all, since 1974, I am proud to say I still remember ALL the lyrics. Listen and you'll know why.