From: Elisa Albert To: Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Ever been stalked? Ever stalk?

Aspiring writers tend to idolize and kinda stalk their favorite writers (full disclosure: my college boyfriend gifted me with a copy of My Date with Satan, which blew my mind, and I have been kinda stalking Stacey ever since). Anyone have any experience with that? What does it feel like, on either side of the equation? What role did a mentor or lack thereof play in your own writing life?

From: Karen Russell To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter Subject: Do not pork the old dude

I think that “if [insert old dude] [(but do not pork him)]” should be the title of my super avant, coming-of-age tale, a tale that is just chockablock with themes. Maybe I can cull and use these emails in there to get bonus meta points or something.

Seriously, I was really heartened by our last exchange. I now need to read (and reread!) all of your books, so that I can awkwardly shuffle up to you at parties and toss off a noncommittal “I read your book.” Elisa, I forgot to say, all my favorite fictional characters are deranged or deeply flawed in some way. I think it takes real courage to leave the shit-deniers under their colorful parasols on the beach and wade into those waters. So yeah, I think you guys are right. We should probably just swim forward without worrying about critics watching in their lifeguard chairs, assessing our strokes through binoculars. Like right now, one of them is definitely blowing his whistle on this metaphor.

So! Elisa’s question for today.

What’s weird is that I, too, had a wild writer crush on Stacey (Stacey, are you blushing?) and have confessed as much to her. I heard someone say once that a book made them feel personally understood, and Stacey’s book was like that for me. My real experience with author-stalking, though, happened with Kelly Link (Stacey, you’re too far away. If you’re in the market for creepy literary stalkers, NY is the place to be, I think). The night I bought Stranger Things Have Happened, I stayed up in a white heat during a big Florida thunderstorm and slammed it. I had to put the book down every other sentence and just take deep Lamaze breaths; I couldn’t believe that stories like this existed, with girl detectives who ate dreams and artificial nose-collectors. It really extended the realm of what I thought was possible in fiction, and inspired me in a way that nothing had before or since.

A year and a half later, I submitted this tiny speculative piece to Kelly Link’s zine, LCRW—it was the first thing I ever sent out. And she and her partner Gavin took it! I got 20 dollars and a tarot card. Magic for Beginners came out, and I could tell this was no flash-in-a-pan fling, this was forever love. So when Kelly came to read in NY, I made my friend Jess go with me on a weeknight to South Street Seaport, and I was as nervous as if I were prepping for a date. And Kelly Link was so gracious, and normal looking! No Joyce Carol owl glasses or anything. I stuck around with the milling hordes of fans afterwards, and do you know what I told her? “I read your book!” Then I spewed out some vague milky sentences about how much I loved it. I’m sorry, klatch. It was just so hard to communicate, in the two minutes I had of her time, how her stories are actually these little carnivals that travel inside me all the time now.

And how’s this for creepy stalking? I also gave her a printout of this 16^th-century ink sketch of a turtle skeleton. I loved this turtle drawing, and I think I wanted to impress Kelly with my off-beat gift (Look, I’ve read you and I understand you! I understand that you, too, will surely share my enthusiasm for this whimsical drawing of a turtle skeleton.) In retrospect, how freaking terrifying! As you might imagine, we haven’t really been in contact since, although sometimes I email with her partner Gavin.

What about you guys? Any mentors/schoolgirl literary crushes run amok? And what are your street addresses, and where are there convenient bushes for stalking?

From: Aaron Hamburger To: Elisa Albert, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Dale Peck

When I was in college, I was starting to deal with questions about my sexuality, so I started looking for fiction by gay writers. At that time, there wasn’t a lot out there, and what was there was more popular fiction rather than literary, in the mold of Tales of the City (a book I enjoyed).

Then I read Martin and John by Dale Peck, which really blew me away. Besides how beautifully it was written, what I really appreciated was the way he’d structured the book, as a symphony of repeating relationships, which seemed to say something about the gay experience as well as the story he was telling.

When I first moved to New York, I saw that Peck was going to be reading with a few other writers at A Different Light (a gay bookstore that has since gone out of business), and so I went, feeling very nervous and excited. After the reading I went up to him, and suddenly felt completely tongue-tied. English became a new language.

“I really loved your book Martin and John,” I said. “The way you arrange words, it’s like music.”

“Thank you,” he said.

That was it.

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to happen. But really, what did we have to say to each other? It was the book he’d written I’d had the conversation with, not him. He was a complete stranger. (Ironically, years later, something similar happened to me when I was on a panel and a reader came up to me to tell me how much my book had meant to him, and I found myself wanting badly to connect person to person, the way my writing had connected with him, and yet once again I found myself tongue-tied.)

Since that first meeting, I’ve had several more interactions with Dale Peck. I interviewed him for a local gay newspaper when his third novel came out, and actually went to his apartment. It was a funny experience because as he answered my questions, he’d go back and forth between really brilliant analyses of contemporary fiction to really bitchy take-downs of contemporary writers. He was very kind and polite, and then at the same time, he’d deliver a cutting zinger about a writer or publisher that made me cringe.

Later, after the interview was published, I ran into him and he said, “I loved your interview because it made me look like the cuntiest cow.”

I’ve kept running into him over several years in New York, and I enjoy chatting with him, but the deer-in-the-headlights enchantment is gone. I think it’s because I don’t have the same need for specifically gay literary role models anymore. I can get just as excited about The Sun Also Rises or a Graham Greene novel or Jennifer Egan’s last book as I used to about a new voice in gay fiction. Good writing is good writing. That’s excitement enough.

From: Elisa Albert To: Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: You love the book, but the writer's still a stranger

That is exactly it: you’ve had the interaction with the book, not with the writer. The writer is a perfect stranger; you don’t know him/her even when the act of reading the book makes you feel known. So obvious, yet so hard to grasp when you’re in the throes of love with a piece of fiction! Every single time I connect with a book I have the problem of becoming at least a little obsessed with the writer. Every time. Lately Alison Bechdel (Fun Home) and Jonathan Lethem, whose fiction doesn’t quite do it for me but whose essays in The Disappointment Artist knocked me on my ass. It’s infatuation. It’s some sort of desire to gift these people with something huge in return: a lock of my hair, unborn children, a turtle-skeleton-thing. (All of which speaks to what I love about reading and writing in the first place. You get to communicate things to one reader at a time, and that reader might really get it and feel understood. And how totally magical is that moment, on either side of the equation? That’s, like, what it’s all about.)

But, yeah, invariably there’s that let-down when reality rears its head: I don’t know Lorrie Moore, no matter how much her stories affect and engage and infatuate me. After college, when I had written a collection of stories for my undergrad thesis, I sent her a long, long letter—with a copy of my Kinko’s-bound ridiculously undergraduate stories!—basically telling her I loved her, pouring my heart out about my various life sorrows up to that point. I don’t know what I was expecting: that she would invite me to come live with her and we would host magnificent dinner parties, lie in parallel hammocks reading and exchanging witty banter, lure Antonya Nelson and Grace Paley to come join us and form some sort of new society? She did write back a sweet note, bless her heart, saying thank you and good luck, etc., which I can plainly see now was a total oh dear, who is this lunatic and how do I deal? moment for her. What can you do? There is no reconciling extreme feelings of connection with a perfect stranger.

Lorrie was at Vermont Studio Center last summer when I was there, and it was fantabulous to stand next to her at the salad bar and make small, small, small talk, and yes, even discuss work with her. She was lovely and gracious and warm. But nothing can remotely approach the level of intensity I brought to the table. Could we ever have a normal, everyday moment? Probably not.

So, Stacey. How does it feel to be worshipped?

From: Angela Pneuman To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Runny-nose crying

After years of loving Mary Gaitskill, and having friends who’d met her, I got to introduce her this spring. But before the introduction, I got to have dinner with her. And before that, I went to a Q&A with her, and knew I was in trouble when I couldn’t decide what to wear, and when my question-voice trembled like an earnest undergraduate’s.

Then after the Q&A—and, Elisa, your boyfriend witnessed this—I met her and tried to say “I like your books,” or even “I read your books,” and I started to cry. The kind of runny-nose crying no one should see. She was very, very kind.

It’s nice to be in an industry where you can meet your heroes.

From: Aaron Hamburger To: Elisa Albert, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Meeting your heroes

It is nice to be able to meet your heroes. And almost always they turn out to be nice, at least in the brief moments you meet them.

Speaking of Grace Paley, I got to sit next to her at the ceremony at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, when I won the Rome Prize.

She was funny, very nice, and very dry. That ceremony was insane. Almost every famous writer in America was there in one room. I was chatting with E. L. Doctorow without even knowing it. And John Updike said to me, “You’ve won a prize. How nice for you. You’ll enjoy it,” and then looked the other way.

This year I couldn’t make it to the ceremony because I was in Rome, but Lorrie Moore was there, and J. M. Coetzee, and Ian McEwan. I almost flew back just to go. Three of my literary heroes. Sigh…

From: Angela Pneuman To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Blathering on to J.M. Coatzee…

One more brush with a hero—Lorrie Moore was reading in NYC a few New Yorker Festivals ago, with ZZ Packer. I was sitting in the audience before the event, when the stage manager came up to the mic, announced my name, and said I was “wanted down below.” Lorrie had just picked a story of mine for BASS, and ZZ had told her I was there. I was knock-kneed and grateful and did not even try to put into words how much I loved her stories.

Later I interviewed her for The Believer, and she said something about publishing early that has stuck with me. She said that whenever you publish something you are creating a public record of “learning how to write,” and she talked briefly about her relationship to her first two books, which I love for themselves but also because they indicate what I was in store for later on. She is also one of those complicated writers, smart beyond measure, whose work opens up to 100 different ways of reading.

I would lose my ability to speak to Lynda Barry and Alice Munro, not to mention Antonio Munoz Molina and Primo Levi, if he were alive. I read The Periodic Table once a year. I wish I’d lost my ability to speak when I met Coetzee, as I went on for far too long and he was too polite or amused or dismayed to stop me.

From: Stacey Richter To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Karen Russell Subject: Too much time spent trying to meet rock stars

Those are great stories. I’m especially impressed that Angela cried—that’s adorable. I love admiration, I’m not at all used to it, and it’s never even remotely reminded me of stalking. I have to say, I never went through a time when I wanted to meet my writer heroes, maybe because I spent too many years trying to meet my rock star heroes (I’m over that). (Mostly.) Now I sometimes want to ask certain writers questions (and will occasionally do it in a letter), but I feel like the intimacy of friendship and the intimacy of reading are not required to overlap. A lot of writers aren’t very social anyway; sometimes, as Aaron said, the most charming part of their personality is in their books. I’ve met such a jumble of writers I like personally/writers I don’t like who’ve written books I love/writers I like who’ve written books I hate that I’ve concluded there’s no pattern, and less chance for disappointment when I remind myself that it’s the book I love.

I like it best when I meet my mentors in dreams. Once in a dream I walked into an old kitchen of mine and Denis Johnson was sitting at the table reading my manuscript. He looked up and said, “Pretty good, kid.” I woke up and thought: Denis Johnson is my father? Then I really woke up. So there you go. Entirely satisfying, and all in my head.

From: Elisa Albert To: Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: THE END!

KIT! WBS! BFF!

N E X T

Do: Ever stalk a writer, or go to pieces in front of him/her? Embarrassing tales from book signings or random street encounters welcome below. Read: Legal thriller writer Scott Turrow never actually "met" Saul Bellow, but he had a reader-meet-icon moment all the same. He recounted it in The Atlantic just after Bellow's death.

The post Friday: The Book Klatch appeared first on Jewcy.

From: Elisa Albert To: Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: The worst thing ever

What’s the most upsetting thing anyone’s every written or said about your work, and how, if at all, did it affect you the next time you sat down to write (and thereafter)?

From: Aaron Hamburger To: Elisa Albert, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: "Hi, I've read your book!"

People have said so many upsetting things, even when they’re not trying to be critical.

It all goes back to my first workshop, back in the high school creative writing club when the idea of a workshop seemed so revolutionary and enchanting. Then someone said my work wasn’t genius, and my relationship to the workshop forum has gone sour ever since. In grad school, I got so mad at one group I, I turned in a story called “The Mutual Masturbation Workshop.”

When my book was published, it was just like workshop, but on a bigger stage. All the things people liked and disliked in class were the same things they mentioned in the reviews.

I remember I had one extremely caustic review that found nothing good to say about one of my books. Not one single tidbit of merit. The reviewer singled out lines from my book that had received praise from other quarters as evidence of how awful I was, and how I had somehow conned Random House into publishing me. It was my first really negative review, and I remember I blushed as I read it, as if ha, ha, this guy has caught me! I am an imposter and a fraud, and he knows it and is telling the world. Later, I was talking with a bookstore owner in the area where the review came out and she said, “We just sold out of all your books after that wonderful review!” And then I realized, that it really is true no one reads your reviews as closely as you do and that the only thing that matters is if you get mentioned in the paper, and if you get a lot of inches.

Another upsetting thing people have said to me is, "Hi, I’ve read your book!" and then nothing. Would you go to someone’s house for dinner and say, "Hi, I ate the dinner you cooked!" Either pretend you haven’t read it or lie. Or if you have some interesting criticism to offer, you could do that, I guess, even though it isn’t so useful once the book is done. I really believe that each book comes with its own problems to solve and lessons to learn, lessons that are not transferable to your next project.

So far the really negative comments haven’t affected me greatly because I haven’t agreed with them or found them useful. Also, because I write reviews sometimes, I know that a lot of it is taste-based, trying to come up with objective reasons for a subjective opinion you may have had. For a while, the experience of being reviewed tempered the way I reviewed. “So what?” I said to myself, “This guy wrote a bad book. He didn’t kill anyone.” But then I read some books that really made me burn because I disliked them so much, and then I felt the reason I disliked them was important enough to mention.

So I’ve resigned myself to criticizing when I think it’s warranted, while trying to be as precise as possible. And I always relate my critiques to specific textual examples.

Negative comments have shaken my confidence a good deal as I read them, made me feel bad that they might affect my future fortunes in some way, but by the time I sit down to write, I try to make it a new day. Also, when my second book came out, I tried not to read reviews, and when I did read them, to quickly glance over and then forget.

None of this is easy, but necessary.

From: Elisa Albert To: Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Noooooooo Mercy!

I never had that quintessential fuck-all-y’all workshop experience, happily. I was always cool with disagreements about the merits of my work in the MFA setting, no biggie. But holy crap, the reviews have thrown me for a loop. To be fair, it’s only been a couple of bad ones, far outnumbered (so far!) by the good, but freaking OUCH.

The title of the most irritating one was “Without Mercy” and the pull quote (placed next to a sizable picture of me) said “If it’s not hard-wired into us as a species to look askance at characters such as these, it really ought to be.” The best part was that I got the same reaction Aaron mentioned! People were like, hey, pretty good review! Hilarious. For the next few days my boyfriend and I did this bit where I would mock-attack and tackle him and he would cry “Mercy!” and I would go “Noooooooooo! No Mercy!”

I’m sorry to say that I actually have lost sleep over shit reviews. Not because I think my book is perfection—I could talk the ear off any reviewer about what’s wrong with it—but because I was so frustrated and upset about what they’d taken issue with. It was all “This is bad for the Jews” and, like I mentioned before, “These people are bad people” and “No character becomes a better person” and crazy stuff like that. Funnily enough, none of the (very real) weaknesses in narrative or prose were even mentioned.

And also sorry to say that I’ve had a harder time working than usual this summer—I find myself writing defensively, suddenly. It blows. I tried burning some white sage, which the dude at the health store says destroys negative energy. I’m tempted to try a red-string Kabbalah bracelet.

Did any of you guys see the harsh review Owen King got in The New York Times last year? The reviewer was especially obnoxious in making a huge deal out of the fact that Owen is Stephen King’s son, and basically had nothing nice to say at all about Owen’s own work. But Owen had such a great sense of humor about it; he added the following to his blurb list:

“…Owen King…”

—The New York Times

I thought that was pretty awesome of him.

Aaron, I think I may have thrown you a “I read your book!” once, when I first met you. Because I hadn’t yet, and was embarrassed, and am an idiot. But I have since read them both, and hey, they’re wonderful.

From: Stacey Richter To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Karen Russell Subject: "So, don't you have any real stories?"

I’m sort of with Elisa on the getting high/cutting oneself front, though I have a good writer friend who’s published a ton of books who was the most popular girl in her high school. Every time she tells me I explain my need to kill her (which makes her laugh—but I’m not joking.) I still think that there’s some loneliness, isolation, privateness, and rage that drives story making, at least in our generation of ironic, spiritually adrift self-deprecators, but then I remember those guys. You know, those guys. Didn’t they sit around thinking how brilliant they are, laughing and writing books and porking their students? I don’t know—Saul Bellow? Mario Puzo?

I’m totally with Aaron on everything he said. The “I read your book” statement is weirdly common and a bummer. But at least they’ve read it. What I’ve heard a lot is: “I saw your book.”

And I don’t even like reviewing books, period. It’s hard enough to be an artist without having to tell other artists what’s wrong with their work. I want celebration and solidarity.

Also Elisa, I don’t even understand a review saying your characters are unlikable. What? They’re all totally engaging, though still haven’t read the last two or three stories yet. Is that where the serial killers are? I’m just stumped here.

The meanest thing anyone ever said to me came from an unnamed teacher—and I love love love her work. She was doing a short, one week tutorial when I was in grad school, and it was during our one-on-one meeting: “So, don’t you have any real stories?” And after I stuttered for a while she said, “I guess I’m just used to teaching at Iowa, where they screen the students very carefully.”

From: Elisa Albert To: Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: A plea for "pork."

Please please please can we all make a pact to use “pork” as a verb more often?

From: Angela Pneuman To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: "Oh, you dressed up!"

Yes, “pork.” I was just about to weigh in on the vocabulary, which has been making me giggle.

What Aaron said about "I read your book," period—sounds like someone saying "Oh, you dressed up."

My book hasn’t come out yet, so I don’t have the experience with reviews that the rest of you have. And Stacey’s teacher’s comments made me wince. I hope never to say anything so thoughtless to a student.

What I do remember from workshops—early, early on—is that the written comments would be diametrically opposed. One person says her use of commas makes her sentences unreadable, and another person admires her masterful use of the long, clause-filled sentences. I think, as Aaron notes, the negative often has the power to seem more insightful. Like the person who says, “oh, you dressed up!” is the keeper of the dress code or something. But, as Aaron also notes, it’s great, period, that people are paying attention.

Elisa, I am off to pick up your book this afternoon, finally!

From: Aaron Hamburger To: Elisa Albert, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Agendas, agendas

Re: Elisa’s “bad for the Jews” review, I think it’s important to remember that people read with agendas in mind, not just reviewers, but also the public. It all goes back to that question of why do we write? Just to please ourselves? Then why publish? For the ideal enlightened reader? But then isn’t that just preaching to the choir? For the general public? Then shouldn’t we measure the quality of art by who sells the most and give Da Vinci Code the Pulitzer? For posterity? In 500 years, if the planet still exists, there’s a good chance our work will not be read, except by academics, maybe.

I have no good answer to this question.

Re: reviewing, I’d like to celebrate and be in solidarity with other writers. For that reason, I’ve declined to review the books I really hated. At the same time, though, I think it’s very important to look seriously and critically and what you don’t like, if you think there’s something important to be said there. I don’t like being on the receiving end of it, but for me starting a dialogue about what a book is doing is a celebration, isn’t it? Very often I’ve been inspired by “bad” reviews to go out and buy a book, and been turned off by “good” reviews to decide not to buy a book. Case in point: James Wood’s dissing of Colson Whitehead’s John Henry Days made me run to the store and pick it up. Whereas anything that John Updike praises makes me immediately suspicious…

From: Karen Russell To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter Subject: The klatch hive-mind

YES!!!! (Fists pumping in the air) I swear, the klatch is developing some sort of insect-like hive mind, because I, too, made a mental note to comment on “porking” in my next response (cut to Mario Puzo poolside, winking at us over the back of his student lover). It sounds so sinister to me! Like a mobster homicide technique. Like, instead of smothering someone with a pillow, you’d use a slab of raw tenderloin, slowly porking them to death. Again, an image I readily associate with Mario Puzo….

Well, I’m glad to see I’m pulling my intellectual weight in the klatch. What I’ve been thinking about nonstop are your comments from yesterday—the relationship between creative impulse and the cutting self/getting high impulse. I know that neither exists in a vacuum, but I haven’t figured out exactly what the relationship between them is. I do agree with Elisa that if I had spent my teenage weekends out clubbing on South Beach with Florizio, I doubt I’d be writing stories right now. I saw this lonely girl sitting by the pond in Central Park the other day, feeding geese in fuzzy purple light and looking like YA novel cover art, and I wanted to yell “Hold on, lonely girl! Teach yourself acoustic guitar now! Start with E minor. And don’t feel bad if you spend prom night writing some wise-beyond-your-years haikus! College is coming, I promise!”

My book hasn’t come out yet, either (there’s a low-key book party at Radio Perfecto on Sept 9 at 7:00pm if any of you New Yorksters want to stop by. I sure do wish I could think of a snappy “porking” joke to insert here). But Elisa, I feel you girl, I’ve found myself following early reviews with a sort of unhealthy interest and, in true workshop fashion, retaining only the negative stuff. Even the positive stuff makes me feel this squeamish, abdominal unease—I think it’s that “imposter” terror that Aaron was talking about. I wish I didn’t put as much stock in reviews and workshop critiques as I do. It’s just been very disorienting to me, after sharing my work with my eight trusty MFA buddies, to have strangers weighing in on these stories.

What stuck with me most was this line from the Publisher’s Weekly review that said something like, "If Russell, at 24, hasn’t quite found a theme beyond growing up is hard to do…." This made me feel a dismal sense of failure for some reason, like the collection had only hit this one note. It also made me worried for the novel, because right now a lot of it explores some coming-of-age type stuff (again! do you guys feel obsessively drawn to certain voices and events in your fiction? Adolescence has this gravitational tug for me…). So now I feel like, yikes, I’m not growing as a writer, I don’t want to do a pasty retread of the story collection, I’d better shoehorn some grown-up themes in there stat, like social justice or medical ethics or something.

Owen King is my hero, BTW!

From: Stacey Richter To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Karen Russell Subject: What?

Jesus Karen, are you 24?

From: Aaron Hamburger To: Elisa Albert, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Reviewers, get past your personal tastes

The coming-of-age seemed to work just fine for Thomas Mann, Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger, Marguerite Duras…, shall I go on? I hate these stupid reviews where they say, “Oh, the characters aren’t likeable.” “Oh, the characters aren’t this, that, or the other.” Why can’t they just evaluate the book on its own terms? Maybe you’re a critic who doesn’t like coming-of-age novels. Fine. But then, for the large number of readers out there who do enjoy reading coming-of-age novels, can’t you overlook your own personal taste and let us know how this particular writer handled this theme?

From: Elisa Albert To: Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Tricky bastard terrorists

They probably give you way more shit for the coming-of-age stuff knowing you’re 24, tricky bastards. If [insert old dude] [(but do not pork him)] had written your collection, they’d praise him for reconnecting with and breathing new life into the oh-so-fascinating coming-of-age motif.

In my more reasonable moments I think: keep doing what you want to do, and eventually it’ll all come out in the wash. The shit people said to/about Roth in 1959 has come to look absurdly limited and unintelligent as he’s just continued to write the books he wants to write. So, fine. At 24 they may take issue with Russell’s writerly obsession with coming-of-age. At 74 there’ll be PhD students clawing each other’s eyes out for new ways to breathlessly describe the coming-of-age themes oft-repeated by Russell.

If you change your novel an iota with some PW reviewer in mind, the terrorists have won, do you hear me?!

Next round: "How does it feel to be worshipped?" 

N E X T

Do: "I don't read my reviews" is the biggest lie writers tell one another. As a reader, whose hatchet-jobs are you constantly on the lookout for? Tell us below. Read: In Slate, Ben Yagoda argued that Michiko Kakutani, far from being the arbiter of taste every scribbler on both coasts has deemed her, is a hack reviewer rather than a literary critic.

The post Thursday: The Book Klatch appeared first on Jewcy.

WEDNESDAY

From: Elisa Albert To: Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Writer = degenerate, addicted, lonely, hopeless heart from broken family?

Do you have to be messed up and dysfunctional to be a great writer? Do you have to be a loner, an addict, a hopeless heart, some sort of degenerate, from a broken family? Do you have to forgo the trappings of bourgeois family life? Do you have to be dark and messy and complex? Is it possible to be a great writer with healthy relationships, 2.5 biblically named children, real estate, holiday-card mailings, and no omnipresent daily heartache to speak of? What’s the relationship between your own happiness and writing?

From: Angela Pneuman To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Happy families

Generally I’d say that the kinds of experiences you’ve had end up dictating your habits of observation—with or without your awareness. A submerged, mysterious geometry.

And there’s the experts: Tolstoy’s line about happy/unhappy families, O’Connor saying that anyone who’s lived past the age of 15 has enough material to write forever. Most writers I know—like most people I know—have led complicated lives, and why that ends up motivating some to write and others to do something else, I can’t say. It may be temperamental or economic. Writing is an affordable habit—you don’t have to buy a saxophone, pay the band, etc. Yet it takes time, and time takes money, and real estate + family + all the rest that falls under what Elisa’s calling the trappings of bourgeois family life take both time and money. Which is speaking more to the economics of the question than the psychology, I guess.

From: Stacey Richter To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Karen Russell Subject: Dark, complicated, and have lived through a time of disorder–that's eveybody

That’s a good question, Elisa. I’ve actually thought about that a lot. I do think one has to, in some degree, be dark and complicated and have suffered an early heartbreak and lived through a time of deep disorder to be driven to write—and toward a world of metaphor (though honestly, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t fit that description, no matter what they do). I say this because I think humans have a deep need to create a narrative that explains their life, where they’re going and where they’ve been as Joyce Carol Oates put it. And the more complicated the life, the writer is compelled toward more explanations—and images, connections. People who have messy, dark, disordered histories have a stronger need to put things in order, or at least try to have their say or get revenge. Even to write about joy, I believe, demands a kind of imperative—bossiness—meant to counteract the time of no joy.

But I don’t think we have to be messy in an emotional sense, or degenerates or drunks, or destructive. (I would like to say not obsessive either, but I think sustained creative work demands a certain amount of obsession.) In fact, growing up, figuring it out, and being happy is a good way to get perspective on unhappiness. My own daily happiness/unhappiness doesn’t affect my writing energy much these days. The only thing that ever made me write like mad was breaking up with a boyfriend. Being dumped! What a great motivator!

Angela has an interesting point about the economics of writing, though I did see that they’re selling flutes in Wal-Mart now.

From: Elisa Albert To: Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Sadness and meanness and dysfunction

It does seem, though, like some measure of intensity in writing comes from resisting something “normative,” fighting the good fight against what one is supposed to do (i.e., accept what you’re told, follow a certain path, don’t disturb the peace). How do you maintain that intensity—the urge to scratch below the surface and, indeed, disturb the peace—when all is hunky-dory and Rockwellian in your own life?

My mom is always admonishing me: “Why do you have to look for the negative aspects in everything? Why do you have to articulate the worst things you see in the world and in people around you?” And now that my book is beginning to get reviewed, I’ve been fascinated (and, okay, annoyed) to see one or two (assholic) reviewers take issue with the fact that my characters aren’t all nice people. Well, um, hi: There is negativity and shit in the world! People are often not nice! Of course I’m going to look at that! The good doesn’t need inspection! It’s the sadness and meanness and dysfunction that’s interesting to me as a writer (and, incidentally, as a reader). Why on earth would one be writing (or painting or playing music or acting) if the goal was to present a happy featherbed of niceties?

But here’s my theory: It’s actually the shit-deniers who have the serious unhappiness and negativity underneath. Being comfortable enough with darkness to include it as a matter of course in one’s perspective makes for a happier person.

From: Aaron Hamburger To: Elisa Albert, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: The dark, tormented artist is overhyped

Fran Lebowitz said, “Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publications.”

As Stacey points out, who out there doesn’t feel like they’ve come from a dysfunctional family? And if they don’t say so openly, then they probably feel that way on the inside and are covering up their supposed inner gloom from the rest of the world, because if everyone only knew how fucked up they were on the inside, then (so goes their reasoning) no one would like them.

All people suffer from feelings of inadequacy and depression. Artists are people who channel inner torment differently from others. Also, because (if we’re lucky) we don’t have nine-to-five day jobs, we do our work at irregular hours, which causes people around us to say, “Oh my God, that writer is a slave to her art!”

I think the dark, tormented artist type is overhyped, especially with writers—because most writers are pretty nerdy, not cool enough to have a J.T. Leroy image. Maybe that’s why I was so amused when “he” turned out to be a fake. He and his shtick were too theatrical to be real.

From: Karen Russell To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter Subject: Enough with the tragic backstories

Rats! I feel like the walleyed kid wearing a paper dunce cap in the corner. Sorry about my delinquency on yesterday’s email—no access to a computer machine last night.

If it’s OK, I just wanted to backtrack a bit and thank you guys for your wildly encouraging ruminations on the story/novel divide. Stacey, I had never thought about the difference between those “talker” novelists and “listener” poets and short-story writers, and I think it’s a really interesting lens on the writing process. I’ve got to put myself in Elisa’s “self-loathing listener” category. Right now, I miss the productive constraints of a story. One of the things I love so much about the short story is that you can turn that thing in your palm like a geode, and sort of have at it with this lapidarian precision. With a story, even when it’s scary and messy, I still always feel like I can spread my arms out and feel the walls of the thing. The novel feels like walking into a big dark cave (echo-o-o!) where you have to do these resonance tests to even guess at its extremities and ceilings.

I really appreciated hearing about how you novelists navigate your own cave systems. I’m glad there’s a lantern aha! moment ahead, when you figure shit out. At what stage in the drafting process did your headlamps come on? I’ve had that “gel experience” that Elisa and Aaron talked about with stories, but the novel I’m working on actually feels like a million little puddles that refuse to coalesce. A few people mentioned outlines, and I wonder what your own outlines look like? That’s a new idea to me, after writing only stories. How specific do you get and how much forecasting do you do? Do the outlines change wildly on you?

Re: today’s question; what a good one, Elisa! It’s something that I thought about a lot in my MFA program. I think it’s a dangerous myth to equate compulsions, addictions, and asocial tendencies with literary genius. I mean, I think that authors like Hemingway and Virginia Woolf wrote their masterpieces in spite of and not because of their alcoholism/depression. I’d like to believe that whatever wound-up darkness compelled Woolf to fill her pockets with stones and head for the river was not the same creative force that called forth The Waves. And two of my favorite writers, Kelly Link and George Saunders, are both happily married and incredibly kind, which gives me hope.

That said—and Elisa can maybe agree or disagree with me on this—there are some similarities in the “submerged geometry” of certain writers and professors that I know from the MFA program. Aside from the economic stuff, I often feel like writers, for whatever reason, often share certain traits. There’s this Didion quote about children who grow up to be writers that I like a lot: “Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.” So while I don’t feel like writers have to be tormented booze-aholics, I sort of loathe the premium that our culture places on tragic backstories, that one-to-one correspondence of art and biography. I guess I think that most writers I know tend toward reflection and anxiety, a stop-time impulse to get experience on a page. I at least sometimes feel more comfortable in the safe intimacy of other writers’ imaginary worlds than this real one.

Phew! Sorry, folks, I got a little carried away. Somebody else’s turn to make sweeping generalizations about writers…

From: Elisa Albert To: Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Time to get high, cut myself

Omigod, Karen! I love that Didion quote. I used to cover the walls of my teenage bedroom with black-sharpie-rendered quotes (Ani DiFranco, anyone?), and that one was central. (How’s that for dark and deviant, eh? Combat boots, a belly-button piercing, and obsessive quote-collecting!) Aaron, props to Fran Lebowitz, but had I been popular in high school there’s no way I’d have become a writer. My personal writer seed germinated over several lonely nights driving around in my 1984 Volvo station wagon blasting Counting Crows and weeping. Granted, unhappiness itself does not a creative-type make, but without the unhappiness springboard, how would the process begin?

Re: Woolf, Hemmingway, Carver, et al., I agree that they did their amazing work in spite of their troubles, but also because of their troubles.

OK, I so clearly had an agenda with this question. Sorry. I shouldn’t have feigned curious neutrality. My bad. Now I will go get high and cut myself.

Next round: "What’s the most upsetting thing anyone’s every written or said about your work?"

N E X T

Do: Writing as catharsis, or a trade like any other? High school malcontents kill presidents, too. What's your take: do great writers need to be fucked up human beings? Comment below. Read: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt says, "[I]t isn't that writing causes drinking or even that drinking causes writing." So what does?

The post Wednesday: The Book Klatch appeared first on Jewcy.

TUESDAY

From: Elisa Albert To: Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Short stories vs. novels

Let’s talk about short stories vs. novels. Did we all cut our teeth on short stories? How is it to be elbowed into embarking on a novel, as many of us, I would guess, have been? Where does the idea for a novel come from and how is that different from where the idea for a story comes from? How do you know when you’ve written the end of a short story? How do you know a freaking thing about a novel? Any or all or none of the above.

From: Stacey Richter To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Karen Russell Subject: Talkers vs. Listeners

I started writing short stories rather than novels because I didn’t have the chops or attention span to write a novel. By the time I figured out how to write short stories and was ready to try a novel, I’d already been writing stories for so long that the form was stuck in my head. Now a part of my mind believes that everything is supposed to be ten pages long. I think that’s why, when I started a novel for the first time, I killed off all the characters in chapter one. I’ve since become a convert to outlining.

Even though my favorite things of all things are certain short stories, in general I like the experience of reading novels better than reading stories, and therefore I feel compelled to try to write a whole lot of novels in order to not be some hypocritical novel-reading short-story writer. I don’t feel elbowed by publishers, exactly, more by my own sensibility. Lately I keep starting different ones. Beginnings are fun. Endings are fun. One thing I think I do know about a freaking novel is that the middle is a bad place. Also, they have subplots.

But here’s my secret belief. There are two kinds of writer people: the talkers and the listeners. The talkers (maybe they don’t even really talk a lot) have a lot of words inside them—a lot of description, a lot of clarifying, a lot of internal dialogue, a lot of inner narration (now I’m walking down the street, they say to themselves), and sometimes they actually do talk a lot. The words inside them have to come out—these people make excellent novelists (whether or not they write excellent novels). I’m sure that Charles Bukowski was a talker, even though he was a poet, so you don’t have to be a novelist, but of course he wrote a bunch of novels too.

The listeners, on the other hand, only have about 25 words inside them, and they don’t think anyone wants to hear those 25 words unless they’re in the exact right and perfect order. These people have a tendency to write short stories or, in extreme cases, poetry. (They also may not listen very well). I’m a listener, and listeners don’t make very good novelists (though they may write good novels). I’d bet that Marilynne Robinson is a listener.

Since I think that easy is better, my goal is always, at the very least, to write short novels. It’s more fun for me to write short stories though. I like to put all the words in the right order, or at least give it a shot. In terms of novel writing though, I’m essentially screwed. I envy the talkers.

From: Aaron Hamburger To: Elisa Albert, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: I'm a talker

I must be a talker, then. For me, the experience of writing a short story collection was like writing ten novels, only I had to fit each one within the space of about 20 pages. Even when I managed it, I felt like there were so many things I wanted to be able to say about the characters that I couldn’t shoehorn into the narrative.

My first novel was an accident. I’d planned to write a pair of novellas about Israel, one about Jerusalem, one about Tel Aviv. But I found that the novella on Jerusalem kept growing like a soufflé (I just took a cooking class and I’m really into soufflés these days) and so I just went with it. And since I didn’t have any idea what to write about Tel Aviv, I never did.

I enjoyed the experience of being able to stay with a group of characters for a really long time and having room to say lots of things about them. Also, I liked having space for them to do everyday things in addition to playing their parts in the main plot. One thing that helped me rein it all in was that I put a time limit on the narrative. All the events took place over a long weekend. As I got further into the writing process, I made up a day-by-day chart of all the action to make sure it all fit. It was also a good way to keep track of what was going on and make sure it didn’t sprawl out of control.

The second novel, which I’ve been working on for a while now, has been more difficult because I’ve tried to do a few things that I hadn’t done before. I tried first person POV, ditched it. I tried to write about a physicist, ditched him. I tried to put in a crime element (and even interviewed the head of the missing persons bureau at the Berlin police department). With great regret, ditched that too. What remains, however, is deeply satisfying, because I haven’t simply repeated what I’ve done before, and I’ve grown as a writer during the process.

With both novels, I’ve found that there’s been a turning point while I’m working on them, when the plot gels, almost like a pudding (here we go with cooking similes again). This can take a year or two of working on it. Before this point, I’m floundering and miserable, enduring several false starts and false eurekas. After this point, everything falls into place, and while there’s still work to be done, it’s all productive work, and much more fun and exciting.

From: Elisa Albert To: Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Self-loathing listener, here

That would make me a self-loathing listener, fo’ sure. Or not. I dunno.

I love how much control you have over a story, and I like how the idea for a story can hinge on a moment somewhere, a dynamic between people, a mood. Working on a novel for the last year and a half I’ve been repeatedly surprised and dismayed by the fact that a moment, a dynamic, a mood just aren’t remotely enough. And then there’s the fact that you can’t hold quite as tight to your narrative threads, the little details you can cultivate and return to in a story.

On the novel upside, though, it is nice not to have to re-conceive a whole new world every few weeks. Hallelujah for that flash when you figure out what you’re doing. Because until then it is just God-awful work. I wish I were more journey-is-the-destination, but Jesus. Nicole Krauss said something funny, like writing a novel is like going into a room every day to chip away at your self-esteem. Even when a story isn’t going well, you can at least hold the whole thing up to the light, as it were, turn it around in your hands and consider it as a whole. When a novel’s not going well, you’re just neck-deep in tar and it can take whole days just to figure out where you stand, where you went wrong, where you need to go, etc.

My only novel salvation has been a really specific chapter-structure, which I return to and make notes on endlessly.

Whine, whine, whine.

On a more proactive note, talking with two writer friends led me to an example of true omniscient: “Hills Like White Elephants” by Hemmingway. Check it.

From: Angela Pneuman To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Stacey Richter, Karen Russel Subject: Feeling coy about the first person

Wiawaka was great, all paddleboats and screened-in gazebos. They have a sliding scale, so all the girl writers should check it out as an affordable retreat. You have to dry-mop your room prior to checkout, stuff like that, and the rooms are about the size of prison cells I’ve seen at Alcatraz. Homier, though.

I don’t feel like I know what I’m doing writing a novel, and though I still don’t really feel like I know what I’m doing writing a story, either, I used to think every story was my last, and that has faded a bit over the years. Someone—Aaron?—said they felt coy writing in first person. That’s how I feel. Can’t do it, though many stories I love from other writers are in first. One thing, with the novel, I do feel like I have more space to figure out how to think about what I’m doing—a bigger wall to throw things against to see if they stick, or something.

P.S. Clarification: I didn’t mean to sound self-deprecating about writing short stories. I just mean that each story comes with its own set of problems to figure out, and the previous story’s methods don’t work, and probably shouldn’t, and what’s new and unanticipated about the struggle is the part I enjoy the most. Though I guess styles develop out of recursive inclinations.

Novels can accommodate large casts of characters, and lately I’m drawn to that. So I’m writing one. I’m also drawn to multiple points of view, which I’m using, and the omniscient point of view, which I’m not using, but which doesn’t strike me as alienating, as I believe someone said. In fact, it sometimes strikes me as more intimate, but I’m still thinking about why.

Next round: "Do you have to be messed up and dysfunctional to be a great writer?"

The post Tuesday: The Book Klatch appeared first on Jewcy.

These four young writers have authored spectacular collections of contemporary fiction. Anyone looking for what can be altogether smashing, fresh, and relevant about a couple dozen pages spent in the company of made up people would do well to check out these collections as worthy primers.

We chatted via email in the heat of late August, and what do you know? Became buddies and ardent supporters. Snarkiness? Competitiveness? Petty jealousies? So 2005. Eavesdrop, why don’t you…

BOOK KLATCHERS

Aaron Hamburger (The View from Stalin’s Head and Faith for Beginners, both Random House, 2004 and 2005)

Angela Pneuman (Home Remedies, Harcourt, 2007)

Stacey Richter (My Date with Satan, Scribner, 1999)

Karen Russell (St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Knopf 2006)

Moderated by Elisa Albert (How This Night Is Different, Free Press, 2006)

MONDAY

From: Elisa Albert To: Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Hey! We're a Book Klatch!

Stacey, Aaron, Karen, and Angela: meet Aaron, Karen, Angela, and Stacey. We can talk about whatever we want. We can become e-buddies. Or not. Feel free to say whatever you want, however you want. By Friday we'll have a lovely chat and have all learned a lot about life/writing/each other.

OKAY. What’s your Achilles heel as a writer? What’s the one thing you wish you could do but can’t seem to crack?

From: Aaron Hamburger To: Elisa Albert, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Just one?

There’re so many things I want to do that I haven’t done yet. My biggest ambition is to write a dense, tightly packed 200-page novel, something like one of Graham Greene’s deeply sad masterpieces in miniature. Still, I haven’t managed it. It always seems that I have so much to say.

Conversely, after 9/11, and after reading some big books with an epic scope like Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Platform by Michel Houellebecq, and Three Cities by Sholem Asch, I’ve been tempted to write a grand social novel with large ambitions about the way we live now. But I find that I want to tell smaller, more intimate stories about the traces left by history on everyday lives.

I think I know why I haven’t managed the epic. I’m susceptible to this age’s mistrust of the omniscient imperial point of view (POV) necessary for Tolstoy, Dickens, or George Eliot. As for the short novel, I’m getting there. My first novel clocked in at a bit over 300. This new one I’m working on seems to be hovering around 250.

From: Angela Pneuman To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: It IS hard to pick just one Achilles heel

For me there’s the writing itself, which I put off and put off, until I have to devise little tricks like word counts, or pages-a-day, etc. Or there’s going to parties and realizing you’ve spent so much time at your desk that you’ve lost your funny bone but not, somehow, your compulsive tendency for an inappropriate comment.

BTW, I think the omniscient POV is back, born again, or should be, since there’s really no avoiding the imperialist tendencies of narrative in general—the coercion activated by identification with character, or by the trajectory implied by plot. Plato threw poets out of the republic for this kind of power, no?

So the only narratives that can be “trusted” are the ones that always reveal their own disruption—which is sometimes interesting but never complete (and never should be). So, what I mean to say is that I’m enchanted by the freedom in not trusting anything. And so I like the idea of a response to that that presents an alternative to the popular explicit emphasis on the eternally collapsible narrative—so that I like the resources of POV à la 19th century in this day and age, which Aaron made me think of. I’m trying to think of who does that right now.

Speaking of earlier times, I am off for one night with the girls at Wiawaka, on Lake George in upstate New York, where I’ve never been. It’s a former women’s suffrage camp, formerly a freebie for women mill workers, I think, but these days, a night and three meals goes for $50. Not bad.

From: Elisa Albert To: Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: If it's not experimental, it's CRAP!

Whoa, Angela. Have you been hanging out with scary academic types who insist that (Mike Myers’ Fat Scottish Guy voice, if you please) “If it’s not experimental, it’s CRAAAAAP”? (By which I mean wow: you’re smart.)

Really, I wonder if “the omniscient” even exists. It’s like a certain kind of sex act—people talk about it as if it’s a given, as though we’ve all experienced it or will, at some point, but I have this sneaking suspicion it’s mythological. Tolstoy’s not really omniscient, he just changes perspectives. And he’s better at some than at others (I’m partial to Levin and Kitty; Anna can die for all I care). I mean, actual omniscience would be crazy boring, wouldn’t it? No investment in any one POV at any given time? Bird’s-eye reportage? Or maybe I just want to believe that because I’m incapable of staying neutral where my characters are concerned. There are some I’m identifying with and some who challenge my identification. I get a lot of shit for that, but call me crazy. It’s more fun to write and it’s more fun to read.

Re: small stories telling larger ones about how we live now, I’m almost done with McEwan’s Saturday, which I think does a lovely job of that (although I could definitely have done without the absurd climactic poem-as-rape-diversion thing).

From: Aaron Hamburger To: Elisa Albert, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Ruling the universe with an iron hand

Yes, Tolstoy’s a different sort of omniscient than that wonderfully imperious oh-so-British Dickens/Eliot/James omniscient, where the narrator speaks to you as if he or she rules the universe with an iron hand and knows every corner of it. Maybe even has a personal back-channel to God. After reading War and Peace, however, I feel as if Tolstoy really does know almost every corner of the universe, and maybe he really does have some personal communication with God.

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee is another stellar example of a small story drawing a larger-scope picture of who and where we are. I read it when it came out and recently reread it and was astounded by how good it was.

From: Stacey Richter To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Karen Russell Subject: Too much to-ing and fro-ing

I guess that personally I find the omniscient narrator intrusive enough (at least in the 21st century) that I’d be unlikely to use it in my own work. Unless I happen to be writing in the form where it’s still in common use—books for children. That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t like it in someone else’s writing, only that I have a tendency to go overboard with narrative devices.

In fact I have to watch myself so that I don’t end up using device after device to cover up my own Achilles heel, which is moving characters from place to place. “Jane walked out the door and across the asphalt, which was shimmering in the heat. She liked driving, even at rush hour, and sang along to the radio at the top of her lungs until she arrived at the beach house.” Ok, that pretty much sucks, and it took me fifteen minutes to write. One of the reasons I tend to make my characters take lots of drugs is that then I can basically eliminate (warp? obliterate?) the niceties of time and space.

Even though I hate writing those kinds of passages, I keep working on it because I truly enjoy reading well-paced novels with characters who change location without getting shit-faced. I can also get overloaded with all the to-ing and fro-ing at times (Ian McEwan, I’m talking to you).

From: Karen Russell To: Elisa Albert, Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter Subject: Better than spam!

Wow, it’s so exciting to find you guys in my inbox! What a nice change from all the “get out of debt” spam! Although if anybody wants to swap get-out-of-debt ideas later (Herbalife? Emu ranching?), you’ve got my contact info…

I’m glad to hear that other people have POV problems, too. I admire the big-spirited, panoramic third person, but I find it personally terrifying. It’s enough of a stretch for me to imaginatively inhabit one other body, much less a big Cheers-like ensemble cast. But I find that I waffle a lot between the first-person “I” and a close third.

Right now, I’m really struggling with the first draft of a novel. I’ve drafted chapters in the voice of the protagonist, then switched to a bird’s-eye third, and then gone swooping back into first again. Maybe my Achilles heel is my total distrust of my own narrative instincts. I’m greedy for anybody else’s opinion. A schizophrenic man could tell me that I should write the novel from the point of view of a sentient, omniscient gator, and I’d seriously consider it.

I like Steinbeck and Nabokov a lot, because they can get away with a sly and seemingly impossible compromise between first and third. I just finished East of Eden, where there’s this wise, audacious third person narration that’s suddenly punctuated with observations coming from a mysterious “I,” ostensibly a character in the novel who sounds a heck of a lot like old Johnnie S. himself. Then there’s a book like Pnin, where we get narration that appears to be a storyteller third and then, surprise, guess who shows up several pages in? That “I” again, a direct address that I always find weirdly comforting. It’s like Nabokov lowers his newspaper on the train seat next to you and winks or something. This is unrelated, but wouldn’t it also be great to be ballsy enough to write convincingly from the point of view of someone from a different race or historical period? And to write a love scene that didn’t make you feel cringy inside?

Hope you guys are having terrific days, I’m really enjoying these emails.

From: Elisa Albert To: Aaron Hamburger, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: Cooking with gas

Now we’re cooking with gas, people! Yeah!

So, to sum up: We're agreed that Disgrace is perfection.

Funny that Aaron feels like Tolstoy may have an in with the Big Guy, given that Tolstoy totally had a religious awakening/rebirth and became something of a hard-core Christian. Perceived ownership of “god”: related to his omniscient powers or not? Discuss.

I love that we’ve all come around to a central and somewhat common weakness, here. What is it about not trusting our own “narrative instincts” (as Karen put it)? I’m so freaking glad that Stacey has her characters take a lot of drugs to sidestep her lack of patience for the “to-ing and fro-ing,” because that leads to stories that are warped and hilarious and unlike anything else I’ve read. If she were great at the to-ing and fro-ing, I, for one, would miss out on that. Not to get all “Free to Be…You and Me” on y’all, but must we all write the same books?

Karen, you should innovate a new perspective for your novel: a cacophony of close-thirds, masquerading as omniscient. How about that?

How was Wiawaka, Angela? And why has no celebrity yet snagged that for a baby name?

From: Aaron Hamburger To: Elisa Albert, Angela Pneuman, Stacey Richter, Karen Russell Subject: The third person limited rocks

I agree with Stacey (I think it was her) that third person limited rocks, and for all the reasons she said. I’ve just finished a novel that I attempted to write in first person and the voice was so cloying and the narrative lens so limited, I had to cut it out and retreat back to third.

I’ve never written from the point of view of another race, but I tend to write from a woman’s point of view a lot and I like it, feel pretty comfortable with it, sometimes more comfortable than with a man’s point of view, even if it’s a gay man. Sometimes I have to check in with female friends of mine about certain facts of life I don’t know about, but in general, people are people.

For my next novel, however, I’d like to write from the point of view of a Chinese man, so I guess I’ll get to try Karen’s suggestion then.

Next round: "I started writing short stories because I didn't have the chops to write a novel."

The post Monday: The Book Klatch appeared first on Jewcy.