On Introductions and Mustaches

I teach nonfiction workshop here at OU and I was (uh, this was back in May) telling my students about how they needed come see Tobias Wolff read at our Lit Fest, because—well—they needed to come see Tobias Wolff, when one student turned to me and asked the dreaded question—

“Why?”

To be fair this question was asked in all sincerity by one of my top students. He was not asking in the sense of why I gotta see Tobias Wolff but in the spirit of a genuine desire to know. And so I wanted to give the inspirational Dead Poet’s Society response his question deserved. I grasped for all the words in the universe—

And answered: blahbalhblahbubbblahbalhblahbubbblahbalhblahbubbblahbalhblahbubbblahbalhblahbubbblahbalhblahbubbb

It turned out, that I was on call to introduce the very Tobias Wolff for Lit Fest, and, with the permission of my student (although I did change the name for this blog post), was inspired to write this introduction below.

As a grad student, or as an instructor, or (ideally) as a famous writer, you might be summoned to perform an introduction. So here’s my sample, for what it’s worth. Also, hey, this might inspire your summer reading list.

The Top Ten Reasons Why You, Jarod Schulzendorfer, Should Be Here Right Now Listening to Tobias Wolff

10) Tobias Wolff is one of America’s great short story writers, having penned such anthologized classics as “Bullet in the Brain “In The Garden of the North American Martyrs,” “Soldier’s Joy,” among others

9) His novella The Barracks Thief won the PEN/Faulkner Award for 1985 And was selected this year by David Sedaris as his recommending reading for his spring tour.

8) Wolff is not only a fiction writer, but a pioneer in the field of memoir, applying techniques of storytelling to nonfiction. In 1989 he helped transform the genre by having Chapter One of his memoir This Boy’s Life by opening with a semi truck careening over a ledge.

7) In addition to This Boy’s Life, the story of his childhood, Wolff wrote the memoir In Pharaoh's Army which records his U.S. Army tour of duty in Vietnam.

6) Wolff is an award-winning teacher, having worked for such universities as Stanford and Syracuse where he has mentored writers we love such as George Saunders and Mary Karr.

5) This Boy's Life became a feature film, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio, as a young Toby.

4) Jarod Schulzendorfer, in case you “wondering about how you are doing in the class,” you are doing just fine. Any student that emails me before spring break about what he should read automatically begins the class with an “A.”

3) As a teenager the author completely fabricated all his applications to exclusive prep schools, from writing his own letters of recommendation, to forging transcripts, to inventing a swim team for his high school and changing his name to Tobias Jonathan von Ansell-Wolff, III.

2) HE GOT IN.

And…number ONE, the top reason, Jarod Schulzendorfer, why you should be here—and I apologize for ending on this—

Sweet mustache.

To which Mr. Wolff replied, “You don’t ever have to apologize for complimenting my mustache.”

Goings on in Seattle: Elizabeth Colen reads at Ravenna Third Place Books

...and I get to be the opening act! Elizabeth will be reading from her chapbook "Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake," which is featured in the new collection They Could No Longer Contain Themselves (Rose Metal Press 2011). I will read from my manuscript "Wreck Idyll," forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in 2012.

Tonight. 7 p.m. Ravenna Third Place Books.

Reading in Olympia

Lohmann Poetry Prize Reading

Three winners have been announced for the 7th annual Jeanne Lohmann Poetry prize sponsored and judged by Jeanne’s poetry friends in California, and facilitated by OPN. The winners (with their hometowns and poems) are Brian Desmond (University Place, Bicycles), Trina Burke (Seattle, Confinement in a Strange Hour), and Casey Fuller (Olympia, Why Are You People So Nice?). Also, contest sponsor Valerie Berry, will be in town "to say a word or two about each winning poem..., what caught the eye/ear/imagination." Jeanne Lohmann is scheduled to read as well. June 16, 2010, 6:30 PM at Traditions Fair Trade Cafe & World Folk Art, Olympia WA

Montana MFA Faculty News: Kevin Canty

It’s no exaggeration to say Kevin Canty transformed my fiction. I’m not saying that I’m a genius now, but if you saw what I was writing before — well, you would understand. Spring semester of 07 was a transformative, if horribly painful molting that involved multiple nights of tossing, turning and hand wringing. But at the end I was a better writer.

It’s also no exaggeration to say that Kevin is one of the best short story writers working today. Maybe I’m biased but I don’t believe so. I can like you as a person but not like your writing.

I like Kevin as a writer and as a person and he has a new collection out, Where the Money Went. I’m waiting until I move to order it, so that it will arrive at my house, but I have heard two of these stories at readings and I loved them. KC has this amazing way of creating stories that feel effortless even as you are transported to this familiar, yet alternate universe.

And he’s great reader.

If you have a chance to attend these readings, do it.

I already missed the plug boat for New York City, July 8, at Joe's Pub, but apparently it was sold out anyway.

Upcoming:

July 14: Shakespeare & Co., Missoula,
August 4: Elliot Bay Book Co., Seattle
August 6: Powell's on Hawthorne, Portland

Here’s where Elle recommends Kevin as summer reading.

A Good Year for MFA Graduates, Okay?

Yep—here we are again. Facing our demons. The bad year? or good year? existential self-questioning had bugged me like Fmr. Gov. Blago’s phone. (…) In honor of May, the time that the current class of MFAers say adieu to what they knew for two years, I offer a recollection of May '08--May '09 (give or take).

The good news. It is still a bit early for you, nearly-graduated one. May still gives you time to look forward to a belabored severance of your new, scared self from your old, confident self. I didn’t freak out or imagine the shape of the future beyond Missoula until August, once the UHaul had to be picked up or I’d forfeit my deposit. Or as I was selling my pre-owned mattress to a family whose toddlery son had to use my bathroom and proceeded to dump (throw?) my last roll of toilet paper in the bowl (true story).

Since August, I’ve learned key money-saving skills. They include how to create life-sustaining feasts in a bowl. It is much like I imagine astronaut food to be but poorly, poorly executed and non-dehydrated. Think rice and beans (dried, not instant), 5lb. beef “savings pack” and onions from the bin at Aldi. Put it all together…and you hope that a burrito wrap can hide the horror:


You know what? Just hold off on that Aldi onion and…grow your own onions! On your kitchen counter. Whoops. Get to know your favorite compost heap pile.


There will be copious reading opportunities for your genre of choice in your city of choice. Or, at least enough to sustain you and comfort you into a false sense that you-are-still-in-the-program. See some famous people. See some soon-to-be-famous people. Silently support them with beams of flowers and rainbows and unicorns and puppies and kittens because they need them and you can wait out karma.

Survive the winter and everything will be a-okay. It won’t seem like it in mid-January in Chicago (or Seattle--or, well, New Orleans is just warm anyway, without mercy, and we'll exclude it from our results), but trust.

You’re going to spend a fair amount of time researching post-graduation fellowships or residencies that will give you another year down the road to do that thing you were doing in the MFA program. You’ll spend the following March opening the rejection letters.

If you’re a poet, maybe you’ll find all the Apocalypse Now stuff mighty useful as an operating principle for your newly imagined collection of poems—you see it taking shape. Your perverse worldview had to pay off sometime. Since the real world is so damn bizarre sometimes, it’s almost too good to be true. It’s taking beautiful, exquisite shape. (Well, at the very least you’re totally estranged from your thesis, which you can’t even bear to look at, much less tinker with. This may change. In a bit, maybe you’ll warm up to it, face its cold icy stare. I’m waiting it out, giving mine the silent treatment for now.) But the scheming and the abject poverty of jet-loving corporations and the illness and the general turmoil treats you OK. It’s something you can always count on. Prose folks, I bet this is the same for you.

You will temp. Boy, will you ever temp. You will know the skills of the temp. Like a substitute teacher, be ready for the 5AM call. “Can you be on site, ah, 10 minutes ago?” Start…now. Watch as the clock on your assignment runs out. Four months, three months, two months… You’ll be searching the fall teaching openings. This is, of course, assuming you didn’t have an idea of what was going on and refused to acknowledge time would pass after you graduated. I found myself desperately clinging to the scam-toned Craigslist posts in the “education” section because, well, what did I have to lose?

And if this hasn’t enticed you, remember, not having the extra money to eat at "restaurants", see concerts, go to, what, the history museums, leaves a heck of a lot of time for sitting down and writing. Right? I’m not a perfect example, no. I spend a lot of time messing around and drafting elaborate and overly complicated, windbaggy emails to my online students. They don’t need to know how amazing Blackboard is. They can access their assignments just fine thank you very much. So, yes, for everyone who is driven, you can sit down and write and something actually materializes on the screen. But one thing is for sure: you won’t be sitting down to just write if you can’t pay your utility bill. Then you’re just in the dark.


And the job tip in the post directly below this one is excellent. Take it. Run with it.


The Three Ps roundup almost one year in:

• PhDs: One up and coming! Go Kelly!
• Publications: Yes, yes and yes.
• Panhandling: I applaud the social service opportunities available in large metropolitan areas for those in need.

Joan Didion is a Badass and I Love Her

Recent Facebook status update:

“Kelly Kathleen Ferguson notices that students refer to male authors by last name (Updike) but women authors by first (Joan). She endeavors to correct one Didion at a time.”

And then voila! I discovered Joan Didion was coming to read at Tulane. This event earned a top tier Hello Kitty! calendar sticker. Joan Didion is the Chrissie Hynde of the writer’s world. One of the few true badasses who has transcended gender in a male dominated field.

Now, given that 70% of the reader’s market consists of women, some might argue with my male dominated rap. But in the field of “Literature,” I argue men (more than women, we can only count Toni Morrison so many times) are considered to be the “important” authors. They aren’t expected to reduce themselves to the crass guttermuck of sales, because they are writing the next Ulysses. I suspect that has something to do with why Jonathan Franzen declined the Oprah award. So demeaning for a man of letters!

As women we have few idols. I’m not going to say they don’t exist, but Didion has stared down male publishing world and she has not flinched. She has not only worked as a journalist and written novels, but she has been nonfiction badass. She has her own patented style. I could see the introducers (3!) squirm as the they tried to conjure the adequate words. This event merited The President of Tulane! The important white man was trotted out!

Then Didion arrives, a petite, wiry figure parting the velvet curtain as if it were a buzzing fly. She turns them all to dust.

She read Chapter One from The Year of Magical Thinking because “she hadn’t read it for a while.” Yep, she rocked the mike. She doesn’t inflect much, but the prose is so freaking good, she doesn’t have to. I can’t think of another nonfiction writer who could write about tragedy, exactly how it feels, as well. She weaves that fine line between stark details and prose in a way that mirrors exactly that surreal floating feeling, even as these horrible visions go off like flashbulbs in our head. These are the imprints that will remain and jolt us awake at 3 am while we struggle to remember the rest.

The Q and A (as usual) was horribly painful. Can’t people just be normal and ask a normal question? One woman got up and said she’s writing a book on California and wanted Didion to (basically) tell her what her book should be about. Didion said as nicely as possible, “Um, isn’t that your job?” OK, actually she said something more like, “Well, I don’t know.” The woman also said she was thrilled to find out Didion was born in Yolo County, just like she was.

Didion: “Actually I was born in Sacramento County.”

OUCH.

Next some guy lifted a quote from an essay she wrote thirty years ago. It took him 2-3 minutes to read this excerpt, (it was something about the bitterness of life, etc.) and he was “wondering if she felt any differently about it now.”

Didion: “No, I’m pretty much the same person.”

SNAP.

What it is, and I understand, is we all want to put our hand on the flame. We can’t help ourselves. I guess I knew to recognize I wasn’t worthy, and kept quiet.

On Tanking a Reading

You know all that stuff they tell you (they being smart people who know these things) about how, when giving a reading one should practice, keep a bottle of water close at hand, practice, make eye contact with the audience, and practice? Well, it's true. If you don't practice, you do stupid crap like lose your place, stumble over unfamiliar words, mispronounce words, and generally make a fool of yourself.

I also learned never to: wear big clunky shoes that make one teeter, drink excessively before the reading, read from a printout with a font smaller than 14-point Times New Roman, and show up without any notes to introduce each poem or group of poems.

I'm not a fan of reading banter or cleverness. Really I'm not. But to some extent the audience is showing up for a show and that needs to be addressed in some manner.

Also good to know: If a friend comes to town to read with you, or if your friends come to town to see you read, resist the temptation to eat and drink excessively for the three days prior to your reading. The pants you planned to wear won't fit if you're bloated and you will find this out with 20 minutes to spare, resulting in a desperate hunt for fat-pants that are still dressy enough to wear to a reading.

Seriously.

And also good to know: Take any and every chance to read in public that is offered to you. I've avoided readings since I've been at Montana and my ability to perform in front of an audience has suffered for it. If I had it to do all over again, I'd read on street corners for change every Tuesday afternoon.

Thank God I don't have it to do all over again.

Second Wind Reading Flier

This is what I came up with for my reading as a part of our MFA reading series. I'm not a graphic designer. Sue me.