Writer & Celebs

All conversations about literature should start with the word anyway and should include the phrase the novel as.

The novel as. I’ve met people who say, “I haven’t read fiction in years,” or “I’ve never finished a novel.” In fact, lately, I’ve met more people that prefer nonfiction. There have been essays written on the phenomenon of the dying short story, and on the predictions that the novel is the next to go. There have been novels written as conversations, or as commercials for themselves. There are novels written as blogs, as interactive diaries, by corporations. We’re supposed to still like MTV. Our society is segregated into classics enthusiasts and nons. I don’t give a damn about any of it because I know that one thing will never change: people mostly think about themselves.

Everyone’s a photographer, and everyone is a writer (or blogger, which is like journalism, so everyone’s a journalist). People are famous because they are in internet porn, or something similar. Even cartoons are in porn. Like Ariel and her dad, King Triton, and Simpsons characters. You know how Cartoon Network had to by the rights to the Hannah Barbara characters? I doubt these porno-animators are buying anything. The internet makes it so you can steal until you get caught, but even then, are you caught – the porn’s past existence cannot be erased when it’s caught.

Everyone is a celeb because celebrity has been shortened to celeb in order to accommodate us. We are in online forums and collectives and clubs and discussions, and our pictures are tagged. People think about us enough to “tag” us and create testimonies. But look at the people with hardly any comments; they must be sad that they are not famous, like the rest of the world. Online personal shopping, exclusive deals, free shipping, and total privacy and anonymity. We can become two different people so easily now: the famous one and the secret one.

My dream, as a female writer, is to look and act like a female writer. I want the surface of my life and my internet-surface to affect my writing and my drive, not the other way around. This way, I can’t lose. I will be famous because I’ll forget what fame means.

I just re-watched The Last Days of Disco (Whit Stillman, 1998), which is about a bunch of people who work in a publishing house but want to be writers.  I wouldn’t say it’s a great movie, but it has great dialogue. I watched it alone, and by the end I was sort of hugging myself whenever Chloë Sevigny said anything. I like her for the reasons everyone else does: Kids, Gummo, Boys Don’t Cry, Julien Donkey Boy, and what some interviewer in some men’s magazine said about her: that watching her act is like walking in on someone in the bathroom, which is uncomfortable but intriguing, since she doesn’t seem to mind.

This is what I want my writing personality to be like. Sevigny is not very good at playing very many emotions, or any, really, which makes Alice a perfect role for her. She’s sort of annoyed every once in a while, but mostly unperturbed, and just into dancing and publishing (like me). Her office outfits are better than her disco ones, and Kate Beckinsale is the other way around, so you know that Chloë will end up okay. (Did I ruin it? So you know: It’s about a group of friends who aren’t very friendly to each other and like to discuss high art and literature by comparing it to low art and literature.)

In my real and internet life (which should soon merge into one), I have to come up with perfect lines, like the one about vodka tonics being the drink of choice for college graduates, which is tragically boring. Maybe there’s a few too many anyways, as in, “Anyway, I don’t think I can live with you anymore.”  None of the lines are very realistic: it’s like a play, but instead of the stage being the limit, it’s that the acting is bad.

So, I’m admitting that I’m dangerously insecure because I’m trying to be a writer, and that’s okay, because I’ve figured out part of it. Here is what I need to do: Always act badly. Say ‘anyway’ before saying something else. And make sure my office outfits are better than my disco ones.

-Natasha Stagg is a writing teacher and student in Tucson, Arizona.

Limitations in Art

Motel in Tucson, AZ.

I’ve always been fond of setting limitations for myself, in a way. When I was in high school, my best friend and I started a “B&W” club and only wore black or white for almost a year (we stopped when we found another pair of girls doing the same thing). I like limitations in writing, too. For my college thesis, I wrote a collection: Each story was mainly about two people, and each was titled with their names. The “novel” I wrote last semester all took place in hotel rooms. The one I’m working on this semester takes place in a mall and an apartment. Sometimes I want it to be only in the mall, but I start to get dizzy thinking about expanding scenes in other stores or the food court. I go to the mall as much as I can, now, and it is one of my least favorite places. At the same time, I love it, because it stifles me.

A fashion designer, Ann Sofie Back once said in an interview, “I’m working with burgundy. I hate burgundy. I’m fairly excited about this.” Perhaps more now than I’ve ever noticed before, designers are creating lines that are a combination of attractive, sexy things and references to the laughable outside world. This is very much inspiring me in writing.

Back’s latest collection was inspired by a Second Life character. Other runway inspirations I’ve read of this season include The Matrix, the first season of Melrose Place, Jamaican dance hall drag queens, and Burning Man. These designers are using cheap, recognizable materials: crushed velvet, fraying denim, sweatpants fabric, faux fur, and t-shirts decorated with body-jewelry. I don’t believe they are making any anti-fashion statements, and most of what I’m listing is actually quite beautiful. Perhaps some shows are saying something about the economy (of course, everything is about that, right?), but mostly, designers, like any artists, need to challenge themselves to make something worthwhile.

I’m  not sure where I’m going with this novel, but I’m into the idea that I can at least see all the walls it can bounce off of. Plus, a mall is like walls inside of walls. Even the food court is segmented, and it has railings around the dining area, and you’re not allowed to smoke in certain places outside, even. There are screaming children and slow-moving old people in front of you. It’s almost as confining as a being on a plane.

I’m also interested in the idea of successful storytelling within narratives (like in letters, or orations at parties), because those seem to me like huge limitations on writing. The author is setting himself up to have to tell a story that is more engaging than the one he was setting this one inside of, or else the reader gets anxious for the real action to begin again. And he has to fend off more interruptions, while this is going on, in order to create realism. People at the party ask questions, the character doing the speaking needs a drink, the reader wants to know what she looks like while she talks, and if she can be trusted.

I’d like to write a story about a group of people or a person I truly hate. I want to write from the perspective of a total misogynist, and have him write letters to women, maybe letters to the editor of a publication I hate, and maybe the real action will start within those pages, and I’ll have to limit each step forward to a tiny square of ranting that is despicable, but at the same time eloquent enough to be published in a magazine. Maybe I’ll just assign that exercise to my students, instead.

-Natasha Stagg is a writing teacher and student in Tucson, Arizona.