Amy Hempel on Turning Survival into a Story

Posted on by Jo Lou

Amy Hempel’s Sing To It is her newest short story collection and her first in over a decade. Each piece is precisely honed and crafted with associational thoughts orchestrated into brevity to intensify, not lessen, the complexities behind emotions, memories and motivations. Rhythmic and tip-top language, punctuated by images and unrivaled metaphors, are tools she uses to destabilize her narrators while mobilizing readers into a cleft of curiosity and compassion. Far from being a minimalist, Hempel is a writer who magnifies a mind in motion. Her narrators swerve toward us with a muscled complexity of vulnerability, not a state of victimhood. Concise wording rivets a reader to the raw and recognizable intimacy of narrators’ interior voices that leapfrog from one thought to the next. The structure of these fifteen mirroring-life stories leaves one suspended without a safety net. 

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Five of Hempel’s one-page stories, (Sing To It, The Orphan Lamb, The Doll Tornado, The Second Seating and Equivalent), read like an entire novel while “Cloudland”, the 62 page closing story, is a crafted artwork of resiliency that thrives within a cyclone of ever-present pain. Hovering above Sing To It’s shoreline of stories is the book’s dedication to Gloria Vanderbilt Cooper, who said, “Once you accept life is a tragedy then you can start living.”

Amy Hempel and I corresponded via email about what drove this collection — personal elements woven into fiction — and talked about the importance of associational thinking in her writing process.

Yvonne Conza: What drove this collection? And, how does it differ from your previous works?

Amy Hempel: Always, there is an image or a moment of illumination, or a wonderfully skewed sentence that comes to mind — these are the beginnings of the several short-short stories in the book. But that is not new for me. I think what is different from earlier work is the stance, a kind of attitude in the narrators. These narrators are more knowing, they’ve been around the block, as the expression goes, but they are still vulnerable. My friend Bret Anthony Johnston talks about the difference between vulnerability and victim; it’s a big difference, and I don’t feel these narrators are victims.

YC: How important is associational thinking in your writing process? Do you feel that the processing of information, through patterns, seemingly unrelated elements and contextual relationships, imparts greater layering and progression to the work?

AH: Associative thinking and memory are key to what I’ve done in this book. There is a leap of faith necessary as thoughts and recollections accrue — you have to trust that there is a reason they are occurring when they do, and you will, at some point, understand it. It’s an exciting way to work because of the discovery inherent in it. Patterns proceed from the accrual. It’s a humbling way to write, and it’s different from planning, something I’ve only done once, and that story, “The Chicane,” took thirty years to write.

Non-linear thinking is the only kind I do in real life, so it’s not surprising that it shows up on the page, as well. I don’t see life in terms of beginning, middle, end, though I suppose you can chart certain relationships in this way. Joe Brainard’s I Remember is a book that is close to my own way of thinking on the page, and of course Mary Robison’s Why Did I Ever was, and still is, influential in its accretion of seemingly small, odd moments that turn out to be central and essential.

YC: In Reasons to Live, your first collection, followed seven years later by At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, you made reference to “branching out of grief to fear.” What is Sing To It branching out of?

AH: I think there is a larger concern with external threat — the threat to the natural world. So the stories, particularly “Cloudland,” fix a gaze towards the damage done and the damage to come unless current behavior, both individual and governmental, changes dramatically. There are many other serious threats, of course, notably the way people with power treat people without power. That is also present and addressed in“Cloudland”and other of the new stories.

The stories fix a gaze towards the damage done and the damage to come unless current behavior changes dramatically.

YC: The personal elements in your material — suicides, dogs, accidents, friendships — are cycled through a fictional transaction. In “The Dog of the Marriage” a doorman rings up to let a wife know that a beagle returned home without her husband who was hit by a car. This brought to mind the tragic experience of Abigail Thomas. (Full disclosure: I know Abigail.) In “A Full-Service Shelter,” reference is made to the narrator being afraid of the Presa Canarios, the molossers bred in the Canary Islands. That made me think of Diane Whipple’s murder by two Presa Canarios in 2001 and I thought that perhaps you had a personal connection to Whipple. Also, the woman of immeasurable kindness and talent in “Cloudland” suggests Gloria Vanderbilt Cooper. Are these elements representing both truth and fiction, or perhaps a kind of narrative toggle that morphs into the early metaphor in the opening story of Sing To It — working as “hammocks” for the stories?

AH: You are right to think of Abigail Thomas in the title story “The Dog of the Marriage.” In fact, Abby and her husband adopted the dog I called “Beagleman” in that story, with tragic consequences. I wrote that story as a prequel to Abby’s brilliant and shattering essays about what followed. And, yes, you’re right — I was referring to the Presa Canarios who killed Diane Whipple in San Francisco. Though in fact I did not know her, had just met her once. And the woman of immeasurable kindness and talent in “Cloudland”is Gloria Vanderbilt. I really like your idea of these facts in the fiction working as “hammocks” for the stories, after the image in the story Sing To It. I saw no reason to change certain facts just because they appeared in a work of fiction.

Sometimes there is no improving on what really happened. Though at the same time, a story will go where it needs to go, if you let it. I’m more interested in where something taken from experience veers off into a new mythology.Since the reader doesn’t usually know whether something in a story comes from something similar in the writer’s experience, I think that what matters is whether the story works or not on its own terms, convinces with no other input. On the other hand, there is certainly a tradition of readers thinking an “I” narrator is the author.

YC: In your 1996 interview with Sharon Olds you asked: “Do readers still ask if a poem about a father is about your father? Prior to the question, you quoted Galway Kinnell as saying, with regard to being daring, “going into the center of the intimate experience of a life, not just telling a story” is to “open yourself to interpretation of the poems as expositions of your personal life.” In interviews, your family and personal experiences get mentioned but never elaborated upon, yet both operated within the material. How do you feel about opening yourself up to interpretation that the stories in your collection expose your personal life?

AH: I do understand the interest in this aspect of writing fiction. I don’t much care what readers might think based on what they read. The people who know me know what’s what, and you can only go on record with what you want to say, to reveal, with no means or need to correct the views of other readers. It can be interesting to watch this play out. I often tell students about the reviews of a story in my first book that features a father and his children out for the day. There is no mention of the mother at all, yet some reviewers wrote of the “divorced father,” and others wrote of the “widowed father.”

There is no mention of the mother at all, yet some reviewers wrote of the ‘divorced father,’ and others wrote of the ‘widowed father.’

YC: Bret Anthony Johnston stated in an interview: “To know a character, I have to understand what they want and what they’ve lost.” Do you feel similar to Bret?

AH: I agree with what Bret said about needing to know what characters have lost. It is some of the most defining information about anyone, both on and off the page. He said another thing I find accurate about writing: Don’t write what you know is true, write about what you’re afraid is true.” I also feel that knowing what someone can do without is useful, not only what they want.

YC: Since endings of your stories leave an advancement of new beginnings, is there a narrator within this collection that you might revisit in a future story? There’s a completion to your stories but never a bow-tie ending.

AH: Thank you for finding my story endings “leave an advancement for new beginnings” — I hope to convey that, so I’m glad you saw that in them. I patrol stories — my own and my students’ — for bow-tied endings. They always sound fake, and it’s never a goal to tie off what people are up against. I can’t predict what might happen in the stories I might write next, but my fundamental concerns are likely to be the same.

YC: How do you feel survivorship works within this collection as a theme? And, is performance a necessary quality or dynamic of survivorship?

AH: I feel it is crucial to most of the stories here. In some, there are people who do not survive, and one is left to reckon with how to continue in the face of this fact. In “A Full-Service Shelter,” there are dogs who do not survive, and suffer along the way to their end. How does someone who loves them go on without imploding? It’s why I read so many memoirs, the need to know how people manage, given what they have come up against.

Everyone survives something. Or they don’t. Some people are able to live a reconfigured life after trauma, and some are destroyed in one way or another. And is a stranger’s suffering available to us? I had an interesting talk about this question with Sharon Olds years ago for an interview in BOMB Magazine. She talked about how she found her way to be able to write about this, but she went through a process of giving herself permission. Sorry to sound like a dope, but I don’t understand “performative” in relation to it as a quality of survivorship. Can you say a bit more about this?

YC: I felt, that in your collection, performance does not mean “acting” but, for me, a kind of choreography linked to survivorship. For example, The “Cloudland” narrator’s day-to-day existence/choreography has a performative movement to it, with hovering information about her past and associational thinking that leads her from one thought to the next. She says: “I left the profession of teaching English in high school — a good, private school for girls in Manhattan — in a denouncement of ambition. That is the way I tell it.”The “that is the way I tell it” part captures what I’m referencing as performative quality to survivorship. She survives and knows what to say and what to leave out — how to keep alive and live within the world. I might be overly projecting — but I do think anyone that has lived through tragedy, especially someone like Gloria Vanderbilt Cooper, can appreciate and gain from the vulnerability crafted into this collection.

AH: Thank you for clarifying, by example — “That is the way I tell it” — the “performative” movement in a story. In “Cloudland” the memories are associative because that is what memory feels like to me — it’s never a linear progression of personal history. I always had Gloria much in mind while writing these stories, particularly “Cloudland.” Her resiliency is astonishing. Her many kinds of strength inspired a good deal of what is in this book. It goes behind surviving to become thriving, though of course with the pain ever present. To manage both of these conditions at once is instructive.

YC: Would you like your writing in this collection to be viewed as short fiction, prose, poetry, or something floating within a newer landmark of, say, associational fiction? Or, are you less interested in the “label” of genre?

AH: I am not that interested in labels for kinds of writing, one reason I so appreciate and admire Bernard Cooper’s first book, Maps To Anywhere. Parts of it turned up in Best American Essays, parts are anthologized as prose poems and short-short stories, parts are memoir, and it won the PEN/HEMINGWAY Award for best first fiction the year it was published.

I patrol stories for bow-tied endings. They always sound fake, and it’s never a goal to tie off what people are up against.

YC: Who are the emerging writers of short fiction that you reading?

AH: My favorite question! But I will open it up to favorite writers of memoir too, because I am filled with admiration for Casey Legler’s memoir, Godspeed, that came out this year. In fiction, there’s the debut collection of stories coming from Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light. And There There by Tommy Orange, and Friday Blackby Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and individual stories by Dan McDermott and Nini Berndt, by Amber Caron and Karen Keats and Cally Fiedorek, Jane DeLury’s The Balcony, and A Key To Treehouse Livingby Elliot Reed, and This Is Where I Won’t Be Alone by Inez Tan, and my apologies for those I’m leaving out!

Of the newer writers I’m very keen on, most of them came to me through friends.A mutual friend gave me a galley of Casey Legler’s memoir, and another mutual friend sent me a photo of Kimberly King Parsons showing where she had tattooed a line from one of my stories on her arm! I’d liked a couple of her stories in literary magazines, and there was no way I was not going to read more after that! Sometimes reviews play a part, as with the widespread acclaim for Tommy Orange’s There There. I’ve also been reading for some prizes, and that is why I’ve fallen behind in reading literary magazines; I can’t stay current in both. Though I will certainly miss Tin House, a longtime favorite.

YC: Have you ever considered writing a memoir?

AH: The three or so personal essays I’ve written took too large a toll. There is not going to be a memoir.

YC: What is your hope for Sing To It?

AH: There is a charming story about Susan Sontag as a very young reader writing in the margins of book, “I too have had these thoughts.” I don’t know if it’s true, but I like that response.

I Remember You Were Made of Dark, Warm Wood

Posted on by Halimah Marcus

Blowjob in a Car Wash 
Eating peaches over the kitchen sink, 
a second mouth opens beneath my chin 
to catch the juice that trickles off. 

Deep in machine-assisted sleep I dream
of farewell banquets in carpeted ballrooms, 
the silverware twinkling in projector-light. 

This too will pass, like carside-window grass, 
as if a reel of film sped up, 
unwinding on a loop of desert waste. 

Sifting through the strata of a drawer
I find a pen printed with the name
of the hospital where I was born.

Now, by twisted strands of fate rejoined, 
I stoop to lance a fallen grape 
that has rolled beneath the oven.

Six P.M.
I can read the hour from the street corner
with the stop sign as my gnomon. 
Its shadow is taut as a kite string, 
arcing in the gale of light. 
Lifting my eyes to the horizon, 
this Illinois sunset flattens me. 

Embracing you, I descend into a cellar. 
My vision softens in the darkness. 
And I can only see the halo of your head, 
and feel the schema of your limbs. 
You become the idea of yourself.

If I could, I’d live in endless six p.m., 
the sun’s position fixed at the horizon. 
Only in this hour can I see you clearly, 
before the veil of night lowers between us, 
and I no longer know you, 
although I knew you once.

Silverfish 
Tonight I’m lonesome enough to write a letter
addressed to a Florida key. I bend my thumb
to squeeze the silver from a silverfish, 
and in its ink I fix my signature. 
Branches reach toward my window to take my hand, 
but I am inconsolable. I stomp down
the stairs like playing “Chopsticks” with my feet. 

I remember you were made of dark, warm wood— 
or do I still? 
At least I feel a warmth and see a darkness. 
We cut our hair alike and walked the streets
as if our limbs were bound together, chained
like galley slaves on the Aegean sea. 
It’s true that I remember less well than you, 
and so I remember it better, even good; 
in the dimness of my memory you gleam, 
receding to a single point of light.

Welcome to Electric Literature’s New Website

Posted on by Halimah Marcus

Welcome to the new Electric Literature website! No, you’re not lost. This is the same Electric Literature you know and love, only with a new outfit designed by the talented folks at CMYK.

Yesterday I told a writer we were launching a new website and he said, don’t you already have a website? I said we do, only now it looks different. Anyone who has ever gone through a web redesign knows that this is both true and an oversimplification. To prepare the new site to be as reader-friendly as possible, we’ve sorted through over 5,000 articles dating back to our first post (September 2009), considering what we’ve offered readers in the past, what we want to offer you in the future, and how we can arrange everything in an intuitive way. (It should be pretty intuitive! Weekly literary magazines The Commuter and Recommended Reading under Lit Mags, essays under Essays, etc. We also have a much-improved search function and author pages if you’re looking for something specific.)

Relaunching the site has given us an opportunity to contemplate all the different faces of Electric Literature over the astonishing ten years we’ve been around—from our self-described “ragtag” lit blog The Outlet (get it?), to our literary events coverage blog The Dish, to the first days of Recommended Reading and, last year, the addition of a second weekly lit mag, The Commuter.

To prepare the new site to be as reader-friendly as possible, we’ve sorted through over 5,000 articles dating back to our first post in September 2009.

What we’ve learned from this trip through the archives of a (knock wood) long-lived literary website is this: It’s not enough to be smart, or committed, or scrappy, or any one of a number of laudable traits that haven’t saved other great sites from oblivion. You also have to be extremely adaptable—and at least a little bit lucky. We’ve been incredibly fortunate in our devoted readership, which has grown from a couple thousand to hundreds of thousands. You’ve seen us through any number of changes we’ve made in order to stay on top of the times, the technology, and the needs of the community. This new site is the most recent, but if our luck holds, it won’t be the last.

(One more note on that storied history: We’ve imported thousands of pieces of content to the new site, some of which date back to several websites ago. If an older piece looks a bit weird, please keep it close to your heart as evidence of our evolution, and assume we know and are working on it.)

If you are going to be at AWP in Portland next week, please join us for our 10th birthday party with fellow 10-year-old The Rumpus: It’s My Party, I’ll Cry If I Want To. We’ll have cake, free drinks courtesy of our sponsor Aevitas Creative Management, and readings on the theme by Kaveh Akbar, Marie-Helene Bertino, Ryan Chapman, Bonnie Chau, R.O. Kwon, and Talin Tahajian.

EL and The Rumpus 10th Birthday Flyer

The White Owl
1305 SE 8th Ave
Portland, OR 97214
Friday, March 29th
6:30 – 9 PM

So what will we be doing for the next ten years? In many ways it seems we are approaching, or have reached, peak internet. On the other side of that peak, I hope the frenzy of our lives online will reach an equilibrium, and the internet will become (or go back to being) a place where we can find what we are looking for, rather than one that takes over. That’s the dream: a more reader-friendly version of online. An internet that looks more like what Electric Literature has always tried to be: thoughtful, well-read, irreverent but not cynical, and interested in a better world.

But people have been wrong about the online future before. Even if the internet doesn’t slow down, we’ll be here, adapting—finding ways to deliver that thoughtful experience in the midst of the digital din. Whether it’s settling into absorbing, long-form fiction, being amused by an irreverent comic, or having your mind changed by an intelligent and personal piece of criticism, I want Electric Literature to be a place where you can stick around for a while. We plan to.


Who Gets to Be All-American?

Posted on by Jo Lou

Mitchell S. Jackson’s Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family is unlike any other book I’ve ever read. Survival Math is, on one hand, a historical and cultural expedition into Black Portland, a city that has seemingly hidden away its Black population in exchange for white hipsters, gentrification, and a facade of liberal open mindedness. On the other hand, it is a deep dive into Jackson’s family history, self-examination, and how history and the world at large overtly and subliminally motivated the “re-visioning” of Jackson’s life. Just as Erika Taylor wrote in her review for NPR, I too am wary of being too effusive with praise for Jackson’s innovative, intense, and intimate collection of essays for fear of coming across as insincere, but I assure you, the praise in this case is well deserved.

The excellence of Survival Math is not at all surprising. Mitchell S. Jackson’s debut novel The Residue Years won a Whiting Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. Jackson has received fellowships from the Cullman Center of the NYPL, the Lannan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, PEN America, TED, New York Foundation for the Arts, and The Center for Fiction. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, The Guardian, Tin House, and elsewhere. He is a Clinical Associate Professor of writing in Liberal Studies at New York University.

Mitchell S. Jackson and I chatted about Black Portland and who gets to be all-American. 

Tyrese L. Coleman: I’ve been dying to ask you about the men on the cover of Survival Math. Who are they and what is your relationship to them?

Mitchell S. Jackson: Those men are my kinfolk. They include my brothers, uncles, cousins, grandfather, and a nephew. They are the men whose stories compose the Survivor Files.

Survival Math book cover
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TLC: Part of what I find striking about the cover are these black and white images of Black men and then the book’s subtitle “Notes on an All-American Family.” It reminds me of a tweet from Tayari Jones where she said that the question she is asked the most is why she titled her book An American Marriage, “because it is confusing for someone like me to use ‘American’ without another word in front of it.” But, you do add another word in front of it: “All.” Your family feels very American to me but I imagine there will be some readers who will question why you included those words in the book’s title. Can you talk about that?

MSJ: Well, I guess I could start with pointing out something others have: if you don’t fit into the dominant group, you often get hyphenated: Asian-American, Hispanic-American, African-American. Those hyphenates seem a part of the great project of othering. A part of me calling them all-American is challenging the idea of who is American. In “American Blood” I claim that the people who are subjugated, oppressed, disenfranchised — and despite those harms, maintain some sense of national pride — might be the most American. The all of the subtitle is a shorthand way of asserting that claim. I want readers to question why it’s there, which is simultaneously an invite to challenge their perception of Americanness of citizenship of belonging, which as I see it, also an invitation to assess their perception of the value of a human being.

If you don’t fit into the dominant group, you often get hyphenated. Those hyphenates seem a part of the great project of othering.

TLC: The book is separated into four different sections: “Who Are We?” “What Have We Learned?” “What Have We Endured?” and “How Do We Proceed?” but within each section, there is even more structure, with poems and essays that reflect the nature of each section, and then at the end of each section, are Survivor Files. Can you talk more about the Survivor Files? Where did they come from and can I assume that the Survivor Notes correspond to the pictures preceding them?

MSJ: The Survivor Files include the portraits of the men on the cover and also a short narrative about a personal crucible. To obtain that story, I asked each of them the same question: What’s the toughest thing you’ve survived? I wrote the stories in the second person because I think that POV is dynamic in that is assumes the character of a first-person narrative but also invites the reader to imagine themselves as the protagonist of the story. Just who is the you? There’s something else about the stories: there’s a nod in each one of them to the past and the future. I mention something that happened to them before whatever is the central conflict and something that happens to them after the central conflict. That started with the first file I wrote which is also the first file in the book. And since I did it with the first one, I challenged myself to be consistent. My old mentor Gordon Lish used to counsel, “What you do once, do twice.”

TLC: You write about growing up in Portland, Oregon. I’ve only been to Portland once, but will be going back soon for AWP. Coming from the D.C. area, I simultaneously loved and hated the city. I’m no expert (obviously) but it felt like a place that wanted to rise above American conservatism while embracing fascism, as if those two seemingly opposing ideals went hand in hand, part of a “free-thinking society.”

Your book paints a city that feels utterly Black, but when I was there, it felt completely the opposite. I noticed a lot of nods to white supremacy and white nationalism. There were people working in certain shops with Nazi tattoos. And I also could not stop thinking about the May 2017 attack on the light rail where a white nationalist killed two men who were protecting two black Muslim women. But I couldn’t tell if I was just paranoid about being in such a white place.

Seeking to reconcile the portrait of Blackness you paint of the city and my feelings about the place, does my intuition have any merit? What are your feelings about Portland in regards to the place you grew up in and now when you may visit, but no longer live there?

MSJ: I think your intuition is right. I wouldn’t even call it intuition if you’re seeing Nazi tattoos. Oregon was formed with the explicit intent to exclude blacks and 162 years later the virtual monolith of whiteness in Oregon, in Portland, is the fruit of that telos. When I was growing up, I spent most of my time in the city’s small Black neighborhood: Northeast Portland (the NEP). Since the NEP was essentially my world, I didn’t feel the blatant racism that I might’ve experienced had I lived outside of the neighborhood. I was also ignorant of the state and city’s racist history. Now it seems that both liberals and white nationalist think Oregon and Portland a dandy place to live. The question is, how could it be bastion for groups who hold, at least ostensibly, radically different ideologies? What is it that links to those groups?

Oregon was formed with the explicit intent to exclude blacks and the virtual monolith of whiteness in Oregon is the fruit of that telos.

TLC: Survival Math felt very familiar and accessible for me. I think this is because of the voice. I felt as if we were sitting across from one another and we were just vibing and you were using the same language you would use in conversation, but more poetically eloquent. It gave me the impression that this is a book written by a Black man for a Black audience with no apologies made for anyone who may not catch on to certain turns of phrase or other culturally specific references. I’ve been seeing writing from other Black authors who I feel are almost deliberately eschewing the impulse to write for a more “universal” audience or understanding. Personally, I do. Was that your thought as you started drafting the pieces in this book? Or did the voice come more unconsciously than that? Should a writer, especially a Black writer, ever bow to the impulse of writing in some “universal” voice?

MSJ: One of my favorite essays is James Baldwin’s essay “If Black English Isn’t a Language Then Tell Me What is.” In that essay, Baldwin writes the following: “It goes without saying, then, that language is also a political instrument, means, and proof of power. It is the most vivid and crucial key to identity: It reveals the private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public, or communal identity.” I agree with Baldwin that language is the most essential part of one’s identity because it’s how we describe ourselves and the world. I’m always trying to find language that asserts my identity. Like everyone else, I contain multitudes, so the language must capture the different aspects of self, must reflect my residence in what has often felt like disparate worlds, must illume that I’ve known what it’s like to run from the police with a pocketful of crack and also what it’s like to chat it up in a Brooklyn brownstone with Pulitzer winners.

TLC: In your essay “Exodus” you talk about the tradition of leaving, of an exodus, for your great grandparents from the South to Portland, but also your own exodus from Portland to New York and the less than straight way you made it out. As I was reading, I kept noticing the aspects of your grandparents’ life that felt very familiar to me, a Southern Black woman. Exodus means to leave or change, but I am struck by what remained, what travelled with the traveler — God, food, comforts of family, traditions. When you made your exodus, what traveled with you?

MSJ: What traveled with me on my West to East exodus was the feeling of having been tested, of having come out — alive — on the other side of trials. I needed that because New York is not an easy city to navigate. There were lean times, particularly in the summers, because I was an adjunct professor for so long and refused to get a job that was outside of the literary life. I also carried with me the belief that community was important, which fueled my desire to build community especially with other writers, once I arrived. Even now, I have been organizing and hosting the Harlem Renaissance Fete for Writers of Color for what will be five years. I hosted it with writer Jacqueline Woodson and editor Tracy Sherrod for several years and this past year, with writer/editor Jennifer Baker. The whole reason for the party is to create community for writers of color, particularly Black writers. One other thing that I brought with me on my exodus was the language of home. I never did conform to the argot of New Yorkers. I wanted to maintain the language of home because I needed it to maintain a sense of self and my for the distinctiveness of my work — I’m committed to writing about home — because I didn’t want to cede the place I loved for a new place, a place that could’ve very easily consumed a huge part of what has grounded me in the world.

The people who are subjugated, oppressed, disenfranchised   might be the most American.

TLC: Your piece “Apples”…whew, where to start? First, I think this may have been the first time I’ve read a Black man articulating what Black women have, generally, felt regarding the idealizing of white women by some Black men. But there was something more brutal, less bitter, coming from your perspective. You say in the section titled, “Myths, Fairy Tales, and Legends,” that the apple, which is a metaphoric term you use for white women that incorporates the enticement and temptation they possess for some Black men, that “The apple is part myth….The apple is part legend.” But in some ways, would you also say, that the apple is part reality? Especially when considering what white man have done to protect them, as you say, “in the name of chivalric and paternal protection of the women they’ve invested (burdened?) with the expectation of piousness, who they’ve weighted with lifetime roles as the incubator and progenitor of the white race”? Legend and myths hardly get people killed on the regular. So is some aspect of the apple reality?

Additionally, the apple feels very much a reality in my eyes being a Black woman who has lived in the shadow of this white myth, fairy tale, and legend. Reality in respect to the threats she creates.

MSJ: Yes. The apple is absolutely a reality. A part of was I trying to say was that white men had mythologized their women so that they could perpetrate corporeal oppression. Of course, Black men and Black women were featured targets of that oppression. It’s hard for me to imagine a group more keen, more intelligent, more perceptive, more strong, more resilient, more resourceful, more forgiving, more loving, more sensual, more, more, more than Black women. How could that not be seen as a threat to those intent on subjugating Black folks, which is also another way of saying, to those intent on the project of dehumanizing all those that don’t belong to their so-called race.

TLC: I have a lot of questions for you after reading “The Scale,” where you discuss your “crimes” against women and examine the root, or at least a few roots, of your behavior and what affect that behavior had on women you mistreated, but mainly, I want to know, what happened? What made you decide to do this self-examination? And what did you gain from it?

MSJ: I read an essay years ago in Esquire magazine titled “Why Men Cheat.” It was a candid essay that detailed the rationale and rules of cheating for a single man. He was unapologetic about it too. For obvious reasons, he never identified himself. I was struck by that essay. I didn’t agree with all of his rationale, but I also recognized some of my pathologies in it. The author wrote, “If you cheat, you must believe this much: that fated love is a lie, and monogamous love a deception. If you cheat, these two sentiments are your guiding light. Doesn’t mean you’re incapable of love, doesn’t mean you don’t want what love — or even marriage — can offer. It’s just a paradox. You have what you believe, and it is never the lie. You train your sentiment to fit inside the lie. Your rules fit right inside that sentiment.”

While I didn’t agree wholeheartedly with his thesis, I did recognize my aversion to deep, unguarded love and also the ability to hold paradoxical ideas concerning women. But I also recognized problems with the essay. One stark problem was that the writer never stopped to examine the genesis of his thinking. He seemed resigned to call it a paradox and leave it at that. That is understandable in some sense, since his thinking wouldn’t stand up to reasonable scrutiny. Another glaring problem with the essay was that he didn’t talk at all about the fallout of his deeds. After reading it, I asked myself, what would happen if I endeavored to examine my relationships with women, my pathologies? What would happen if I was honest about the fallout of my deeds?

Later in my thinking — I began writing the essay in 2011 — I also was very much interested in trying to track the historical and philosophical genesis of womanizing. But I also challenged myself to do it without the cover of anonymity. It seemed like if I was sincere about the effort, that I had to own it all the way. And I tried as best I could to cast myself in the most critical light. What I gained from it was a fuller understanding of the harms I’d caused. Fearing what I suspected might be paralyzing guilt, I had long avoided considering the consequences of my actions as much as I could. But in writing the essay, I had to lay them out, not only that, but read them over and over. I also got a chance to speak with some of my former partners about our relationships, and speak to them at a time when the pained I’d caused wasn’t so acute. That again gave me more perspective. I also hope that if any of them choose to read the essay it gives them a sense of understanding. I would hope that it doesn’t act as a trigger for them or any other woman, but I also realize that that’s a risk. To anyone that receives the work in that way, I apologize.

It’s hard for me to imagine a group more keen, more intelligent, more perceptive, more strong, more resilient than black women.

TLC: Also in “The Scale,” you write very candidly about your own egotism, saying “…the crux of my motivation: that, almost always, was the need to satisfy my ego, to prove to myself that I was still capable, that I hadn’t lost the power to, as we say, ‘make it happen.’” And I wonder if the choice of memoir (for you, for me, being that I am also a memoirist, and for others) is an exercise in egotism. The basis of the self-awareness needed to examine oneself has to be rooted in some form of egotism, right? If not (or in addition), where else does the memoirist’s desire to write about themselves come from? What made you write this book?

MSJ: It’s interesting because I never intended to write a memoir. I intended to write essays. My definition of a memoir is this: a narrative composed from experiences. My definition of essay is this: prose focused on a particular subject or idea. Some readers might apprehend the major sections of the book as chapters of the memoir, but I see them as essays. Because I don’t want the essays to be solely or overwhelmingly expository, I ground them in personal experience. Some of that is my experience, but in many cases in the book, it is the experiences of others: my mother, uncles, dad, etc. But again, I always imagined their stories in service of an idea. The idea that poor people might be our greatest patriots, that idea that the chosen people are the righteous that choose themselves, the idea that long-term addiction can be viewed as a long-term marriage. So, I’m not sure if this book evidences the ipseity of a conventional memoirist. I do, however, think my experiences are valuable, but I guess one of the points I’m making in the book is that mine are not the only valuable experiences, not necessarily the most valuable experiences either.

Satisfaction seems like a dangerous place for a writer to reside, one that discourages the motivation one needs to keep going and going.

TLC: In “Revisions,” you use a quote from Toni Morrison, “Endings I always know, because that’s always what the book is about. The problem is getting there.” And you write, “…gleaning the differences between a start and a beginning is crucial to revising one’s self. Starts are beholden in some respect to time. Beginnings are a harvest of timing.” Your exodus was your beginning, but I feel as though all of Survival Math is your start. Are you done revising yourself now? Have you reached a satisfying ending to your story?

MSJ: I hope that me re-visioning my life continues until I die, that I am constantly looking back to inform where to go. While I am proud of completing this book, I’m also relieved that I don’t feel like I’ve reached a satisfying ending. I would actually be scared if I did. Satisfaction seems like a dangerous place for a writer to reside, one that discourages the motivation one needs to keep going and going. The minute I start to believe I’m done revising, I’m in trouble. One could argue it would be the first moment of the end producing strong work. That said, I don’t think I’ll revisit my family in the way that I have in this book. I did it in The Residue Years in fiction and now in Survival Math in nonfiction, and though I’m sure there’s more to say, I don’t see myself reflecting on them in such an explicit and sustained way.

In that sense, Survival Math is the start of me moving into a phase in my writing life where my and my family’s personal stories aren’t the crux of the work. That’s both an exhilarating and frightening prospect for me because I place so much on ethos, so much on the authority one gains from being intimately connected to the content. Luckily, my next project is a novel about a black cult leader in Oregon, and I happen to be close with a couple of people who were in the cult.

6 Books Made of Weird Materials

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

You know what a book is: 200 or so sheets of paper inside a cover, right? But why not 200 or so sheets of… cheese? Or fabric? Or glass?

These artists have taken their book-loving to a new level, using non-paper materials to create their own interpretations of books. A book isn’t just paper and ink, which opens the conversation to the future of bookmaking. What are the opportunities that can come from using different materials? Is it a genius reawakening, or an expensive gimmick? And does this change how we understand books?

Here are a few of the interesting books that show the creativity, ingenuity, and humor of different artists to expand beyond the standard practice of paper bookmaking. Some of these books are important considerations, even if they would never fit on my own bookshelf. Though, if I had a book? It would definitely be made from chocolate.

https://twitter.com/MariaLai_/status/514720676348182528

Fabric

Various sewn books are made from textile materials and stitching. Maria Lai, an Italian fiber artist, embroidered books entirely from thread and cloth. Much of her art was interested in the lives and voices of Sardinian women and their domestic and social practices.

Invisible

Reddit user cuddlebadger created an “invisible” print of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man using 1/16” Lexan sheets and fishing line. This clear copy is the perfect example of form meeting content and reminiscent of Super Terrain’s heat-sensitive copy of Fahrenheit 451, which has to be burned to be read.Buy a Copy of Fahrenheit-451 That Can Only Be Read If It’s on Fire
For a mere $451, you can now own a limited-edition heat-sensitive copy of Ray Bradbury’s bookelectricliterature.com

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpJX2UVnkuO/

Cheese

Ben Denzer’s 20 Slices consists of 20 plastic-wrapped Kraft singles. His other works include a book of 192 one dollar bills à la Andy Warhol that was sold by the Whitney Museum in 2018; 20 Sweeteners, made of 20 Splenda packets; and 5 Ketchups. Heinz, of course.

Waterproof

Mary Anne Mohanraj’s Aqua Erotica is a waterproof anthology of erotic short stories made from polypropylene, a thermoplastic polymer. This is the perfect book to bring to the beach or in the bath, though be careful. Aqua Erotica is not protected from all liquids. According to some readers, it doesn’t hold up against wine or beer, so drink beforehand. Cheers!

https://twitter.com/delight_monger/status/421317169993904128

Ice

Artist Basia Irland’s “Ice Receding/Books Reseeding,” a series of book-shaped ice sculptures frozen with seeds and other plant materials. The books are left to melt along rivers to reseed the local ecosystem with new life and raise awareness of climate disruption and watershed restoration.

Glass

In 2013, Icelandic-Dutch artist Olafur Eliasson worked with Ivorypress to create “A view becomes a window,” an edition of nine leather-bound artist books made of glass and light. The pages, created from hand-blown glass of various colors and opacities, can be read when light reflects and refracts through the glass to create brilliant illuminations.

What Science Can Learn from Constipated Dogs

Posted on by Jess Zimmerman

The first time I picked up Gulliver’s Travels, I was working in a protein production lab. I’d just gotten home after a painfully long day, half of which I’d spent on an experiment that mysteriously failed at the last minute — not a good thing when the deadline to get data is fast approaching — and I was more than a little stressed. Gulliver’s Travels happened to be the book nearest to the armchair into which I’d gratefully collapsed. But in spite of my mood (or perhaps because of it), Jonathan Swift’s imagination, his worlds in all their layered absurdity, fascinated me enough to read well into the night.

A similarly frustrating week would pass before I got to Book III of the Travels, where Gulliver travels to a city of people devoted to studying mathematics, but who can’t even build their houses level. A grand Academy, built for the brightest minds in the country, stands in the city center and is occupied by a motley of projectors (investigators, that is) who do things like try to determine the color of paint by touch and smell, or turn ice into gunpowder. Their attempts are met with approval by the city’s inhabitants, and only Gulliver feels there’s something ridiculous going on.

Maybe it was my irritation with the work I was doing, but in reading Swift’s satire on the science of his day, I could see the spitting image of modern scientific practice.

Admittedly, my response wasn’t typical. Almost 300 years separate our world from the one Swift lived in, and for most people, the Academy of Projectors Gulliver visits seems at first glance a crude caricature of today’s multi-billion-dollar research institutes and university science departments. The instinctual reaction is to scoff — surely modern science doesn’t involve some crackpot squirreled away in a lab waving fistfuls of test tubes, right? After all, advances in science since the 18th century have been responsible for everything from the eradication of smallpox to the launch of the International Space Station.

But first impressions aren’t always perfect. It’s worth pushing through that initial reaction and thinking through the similarities between the discipline of science that Swift saw and criticized, and the science of today. The two have more in common than first meets the eye. Even now, three centuries on, reading Gulliver’s Travels can give us insights into modern science and its relationship with the world.

We just need to know what to look for.

I’ll start by saying something about what makes Gulliver’s Travels effective at delivering its criticisms. Throughout the novel, the protagonist, Lemuel Gulliver, repeatedly encounters worlds which seem completely alien to the one he knows. On Lilliput, he meets a race of people one-twelfth the size of regular humans, living in tiny villages and cities. In Book IV, he comes face-to-face with a breed of talking horses and their vaguely humanoid slaves.

Swift hides his satire behind a veil of fantasy, and it’s only when we look closely that we see the mirror he holds up to society.

Swift hides his satire behind a veil of fantasy, and it’s only when we look closely that we see the mirror he holds up to society.

The Lilliputians may be tiny, but their capriciousness and cruelty easily match the extremes of which humans are capable. The talking horses might appear to be objects of slapstick humor, but they spend their days actively plotting genocide.

Time and time again, the worlds Gulliver visits and the beings he meets come to embody the worst of human nature and society, and Swift is so effective at leveling his criticisms because he withholds recognition of that humanity for as long as possible.

By presenting the familiar wrapped up in the exotic, Swift makes us, as readers, first experience, then intuit, and only then recognize and think.

It’s no surprise, then, that Gulliver’s Travels is often seen as one of the first science fiction texts in the English canon. After all, Swift is using a technique that in the years after him science fiction has come to perfect: burying the narrative’s relevance in a world so completely unknown that we can’t rely on our previous experience to recognize it. Darko Suvin, one of the best-known sci-fi literary theorists, describes it like this:

SF is… the space of a potent estrangement… [it is] a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author’s empirical environment.

“The presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition.” In other words, Swift goes out of his way to make the worlds he builds strange and unfamiliar, which causes us to bypass the fog of experience and see them afresh. And then cognition kicks in — then, once we’ve judged them properly, we can realize how similar they are to what we know, and hopefully come to a much more sober reflection on our own society.

All this brings us neatly back to Gulliver and the Academy of Projectors. By now it should be clear that here, like everywhere else, Swift gives us situations that we’ll first judge as ridiculous, and only then start to recognize. So Gulliver’s first encounter is with a scientist in the Academy who

had been eight years upon a project for extracting sun-beams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt in eight years more, he should be able to supply the Governors Gardens with sunshine at a reasonable rate…

Mostly, this is funny because it’s incongruous — because the certainty with which the projector speaks doesn’t match up with the absurdity of what he’s suggesting. But for the more astute of Swift’s 18th-century readers, there would be a spark of recognition following the smirk.

An illustration by Milo Winter of a projector extracting sunlight from cucumbers
A projector extracting sunlight from cucumbers

By the time Gulliver’s Travels was published in 1726, the Royal Society of London, established 126 years earlier to bring about “the improvement of Natural Knowledge,” was starting to be viewed with a bit of skepticism. Partly, this was because its achievements at the time weren’t quite as numerous as people had hoped, but it’s also clear that Swift, like many others, saw some of the society’s activities as rather ludicrous.

In a 1937 essay, critics Nicholson and Mohler showed that the majority of the projects in Swift’s Academy aren’t really that far removed from what the Royal Society was working on at the time. The “sun-beams from cucumbers” idea, for instance, probably came from actual attempts at using plants to convert sunlight into gas, and experiments in bottling and selling regional air.

But that was then. How relevant is Swift’s idea about the absurdities of 18th-century science to the science of today?

Well, in one sense, the discipline has changed a lot since 1726 and has many more accomplishments to speak of. Science has certainly benefited from the process of institutionalization, and the persistent efforts of scientific organizations and the scientists in them have led to humans living longer and healthier lives. They’ve allowed us to manipulate the world in unbelievable ways, to build skyscrapers and airplanes. Science has cured diseases and saved lives, explored everything from the microscopic cell to the frontiers of space.

And it’s important to remember that toying with absurdity has played a crucial role in all thisIt’s important to remember that many of these advancements would never have come about if scientists weren’t willing to entertain the seemingly absurd — after all, the methodology of science has always been to take small steps in the direction of making the absurd a reality. As sci-fi writer Arthur Clarke put it, “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”

But at the same time, the inexorable, institutional pursuit of science has some troubling consequences. As our scientific knowledge has grown over the years, it has become increasingly segmented and stratified. To take one example, my field of study, genetics, was all but unknown until a century ago. In the seven or so decades since the structure of DNA was discovered, the field has split into literally dozens of sub-specialties. Many of these, like evolutionary genomics and pharmacogenetics, are as alien to each other as completely different branches of science.

The inexorable, institutional pursuit of science has some troubling consequences.

We have to pause and consider what impact this segmentation of knowledge may have. Swift’s projectors in the Academy are ridiculous (and pitiful) partly because they’re so engrossed in their research that they have no ability to look up, step back and see the bigger picture. And as humanity’s wealth of scientific knowledge grows, it’s getting more and more difficult for researchers and students alike to maintain a sense of perspective. Already in many universities, science programs allow little to no scope for exploring other disciplines like the humanities.

It’s increasingly the case that in science, one has to learn more and more to become an expert in less and less. This trend cannot be good for our development as individuals, and it should worry us a great deal more than it seems to.

One of the reasons we don’t often think about such things is that our society, generally speaking, doesn’t like criticizing science. I don’t mean in the sense of climate change deniers or the rabid anti-vaccination movement — we’ve got plenty of those, unfortunately. I mean that serious methodological debate about science as a whole isn’t something we’re comfortable with.

This, too, was a problem that Swift identified early on. During his tour of the Academy, Gulliver meets a projector whose task is “an operation to reduce human excrement to its original food,” and that wonderful interaction starts off in a striking way:

I went into another chamber, but was ready to hasten back, being almost overcome with a horrible stink. My conductor pressed me forward, conjuring me in a whisper to give no offence, which would be highly resented; and therefore I durst not so much as stop my nose.

This is one of the most revolting scenes in the entire novel, and Swift uses that repulsiveness to demonstrate the cult-like reverence the Academy has generated for itself. Such is the power of the institution that the danger of offending its practitioners supersedes all other concerns — even ones of basic hygiene.

There’s a serious point here: in observing the institutionalization of science in the 18th century, Swift saw the very real danger of it becoming an increasingly inaccessible, incontestable, and monolithic discipline. And unfortunately, it looks like his fears were justified.

Just last year, I met a student at the University of Edinburgh who told me that philosophers have no place commenting on the dealings of science. That only scientists have the right to judge science. Sadly, this is a common view, coupled with a growing belief that science is the only useful way of interpreting the world and gaining knowledge about it.

“What are you studying that for?” is a reaction I get regularly when I tell people that I study English literature as well as genetics. Sometimes it’s subtext. Sometimes it’s not.

Because of the very visible scientific achievements that have made our lives so much better over the years, people are forgetting that there are some questions about our existence science in principle can’t answer. Important questions, like “How should one act in order to be a good person?” and “What can we do to understand the experiences of others?” Questions that we cannot afford to lose sight of.

But the scientific mindset is at risk of overshadowing the forms of inquiry that are best suited to probing these questions, and that worries me greatly. When funding is cut to university departments, it is invariably historians, literature scholars, sociologists, artists, and anthropologists that suffer first, rather than physicists, mathematicians or computer scientists. Once upon a time, philosophers were the most esteemed members of society. Now, largely because of a lack of job funding, the vast majority of philosophy majors will never work in their chosen discipline.

And it’s a shame, because science is at its most beautiful and extraordinary when it shares the stage with other disciplines. When the insights it generates supplement other modes of thinking. When it steps into dialogue with philosophy, law, medicine, history.

The scientific mindset is at risk of overshadowing the forms of inquiry that are best suited to probing these questions.

Incidentally, the prestige of scientific authority that Swift saw as an emerging problem isn’t just something that affects the status of other fields. It’s also a reality that scientists themselves have to deal with.

Before he published a single word on evolution by natural selection — what would become the most successful scientific theory in biology — Charles Darwin spent 20 years gathering data, repeating his studies and thinking through his ideas. “You know what would happen to me if I did that?” an evolutionary biology professor from my university once told me. “I’d lose my job within a year.”

The drive to actively contribute to the prestige science commands — to further the cause of science — has led to a “publish or perish” culture in the field. Researchers are spending less time than ever reflecting critically on their work and much more time writing grant applications and publishing papers. Increasingly, quantity trumps quality.

Add to this the fact that many scientific journals are reluctant to accept negative results, and it’s no surprise that science is in the midst of an unprecedented reproducibility crisis. A 2016 article published by Nature found that of more than 1,500 researchers surveyed, over 70% had tried and failed to replicate the results of another study. In cancer biology, a 2012 inquiry estimated that as few as 11% of published results are actually reproducible. This is a major problem whose scale we’re only now starting to realize.

And broadly, this was exactly Swift’s point. If we consider the methodologies of science as a discipline to be beyond criticism, if we invest in it to the detriment of other human attempts at understanding the world — if we never step back and see the broader picture — there will be very real and devastating consequences.

If we invest in science to the detriment of other human attempts at understanding the world, there will be very real and devastating consequences.

Gulliver’s trip to the “practical” side of the Academy ends with a visit to the resident doctor, who first outlines his ingenious idea for treating colic — pumping and then sucking air through the rectum with a pair of bellows — and then demonstrates it: “I saw him try both experiments upon a dog… the animal was ready to burst, and made so violent a discharge… the dog died on the spot, and we left the doctor endeavoring to recover him by the same operation.”

The shock value is strong here, but the graphic imagery also reveals an unrecognizably, unfathomably barbaric side to science. And as always, there’s a deliberate delay for us to respond emotionally before we start to think about how accurate this depiction is — whether the science we know and trust really has the capacity for such harm, literally or otherwise. The answer isn’t easy to come to terms with.

So Swift’s final image of the dog and the doctor becomes a sad metaphor for a terrifying possible future — for a discipline scrambling in vain to repair the untold damage done in the wake of its unchecked and unquestioned progression.

In spite of all this, it’s important to remember that Gulliver’s Travels wasn’t an anti-science book. Jonathan Swift didn’t have a beef with the idea of science in principle — after all, he was writing during the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment. The very fabric of his satire, as we’ve seen, only works if people think.

Swift’s problem was with the way science was being practiced, and especially with the people who would preach it to the exclusion of everything else. By relying on rationality in his criticisms, Swift actually showed his support for the underlying principle of good scientific practice: careful and considered reason. It’s just that science shouldn’t be allowed to eclipse other modes of thought.

Three centuries on, we would do well to heed his warnings.

Spring 2019 Horoscopes for Writers

Posted on by Jess Zimmerman

In spring, all things are made new — but this is also an opportunity to review the intentions we set at the beginning of the calendar year.

In April, outer planets station retrograde, where they will be for the entirety of the summer, into autumn. This isn’t going to be quite like last summer, where practically every planet in the sky was retrograde, leading to a sloggish summer where all we did was turn over the same soil. This time around, it’s just three retrograde planets: Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto. How we expand and where we find our faith, how we work within and create structure, and where we are undergoing transformation are all up for review. You may be most familiar with retrogrades via your Twitter friends blaming every kind of wackiness on Mercury being in retrograde, but retrogrades are normal, and are just one kind of energy to work with. When it comes to astrology, knowledge is power: if you know it’s happening, you can use it to your advantage.

Meanwhile, Venus, the planet of love and value, will zip through four different signs — and four different areas of your life — asking you to consider how you bring beauty to your life, how you value different parts of yourself and those you love, and how you take the time to nurture your creativity.

At the very end of spring, just as the summer solstice approaches, Jupiter, the planet of expansion, and Saturn, the planet of responsibility, will both connect with Neptune, the planet of vision and dreams, offering blessings in kind, asking how we are going to work with the dream this summer. Jupiter (by then retrograde) amplifies the dream; Saturn asks us whether and how the dream needs revising.

This is a time of preparation. The summer will bring more eclipses, and more rooting out. Spring is a time for renewal, a time to work with retrogrades, a time to bask in the varying Venus energies, a time to use Aries fire, Taurus seed sowing, and Gemini fast-flying energy to your advantage.

Aries symbol

ARIES

Feeling energized lately? Spring is your season, a time of new beginnings, new ideas, planting seeds and breaking free after the long winter. The vernal equinox on March 20 ushers in Aries season and with it, your birthday: new year, new you.

This is a time to harness as much of that fiery, buoyant energy into your creative projects as you can. On April 5, a new moon in Aries offers you the opportunity to set powerful intentions for this new zodiac year, and for your own birthday season. New moons are all about new beginnings and new projects: what have you been muddling through this winter, having difficulty getting off the ground? Now is the time to put some fire behind that idea. (Also, this new moon will be at 15 degrees — those of you with your sun, ascendant, or other personal planets or angles within one to three degrees of the moon will be particularly impacted.)

On May 15, Venus goes into Taurus, where she is at home in its earthy sensuality — and in your house of resources and value. While Venus is in Taurus, she brings a touch of grace and nuance to how you handle your resources (as well as how you value yourself). Now is a time to pay extra attention to the give and take of the flow of money and time and exchange of resources in your life.

Writing Prompt: What project have you been meaning to get to, and just putting off? Brush it off, and make a date night with yourself to work on it — perhaps around the new moon.

Taurus symbol

TAURUS

The big news for you in the early months of this year was Uranus, the planet of change and revolution, going into your house of self and identity. It’s going to spend the next seven years here, turning over the soil. While Uranus can take a minute to get going, if you’ve got planets or your ascendant at early degrees (check your birth chart), you may be feeling these effects early. What does that mean for your writing? Uranus coming through this particular part of your life shakes up how you conceive of your very identity. That could mean what you write about, or how you think of yourself as a writer. The key is rocking and rolling with the changes Uranus throws your way: stay flexible. Not always your first instinct, Taurus: you like comfort; you like to root down. You like stability. You are an earth sign, after all.

Your birthday season kicks off on April 20. There is a new moon in your sign on May 4; a time for planting, growing — everything that Taurus loves to do. Use this energy to really focus on gathering and growing those seeds that you kicked off in Aries season, and put them down in the fertile Taurus earth. Saturn, the planet of responsibility, will have just gone retrograde a few days before; this project may, in some way, have to do with reconsidering or revising an aspect of an old project idea. The next few months under Saturn Retrograde are a ripe time for revising and re-envisioning, for making all things new.

Writing Prompt: Uranus wants to change up that topsoil and sift through, finding what still serves you — and what doesn’t. What parts of your identity are calcified — what is past its expiration date? What is it time to let go of? How does this letting go affect your creative self, your work?

Gemini symbol

GEMINI

If winter was all about working with your long-term goals, spring is all about digging in to your community and, ultimately, taking care of yourself. The season opens with planets hanging out in your house of friendships, social consciousness, and the internet: social networks like Twitter are playtime for you, and a gathering like AWP offers you the chance to truly shine. In March and early April, don’t lose the threads of new, budding relationships you are building with people. Winter can be cold, and SAD is real, but keep those new flames burning. The people you’re meeting right now will be good for you (and vice versa).

Gemini season — your birthday season! — arrives on May 21, heralding with it the winds of spring, spreading new ideas and inspiring people to travel, to share, to connect. Gemini is ruled by Mercury, the messenger, who can zip around the world and also dive beneath to Hades’ realm: Mercury is surefooted, and able to chameleon into any environment they need. This ability to adapt is a gift, but be sure that, as your season unfolds, you are standing on solid ground. When you feel rooted, your work is more rooted, as well. There is a new moon in your sign on June 3, offering the chance to set new intentions and put new plans into place.

With both Venus, the planet of love and value, and Mars, the planet of action, lighting up your house of self and identity, you’ll attract attention in a good way. This is an excellent time to continue to nurture and invest in your creative communities: Gemini delights in sharing ideas, and Venus and Mars work to put extra wit in your words.

Writing Prompt: Think of the last few gatherings you were a part of where other creative people were present. They could have been centered around writing (like a literary reading), or not. What did you like, and what did you not like? Now: how can you cultivate — and seek out — the things that you liked, the things that were nurturing, in your creative communities, moving forward?

Cancer symbol

CANCER

Summer will be here before you know it, and with it, your birthday season — and some powerful eclipses. Utilize the energy of this spring to lay track for the train that’s coming.

This spring is a time to take stock of what’s working in your life, and what isn’t. Who is working in your life, and who isn’t. In April, both Saturn and Pluto will begin a retrograde in your house of committed partnerships. These planets are in serious, empire-building Capricorn — your opposite sign, which shares similar values as you do when it comes to things like security and long-term planning. While this part of your chart governs committed romantic partnerships (certainly, something that affects the creative life), it also governs committed business partnerships — say, with an agent, an editor, or a writing partner. Writing is considered a solo enterprise, but we know it’s not. The people we love, and the people we are in this business with, significantly affect how we approach the work: what we write about, when we write, how much we get for our writing, our general emotional state. Saturn and Pluto are both heavyweights that deal with life’s responsibilities and transformation, respectively, and they are here to help you clear out any patterns that aren’t working to your highest good.

Your career gets a boost from Venus, the planet of love and value, which travels with the sun through Aries and your house of public image and fame early in the spring. Here, Venus is fiery, brazen, and no-nonsense, helping you to trust yourself — to value yourself — and to feel confident about the choices you are making in your work and how you are putting it out into the world. Venus in Aries is Wonder Woman energy — and after this winter, you could do with some Wonder Woman energy, Cancer.

Writing Prompt: Venus asks us to consider our worth, to look into the mirror and say I am worthy. I am worth it. Do you believe your work is worthy and worth it, Cancer? How have you struggled with seeing the value in your work this past year?

Leo symbol

LEO

You love spring, Leo. It’s light, independent, sunny — much more your speed than winter, when the world is resting. Spring feeds your energy, and no wonder: Aries is your fellow fire sign, a kindred spirit. This spring, the sun and Venus travel together in Aries, lighting up your house of travel, philosophy, and long-term plans. For you, this is the time of year when all the world’s a stage, full of new life and possibility, just waiting for you to be not only the lead, but also the producer, the writer, the director. For you, this time of year is about the vision. So get out the vision board — or the notebook. Go on a walk. Take an impulsive weekend trip somewhere that’s outside your normal surroundings. Get out of your head, and tap into that big heart. You may not like the word manifest, but that’s exactly what you’re good at doing, and it’s exactly what can happen for you right now.

Meanwhile, your daily routines are about to get an upgrade. Saturn, the planet of responsibility, and Pluto, the planet of transformation, are hanging out in your house of health and day-to-day work stuff: decidedly not long-term vision, but the kind of chores and routine scheduling that helps those big plans get accomplished. We have to pay attention to the little details, too, and these major planets are about to spend the entire summer (and some of the fall) in this part of your life, turning over the soil and making sure that your habits are serving you for the better. (Have you been meaning to start ordering a meal service so that you eat better — or even just purchase wrist support for your desk to help with carpal tunnel? This retrograde is gonna bring all of that up for review.)

Writing Prompt: Write out a typical daily schedule for you, then a typical weekly schedule. What parts of this could stand to be upgraded? What do you wish you had the time to improve, or to add in? (You might be surprised what the next few months bring.)

Virgo symbol

VIRGO

Where do you find your creative inspiration? Over the next few months, Saturn, the planet of responsibility, and Pluto, the planet of transformation, will be sifting through your creative consciousness, encouraging you to dive deep into your reserves. This spring, these planets will be reviewing (and perhaps also revising) how you typically find entry points into excitement. This is the part of your life that is creative, but also flirtatious and romantic — a part of your life that’s about being inspired by life’s joys. If your emotional well has started to feel stale lately, spring will bring new opportunities for change: but you might need to put in the effort. Saturn and Pluto are in Capricorn, after all: earthy energy that requires effort to build something new that lasts.

You understand how to utilize earthy energy, Virgo. You’re comfortable with the harvest, with the end of a season, but perhaps less so with the new beginning. And Aries — the fiery start of the zodiac year — strikes at a particularly deep part of your chart, in your house of intimacy. This is introspective energy. You’re comfortable in the details: with organizing, with a mind toward healing. Aries’ single-minded, laser focus on the parts of yourself and your work that you would rather not lay bare to the world? That’s less comfortable. But sit back, and consider: what discomforts is this season bringing up for you? What parts of yourself do you prefer to keep hidden — from yourself, from your professional network, from intimate partners? What is okay to keep to yourself, and what might be worth taking a second look at? Confession to others may not be the solution to everything, but self-awareness and a bit of journaling (or therapy) might be.

Writing Prompt: What parts of your life has 2019 brought up for review so far? What has felt comfortable — and what hasn’t?

Libra symbol

LIBRA

Aries is your opposite sign: the individual to your balanced, relationship-focused scales. Libra craves harmony and delights in its ability to see (and debate) all sides to an issue. You take your time, patiently researching and assessing the information before deciding your mind. Ruled by values-driven Venus whereas your sister Aries is ruled by action-driven Mars, you truly are two sides of the same coin. You kick off the autumn; Aries starts the spring. Opposites, in every way.

So what is a Libra to do during Aries season? Well, enjoy full moons, for a start. Yes, you read that right: moons, plural. The spring starts with two full moons in Libra, on March 20 (at 0 degrees) and April 19 (at 29 degrees). Having two full moons in one sign is a relatively unusual occurrence, so enjoy this double dose of your energy! Full moons are about releasing, culmination, fulfilling. What projects or ideas have you been fulfilling, personally, lately?

Aries also governs your house of committed partnerships. This isn’t just romantic; it’s also business. The sun and Venus will both spend time in this house, highlighting what you want in the long-term (are you happy with your agent, your editor, your writing group? Are these things you’re looking for?). This spring, your relationships are up for review — even as the sun and, then, Venus go into Taurus and your house of intimacy — and those relationships continue to deepen and unearth the most uncomfortable parts of your psyche. Are you bringing people into your creative life who share your vision: who are compatible with you on personal and professional levels, and who can work with you for the long term? Time will tell.

Writing Prompt: What kinds of people most rejuvenate you, creatively? What kinds of events, what kinds of engagements, what kinds of partnerships?

Scorpio symbol

SCORPIO

Your big story, Scorpio, is that your writing and short term projects are getting major shakeups this spring. Buckle in. Saturn, the planet of time and responsibility, and Pluto, the planet of transformation, are leisurely sifting through this part of your life, and when they turn retrograde come April, they will bring all kinds of long buried things up for review — and revision. You may quite literally end up revising an actual project over these next few months: specifically, its boundaries or your time commitment (Saturn) or even its very essence (Pluto).

In a similar vein, spring kicks off with rather literal spring cleaning. In your chart, Aries is your house of health and daily routine — all that day to day stuff that makes up the big picture. But the little things have to be in order in order for the big picture to flourish, yes? Use the Aries new moon on April 5 to set intentions around health, wellness, and a daily schedule this season. In many ways, your body is your instrument, and it’s important to take care of it.

Finally, you have a full moon at 27 degrees of Scorpio on May 18. Full moons are for culminating, for releasing, for letting go. This full moon is highlighting your house of self and identity — what aspects of yourself have you been working on over the last six months, and what are you ready to let go of?

Writing Prompt: What parts of your life (or creative life) feel like they’ve been undergoing a spring cleaning?

Sagittarius symbol

SAGITTARIUS

Have you been feeling lucky, expansive, like nothing can touch you? It might be because Jupiter, the planet of expansion, has been hanging out in your house of self and identity. Jupiter is home: Jupiter rules and loves Sagittarius, where its yearning spirit that craves intellectual stimulation and new experiences can go wherever free-roaming Sagittarius fires off to. In April, Jupiter goes retrograde. Keep in mind, retrogrades are a regular occurrence and they aren’t a bad thing! Just a time to do anything with a re- in front of it: review, revise, rethink. Because Jupiter is going to be retracing its steps over this part of your chart, this spring might bring up ideas or beliefs about yourself and your life path that you thought you had figured out, just for reconsideration. Jupiter is a joyful, bounteous friend and is on your side — they’re just going to sit with you for a little while and make sure that you’re sure about the next steps.

In that vein, Jupiter will square off with Neptune, the planet of dreams and all things subconscious, on June 16. Jupiter blows up anything it touches, and since Neptune’s energy is nebulous on a good day, when it connects with Jupiter, whew — watch out. At best, this energy is dreamy, allowing you to ideate without commitment. Mark your calendar for a bubble bath or maybe a creative, “wander the streets (or the woods) with yourself and see where it takes you” date. But keep a skeptical mind about people coming out of the woodwork with opportunities that seem too good to be true.

The next day, June 17, there is a full moon at 25 degrees of Sagittarius. Full moons are completing energy, and they are also excellent times for releasing. If the spring, and Jupiter retrograde, have brought up issues that you thought were long since resolved, this might be a good time to have a night in, treating yourself to some take-out and Netflix (and perhaps some journaling, too). Whatever helps you to let go, and know that you are walking on the right path, even when the journey curves unexpectedly.

Writing Prompt: What goals did you set for yourself at the beginning of this year? What have you achieved so far? What are you still working toward? What needs to be revised?

Capricorn symbol

CAPRICORN

You’re comfortable with the serious side of life, Capricorn: with making a plan, with keeping a schedule, with committing. You understand how to finish things. But even for someone like you, having Saturn, the planet of time and responsibility, and Pluto, the ever-so-slow moving planet of transformation, rock and roll and retrograde through your house of self and identity, over and over and over, can be tiresome. Are we there yet?

No, unfortunately. Your relationship to yourself — how you conceive of yourself (how you conceive of yourself as a writer, how you write about yourself) — is shifting, dramatically, with these planets hanging out there. They are digging and planting and harvesting and sifting again, a farmer with a plow. There is fruit on the other end, if you work with this and really lean into experiences you’re having and the lessons you’re learning. You might not write about them right away. This might be one of those “five years from now” essays. Be present in your body, be present with what you’re feeling, and (for once) don’t try to take the clay that’s molding you and form it into art too soon.

Of course, you’ve still got irons in the fire and creative energy to spare. Use the new moon in Taurus on May 4 to set intentions around your new ideas and projects this spring. Taurus energy feels more playful and heady, more sensual and grounded, and this part of the spring will be a particularly fruitful time for you.

Writing Prompt: Make a list of those “five years from now” stories and essays that you know you’ve got in you, that you can feel yourself working toward. And now: what feels doable now? Make that list, too.

Aquarius symbol

AQUARIUS

For you, Aquarius, spring is literally about new ideas and writing a new essay or a new story. Aries season, ushered in by the vernal equinox, lights up your house of communication and short term projects, inspiring you to take action and get shit done with those projects that have been, perhaps, on the back burner this winter. Mark your calendar for the Aries new moon on April 5, an auspicious day when the juices will be flowing: an ideal day to get a new project off the ground.

Even if projects have been a little slow to pick up speed this winter, you’ve definitely been meeting a lot of people and making exciting connections — or at least, have had the opportunity to do so. Jupiter, the planet of luck and expansion, has been blowing through your house of friendship, social consciousness, and the internet — a big ol’ party-hardy tumbleweed. Look who I want to introduce you to! It’s on you, of course, to actually pick up what Jupiter throws down — to make that coffee or drinks date, to DM that person, to follow up — but if a few folks have floated in and out of your orbit, you’re about to get the chance to get a do-over. Jupiter goes retrograde this April, offering you an opportunity to reconnect and redo. Who has popped up who you missed the first time around? Who have you been too intimidated to reach out to? Now’s the time, Aquarius. (And if you’re going to AWP, all the better: don’t let them pass you by!)

Meanwhile, Saturn, the planet of responsibility, and Pluto, the planet of transformation, are sifting through your house of rest, spirituality, and unconsciousness. Not the most comfortable place for these heavyweights to hang out, you know? If you haven’t, spring is an ideal time to get into therapy, book a reiki session, or schedule that mini personal retreat. At the very least, start blocking out intentional alone time for yourself.

Writing Prompt: Something else that comes up during a Jupiter retrograde in your house of, umm, the internet? Your online presence. Time for a quick reevaluation of your Twitter brand, of the platforms you’re using, of your website. How is your online presence serving you? Is it working for you, or against you?

Pisces symbol

PISCES

Pisces energy carries us out of the last recesses of winter and into the heady dawn of spring. Fresh off your birthday season, you go into Aries more energized than most, renewed in your self and identity and ready to translate that personal rejuvenation into value, both internal and external. Aries season brings multiple planets — the sun, Mercury, and Venus — into this part of your life and chart, which for you is about understanding how you value yourself and how that extends into material value in your life. Mercury, the planet of ideas and communication, inspires you to imagine new paths for revenue streams, while Venus, the planet of love and value, asks you to both ask for what you’re worth and intrinsically know your worth.

We live in a white supremacist, heteronormative, patriarchal capitalist society, where the monetary value of creativity and ideas are ever shifting, and the very idea of attaching money to art and people can be problematic at the best of times. But this spring, the energy in the air is pushing you to take the steps to ensure that you and yours are provided for, to the best of your ability, and that that provision comes from a place of self-assurance and self-worth.

This energy carries you through the entire spring, into Taurus season, where those seeds of value you planted in Aries time are nurtured into literal manifestations of new projects: new stories, new essays, new newsletters, perhaps even new a new job in writing and communications. Who knows? The energy is yours to work with (or not): ultimately, you are the arbiter of your own life.

Writing Prompt: There is a new moon in Taurus on May 4, a moon that will provide excellent energy for starting a new story, essay, or other project. So your prompt is this: begin at the beginning.

How Do You Even Get Started Writing a Book?

Posted on by Jess Zimmerman

The Blunt Instrument is an advice column for writers. If you need tough advice for a writing problem, send your question to blunt@electricliterature.com.

Dear Blunt Instrument,

I’m a writer in Denver. I’ve freelanced a little bit for Westword and covered coffee and booze for a publication called Sprudge, but really I’d like to write books.

I’m working through a draft of something right now but am unsure if working on it on my own and then taking it somewhere is the correct approach, or if there even is a correct approach. Do you have any thoughts? I don’t even know how to approach a publisher, and am unsure of when the best time to do it would be.

Ben

Note: This month, the Blunt Instrument welcomes a guest columnist, the novelist, essayist, editor, and instructor John Cotter.

Dear Ben,

Congratulations on the publications (Denver loves its drugs) and on commencing the Great Work of summoning a book from thin air. What’s next depends on what kind of book you’re writing. Sit back, pour some booze in your coffee, and let’s figure it out.

If you’re writing a novel, you won’t want to approach a publisher until the book is finished and polished to a blinding shine. If you’re still in the drafting stage, don’t worry about approaching publishers now. Same goes for agents: because most agents are so swamped with manuscripts they can barely find time to panic, you’ll want to avoid bugging them until your own manuscript is as unimpeachable as it can be. If that sounds like a long time from now, rest assured that, yes, it is but a) it’ll go by fast, especially if b) you’re spending the time on a project that excites you. Make sure this is the novel you really want to spend at least two to five years writing, then write it, reading a ton of other novels in the genre as you go and studying how they’re constructed with care.

Make sure this is the novel you really want to spend at least two to five years writing, then write it.

If you’re writing a collection of either essays, stories, or poems, you’ll want to sharpen up the best of them and start submitting to magazines. Publication can attract notice — an agent may contact you, though you shouldn’t sit around waiting for it — but either way, publication makes you seem more professional, more in-demand, the sort of person worth taking a risk on. If your book is a collection of essays, this will require writing pitch letters, which you can learn more about here, here, or here.

If you’re writing a nonfiction book, like, say, another much-needed history of craft cocktails or the weed boom, you’ll want to start with a rough outline, and gradually work that into a formal proposal to send along to an agent. Formal proposals can run from 50 to 70 pages in more-or-less five parts: an introduction, market details, biography, a chapter outline, and a couple of sample chapters. Your introduction hooks your reader (your prospective agent, who wants to be hooked both for their own sake and for the sake of future readers) and makes the subject of your book seem important; show that you command the field, know what’s been thought and said on the subject, and that your own perspective is unique. Market details make clear that people will buy your book because it’s the kind of book that people buy — accordingly, if there are recent bestsellers in the same vein, mention them here. If you have literary connections, drop those names. Your biography is a list of accomplishments and qualifications. If you’re good-looking, include a picture. There’s some more advice on writing a proposal here.

Those are the broad strokes. It’s tricky to do this alone. Community is important — if often fraught — for writers at every stage. There are a few ways to hack it, which I’ll abruptly gloss herewith:

Writing guides. The most useful and most fun writing guides I’ve read are Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman’s How Not to Write a Novel, which will teach you to follow the rules (“giving the reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half a kitten” — half a kitten is not better than no kitten), and Lance Olsen’s Architectures of Possibility, which will teach you to break those rules.

A writing group. If you know a couple of sharp and thoughtful readers, why not start a writing group? It gives you someone to share your work with and talk shop. Writing is an act of communication — readers are necessary to complete the circuit. Meet once a month or so and share. Be kind to one another.

Note: do not start a group with any old yahoos who happen to write — if they’re not also very good readers they won’t help you. If you know good readers but those readers aren’t writers, consider a favor exchange: repair the siding on their cabin or make them dinner or critique their podcast in exchange for feedback. This actually works. I helped a friend with grad school applications and in exchange she built me a desk.

Do not start a writing group with any old yahoos who happen to write — if they’re not also very good readers they won’t help you.

Classes. An MFA is a good way to make connections. But most MFAs are morbidly expensive and that debt can dog good writers to their graves. If you already have a great deal of debt then it’s not a realistic option — some of us didn’t get an MFA and write fine. Further, the last twenty years have witnessed an uncanny rise in the number of writing centers around the country: Grub Street in Boston, Lighthouse in Denver, Hugo House in Seattle … the quality of instructors at such places is often identical with what you’d find in MFA programs, and writing centers are cheaper. There, you can order classes or consultations à la carte.

You’ll notice there’s one thing I haven’t talked about so far, and that’s actually writing your book. This is the part of the business that happens alone, in the quiet of your home or the library or a coffee shop. You don’t have to work on your book every day, but if you never work on your book, then your book will never be written. About this part of the process I’ll give you one piece of advice: writing is like dreaming. What I mean is you don’t fall asleep the moment your head touches the pillow each night, and even if you do you don’t start dreaming right away. Give yourself twenty minutes or whatever to dally, strike out with false starts, read a little poetry, play a Cat Power song or two while you stare at the tree outside. It takes time. Just as you find trouble sleeping some nights, especially when anxious, so your creative mind needs some time to find its preferred orientation: relaxed but attentive. Take the time you need to find that space. Then begin.

Is He Doing Absolutely Nothing or Is He a Genius?

Posted on by Erin Bartnett

An Excerpt from ‘Trust Exercise’

by Susan Choi

The English People were a performing troupe from a high school in Bournemouth, a city in England. They were only fifteen and sixteen themselves, which was why the Sophomores had been granted the particular honor of hosting them. The previous September, when Mr. Kingsley had gathered them in the rehearsal room, he’d reversed his chair and leaned at them confidingly. “They’re touring with what’s supposed to be an absolutely terrific adaptation of Voltaire’s Candide,” Mr. Kingsley had explained, “and as you’ll learn in European Theatre History, Voltaire was France’s most famous playwright. Now, who’s been to England?” Involuntarily Sarah looked at David, and as quickly looked away. For her, until now, England only existed in David’s postcards. Now those Big Bens and Piccadilly Circuses and Carnaby Streets with their punks seemed like jokes played upon her alone.

David’s hand, and only David’s, raised up. The elbow remained bent, denoting his reluctance to answer this question. Sarah remembered the first time she caught sight of his house, freshman year, from the kid-crammed back seat of Senior Jeff Tillson’s car. Jeff driving some five or six nondrivers home after one of the mainstage rehearsals, the lengthy and confused overlapping directions, debating who lived nearest to school and each other, David repeatedly telling Jeff Tillson to take the other kids home until it came out that David’s house was the closest to school, in its historic neighborhood of enormous old live oaks hiding tall stately homes behind veils of discreet Spanish moss. David wound up being dropped off first, and the car had erupted with cries of “That’s your house?” while David, his face crimson, uprooted himself from the overpacked car.

The chief feature of David’s house was that it was two houses: the gracious two-story in front and a luxurious garage apartment, just built, in back. Apart from the bathroom, the garage apartment was a single enormous rec room, with David’s bed at one end and his younger brother Chris’s at the other, and a pinball machine and sofa and stereo and TV in between. David’s mother, in preparation for the English People, added a set of bunk beds, a dorm-size mini-fridge, and a microwave oven, whether to encourage total exile from the house or apologize for it, no one bothered to wonder. Eight hosts had been originally asked for, but only six had been needed, because David’s family would house two of the boys, and Joelle’s family two of the girls. The other two boys would stay with William and Colin, and the other two girls with Karen Wurtzel and Pammie. Julietta had ardently wanted to host but for reasons that went unexplained Mr. Kingsley chose Karen Wurtzel instead and Julietta fervently smiled her approval. There were also two adults, both men, both of whom would be hosted by Mr. Kingsley and Tim in their beautiful home.

Long ago in September, Sarah was still enough part of her class to laugh with everyone else when Mr. Kingsley said the English People were arriving over spring break to get accustomed to their hosts and temporary homes “before tackling CAPA, which — how shall I say? — can be intimidating to the uninitiated.” Sarah was still enough part of her class to relish the smugly held knowledge that for all its feuds and sectarian fissures, their school as a whole was a clique, unwelcoming to the outsider. Sarah was still enough part of her class to anticipate the pleasure of pitying these eager, inferior English, of surprising them with kindness, and receiving their gratitude. But now Sarah was so far outside of her class that she might have been English herself. She was so far outside of her class that when spring break ended, and school resumed, she was at first unaware that there had been a revolution, for she had missed all the contributing events: William’s guest, Simon, deserting the unpredictable austerity of William’s home for the dependable luxury of David’s garage apartment; Colin’s guest, Miles, in protest of the other three leaving him out following Simon, and being followed by Colin; David’s original guests, Julian and Rafe, mocking Colin’s Irish heritage in a manner that Colin mistook for a special distinction; David’s brother, Chris, deserting the apartment for points undisclosed, leaving Simon and Miles to nightly fight over who got Chris’s bed versus who got the sofa, while Colin uncomplainingly slept on the floor.

Meanwhile, among the girls, surprisingly it had not been Joelle’s house but Karen Wurtzel’s that became the headquarters. Karen’s English guest, Lara, had in no time at all learned and broadcast what facts about Karen nearly two years of Trust Exercising had not excavated: that Karen’s mother, Elli, unlike Karen, was pretty and fun and would stay up till all hours drinking Bartles & Jaymes and watching telly and talking and laughing while Karen stayed locked in her room and only came out to ask her own mother to please make less noise. Joelle and her two guests, Theodosia and Lilly, having hit it off like the proverbial house afire and spending the late hours after rehearsal driving Joelle’s Mazda everywhere but the forty-five minutes to Joelle’s inconveniently located home, started sleeping at Karen’s; after which, as had happened with the boys, the fourth English girl, Pammie’s guest, Cora, protested at being left out and migrated to Karen’s, Pammie trying to follow, but finding herself not invited.

After these domestic rearrangements, which took less than a week, the clique hardened its form.

Their first day at CAPA, the English People debuted as a leadership class. Though in many ways they looked physically younger than their American peers, the boys — Simon, Miles, Julian, and Rafe — being slender and smooth, their faces and chests still entirely hairless, and the girls — Lara and Cora, Theodosia and Lilly — being girlishly skinny, with no hips or breasts, the English People nevertheless separately, and even more so en masse, seemed older, their wits sharper, their knowledge more extensive and at the back of it somehow impenetrable. Perhaps cultural difference explained this. Perhaps it was all a mirage they induced with their accents, poor imitations of which became a widespread affliction of the sophomore class. The impression of power they gave seemed not wrought, but inevitable. That David or William or Joelle or Sarah or any of them had imagined impressing the English was now so unimaginable as to best be forgotten.

The two English grown-ups — Martin the teacher/director and Liam the star — first appeared after lunch, given that they were grown-ups, not visiting students, and so didn’t take classes. When everyone had assembled in the Black Box, Martin and Liam sat onstage with Mr. Kingsley, like Mr. Kingsley backward on their chairs, while Theodosia and Lilly and Lara and Cora, Rafe and Julian and Simon and Miles, sat anonymously in the risers with the rest of the students. Bantering back and forth with Mr. Kingsley about the Touring Life, One Hotel Seeming Just Like Another, and the Pleasures of Home, Martin and Liam seemed cut of that same kingly cloth as the aptly named teacher. Martin and Liam were capable of the same ostentatious air of relaxation: that manner of behaving as if unobserved, to broadcast the serene consciousness of being closely observed. Martin and Liam and Mr. Kingsley, entirely ignoring their students, trading theatrical badinage between their improperly utilized chairs, formed not a clique, grown-ups being understood not to form cliques, but another sort of unit, perhaps best called a club. To Sarah, the existence of the club registered just below thought, as a sensation of hopeless exclusion. To David the existence of the club registered as an angering challenge he wished to reject — but in such a way that Mr. Kingsley and Martin and Liam would be abashed, and desirous of winning his favor. To Joelle it was merely three men, two of whom she’d not before assessed. Joelle quickly found Martin too old and dismissed him to the same inert heap where lay gay Mr. Kingsley. Liam, by contrast, was in range. As if her eyes were a stethoscope, Joelle measured his blood: high temperature, swift tempo. Energy zigzagged unpredictably through him like the charge through a poorly wired lamp. He had arrestingly unique, ice-blue eyes such as you read about in fairy tales, but they transmitted to Joelle some sort of muffled desperation. This was a good-looking guy who would never be sexy, due to what sort of deficit or obstacle it didn’t interest Joelle to discover. Dismissing Liam as well, Joelle returned to passing notes with Theodosia and Lilly about the packet of cocaine in Joelle’s makeup bag, and with whom they should share it at lunch.

Liam had been Martin’s star student some handful of years before this, and Martin had staged Candide specifically for him, which Martin’s current students seemed to accept with no trace of resentment. Liam was twenty-four, six years out of high school. Of Martin’s age no one was sure. Sarah would not learn Liam’s story, including his age, until Liam told her himself, later on in this Month of the English. Mrs. Laytner had been unusually visible since the English arrival, intersecting as it did with ambitions she had for the school. Their multimillion-dollar theatre, with its two hundred feet of flyspace, its four hundred red velvet seats, its twenty-four-thousand- dollar lightboard, would host touring dance companies, orchestras, and whatever else one found in such beacons as Los Angeles and New York. While the Bournemouth Candide marked the American debut of its director and precocious young actors, its greater importance was as CAPA’s debut as a venue on the stage of its city. A first performance of Candide during the regular school day was reserved for CAPA students and teachers, but this was only to keep them from taking up space at the two weekends of public performances, all of which had sold out in advance, after a photo-filled feature in the city newspaper, more evidence of Mrs. Laytner’s exertions.

By the day of the first performance, the CAPA “sneak preview,” the English People are almost halfway through their stay. They seem both familiar and foreign, as if they have always been here and as if they have just now arrived. Familiar are their faces and voices, their postures, their gaits — any one of the CAPA students can pick out any one of the English from the ocean of heads in the hall, across the width of the lot ducking into Joelle’s Mazda or vaulting into David’s convertible Mustang. Foreign is almost everything else. Well as the Sophomores know one another’s private lives, which Mr. Kingsley has made them yield up like paying dues into a fund, they’ve learned so little about their English peers they do not even notice how little they know. They don’t know if Rafe lives in a large house or in squalid government housing, if Cora is a knowing virgin or a discreet libertine. They can’t crack the code of their clothes, if there is such a code, or of their accents, which to them all sound the same. They don’t know what roles any of the English people, apart from Liam, are playing in Candide, nor what roles there are, nor even what the title role is, if “Candide” is a name or a thing. Busy as they are with this quarter’s Costume History and Shakespearean Monologue and American Songbook, not one of them has read Candide. They may imagine that its title has an exclamation point. They have never seen a rehearsal because it goes without saying that the English People have no need to rehearse. They have never seen sets, props, or costumes because these don’t exist. The English People travel light.

Sarah sits alone in the full house, hidden amid instrumental musicians. She is doubly exiled from Theatre now, persona non grata among the Juniors also. Somehow the year-old secret of her one night with Brett has become current news. They hadn’t even had sex; in her memory Sarah sees Brett’s narrow, hairless body and his abashed and drooping penis, pallid and cold to the touch. But these details do nothing to lessen her crime, just as her self-isolation, her cold-shouldering of loyal Julietta and Pammie, her funereal clothes, sullen curtain of hair, and dragon’s tail of cigarette smoke have done nothing to prepare her for being an actual outcast. She’s ablaze with fresh humiliation and can no more see beyond its nimbus of heat than could anyone being burnt at a stake.

The house lights go down. Greg Veltin has a list of lighting cues he’s been given by Martin. A lightboard operator being the only technician Candide requires, Greg Veltin is the only person at CAPA, indeed in the entire United States, who’s seen a rehearsal, as rehearsals in fact there have been. Greg Veltin is looking forward to the performance. Greg’s own paradoxes, of personality and persona, of social status and historical experience, perhaps uniquely equip him to look forward to it.

Greg Veltin brings up the first cue and out saunters Liam, in generically olden-times baggy white blouse and knee breeches. The stage is otherwise perfectly bare. At CAPA, elaborate sets, props, and costumes are always required to keep busy the students who will never be cast — or who once were but are not any longer. For example, Greg Veltin, once the next Fred Astaire, now anonymous lighting cues guy. Greg Veltin appreciates the blunt lack of bullshit in this English production. Apart from the lighting cues list that Greg holds, the production consists entirely of the actor who plays the hero, and eight other actors who play, variously, the other human roles, a couple of animals, and some items of furniture, roles that aren’t really performed but denoted, with a startling carelessness Greg Veltin knows is not actually careless. He has seen it repeated with flawless precision, the tossed-off gesture again tossed, with just the same strength to just the same distance, again and again, the definite vagueness maintained so you’re never quite sure if the gesture denotes an object or an action or even the set, as for example when actors get onto all fours, as they do frequently, to play at being tables, or sheep, or South American mountains, or something else altogether.

Once Liam sauntered onstage Greg’s concentration on his cues became complete; regretfully he couldn’t spare attention to the audience reaction for fear he’d mess up. Pools of light bloomed and faded to indicate scene changes that otherwise might go unnoticed — despite, or perhaps because of, the incessant and bellowed narration. “ONCE UPON A TIME THERE LIVED A BARON IN A GREAT FANCY HOUSE,” bellowed Cora, as the rest of them, the girls dressed like Cora in knee-length ruffled skirts and snug blouses, the boys dressed like Liam in loose blouses and snug breeches, charged onstage like attacking commandos, enacting a house, a baron, fine furnishings, servants, and many abuses of servants, while Liam, as Candide, wandered this frenetic landscape of events in such a haze of charismatic idiocy Greg couldn’t decide whether Liam was doing absolutely nothing onstage or whether he was a genius. Sarah, alone in her row of musicians, saw expressionless Miles standing arms akimbo, to indicate being a wall, over which Theodosia, on tiptoes, mimed peeking. Behind the “wall” were Lilly and Rafe, Lilly flat on her back with her legs scissored open, Rafe on all fours energetically thrusting. “OH!” shrieked Lilly with gusto. “OH! OH! OH!”

“ONE DAY,” competingly bellowed Simon, taking over for Cora as narrator, “WHILST SHE WALKED IN THE GARDEN, SHE SPIED MASTER PANGLOSS INSTRUCTING THE MAID IN SCIENCE. SHE THOUGHT SHE AND CANDIDE SHOULD LEARN SCIENCE TOO!” Theodosia determinedly yanked her skirts up to her waist and leaped onto Liam, whose expression of idiocy grew so much more idiotic that Greg Veltin concluded he must actually be performing, although with unique subtlety as compared with the rest of the cast. Sarah saw, without seeing, the thrusting of groins, heard without hearing the squeals and moans. No part of this pantomime struck her as sexual; she stared as if at animals or children, organisms beneath her interest. An indeterminate sound that was equally titter and murmur had spread through the house, like an erratic wind on water. Mrs. Laytner, who had been sitting in the front row with Mr. Kingsley, rose abruptly and stalked up the aisle. The doors at the rear of the theatre swung in her wake.

Was the performance cut short, or was it simply short at its full length? Even with such headlong swiftness — the English People raced through Candide as if in reasonable expectation that large hooks would yank them offstage — it was possible for audience members to grow more discerning. This was their first real experience of double entendre, and they were starting to get it, the joke of the mismatch between words and acts; they could catch it before it flashed past. There was another mismatch, between the actors’ acts and their blithe, even dopey expressions. Stupidly grinning, the English People — Rafe and Julian and Simon and Miles, Lara and Cora and Theodosia and Lilly, and, of course, Liam — energetically pantomimed killing each other and being killed by each other, by means of guillotine, gun, bonfire, dagger, and noose; they pantomimed natural deaths via drowning and sexually transmitted dis- ease; they pantomimed raping and being raped and consensual fucking; and above all, it seemed, instances of both forced and consensual ass-fucking. In the audience the uncertain titters and murmurs and utter confusion gave way to real, emboldened laughter flaring up here and there threatening to ignite the whole house, then turning inside out and resurfacing weirdly as shame. Things were very funny and without warning weren’t funny at all, they were deeply embarrassing, and just as quickly that was funny, that ridiculous seriousness — or was it? Were you an asshole for thinking it was? And why had you thought the word “asshole”? How incredibly funny! — or not.

Greg Veltin performed his last cue and turned his attention to Mr. Kingsley, still in the front row showing the rest of the house the expressionless back of his head. To his disappointment, Greg couldn’t derive any clues about the state of Jim’s, or rather, Mr. Kingsley’s, face, from the back of his head. Greg was no longer sure what he’d expected, or what he had hoped for. The show was over — had they taken their bows? Not having started with raising a curtain, they couldn’t end with lowering one, so just walked off the stage. As throughout, the audience, once released from the spectacle, could not reach consensus on how to react. Some stampeded for the doors. Some remained as if roped to their seats. Even these motionless ones, like Pammie, appeared torn between opposing impulses, in Pammie’s case the passive immobility of shock, and the active immobility of rage. Pammie’s seatmate, Julietta, didn’t stay to find out. For Julietta, the only thing worse than watching the show would be talking about it.

Copyright © 2019 by Susan Choi. All rights reserved.

7 Thrilling Novels About Espionage

Posted on by Jo Lou

When I began writing my novel, American Spy, I didn’t have a particular affinity for the spy genre. I’ve since come to love it — especially some of the classics, like The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré and The Quiet American by Graham Greene — but this appreciation came well after the book was already underway.

Purchase the novel

My novel started with an image that popped into my mind: it was of a black female protagonist who is a typical suburban mother — or so it seems until someone tries to assassinate her. At first, I had no idea why someone would want to kill her; eventually I asked myself what if it’s because she was once a spy? And the book took off from there. Set during the Cold War in the 80s, American Spy follows Marie Mitchell, a special agent who is approached by the CIA and asked to help destabilize Thomas Sankara’s Marxist revolutionary government.

Answering that initial question, and in so doing figuring out that Marie was once a spy, I created dozens more questions for myself. Most I had no idea how to answer, so to generate ideas I’d read spy novels. My favorites tended to be the ones that resisted the conventions of a genre that has historically been dominated by straight white male authors. Most (although not all) of the books on this list do so in some way.

Who Is Vera Kelly? by Rosalie Knecht

Part spy novel, part coming-of-age story, Vera works for the CIA — she’s an electronics expert undercover in Buenos Aires during the political tumult of the 60s. The book also details a complex backstory: Vera’s relationship with her abusive mother, and the formative relationships and experiences she has in New York as she comes to terms with her sexuality.

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

In this Pulitzer prize winner, the Captain, a half-Vietnamese, half-French Communist operative, escapes the fall of Saigon. He heads to California with the General, the South Vietnamese military official that he’s been spying on. I enjoyed this book because of how resistant it is to narrating the Vietnam War entirely from the American perspective.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Okay, so this one isn’t strictly a spy novel, but I’ve included it because of what the narrator’s father is told by his grandfather when he’s on his death bed. He says “…our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy’s country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction.” The protagonist puzzles over what his grandfather meant and how his words should affect his own conduct, and this motivates him throughout the novel.

Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee

Henry Park, a Korean American undercover agent working for a private intelligence agency, is grieving the death of his young son and estrangement from his wife. When his agency assigns him to go undercover to disrupt the mayoral campaign of a high-profile member of the Korean American community, he experiences a crisis of identity. I’m especially fond of spy novels that detail the spy’s family life as well as their work, so this book really resonated with me.

Restless by William Boyd

Set in the 1970s, this story introduces Ruth, a British ESL teacher with a young son. While visiting her mother, Sally, the older woman reveals that she’s actually of Russian origin, and that in her youth she worked as a British spy during World War II.

Berlin Game by Len Deighton

In the first novel in the Game, Set and Match trilogy, Bernard Samson is an MI6 agent who’s tasked with ushering Brahms Four, a highly valuable asset, out of East Germany. Meanwhile, he’s also trying to figure out who the double agent in his office is, and why his wife has been acting so strange lately. While this book does very little to resist the conventions of the genre, Samson, like almost all of the intelligence agents who resonate most with me, is burnt out and cynical about his work. I loaned my main character Samson’s defensive cynicism but gave hers an origin that’s different than burn out.

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

The first in the James Bond series, this novel details 007’s famous (and entirely implausible) assignment to bankrupt SMERSH agent Le Chiffre at a French casino. It’s a fun book, and also one of the most relentlessly sexist things I’ve ever read. I think of Marie as an anti-Bond because it’s her female relationships that have the most enduring effect on her. They define her character. So, I’ve included Fleming on this list because he managed to inspire me quite profoundly despite himself.