WordWacky

Garrison Keillor and Andy Warhol may not have much in common. At all. But today’s Writer’s Almanac celebrated the birthday of someone much more well known for his visual art than his writing. Maybe.

Today’s poem, “Andy Warhol for Familiar Quotations” by Peter Oresick is one with repeating lines (if anyone can identify it as a specific form, please let me know — I couldn’t find it anywhere). It begins:

Andy Warhol said, Always leave them wanting less.
Being born, Warhol said, is like being kidnapped.
Everyone will be famous, Andy said, for 15 minutes.
I thought everyone was just kidding, said Andy.

Being born, Andy Warhol said, is like being kidnapped.
Think rich, said Warhol, look poor.
I thought everyone was just kidding, said Andy.
Dying, Andy said, is the most embarrassing thing….

At first I wondered what Andy Warhol was doing on the Writer’s Almanac, but as the quotes wedged their way in again and again, I realized how pithy and quotable the man was. While quotes may not be exactly writing, they require thought, editing, and precise wording. Sounds a lot like writing to me.

Back to Andy and Garrison: there’s a pleasing converse, parallel effect between them. Andy was the very epitome of cool and — despite what he said — for a lot longer than fifteen minutes. He took the popular and ordinary and lifted it from its day to day to make it extraordinary and even more popular. (Are you gonna tell me you don’t think he sold soup?)

Garrison, on the other hand, is the very epitome of uncool. He’s midwestern, nerdy, and old fashioned. He takes the bizarre and unpopular and makes it extraordinary and at least a little popular.

I don’t know if I’m right, but I suspect they’d be friends, were Andy still around.

Be well, do good work, and always leave them wanting less.

And I guess I did, too, though only until about age six, by which time I was entirely too worldly and jaded to buy in anymore. But my mother could be found watching his show, even in adulthood. I know, strange, but he still makes me cry.

Apparently, Mr. Rogers wrote all his own songs, including “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” the subject of this lovely anecdote:

Once while rushing to a New York meeting, there were no cabs available, so Rogers and one of his colleagues hopped on the subway. Esquire reported that the car was filled with people, and they assumed they wouldn’t be noticed.

But when the crowd spotted Rogers, they all simultaneously burst into song, chanting “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.” The result made Rogers smile wide.

Read all of the 15 Reasons Mr. Rogers Was the Best Neighbor Ever at CNN.

Mom, Mr. Rogers, I miss you both.

I bought business cards the other day. They identify me as a writer.

There are many opinions about when you get to call yourself a writer [Ed: see comments]. I like to think that like other parts of one’s own identity, it arises from within — only you know whether you’re a writer or not.

Doubts I have, though this identity has been with me as long as my oldest friends. It’s been a secret. It’s been a title. It’s been a lie. It’s been the only thing that keeps me alive. I have rolled around in the mud with writer, wrestled it and conquered it, only to lose on rematch.

And even when you get over coming out as a writer and you claim the identity, there are other people in the world to think about. Will they call you a writer?

Apparently the late, great George Carlin struggled with this side of the dilemma. He was not just a comedian, but a writer. From his last interview, with Psychology Today:

It sounds like you think of yourself much more as a writer than a performer—is that true? How do you think about performing?

It’s my primary delivery system. I used to, in my early years, when I would do an interview I was always proud to tell the writer that I wrote my own material, if they asked me or even if they didn’t. I wanted to be distinguished from the ones who didn’t do that, and I was proud of it, so I would say I am a comedian who writes his own material. And then at some point, I discovered what I really had become was a writer who performs his own material.

This was a really important distinction for me to notice—it happened way after the fact. I’m a writer. I think of myself as a writer. First of all, I’m an entertainer; I’m in the vulgar arts. I travel around talking and saying things and entertaining, but it’s in service of my art and it’s informed by that. So I get to write for two destinations. The writing is what gives me the joy, especially editing myself for the page, and getting something ready to show to the editors, and then to have a first draft and get it back and work to fix it, I love reworking, I love editing, love love love revision, revision, revision, revision.

Last year a group of us from the little writing school that could, Bent, went to Saints and Sinners, a queer literary festival in New Orleans. Traversing one of those cobblestone streets en masse, we talked about the fear of calling yourself a writer. And we practiced. In turn, we said it, out loud, so that everyone with us could hear. “I am a writer.”

I am a writer.

Those of us who have come out in other ways know how scary – and ultimately liberating – coming out can be. But when I came out as queer, it was just done. From then on I could be. Could love. Could  breathe and smile and curl up in the arms of the person I loved and who loved me, freely.

Calling yourself a writer means that now you must work. Because if you don’t have “something to show for it,” sadly, nobody will believe you.

You may as well tuck that journal back under your mattress and go back to keeping secrets.

Discovery News reports that monks charged with writing Biblical texts may have been poisoned by the ink they used. Back before the 1500s (when texts started to be printed rather than hand written), a type of mercury, cinnabar, was used in ink for its red hue.

One scientist suggested an entry point for the mercury: 

He told Discovery News “it is very human to lick the brush, if one wants to make a fine line.”

The article goes on to speculate about the diets of the monks and rules out dietary and “medicinal” mercury exposures.

Little did they know that their precision and dedication was killing them, with a scenic stop at mad-as-a-hatter along the way.

  Just in time for Pride weekend, Tom Spanbauer will be visiting Seattle to read from Faraway Places. Spanbauer’s first book has been reprinted by Hawthorne Press, a cool Portland indie publisher:

All of our titles are published as affordable original trade paperbacks but feature details not typically found even in case bound titles from bigger houses: acid-free papers; sewn bindings that will not crack; heavy, laminated covers with double-scored French flaps that function as built-in bookmarks.

The new volume features an introduction by A. M. Homes, who’s a new favorite of mine. From the introduction:

Faraway Places, Tom Spanbauer’s first novel, is not enormously long, but it is a big book. And it is masterly—a near perfect book. Built upon keen observations of human behavior—ranging from God, to farming, the scent of one’s father, the magic of sex and the exact number of steps from here to there—there is enormous originality, drama and spirit to this tale. It is a family drama with a pitch perfect crescendo. The story is hypnotic, mesmerizing, delicately brilliant—and so well made. While you are lulled by the language and the characters, the storyline builds and then like a well timed firework explodes—surprising, enthralling, captivating.

I’ll be there to get his paw prints on my yet-to-be-purchased copy of In the City of Shy Hunters.

You should be there, too.

Tom Spanbauer
Elliott Bay Books
Friday, June 27 at 7:30 p.m, Free!
101 South Main Street
Pioneer Square, Seattle

Tomorrow is Richard Hugo House’s Write-O-Rama, a day of rapid-fire writing workshops to get you started or keep you going on your writing projects.

Write-O-Rama is a full day of hour-long workshops offered to anyone who wants to write by the creative writing teachers at Hugo House. On June 7 we will hold over 30 writing workshops, and to sustain you as you write we will also have free food, beverages, two open mics, and a wrap party following the last session. Guests will have the opportunity to generate new writing, meet fellow writers, share their work, sample the work of Hugo House writing teachers and find new motivation to write.

If you’re too far away to get there, Write-O-Rama is also a fundraiser. You can donate to my campaign by visiting the Write-O-Rama Laureate page and designating me as your sponsoree (under Dedication).

It’s a truism of writing a novel in this post-everything literary climate. There are no new stories, no truly unexpected twists, not a single surprise, anywhere. The butler did it. He gets the girl in the end. After his circular journey, the hero comes home.

Here’s an old story:

One of my heroes was caught retelling that old yarn at a literary festival in Wales.

Ian McEwan — whom I read voraciously, and who is almost prolific enough to keep up — read a passage from a work in progress. One attendee spoke up, reporting that the anecdote had been written about before. Most famously it was told by Douglas Adams in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and so many times in all that it’s a standard short film assignment for would-be directors. McEwan’s version uses crisps instead of biscuits, but it’s the same old story.

It’s something of an urban legend, this story. McEwan says he overheard it. And though the festival incident may seem embarrassing for McEwan, there are two other writing truisms well illustrated by the story.

First, always have readers. Is it so impossible that this very thing may happen in the world? No. Could he have gotten away with printing the story? Probably. Would it have been awful? Certainly. He was saved from a much greater embarrassment — a McEwan-sized printing of that story in his next novel.

Second, yes, we’re back to “kill your darlings.”

The mix-up over the crisps had the feel of an urban myth to it, McEwan said, adding that he would be grateful for any more information about the anecdote’s provenance.

[Ed: Provenance. Don't you just love that guy?]

Folks, if it sounds like an urban myth to you, it should likely be cut. I’ve learned that myself, and I have the darling carcass to prove it.

On the other hand, if there aren’t any new tales to tell, then why not just retell the good ones — the ones with adages to sum them up and all of the characters neatly paired off in the end?

Every now and then, for years, I have strolled down Broadway in Seattle’s Capitol Hill and passed Brett Dean McGibbon and his sidewalk book stand. Sometimes he’s handing out free poems to passers by. Always there are his own works, handbound in both paperback and rough-cut leather. He sells similar volumes as journals.

I remember taking a poem from him once, and though I don’t remember how I felt about his poetry, I do remember thinking long and hard about his business model, only to decide he must be at least a little off to think a home-baked scheme like his would work.

On Friday, after a happy hour cocktail smoothed my work-frayed mood, I passed McGibbon, sitting at his card table with his books. He was outside the new location of Capitol Hill News, on the north end of Broadway. Feeling chatty, I stopped to talk.

“So can I ask you something?” I’ve never been one for false formality.

“Sure,” he said, his face not revealing any sign of unease.

I waved my hand at the table. “So, do you make your living from this?” Maybe my incredulity was insulting. “I mean, I’m a writer, too, and I just wondered if you were able to support yourself this way.”

“I make my living through my book sales, yes.” And a man who knows his audience, he then tried to sell me a copy of his CD, Successful Self Publishing of Fiction and Poetry.

I didn’t buy the CD. It’s not that I support wholeheartedly the publishing institutions, it’s more that the leap of faith required to “go McGibbon” is so great that the barriers to getting your book published through traditional means seem minor in comparison.

Returning to the car with my copy of Lucifer’s Redemption, I told my wife, “I’d be good at that. Sitting around talking to strangers and selling books.” I started to read the book aloud to her during the ride home, and we’ve left it in the car for story time. While I’ve found a few places that McGibbon could have used a good copy editor, and the book is decidedly handmade, I’m also finding great sentences and vivid imagery.

It’s a little bit like building your own house versus hiring an architect and a contractor. The outcome may not be as polished as some of the other houses on the block, but every inch of it is your own.

Writer’s block is a controversial idea among writers. While some struggle for days, months, years to slay the beast, others mock it as fiction: so much Sasquatch.

You can count James Frey in that latter camp, and an off-the-cuff, quotable comment he made at a reading has injured the feelings of — not writers, but bankers.

Frey is easy to pick on — even Oprah, the guardian angel of modern American women, has had her turn. And unlike Oprah, the field of banking has never been known to champion the underdog, so it’s not surprising that they’d resurrect his past “mistakes” [Editor's note: I believe these same mistakes to be present in all memoirs, to a greater or lesser degree.] and call him a “Fake Writer.” A fake writer he is not.

From Dealbreaker:

At a reading last night, when asked by an audience member if he ever found it difficult to come up with material, he responded, “Writer’s block is for chumps. To me this is a job, like being a banker, or a teacher. You never hear of banker’s block.”

Well, it turned out that some bankers had heard of banker’s block. Said one particularly eloquent banker:

“I’d like to see how long it would take Frey to try and write a public filing that describes the ass-rape of Bear Stearns without using profanity. Do you have any idea how long I sat there trying to come up with an acceptable alternative? At first I thought, okay, how about the ‘non-consensual fucking of Bear Stearns,” but that didn’t work. Then I tried “backdoor surprise,” but that didn’t cut it either. I literally sat there for hours with nothing but that infernal cursor staring me in the face before deciding to go with “involuntary and immediate liquidity injection requirement.” Late at night, I lie awake and see visions of that cursor. Taunting. Mocking. Making a fool of me. So don’t you dare tell me there’s no writer’s block in banking.”

Is the point that in all pursuits people have lackluster days, days where nothing’s flowing, no progress is made? Or that some people, whatever their pursuit, are chumps, staring at the mocking cursor?

Or maybe there’s more in common between writing and banking than we previously realized, Mr. Frey. Whaddya say? Career switch?

In a Radiohead-like move, author Paulo Coelho increased sales of his books by offering downloads of them for free. His publishers, inspired by the increase in sales, later did the same.

Coelho himself has an answer to my title question, “Why buy the book…?” from Torrentfreak:

“A (real) book is easy to carry, easy to read anywhere. Reading a book on a monitor on the other hand is very tiresome, and it would be even more expensive to print (considering cartridge prices) than to buy a paperback,” he says.

Coelho considers the downloads previews, and hopes that previewing encourages readers to buy the book. It has, too — in its 34th week on the Bestseller List, The Alchemist is number six.

Never mind that citing Coelho as a favorite will lose you dates, if you believe the readers of the New York Times book blog, Paper Cuts (read the comments). This is the same New York Times that maintains the bestseller list on which Mr. Coelho has managed to rise back up to #6 with a book that is fifteen years old.