Come to a reading at the Rusty Nail in NOLA

Reading @ The Rusty Nail in Nola on May 15th (7pm) with memoirists Eli Hastings and Margaux Fragoso, Fiction writer Chris Tusa, (me too by the way). Stop by if you’re in the area. ...

http://www.therustynail.biz/

Clearly Now, the Rain by Eli Hastings

Eli Hastings has written a memoir that will stay with you long after you have finished it. Not only is Eli a great friend of mine, but he's a glorious writer who has written his heart out for you. I urge you to get this book as soon as you can and read it as if your life depended on it. If you don't believe me just check out what Ben Percy, Paul Lisicky, and Kirkus Reviews have already said about it!

Nashville 1864: The Dying of the Light by Madison Jones
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read this book when it first came out and it was the first book I ever read by Madison Jones. I had the feeling that I'd earlier had with Flannery O'Connor when I read Wise Blood in college--I felt cheated as though someone purposely kept her from me! That's probably not true, but Nashville 1864 immediately brought to mind The Unvanguished by William Faulkner. It's a slim book but it's definitely a book of high literary quality and entertaining to boot. Jones is a first rate writer who I keep thinking will suddenly attract the notice of everyone in the way that Cormac McCarthy, who had also labored in relative obscurity as well, did with All The Pretty Horses. Over the years he's published great books, but labored for the most part in obscurity. I believe he's one of those writers who deserve a greater audience. Writers like Flannery O'Connor and James Dickey (among many others) praised his work. I believe this slim volume would serve as a great introduction to Jones along with The Innocent.


View all my reviews

The Dead Dog Effigy of Writing Failure:
Grant is Dead, God Junkies, The Penetralium

by Daren Dean

If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy
you.
--Jesus, from the Gnostic Gospel of St. Thomas

I. The father of the bride stammers out an emotional thank you to all present
for joining in the celebration. David Caruthers chokes me up more with his barely
controlled feeling than the exact words which have already fled from consciousness. Too
many glasses of cabernet have dimmed the exactness of the words in my memory, but I
understand it's the emotion that's the important thing. Or, it might be the fact that my
exhausted four year old daughter, Claira, lies beneath the table in this country club dining
room with my suit jacket draped over her. Something tells me it will be all too soon when
her mother and I will be overseeing her marriage. How difficult it will be to deliver this
girl into the arms of another man--this little girl is my princess-angel.

The bride in question was a flower girl at our wedding back in 1990. It was an
outdoor wedding especially windy that day and I remember she was carefully trying to
place the rose petals on the sidewalk. She was six years old then; now she's a college
graduate. A woman with a husband who might have children of her own in the next few
years. It hardly seems possible, but Kelly is married now with a freshly minted last name.

What this wedding calls into question is the passage of time and how we view it at
different stages of life. I look over at the dance floor where the bride and groom, children,
young and old, are flailing around to the rhythm of frenetic 1960's pop music--celebrating
this new beginning--this life of two people who have chosen to become one and there is
my brother-in-law Quentin, all six feet and some five inches of him, swaying with my
baby son Finn, as if he were the father, as if he can't wait to be a father himself soon. I
think about the passage of time, my fortieth birthday looms in November, and how little I
have accomplished as a writer, as a father, or a human being. To keep this metaphor
going I can choose to renew my vows as a writer, but the sad truth is I've spent years in
dreaming of being a writer, a few actually writing, and now I wonder about the futility of
the project I have dedicated myself to.

A writer I know and respect recently told me that his wife, also a writer, threatens
that she might do this or that instead with her life, but he says she would be better off to
resign herself to being a writer at middle age. I know he means this bit of advice for me
and I latch onto it like a life preserver. It doesn't fill the void--that black hole of rejection
or soothe the shattered ego of being referred to as a writer with talent, and yet your work
does not suit our needs. This is in no way a reflection on the literary quality of the work.
Another editor, more astute, may accept it. Or, the agent who once sent me a form
rejection letter with the diction and resonance Faulkner himself would have been proud
of, I wish I could send you a more personal response, but in this business efficiency
vanquishes humanity every time. Great rhetoric, I think, but only because you let it dear
agent, only because you allow it.

We work in our own darkness a great deal
with little real knowledge of what we are doing.
--John Steinbeck

II. At the time of this writing I am a failure as a writer. I've been a failure in a lot
of other ways too, but that's probably outside the confines of this piece. I studied creative
writing in graduate school but that's no guarantee that I'll be any good. I've been
published a couple of times here and there, but sometimes I think more a testament to the
law of averages than as confirmation of talent or ability. I could, and might yet, discuss
the problem of finding a job or discuss all the employers who have gouged me in the
forehead with a ten foot pole, but instead this is one of those moments I choose to be
philosophical rather than kicking the dead dog effigy of myself on the occasion of its
corpse. See, Joseph Campbell once declared: "There is no meaning to life. We bring
meaning to it." Artists wouldn't have the reputation for drinking and depression, and
being generally disagreeable if it weren't for the heights to which they aspire and fail to
scale. I am convinced that the struggle of writing is the writer's struggle for
existence--proof that our lives are not just insubstantial wisps of consciousness.

Consider that truism of Descartes, I think therefore I am but if that's true what
about the times when my mind is on the blink? When I can't remember my best friend's
name or I call the next door neighbor Mr. Eaton instead of Mr. Coe? How real or less real
do we become in those moments we love someone intensely, emotionally, overcome with
this stuff of feeling? Or consider those moments when we wander into the kitchen and
forget why we are standing there on the cold tile floor with mouth agape? Did we forget
to dream the dream of ourselves intensely enough? Afterall, what if the death of
consciousness is just a failure of will?

My favorite artist is Vincent Van Gogh. I don't care if you pronounce it, van-go or
if you prefer to sound like are a coughing up a hair ball when you say the artist's name.
As an Impressionist, or anyone engaged in the act of becoming an artist, Van Gogh's
work is not perfect in form, but there's a raw emotion to it that you cannot deny when you
look at his work. At the art museum in St. Louis they have some of his works and though
they aren't large pieces I'm amazed by the vitality of the brushwork. His life was one of
extremes in his decisions, his passions, and his art. The life of artists and writers have
always fascinated me and Van Gogh is one of those high priests of art. He paid his dues
in failure and was never rewarded during his life--it's only after his death that the world
has genuflected to his genius. He once wrote to his brother and benefactor Theo: "Well,
my own work, I am risking my life for it and my reason has half foundered." I don't
compare myself to Van Gogh or any artist or writer, but I can take some comfort in that I
share the same struggle and the same fear of ultimate failure. Has the time I've spent
answering the muse been wasted?

So, you have to write all this stuff and throw it away and fail and fail and fail and
keep going, until you finally succeed. That's the only thing that's going to solve
it, make you feel right, if you really want it. But its tough, and its lonely, and
you've got to spend a lot of time in a room by yourself.
--Larry Brown, interview with Charles Blanchard

III. One of my favorite writers is Mississippi's own Larry Brown. In interviews
he discusses time and again his failure as a writer. Rather than discuss his awards and
accolades he received he seemed to prefer to talk about his suffering as if maybe that
made his success more legitimate. He talks about all the times his story "Old Frank and
Jesus" was rejected. It causes me to think of the film, Big Bad Love, based on Brown's
book of stories of the same name. Leon Barlow, brilliantly portrayed by Arliss Howard,
writes a letter to an agent, "Dear Motherfucker" it begins.

Gary Hawkins' documentary Rough South of Larry Brown is a meditation on
failure. Brown and his wife Mary Annie talk about all the jobs Brown had, even after he
had made the decision to write, and they both seem to revel in the struggle. In his
characteristic candor, Brown is asked about the reception of one of his more experimental
stories: It wasn't received worth a shit. There's no fanciful regret being expressed there
just the way it is when you have to deal with something you don't want to have to face. I
have a quote from Larry Brown taped on my writing desk that's inspired me a more than
a few times, "You must keep on in the face of failure in the hopes that there will be
success down the road. But there is no guarantee, it's an act of faith."

I think some friends and other people that know me are sometimes surprised that I
write the kind of stuff I do. I may be seen as well on my way to becoming an ivory tower
academic. But on the inside, where it counts, my own upbringing was full of turmoil as
far as us moving around went. We lived with aunts and uncles and their kids at times, or
my mom might be living with a female friend or a boyfriend. Literally every few months
we moved. My memories of growing up are not of one particular place that I call home.
There's no ancestral land I can claim or a tract of land or an old house, and I guess that
sense of place that we see in southern writing or regional writing calls to me. I realize I
never had that with my extended family and never will now. It definitely left a mark on
how I view people. I am suspicious of them and totally fascinated all at the same time.
When I was a kid I went for about a year where I barely spoke to anyone, this might have
been about eighth and ninth grade, mainly because I was emotionally exhausted with all
these new situations to adjust to. Now, if it doesn't seem normal--the way I've always
lived--it doesn't seem abnormal either. But when I look at my own kids I hope I don't
infect them with the same disease. The disease of moving, of feeling alienated from
everything most people take for granted. I want my kids to take things for granted like
where they're from and who their people are. For better or worse.

I do not like it here or there. I do not like it anywhere.
-Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham

IV. I ain't going to Grant's farm anymore: Earlier in the summer my wife and I
took our kids, Claira and Finn, to Grant's farm in St. Louis. We've been married for
seventeen years and I always like to see people freak just a little when we tell them. I'm
about to turn forty and folks tend to think we're still in our twenties. How old was Grant
when he settled here I wonder? How Ullyses S.Grant, famous Civil War general and U.S.
President, ended up in St. Louis I'm not sure now. I remember years ago reading some
pages from his journals. Grant was a failure in business, and a clerk in his father's leather
store in Galena, Illinois before the Civil War got underway. If it hadn't been for the War
it's hard not to wonder what would have become of a man who had a fairly
undistinguished career in the military and in his private life. Grant's failure, and maybe
the fact that he started his Civil War career in Missouri, give me some inspiration I don't
mind saying. My good friend, writer Eli Hastings, claims to be somehow related to U.S.
Grant which is a non-sequitor I know, but still another interesting detail to consider.
In the 1850s, Grant bought 281 acres and farmed some of it. It's billed as the
ancestral home of the Busch family. It's been a tourist attraction for some fifty years now
here in Missouri. The farm is owned and operated by Anheuser-Busch, Inc.--the beer
people who bring us all the Budweiser we can drink! I can only vaguely remember going
there as a child with my mother when I was a little older than Claira is now. The farm
sells plenty of beer to parents in what looks like a little section of a German beer garden.
It was fairly hot the day we drove east on I-70 until we hit 40-64. The traffic
bottle necks at 270 and 170 with the on ramps running north and south. Traffic isn't so
terrible there really. I've seen much worse, but it's one of those days where people are
driving so aggressively they create their own problems. They drive straight into
congestion.

A black Volvo whips around us and proceeds to tail gate; pass, tail gate; pass, and
I see a black man driving an SUV who lauches a casette out of his window at the Volvo
and it bounces off the passenger door. Another car, a neon green color, looks like it might
have been in one of the Fast and Furious films, passes in the far right doing at least ninety
miles an hour. I'm relieved I don't live in St. Louis and I worry about Cassie and the kids
more than myself.

As we pull in the parking lot at Grant's farm and find a place to park close to the
stables, for the famous Clydesdale horses that you used to see in the Budweiser
commercials. Claira is saying she wants to tell Grant something when we run into him
later on in the day. She's positive she will see him. Afterall, it is his farm. It only makes
sense that we will see Grant at some point. It's one of those moments you don't realize
you're about to commit a breach of contract as far as sensitivity in fatherdom goes. I'm
distracted and worrying if we parked in the right place or not? Why won't the trunk latch
in the floorboard work right? How damn hot is it going to get? When I get out and open
the back door I have to move Claira's Plue-blankee to get the clasps on her seat (her
blanket is predominantly blue with Winnie the Pooh characters on it) which she promptly
pulls around her again.

I don't understand the first part, but Claira says something about telling
Grant_______. What it is I'm not sure. Now, I've managed to open the trunk and hauled
out the stroller for Finn. We haven't had this particular stroller very long and why they
make these things so strangely it's hard to say? Getting the things to unfold isn't so
difficult, but breaking it down will be a problem later I can already foresee. These
strollers are probably advertised as new ergonomic design which might as well be latin
for a pain in the ass to figure out and Claira says, Daddy to get my attention.

What is it, sweetie? Once again, she says very quietly (though she's not always so
quiet) that she wants to tell Grant _______. In my brusque way, hoping to be informative
as well, I tell her it's kind of complicated but Grant lived here a long time ago. He's no
longer alive. He is, in fact, well,--dead. Okay, I admit, a good parent probably shouldn't
talk to a four-year-old like an adult. In my defense, she's an exceptionally smart four year
old, but still she's a baby. To my credit I do not try to explain that the beer people bought
the place, et cetera. Her eyes are scrunched up tight as she looks up at me, the sun is so
intense it almost fades out the other colors in this parking lot where all the chrome
bumpers are reflecting the heat from a thousand suns. She nods. That's all right, her nod
seems to say. She says, "I'll tell Grant's wife__________."

I often wonder if I'm not going deaf or if I'm just losing the ability to concentrate
on what anyone is saying to me anymore. Maybe I already have the old dad's disease.
You know the disease I'm talking about? It's the same one all the dad's had when we were
kids and you would go over to a friend's house and his dad would be sitting in his easy
chair, wife hollering something from the direction of the kitchen, and he would either
feign being asleep or unable to hear or just completely out of it, or engrossed in the
sport's section of the newspaper. A mild form of mental retardation that madras short and
black sock wearing dad's tend to develop over time.

You see what I mean? I'll tell Grant's wife. How does she think of this stuff? I
think, brilliant, but then I tell her. Well, Grant's wife is dead too or something insensitive
like that. Her eyes are wide now. Her face pale (it's always pale though) and she starts to
cry. Not just cry, but wailing now. Do you want to go back home? I ask. She nods, yes.
I'm determined to make this worse if possible. Oh shit, I say under my breath.

"You lie to her about everything," my wife sticks her head up so I can see her
over the car's hood. She probably wants to make sure I hear her so she over does it with
the exaggerated mouth thing people do for the hard of hearing. She would probably start
American sign language now if she knew how to do it. It wouldn't surprise me in the least
if she did and then what excuse would I have? "And this you choose to tell her the truth
about?"

"You're right," I say. "Absolutley right." Most dads know it's best to know when
to admit defeat. It's only when you're young and single, or young and married but still
without children, that it seems to make sense to argue when you know you're wrong.
Claira is howling now. There will be no consoling her. What, I ask myself, could I
possible bribe her with? People are looking at us as they walk past us no doubt on their
way to the Clydesdale's stables or to get their picture taken with one of the horses in a
little barn especially made for tourists to get their picture taken on the other side of a red
rope of the variety you see at movie premieres. I wonder who thinks it's a good idea to
get your picture taken with one of the Budweiser Clydesdale's anyway? Unless it's done
ironically, right? And there are far too many people having their picture taken with this
particular horse for there to be anything ironic about it--it's actually a quite popular thing
to do. Do they give you a large framed picture with the horse and yourself--and if so
where is an appropriate place to hang it? Or, maybe you buy wallet-size pictures to show
the folks back in the office or the plant or wherever you work. Yourself, with the kids,
and a Clydesdale? Is the horse just standing there or is it posed somehow? It seems like I
read you could have calendar made with these pictures. Maybe men are asked to pose
holding German beer stines . . . I'm still not sure I understand the allure . . .

Claira is still crying. My wife is glaring at me. Why did we come here? I'm
wondering this now, like you do. Why was I born? Why did I have children? And what is
my purpose in life? God did not intend for me to go to Grant's farm I'm all but convinced
of this fact. Now Cassie tries, "Do you want to go home?" Yep, I think she said it too.
Since I'm not exactly sure if she said it or not so I probably shouldn't put it in quotations,
but I'm sure I'll pay if she didn't say it. Claira cries the righteous cry of wronged children
everywhere.

"I want to go home," Claira says.

"Well," I say. I tend to sound a lot like former President and cracker-jack actor,
Ronald Reagan these days. "We can't go home. We just got here. Quit crying." Telling a
child to quit crying is a good way to insure they will continue crying much longer than
they would have if you hadn't said anything at all. "Besides, don't you want to see all the
animals?"

"No," she says. "Grant is dead."

"Well," I did it again. "I'll let you in on something. I was mistaken. Grant and his
wife are still alive. In fact, we will drive right by his house later. Then, you can tell Mr.
and Mrs. Grant anything you want. Okay?"

She nods but it takes at least an hour before my girl can pull herself together.
What must she be thinking. Her father telling her people had died--what a sick man! We
do drive by, in a kind of safari park vehicle, Grant's house. A pretty primitive place
definitely just post Civil War era. I can almost see him leaning against the house drinking
whiskey with a grim expression on his face. As we pass by in our little convoy sprinklers
water Grant's grass and house. It seems like that would destroy the house after awhile, but
the Busch folks probably know what they're doing. I point out the Oreo cookie cow to
Claira. We talk about trying to dip into a glass of milk, but in Claira's case it would have
to be soy milk, but that's another story.

A few days later we're back in Columbia. We're heading toward downtown and
drive by the new public library and Grant's elementary school. Suddenly, I'm inspired.
"Claira, look, do you remember we went to Grant's farm?" I see her reflection nod in the
rearview mirror. "Well, that's Grant's elementary school." She makes a sound in her
throat like she's calling bullshit on me. "No, really, it is." I look at Cassie and we laugh
together. A four year old shouldn't be so jaded.

I wonder if Claira might end up being a writer someday. Once I asked her what
she wanted to be when she grows up and without any prompting she said, "A doctor."
What kind of doctor? I asked. "An allergy doctor, but I won't take any blood." She has
these terrible food allergies that she's had since she was a baby. When I look back on her
baby pictures it is obvious how sick she was with the dark circles under her watering
eyes. We would take her to Cape Fear Pediatrics and they seemed mystified. One of the
doctor's always wore a bowtie and no matter what problem Claira seemed to be having he
would take out his PDA and start typing out formulas for prescriptions. Or, he might have
been text-messaging friends now that I look back on it.

We used to take Claira to the doctor together as often as we could. We had that
parent's first child problem going on. We were also older parents, I was 35 when Claira
was born, and we worried ourselves sick over her. Actually, I think I was sick every time
my daughter was sick during that first year, but looking back on it now it must have been
a sympathetic sickness since her problems were mainly food related. Some fathers-to-be
have sympathetic morning sickness so I guess I was having sympathetic allergy
symptoms. She also had roto-viruses and things that I have effectively blocked from my
conscious mind. One time we went to the pediatrician's office a doctor and a nurse asked
us who had seen Claira last. I told them I couldn't remember his name, but he wore a
bow-tie. Without missing a beat they both looked at one another, "Bow-tie man?" We
couldn't help laughing then.

Finally, they did start testing for food allergies. We knew she couldn't have milk
or anything with milk in it. We had yet to realize how many products have milk in them
or some form of milk. She would be nearly four years old before we realized the width
and breadth of her food allergies. It was a topic of conversation everywhere we went. I
worried that people might question our sanity after awhile. My wife began having the
allergy conversation with her mother and my mother everytime we saw them. I knew
they had to be sick of hearing it by now. Cassie's mother has been a nurse for probably
thirty years and still she sometimes asks, "Can't Claira have some milk or pancakes or
something with milk despite how many times we have bored her with the topic.
It's hard for folks to remember, especially when they're not living with the child.
Sometimes the effects don't take hold immediately so then we do seem like the crazy
people who don't know what they're talking about. Singular seems to help control it a
little. Sometimes the girl will come back from a couple of days at grandma's rolling in the
floor holding her stomach. I recently saw the Bruce Willis movie, I See Dead People, and
that terrible scene where the father watches the tape showing that his wife poisoned her
own daughter. It's a horrifying scene.

I don't hope that Claira isn't a writer, but I do hope she becomes a doctor. It's not
that I worry about her being a writer as much as I worry about her being a failed writer
like myself. But then I remind myself that she's much smarter than I am. She will have a
great future no matter what she chooses to do.

The Writer's duty is to keep on writing.
--William Styron

V. Margaret Atwood referred to her career in writing as working in the
wordmines. I should say I did not start off wanting to be a writer--that is to say--I was not
a born writer. I started off, at least from what I remember, just wanting to be loved. If I
were trying to be honest with myself I would say I kept hoping to understand--not
everything--but something that would add value to my life. Flannery O'Connor rails
against eliminating the mystery of life and fiction. She says the "proper study of a novel
should be contemplation of the mystery embodied in it . . ." She seems to be talking not
so much as the profound Catholic writer she was, but almost more as a gnostic exhorting
the novice to contribute something new to the mystery rather than simply obeying the
letter of the law. But with all her profundity--how does this help me as a writer? Each
writer must ask themselves what mystery they are interested in devoting their time to.
Notice, I don't say life but rather I say time.

As an undergraduate I was lucky enough to study under a very talented writer,
Michael Pritchett, who told me that he thought writers should write from their continent.
Now, I'm not exactly sure if he came up with this term or picked it up from a mentor at
Warren Wilson, but I understand it to mean that you write about those topics that most
obsess you. There's an inherent distinction from writing what you know--it's what are you
so compelled to write about it that you must say it and continue to say it until you've
finally gotten it right, or the show closes on that particular narrative.

Margaret Atwood also likens the writing life to being lost in a dark wood and
cites the infamous opening lines of Dante's Inferno where Dante imagines himself on a
quest to find paradise where he is later joined by the poet Virgil who was quite familiar
with the underworld an artist must pass through. I'm always fascinated with the part of
the story where this dynamic duo make their way to hell and the presence of Lucifer
himself freezing the great lake with the flapping of his multiple sets of wings where the
bodies of sinners frozen, half-in and half-out, or completely submerged in the ice
depending on their level of sin.

It's difficult for me to consider the person of Satan at the moment, under the harsh
florescent lighting in my leaky basement, and consider his reality. It's not that I don't
believe in evil per se. It's easy to think that perhaps people created the figure of Satan so
they could justify their own terrible deeds with a convenient entity to blame it all on. The
Devil made me do it is the authority of last resort in our culture now.

Recently I taught a world literature class. It was a summer class. Among other
things we read the excerpt I mentioned earlier. The student who was probably about my
own age mentioned that she found it very difficult to read this stuff. She just didn't
understand why we should have to read such terrible things. It didn't take long before I
realized that she didn't necessarily think the Inferno was bad, but due to her background it
was a difficult to read. Finally, I couldn't beat around the bush any longer and asked her
what she meant. Well, she explained somewhat reluctantly, I was raised by Satanists! I
thought I'd heard every reason and justification for why a student thought they should be
exempt from reading a work until this particular student. I'm not sure what would top
that, but the head of our evening program stood in for a hypothetical student and revealed
the answer, I am a Satanist! In my view an argument could be made for what Joseph Campbell
would have referred to as confusing the literal and the allegorical in one's religious views.
In the book of Revelation Christ is referred to as the morning star, but in Isaiah we're
given to understand that Lucifer is called the son of the morning star. Don't
misunderstand me. I'm not saying god and the devil are one. What I am saying that this
represents a perfect balance of what seems to be inbred in our DNA: big evil; great good.
If I were to explain to someone the negative side of the writing life it could be
equated to being frozen, ineffectual, in this antithesis of creativity. According to the logic
of the Inferno, the souls in Purgatory are doomed to spend thirty years for each year of
their earthly life before being allowed to move on to Paradise if memory serves here.
How long should a writer labor in the wordmines before he turns his back on it?
Even when Virgil attempts to lead Dante out, they have to crawl down the hairy
body of Lucifer who seems more like an ineffectual automaton chomping on the bodies
of the great traitors in three mouths. It is this separation from God that is most clear in the
lives of the traitors of the underworld, but for the artist it must be separation from self.
Coming out of Underworld--this resurrection is the lesson of myths if we can reduce it
down to something as easily expressed. Personal resurrection is always the hope--the
religious epiphany we hold out for.

The failure to integrate self and subject matter or as Alan Watts once put it
writing about Buddhism, You are it. The failure to realize this central fact of the writer's
life. Not announced with egotism, but with the tranquility and belief of a spiritual pilgrim
who has never quite achieved, or the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara who has foregone
enlightenment in order to help others attain it. And yet I find myself slipping between
attainment of Truth and the imperfect execution of it just like any flawed human being.
These are the highs and lows. It is as if the writer were bipolar. Terribly manic, seeing
visions, hopped up on dramatic questions; simultaneously destroyed by self-doubt.

I see this doubt even in my students who I attempt to view with as much
compassion as possible. This particular semester I am teaching two sections of
composition at the University of Missouri where the new head of composition and
rhetoric recently informed me that in his field they have been taught to despise fiction
writers I suppose for stealing their thunder. I didn't know exactly how to respond to this
except to say that in my ignorance I have never spent much time giving any thought to
rhetoric he believes is indispensable to teaching English 1000.

So I have these two sections of comp set up to read southern fiction and write
about it. I call it "Grit Lit Composition." I may never teach there again, but this semester
it's been great fun although the challenge for my students is still just as great as any
subject I could have thrown at them. They must still write papers about a subject most of
them know very little about. The new director of composition does not believe that
fiction engages the culture in any way that merits discussion I suppose, but one of the
first papers I required is for my students to write about social alienation in the stories
we've read. The problem is that many of students either because of their youth, social
strata they've inherited, or chronic business with their lives, have had difficulty with the
subject and seem to confuse it with mere isolation. They understand the distinction, but
can't quite grasp how to articulate the difference or that the difference is worth the effort
perhaps. I struggle to help them get beyond mere summary. I'm finding this position of
writing about cultural identity in freshman composition is a ubiquitous theory.

VI. The Problem of Writer in a Border State: In relation to Southern writing
we always hear about writers who were surrounded by compulsive storytellers. However,
much to my relief another thing Atwood says, "A good many writers have had isolated
childhoods" in Orientation: Who Do you Think You Are? Once again, I go back to this
motif that writers are creating reality for themselves. The rootedness of family and place
in regional fiction (which I say without a hint of a sneer, only respect) is something I'm
completely fascinated by and jealous of writers who have this in their back pocket. I
always get the impression that some writers must apologize for it even in Faulkner's
famous postage stamp of native soil quote where he explains that he discovered his
mythical Yoknapatawpha, based on Oxford and Jefferson County, Mississippi, was worth
writing about. But if my own family is fairly rooted to the Kingdom of Callaway County
in Missouri on my mother's side--I have always felt alienated by time and geography
growing up.

Writers who are any good do not stay in Missouri. T.S. Eliot left to become
British. Tennessee Williams at least set one of his greatest dramas in St. Louis. Writer
Mark Winegardner once wrote about University's and their offerings to study Southern
literature, but the idea of studying midwestern literature seems all but preposterous. My
home state of Missouri--I'll spot you Mark Twain--seems to despise her literary writers.
They have to move away to find an audience or change the name of the town they're
writing about or become New Yorkers like Jonathan Franzen. One of my favorite writers
is West Plains resident Daniel Woodrell who seems to grow in stature every year as an
artist and yet most Missourians have never heard of him.

Growing up I attended at least thirteen different schools between Kindergarten
and high school. Often folks ask me if my family was in the military. I've tried to answer
that question with something that at least approximates the truth by saying that, 'Well, my
mom was a hippie." Except she wasn't really a hippie, but the distinction could be that
she was a child of the times.

If asked where I'm from or about my hometown I'm really at a loss. I grew up all
over Missouri, but mostly mid-Missouri, but many times I came from home school to
find we were going to move soon if not that same day. We loaded up the car: my mom's
Nova or Imperial or a Ford, whatever she was driving at the moment, and off we went out
to Arizona, California, Nebraska, or Colorado. There were times we'd just move across
town too. How many towns I can't remember.

My mother's obsession, a compulsive idealism that things would be better if we
only moved, the country's love affair with makeovers or bootstrap tugging at work. It isn't
hard to imagine that I also caught this virus so that not only do I not have a hometown,
but I feel more comfortable with the idea of moving than staying put. Things could be
better I think. I can be someone new. I can recreate myself in a newer, shiny image, and
find what it is that I can't quite define.

It's a compulsion so deeply ingrained in me, as it had been in her childhood too,
that I haven't been able to shake it. It was like trying to change the direction of the wood
grain in a coffee table. A result of all this manic travel is that I became about as far
removed from all my extended family as it was possible to be except for a few exceptions
that I might write about later. It's like the old stories that start "Once upon a time . . ."
Starting over but never getting to the middle, or getting to the middle of a story brimming
over with conflict but instead of catharsis, we fled or were dumped over by mother's
boyfriends, husbands, friends, relatives, and always we had with us in the story of our
lives, "Once upon a time . . ." as a reset, a choose your own adventure, a way to forestall
regret and dashed dreams.

Perhaps it was this narrative dysfunction that called to me to write. Often writers
are asked about when they knew they wanted to be writers. What was the defining
moment? Was there a particular writer or work that decided it? Well, I can only say that
there must a many of these moments or at least there was for me even if I admit to being
a hack. I remember one of my own mentors, Clyde Edgerton, talks about May 14, 1978
when he saw Eudora Welty reading from "Why I Live at the P.O." on PBS. For me there
must be a series of these moments from childhood that now seem to me to be impossible
that they could have all happened in only one childhood.

VII. Under the influence of the Holy Ghost: During the mid-1970s I lived with
my great aunt and uncle who had three other children who became like brothers and
sisters to me. My great uncle Russell Salmons as a cook at a truck stop called Gasper's in
Kingdom City, Missouri. He also felt he had been called by God to become a preacher
who believed in being born again, speaking in tongues, and in signs and wonders. Now, I
won't try to explain it all here, but he was inspired by a charismatic preacher with a
background in the Holiness movement who everyone called Brother Frank.
My uncle was in the process of becoming a lay preacher as I understand it now,
but there was no mother church. Brother Frank's church, as I remember it, grew out of
meetings from a place that had once been a coffee shop, and then they became a more
formal church with a Christian school called The Christian Center Academy with a
curriculum based on the Baptist school system that used little booklets on every subject
called the P.A.C.E. system.

And what I learned there of great importance for a writer was a clear
fundamentalist vision of the stories of the Bible. Not only as stories, mere literature, but
as flowing from a supernatural source. The people of these stories had not just lived
thousands of years ago, but the importance of what they had done invigorated the church
into the eternal present.

It would be hard to underestimate the importance of this religious training in my
background. I regularly watched folks complaining of sickness and cancer who went up
front to receive prayer. Everyone would have their hands in the air, raise-the-roof style,
speaking in tongues, or little ecstatic exhortations. The entire congregation which back
then was probably a bit over a hundred and fifty souls would crowd around the one
person and lay hands on them. Those of us who couldn't physically touch the person
needing prayer would put our hands on the arm or shoulder of the person in front of us so
the power of faith and the Holy Ghost could pass through like an electrical current of
supernatural healing. Oh, yes, and sometimes folks were overcome by the Holy Ghost
and fell in the floor--slain in the spirit! There she goes, a deacon might say. Somebody
catch her, would come the response. The men would lay those who had been overcome
by the spirit on the floor like God junkies. I often wondered as a boy what it was like.
Were they in the presence of God? I tried to imagine it. I was always thinking about those
amazing descriptions in Ezekiel. We were a church concerned with the last days! Jesus
would appear in the eastern sky any moment! And we were all ready!

VIII. In my classes at MU, we read Lee Smith's story Tongues of Fire and what
is significant about it to me is not that Karen speaks in tongues, but that she so easily
turns away from, an adolescent interest in Asian religions, when for me it was a way of
life for years. One of my students, from Atlanta, told me he found an article that
discussed how the poor tended toward fundamentalism while the rich tended toward the
more mainline denominations. We know which denominations are marked by the pocket
book or social status so why go into it here, but I also felt obligated to tell him about the
unbridled emotion of a charismatic service and the utter reality of interacting with God in
such a service as compared to the more sedate branches. If God does exist, then what
kind of interaction would you want to have with him, I asked rhetorically. For awhile I
considered following in my uncle's footsteps in the ministry. I even attended a Bible college in Southern Missouri for a year, but that was the year I had an extraordinary
English teacher who asked us to read stories by Flannery O'Connor. After I read Wise
Blood I was hooked and had a new calling that I couldn't say no to. It was a calling that
had already struck once when I was much younger.

My friend David Gessner published a piece in the Oxford American, The Dreamer
Did Not Exist, and he eloquently discusses his childhood feeling that he, and the world,
did not exist. "A sudden and overpowering sense that there was nothing in the world and,
more importantly, that I didn't exist," Gessner writes. I never doubted my own existence,
but I had an obsession on a variation of that theme. From a very young age I had this
overpowering paranoid feeling that I was being watched. It's similar to that feeling you
get when you know someone is staring at you and turn to catch someone actually looking
at you. Well, I was convinced I was being watched. Any mirror was probably a two-way
mirror in my view. Men in white lab coats were making notations hunched over
clipboards no doubt. They (whoever they are I'm not sure) were actually causing all the
strange events of childhood to see how I might react to them. I still have this feeling at
times that this is, in fact, happening, but I somehow have managed to keep it under
control. I wonder if this is common thought? So when I read 1984 by George Orwell the
book really resonated with me on the level of I know what it means to be watched too,
Winston.

I don't obsess over the feeling like I did when I was a teenager at that awkward
age when you have the mistaken impression that people are more interested in you than
they actually are. It's something that naturally fades, because we are obsessed with
ourselves in a necessary way when we're teenagers and trying to figure out how we might
fit into everything or how everything fits into us. But the next thought that has begun to
obsess me, since I keep repeating the word, is this notion of ritual, and apotheosis. How
do we wring more from life. Nearing forty my body and my mind are not what they were.
Eventually, if not some years back, it's for the worse. I don't have energy I had. My body
does not look like it did. Damn! And my looks are not what they once were, but I'm
beginning to care less and less about it. I mourn it less, I guess is this best way I can put
it. So, how does one become immortal?

When I was young I thought I most likely would not age. I'm not sure I really
accepted the idea of death. Writing itself is a way to keep living. To write is to defy death
with little black smudges on white paper serving as something like the cave drawings of
early man recording a successful hunt. I consider the idea the Greek heroes had about
immortality. They wanted to do great deeds that the bards would sing about and thus keep
them alive in the memories of the living. They memorized their works, these epic poems,
and passed them on. I read once where one scholar said Homer may have been an office,
a position, a post if you will, rather than one man. What it translates into now is being a
writer. From there, I guess it's a pretty easy comparison today to being one of the bards.
Writers make their characters, their people, immortal by writing about them. I remember
Allan Gurganus urging me to mythologize my characters--to raise them above the level
of mere men.

Writers often talk about what hard work the act is. I can't say I disagree either, but
there's also something thrilling in the act that I don't hear discussed much. When I write
and really begin to imagine these fictional people of mine and things are really working
in my mind--it's just incredible. It's the sublime in art we've read about. The place where
writer's can go in their mind to envision their work, it's John Keat's Penetralium. Of
course, just because we can see the scenes happening in a cerebral way doesn't mean it
will work on the page, but it helps. This creativity, the act of writing, is the
spark-evidence of divinity I think and it's stronger than any narcotic.

Midwestern Gothic Interview

I just wanted to share this interview that Midwestern Gothic did with a follow up to my story "The Mail Order Jesus" that they published in the Spring.

http://midwestgothic.com/2012/09/contributor-spotlight-daren-dean/

New Publications

Since my last post I've had a story recognized as a Finalist in Glimmer Train, a story called FEVER forthcoming in The Oklahoma Review, and THE MAIL ORDER JESUS accepted in Midwestern Gothic.

Story Selected for Yemassee's William Richey Short Fiction Contest

http://yemasseejournalonline.org/contests/fiction-contest/fiction-contest-winners-2/

My story "Bring Your Sorrow Over Here" was selected as runner-up in Yemassee's William Richey Short Fiction Contest by Judge George Singleton. The story will appear in the Spring 2012 issue.

Is This the Future I was Hoping for?

If you’re like me it’s difficult to find yourself in the moment. How do you keep yourself from sliding into the past or worrying about the future to the point of distraction. Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” And the older I get the more true that line seems to become. Everything that happened in the past has left an indelible scar on the personal timeline, yours and mine. When I was very young I used to think of it in terms of the good and bad that had been done to me, but now this exercise of self-examination has been turned on its head to include the things I have said and done and often, usually, what I find there is not so noble.

What’s wrong with now? It is a cold afternoon in January. I let the dog in. I hear her nails clicking as she leaps across the floor in little joyful skips. She licks my hand when I stop petting her. There is that rank dog smell that reminds me when it warms up again that she will need a bath. I sip my lukewarm coffee. It’s Folgers, nothing fancy, but it’s good and has all the good qualities of familiarity. The furnace has kicked on. All is well. For the moment.

See this is when it gets tricky. What Natalie Goldberg called “monkey mind” takes over. Distractions enter the picture. Anxiety begins to rage at the feet of expectation. How long before I find a job again? Will I teach again? And when I do will there be any real content beyond busy work and merely satisfying course objectives which I believe comes from the instructor more than the best planned syllabus. When will I finally write that narrative, story or novel, that will be everything I hope it will be and what others will also recognize? Will I be big enough to be the kind of father I should be to my kids? Will I ever be the kind of man my wife expects me to be? Will I run out of time? God, I hope not.

So when I look into the past I see a blurred vision; in the future there’s a warped reflection of the past made into flesh. The cardinal I saw flittering from branch to branch of the cherry tree in my backyard like a bloody teardrop looks like every red bird I’ve ever seen as if it had been reborn again and again or made of papier-mâché and animated by some alien force for an ulterior motive I may never fully apprehend.

If I sometimes struggle with the words, thoughts, and deeds of others and even more myself I know I have to have some faith in the struggle itself. Count this intention as equal parts obedience and faith. I can change. I can evolve. Emerson wrote about this idea of expansion of circles in life, “If the soul is quick and strong, it bursts over the boundary on all sides, and expands another orbit on the great deep, which also runs up into a high wave, with intent again to stop and to bind. But the heart refuses to be imprisoned; in its first and narrowest pulses, it already tends outward with a vast force, and to intense and innumerable expansions.”

Inside me always is a boy who felt abandoned at times. There was a time my father had a new wife and son. My mother was searching for herself out west while I lived with family here in Missouri. The timeline of my childhood is so tangled with comings and goings that I can’t even put it in order now. I remember longing for my mother with an intensity that sometimes we fail to give children credit for. I remember certain family members that might by definition be considered distant becoming the people that mattered to me. Hard times breeds a closeness unlike other experiences.

We moved around the country, within the state, and back and forth in some of those towns. I remember watching my mentally handicapped brother standing in a green playpen leaning against the side for balance because one of his legs was a bit lame from birth as he hit one birdlike hand with another as if he were punishing that hand for its sin while a Jacob’s ladder of light poured in the living room window illuminating him as if he were a saint. I had this notion that one day I’d be able to communicate with him telepathically someday and have a normal brother. I used to look into his eyes and speak to him in my mind while he chanted his childish “mummumumum.” I remember later we had to take him to the hospital in Sedalia where they could take care of him better when he was about six years old. I thought he’d always be with us. We would visit him in institutions across the state as the years went by. I always wondered why I was so lucky to be normal and why this had happened.

I remember my great uncle who was a cook at Gasper’s truck stop who decided to become a charismatic lay minister in the seventies. He would often take us all, my aunt, and two of my cousins to nursing homes around the state where we would have church services for them. Sheila played the piano and we sang The Old Rugged Cross and In the Garden. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysiDcqCFCM0&feature=related

The sound of my aunt’s incredibly high voice. The dutiful expression of Sheila’s face as she played the upright. The incredible glow my younger cousin Bryan had at age four wishing so hard that he would no longer have to endure being the youngest--and most loved. When we pestered him too much Aunt Vivian would always say, “Leave that baby alone.” I said, “He’s not a baby, he’s four years old.” She said matter-of-factly, “Well, he’s my baby!”

The faces of the elderly lighting up when my uncle would tell us at a certain point in the service to walk through the audience and they would touch us with their feeble hands with an inexpressible joy as if we were performing miracles just by the power of our youth. It was the hand of the woman with the issue of blood who reached out to touch Christ for healing.

I suppose what I was searching for was family. The feeling of not quite belonging has been like a stain that I thought everyone else could see. It was hard not to feel like an intruder into other people’s lives. This feeling became a reality. I embraced this idea that I was some sort of rebel. I withdrew. I lost the ability for a time to connect with people. This problem sometimes rears its ugly head every so often. I become the angry kid who retreated into silence and became an observer and wanted to avoid the pain of being seen. I tried to avoid showing my emotions so that no one could criticize my sorrow or anger. I kept those things hidden. It was what we did then. I worry that though I have some measure of control of things now that I give myself too much leeway to the other direction now. But this feeling of not belonging, wishing I belonged persisted. Emotionally and intellectually this thought had become an unseen reality—a trench, an open wound, that would not allow me to navigate life without embracing this truth which had somewhere along the way become a lie. It was an untruth I was not ready to surrender. I was incapable of giving it up. It was the narrative I’d used to define myself by. If it wasn’t true anymore then I’m not sure I’d recognize myself.

I touch my wife’s shoulder in bed. The bedroom door opens and our daughter comes in complaining about a nightmare. She spoons up to Cassie. My four year old, Finn, hears us murmuring and comes in full of life and clambers on top of the mountain of family and lies across Cassie and me with a blissful smile on his face. I realize both of these children are remarkable in their own way. My daughter is the mercurial and sometimes mischievous rebel without a cause. My son already has the charisma of any ten men I know and I sometimes think must be bound to be both popular and loved. The four of us crammed together in a knot. I understand something for a moment. I already have something I thought I was missing. I have a family. I’m part of it. I’m still here and we do our best to love each other. One thing I’ve already achieved that no one achieved for me when I was a boy. I don’t think that the boy I was would hold it against his parents or anyone else if he could see me now. He would be envious of what I have and remind me to appreciate what he doesn’t have. Maybe this is the future I was hoping for.

    

Link to my Columbia Business Times article THE BEIJING CONSENSUS

http://columbiabusinesstimes.com/13047/2011/10/28/the-beijing-consensus/

Reading

William Woods University at 4:30 PM on Thursday, September 22 to hear me read with local writer Justin Hamm. He will be reading a mix of newer work and poems from his chapbook, Illinois, My Apologies. I will be reading from my novel Mercury in Retrograde. The reading will be held at Woody's, on the lower level of Tucker Dining Hall. I hope you can make it.

BINGO

Today is my daughter’s first day of 3rd grade. Her shirt is covered in silver bling and her multi-colored shoes light up with every step she takes. When she was in Kindergarten someone taught her a car game. Each time we passed a yellow car she’d shout, “Bingo!” At first I thought it was funny which morphed into annoying before long. Over time it was a game that became somewhat addictive. Claira’s 4 year old brother likes to holler bingo after his sister or even just to say it to get her goat. The whole family is doing it now. In fact, it’s difficult to avoid thinking the word bingo when we see a yellow car. I have to admit too that a car that color seems a bit garish to me but to each his own. Still, driving around town, the next thing you know you’re looking for a bingo. It almost feels like you’ve won a prize.

It got me thinking about the power of words to change our mood, outlook, and ultimately maybe even our future. Not that I’m all about positivity no matter the context, but I do believe in change and that finding a doorway to inner change is usually preferable to a negative state. I will cop to being a road rager in my daily commute in the past so this is quite a progressive state for me personally. So what I was thinking, feel free to try this yourself, is this: each time you spot a yellow car instead of thinking or shouting bingo you might think or say “love” or “peace” or “compassion.” Anything that will bring you to your own optimal state in a world that seems chaotic and harsh. Maybe we can start to become our own catalyst for change one yellow vehicle at a time.

David Gessner Book Trailer for MY GREEN MANIFESTO

The Night Train Book Trailer--Clyde Edgerton

The Night Train Book Trailer - Clyde Edgerton from Mark Teachey on Vimeo.

In Case You Missed It: Checkout My Recent Post on the University of Missouri Press Blog on David Foster Wallace

http://umissouripress.blogspot.com/2011/05/books-ive-been-reading-rereading.html

BOOKS I'VE BEEN READING, REREADING, STUDYING, AND THINKING ABOUT RECENTLY

1. THE FUTURE WITHOUT A PAST: THE HUMANITIES IN A TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY/ JOHN PAUL RUSSO

2. DISTANT STAR/ROBERTO BOLANO

3. THE CORRECTIONS/JONATHAN FRANZEN

4. THE HUMAN STAIN/PHILIP ROTH

5. INFINITE JEST/DFW

6. UNDERSTANDING DAVID FOSTER WALLACE/MARSHALL BOSWELL

7. THE PALE KING/DFW

8. WHITE NOISE/DON DELILLO

9. MAO II/DON DELILLO

A Recommendation: I recently read an excerpt from this book in American Poetry Review and it looks pretty interesting:
A JOURNEY WITH TWO MAPS: BECOMING A WOMAN POET BY EAVAN BOLAND

Middle Path

Trying to find the middle path
with a machete,
meditating on the breath
but your boy is asking
for another glass of water,
seeing a charming deity
in his impy smile,
you blow out the candle flame.

The Language of the Universe

We drove up to my brother's foster home in Mom's old Ford. She wore a black outfit, mini-skirt and high heels, and big round movie star sunglasses. I sipped from the can of Mountain Dew I clutched in my lap letting the cold, sweet soda slosh around in my cheeks like a bullfrog. Mom was happy. She sang Me and Bobby McGee with Janis Joplin on the radio. She asked me for about the fortieth time what I thought about moving out to Arizona. My uncle lived out there and he said we could stay with him for awhile. She didn't know what she was going to do but she had the vague idea that things would be better somehow. It would be warm there all year round and no snow.

The foster home was a house that belonged to a Mr. and Mrs. O'Connell. They lived on the second floor of their bungalow style house with their two teenaged children. The house was green. I remember that for some reason. It was so green it glows in my memory. We got out of the car in the driveway. I skipped the flag stone steps to the back door. It opened to a nice kitchen.

Mom talked to Mrs. O'Connell about Lane. I wandered through the house. The house had been gutted except for the wall that intersected the room. The noise of the retarded children hit me as I walked through what had once been the dining room, living room, and bedrooms. Every few feet there was a crib or a bed with a kid lying or standing nearby making whining or hollering noises. I wasn't sure where Nick would be. We hadn't seen him in months. I came to a crib and peered over the side expecting to see a tiny baby what I saw instead was a head as big as the baby's entire body. I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. It seemed to smile at me. I knew then that the world was not a fair or just place. The face of a young mother popped into my mind. She was trying to hold this baby, tears streaming down her cheeks, and then she handed the baby over to Mrs. O'Connell. I wonder if the baby felt loved.

"Hi Laney-bird," I said.

My brother was stretched on the floor slobbering on his knuckles and making a sound like he was terrified. This was normal for him. He sat up when he saw me although I don't believe he recognized me. He would get these expressions on his face like a compassionate saint or buddha until the spell would be broken and he might hit himself repeatedly in the temple like a flagellent. For now he was calm. He put an arm around my shoulder to pull me close. He called "Mmm-Ma, Mmm-Ma, Mmm-Ma but it could just as easily have been "Om." At Church some people spoke in tongues. My brother chanted in the language of the universe.

I laid down on the rug next to him. I stared into his eyes thinking what it would be like to have a brother. A brother who lived with me. Maybe even shared the same room. His eyes were a very light blue. His lips were chapped as were the fingers on one hand. He had never spoken a word in his entire life and never would. He made a noise part chant and part song. I imitated it. He fell silent. There was a secret behind those eyes. I thought about the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Somehow I knew this story would not end like that. I waited for the mystery to reveal itself. I did not ask questions or think of answers. I looked into his eyes and he looked back at me. I wanted to tell him that this, all this, was not fair but somehow I believed he knew it already.

A PRESCRIPTION FOR ANDY RODDICK by Daren Dean

After his latest loss can Roddick turn his career around and win another grand slam title at this point in his career? Roddick (Age 28) is ranked number 8 in the world but he went down in straight sets in his fourth-round match at the Australian Open to the journeyman Swiss player Stanislaus Wawrinka.

On paper Roddick has all the advantages in this sort of matchup. He has the ability to hit a 155 mile an hour serve (the fastest recorded serve in the history of our sport) and he’s appeared in 5 grand slam finals, Wimbledon 3 times and twice at the U.S. Open. Oddly enough it was his first final at the 2003 U.S. Open against Juan Carlos Ferrero where he first hoisted a major trophy where you might expect him to win Wimbledon with that titanic serve. However, it was Roger Federer who stunned Roddick with a straight set defeat of the American at Wimbledon in 2005. Federer demonstrated that the way to nullify the booming Roddick serve was to simply block it back deep. Roddick visibly struggled as Federer time and again returned his serve with ease.

This defeat showed not only the tactical brilliance of Federer on defense, but also a psychological achilles heal in the mental game of Roddick. Roddick allowed Federer to get away with blocking back his serve partly because he was surprised Federer could consistently do it over the course of the match, but also because Roddick did not back up his serve by effectively coming to the net behind it. Part of this is because despite having an amazing serve and forehand his volleys are only average at his level of the game. Another area of his game that is problematic in my view is that two-handed backhand. Rather than argue about which is better a one-hander or a two-hander I’d say that in certain situtations one hand is sometimes better than two despite the barrage of male players ranging from 6’4 to 6’10 who use the double-fisted grip. The difficulty comes in the transition game where it can be a liability at the top of the game when players are dealing with low short balls in the middle of the court.

Roddick causes his opponents to regularly hit weak shots off of the return of his serve but a two-hander finds himself making a split-second decisions to hit an outright winner or an approach shot. If it’s above the net you’ll see two-handers go for the winner, but if it’s low or angled away from them then they’re forced to carve under it while reaching forward with two hands or hitting a one-handed slice shot which more players have developed, but I would argue these players either hit it with too much slice and it pops up or they’re just not used to hitting it effectively against the top players. Obviously both Federer and Murray attempted to use this strategy of hitting off speed shots to the backhand to throw off Djockovic but the Joker loves this surface at the Australian Open and he triumphed over both of his top rivals with quick feet and a refurbished first serve.

Aside: Another reason for this rise of all-court baseliners is due to the fact that the surfaces have been slowed down perhaps due to the sharp criticism back in the 90s that watching short points and booming serves was too boring. There were several years where the common wisdom said the sport was not appealing to the masses the way it did when you had the violent personalities of Connors and McEnroe drawing spectators to see the blood sport aspect of the game these American players brought to the game. In my view, real tennis fans still loved the sport after the decline of those colorful players but not all of the folks who watched them really cared or knew anything about the game. Changes that were discussed or put into practice were playing loud music, changing the rules of the game, and all of this criticism seemed to disappear since the Federer-Nadal rivalry has emerged. But I digress, can you imagine what terror the 6'6 Juan Martin del Potro would strike in his opponents if he hit a kick serve and followed it into the net?

It was the Swiss Stanislaus Wawrinka who took a page out of Federer’s book to mentally and physically take the match from Roddick by using a strategic game to underscore Roddick's weaknesses. Whenever A-Rod seemed to get ahead in the point he seemed to play passively and allow Wawrinka to exploit his neutral two-hander and then turn defense into offense.

It might be ridiculous to suggest that a one-handed backhand is always better than two. Not what I'm suggesting at all, but I have noticed a trend in professional tennis which seems to be dominated by big men who move like gazelles with Thor-like serves and forehands but play like they have to skitter around on the baseline as though they are afraid they might be passed at the net if they come in off the backhand.  It's analagous to the 6'11 basketball player who decides he's a three-point specialist. Yes, he might have a nice outside shot but why not maximize your natural gifts? Let's face it, it is an awkward shot for a two-hander.

I would even suggest it’s those darn two-handed backhands that have forced them to play this way. Now, I have to back track and say yes Soderling has an amazing flat two-hander and there are others but in the transition game only a few players over the years have overcome this problematic issue of the transition game. Number one, to the detriment of many of these top players there isn't much of a transition happening and it's awkward to do the graceful shuffle with the feet to hit an effective approach shot when you have both hands on your racquet.

Jimmy Connors had probably the greatest two-handed approach in the history of the game while Mats Wilander who went 3 for 4 in the grand slams in 1988 with his new secret weapon—the one-handed slice backhand. Players can hit this shot but largely it’s just to pin their opponent on the baseline rather than a threatening shot like the infamous knifing Ken Rosewall stroke. In addition, the racquet technology of the game has given rise to another phenomenon that almost everyone on the men’s and women’s tour now has a very serviceable backhand. I think this is a case of technology over technique. Another point I’ll throw in there is that strategy and the ability to change game plans in the middle of the match separates Nadal and Federer from the pack. So many technically brilliant players seem to be out there whacking the ball for all their worth but hitting through the opponent and chasing down balls seems to be the go-to plan which in my view is no plan at all.

On the other hand, I watched a couple of Francesa Schiavone’s matches and was reminded of a time when players actually tried to exploit weaknesses and take control of the net. More players than you can shake a ripstick at seem to be playing in the Agassi style these days which I think has shown one great weakness which is currently being exploited by the world's best players. Nadal and Djokovic use two hands too, but they have had more success because of their conditioning and quick feet in my view—and they aren’t afraid to be aggressive and take over which, if you’ll remember, Nadal was tagged with this criticism earlier in his career.

In this vein, I believe Roddick could improve his chances against the field in general if he concentrates on backing up his serve by taking those floaters in the air, improving his conditioning for his movement’s sakes, and developing his transition game. I’m sure great coaches like Stefanki have been begging him to do this but it’s up to Roddick to get outside of his comfort zone in order to compete with the greatest players of his generation: Federer, Nadal, and revived Novak djokovic. No easy feat I’ll grant that but he’ll have to take more chances particularly on the return of serve.

A-Rod is moving in the right direction with Larry Stefanki as his coach, but the real question is will he listen to Stefanki? He’s been through a numer of coaches including his brother, and more notably Jimmy Connors, and Brad “Winning Ugly” Gilbert to name a few. Does the Nebraska native’s recent loss at the Australian Open mean he’ll soon be shopping around for another new coach? (I hear Patrick McEnroe is free.) Let’s hope not. I haven’t noticed Roddick’s game improving or changing for the better but I suspect that his on court woes are a combination of strategy and confidence issues. Against the top 5 players in the world he will definitely have to produce brilliant tennis. His tendency to stay back and wait to hit a big forehand will just not work against Nadal and Federer who frankly can do everything he can and a little better. His movement is good but it’s not at the level of the top contenders. I believe he can get back into the mix again but it will take work if he's willing to dedicate his 2011 to finding the right formula for his game.

Don’t feel sorry for Roddick. He is, after all, married to the beautiful swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker besides being a grand slam winner. But it would be nice to see him as a serious contender for future slam titles for the sake of American tennis.

Richard Ford on Writing

This is a part 1 in a 2 part video interview with Ford talking about moving to the Jersey shore, writing, and other things. It has a nice atmospheric sense to it that I think you might enjoy. Richard Ford is a brilliant writer. I've known this for awhile but funny enough I've never read the Trilogy he's most well known for which are the books about his character Frank Bascombe (The Sportswriter, Independence Day, and the Lay of the Land). I read Wildlife and Rock Springs years ago and really loved that stuff. I only just finished A Piece of My Heart. I'm not sure how long ago it was after I read Wildlife I was surprised to learn Ford was from Mississippi since those other books had a western flavor. It must have been the early 90s I was reading other western writers like Thomas McGuane and Rick Bass. A little later I found Annie Proulx and the list goes on. I could identify with these writers because I'd moved around a bit growing up and before I started high school we'd lived in Arizona, California, Colorado, and Nebraska. The open landscape and the myth of the American west that my mother must have bought into that there are limitless possibilities in the west must have appearled to her. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The idea of reinventing oneself has always appealed to me.

A Piece of My Heart echoes with the southern cadence you might expect. It's a literary novel with long stretches of atmosphere and conversations that seem to about to explode into violence. It just solidifies this idea of Ford in my mind as a great writer. I want to say he's underrated but since he did get the Pulitzer for Independence Day in 1996 I guess that might sound funny though I rarely hear anyone mention his name. I'm going to read that trilogy for sure now since I've given myself a pep talk about it. Let me know if you read him and what you think. He has successfully avoided getting labeled as a Southern writer or a Western writer because his work takes place all over the country. He's an American writer.

Columbia Tribune Piece

Niche: A weekly peek at an area artist

Daren Dean
By Aarik Danielsen Columbia Daily Tribune
Sunday, November 7, 2010

Often, talk about successful writers centers on bringing shades and shadows of a very specific setting, the haunts and hallows of their homes to bear on their words. Faulkner had Mississippi, Steinbeck the Central California coast and Thoreau the Walden woods.

Daren Dean’s work has a definite sensibility, but it’s born from a childhood in the company of rich characters rather than born out of a single location. Dean was born in Missouri, the state always a point of reference and return. Growing up, however, he and his mother sojourned frequently “for no good reason,” an indefinable wanderlust rousing them and a westerly wind blowing them to states such as Arizona, California, Colorado and Nebraska.

At each stop, Dean encountered a cast worthy of preserving in print: jovial shop owners, beguiling barflies and roughnecks who doubled as swimming teachers. Each of their stories added contour to his character, each highway and byway traveled providentially pointing toward one path. “I think partly my background was raising me to become a writer,” he said.

Dean speaks like a modest Midwesterner but writes like a Southerner with sordid stories to tell, versed in the vernacular of violence, fluent in the language of hard luck, acquainted with everyday drama and the alienation that occurs even in close-knit communities. In his new novel, “Far Beyond the Pale,” Dean draws deep from wells of tradition and tension established by his literary forefathers.

“Things resonate with me more … with these Southern writers,” Dean said. “I guess it has to do with growing up mostly in the Midwest. … There’s a lot I recognize when I look at those characters. Some people think it’s funny that you write about these kinds of characters when you’re not this kind of person. But I’m very familiar with that thought process and how people really do things and think about things.”

Like a sphere careening through a pinball machine, he was flung back and forth between drastically different situations. Living with his mother, Dean knew few restraints. They occasionally lived in motel rooms, and, often, he would get off the school bus to visit her in bars where she worked. There, he heard “a lot of funny talk because everyone was drunk or on their way.” Tall tales, outright lies and candid confessions were part of the chatter; Dean was often amazed at how adults would fail to filter their comments around him.

He would also stay with a devoutly Pentecostal aunt and uncle; Dean was given a great deal and love in each environ but felt adrift in a world of extremes, hoping to find merit in the middle. He learned to blend in during even the most “volatile” situations, a gift that would later serve him well. “When you’re a kid, you’re not in control of too many situations so, really, what you have is the power of observation to help you,” he said.

Yet, for a long time, he had little interest in writing, inspired instead by visual movements such as surrealism and dada. Over time, he warmed to the likes of Truman Capote and, especially, Flannery O’Connor, whose stories he felt paralleled his own. French author André Breton provided just the bridge Dean required between surrealism and the written word; his “Soluble Fish” encouraged him to engage writing techniques such as free association. He eventually completed a degree at Central Methodist University and a Master of Fine Arts at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. Influences deeply felt during school and beyond included professor and novelist Clyde Edgerton and Mississippi-based author Larry Brown. He taught writing and literature classes adjunct at the University of Missouri, Westminster College and William Woods University but, after struggling to “cobble together” enough classes each semester, accepted a position at the University of Missouri Press.

All the while, he penned and published prose, poetry and creative nonfiction, securing a style that positioned him as an heir to a rich legacy of Southern literature, though Dean also identifies with genre-blurring labels like Industrial Gothic, Southern Punk and Country Noir. His work possesses a quick, dark wit similar to O’Connor’s — his narrators are self-deprecating and self-aware — as well as a characteristic fascination with the grotesque. His most astute awareness is of the alienation felt by a generation with increasingly absent parents. “I think my characters struggle with being true to their loved ones, and being true to your family is a way of being loyal to yourself,” he said in a follow-up e-mail. “They struggle with these loyalties because the characters … are divided within themselves.”

Each factor emerges in “Far Beyond the Pale,” the story of “Honey Boy” Kimbrough, “a 13-year-old, four-letter spouting, pistol-packing kid” who befriends a violent scofflaw on his search for any semblance of a functional family. Although the tale’s trajectory mirrors his, Dean said the main character is far more audacious and willing to act than he ever was. Currently available, the book is being considered by a larger publisher, so Dean’s work continues “to hopefully make the characters stronger and perhaps make the arc of Honey Boy’s life more dramatic for the reader.”

The book contains no grand epiphany; Dean said he doesn’t succumb to the “misconception that fiction has to have a moral.” He agrees with Harry Crews, who said, “What the artist owes the world is his work, not a model for living.” Dean would rather concentrate on crafting “an interesting and entertaining story or have a certain aesthetic.”

The perpetual migration Dean endured meant rarely seeing resolutions in the lives of characters he encountered. As such, he sees solid beginnings, muscular middles and incomplete endings in his work. However, as he continues on with Honey Boy and in his career, Dean is learning how to craft fascinating conclusions to his chapters, ones sure to reflect his Midwest-by-birth, Southern-by-the-grace-of-great-writers sense of self.

Checkout the article in the Columbia Tribune

http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2010/nov/07/daren-dean/#

Orr Street Studio Reading Lisa Groshong and Daren Dean

 

Far Beyond the Pale Review

http://301media.com/301/2010/finally-cracking-open-an-ebook/

David Baker discusses ebooks and Far Beyond the Pale on his blog:

HomeAboutFilmsScreenplaysWeb DesignWriting RSS301media.com

A mixed media blog by David BakerBusiness Comics Contests Dialog Fiction Films Habits Misc. Poetry Resources Tips Gutenberg, iPhones and “Far Beyond the Pale”10th August 2010 Update – 08-11-10 – ReadWriteWeb offered 5 reasons why paper books are better than eBooks. Kobo offers a host of free eBooks including every classic you’ll ever need to read.
It’s been at least ten years since I first started thinking seriously about eBooks and getting excited about the idea. I had a Palm Pilot for work, and the display was poor and the Internet connection was horrible. But I loved the idea of carrying an entire library in my pocket. Still, I never even purchased the first book. The Palm Pilot is probably in some museum right now. Maybe the Gutenberg Museum we recently visited in Mainz, Germany.

Far Beyond the Pale is the new novel from Daren Dean.

Well, it’s taken me ten years to finally give it a try. What I needed was the right device and a strong reason to jump in. I bought an iPhone a couple years ago. But still, I didn’t download the Kindle app and a book until my friend Daren Dean released his amazing novel, Far Beyond the Pale, on Amazon. I downloaded the app and fired up the book, and now I’m thoroughly enjoying both Daren’s excellent writing and the experience of reading a novel electronically.

Readwriteweb recently gave five reasons why eBooks are better than their paper ancestors.Though they highlight some amazing features of eBooks that aren’t available in the dead tree format, I wouldn’t go so far as saying this makes them superior. There’s still nothing quite like the smell of a fresh (or old and dusty) book, or the feel of pulp in your hands. There’s a sensory pleasure in reading a paper book that can’t be replicated digitally.

But the actual act reading, of experiencing words, even on the iPhone’s small screen, is just as engaging as reading on paper. You can make notes, highlight, save your spot. The iPhone allows you to flip pages with your thumb, adding a new level of touch to the experience that pressing a button can’t give you. The digital annotation tools are more efficient than the analog system of sticky notes, highlighters, bent corners and margin scrawls (albeit aesthetically less pleasing). The price is also fantastic. Daren is self-published, but I was able to buy his novel at a price on Kindle that allowed him a better profit margin (per copy) than if he’d connected with a traditional publisher.

Some writers and book lovers may think that the advent of eBooks is a sad day for novels, words and books in general. I think that’s pessimistic horse shit.

There’s also something nice about the short page length on an iPhone…it gives you the feeling of headlong progress (through the 4,000+ pages that Daren’s novel reaches in this format). I thought I’d need time to adjust to thousands of micropages compared to the traditional200-400 page length of a novel, but it’s been no problem at all. In fact, I appreciate being able to flip a page or two between giving my kid a bath or waiting for her to brush her teeth. It seems easier to dip in and out of a novel than reading a fraction of a longer, standard-length page.

Some writers and book lovers may think that the advent of viable eBook platforms is a sad day for novels, words and books in general. I think that’s pessimistic horse shit. eBooks may just be what saves the novel form in this digital age. The new platform introduces the novel experience to people who are used to consuming all of their information on a mobile device and wouldn’t otherwise think to read something of that length. It saves trees. It allows self-published authors to reach a global audience in minutes. It enhances the opportunity to deepen the novel experience with, say, video of the author reading or social highlighting and notes that give you an instant book discussion group. The future of the book-length manuscript would be far more precarious if they didn’t translate so smoothly to the Kindle, iPhone and iPad.

And it’s silly to think that paper books will die as a result of the growing popularity of eBooks. We all now have keyboards and mobile devices that shoot video and record audio. People write blogs and online diaries and send volumes of digitally composed email. But personal journals are as popular as ever. Moleskine notebooks are on sale everywhere. I see them in every coffee shop in Oregon, but I also recently returned from Germany and Italy, and they’re all over Europe as well. Every corner in Florence seemed to have a fine stationary shop, where Moleskines were the cheap option, and antique leather notebooks fetched ridiculous prices. There’s still a place for the handwritten word five hundred years after Gutenberg. People will always read paper books as well.

Hands-on printing at the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz - they'll still be doing this 500 years from now.

While we were in Germany, we stopped at the Gutenberg Museum. My daughter joined her cousins in making prints in the museum’s hands-on print shop. She was thrilled by the tactile, mechanical experience of creating art in a method not unlike Gutenberg used when he printed his first Bible page a half millennium ago. This experience could never be replicated digitally. The art hanging on the walls of the print shop was innovative, and had a warm, comfortable feeling. Prints will be decorating walls for as long as I’m alive. Gutenberg’s invention brought the Bible and a host of other materials to the hands of people who didn’t have access to them before. He created a world of readers, expanding the simple practice of reading to the great unwashed. eBooks have the potential of bringing novels and book-length manuscripts forward, not only reaching people who already read them, but even introducing them to folks who never would have thought to pick up a manuscript on their own before.

Just like Gutenberg's invention brought the new experience of reading a book to people never reached before, the digital novel will bring novels to new readers.

So for writers and serious readers, there’s nothing to fear from eBooks. Bookstores will still exist. Some will flourish, and some will close. But books and novel manuscripts will persist. Writers like Daren Dean will be able to share their stories with friends on the other side of the country, and hopefully even reach a wider audience. Far Beyond the Pale is a compelling novel with an engaging voice. It’s a little raw, but it’s better than a lot of the pap that I’ve bought from traditional publishers in the past year. It also has a feeling of personal authenticity that other novels I’ve read recently. Maybe it’s because I know Daren, or maybe it’s because the digital age is allowing novelists to engage readers without the filter of big corporate publishers.

Daren is an amazing writer who surrounds his readers with voice-driven prose and rich, tactile imagery that comes through just as well on screen as it does on paper. And even traditional publishers and agents have been telling him for years that he’s an amazing writer, though, “the market is just too tough right now.” But today he’s now able to reach the audience he deserve.