Entrekin

Last night, I think I dreamt of Denver.

I’m not sure it was Denver, as I’ve never been to Denver, but I think it was my mental approximation.

The situation was this:

A coffeeshop/bar/deli. Not sure which, as I didn’t order anything. Could have been all of the above, in fact, for all I knew. And there was a person (I think a woman) at a table outside. And I spoke to her, and then she referred me to a ledger inside the shop itself. The ledger enumerated points of my life, mainly to do with graduate school, with commentary beside each one. Like, for example, the note under “Went to USC” was along the lines of “Dusting off the old diploma to . . .” etc. (the actual details of the dream, are, as is so often the case, lost to the kind of morning that will last all afternoon). But I woke up thinking about that ledger, and feeling judged. Feeling as though I came before a jury and was found wanting.

Which seemed as good a prompt as any to talk about Denver. Shows how much I want to go, I think. For various reasons.

Los Angeles has not agreed with me. I usually take pretty well to new places, and I dug LA for a while; I’m not sure when it lost its luster, but it since has. Which isn’t to say it’s been a terrible experience, and saying that I hate LA would probably overstate the case, but I really can’t wait to get the hell out of here. I was talking to my advisor and his wife about it on Friday night, and I think they got it; his wife mentioned the “hermetically sealed confines of people in their cars compartmentalizing their destinations” (pretty much verbatim), which may be partly it. Some of my friends have called me a city boy, which may be true, but calling Los Angeles a “city” stretches the word across too many miles to really have any meaning anymore. It’s a giant, smoggy sprawl full of vanity and car exhaust, and though I’ve made some wonderful friends, I’ve never considered friendship a function of geography, and more than I’ve thought writing might be.

So, Denver. First, the PhD. I realized I wanted to pursue one, because I definitely want to continue being a professor. I love teaching, and on a college level . . . yes, please. There aren’t many PhD programs; USC, UNLV, a couple places in the midwest, and Chicago, are the ones that stick out. And really; I’m done with LA, don’t want to do either Chicago or Las Vegas for the next five years, and the midwest doesn’t sound all that terrific. Denver has some really cool professors, namely Brian Kitely and Laird Hunt; the former is interested in story and its origin, while the latter has written some experimental noir books.

Story and noir? Um, yes. I want to found a new theory of literary criticism, in fact, and who doesn’t like good noir?

I had the same reaction to their names and concentrations as I had when I read that Marc Norman and Janet Fitch taught at USC. And that was enough for me.

Also, I think Denver will be a good balance between the urban life I love to immerse myself in and the natural life I continually seek. It was one of my favorite things about Jersey; smack between New York and Philadelphia, with millions of acres of the pine barrens in between. Between the tight-pack of Denver’s thriving downtown and its proximity to both the Rockies and Red Rocks, I think it will feel like a different version of home, which is pretty much what I’ve sought all my life; where I’m from, but a little different. As dynamic as New York but smaller, and without the brusk hustle.

Getting into DU, I’ll be a teaching assistant (awesome), which is actually a step down from what I’m doing now, technically, but that’s all right by me. And if I don’t get in; it’s not like I’m not qualified to do just about anything. I’m going to retake my personal training test this summer, maybe get into subbing again, and query some freelance stuff.

And then I’ll just reapply next year.

That’s always been the deciding point for me; is it something I’d want to do even if I didn’t have to? If I’d gotten a book deal two years ago, would I have finished my Master’s? I didn’t decide to go to USC until I realized the answer to that was an emphatic yes. And if I’d sold my novel last week, I would’ve used it to rent a house in Denver without a second thought.

So I’m a bit scared, but it’s nice to know that feeling comes from the fear that I won’t get into DU. That it won’t work out the way I want it to.

One thing I’ve learned so far, though, is that even when it doesn’t, it works out the way you need it to, and that’s all right by me.

Tags: brian kitely, chicago, Denver, dreams, DU, janet fitch, laird hunt, las vegas, life, literary criticism, literary theory, los angeles, marc norman, new jersey, new york, PhD, pine barrens, University of Denver, unlv, USC, writing

Will Shetterly, whom I’ve mentioned before, wrote a novel called Dogland, semi-autobiographical in nature, about growing up at an amusement park. He’s posted the first chapter of a memoir, A Boy in Dogland, here.

You should check it out. It’s good.

Tags: books, dogland, excerpt, free, memoir, novel, will shetterly, writing

Yesterday’s post concerning the Orange prize was just the start, and the nice thing is that a couple of comments segue directly into what I’d planned to address next.

Lisa said:

they shout: “Hey ladies, if you wear my perfume or eat my yogurt you’ll look like me; a size one beauty queen with airbrushed skin and perky breasts.”

concerning half-naked (or fully naked) women on billboards.

Alma noted:

What kills me, though, is how women try to demonize men for things that women do. Don’t get me wrong…sexism *is* alive and well–just like racism. And, yes, women *have* been oppressed. But, I wonder, how much of that oppression–both then and now–has come from women themselves.

I think both are very apt, and I’m also very glad that two spectacular women made the point before I did, because I think part of the problem with discussion about feminism is that demonization of men, when a lot of men don’t really deserve it. Though some say that one can’t draw analogs between sexism and racism, there is, I think, some connection there. Black people cannot simply blame white people for millennia of oppression, because you can’t blame people for something it’s impossible for them to have had anything to do with. We all, together, as a society can try to ameliorate past injustice, but trying to place blame is not the way to do it. Slavery sucked, but fuck, I didn’t have anything to do with it, and I don’t think any of my ancestors did, either; why blame me for something other people’s great-great-grandfathers did? Oppression of women sucks, and is awful, but why blame me for something previous generations created when I’m actively trying to help further equality in the world?

The thing those two comments bears out, though, is that men sometimes have little to do with it. The demographic of half-naked women billboards is not men–it’s women. I’ll admit, I think this is a troublesome spot, mainly because I think that marketing is a completely different question all together, but I do think they cater to women’s perceived needs, as women perceive them. Walking down the aisles in my mental Target–how many different kinds of shampoo/conditioner/hair styling products can really be necessary?

Does makeup make a difference to a man, or do women wear it because they fear judgement from other women? Because I’ll be honest, I’ve seen lots of ads for mascara but have never, even once, looked at a woman and thought, “Wow, now those’re some eyelashes” (that’s what mascara’s for, right?), and most of my friends will tell you I’m just the sort of aesthetics-driven man that would notice something like that. Concerning heels: I was talking, last week, to someone going on interviews who was lamenting the idea of wearing heels. When I suggested she not, she called it “unprofessional” not to. Mind you, this is a girl who firmly believes in separating herself from others based on her talents and qualifications; that she worried her shoes might make her unprofessional was a revelation. My thought was: to whom? If I were a guy conducting an interview (and the old argument is still that men run corporate America and have all the power positions, except the fact that I’ve only ever been interviewed by women, ever [and I've worked in advertising, education, personal training, and publishing]), I’d never hire-or-not an applicant based on her shoes.

In fact, when I worked at a publishing company, I worked in a department as the only man among 12 women, all of whom were the executive or managing editors of their publications. Or editorial director was a woman. And the VP positions in the company were split pretty evenly male/female.

I’m not saying biases don’t still exist. I’m not trying to make the argument that we live in shiny happy utopia with no racism or sexism. I’m just asking questions about that gender bias, and wondering, who’s really against women?

I read a post the other week on Book Addiction, in which the blogger posted a review of Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminsim. Now, I was interested in the book, at first; I studied gender when I was in college, even took a Women & Literature course in which I did a term paper on insanity as an escape in Victorian women’s literatures, and made the argument that insanity was actually sane considering the ‘normal’ conventions the female protagonists were rejecting. However, I clicked through to Valenti’s book, and read the first two pages, and found lots of weirdo stuff.

Her opening sentence is “What’s the worst thing you can call a woman? Don’t hold back now.” She enumerates several possibilities, among them ‘skank,’ ‘whore,’ and ‘cunt.’ Then she asks about men, and enumerates again: “Fag, girl, bitch, pussy,” because her argument is that the worst thing you can call a girl is a girl, and the worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Which strikes me as a little inane, mainly because I’ve heard a lot of guys called assholes, and those are pretty gender non-specific. I’ve also heard men and women alike call guys ‘dicks,’ ‘cocks,’ and ‘pricks,’ and not just as metonymy.

The paragraph I really hated, though? Here:

Do you think it’s fair that a guy will make more money doing the same job as you? Does it piss you off and scare you when you find out about your friends getting raped? Do you ever feel like shit about your body? Do you ever feel like something is wrong with you because you don’t fit into this bizarre ideal of what girls are supposed to look like?

To answer all her questions: it’s not fair, of course it pisses me off, of course I’ve felt lie shit about my body, and I do sometimes feel like something is wrong with me because I sometimes don’t fit into this bizarre ideal of what [men are supposed to be like].

Of course, I question her: does she think only women get raped? (They don’t. Men get raped to. And sometimes not even by other men. Women can coerce men into sex they don’t want to have every bit so much as men can. Not all men are the sexually-starved slavering drool-fools we are made out to be.) Don’t we all have days when we dislike our body, or our hair? Aren’t men driven to some ideal to billboards and magazine advertisements? Just because the ideal is to play golf and have great hair and watch NFL on Sundays from the La-Z Boy doesn’t mean it’s not an ideal. We are inundated with airbrushed models in Calvin Kleins every bit as much as women are. What man ever had Marky Mark’s abs? Not even Marky Mark has Marky Mark’s abs anymore.

Valenti’s new book, out next month, is called He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Women Need to Know, but she’s wrong, of course. Because men who indulge in casual sexual promiscuity are no longer held up to some ‘bizarre ideal’; that idea is as quaint and rooted to the 50s as the whole ‘slut’ thing; the men who grease their hair and permatan and use the tactics in The Game are “players,” and are called assholes or douchebags by pretty much everyone who knows better.

Tags: abs, asshole, bitch, body image, book addiction, cocks, cunt, dicks, douchebag, eyelashes, fag, feminism, full frontal feminism, heels, jessica valenti, literature, marky mark, metonymy, orange prize, permatan, pricks, pussy, racism, rape, sexism, the game, women

I’ve read a bit over the past week about the Orange Prize, which is a literary prize awarded to a woman and judged by a panel comprised exclusively of women, as a response to the literary subjugation of women in the literary world. There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle; A.S. Byatt (author of Possession) denounced it as a sexist prize, with which Tim Lott agrees. So one side of the camp (and the award’s organization) claims that it needs a prize because women have not received their proper due, whereas the other side of the camp argues it’s unnecessary. Various heated arguments have ensued, if by ‘heated’ we mean ‘various bloggers have contributed their free two cents.’

Lott makes a few good points, opening with:

Here is a selection of groups that have been consistently under-represented among the winners of the UK’s two major book prizes, the Booker and the Costa/Whitbread: the white working class (0); West Indians (1); black Africans (0); disabled writers (0).

No one has funded a prize for these groups. However the Orange Prize was set up in 1996 to give women their own prize – because of perceived under-representation in the Booker. Despite 12 years of consciousness-raising by the Orange, the Booker still doesn’t give women their just mathematical due – a 3:10 ratio remains. But given that women have won five out of the last six Whitbread/Costas, does the level of injustice remain enough to justify the Orange?

Although the idea of applying ‘mathematical dues’ and ‘ratios’ to anything concerning writing hurts my head.

It’s a post both The Girl Detective and We are in debt took umbrage with and argued with, to various degrees of efficacy. My students would be quick to point out that calling anyone “Neanderthals” outside of an anthropoligical/taxonomical context is immediately ad hominem (a phrase meaning “against the man,” which may be particularly appropriate in this context).

Which also probably describes my own thoughts on this, as well as the probable argument that I am not entitled to them. I should not think about such issues because, as an average white male, I have no right. That Debt blog notes that “there’s no such thing as a reverse -ism,” but I’d disagree with that, especially in consideration of a phrase later used: “Leave it to a man.” Right. Because all we white males believe precisely the same thing and act precisely the same way, and we’ve all subjugated and oppressed every woman we’ve ever met because to do otherwise threatens our alpha-supremacy in the world.

The author later notes “The author of this silly piece seems to think that women are a “dominant” group, like “whites” (wrong)” but I wonder if that’s truly the case. First, a quibble: technically, women are more numerous, as a gender, than men–isn’t the population split still, like, 52% to 55% (versus, wait, I can do this–48% and 45%, respectively) in favor of women? I get that the trouble spot is in the definition of “dominant,” and that to be more populous does not necessarily equate to dominance, but still it isn’t technically wrong to state that women are a dominant group, for most definitions of the term. Not to mention that simply calling an argument ‘silly,’ or ‘wrong-headed’ or whatever doesn’t actually forward any real argument, and, indeed, if nothing else, brings the debate down.

The argument seems to be whether the Orange prize is necessary, but I have to admit I have trouble believing any literary prize is actually necessary. I don’t really get them, any more than I really get the whole Oscars thing; what, exactly, is a best picture, and on what level was No Country for Old Men better than Zodiac (I can think of many ways it was worse, but few better)? Given a real ballot with nominees (of any medium or genre) of any actual merit, terms like “better” actually cease to exist, I think. And does it really denote anything? Looking over Wikipedia’s list of nominees and winners, the only book on it I’ve ever read is Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, which I thought was overrated. I’ve picked up books by the usual suspects (Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, etc.), but have felt the same way toward theirs; nothing to inspire me to read beyond the first ten pages.

Maybe bad writers need awards to get recognition in a marketplace of books by people who know how to tell stories? Who’s Booker, and why does their list matter so much? There was a recent blogbate over Zadie’s Smith’s decision, as judge and jury for the Willesden (sp?) Herald’s award, to not award anything because it wasn’t good enough; who, besides WH, decided Zadie Smith is some arbiter of quality? More important, one of the members of the Orange jury is Lily Allen. Of MySpace fame.

Has Lily Allen ever even read a book? Her comments on Radiohead’s ‘devaluation of art’ seem to demonstrate she is perfectly content to argue based on superficial preconception with neither basis nor experience to bear them up.

One of Girl Detective’s arguments is:

I’d love to see a society in which women’s needs are catered to in the marketplace – where, say, every billboard has a picture of a naked man on it – and products for men just don’t exist. I wouldn’t want to live there – I’d just like to poke around a bit.

Does this mean that products for women, in the current marketplace, “just don’t exist,” whereas men’s every need is catered to? Also, I wonder where GD lives; I live in Hollywood, and there are plenty of naked men on billboards. Plenty of giant images of sharply chiseled jaws like none of us really have, washboard abs like none of us will ever really manage to get… etc. What female needs aren’t catered to, exactly?

No, really, I’d love to know, because as I’ve learned in my marketing class, built-in need-based target markets are a fucking gold mine, and I’d love to not be a broke-ass grad student anymore.

Speaking of mines, I’m sure this is probably one, and I expect debate/discussion (though not all together much, because who really reads this blog yet?), but if we can refrain from calling me a whiny Neanderthal, that’d be awesome.

Because, I mean, come on, it’s kind of the obvious strategy, isn’t it?

Tags: a.s. byatt, booker, feminism, ian mcewan, life of pi, lily allen, margaret atwood, No country for old men, orange prize, oscars, possession, tim lott, willesden herald, yann martel, zadie smith, zodiac

It’s really settling in, with full force, that I’ve finished USC’s MPW program for all intents and purposes. Today, in my email, I got a note about some loan exit interview I’m supposed to do before I graduate.

And then I came home to find a box from Lulu on my stoop:

Which I then opened:

To find a stack of two books, sheathed protectively in foam:

Which I then turned over:

To find my uber-pretty, perfect-bound thesis, The Prodigal Hour:

With its title page:

And then a page I’ll give you a ‘before’ of:

Because I’m meeting with my advisor tomorrow so he can sign it.

A note on the cover: I actually made one myself, with Photoshop, but then got up to the Lulu page and decided to just go with one of theirs, for a simple reason: this copy, in particular, is going to do nothing more than collect dust on a couple of shelves (one with me, the other with my program). It’s really kind of cheesy, but then, I was like, well, who’s really going to see it, and it does sorta match the story (with cool light effects around a pair of eyes, and a cityscape, and then cosmic implication, all of which are included in what the novel is about).

Yes, just two copies:

And here will be the only place you’ll ever be able to see them.

Lucky you.

Fuckall, I’m done with grad school.

I was going to write about why I’m moving on to Denver, but that’ll wait for another time. I’m going to take an evening to process this.

Tags: grad school, lulu, mfa, mpw, novel, prodigal hour, thesis, USC

Just done my own class/lecture, during which I taught “A Modest Proposal.” It’s difficult to imagine a time when Swift was his own era’s Jon Stewart, but that’s how it strikes me. The prompt I’m teaching specifically focuses on satire, but it also encompasses ideas of frameworks and Marshall McLuhan’s ideas of media being the message.

I use Swift as an exercise; his essay is good as satire, perhaps, but would it fly in our class? How would I grade it?

My students understand, by and large, that it would perform poorly, in terms of a grade, and, most important, why. And then we fix it.

I try to have some fun teaching it; last semester, the lesson went over like nothing else through the whole course–my students fully engaged, making jokes, and came up with some surprises. They seemed to have fun with it, and any time I can demonstrate how much fun writing can be, how awesome the process can really be, I feel like I’ve done my job. And so today we revised Swift. It came off pretty well, I think. Any time I can get my students to discuss the consumption of infants for nutritive purposes is, I think, rather funny. One other fun thing is the challenge of social mores; the idea of eating babies is awful, but lots of different cultures have their own culinary mores (Jews and pork, etc.).

I tried to really drive home the idea of a framework–that it’s not just what their papers say, but how they say it, and that they need to make explicit the connections they are making. Which, of course, ties back to McLuhan–Swift’s essay works in its medium, but changing that medium necessarily changes the implicit or explicit method.

I’m still uncertain whether it truly is a case of one being the other, though. As McLuhan states it, he uses a being verb–one is the other. Me, I tend to think it’s more subtle than that; one affects the other, but what you say and how you say it are, ultimately, two fantastically disparate things (even if they do, in fact, relate).

One idea that came up was when my student called me a ‘medium.’ I’m not sure about that either way, but I’m really glad they’re thinking.

Tags: a modest proposal, mcluhan, medium, message, revision, swift

Lecture first, then class, then office hours . . . I’m out for several hours.

Some pictures of where I’ll be at Imagery, though.

Tags: class, imagery, lecture

A new Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers CD is reason enough to write, and would make this post good enough, but good enough is simply not awesome, is it?

I’ve been a huge fan of Clyne since 1995, and the Refreshments; Fizzy, Fuzzy, Big, & Buzzy was the first CD I ever owned I loved beginning to end. I played the shit out of that bad boy. Over and over. I passed up a chance to see the Refreshments in New York, once, and they subsequently broke up. Clyne reformed a band not long afterward with a few members of other bands from the Tempe music scene, and Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers released Honky Tonk Union.

RC&tPM are the most successful independent band in the country, from what I’ve read. I think they deserve it; I love pretty much everything I hear from them. Not everything, mind you; I think it’s rare to find an artist whose entire output one loves, but they come pretty close. Clyne reminds me equally of Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Bruce Springsteen, but to my mind surpasses all three with a unique vision of the southwest, peace, love, and rock ‘n roll. This new one, Turbo Ocho, is really good; not as awesome as !Americano!, but certainly among their best (though really, which isn’t?).

I’ve also just received the new Arsenal CD, Outsides, their follow up to Oyebo Soul (the latter of which apparently most accurately translates to “White Boy Soul,” which, being a white boy, I find amusing). They’re a bit of a fusion band; as nearly as I can figure, the members of the band are from El Salvador, Puerto Rico, and Boston, or somesuch; really, they’re a terrific mixture of some very different styles. They’re a bit electronica, but a little lounge-y, with some rock thrown in for a sexy groove. I dig them lots.

And finally, Steve Acho. I found Steve by accident; I’d been searching on iTunes for different versions of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” (the greatest lyrics in the history of music? Discuss), and his covers CDs came up. I like his style and delivery; I’ve seen comparisons to Elton John and Billy Joel, but I think they’re superficial at best–just because he’s a dude with a piano doesn’t make him comparable. He lacks the ostentation of the former, certainly, and seems more passionate than the latter.

So what’re you listening to?

Tags: americano, arsenal, fizzy fuzzy big and buzzy, hallelujah, independent artists, independent musicians, leonard cohen, music, outsides, oyebo soul, piano, refreshments, rock, roger clyne, Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, steve acho, turbo ocho

Over at Imagery. Tags: imagery, photography

I wrote, last night, of a couple of rejections I received yesterday, and also that I wanted to describe the submission process in a little more detail than I’ve ever read a new writer describe it.

Truth is, what occurred last week (and last night) is atypical; the submission process is supposed to be slow, mostly–you write that good book, and then you find an agent to submit it to. There are lots of ways to do this–my favorite has always been to Google my favorite authors and submit accordingly. Also: reading their guidelines–I don’t submit to anyone who represents only, say, romance and crime, because though there may be romance and crime in my novel, that’s not what it’s about. Generally, if agents say they won’t take on science fiction, I avoid them, as well, because I worry that most of those won’t be able to wrap their heads around the time machine in the story.

Once you find a prospective agent, you write a query (which includes a brief synopsis and a bio), and then you send it, along with a sample chapter and a self-addressed, stamped envelope, off. Many don’t require sample chapters, and some don’t want them at all, but my first chapter is four pages long, and so I try to get away with it. I wouldn’t if it were twenty.

So, package sent.

And then you wait. The waiting is the hardest and the longest part. The waiting is why it takes so long. Some are fast. Others not so much.

Yesterday’s responses came within a week of sending the submission. These were extraordinarily exceptional circumstances, mind–in both cases, I had known the agents in question for years, and they had already asked to see the manuscript, either in whole or in part. Truth is, I had thought I’d wait at least another week or two to hear. I hadn’t expected either to read the material over the weekend and respond so quickly.

That both did, and that one even included some comments, was simply awesome.

I mentioned I’d been uncertain of either, in terms of their fit for the project, and I think that’s the feeling/question I keep returning to. The one I feel I should listen to, right now. I think I should take a couple of weeks away from the project, completely, and write something else. I think I should try not to think about any agents or editors or anything and simply focus on my tasks at hand, of which there are certainly enough to keep me busy.

I’m going to be moving to Denver in a little more than a month. Another fresh start, another clean slate–I think that’ll be a good time to return to the project, and submitting it, in earnest.

That’s my plan, anyway.

So we’ll see what life sends my way, instead.

Tags: agents, crime, editors, guidelines, queries, query, romance, sample chapter, science fiction, submission, time machine