The Importance of Being Ernest About Your Viands

I got caught up in my past again today thinking of a favorite commercial, because, during the day, I am a drudge, making my mind mine, you see. And for you who know me, you will not be stupefied to know that my thoughts turned to food.

Dairy, in fact.
All wares milky, in fact, but particularly the rinded.  
(For the next paragraph, imagine it is being spoken in  Superman 3's narrator's voice. For those of you who, for whatever reason, lost the brain cells that made up your memories of the eighties, I offer an example:)

My hobbyhorse is writing and food, my fetish. Separately developed, it seemed that the twain were never to meet, but one fateful day, far in the past, as  Saddam
Hussein hung his jacket on the second floor coat rack of the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar for the six hundredth and sixty-fourth last time, as George W. choked on his pretzel Laura had slipped playfully into his mouth, the twain met and had cocktails. The liquor went straight to their heads and they copulated wildly on the bed of James Tate's poem, The Wild Cheese. My loves became one love and I became a creative monogamist.

Why am I telling you this?

Because this is the first posting of my new blog and I wanted to make a blogging covenant. I want to create a point of juncture between food and writing. I will bring in edible literary allusions and maybe some recipes, observations, a couple gripes, and the occasional food-based tongue twister. I hope you enjoy reading our blogs.



And remember that your Fringe is ran by our hlǣfdīgen and one or two men. Respect and show the love - visit the magazine, yo.

'The Bang-Bang Club'

I recently read a book, that challenged me as a journalist, and as a human being. This graphic and intriguing account vividly documents the lives of four South African photojournalists who cover the conflict of the Apartheid years and other war correspondence during the 1990’s. The self-told account follows their lives as they encounter the horrific violence of the township feuds, and as they battle the ethical dilemma of when to shoot pictures and when to intervene. Greg Marinovich relives the tales of war, the killings, the shootings. Both he and another colleague were shot in a township battle. He survived but sadly Ken Oosterbroek was killed.

Through the journey, you begin to get a taste for the depression that slowly invaded their minds, the nightmares that plagued their sleep, the emotional toll of their chosen career. As a photographer, I have begun to see pictures from a fresh perspective. I now understand how difficult it can be to get a good shot. I know what it is like to work with people, to get the right expression, the movement, to capture a moment, to stand steps away from the action. When I view pictures now, I think about the photographer, who they are, where they are, how they took this shot. I think about how that image must have looked, displayed just feet before them. The world takes on a certain distillation when viewed through the lens of a camera. It makes the photographer impartial, hidden, slightly removed from reality. But as I lower my camera, as I engage with my bare eyes, the creative mask is gone, and the harsh reality of life sits.

Kevin Carter, a member of 'the bang-bang club’ (as they were dubbed by the media) won the Pulitzer prize for his photograph of a Sudanese child face down in the dirt, a large vulture lurking in the background of the frame. Despite being a brilliant shot, the picture has raised global controversy as to what happened to the child after the picture was taken. Kevin has received much scrutiny as to why he didn’t help the child? Did he scare away the vulture? Why didn’t he carry the child to shelter? His initial account of the story was that he chased away the vulture, and that he was sure the child made it to safety, however he couldn’t be sure. Leaving himself wide open for scrutiny.

I remember studying this photograph in a university ‘ethics in journalism’ class. Kevin Carter's photograph was used as a bench mark, symbolising when telling the story overrides a human responsibility to help a starving child. The way the story was told to me, was that as the picture was being taken, the vulture attacked and killed the child, whilst the stunned photographer did nothing to stop it. I recall being disgusted that a person could come across a dying child, photograph them, and leave them alone, to be eaten alive by a preying vulture.

In reality, this is not what happened at all. In a war zone, in immense poverty, there are often many starving children, so many children hungry and desperate for attention. In this particular circumstance, a plane carrying aid had just landed (upon which the photographers had arrived), a large group of mothers had set down their children and babies to rush over and collect food and aid. This child was one of many, for all Kevin knew, its mother would shortly return for him.

There are many unknowns to this situation, it is clear to me after working in the field, that it is not as simple as I once imagined sitting safely behind my university desk in downtown Auckland city. A journalist goes into these situations to tell the story, to expose the truth. They simply cannot save every person they encounter, but by telling the story, they can enable others to assist. This particular picture that Kevin took shed light on the famine in Sudan that many were unaware of. As a result of the picture, millions of dollars of aid was donated to the Sudanese people.

Kevin eventually killed himself. He had seen too much.

The book goes on to explore the effects such a job has on the mental and emotional state of a human being, the cost at which these stories are told. It is an incredibly interesting and honest first-hand insight into South Africa’s dark history, and has given me a greater appreciation for the people of this place I currently call ‘home’.

What really strikes me, is that the tale of South African history is told from an individual who was actively involved, not in the fighting but in attempting to gain understanding. A man who was aware, yet still had questions and still found himself caught between the controversy. So much of what happened during those years is kept hidden, people simply didn’t know what was going on in their own backyards. My respect goes out to these men, who subjected themselves to significant danger, in a battle to uncover truth.

("The Bang-Bang Club" Written by Joao Silva and Greg Marinovich)

Is this it?

When I enrolled in a creative writing MFA program three years ago, I did so with very few delusions. In response to the inane "What are you going to do with that?" question, I was clear: I'm going to devote two years to my writing. And then? See what happens.

It was the "see what happens" part that I didn’t give much thought to. While I certainly didn't anticipate a book deal post-graduation, I also didn't anticipate returning to the kind of mind-numbing cubicle life I had abandoned. Or the depression and despair that quickly followed.

Though the reasons for my foray back into cubicle land were obvious -- food, rent, health insurance -- this time my reasons for disliking it were different. I likened myself to Francesca in The Bridges of Madison County (two months in a cubicle and already my literary allusions were slipping). I had strayed from my safe, passionless marriage (first job) and had a torrid, all-encompassing affair (MFA), only to return to my boring husband (new job).

Though the program had warned me of long-term hardships as a writer, it hadn’t prepared me for the day-to-day indignities of the grad-school-to-working-world transition. And though I wasn’t alone in my strife -- many of my fellow MFA grads suffered from a similar downward spiral -- the question remained: Were our writing days numbered?

The answer, of course, is absolutely not. Whatever your MFA experience may be, it changes you. The key to post-MFA survival? Remind yourself that no matter the size or shape of your cubicle, your job is simply one stop among many along the path to your ideal writing life.

Dickens lives again in Alexander McCall?

Back in the day, Dickens novels ran in serial form in newspapers -- and apparently he was paid by the word, one of the reasons for his legendarily lengthy novels.

Now, the British paper the Telegraph has renewed the trend. No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency author Alexander McCall Smith is producing a novel called Cordouroy Mansions that will run for the next 20 weeks, with a new chapter -- available in audio form and written form -- each day.

I think it's a brilliant idea to bring back this old form. People are used to going to websites every day to get an update on a story, whether it's the story of a forum, a graphic novel or a blog. I know I do.

And think of the writer! Instead of spending 8 billion years writing the manuscript and getting a book deal, she or he could write in small installments. Now, thanks to the Internet, authors can get feedback from their writers immediately.

I've gotta hand it to the Telegraph and to McCall Smith -- way to take it back to the old skool.

Teh Internetz: social booking networks

Hello writers and other assorted lovers of the written word,

You may look at the heading of my humble blog post and say, "Internet! P'towie!" ("P'towie" being the sound cartoon characters make when they spit; if you can actually spit while making this noise, please record it and e-mail it to me. I would be most delighted.)

Anyway. I understand your spitting anger.

The internet represents to many of us the fast-paced tide of time, a death march whose tempo is meted out by that annoying hamster song, a flurry of hyperlinks and hyperactivity. This new future we find ourselves in appears to be devoid of art, love, beauty, and most distressingly, well-written novels published to deserving nationwide acclaim. Children don't read anymore, you might cry. No one cares about books, you might groan. They only care about cats with captions and the myriad ways failure can be captured on camera and then blogged about.

To you I say: don't despair, Negative Nancy. The internet is content, and content is your product! Writers and teh series of tubes go together like lions and the circus (minus the cruel abuse in most cases).

I may be biased because I'm an online/interactive book marketer (which is a fancy way of saying: a synapse between the nerves of publishers, authors, and bloggers) but I truly believe that books and the internet are the greatest technological advances of their respective ages, and they can help each other in ways that we haven't quite gotten around to dreaming up yet.

But we're already on the right track! So my tiny contribution to this blog will be regular updates on the online world and how it can help inform your writing, your career, your understanding of the publishing industry, and your life's general betterment.

No need to thank me. It's my job.

So as a gentle way of guiding you into the online book world, please feel free to dip your cautious toes into the following pools. These are social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace, but for books and book lovers. Many of these sites allow authors to create special profiles and connect to their readers. Check them out.

Good Reads

LibraryThing

Shelfari (Owned by Amazon)

Book Jetty

Anobii

Beer Steins and Frauleins: THIS Sunday, Sept 21

Just thinking about the reading this Sunday is getting my dirndl in a twist! If you've somehow missed the buzz, consider yourself invited. Fringe is teaming up with other local presses as The Dirty Water Reading Series, to present "Beer Steins and Frauleins: A Dirty Water Readingtoberfest", an Octoberfest-themed reading at the Grub Street Headquarters on Sunday, September 21. The reading will feature authors Rauan Klassnik, Amy L. Clark, Aimee Pokwatka, and Fringe contributor Francine Rubin, whose work appears in the current issue of Fringe.

For this particular reading, Fringe is in charge of decorations. How fun is that? Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas of how we can decorate the Grub Street space? Anyone have a dirndl or some lederhosen, maybe a few beer steins lying around, waiting for a chance to shine?

EVENT DETAILS
Beer Steins and Frauleins: A Dirty Water Readingtoberfest
FREE ADMISSION (free beer and free food too!)
Sunday, September 21
7:00 p.m.
Grub Street, 160 Boylston, Boston

Mark DeCarteret's Feasts/Week 17

The seven poems of Mark DeCarteret's recent Beard of Bees chapbook, Feasts/Week 17, take saints' names so that each represents a different feast day, as if the short collection were a week out of church calendar with brief, 3-line explications of each day's saint. Strict adherence to a 5-7-5 haiku structure leads to a degree of condensation that, together with sparsity of punctuation, makes these verses function less as explanations than as objects for consideration and meditation. Uncovering the meanings of the lines and their relationships to the saints of their titles (whether legitimate Catholic saints or otherwise) requires conscious acts of interpretation by readers. They must consider these poems as the devout consider the mysteries of the rosary.

Take the first poem, for instance: "st george". The majority of educated anglophone readers have likely heard of this dragonslayer and so, assuming they can make the leap from dragon to serpent, should feel some sense of connection between the first line and the title. The serpent, however, is not killed. In fact, an act of interpretation is required to determine whether anything at all is done to the serpent. Is "sound" a verb (as parallelism suggests) or a noun (the more common usage)? Are the three lines a series of instructions or a description of actions accomplished (or being accomplished) being told via an atypical verb tense?

In creating these objects for contemplation, DeCarteret repeats certain themes. Medical imagery--"lip's herpes", "aspirin-white", "anesthetized type"--appears in the first three poems. Then there are the twists on cliches: "this world’s last gasp", "unsigned dotted line", "...or else". Unfortunately, in the italicized lines of "st peter mary chanel" there's a little too much cliche and not enough twist. Despite the cleverness of the title, the verse itself seems dull.

One of the greatest dangers of writing in such a short form is that, no matter how dense the writing, the reader may reach the end and feel as if they have read nothing substantial. Challenges to interpretation such as this chapbook presents are one way to overcome this, one way to slow the reader down. Such a technique also requires that the poems raise the desire in the reader to linger over the poems. The aforementioned "st peter mary chanel" fails for me in this regard; the other poems succeed to varying degrees with a smattering of onomatopoeic lines being the most powerful in this regard. Such judgments, of course, are necessarily subjective. Do these poems draw you in?