Jonathan Safran Foer Talks with Slate

Check it. One of the greats of our generation talks about his life and his process. And Sam -- I'm totally into the reading binge. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close really delivered the goods. Cool that Slate is taking on the task of talking with living writers. I'll be interested to see who they talk to next.

Teh Internetz: Feed Readers

If you're a writer...

No, scratch that, if you are ANYONE living in the world today, you must start using an RSS feed reader if you haven't already. In a nutshell, a feed reader will take the content from a web site (usually when you click on the nifty orange button with the radio waves in your toolbar) and FEED that content into an interface that is controlled by you. Feed readers enable you to view, organize, share, tag, and keep tabs on your favorite sites without checking each one every single day. It will change the way you browse, certainly. But do not be afraid.

Most people, my stubborn past self included, don't like the idea of switching to a reader for their online needs. They whine: "Oh, but I like visiting my sites! I like seeing them for myself! I like wasting time and being inefficient for hours and hours on end."

Fine. Suit yourself. But the rest of us fly honeys are going to be rocking our readers.

For writers, a reader can help you keep track of your favorite author blogs, organize news feeds, and stay on top of sites that are helping you research that next great American novel (and I say that without snark or incredibly dull patronization). For publishing folks, it can help you follow industry news and financial stuff. And here's something awesome: you can even set up feeds from job sites so you can easily scan the help wanted sections for your chosen profession. It's how I landed my gig.

And of course, there are the blogs. Millions and millions of blogs. The internet is just teeming with them. And you can follow them all, from cooking to cakes to LOLcats, on a reader.

If you want to set up an RSS feed reader for yourself, you have a lot of options. Here is a list of the top 5 as compiled by Life Hacker. I personally use Google Reader, which, if you have a Google Account, is already ready and waiting for you.

They should all take only a few minutes to set up. Then the fun begins: adding your feeds. Start right now. Click the little orange button up there. Yeah, that one in the address bar if you're using Firefox. Probably lower in the toolbar if you're using IE (we'll talk about that later). Who knows where the hell it might be on Opera. Chrome? It's probably already thought ahead for you. Anyway, give it a click. Add the Fringe blog to your reader. You'll be glad you did.

Review of The Tenth Muse by Judith Jones

Judith Jones, at least to me, is one of those women in publishing. You know, those ones. You've heard their name somewhere, only you can't remember where. Maybe on NPR? You know she's responsible for something to do with...oh, cookbooks...publishing...you're pretty sure she's really important. Recently I picked up a copy of The Tenth Muse at the library feeling I ought to get to know a bit more about what this woman has done for publishing and also for cooking.

Suffice to say if there was a great discovery to be made, Jones quite likely had a hand in it. It was Jones who brought The Diary of Anne Frank to publication and, as if that weren't enough of a career accomplishment, Jones who championed Mastering the Art of French Cooking into its publication. Jones chronicles the process of working with Julia Child to present a recipe for a French baguette because, at the time, no such thing was commercially available in the US, and both women believed French bread to be crucial to a fine French meal.

Jones's memoir reads like a who's-who of the genesis, not only of American cooking (Marion Cunningham. MFK Fisher, Edna Lewis, Jams Beard) but of the great expansion of regional and international cookbook authors (Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey, Hiroko Shimbo, Lidia Bastianich). I was surprised to see that Jones keeps constantly abreast of the changes in publishing, food trends and food history in this country, pausing to mention Michael Pollan or Eric Schlosser in a local chapter on local eating and cultivating a garden.

While I would have liked to hear Jones discuss her position in publishing with some regard to feminism or women's issues (perhaps especially because she dealt primarily with cookbooks, and domesticity is already a murky issue for women) I thoroughly enjoyed the book overall. Jones has changed the character of many households through her continuous contribution to culinary writing and her memoir is a quiet pleasure for any fans of food. For anyone wanting to learn more about Jones, Michael Ruhlman has a good interview here and the New York Times has a great profile up here.
If these names sound unfamiliar to you, check them out next time you're thinking of googling some Food Network show or whipping up a Rachael Ray suggestion.

Fever-Stricken

Laurie Halse Anderson is one of the most gifted young-adult authors of the 21st century. Her 2nd published novel, Fever, 1793 tells the story of 14 year-old Matilda Cooke, strong-willed heiress to her widowed mother’s coffeehouse in post-revolutionary Philadelphia, and is a quintessential example of the higher-standards required of today’s young adult literature (R.L. Stein, take note).

For the history lovers, there are the historical names, places, and details of the worst yellow fever epidemic in U.S.history intricately woven into Mattie’s story. There’s the dry-heave-inducing accounts of yellow fever’s symptoms. There’s a sweeter-than-saccharine romance between Mattie and Nathaniel Benson, a ne’er-do-well, lowly painter’s apprentice in front of whom Mattie scandalously dares to show off her elbows (gasp!).

There’s Grandfather: General William Farnsworth Cooke “of the Pennsylvania Fifth Regiment,” who spends his days in the coffee shop, regaling the customers with stories of his days under General Washington, while doting on Mattie and his pet Parrot, “King George.” There’s Eliza: the Cooke family’s freed-slave chef who serves as a member of the Free-African Society and always shoots from the hip (“You’re too soft!” she tells Mattie, “You have city hands and a weak back. You wouldn’t last a week on the farm.”)

And, of course, there is Mattie, a typical teenager grappling with the woes of adolescence: awkward in her pubescent body, rebelling against her stoic mother’s rigid expectations while simultaneously seeking her hard-won approval, and trying to establish her own identity, under the most tumultuous of circumstances.

The novel begins with a sluggish introductory chapter which sets the scene and introduces the major characters, and through which I always have to coax my dubious students. But, by the end of chapter two, the story is catapulted into high-gear as it races towards the heart-wrenching climax (I am yet to make it through a read-aloud without tears), and a conclusion that leaves no loose ends untied as Anderson deftly concocts a well-balanced literary meal that is at once educational, suspenseful, and deliciously satisfying.

Binge Reading (the joy of)

For me, reading fiction demands total immersion. Those novels dubbed ‘absorbing’? They are concentrated joy to me. On those rare and wonderful occasions whereupon such a book falls into my quivering hands I am held captive until the end. Yup, I am indeed a dirty binge reading fiend.

Last night sleep won: exhausted, I had to put my latest bundle of book joy to one side and resume once rested enough to give the finale the attention and love it deserved. Nothing is less satisfying than rush reading (‘binge’ is perhaps not the right word – I do not mean to imply speed. Quite the contrary; every sentence is to be relished - but relished now, not later.) It is pure compulsion. You cannot drag your tired eyes from the page.

But alas, there are so many pesky little things that impede upon the dream of a book-centred existence, shoving our precious reading time into a tiny little corner of the day, or (gasp) week. We must reclaim hearty chunks of time rather than feeble little slices. Escape from people, from distractions, from the constraints of your humdrum life.

Like any addictive pastime, there is of course the inevitable comedown. Common after effects include a penetrating feeling of emptiness, loss, despair. For a fleeting second you’ll wish you’d rationed your joy into lunch break bites, but deep down you’ll know it wouldn’t have been the same. If you’re lucky, you can bask in the afterglow and reminisce. Long-term regrets are minimal to non-existent. Go forth and get your fix.

Classic binge reads? Tell me yours. I need more, more, more.

Zachary Kluckman's "Exodus By Mass Transit"

Something unsettles me about Zachary Kluckman's "Exodus By Mass Transit", the first poem in Orgami Condom's recently completed eleventh issue. It begins with a description of a woman on a bus, the driver in fact, and, due to my experiences as a transit-dependent poet, it is easy for me to imagine the poet (or narrator) sitting on the bus scribbling down these details. With that beginning, when the poem moves into expressions of her thoughts and experience, it feels as though the speaker appropriates the woman's identity--makes her image his puppet--in order to get his ideas across. Phrases like "the cancer of cigarette glamour" drip with judgment; the narrator evaluates the woman he sees on the basis of what he imagines about her. He even manages to use her to embody abstractions: "It’s never about the stories, only the need to tell them." Not surprisingly, the stories she would wish to tell do not get told: only the poet's do.

This is, of course, what writers do: we see and reimagine. We are not seeking precise facts and truth. We may take the way you hold your head and make it mean the opposite of what it means to you. We choose which stories we tell.

What this poem does when the words of the author meet my personal experience is to create a reminder of the need for humility in the writer, especially when we write about subjects who may have less social or economic privilege than we do. To be or act otherwise risks using language in the service of an imperial gaze.

MFA Confidential: To Teach, or Not To Teach?

While Julie offered some insightful words of wisdom about post-MFA life last week, luckily, I am still mid-delusion, mid-torrid-affair with my graduate degree in creative nonfiction. And I know I should feel lucky:

I don’t have to wake up at the crack of dawn five days a week (only two this semester); I can still ignore “the real world” when it’s convenient to (and the bailout plan won’t affect my next paycheck); and I get to shoot the shit with fellow writers and publishing professionals on a regular basis. Talking about David Foster Wallace and his tragic demise for 48 straight hours seems normal, as does analyzing the choice of bug by Kafka in the opening of The Metamorphosis for 20 minutes. All in the name of becoming "literary,” well-versed enough in the heavy hitters of one’s field so as to someday be able to mock them in a list on the McSweeney’s website.

However, now that we’ve hit the fourth week of the semester, I am confronted by one of the less savory realities of grad-student-dom: I am a teacher of freshman composition at Emerson. And unfortunately, much as I like to deny it (and continue to deny it by blogging here about it!), I have to grade papers. Tons of papers. Terrible, badly phrased, ill-conceived, freshmen papers. (Some are fabulous, and they string you along just long enough to keep you going through the worst ones.)

Several of my colleagues have already embarked on the grading hamster wheel, one that ensures that for the next ten weeks or so, several of our nights, weekends, and otherwise free cell phone usage time will be consumed with thinking about our students’ papers: their subject-verb agreement, their overuse of passive voice, and their ability (or lack thereof) to convincingly analyze a text or persuasively present an angle on a topic.

Don’t get me wrong: I love teaching. It’s strange, actually, how much I have taken to it over the past year, and how dry erase markers kind of get me hot. But now that I have embarked on the large-scale project that will become my thesis in May and actually want to work on it, I find myself returning to an age-old question that Emerson MFA-ers tangle with: should you teach in grad school? Why distract yourself from the writing time you clearly value and have staked a goodly sum on being able to engage in, in order to toil amongst freshmen papers?

I’ll return to this topic, surely, as the semester progresses and I lose track of friends, relatives, and everyone else except for the lovely 18-year-olds I have in class, but for now, I present a brief Pros/Cons list. Feel free to add to my list with a comment if you too, have considered the benefits and drawbacks of teaching during graduate school:

Pros of Teaching Freshman Comp:
- Resume booster (duh)
- An Emerson Copy Code (worth its weight in workshop crits)
- Ego boost
- Free paperclips (from the WLP front desk)
- Dry erase markers (see above)
- Liking your students
- Feeling like you’re making a difference in the world! (as opposed to the lack of instant gratification in revising that essay or story you’ve been working on for the last year but which hasn’t ever seen the light of day, let alone been “published” for an “audience”)
- Getting to work with John Trimbur (Composition & Rhetoric God)
- Ego rush of grading papers (beware: it wears off quickly)
- Not having to get a soul-killing part-time job at Barnes & Noble (or insert other hellish job here)… hopefully
- Getting paid to teach! (again, novelty wears off just after rent is paid)
- “Talking shop” with other faculty
- Increased chance of overhearing WLP-dept gossip
- 18 or more freshmen hanging on your every word (at least once or twice during the semester)
- Actually getting to test whether you ever want to do this again (priceless!)

Cons:
- Less time to write
- Stress of wondering if you’re spending too much time/not enough time/no time planning your lessons
- Grading papers (the novelty wears off)
- Hand cramps from grading papers
- Deterioration of eyes due to grading papers
- Realizing you’re at the bottom of the academic totem pole
- Realizing you’re probably making less than minimum wage (Never divide your paycheck by hours spent teaching)
- Jealousy of writer friends who seem to be spending lots of time writing, while you are trying to figure out the best way to explain dangling modifiers
- Wondering if you’ll ever get another teaching job, or get stuck teaching composition for the next 35 years. Or until you go blind
- Sense of humor devolving into things 18-year-olds find funny (booze, boobs, hipsters)
- Receiving panicked emails at all hours of the day
- An intimate entrée into the personal lives and antidepressant cocktails of your freshmen
- Did I mention: less time to write?