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The Writer in Question Publishes Books

Thursday, April 16, 2009

One of my flaws in character, and that sounds a little harsh, but I’m not sure what else to call it, is the way I rebut — the way I disagree with people when I think they’re making an incorrect statement or assessment, or when there’s some kind of action I deem an injustice.

This entry is an exercise in disagreeing like a normal person.

I like to blame this disease on the fact that I was raised on Long Island, a place, along with Florida, that could break away from its tectonic-freaking-plate, float to Greenland, Europe, Africa, whatever, and would not be missed at all.

Of course I’d want most of my family off the Island, but I’d probably leave Billy. Mostly because Billy is delusional, and doesn’t think he needs anybody.

My disagreement is with a writer who posted, on a social networking site, that he was just accepted for publication in a literary magazine. To set the scene clearly, so you don’t have to read my mind, he is also the director of a rather excellent publisher, and this literary magazine is a bit of a third or fourth-tier publication, assuming, as I do, the first tier is Paris Review, Granta, Ploughshares, and The New Yorker; second tier, or first tier A, is something like McSweeney’s, Fence, Tin House, Zoetrope All-Story, Virginia Quarterly Review; and third are magazines like Post Road (awful type, horrible arrangement, terrible layout, good writing) and the 1500 other literary magazines in the Boston area, Ninth Letter (who spend all their grant money on website development, apparently), The Cottahatchie Review or whatever you call it, Florida Review, Georgia Review, Your Mom Review, etcetera.

The one I’m talking about is a third tier.

So this writer/publisher, who I respect a lot (‘whom’ I know, but ‘who’ is how I’m saying it), because he does wonderful things for the publishing world, for writers, and for kids, makes it known that he was published in this third-tier magazine. It’s an exciting time, to be sure. How awesome is it when someone acknowledges your diction and syntax and chooses to have it representative of the vision they have for their magazine. I do not disagree with his excitement at all. He deserves to be excited and to let those who admire him know about it.

But then he started saying things like, “I can’t believe they accepted that piece…” “I threw that thing together in, like, one day…” and so on (These are not direct quotes, but are the root of my discomfort.)

This really bothered me for two reasons.

One: On behalf of all of us who (not ‘whom’ but ‘who’ this time) write, and on behalf of all those who work endlessly on their writing with little acknowledgment because their submission ends up on a slush pile that is not even read, I’d like to say that writers do not want to know if a published writer just threw a doodle together and submitted it. They really don’t, even if it’s true. It cheapens the work, makes the writer look like a jerk, despite the fact that he is not, and it reflects poorly on the publication in question (he named the publication in his jottings), even if it is a third-tier literary magazine.

Two: The writer in question publishes books. He publishes very good books. The literary community is about knowing one of the editors or being a famous writer, and it is rarely about being published as an unknown. Every editor and publisher has a backlog of favors to grant to friends that will last him two or three years. My point is that he can’t think, can’t even remotely think, that his thrown-together story/poem was accepted on the merits of its brilliance, that his being an editor didn’t play a significant role in the decision, that this wasn’t the initiation of a not-so-inconspicuous back-scratching exercise, that will be cashed in sometime in the future, when enough time passes that the writer in question wouldn’t suspect such distastefulness.

These literary publishers are the same ones that whine about how The New Yorker only publishes John Updike and Alice Munro, and what they are not realizing is that they are, in essence, doing the same thing and perpetuating the problem by doing so at the ground level, at the seedling stage, where promising young writers are supposed to get their break, where we should be reading the freshest, most innovative material.

My only hope is that he doesn’t reach up to scratch their backs.

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I’m Sorry, Margaret Wendel

Sunday, April 5, 2009

I’ve had this really interesting biological thing happen to me the last few weeks. I’ve been terrified, pissed, nervous, overwhelmed, dejected, alone and I’ve been actually smelling different as a result. Now, keep in mind that I’m always smelling great to begin with, especially when I run out of my manly body wash and have to use the little Bath & Body Works bottle of Black Amethyst, but my aroma has been different, and I haven’t been able to place the smell until a couple of days ago: I smell like Margaret Wendel.

Margaret Wendel and I were in the same fifth grade class at Edith L. Slocum Elementary School, and she was tortured mercilessly by everyone — was called ‘corroded’ regularly. Margaret Wendel smelled exactly like I’ve been smelling lately, and I can’t help but feel the stabs in my heart over the fact that she smelled that way because she was scared, was nervous, every single day of her life in that school.

I was, by no means, a ring leader in any of this torture, as I had no power, but I didn’t help her cause. I don’t remember her voice at all, but I remember that she tied ribbons in her hair a lot, wore floral-patterned dresses, and looked like she was smiling all the time because her teeth were so large. I can see her nervous face and those teeth, and I can smell her fear right now, even after the Black Amethyst delousing, and I am so goddamned sorry, Margaret, that you had to live through that. I hope your life is beautiful now.

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On Sentence Rhythm

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Consider the following sentence that I’m considering:

Human beings desire the dramatic.

Then consider

Human beings desire drama.

In the interest of brevity and conciseness, which is something I demand from my students, the latter wins by a nose. However, in the interest in rhythm, the former is the obvious choice. John Gardner discusses this in The Art of Fiction extensively. In demonstrating different rhythmic possibilities, he places accent marks over the syllables in the spots he might tap his foot if he were keeping time. I don’t know if I’m explaining this clearly enough, but anyway. Here’s how the second sentence can be accented, demonstrated by the bold, capitalized letters:

HUman BEings desIre drAma.

He might say that the sentence is too rhythmically stunted, that there isn’t enough play in between the accented marks. The first sentence seems to be stretched out more:

HUman BEings desIre the draMAtic.

Admittedly, there’s a slight variance, but this sentence features words with 2, 2, 3, 1, and 3 syllables, respectively. Since the first sentence contains words with 2, 2, 3, and 2 syllables, there might be too much syllabic repetition (what I’m calling it).

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On Writing the Perfect Paragraph

Thursday, March 26, 2009

What is it that makes the human being desire the dramatic, that last time to wave goodbye and off into the night? the sunset? Metaphorically, he rode off into the sunrise that morning. Literally, the sun must have come up over his left shoulder, window down, the heat baking the top of his forearm, his elbow. Nothing dramatic about this, unless he was leaned back in the seat, a little grin on his face, and unless his head opened up and the confetti of what he was leaving behind exploded all over the inside of the car, flew out the window and onto the highway, all those mistakes and all that misery, littering Florida, that long, giant sand bar, where, mysteriously, there would be no one else on the highway.

This is what I’m starting with, and my goal is to create the perfect paragraph. There’s a man out on his own for the first time in his life, and he has said goodbye to his brother. My attempt here is to try and convey a simple bit of plot while exploring the need for the drama. I hate questions in text. I really do, but I typed the first thing that came into my mind, so perhaps it has to be reconsidered anyway. Even as I type this now I’m getting ideas about a desire for the dramatic, riding in a car alone, and the window next to the driver’s face serving as the screen through which everyone watches. My original thought was hating the question, so I’ll change it:

Human beings desire the dramatic (desire drama?)

again:

Human beings desire drama, that last time to wave goodbye and ride off into the night, the knot that comes from oblivion and nestles snugly into the throat, and the feeling that if that knot were to unravel, the tears would come in torrents.

I don’t like the alliteration at the end of the sentence, but I’m leaving it for now to continue the paragraph:

They love riding in cars and feeling the television screen, through which the world is filtered, on their left. They perform from their seats. Cars will come up from behind and gather first impressions So Many Pedestrians, So Little Time, If You Can Read This, You’re Too Close, My Other Ride is Your Mother, and the cars need to come up on the left to see who it is, and he wants them to see who he is so he lets up on the accelerator. His channel is on, again. He can look over and give his audience what they want, or he can take a hand off the wheel, lean back, purse his lips, and pose for them.

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Hurt by Those You Love

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

There’s nothing like healthy doses of hate mail, from people you care about, to get the blood flowing. Yeah, the whining I’m doing about life with my father is somewhat pathetic, but in the purest sense of the word. There is a pathos here, and I am allowed to contemplate it, especially during this time in my life. There’s a tricky balance to maintain here: how do I speak the truth and work through memory without hurting people I love?

This isn’t the movies. I don’t want to sit in front of my father, him all clueless and rough, and scream at him about how he’s failed me as a father. Then tell him I’m gay. I don’t want any of that drama, but reading over the entries, what is essentially a series of rough drafts, I can see that my first impulse as a writer is to pour things out. All of this is natural.

It’s the balance memoir writers have to negotiate all the time. When I was in graduate school, I helped initiate a change in how writing workshops were done. Initially, the workshop groups were separated into distinct “fiction” and “creative nonfiction” groups. Sitting in an exclusively nonfiction group turned my stomach and made me as resentful as the two students who have been sending me hate mail the past week or so. I didn’t want to hear the other memoir-writer’s problems with man-hating, or coming out, or past abuse, and yes, I thought they were pathetic. I didn’t have enough compassion for them, and it was a mistake.

I wanted to be with the fiction writers, mixed in with people who wrote thinly-veiled nonfiction. The problem was that they didn’t want the likes of me, either. They didn’t want to hear my problems. What I came to realize is that I wanted to be in the fiction workshop group because I could hide there. You can’t hide if you’re in a group that writes exclusively nonfiction.

So the question is: How do memoir writers express themselves without their words sounding overwrought and pathetic? With me, it’s still under negotiation. But I’m not hiding anymore.

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Sign of the Apocalypse

Thursday, March 12, 2009

This is in today’s Berkshire Eagle, Berkshire County, Massachusetts’ contribution to fine journalism:

According to a report by Pittsfield Police Officer Kipp D. Steinman: “Jennifer said that Stephanie had a ‘turkey baster and her brother’s semen in a sealed container.’

If this isn’t a sign that I need to leave this city, I’m not sure what is.

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Big Brother

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

I am the eldest of three brothers. I am two years older than one and seven years older than the other. I don’t know how I did as an older brother. No one ever told me.

One year, I think it may have been 1985 or 1986, I gave up on being the eldest brother. I let the middle brother assume the role of the eldest brother. I could feel that he wanted it so badly, and it was obvious my brothers wanted me out of that position.

I think my father made me hate responsibility. I was the best runner on the Cross Country team of Connetquot High School for my sophomore through senior years, yet when it came time to name team captains, I was passed over. I should have been passed over, because I didn’t like to practice — complained about the workouts all the time, regularly engaged in what we called Hostess Runs (instead of running the prescribed distance, we’d run to the Hostess outlet and gorge on Suzy-Q’s and Twinkies at a remote location inside Connetquot State Park.) But when it came time for the meets, I would win — every single time. I was the best and there was nothing anyone could do to take that away from me. They could practice harder, stretch longer, have a beautiful girlfriend — their parents could have more money than mine. None of it mattered. I was always fucking better.

My father made me hate being good at anything. There was always unnecessary pressure associated with being good. I had to get a scholarship, I needed to win awards, I couldn’t be pushed around.

My father made the middle brother and I join an organization called DeMolay. It was some junior organization of the Masons, and my father wanted to create a new chapter of this freak organization at his Masonic chapter in Smithtown, New York. There came a time we had to decide on the first leader of this organization. Since my father, Frank J. Tempone, Jr. initiated this endeavor, it seemed obvious that I, Frank J. Tempone, III would be its first leader. I don’t remember what the title was called, but there was a ceremony where the girls’ equivalent of Demolay — Rainbow, or something — would come in and present the new boys’ leader with a giant stuffed animal, as a token of acknowledgment. It’s one of those things that makes a person think about why he’s actually on this Earth. Are we here to do time-killing shit like this all the time?

When it came time to vote, I not only backed out of the running for Grand Water Buffalo, but I abstained from all voting. My father seethed when I refused to vote, probably asked me why I had to be such a dick, which was especially traumatic coming from your father, but I guess that’s what I wanted all along.

Today my brother, the accountant, continues the role of big brother. The other evening, Big Brother asked me what was going on, like he cared. He told me to stick it out, or something. He told me I had kids to think about. Thanks, Billy, but there’s nothing you can do to help me with this one.

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And I Bought a Clarinet Off of eBay

Friday, January 2, 2009

One of the many perks I receive as a teacher of English at a prep school is professional development funding to take courses to enhance my classroom teaching. Since teaching English is more an extension of my lifestyle than a job, these professional development opportunities provide personal enrichment, too. Last year, I received funding to attend the Juniper Writers Conference at UMASS, a subject I wrote about in earlier entries. Other colleagues of mine have gone on photography expeditions to Ireland, attended the AWP Conference, studied with Robert Pinsky for six months, and taught American History in Korea. It is an extremely demanding job that gives back in droves.

This year I wanted to do something that might give me the momentum I need to finish my novel by the end of 2009, so I asked for money to work with a writing mentor online. I think I researched this possibility after getting something in the mail from my MFA Program in Vermont, and the one I found at the University of Minnesota seems to be the only one with an organized program. I’m probably wrong, but this one did a good job of advertising. I imagine, though, that this sort of program could be another money-generating tool for schools trying to take advantage of post-MFA wanderers like I am.

The way it works: I apply by sending what they call “Groundwork,” which is a ten-page sample of what I’d like to work on, accompanied by a project summary and an author’s autobiography. The Program’s administrators look it over and assign the Groundwork to a mentor. The Program gave me the opportunity to choose my mentor, but I wanted to be assigned a mentor. The best writing teachers I’ve had were ones whose work I didn’t necessarily connect with.

After the Groundwork is evaluated and responded to, the writer and mentor agree on the length of the mentorship. There are three possibilities: a Level I, which consists of a total of three hours of the mentor’s time; Level II entitles you to six hours; and Level III, nine. I chose Level III, obviously, since I wasn’t paying out of my pocket, but also because I’m writing a novel now.

I was sent a login ID and password, which gave me access to the secret vault of the U’s inner sanctum, the place they carefully keep track of minutes logged on my behalf.

My mentor’s name is Wesley Brown:

Wesley Brown is the author of two published novels, Tragic Magic and Darktown Strutters, and a novel in manuscript, Push Comes to Shove. His plays, Boogie Woogie and Booker T., Life During Wartime,A Prophet Among Them, and most recently, The Murderess, have been produced in New York and around the country. He has co-edited two anthologies of multicultural American writing, Imagining America and Visions of America. He holds an MA in creative writing and literature from The City College, CUNY, and since 1979, he has taught creative writing, American literature, and drama at Rutgers University. (from Writers at Rutgers. http://english.rutgers.edu/news_events/war/calendar/0405/wbrown.html)

My first thought is that I’m working with a possible literary disciple of Langston Hughes, a true artist of the word who used syllables like blues notes – sentences like chord progressions – his expressiveness like a master improviser. OK, I’ll stop. I’m looking forward to working with Professor Brown, regardless of his association with Langston Hughes.

We’ll see how this goes. I have four months to accumulate momentum, and you, Professor Brown, have your work cut out for you.

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Shut Up, Already

Friday, December 19, 2008

Stop whining about the publishing industry tanking, or laying off a bulk of their editorial staff. Stop giving yourself excuses as to why you haven’t been published. Your book wasn’t published because it wasn’t good enough. If you truly worked diligently and didn’t sit around finding excuses for why your book doesn’t fit today’s market or how your agent isn’t working hard enough for you, you would have written something decent already.

Come back when you decide to work harder — come back when you agree to commit yourself to the work you want to do and stop making excuses. I’m tired of all your whining.

Also: stop being so agreeable. You know what your problem is — you fully recognize your limitations and your shortcomings — but you’re spending all your time saying “I know, I know…I must do better…” When it gets so tiring to listen to such crap. Fix it already.

Sit at the desk and work. If your job or your kids are getting in the way, deal with it. If it’s going to be a crutch for you, quit writing. Just quit and save everyone the hassle of having to hear your mouth anymore.

In fact, just quit. I don’t even trust you at this point. You’ll nod your head when you read this and resolve to do better, because you know I’m on to you. It won’t last, though. You’ll do all right for a day or two, then you’ll start the excuses again. You’ll have to clean the office, or the holidays are here. You’ll start on New Year’s. It’s the perfect time for such things. You’ll start writing seriously, SERIOUSLY this time. You’re at a crossroads and THIS IS IT.

Save it. You’re not doing anything like that. Unless you’re willing to start right now and right where you’re sitting (no coffeeshops, no reserving a quiet room at the library) then just quit. You’re finished.

I don’t want to hear about this again.

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Shaft-Getting

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Man walks into the coffee shop, and he’s talking before the door closes behind him. I think he’s talking to me, so I turn toward him. He says he’s got shaft work to do at the old Eagle Building. It takes three or four seconds to realize he’s talking to the old guy with the newspaper. The old guy’s in here all the time, holding his newspaper like he’s got a giant moth by the edges of its wings. He sits a bit away from the table, which seems like an accessory to his daily scene, and his legs are comfortably crossed. He should be wearing a robe and a pair of slippers. He’s not that old, though. I’m figuring he’s a buyout retiree, or maybe he’s one of those half-retired consultants.

The man continues his talking with the obvious joke that comes after saying you’re working in a shaft, but the old guy has already begun his greeting and response to his first statement, so the joke hangs out there, lost. I can see in his eyes that he wants to try it again, but decides against it. I want to tell him that the joke came too close to the tail of his first statement – that he was overzealous in his plan – and that his delivery suggested he had made this statement about “getting the shaft” four or five times before he even got to the coffee shop, or else he practiced it in the truck on the way over, or his wife said it to him while chasing her flaxseed oil capsule with a glass of orange juice, leaning on the door jamb in the entryway of the kitchen, and she delivered it so perfectly that he knew it had to be his line for the day. She’s home with a baby and a sick kid all day, so when would she possibly use it anyway?

The old guy must have retired from the same kind of work: shaft cleaning, duct work, or maintenance, something filled with dirt, grease, and labor, because he knows the man – puts an ee on the end of his name like he’s had a beer with him once or twice. The man’s name is Rick or Jim to me, but he’s Ricky or Jimmy to the old guy. It occurs to me that he’s Ricky or Jimmy because the old guy’s in a good mood. My father would call me Frankie when things were going particularly well for him, or else it was an irritated, booming Frank, a sound like a stab in the air, a salad bowl thud off the kitchen counter, or a hard thigh to the corner of the coffee table.

The old guy says, “Nah, I’m not going in today. But they’re serving lunch again this year to the guys.”

“Yeah? They had that thing catered last year. What a spread.”

“Yeah, but you need a ticket.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, you need a ticket this year. I’m not going in, but I got a ticket. I’m going in for that lunch.”

“I don’t have a ticket.”

“You’ll be filthy from all that shaft work anyway. I’m just going in for that lunch and going home to relax.”

The old guy shakes the giant moth in his hand to get enough momentum to turn the page of the newspaper without much trouble. I’m not sure what he thinks he’s reading, but he’s been turning the pages too fast to give proper attention to even one article. This might be just a routine for him. The newspapers read the same things every day, anyway. They’re reality Mad-Libs, and the reporters are filling in Proper Nouns every morning. Shaft goes to the counter to get his coffee. It’s too small a space to guarantee he’s out of earshot, but I have to say something to the old guy.

“Is it possible to get another ticket?”

“What’s that?” the old guy folds down the side of the paper he had gripped in his right hand.

“I was just wondering if you could get another ticket.”

“No, no, no. They don’t give out these tickets to just anybody. It’s a catered meal, and they cook up only a certain amount of food. Nope, got to have a ticket, son.”

I turn away, half to think about it and because the old guy’s still got the corner of the paper folded down. I want him to know the conversation’s over for now. On my right, the store manager is opening cardboard boxes one at a time. They’re filled with bags of coffee beans, travel mugs, and French press carafes she’ll have to stack on the shelves. I don’t want to turn back to the old guy, so I count twenty-seven boxes of merchandise she has to verify, unload, and display. She and I have spoken about this before – how she has no business doing this since she’s the store manager. There are teenagers behind the counter steaming the milk and grinding the beans. Her reasoning changes every time: the manager is responsible for inventory, she’s likes doing this kind of work, the girls who work the counter are nicer to look at. The answers get more personal each time, so I don’t ask again. I don’t care what the girls look like behind the counter. All I’m interested in is the coffee. If it’s fresh and it’s fast, the girls could look like bag ladies.

Shaft is back with his coffee, “Take care,” he says on the way out. The old guy sits behind his newspaper and says nothing. He’s been on this page longer than the others. I’m sitting in front of a large window that overlooks the parking lot, so I can see Shaft get into his truck, do something I imagine is finding a proper place for his coffee, and start the engine.

Back inside the old guy begins to get up to go, takes a last sip of whatever he had to drink, and lays the folded newspaper down on the table. I turn back in his direction, and pretend to look out the window on his side of the coffee shop. I want to see the page the newspaper is opened to, because he’s been on that one page for a comparatively long time, but I don’t want him to know I want the paper. I don’t want this guy to think I want anything from him.

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