Key West Literary Seminar: Session 1 download

Session 1 of this year's Key West Literary Seminar wrapped up yesterday. If you missed it, I suspect recordings will be showing up soonish on the Seminar's audio archive site. And we're getting particularly good coverage this year on Littoral, the Seminar blog and from WLRN, the public radio station in Miami. If you're Twitter-inclined, check out the hashtag #kwls -- you'll even see eminences like Judy Blume and James Gleick chiming in along with us lesser mortals in the audience. This year is not as Twitterific as last but we don't have William Gibson and Margaret Atwood with us (though Gibson is scheduled to return next year -- don't wait too long to sign up for 2014's Seminar, The Dark Side, because it's selling fast). As has quickly become tradition, Jason Rowan is back making custom-crafted cocktails, tailored to the year's theme. Keep an eye on his blog, Embury Cocktails, for recipes and more information in the near future.

Phyllis Rose opened with a wonderful keynote address Thursday night, examining John Hersey (for whom the Thursday event is named) as a lens through which to view the whole writer vs. person question. Is the man Key Westers saw riding his bike around the island the same person who wrote "Hiroshima" and "A Bell for Adano"? The answer is, of course, no and yes. Rose was also refreshingly dismissive about the overwhelming adoption of deconstruction and other French-influenced critical approaches toward literature, which tortured those of us who were English majors in the latter part of the 20th century and dared to think that writers' lives and times might influence their work. For literary scholars who didn't feel like sacrificing themselves on the altars of Derrida and Foucault, literary biography became "a welcome oasis during the desert years of deconstruction," Rose said. "Writers about writers were rescued by readers who wanted to know about writers' lives."

A sporadic sample from the rest of the weekend:

From Judith Thurman, biographer of Isak Dinesen and Colette and staff writer for The New Yorker:

• "Fiction is high-minded betrayal and biography is dirty-minded fidelity."
• One of Thurman's early jobs was translating pornographic movies. "It's freelance work that I heartily recommend because it's easy -- you just have to understand the words 'Yes.... yes!' and 'More!'"
• Translation is "yoga for the mind and for the ear."
• "One definition of the truth is that which is untranslatable."

From Brenda Wineapple, biographer of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Gertrude and Leo Stein, author of a book about Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson:

• On her subjects: "I prefer them deader and deader."
• Emily Dickinson is "the elusive subject par excellence."
• Oscar Wilde quote: "Biography adds new terror to death."

Most amazing fact learned at this year's Seminar (so far):

• Bram Stoker based the character of Dracula on Walt Whitman (amazing fact supplier: Mark Doty). Edmund White followed this with a comment on why vampire is so often code for gay in literature: "You meet someone, you kiss them and you turn them into you."

More from Edmund White, biographer of Genet and Proust, literary critic and author of a biographical novel on Stephen Crane:

• "Politics and literature are opposites. Politics are all lying and literature is all truth-telling."
• "Having come out when I was 12, I've always wondered what it would be like to be closeted."
• On fiction vs. nonfiction: "The contract with the reader is entirely different." That's why he calls the books about his life autobiographical novels, not memoirs. "Once they're called novels, you're free to do whatever you want."

From Jay Parini, biographer of William Faulkner, Robert Frost and John Steinbeck and author of biographical novels on Melville and Tolstoy:

• Leon Edel's five-volume biography of Henry James is "better than Xanax" as a treatment for insomnia. "He's the Xanax of all writers."
• On the difference between writing biographies of Jesus (his most recent subject) and Gore Vidal (his next subject): "At least Jesus didn't think he was Gore Vidal."
• "Biography is a form of fiction. .... I love to read biographies, even bad ones."
• In writing biography, "you're not presenting a life. You've giving an illusion of a life."
• To Edmund White: "I read your biography of Genet. I thought it was a great novel."

Literary subjects that KWLS panelists attempted as grade-schoolers:

• Phyllis Rose: Eleanor Roosevelt, after her mother rejected her earlier choice of the Duchess of Windsor as a suitable subject for an assignment to write about "an admirable woman."
• Edmund White: Peter the Great. "I was absolutely power-mad as a child."
• Brenda Wineapple, at 10 years old, wrote the first chapter of a novel and gave it to her father, whose response was "But there's no plot here." Wineapple: "My career as a novelist was over."

Books I have purchased (so far):

• The Master by Colm Toibin
• Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America by Jay Parini
• Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer by Richard Holmes, who isn't at the Seminar but the book was mentioned several times

If all of this makes you eager to sign up for Session 2, it's not too late. It all starts again Thursday night with a keynote I'm really looking forward to: Colm Toibin talking about Elizabeth Bishop. That's Toibin in the photo, by the way, speaking at the podium that Cayman Smith-Martin and his crew built from books they got from us here at the library -- they were otherwise destined for the recycling plant so it's great to see them serving literature one last time.

Time to get reading some Writers on Writers

I love this time of year for a few reasons. Holiday decorations in Key West are fun and appear to be getting more fun every year. I love the best of the year book lists that come out around now, to compare my own reading and to get ideas for books I might have missed. And I love the annual library display of books by writers appearing at the upcoming Key West Literary Seminar.  The theme this time is Writers on Writers and the works encompass straight-up biography, meditative memoir and novels with real writers as fictional characters. Lots more detail, including the writers appearing and the schedules for both sessions, is available on the Seminar website. You can still register! The books by this year's authors include some serious -- as in long and demanding attention -- books. But don't let that discourage you. While you may not be up for wading through a magisterial Literary Biography, especially during the distractions of the holiday season, there are plenty of other books that you may find surprisingly entertaining, as well as edifying.

We've just put up a display of books by Seminar writers at the Key West Library so if you're in town stop by and check it out (the display is in the Reference Department, turned over the summer into a more open reading room if you haven't been in recently).

As usual, I haven't read every single writer who will be appearing at the Seminar. But I have read enough to make some recommendations, especially for those who might feel apprehensive about this year's theme. My top choice is one of my all-time favorite nonfiction books: Parallel Lives by Phyllis Rose. I love this book so much I've bought it, given it to a friend, then bought myself another copy because I had to know it was available. We have it in the library, both in hard copy and as an ebook. Rose, a part-time Key West resident, writes about the marriages of five Victorian writers (or four marriages and one long-term cohabitation, that of George Eliot and George Henry Lewes). It's got the satisfactions of high-toned literary gossip -- most of these matches were, in some way, disastrous -- but also offers the chance to reflect on what it means for personal, domestic life when one partner is an artist, as well as the dynamics between men and women, both between individuals and within a context very different from our own.

The most difficult title to categorize but one of the best books I read this year is Geoff Dyer's memoir/meditation on D.H. Lawrence, Out of Sheer Rage. It's funny. It's thought-provoking. It's comforting, if you're prone to procrastination. I wrote a whole blog post about it a few months ago. It's very difficult to describe but it's intelligent and entertaining. And you should be able to read it a whole lot faster than I did, assuming you're not moving house after 14 years of accumulating stuff.

Some other nonfiction titles I can wholeheartedly recommend: Jane's Fame by Claire Harman -- if you're a fan of Jane Austen on print and screen, this is an interesting examination of why her five novels have retained such a high profile in our cultural lives. New Ways to Kill Your Mother by Colm Toibin, an essay collection about writers and their families. Especially insightful about Irish writers, not surprisingly, though the last couple sections on James Baldwin are masterful. Judith Thurman's biographies of Colette and Isak Dinesen are interesting and extremely readable (there's a reason she's a staff writer for The New  Yorker). Her essays on artists and writers are collected in Cleopatra's Nose. As someone who grew up in and around Amherst, I'm always interested to hear more about Emily Dickinson so I can't wait to see Lyndall Gordon, author of Lives Like Loaded Guns (yes, that's a Dickinson biography), as well as biographies of Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot and Charlotte Bronte.

I'm looking forward to the discussions about writing about writers in fiction and there's a great selection there, too: Flannery O'Connor (A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano), Sylvia Plath (Wintering by Kate Moses), Stephen Crane (Hotel de Dream by Edmund White), Edith Wharton (The Age of Desire by Jennie Fields). Jay Parini, who will be at the Seminar has written novels about Leo Tolstoy (The Last Station) and Herman Melville (The Passages of H.M.).

Finally finishing a book about not really writing a book about D.H. Lawrence

Last night I finished reading Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer. According to my record on LibraryThing, where I obsessive-compulsively record such things, I started reading it on March 6. So it took me more than four months to read a 256-page book. First up: It was great. More on that later.

I have good excuses. I had a couple other things going on. Moving, mainly, which involved organizing, and packing, and holding a yard sale and unpacking. Most of our books remain in boxes since we still haven't built the Wall of Bookshelves. All that chaos meant I wasn't in the right frame of mind to appreciate Dyer's dry, funny, smart observations on literature and himself. It was easier to dive in to various kinds of genre novels and a true crime book. And I went out of town for a week and that meant I had to read a Patrick O'Brian book because I only read those when I travel and I rarely travel these days. Besides, procrastinating on reading a book that is, in large part, about why and how we avoid doing the things we supposedly want to do, seemed appropriate.

But I kept the book near the surface level of the moving chaos and eventually finished it and am extremely glad I did. Dyer is hysterically funny, writing about his journey to write (or not write) a critical study of D.H. Lawrence, which winds up being this book instead, a memoir of sorts and meditation on the creative process and, not least, on Lawrence and his choices in life.

I especially loved Dyer's rant about academic literary criticism, which is over the top but perfectly expresses the fury many of us feel toward the current "official" approach to literature by its self-appointed judges who appear to be interested only in finding reasons to tear it apart and blame it for humanity's evil excesses, and then express their findings in repellent prose. Who needs it? Dyer speaks for those of us who love reading, and wind up majoring in English or studying literature in some fashion but are horrified by the way academia handles the field.

There's one other good reason to read this book if you're in Key West or interested in coming to Key West this January: Dyer will be here for the Key West Literary Seminar's upcoming session, Writers on Writers. We're holding two sessions -- the first is sold out but there's still room in the second, Jan. 17-20. And Dyer will be here for both, along with an impressive roster of fellow writers. Can't wait to find out if he's as funny and interesting in person as he is on the page (though after reading his comments on Rome, Santa Fe and Taos, I fear a little for Key West in future essays).

Future Perfect Continuous

It's all over but the workshops. Yet Another World materialized in the San Carlos for one night and three exhilarating days, and then it was over. What's left is the post-Seminar letdown ... and a massive new reading list.

I promised further explanation of this year's theme. Can't say I can, other than to reiterate that it isn't really dystopia -- though there was a good bit of that -- nor scifi, or speculative fiction as high-end scifi is frequently styled these days. The subtitle was "Literature of the Future" and the guiding texts were 1984 and Brave New World, if that helps. In his introduction in the Seminar's program, Program Chair James Gleick writes this, referring to the writers gathered for the Seminar: "What they do share -- what their work reveals -- is a deepening awareness of past and future, which also means an awareness that our world is not the only one possible."

I won't even try to come up with a coherent report about what the Seminar covered or explicating further on the theme -- keep an eye on the Seminar's always-expanding Audio Archives for recordings of individual sessions. Here, instead, is an episodic report of stuff I heard that I thought was interesting (and short) enough to jot down in my notebook.

Interesting information new to me

In his opening introduction, Gleick told us about a religion newly officially acknowledged as such in Sweden: Kopimism, or copyism, it is a religion dedicated to file sharing. Ctrl-C and Ctlr-V are sacred symbols. "That is not speculative fiction," Gleick said. "That is Wikipedia. And it wasn't there yesterday."

Sharks save swimmers, according to Jonathan Lethem. How? Because after a shark attack, the number of drowning deaths decreases for a few years.

Year of the Flood, according to Margaret Atwood, is not a sequel or prequel to Oryx & Crake but a simultaneal.

Colson Whitehead's first piece of professional writing, for the Village Voice, was a think piece about the series finales of Who's The Boss and Growing Pains.

After finishing a novel, Cory Doctorow buys a steampunk bondage mask from some specialty shop in Bulgaria. According to William Gibson.

After Chronic City was published, Wikipedia had to lock down the Marlon Brando page because fans of the book were trying to revive him in keeping with the book's plot.

Pithy quotes

"Paranoid art, unlike paranoid persons, also distrusts itself." -- Jonathan Lethem

"Technically every woman is the woman I never married. So why not call her Marie?" -- Charles Yu, from How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

"The real versus the unreal doesn't mean what it used to." == Jennifer Egan, discussing how much of our lives are now conducted virtually

"We may be tempted to dismiss books with ghosts and monsters in them. Scary is really hard to do." -- Michael Cunningham, who is currently adapting The Turn of the Screw for the screen

"I've always found someone like Beckett to be a form of high realism." -- Colson Whitehead

"MacArthur Park is an investigation of the artist's journey." -- Colson Whitehead

The human mind "is a factory for processing metaphors." -- China Mieville

"Everywhere I go, the empire collapses. The State Department is desperately trying to send me to China." -- Gary Shteyngart

On paranoia: "It's essential as a sensibility and it's disastrous as a world view." -- Jonathan Lethem

"The past is rumor. The future is speculation. The present is over. So where are we, as writers?" -- Valerie Martin

About that dystopia thing

Margaret Atwood has coined a term "ustopia" that covers both dystopia and utopia, normally cast as opposites. "They're much more like the ying and yang," she said. "Within each dystopia there's a little utopia and within every utopia there's definitely a little dystopia, especially for people who don't fit the plan."

About that steampunk thing

The Seminar's major disappointment was the spoiling of the panel addressing steampunk by the moderator's insistence on trying to make the panelists define the term (Why steam? Why punk?) -- and by the way the panelists were Dexter Palmer, China Mieville and William freaking Gibson. And when the panelists did offer definitions, and hints that it might be broader and more interesting than just young guys in funny mustaches, the moderator kept interrupting them and narrowing it down. Infuriating.

Despite that, the three extremely smart and extremely patient men managed to say some interesting things about steampunk as a genre, ethos and lifestyle choice. Mieville's definition was two words: Fantastical Victoriana. Gibson's is a little longer: Technologically driven alternative history.

When Mieville finally got to talk, he made a really interesting point about why steampunk has become so popular in the last 12 years. Victorian Britain, the epicenter of steampunk, was built on the proceeds of the Raj, Mieville pointed out. Yet in classic steampunk texts, there is no Raj. Steampunk, he said, expresses a "particular anxiety about resurgent imperialism." Mieville's disquisition met with loud applause from the audience. Unfortunately the moderator did not take this as a hint that he should get out of the way and let these guys talk. Oh well. Every Seminar has one. It was just too bad that this year's happened on the panel I was most looking forward to.

Books mentioned by Seminar authors that might be worth checking out

Futuredays by Isaac Asimov (mentioned by James Gleick in his program intro, includes the program illustrations by Jean Marc Cote)

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (mentioned by Jennifer Egan and Michael Cunningham)

Pavane by Keith Roberts (mentioned by William Gibson)

In Praise of Shadows by Junichuro Tanizaki (Gibson again)

Pandemonium 1660-1886 by Humphrey Jennings (yet another Gibson)

The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell (mentioned by Valerie Martin)

Writers who could probably make it as TV stars and/or stand-up acts if the writing thing goes south

Margaret Atwood & Joyce Carol Oates (on some PBS Charlie Rose-style show)

Colson Whitehead

Gary Shteyngart

Margaret Atwood & Gary Shteyngart (on some late night Craig Ferguson-style show)

Cocktails created by Jason Rowan of Embury Cocktails for Seminar receptions

(Detailed descriptions appearing gradually ... )

City of Tomorrow

Future Perfect Continuous

Neurogibson

Atomic Sunset

Chocotopia

Release the Kraken

Fantastical Victoriana

In which I assert my coinage of the term Conch Gothic

Years ago, I came up with a term for the particular weirdness that occasionally erupts around here: Conch Gothic. This is more a sensibility than a literary genre, at least so far. The perfect exemplar of Conch Gothic would have to be the story of Elena Hoyos and Carl Von Cosel. Though I'm pretty sure serious weirdness has been going on here long before that. It's the island thing, I think, where isolation allows weirdness to develop in ways that other places might nix earlier -- paradoxically combined with the seaport diversity that gives places like this (and New Orleans and Savannah, for example) a live-and-let-live nonjudgmental ethos. I write this because 1) China Mieville said any movement or school of thought/writing needs to own its name and the name needs to be cool and 2) I mentioned Conch Gothic to William Gibson at a party Saturday night and he seemed to like it so if it shows up in a work of his fiction in the future, you'll know where he got it.

Before the Seminar, After the Apocalypse

The 2012 Key West Literary Seminar starts tonight -- it's been sold out for months, sorry, but there are free sessions on Sunday afternoon.

This year's theme is Yet Another World, which is kind of dystopia but that's an oversimplification. What is it really? Watch this space and I'll report back.

In the meantime, it's got me thinking dystopically, or post-apocalyptically. Maybe it's because we live in one of the places most vulnerable to hurricanes in the nation -- and watched what happened to New Orleans. Maybe it's The Walking Dead not to mention The Road and all the books written by the many fine writers who will be joining us this weekend. But I sometimes think about what I would do after the apocalypse. This is, of course, assuming I survive the apocalypse but hey, if I don't then it's not really my problem.

I use it as an excuse to hang onto our kayaks and canoe, even though they haven't been out of the yard in years. It makes me feel a little self-satisfied about my few remaining practical skills, like knitting. I've operated a treadle (non-electric) sewing machine, too, though it's been a couple decades. And I've always liked the idea of weaving.

So I decided my skill/niche would be knitting, and possibly making cloth. I have been hoarding yarn for about 15 years but that's not all I'd knit. After the apocalypse, I would knit whatever I could and that's the beauty of knitting. You can knit just about any damned thing. My friend Emalyn has a dress her mother knit out of cassette tape.

My husband, who has recently become a rum aficionado since spending time in the Caribbean, plans to distill booze. He thinks this will give him a lot of influence and bargaining power for other commodities. We have discussed the need for weapons (crossbows look good, based on The Walking Dead) to defend the booze and ourselves.

I like the idea of sloughing off all the artificial layers of stuff we accumulate, protect and worry about. I'm not just talking just about belongings -- but also about intangibles like your 401(k), your social obligations, your job. After the apocalypse, who cares about your credit rating or what's going to happen to windstorm insurance rates? And having a little extra meat on your bones could be an advantage. I have a strange attraction to the post-industrial agrarian visions like that at the end of "England, England" by Julian Barnes. This, even though I grew up in a rural area and am well aware that farming (especially without heavy machinery), animal husbandry, toting water and firewood, preserving food, making clothes, etc., is hard work. And how much harder will it be when you can't run down to the Agway or Jo-Ann's Fabrics for your supplies? But that's the thing about the apocalypse. It's not a voluntary dropping out, joining a commune, going back to the land. It's a Big Change and if you survive it,  you have to figure out how to cope.

The other night, at a pre-Seminar gathering, I conducted an informal survey: After the apocalypse, what will be your survival skill/economic niche? I  was surprised at how many people said they had never considered the question. And I got some interesting answers.

Dara: Arranging spaces. “I could find places for people to be and improve them, so they could survive in them.”

Kathy: Camouflage expert. Blending. Camouflage warrior.

Ashley: Stress relief, coping with stress.

John: “I’m going to die in the apocalypse. Speaking German, will that be a useful skill?”

Michael: Communication skills. “I can negotiate for trading of sticks and firewood.”

Richard: “Charming everybody else to take care of me. Maybe I should grow drugs.”

Kerry: “Food hoarding and judiciously distributing to the worthy.” Also facilitating suicide for those who want to check out.

Diane: “I’ll have to garden.”

Linda: “I’m going to be the recorder of what happens.”

Cynthia: “Cleaning houses. I think I could be pretty good at that.”

Judy: "I'm optimistic. I can lead cheers."

Arlo: Fishing

Jim: In his dreams of the apocalypse, he checks out. But he thinks he can manage it without Kerry’s help.

Miles: Potter

Alan: Make paper and soap.

Margaret: "You're assuming a society. I’m not.” Head for the woods. Having social order is the sine qua non – otherwise we can knit our heads off or produce all the booze we want and someone will just come and take it.

Valerie: Water gathering in huge trash cans under the eaves of houses.

Mary: Build a fire.

Judith: “I’ll fish.  We have to eat.”

Peyton: “I’ll make pots.”

Items we should be hoarding now:

Sugar, yeast, mosquito netting, Skin So Soft, Tupperware, mason jars, mirrors, goats, chickens, bows and arrows, manual sewing machines, antibiotics, needles, threads, seeds, bees

Question to investigate: Are iguana eggs edible?