Review: Patti Smith's Just Kids

Reading Patti Smith’s Just Kids—with so many minute details about NYC in the 70s and 80s— I got the feeling she probably kept journals to which she referred when putting down the story of her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe, back when they were poor and struggling, aspiring to a fame that seemed elusive until “suddenly” (after a decade or so) it didn’t. And yet, despite so many fine strokes, the book as a whole more resembles an impressionistic painting than photorealism, perhaps an intentional blurriness applied by Smith to smooth away the rougher edges of how life surely must actually have been for the pair.

In that vein, I offer here my own impressionistic thoughts as I stand back and consider the book as a whole. Because I connected with JK as far more than the sum of its parts. In fact, the writing style doesn’t seem particularly soaring or intricately crafted, despite the fact that the book won the National Book Award. Though maybe this is a literary sleight of hand considering that the scenes and emotions are rendered so vividly that I continue to carry them with me—not always the case once I finish reading a book.

I confess that I initially resisted reading JK. The main reason, upon close inspection, is sort of silly. My all time favorite teacher went to college with Smith and I have this vague but indelible decades-old memory of her telling me a couple of unsavory anecdotes about Smith. Nothing horrific. I  realized I allowed myself, courtesy of allegiance to my mentor, to feel an annoyance by proxy. This, coupled with the fact I never much connected with Smith’s music (I don’t dislike it, I’m just not swept away by it) was enough for me to skip buying a copy of JK when it first came out, despite the urging of a friend with whom I share very similar tastes.

But when JK won the National Book Award, I grew curious. I know I shouldn’t put too much weight into awards. But NBA is a pretty massive honor, so I figured maybe there was something I didn’t know about Smith that was worth knowing. Sure enough, even if the writing style didn’t bowl me over, the stories sent my mind flying in so many directions, got me reminiscing about my own coming-of-age artistic efforts, and so made me feel as if I were in a very particular place and time that Smith describes that I noticed my feelings about New York-- which mostly run toward anxiety-riddled—shifted. Reading JK I got as excited about the city as I did reading Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast.

What pulled me in initially was the story of Smith’s childhood. We literally came from—and fled— the same place: South Jersey. The small blue-collar towns in which we grew up lie side by side. Our high schools were miles apart. And both of us briefly attended Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) before rejecting that school. I understood exactly what she describes when she writes about that place. I know precisely how hard it is to escape from it. And I recognize how being from there might just be a major catalyst fueling a desire to show the world some greatness you think/hope you have inside of you. (Maybe that’s why so many famous people come out of New Jersey. Maybe all this fame is entirely based on an I-made-it-IN-SPITE-of-being-from-here.)

Also, like Smith, I had a child “out of wedlock” as the judgmental put it. I’d say both of us were changed so much, inspired in our art so much, by these early pregnancies. But here’s the differential: Patti Smith is 20 years older than me. Back when she got pregnant sans marriage, the pressure to partake in a shotgun wedding or else surrender the child for adoption was enormous. Not so for me. I thought about this quite a bit as I read JK. Smith gave her firstborn away, and details the painful and prolonged emotions of this (forced-by-society) “choice,” which, despite the attendant pain, also gave her a certain freedom—if not from the emotional burden of the adoption, then from the day-to-day duties of young motherhood. I, on the other hand, was “allowed” to keep my firstborn, thankful he arrived at a time when doing so was “acceptable”—or at least less unacceptable. While I won’t go so far as to say that being a mother robbed me of freedom, certainly the choice shaped my days differently than that of childfree artist chasing a dream, unobstructed by diaper changes and middle-of-the-night feedings.

On one level, JK is a “simple” love story of two very young aspiring artists on a very wild adventure that came during a very exciting time in history. Timing might not be everything, but it certainly plays a big enough role. Had Smith arrived in NYC twenty years earlier, she never would have become the godmother of punk. Had she arrived twenty years later—well, maybe she could’ve given Madonna a run for the money. Whatever heady adventure Smith and Mapplethorpe engaged in, their coming of age saga was all the richer for the excitement brewing around them, revolutionary attitude changes about art and sex and politics, and friendships forged with cutting edge artists a few steps ahead of them— Warhol, Hendrix, Ginsberg, etc.

Reading JK, I was reminded of the direct, stripped down descriptions in Bukowski’s Ham on Rye and the grandiose proclamations of Isadora Duncan’s My Life. Smith doesn’t spend time shaping carefully wrought metaphors or hiding behind modesty real or false. She lays it bare, and speaks often of a shared belief she and Mapplethorpe held that they would one day garner international recognition. She also has a skill for downplaying and romanticizing circumstances that surely must have been more difficult to deal with while they were occurring, referring, for example, to the heroin habit of her onetime lover Jim Carroll as modest (WTF—can one really have a modest heroin habit?) and describing life in a cold, toilet-free loft in a manner that makes it seem far less uncomfortable than surely it must have been. And yet, before I make too much of this glossing over, I recall the sundry dumps I live in, many of which were in houses that have long since been condemned and razed, that nonetheless continue to occupy the Happy Memoris file in my mental hard drive.

Of the many parts of the story I related to, perhaps the strongest resonance revolved around Smith’s description of her perpetually evolving and morphing friendship with Mapplethorpe. The two were around 20 when they met and their relationship was incredibly intense—a sometimes romance that frayed when he wrestled with and then embraced his true sexuality. When I was 18, I also met a boy about my age and the friendship we developed – though it did not ever become a romance unless you count that two-minute drunken make out session up against a cigarette machine in a skanky bar at the Jersey shore one night—sometimes felt as intense to me as the one Smith describes. He was the first one in my life EVER to say, “I love you to me”—I don’t mean first boy or first friend to say this, I mean first person (in my family, we didn’t bother with such verbal sentiment). And when he said those words, it changed my life, simultaneously made me squirm and opened up something deep inside.

My friend told me that he wanted to be a writer because I was a writer. And he did just that, going on to become a quite famous, his words bringing him great financial fortune and entrée into some pretty fancy worlds, much like Mapplethorpe’s work moved him up to higher and higher levels of NYC’s art and social strata. (Recently my friend sent me a picture of himself hanging out with Lady Gaga in Paris). My friend, like Mapplethorpe, also wrestled with his sexuality, until at last he embraced it, eventually finding the man of his dreams and forming what now must be a decades long partnership.

As Smith eventually falls out of touch with Mapplethorpe, so I fell out of close touch with my friend. But how the stories of our youth came rushing back in as I read JK. I recalled many trips to NYC to see my friend, and more than a couple of parties he threw for me, introducing me to so many publishing industry folks he connected with long before the advent of FB. In doing so, he set me up for all sorts of assignments, including one that eventually led me to my first book contract.

I visited NYC a few weeks ago—I hadn’t been in years. I had a speech to give and made plans to spend one quick day there, not even stay overnight. I made no editor appointments, scheduled only lunch with my friend Elizabeth Royte. On a whim, I emailed my old friend to see if he could have coffee, but I hadn’t given advance warning of my visit and he was on deadline. Still, I wandered the streets with him in one pocket, and Smith and Mapplethorpe in the other, our respective coming-of-age friendships separated by two decades, overlapping nonetheless.

I wandered into McNally’s bookstore in SoHo, and picked up that second copy of Just Kids I mentioned. It was a gift for my young friend Sam—I’d given my own copy to my son. Sam and Henry met when they were in high school. They dated, and then they stopped. They kept their friendship and theirs is a bond at least as strong as Smith’s and Mapplethorpe’s, as mine and my friend’s. They share a passion for art, music, fashion. They love New York the way I never could—except vicariously through Smith’s writing. Sam is setting off to pursue a modeling contract. Henry is getting ready to go on tour again with a band based in Brooklyn. Though they are pursuing these dreams twenty years after my friend and me, and forty years behind Smith and Mapplethorpe, I see more parallels than not.

And that, perhaps, is the greatest pull of JK for me, the very thing Smith wanted it to be: the tale of the sort of friendship some of us are lucky enough to have, that begins in our brutal youth and carries over and transcends and—even when death or distance ends it—remains a huge part of who we are.

Q & A with Esteemed Writer Elizabeth Royte

Time for another Writer Q & A. This time, I asked my friend Elizabeth Royte if she’d be game for my inquisition. She graciously agreed. I met Elizabeth back in 1995 sitting at a bar in Las Vegas of all places. She was on assignment and I was on a cross between a blind date and work duties—attending Comdex as party of my job duties for Prodigy Services. Back then Prodigy had hired me to send out, via email, weekly updates about my life. Or, as I like to put it—at the risk of sounding like Al “I invented the Internet” Gore, I was, in fact, one of the first bloggers. Only we didn’t call it blogging back then. But never mind that—getting back to Elizabeth. I am such a fan of her work. I will never forget when her stunning first book, The Tapir’s Morning Bath—which, as an aside, let me say is the best book title ever-- came out and the New York Times Book Review reviewer did something so uncharacteristic for NYT reviewers that I’d never seen before and perhaps have only seen one time since: flat out proclaimed, “This book is a charmer. I loved it.”

That’s because the book is so smart and such a compelling read that there’s nothing not to love about it. Elizabeth spent time on a research island off the coast of Panama studying the habits of researchers who study particular habits of rain forest critters. Super-meta, right? Right. Since then, Elizabeth has had two other books come out: Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash (in which she follows the path of trash from her kitchen to wherever it eventually goes) and Bottlemania (a look at this disposable bottle culture in which we live). She also writes for the New York Times Magazine, NYT Book Review, Outside, Rolling Stone, National Geographic and Harper's.

Seeing as we met right when the Internet was gaining purchase among everyday folk, I thought I’d ask her, among other things, what her overview-in-hindsight is about how the web has reshaped the way we write and are published. And so, sans further adieu, I present Elizabeth Royte. Oh, and here’s a link to her books on Amazon and her personal website and her blog. 

 

SG: You and I met in 1995 at Comdex Back then, it was kooky exciting with this whole Internet thing and we weren't sure where it was going. Now, to paint in broad strokes, I'm going to say that while the Internet has brought a lot of grooviness and some opportunities for writers, it has also in some ways made making a living as a writer more difficult. Do you remember having any particular thoughts in '95 about how "Oh this is going to change things for the better?" and/or have you looked back over the past 16 years and come up with some personal overview about how the Internet (especially blogs) has changed the way writing is produced/consumed?

ER : I had no idea, in 1995, that the Internet would look or feel the way it does. I used it only for e-mail and AltaVista searches; I’m not tech savvy; and I hate prognostication (because I’m always wrong). Certainly blogging has changed expectations of publishers (they like authors to have a platform from which to sell books), and it’s also turned anyone into a writer, which – as you know—broadens the field of competitors vying for ever less space in journals that still pay writers to report, think, and write. But I’ve also realized, from dropping in on some of these blogs, that there’s a lot of talent out there – some surprisingly good and/or quirky writers. Refreshingly, they’re not necessarily blogging to get noticed, craft a platform, or make money.

SG: Tell me about Bottlemania, which I am embarrassed to not have read yet, though reading the blurbs about it immediately called to mind an installation by Chris Jordan called Running the Numbers, and in particular this piece: Plastic Bottles. Since I saw that installation, I am not kidding-- I have reduced my consumption of all beverages in plastic bottles by about 90% and hope to get that down to about 99% reduction soon. 

ER: Brava for reducing consumption of single-serve, factory-made beverages in disposable bottles! It’s easy to make one’s own tea, lemonade, et cetera, and pour it into a reusable container when you want to take a beverage with you. Bottlemania started out as a book that questioned how we got to the point of purchasing (and discarding) 40 billion of those bottles a year (I was interested in the bottles’ environmental and social impact), but it took a serious turn when I started to look at what’s right— and wrong— with tap water. Ultimately, the book makes a case for increased support of municipal water supplies, so everyone has access to affordable, healthful, zero-waste water.

The book grew from the research I did writing Garbage Land, and I hope that it gets at what bottled-water consumption stands for (a form of heedlessness), and why we need to re-think our culture of convenience. It is not a screed against bottled water (imagine a screedy exclamation point here), which I don’t consider the worst thing in the world, although it does distract us from devising systemic solutions to water quality and quantity problems.

SG: In Garbage Land you followed your personal stream of trash. In Bottlemania you look at the wicked consumption of bottled water-- so how does this affect you personally? And do you think your work is having an impact on folks? Is that what drives you-- to effect change? Or is it more about observing and reporting? 

ER: I’ve always been a lackluster consumer, so I never dramatically cut my waste or made radical lifestyle changes (I’m not even sure I have a lifestyle) reporting these books. But yes, I write to find out what I think about things (I hadn’t thought much about tap water before writing Bottlemania, but that may be because I live in New York City, which has famously good water). And I also write to try to change people’s minds -- to persuade them to tread more lightly on the planet by informing them of the upstream and downstream impacts (environmental and social) of their consumer choices.

SG: What's your writing process like when you are preparing for and then writing a book? I mean, you are a massive research queen writing in what sometimes feels like a world full of airy memoirs (I feel okay saying that, even though I could be accused of the latter).

ER: When starting a book I read what’s already been written on the subject (in journals, books, newspapers), and I try to get up to speed on the latest thinking, familiarize myself with the jargon, et cetera. Then I pick up the phone and try to find interesting places from which I can report and set scenes, and to find my Virgils—my guides to and interpreters of these new-found lands. 

SG: Speaking of airy memoirs, any thoughts on the glut of me me me writing? There was that scathing put down of memoirs in a recent NYT Book Review. I personally was really put off by a memoir I read recently because I felt it perpetuated the whole bullshit (my opinion) Mommy Wars thing. So, to piggyback on my memoir question here-- you're a mom but you write hard-hitting stuff, and you write beautifully, and you research your stuff. Any thoughts on gender and writing-- do you feel like you are, as a woman writing about science and environment, mostly in the company of men writers when it comes to these topics?

ER: I don’t read enough memoirs to have an opinion of recent examples, though I’m fairly uninterested in the mommy genre. I hugely admired the excerpt of Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones and Butter in the New Yorker and have ordered the book from the library. I think it appealed to me mostly because of my fondness for this Seventies/Boho-Parents/Divorce genre.

As for my gender and my writing: I don’t really think about it. I do what I do, and I don’t think too many people (editors or sources) notice that I’m female. I haven’t thought much about why there are more men writing about the environment than there are women (there are more men than women freelancing on any subject for the magazines that publish my work). Interestingly, it seems that there are more women than men blogging about “green living,” sustainability, and so on. Is it because they’re home more, and they’re making the decisions about what (or if) to buy? I don’t like to think that green citizenship is a consumer issue, but that’s the impression one gets from these sites. Who’s writing about systemic solutions to environmental problems? Mostly men.

SG: Tell me more about your journalism-- who are you writing for these days and do you try to only take serious assignments or, as needed (financially) will you write lighter pieces?

ER: I’m writing a piece for the New York Times Magazine now (on a semi-environmental but mostly social issue) and a piece for National Geographic. And I continue to review nonfiction for the NYT Book Review. I recently did a couple profiles for a women’s magazine. Was it lighter fare? Not really: I profiled a biogeochemist and an anti-CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) activist. I’d love to do lighter pieces, maybe some essays, but I’m not so good at generating those ideas. Maybe I should take a class from you.

SG: What's next for you?

ER: I’d like to say I’ll be on to a new book project soon. But I’ve been saying that for twenty months and a solid (and marketable) idea eludes me.

SG: I teach writing workshops and naturally my students want to know about getting published. I don't want to paint a bleak picture for them but I do like to be realistic. I do point out that they can publish, in an instant, with blogging. Any thoughts on getting published in general (advice, the difficulty of it, etc) and blogs in particular?

ER: I think there’s still room out there for good writers with unique ideas, or spectacular access to an elusive source, or real investigative chops. Editors need novel, solid and intriguing ideas, not just mild curiosity about something a writer happens to be interested in. Having a good track record with editors helps, as does having a niche specialty. Get started with small journals, local newspapers – write for free if you have to, but develop a body of work and then start pitching larger journals (it’s worth researching how to write a winning query). 

Freedom is Just Another Word

A writer friend of mine pointed me to an NPR interview with NYT writer David Carr about the benefits of writing free content, which he has done in addition to his paid work for NYT. (The catalyst for the NPR story was the recent sale of HP to AOL for a ridiculous sum). In the piece, they also mention Carr's piece in NYT on the same topic.

In the summer of 2009, I wrote a very long blog post called Why It Sucks to Be a Writer. In that rant, I decried how people were offering me, in exchange for my writing not for money but for a CHANCE FOR EXPOSURE! And I further noted that the next time I want exposure, I'll hop up on the bar and take my shirt off. In fact, I actually do write for free for the Austinist -- a weekly column that is often in the Top Ten most read list, which is to say I drive traffic to the site for free. So you could say I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth. Like many double speakers, I rationalize-- in this case, my rationalization goes like this: While Austinist is based on a site that started as Gothamist, it is very much locally run, lovingly put together by a group of passionate Austinites. I liken my contribution to being on par with hosting a KOOP radio show, an effort made out of a combination of my love for the medium as well as my love for this city.

But it's not all selflessness. Hardly. I also use my column as a chance to cross market. In my tagline I often mention upcoming workshops and camps, both of which generate a decent portion of my annual income. In that sense, I suppose I could argue that each column is one very long advertisement for myself.

When other sites have asked me to write for free, I have mostly balked. But Carr makes the point that Facebook is packed with what is, in essence, free content which draws in bazillions of readers who are then exposed to all the advertising.

As free content grows, the price I can get for my work drops, another point Carr examines. One guy he quotes likens this model to feudalism and I think that's a good analogy. Why should the people who own and profit off these sites buy the cow when the milk is free, right?

I find, in my own work, things continue to shift. Recently I was hired to write for a major website that pays-- compared to most-- outrageously well. I could, if they would give me just four assignments per month (posts of just 500 words) make enough to live on comfortable. On the other hand, I just created a document of about 6000 words that netted me $1000. Yes, that's fucking insane. But I tried to ignore the word count-- and the pennies per word it amounted to-- and look at my bottom line, which is a massive monthly mortgage. You know, you do what you have to.

In my writing classes, I try to help my students consider ways to get their work published for pay. But I always always emphasize how increasingly difficult this has become. So, in a sense, this is also me talking out both sides of my mouth. I do encourage them to start (or continue) blogging to at least have the satisfaction of putting their words out there. And/but is anyone reading blogs? I hardly read blogs and I write about six of them (for self, for others). Partly, I am so busy producing content that I have little time to consume it. More to the point, a combination of too many choices and way way way too much crap writing finds me avoiding blog reading more often than not. And lately, I've gone practically Luddite, at long last attacking the teetering stack of-- gasp-- BOOKS by my bedside. (I augment with lots of audiobooks but that's a comparison to examine at another time).

So, is writing for pay going away for good? Well, of course not. There will always be the mega bestsellers who make millions. And there will be some websites-- at least I hope-- that continue to pay some money. But this whole constant shifting has left me confused about "being a writer for a living." At a dinner party not long ago, a writer friend of mine, contemplating whether or not to write another book, voiced hesitation simply because, "Why bother just adding more to the existing heap?" I argued the point that his thoughts, words, and stories contained a unique element that makes them as important as everyone else's writing (more important than some, in fact). But at the same time, I totally understood what he was saying. After having six books published and four rejected, I find myself at an odd crossroads: Writing books is what I DO. To simply stop writing isn't an option. But then, how often do I find myself trying to come up with a book idea based on marketability vs. "just" a topic for which I feel passion?

It's almost unavoidable. Last week in this space I tore apart the book Poser for being, to my mind, totally contrived. That bugged the shit out of me. But maybe it's because I have my own fears around doing the same. Is pure writing for writing's sake a thing of the past?

Ah, that's where we circle back around. The answer to that is NO. Blogs, which in so many ways have destroyed the ability to make a living writing, also do allow us the ultimate freedom to write what we wish. They call to mind my favorite Dolly Parton quote, "I had to get rich before I could sing like I was poor again." This, I believe, a reference to the gorgeous, stripped down bluegrass records she has released in the past decade or so. She couldn't do things her own way, once her Big Persona was established, until she reached the point that money didn't matter any more--she has enough of it. Now she can do what she wants.

This no-more-pay-for-words thing that's going around is a perverted echo of that quote. I never did get rich enough to write like I did when I was young-- with abandon (and, I humbly admit, unintentional pretension-- wait, can pretension be unintentional?) But since I'm not getting paid much anymore, well, what the hell, I no longer have to come up with clever pitches for women's magazines.

But then, I do have to find other ways to support myself. I perform a LOT of weddings toward this end. And I teach writing-- is that ironic? Fraudulent? Am I perpetuating the myth, in these writing classes, that my students can fulfill that dream to have a book published? I worried about that a lot when I decided to start offering workshops on a regular basis. Now I don't worry about it. I make it clear, even before the first class begins, that we're not primarily in the room to learn how to write for publication/pay. We're in the room to learn how to put our stories down in words, and to polish those stories. Some show up to put their stories down in an effort to heal from wounded pasts-- and that, I know from personal experience, is a real and priceless thing. Beyond all that, I remind myself that no one is being forced to sign up, and anyone who wants can leave at anytime.

I also teach kids' camps, and these might be the "purest" jobs I take. There is no agenda beyond having fun. There is no wondering, as I sometimes do when contemplating being a wedding officiant, how I can reconcile myself to being opposed to marriage in my own life and yet be perfectly okay with marrying others. (Aside: I don't really worry about that a whole lot-- I am hired to perform a function, and it's something I'm good at, so okay then, makes sense to me in that context.)

One thing I have been thinking about lately, regarding words for money, is simply asking readers to give me some. I have friends who start KickStarter campaigns to raise money to put out their CDs. I'm happy to support such efforts. I have been toying with starting a KickStarter page of my own, and saying, flat out: Look, I have an idea for a book, and another one for a screenplay. I have no idea if these things will come to pass and be "marketable" but I really want a chance to try, and my current work-forty-jobs schedule isn't allowing that. Therefore, if you enjoy reading my Austinist column, which I write for free, would you consider making a $5 donation? If I can get 1,000 of you to make a donation, that will afford me two months where I can put down all my hustling and job taking and just fully focus on my writing. So, what do you say?

I haven't been able to do this yet-- it feels oddly like passing the hat, begging for people to indulge my little pastime. I haven't ruled out the request yet either, and even had a sign from the universe that maybe it's the way to go-- just last week, out of the blue, a reader from Chicago sent me $50 just because she could. Another time, a reader sent a few bucks, noting that's what she'd pay for a newspaper. When I want to feel NOT like a beggar, I remember this excellent blogpost by Amanda Fucking Palmer saying why she has NO QUALMS about asking for money.

No big conclusions here. Just mulling this whole money thing, which has always been befuddling whether you're connecting it to writing, pyramid schemes, panhandlers, or the question "is it tacky to give money as a gift?" I often long for a society in which we can trade rocks and shells for the things we need-- I have an abundance of both, just as I have an abundance of words. But alas, rocks and shells-- and increasingly written words-- won't get you too far with the taxman and other wolves at the door.

So-- your thoughts on this? Do you provide free content-- either in the form of your own blog, or blogging for others? And if so, what's your rationale. And if not-- if you refuse to write for free but have been making a living off of writing, what are you doing now to support yourself?

Poser: Sadly, The Joke Inferred by Its Title Isn't Really a Joke, It's Painfully Accurate

Note from Spike: It's not my intent to review a lot of books here. I do hope to run plenty of Q&A's with writers. And when I read really good books, I do want to mention them. But today I am posting a really negative review and part of me feels bad about it. One reason I'll never make it as a professional critic is because I prefer, overwhelmingly, to direct readers and theatergoers to stuff I LIKE. Why waste time bashing the bad stuff when there is so much good stuff out there-- that's the motto I try to mostly stick with. But I just finished listening to Poser, the audiobook version of a memoir that's getting a ton of press, and I am so fucking annoyed by it that it's haunting me. And so here I am, trying to capture my thoughts. I sort of want to apologize to the author because I want to think that she really put her best into it, and it pains me to strike out against that. Still, in the interest of complaining about larger awful trends-- which this book symbolizes-- I present my thoughts.

It’s been days since I finished listening to the audio version of Claire Dederer’s memoir, Poser, and I am still so fucking annoyed with the book that as I woke up this morning, as I came to the surface, I found myself continuing to waste time dissecting it, trying to get to the root of why it chaps me so.

First, in the interest of fairness, let’s address a major problem for which Dederer cannot be held totally accountable. I understand that whenever I choose the audio version of a book, I am quite possibly signing up for a very different experience than the author intended. Sometimes this works out great. I recently listened to Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese and Under the Dome by Stephen King. Both were astonishingly great books and, on top that, each was read by an extremely talented actor that took the tales to new heights. But sometimes a reader totally (or partially) fails an author. For example, while I eventually developed a tolerance for the narrator of Jennifer Egan’s excellent A Visit from the Goon Squad—I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed the book better if I’d read it from the page.

As for Poser—which I should toss out there is allegedly a memoir about yoga—it was read with such a heightened and sustained sarcasm throughout that I wanted to scream. I have no idea why I didn’t just quit listening. Maybe my insistence on going through to the end was a combination of my admitted masochistic streak, and a hope that it would get better—that either the narrator would adjust her tone or that Dederer’s words, which I now think probably are just as sarcastic on the page, would adjust her story/attitude You know, the old formula—redemption at the end, the Grinch’s heart grows, Dorothy taps her red shoes together and has an epiphany, etc. But no, the sarcasm never lets up, and I don’t think it was just the narrator’s interpretation. Look, I know from sarcasm, I’m a Yankee and that is my native tongue. But there comes a point when enough is enough and any cleverness demonstrated by sarcasm is overcome by the pure stench of too much. Okay, so Dederer can be cleverly biting, we get it already, but did she ever really gain any insight? And do we gain any insight as a result of reading the book? I would say No and No.

Before I get to the nuts and bolts of problems in Poser, I want to cop to another thing for which Dederer cannot be held responsible: the professional jealousy I fully admit to suffering whenever another one of these flimsy memoirs comes out. I see how hard this book is being pushed by marketing forces—a huge ad inside the cover of NYT Book Review, not one but two articles dedicated to the book itself in NYT and another one that refers to it in NYT Mag. I recall my own first memoir getting orphaned when my editor left Simon and Schuster before it was published, and the editor who inherited it had less than no interest in seeing it through. There was no marketing budget for my book. So okay, let us include that factor when weighing my own criticism.

When I think about the massive marketing efforts put behind books like Poser , my mind jumps to the topic of Connections in the Book World. (Aside: If you are wondering if I’m actually going to review Poser here, the answer is maybe. I’m not sure yet.) I picked up Poser for a few reasons. First, I read the NYT Book Review review. Even though I winced a bit when I got to the part about Poser being a mommy-memoir—few words turn my stomach more than mommy as a modifier for writing, which I find so patronizing, well, even still the reviewer strongly suggested the book was worth a read. When am I going to learn to stop trusting reviewers? Once I got to the part in Poser where Dederer describes her work as a book reviewer, I could not help but suspect that anyone reviewing her book would—perhaps subconsciously—go easy on it. Fear of retribution in a future review? I’m sure I’ll catch flack for this conspiracy theory but Poser reminded me of another book that got a total NYT blowjob – I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti. That author (whose name I’ve forgotten and who I’m not even going to bother to look up) had some big connections at NYT and no one will ever convince me that this did not have a hand in the glowing story that ran about her, which duped me into buying the book. Her book, for which she got something like a quarter million dollar advance, read like an unsolicited 300 page email from a former high school friend you purposefully fell out of touch with but who tracked you down anyway via FB and insisted on telling you about her incredibly boring dating life with a few pasta recipes thrown in.

So with Poser, I want to know, does Janet Maslin really think the book is that good? Does Dani Shapiro really like it that much? Or is this all part of a bigger world of you stroke mine and I’ll stroke yours?

I mean, really, am I the only one who thought Poser was utterly contrived right down to the Elizabeth Gilbert blurb touting it as the next great thing? I’m pissed at NYT and I’m pissed at Elizabeth Gilbert (whose EPL, whether you loved it or hated it, at least had real substance) for misleading me like this.

Listening to Poser, I kept coming back to the nerd-rap song a friend told me about recently. It’s called First World Problems and there’s a line in it where the rapper bemoans not being able to find his Ambien. So, okay, Poser should be called First World Problems to the Nth Degree. Because Dederer whines about so many things that so many of us could never even dream of accessing in our lives. She bitches and moans about the “rules” imposed by being part of a hipster mom set in Seattle, by which she means, I think, white, well-off, living in a really nice place with far too much time on her hands. She pays lip service to wanting to be less judgmental but that set off my bullshit alarm. She’s judgmental throughout.

And now, as aside about feminism. Or maybe an aside about my personal life. You know, I fucking hate it—HATE IT—when supposedly intelligent women writers perpetuate the so-called Mommy Wars. I do buy into the theory that much of this “war” is a creation of the media to divide women, stir shit, and sell papers. It always gets broken down to the Stay at Homes vs. the Working Moms and who is “better” and whose kids will be less fucked up. I never read about the very real gray areas, or the people like me—a single mom who worked AND stayed at home. It’s an option, you know? If these women would spend less time advancing the myth, they’d have far more time to just kick back and enjoy their kids. 

Lisa Belkin has articles that seem to run like clockwork where she tracks down, say, a group of women with PhDs or who are CEOs who “give it all up for their kids!” Then the article is followed by an onslaught of letters to the editor where women defend their own choices and attack other women's choices. Fuck it. Fuck these Lisa Belkin backstabbing, war-perpetuating pieces of nonsense. And fuck this Dederer Poser crap, in which she tries to have things both ways, tries to pretend she’s somehow above the people she makes fun of for pretending to be above her while all of them seem to, at their most “difficult,” suffer from not being able to decide which private pre-K to choose for the children. Worse, these children, at least by Dederer’s description, seem at once to be overly coddled and somehow resented as a major imposition (before then being exploited as a writing topic).

She bashes attachment parenting, then eviscerates and exploits the life and choices of a so-called friend who adhered to attachment parenting until she changed her mind and then jumped ship and—the way Dederer describes it—bailed on her kids. As if this one woman’s behavior—or Dederer’s interpretation of her behavior—is “proof” that attachment parenting is “bad.” She makes fun of those of us who would breastfeed for more than a year or share our beds with our kids.

To each her own but must we continue to bash each other? Full disclosure: I breast fed my son for two years, let him sleep in my bed for three, but did not adhere to some rigid doctrine that required following specific rules at all times. You know, we also ate crap food, watched BH 90201, made a lot of mistakes along the way. Because we are HUMAN. Most importantly, there was not the kind of judgment among the mothers I knew about "how" to mother. Look, I'm not saying judgment is non-existent, I am saying it continues to be exaggerated to the extreme by these fucking "mommy writers" (BLECH) who know it's a hot button, and who keep setting up the false argument, keep backstabbing each other. When—I mean fucking WHEN—will these women just shut up and be grateful for their kids, and they joy they bring, and the fact that we have running water and houses and daily bread and paying work? It's a goddamn PRIVILEGE to have kids and a PRIVILEGE BEYOND COMPARE 

to have the luxury of having enough time to sit around and waste time wondering if one's parents' failed marriage is a reason that one prefers cafe au lait over double fucking frappucino.

I think this is where Poser begins to fall apart for me—which is to say at the very beginning. Dederer sets up this straw man: “Oh the pressures are too much to bear on me as I deal with my hip which is sore from carrying my baby and which I have to much time to worry about since my husband is the main breadwinner!” which she somehow uses as an excuse to write about going to yoga.

During the yoga parts of the book—which are vastly separated by the story (yawn) of her childhood and marriage (yawn yawn yawn)—she again makes fun of others: white people who dare have an interest in the Eastern side of yoga, fit women who hop from studio to studio. And yet she becomes the very things she criticizes, or at least pretends to become “enlightened” by allowing her lily-white ass to dip a toe into Eastern philosphy as she hops from studio to studio to studio.

You know what? Even as I sit here writing this, I’m thinking, “Jesus Christ, I wasted ten hours of my life listening to that audiobook and now I’m wasting another two critiquing it and you know what? My life is too fucking short. I do not want to let this woman or her work steal any more precious moments from me.”

But then, a small lament creeps in. The thing is, I wanted to like Poser. Like Dederer, I’ve been doing yoga for a dozen years, I’ve raised a kid and I’m a journalist. There should be so much that resonates, right? And there are spots where her writing sings—not like a virtuoso, but like somebody who is pretty good at karaoke. When that happens, I found myself thinking, “Cut her some slack, she’s a pretty good writer.”

But then, there she’d go again, screeching off on some tangent about how she just has to escape her mother who commits the ongoing sin of wanting to be involved in her grandkids’ lives.  

In the end any good writing and borderline keen observations are far outweighed by what never stops feeling like an utterly contrived work—one that uses yoga for a framework not out of sincerity but to continue to exploit this practice that Dederer makes fun of others for exploiting. And she tries to shape the story of her marriage into a magnificent arc of a tale when, in fact, the biggest obstacles they seem to face are an unpinpointable smell in a rental house, her husband’s depression (which she decides ultimately to dismiss—is this part of her enlightened attitude?) and perhaps an unspoken drinking problem: I lost count of how many scenes revolved around boozing it up.

We should all have such First World Problems of being financially supported by someone who will also babysit the kids while we fussily set out to find a yoga teacher that we deem worthy of our holier-than-thou selves.

But wait, that was sarcastic, wasn’t it? And didn’t I complain about too much sarcasm in Poser? Okay then, how about this, and I mean it sincerely: it will be a really awesome day when skilled women writers (and Dederer has the potential) quit bashing the shit out of each other’s mothering and quit lamenting the burden of marriages. If you hate mothering, don’t have kids. And if you’re worried about being trapped in a marriage, for fuck’s sake, don’t get married. But please, please spare us another fucking memoir about how everyone else is a fake for trying something like yoga but how you—you and your terminal uniqueness—are somehow the one single person in the universe who transcends.

Ugh.

Opinions are Like Assholes

One thing we talked about last night in workshop was Drafts. To Revise Or Not To Revise, that is the question. I write fast, don't revise a whole lot, but then probably revise more than I realize. That's because working on a computer lends itself to multiple drafts easily. It's not like the good old typewriter days when a new draft was much more labor intensive. On the other hand, I rarely write something then sit on it for six months or a year and come back to it. I did do that with my last novel, which was swiftly rejected by the first agent I sent it to. Maybe the message she was trying to send me was that I suck at fiction. I could also interpret it as, you know, it doesn't matter that I sat and waited before revising it. If I ever dig it back out and rework it again, and if this nets me a book contract, maybe I'll have some stunning new thoughts on the power of revision. For now, in this wacky world of Internet writing, so much of what I (and a lot of other people) write is just blurted out. 


Besides self-revision, there's also the matter of Input from Others. I recently did a contract job where everything I wrote had to be reviewed by about six different people, all higher than me in rank. Even though I was brought in as a specialist, and none of these supervisors were writers, they were allowed to, and seemed to really enjoy, littering the margins of my document with countless requests for changes. Often, these people would counter one another. Sometimes, from draft to draft, someone would counter a section I had revised to THAT PERSON'S SPECIFICATIONS-- ie they would look at a change they had insisted on and then tell me it was wrong, even though often enough I cut and pasted their request verbatim. Ha! Equally annoying were comments like, "This doesn't work for me," and "I don't like that." Okay, great, very constructive, thank you. I'll just read your mind now and guess what you don't like about it and change the copy accordingly. 


Seriously, writing by committee should absolutely be outlawed. It calls to mind two of my favorite jokes about editing-- one is visual, the other a joke. Here's the visual, which pretty much captures the job I described above:


Original sentence: The cat has a fluffy tail.


Editor One: The cat  feline specimen has  possesses a fluffy tail posterior fur embellishment.


Editor Two: The cat  feline specimen mammal that descended from lions and became domesticated has  possesses bears a fluffy tail posterior fur embellishment phallic protrusion at its hind end that is comprised of short hair sprouting from follicles.


Editor Three: [Note to writer-- how did you come up with this? You need to simplify. See my suggestion below.]
The cat  feline specimen mammal that descended from lions and became domesticated has  possesses bears a fluffy tail posterior fur embellishment phallic protrusion at its hind end that is comprised of short hair sprouting from follicles.


Suggestion: The cat has a fluffy tail.


And now the joke: 
A plane crashes in the desert. The only survivors are an editor and a writer. They crawl, parched, for days searching for water. At last they come upon an oasis. The writer dips her head in and starts slurping up the water. The editor drags himself to his feet, staggers, pulls down his zipper, and starts pissing in the water. The writer says, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!" and the editor says, "I'M MAKING IT BETTER!"


That, too, has been the story of my life far too often. It's bad enough having to make my own changes and while I'm not above the assistance of a good editor, far too many of them want revisions made not to improve a piece but just so they can put their dirty little hands all over your writing. (Once, I was assigned to write a story about children and depression for a magazine. The editor sent a note back after my first draft asking, "Can't you make it a little more... peppy?" Hey, the universe got even with her-- she went on to ghostwrite Clay Aiken's autobio.)


I did read a couple of quotes about revisions that both appeal to me. Further testament to my inability to be decisive-- I sort of agree with both of them:


“My ‘first draft’ is IT. I’ve tried once or twice, but I haven’t the mental stamina and I feel all the time that although what I’m attempting may be different, it won’t be better and may very well be worse, because my heart isn’t in it.”

--Dick Francis, Jockey and Writer


"It can take years. With the first draft, I just write everything. With the second draft, it becomes so depressing for me, because I realize that I was fooled into thinking I’d written the story. I hadn’t—I had just typed for a long time. So then I have to carve out a story from the 25 or so pages. It’s in there somewhere—but I have to find it. I’ll then write a third, fourth, and fifth draft, and so on."

— David Sedaris

And now-- your thoughts on revisions? Bonus points if you post a comment and then follow it up with a second, more thoughtfully written comment.

My First Write With Spike Interview: Meet Ruth Pennebaker

Hey Y'all,
Some of you already know and love Ruth Pennebaker who can be so delightfully dry that she makes the desert seem like a Moist Towlette in a bucket of lemonade. (Aside: that last sentence is proof that I made no New Year's resolutions to work on similes.) Well, Ruth's got a brand new book out, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough, a novel about... you know what, I'm going to let her tell you what it's about. You can also go hear her read from the book this Sunday, January 23, 2011, at BookPeople at 6th and Lamar, 3 p.m. Ruth's been a buddy of mine for years and good lord you should hear some of the stuff that comes out of her mouth/pen. She's written some great pieces for NYT, including an article about how to spend 36 Hours in Austin and another about her secret Rules for Pool, which she shares with her husband Jamie, who also happens to be a writer, and a damn good one. But enough about Jamie.

Getting back to Ruth. I asked her if she'd join me on my maiden voyage of posting Q & A's with writers here. I can't say for sure what these Q & A's might take the form of over time, though I can promise I will never exhibit the asshole-ish tendencies of Deborah Solomon as she struggles, every Sunday in NYT Mag, to prove she is more important than every single person she "interviews" (read: condescendingly mocks).

No mocking here. Ruth is smashing and I'm delighted and grateful she came out to play. And so, without further adieu, our conversation.

Spike & Ruth, Sittin' in a Tree
an email exchange...


(Aside from Spike: below we discuss a video Ruth made to promote her book. You can see that video here. Or if you read down a ways you'll see that I figured out how to upload it. Yay me!)

1. First, in the interest of the good old days, when people really got to focus on discussing the content of their books, let me ask you to tell me a bit about your new book. Of course I know you can (and should) direct us to your very nicely done video in which you describe the book, but go ahead and tell us a little something here, in print.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough is about three generations of women living under one roof.  A pretty small roof.  And they're not too happy about it.

The oldest, Ivy, has led a frugal, uneventful life till her husband died and she lost most of her savings in the recession.  She's been forced to move from a small town in West Texas into her daughter's house in Austin.  She's joining her 49-year-old daughter Joanie and granddaughter Caroline, who's 15.  Joanie's still reeling from getting dumped by her husband and having to rejoin the job market with a resume showing work experience pretty much limited to "room mother."  Caroline's miserable, awkward and shy, and in love with a good-looking guy in her Spanish class who couldn't conjugate a verb in any language.  Oh, and did I mention that Joanie's ex-husband, with impeccable timing, has just gotten his little girlfriend pregnant?

The crux of it is that these three women are each struggling with their own lives -- and can't quite see or understand what the two others are grappling with.  It's about how you can live closely with another person, even someone you love, and not really see or empathize with what's going on in her life.

2. Tell me a little bit about your process. Do you write every day? Do you have certain pre-writing rituals in which you must engage like flipping a light switch off and on twelve times while saying forty Hail Mary's?

I have no rituals, except for becoming heavily caffeinated as soon as possible.  Oh, sure, I mess around on the computer, answering emails and seeing what's going on in the world, but I always have this creeping feeling of doom that I need to get to work or I will end up on the couch eating bon-bons and watching TV.  That's my greatest fear: the bon-bons and TV.  I was raised with a lot of shame -- and the bon-bon shame gets me moving.  Maybe, as a parent, I've underestimated the Power of Shame to motivate. Oh, well, it's too late.  My kids are already pretty shameless.

3. Okay, I can't resist-- Ruth, let's have a no bullshit conversation here about WHAT IN THE HELL has happened to the state of the industry of books? (Can I call it an industry?) For example, not that I ever could get an agent to hold my hand for longer than the equivalent of a last dance, but these days, good lord, it's like-- well everything is so DIFFERENT now. From where I'm sitting it seems like the money is a whole lot worse, the lengths you have to go to to market yourself are ridiculous, and then there are so many other factors-- eBooks, audiobooks. Don't you remember the good old days when you, me and Louisa May Alcott used to toil away in our attic garret and then join up for tea in the late afternoon and talk about WRITING. What's your take on the BUSINESS of writing now, vs. simply WRITING in years past?

It's all changed and continues to change.  I think we can spend our time howling and moaning about the good old days (when, remember, we were all howling and moaning about something else, since life is perennially unfair and writers are master complainers) or we can try to constantly adjust ourselves to the changes and use them to our advantage.  It's a whole new world out there, with ebooks and iPads and blogs.  We have to adjust.  And yes, we have to promote ourselves. Then we get discouraged and go into fetal position and wake up and do it again the next morning.

But I'll tell you one thing: Publishers are as overwhelmed by these changes as writers.

4. I gotta ask you about the video promotion. It's really nice, you look great, and you don't appear to be reading off of cue cards. Did your publisher arrange this? Did you foot the bill? Any good bloopers that got edited out that you want to tell us about?

I arranged it myself -- wrote the short script, practiced it, got two friends with a documentary company to film me.  Paid for it.  No memorable bloopers, since I was pretty well-prepared.  I didn't want to spend any more time or money than necessary, so knew what I wanted to say.  I didn't want my film friends to think what a big loser I was that I'd stumble all over the place.  You see?  Shame comes through again.

5. You're an award winning blogger, no? Tell me a bit about your blog. And are you having fun keeping up with it? I mean, let's talk about PACE and I don't mean pacing of a story's plot, I mean the sheer quantity of blog posts some people put out in a year. It's crazy (I know of what I speak).

It's almost ridiculous how much I love writing my blog, the Fabulous Geezersisters. I post twice a week about everything from marriage to politics to cancer, so I commit the #1 blogging crime of having no niche.  I do have a fair number of dedicated, articulate readers whom I don't want to disappoint.

You know what I make of this?  I've always been attracted to low-paying work.  Since blogging pays nothing, no wonder I love it. 

Algonquin-- Ruth took this picture which is why you don't see her in it.

6. You spent some time in NYC last year-- did that feed into any young writer romanticism you held as a writer starting out? For instance-- I got all wound up when I was in Paris and happily engaged in a most cliche but most enjoyable action: I went to-- what the hell is the name of that American bookstore there? Oh yeah: Shakespeare & Co. And I bought Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and you know, despite his sexism and his alcoholism and all the rest of it, I will always have a place in my heart for Hemingway. I loved reading his take on Paris while I was in Paris. Just thinking about it makes me want to go back to Paris right now. So did you have any experiences like that in NYC?

I had an incredible experience in New York -- for the whole year, really.  But, also, the afternoon the novel sold, I had a prearranged appointment to meet a friend at the Algonquin for a drink.  The Algonquin!  Then we went to see Nora Ephron's play, "Love, Loss and What I Wore."  I've been reading Ephron for years and love her.  So, I felt like a princess that night.  Then, of course, I had to get up the next morning and go back to work.  The truth is, I'm not happy if I'm not working.

7. It's time for the What's Next question, Ruth. So, Ruth, what's next? Another novel? More blog posts?

Definitely another novel, definitely loads of blog posts.  I also write the Urban Cowgirl column for the Texas Observer.  I've got enough to keep me busy for a long time.

Announcing: Spring Workshop 2011

Hey Y'all,

Beginning January 17th you will find more regular updates here-- thoughts on writing, interviews with writers, book reviews and reviews of reviews (because sometimes reviewers can be so... well, reviewable).

For now, please know that I still have a few slots left in my Winter Writing Workshop, which begins January 20th and run for six consecutive Thursdays. Cost is $300 and includes one-on-one writing coaching via email over the run of the course. The in-person meetings will be held in Central Austin. You can email me at spike@spikeg.com for details.

The Spring Writing Workshops will begin on April 28th and run six consecutive Thursdays through June 2, 2011. The focus, as ever, is memoir writing and creative non-fiction. If you are seeking help polishing something you've already written, or are hoping to get started on a memoir, or want ideas on how to be a better blogger, this is the workshop for you. If you want more specifics about the workshop, feel free to email me at the address above. Cost for the Spring Writing Workshop is also $300. Space is limited. Reserve now.

Thanks,

Spike