Pushcart Nomination

I am honored that Copper Nickel is nominating my story "It," for the 2011 Pushcart Prize.

"Want"

Just placed my lyric short "Want," with The Literary Review.

Now, fingers crossed for The Sun.

Just placed my essay "To Cut," with Gulf Coast.

My, but it seems nothing is quite enough these days. Years ago, I'd have felt that a great victory: an outstanding magazine, prestigious, hard to get into, paying a professional rate for prose. These days, I want more all the time. That must have to do with just how long I've been trying to agent my novel-- I know the work is good and deserves to see print.

I used to believe one day something would tip. Now it seems as if I have to fill the glass until it brimmeth over.

Why I Read, What I'd Like to Read

Stole this from a post at HTMLgiant. But it's really nice:

“I believe that you should only read books that bite and sting. If the book we are reading doesn’t hit us like a fist on the head, why are we reading the book? For it to make us happy, you write? My God, happy we would also be if we had no books, and such books that make us unhappy we can write ourselves if need be. We need books that affect us like a misfortune, that hurt us a great deal, like the death of someone whom we loved more than ourselves, like a suicide, a book must be an ax in a frozen sea inside us.”

– Kafka writing to Ernst Pollak

Kafka's not advocating violence for the sake of violence, gore for the brightness of the blood, as so many writers seem to misunderstand the compelling nature of the troubling and difficult. There's an indie trend today that too often mistakes writing about apocalypse and torture and suffering as being significant or compelling because it's loud, bright, awful, and thoroughly amoral. Writing of the interweb and indie book too often feels like the new age of William Burroughs as rendered by artless children-- and that is the best of it. What Kafka is getting at is making art that doesn't flinch, that is bold and significant and refuses to go down easy. That is not the same as art that does not know what art is, and instead substitutes the excesses of a Tarantino film without the craft or vision of Tarantino. Kafka is talking about writing that gets at what is irresolvable, what implicates the reader and exceeds the reader, what can strike at our still, cold heart and free it for a moment. He's talking about art that exhibits honesty and courage to face the difficult, about reach and ambition, about writing that refuses to satisfy easy expectations. The last book I read that did that was Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio." The last prose I read that did that was the FINE essay in the new issue of The Missouri Review by Michael White concerning the end of the life of alcoholic poet Tom McAfee.

Why I

Stole this from a post at HTMLgiant. But it's really nice:

“I believe that you should only read books that bite and sting. If the book we are reading doesn’t hit us like a fist on the head, why are we reading the book? For it to make us happy, you write? My God, happy we would also be if we had no books, and such books that make us unhappy we can write ourselves if need be. We need books that affect us like a misfortune, that hurt us a great deal, like the death of someone whom we loved more than ourselves, like a suicide, a book must be an ax in a frozen sea inside us.”

– Kafka writing to Ernst Pollak

Fingers Crossed

The Fall is Wintering up, and I am getting ready to take the next round of longshot lottery tickets out: Wisconsin, The Stegner, the new Emory Fellowship, a new round of agent queries. These bigger reaches have greater significance for me this year: I am determined to get out of Eugene at the years end, and want to find a path that will support my work, that concerns writing and is not a sub-lateral move. But these options are not likely, any of them, and so increasingly I'm a bit despairing about the next step. What I do know is that I'm not inspired here in Eugene-- not by the community, the people, even the work now, as much as I love my students.

I just received Copper Nickel 14 in the mail, which contains my dialect story "It," and my craft essay "Race, Authority, Culpability," and it's a beautifully produced issue; in a few days, I should receive Unsaid 5, which contains my dialect story "Pipe." And I have three other reasons to hope: my story "True Conditions," is out at Tin House, where they solicited a revision. My essay "To Cut," is in the final editorial meeting at Fence, which should occur in the next couple weeks. And my story "Classroom Management," is newly out in revised form at The Sun, who also solicited a revision. Any one of these fine venues would be a success; of course, I desperately want all three to pan out. Perhaps it's a mark of how long I've been trying to place each of those pieces (4 years; two years; two years) that now, rather than settle, I think each deserves prominence. Why else wait so long?

Or perhaps it's all a long impatience. I am tired of hurrying up and waiting.