http://www.catherinelacey.com/
Catherine Lacey is a 2012 NYFA Fiction Fellow. She has published work in The Believer, The Atlantic.com, a Harper Perennial's 40 Stories, Diagram and others. She writes for Brooklyn Magazine rather often and is a founding partner of 3B, a cooperatively operated bed and breakfast in downtown Brooklyn.
Writing Room
Yesterday I spent a few hours in the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum and got to see the room where he wrote more than half of his work, though he only lived there for about ten years on and off . His routine was to wake up at six am and work until he had 700 words or it was time for lunch. Then he went out to fish until happy hour and then he drank until he was tired. That was how he wrote most of his books. His writing room was only accessible via a catwalk from the main house, and no one ever went in there except for him. (It is now my life’s goal to have a private writing room only accessible by catwalk or maybe a ladder and fireman’s pole or maybe a zipline.)
Thou Shalt Read
Last week while I was visiting family in Mississippi, I spent more time in church than I have in the past two years. This reminded me that from the age of 4 and 14, I spent roughly 490 Sundays in church excluding occasional sick days. That’s 1,225 hours when you include Sunday school and “fellowship” time. In addition to regular Sundays there were Wednesday night dinners, youth group meetings, confirmation classes, summer Bible school, youth choir practice, choir tours and weekend retreats. I’m estimating that about 3,500-4,000 hours. Yikes!
But what effect does all this Jesus have on one’s writing? I can’t speak for everyone who has had this kind of upbringing, but for me, church-going led me directly into writing. Prayer led to journaling; journaling led to disgraceful poetry; disgraceful poetry led to disgraceful fiction, then to essays and memoir and more fiction. But church also instilled a reverence for narrative and the inclination to analyze and obsess over stories and books (first books in the bible, of course, but then others.)
Just in time for Christmas, N+1 posted this video of their panel discussion titled Evangelicalism and the Contemporary Intellectual and it’s pretty interesting, though the title is slightly misleading. (It’s not just about Evangelicalism, which is a very particular corner of Protestantism, but about growing up in the church in general.) READ MORE >
Some British guy is saying Jesus came to England to “study” and build a church because ” little was known about his life before age 30.” Sure! Why not? I have a feeling this guy is some kind of reincarnation of Chaucer’s Pardoner, because little is known about the afterlife. More importantly, what degree would Jesus get? I’m thinking an MFA. Best attempt at His first submission to His poetry workshop wins my blessing and/or the bones of a dead pig saint.
Zadie Smith has a long essay in The Guardian that is half about David Shields’s forthcoming, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, and half about her own frustration with novel writing. Go read it. It’s longish, but it is completely worth the time. I am not going to include an excerpt here. Once you’ve read all of it, read the rest of this entry. READ MORE >
A writer friend of mine in New York recently packed up and went to live in a cabin in the Amazon rain forest because he wanted to keep the overhead low while he was finishing a novel. Another writer I know went to Argentina to live with her novelist boyfriend where they both live cheap. I could keep listing examples, but just know that there are more.
Yet there are so many reasons to live in New York all the same. For one thing there are a lot of writers here and crazy shit happens. (One example: I got to meet Werner Herzog & hear him speak yesterday.) But there is the money issue, of course. Rent is high in a lot of places & if you eat out a lot you’re going to go broke. On the other hand there are a lot of good jobs for a writer to have here, though landing one of those jobs can be an issue.
While he was on his book tour someone asked Tao Lin if he thought there is “something happening on the east coast literary scene that is a little exciting, as opposed to [California.]” I don’t know what Tao said, but I wonder what y’all think of New York as a place for a writer to be. What is this exciting thing? Does it exist at all? I think I live here because there is no reason to have a car and I fear and loathe being in cars. Also, I have a relatively affordable set-up and can’t think of anywhere better to be…. thoughts? Alternative city suggestions? Damning accusations?
I don’t have anything amazing to say about Sarah Manguso except that her book, The Two Kinds of Decay, was so awesome I feel like it became a part of my body. I wrote this thing for The Rumpus that goes more into that book, but for now I want to give you one quote from a Bookslut interview with her:
In a magazine feature I read years ago, a mathematician was quoted as saying “I am a machine that turns coffee into equations.” And at the time I thought, “Oh, I’m a machine that turns coffee into poems.” I live a regimented life. I work in a little box, a little room at the back of the apartment, and eat lunch at the same time every day. I’m a simple machine.
I guess I just love the memoirist/poet hybrid. Nick Flynn and Michael Ondaatje are two more that come to mind. Anyone know of other poets who venture into memoir?
Lucia Joyce: Troubled Spawn
Speaking of James Joyce, check out this post on MobyLives about the latest on the Joyce estate’s “disgusting” attempt at censorship.
Here’s a little quote from The Stanford News about some of the nastiness that’s been going on:
Stephen Joyce has stopped countless public readings of his grandfather’s works and discouraged a generation of research. At one point, he told a prominent Joyce scholar that he was no longer giving permission to quote from any of Joyce’s work. He told one performer, who had simply memorized a portion of Finnegans Wake for an onstage presentation, that he had probably “already infringed” on the estate’s copyright, according to a 2006 New Yorker story.
I went to the New York screening of Michael Kimball and Luca Dipierro‘s film I WILL SMASH YOU (caps are obligatory) and I can now confidently say that you will want to see it also.
The premise is this: Michael sent out a call last year for people who wanted to smash something that carried a meaning or burden they wanted to rid themselves of. The people came to Michael’s house in Baltimore where he had a smorgasbord of smashing implements laid out on a table in his backyard. Michael interviewed them a little about why they were destroying what they were destroying and then they dismantled the object using an ax, sledgehammer, crowbar, chunk of concrete, etc.
By now I think everyone has seen the trailer featuring our man, Adam Robinson, in which he metaphysically destroys the hymn, It Is Well With My Soul. (If you haven’t, please, for the love of no God, click here.) This was one of my favorite parts of the movie because there are a number of Hymns I would like to destroy also, but I was also surprised and delighted by how much of an impact that the other performances and stories had. Michael and Luca did a phenomenal job in selecting the right quotes and facial expressions and gestures to reveal something really intimate about each person.
Not one but two computer monitors are savagely axed; a teenager mutilates a blood-filled pinata of her teacher’s head; a be-scarfed man destroys ‘procrastination‘; and a woman in high heels and a velvet dress destroys a car she believes is cursed, axing every window and even ripping out the steering wheel.
I hear that Ken Baumann is putting together a screening in LA, and the good folks of Detroit and Toronto will also soon get a chance to see it. Contact Michael or Luca to arrange a screening in your town. You need to be smashed.
Ed Champion of Ed Rants/ The Bat Segundo Show has posted an interview with Brian Evenson. If you’ve never listened to the Bat Segundo show then it might be worth checking out the archives. Bat (an alter ego of Ed Champion) has interviewed tons of people, from David Lynch to Nick Antosca to Oliver Sacks to Amy Sedaris to 306 other people.
Click the picture to listen to Brian and Bat.