Flash Fiction vs. The Novel: How to Make a Writing Practice in Today’s Market

The path to a successful writing career is not always clearly marked. I think of Samuel Beckett writing Waiting for Godot, and his surprise and despair at its eventual success. Over the years, this unprecedented play would eventually astound and confound audiences worldwide, making the author’s name. Yet Beckett had been writing fiction for years, and his foray into playwriting was initially out of frustration with how his fiction was being received. After Godot, he continued to write plays and fiction, and in his fiction, perhaps in reaction to the success, he went inward, creating even more obscure and consciously inaccessible work. Ultimately, his playwriting defines his body of work as frequently as his fiction does.

The road my writing career has taken is ultimately not the one I had envisioned. If anything the way I imagined it was to be more traditional (read: with more financial rewards). But somehow, without a clear path to having my novels published, I have tried to adapt to the market. I could as easily say I have adapted my writing practice to the limits on my time to write. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Though I’ve not lost any of the ambition I have for the novel, the restrictions on my time have led me to writing quite a bit of shorter fiction. As I have adapted, I’ve begun to feel the trend away from the traditional route is inevitable, but also another potential path.

In terms of the online writing market, there are far more outlets for what could be considered esoteric and experimental short work, which seem to dominate the online journals. This may be because there are more people writing, and there is an accommodating rise in a need of outlets for this work.

Starting out as a writer of fiction, I was hungry to publish. This then became a desire not merely to publish, but to publish more. Naturally, this led me to writing and submitting shorter work. Yet I was already writing this type of material in school--informed by my reading--before I knew there was a market for it. Essentially, this type of writing has fallen under the rubric of traditional flash fiction, though it goes by many other names: short fiction, short experimental fiction, hybrid writing, etcetera. In fact, much of this type of writing is similar to what Beckett was producing in his Texts for Nothing, and fizzles. What I’m not talking about are short stories per se, but the work that predominates online venues such as Decomp, Spork Press, Word Riot, and many others.

               I’m sure there is some correlation between the length of a piece and its likelihood of getting published. There’s probably also a correlation between the intensity and effect of short fiction, versus that of longer work. The intensity can’t be maintained for 70,000 words. In fact, most people wouldn’t want to read it. (It’s called Finnegan’s Wake.) Yet often enough, with short experimental work, I believe I’m writing at my best. I don’t have to adapt to any style or form. There are no expectations, frankly, and fewer rules, for what this short fiction can be. In it, I find I can thrive.  

Much of the time, I try to carve chunks of time to finish a traditional novel, an ever present grail project, because the reward for that can be multiples of what one receives from publishing a piece of short fiction. Still, that kick from getting my work published is always rewarding. And it’s much more expedient to write a 500 word piece than it is a 70,000 word novel.

Where does this place me as a writer among thousands of other writers? I still aspire to a traditional career, but over time I am adjusting my original expectations and goals. I am ten years into my writing career, and I’m accumulating a body of work that has been vetted by many editors I’m grateful to. I consider this short fiction some of my most exciting work. Is it because I don’t rely on writing to support me financially, that I’ve been able to pursue a career in this way? This notion, though in some ways merely convenient (I would have made money on it if I could have figured out how), validates the idea I have for myself of being an outsider. The trade-off with a traditional career is that I can write whatever I want--whatever comes to me in the odd hours and can’t be shaken. This might actually force me to experiment, if not simply to compete, then because I’ve made it a point to subvert my own expectations for my work.

              Yet there is a paradox here. I’ve spent many hours on novels--years, really--and exponentially less time on most of the work that has gotten published. This could imply that I’m better off to keep pursuing the online fiction writing markets. The success I’ve had publishing has me often wondering if I am trying to hard to peg myself, and my writing. (This happens in my reading also, as I spend inordinate amounts of time trying to find books to read, and am often as disappointed as those people who feel duped into reading the next big thing. My gut inclination often, thankfully, gets me to veer from this reading.)

A novel can become an all consuming project; Henry James’s “loose, baggy monster” is a reminder to keep perspective and not overthink the work. Yet a novel is a rationally plotted compendium; though it might be made up of those pieces that could resemble the short fiction, the end must conform to the larger project. A novel is much less open ended than a piece of short fiction. I’m ambivalent about this.

               In my writing practice, I teeter between the unearthing of my subconsciousness, those visions tapped in dreams, and the material where I try hard to attain clarity and project a plausible story. If I have any frustration, it might be the limits of this way of traditional storytelling. With short fiction, I break the rules all the time. Inevitably, this is what grabs an editor.    

              I rarely let this work inform my novel writing. I might do this because I don’t see any writers as models for this approach. In a sense, a writer can be ghettoized by their success; it might be difficult to convince oneself that it’s worthwhile to venture into a different form. If only this was my problem.

Bringing Secondary Characters to Life

In the midst of trying to solve a writing problem in my fiction, I tend to “go to the literature,” to quote Joan Didion. I used to do this when I was a far less confident writer though with mixed results, since I wasn’t always certain about what I was looking for. Presently I’m looking for ways of bringing a secondary character to life in my first person point of view novel.

After reading the first three chapters of a draft of this novel, my writing group honed in on the character of my protagonist’s wife. “We need more dialogue,” they resoundingly agreed. “We need to see her.” Something in my presentation of this character made her feel unformed to them.

Of the three or four books I turned to, one example that jumped out of a first person narrative showing a secondary character with some specificity was found in Matthew Klamm’s one and only book Sam the Cat and Other Stories, which I’d forgotten, or just put into the recesses of a cobwebbed memory. Right away I recalled Klamm’s deft handling of bringing a secondary character to life, which feels somewhat sleight of hand.

Klamm’s language is frank, blunt and naked. His dialogue is even more revealing. Yet it tends toward turning the narrator, typically first person, into something of a buffoon and a lumpish failure, what was once called, I believe, a milquetoast. This seems in the service of conveying his women (yes, plural) of the type a la Esquire magazine’s self-congratulating feature “Women We Love.” As if no such woman has any flaws worth noting, or these flaws are merely charming, so enraptured are they by her beauty. These effects are often achieved with dialogue, of course. Klamm’s writing excels in an easygoing talking style, as of a good friend telling you intimate details over a pint. This style might be used to make an unsympathetic narrator more sympathetic. Does it matter that these secondary characters are rather typecast? Probably. As successful as this is, I became suspicious that Klamm’s stories appeal to a specific demographic that I might be on the outs with. This might be half the problem with my own first person narrative--my readers are not entirely in synch with the narrator.

Thus I thought, rather than merely bringing in additional characters more to life with more dialogue, I would need to do a lot more to appeal to the demographic that isn’t agreeable with my first person character. But I also began to wonder about the ready advice, “Use more dialogue.”

Why am I so willing to conclude that dialogue is an easy way--or as it’s also frequently thought of--the main way, to bring a character to life? I suspect the idea is that in first person, dialogue is an opportunity to not have your narrator endlessly talking, after pages and pages. Dialogue can seem live, and in this way it brings whatever character is talking to life. I don’t disagree with this assessment. But I believe you can fall into these soft traps of a ready made solution without figuring out if it actually works.

Yet, even after writing several pages of more dialogue centric scenes in my novel, I didn’t necessarily feel any closer to bringing the protagonist’s wife to life.

What I recognized was that I needed now to approach this in a more organic way. I begin to ask questions: what am I trying to convey exactly? The problem for the narrator is that, after returning from a mountain climb, he’s become permanently disabled; in light of this, his wife has returned to help him after a separation. That specific plot point aside, I am trying to convey multiple problems in this novel, and this is just one facet.

Certainly dialogue will carry emotion and feelings, here. Because I need to have the narrator explain some of his situation, I don’t believe it is unexpected--or really wrong--to have him offer his interpretation of events--this is the purview of first person, after all.

With a novel, it is normal to have to juggle multiple objectives. This story with the wife is only a subplot within the larger narrative. The main narrative might be summarized as a man tries to understand his life after confronting a life altering injury. I don’t think every character has to have a curriculum vitae and a diagnostic workup. In fact, with first person, it might even be expected that secondary characters get short shrift, and that they may be presented with some degree of bias. I can’t make them full fledged in the 250 pages I have for the novel. I think my approach has been to give the secondary characters enough material to function in service of the larger plot.

This is the kind of problem I expect from handing out a first draft of a novel. The reading group’s bias comes in because they are not seeing the whole picture. Granted, it’s a delicate dance between keeping the reader interested and not making them despise a potentially unsympathetic narrator. As much as I want to hold my argument up as explanation, the reality is that anyone else who reads the novel might come to a similar conclusion. I discussed this attempt to appeal to everyone in the following blog post Cheese Pizza Effect.

Beyond these issues, I believe there is more at work here: the wife is thought to be two dimensional, or flat, as they say; god forbid that I should portray such a character--such an important character--as flat. And this is when I realized: this character is the one my writing group is most predisposed to. They are reacting to my narrator as I am to Matthew Klamm’s. The chorus becomes, “Well, nobody wants to read about them,” or, “The narrator needs to be more sympathetic.” I get their point, but I also think there is a place for a narrator who is occasionally reprehensible.

One of the lessons I’ve learned over the years of writing and revising is knowing how to pick and choose advice. When the tenor of this criticism is too strong, as I feel was the case with my group, I realize I have hit a nerve. I take this advice cautiously, usually. The group is getting a firsthand impression without having read the full novel. Do I try to make it more conducive to their expectations, knowing this might be the way an agent will read it, or do I stick to my resolve and not lose sight of my goals for the narrative? I recognize why readers might be reacting so vehemently to the narrator, and I will consider their suggestions, but it’s not the secondary character’s story, after all. 

Interested in reading more about the conundrums of writing fiction? Check out an earlier post: On having to explain one's work (or that dumbing down logic).

Roth’s First Person Point of View in Operation Shylock

I find that, in spite of my own sage advice to myself, I am working on a first person novel again. John Gardner, in The Art of Fiction, says “In any long fiction, Henry James remarked, use of the first person point of view is barbaric.” And yet, if this is the case, we don’t seem to lack for first person point of view novels, I’d venture far too many to count since the beginning of time. Is there something inherently apt for our technological times that lends itself to first person?

One of the reasons I’ve avoided first person in a novel is that it always feels too limiting being locked into one character for several hundred pages. My inclination is to always want to go big, broad, reach for a larger perspective, something more readily done in omniscient or third person (the all knowing, all seeing and indifferent God paring his nails.) It’s interesting that in many reviews, point of view barely gets discussed, but it’s impact is fundamental, and inextricable--though saying this sounds ridiculously obvious. Nothing has more effect on character than its being written in first person. First person is character.

I think the challenge for a novelist writing in first person--or one of them--is that unless you’ve got a compelling voice for this character, you are at a disadvantage. First person requires an extended performance. In a sense, the narrative never drops out of that register, and thus, it becomes difficult to reveal the other characters except from one specious point of view, which may (will be) biased, critical, and short sighted. The ancillary or secondary characters don’t get an equal hearing, unless your first person narrator can be entirely magnanimous. Or these characters have to become first person narrators, too. This is also a strategy, though I think the difficulty would then be how to distinguish one narrator from the next. But this doesn’t seem thematically what I want from a novel, though of course anything is possible. It’s an egalitarian point of view structure that favors one voice, which opens it up to being one-sided, lacking in complexity.

Roth, to my brief survey, has evaded these problems using first person masterfully in Operation Shylock, and thus reveals why and how it is a viable point of view--challenging, but worth trying to pull off. Or at least trying to learn from Roth. 

According to Claudia Roth Pierpont in her biography Roth Unbound, of the writing of Operation Shylock, Roth said: “I felt like I was dancing as a writer.” It shows.

From the start this novel heightens complexity, not in the least by using a double, an imposter (supposedly) of the character Philip Roth. This forces Roth’s first person to challenge him by posturing himself as someone else in confronting the imposter, which reveals another way out of the first person dilemma, dialogue, which creates an immediate, unavoidable tension. This provides for brilliant conversation in which, apparently straightforwardly, the Roth imposter presents his views on Diasporism, to which character Roth can respond, incredulously, vehemently. This is wonderful, inventive satire. (And Roth makes it look easy; as well, he does this so beautifully that it is inspiring.) The doubling even extends to the character of John Demjanjuk--”So there he was--or wasn’t.” Even the possibility of uncertainty hangs over his identity as a Nazi camp guard.

In Operation Shylock, Roth complicates what could merely be simple. With Roth, we’re always being poked narratively far deeper into even the most mundane surface (this is rather euphemistically, being pushed deeper into shit, shall we say). Here’s an example in a bit on Apter:

My tiny cousin Apter, the unborn adult, earns his living painting scenes of the Holy Land for the tourist trade. He sells them from a little workshop--squeezed between a souvenir stall and a pastry counter--that he shares with a leather craftsman in the Jewish quarter of the Old City. Tourists who ask his prices are answered in their native tongues, for Apter, however underdeveloped as a man, happens to be someone whose past has left him fluent in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, Russian, and German. He even knows some Ukrainian, the language he calls Goyish. What the tourists are told when they ask Apter’s prices is, “This is not for me to decide”--a sentiment that, unfortunately, is not humbly feigned: Apter is too cultivated to think well of his pictures. “I, who love Cezanne, who weep and pray before his paintings, I paint like a philistine without any ideals.” “Of their kind,” I tell him, “they’re perfectly all right.” “Why such terrible pictures?” he asks--“Is this too Hitler’s fault?”  “If it’s any comfort to you, Hitler painted worse.” “No,” says Apter, “I’ve seen his pictures. Even Hitler painted better than I do.”

Roth expands a narrative with telling anecdote: it reveals, like good dialogue of which it is only one component--the subtext, and enriches the whole.

Yet Roth achieves all of this without reverting, necessarily, to any outlandish “voice” or device. The language is relatively straightforward; his ability to bring the complexity to the fore makes it compelling.

An aspect of Roth’s first person is that the narrator isn’t solely focused on himself; the first person point of view manages to invoke the personalities of the other characters through dialogue, and their behaviors, their descriptions, as well as when he or she makes pithy observations about them. It’s as if the first person narrator is  putting himself in the background. The “I” never calls excessive attention to itself; in the dynamics of plot, the “I” never overshadows.

Joshua Cohen in The Book of Numbers, utilizes a similar theme of the double while using the first person point of view.  Cohen strains at this, at times. An extended reading is both necessary in order to get him--in essence, to learn how to read him--and to begin to get into the flow of the writing. His nerve, audacity, wordplay and storytelling is both exciting and infuriating, simultaneously. But then there is the question of length (the novel tops out at 580 pages); at some point, the reader has to come up for air. Cohen risks alienating a casual reader. There’s too many verbal tics, the use of onomatopoeia, the coinage of words and phrases. I might be an ideal reader for Cohen, but I’m in danger of feeling alienated. Nonetheless, Cohen is always an interesting writer, one of the most interesting young writers today.

Roth is working within an invented satire. Though he is often addressing serious matters, he’s also going for comedy. It doesn’t always work. There’s often a drawn out quality--which is part of the satire, an over the top quality--in some of the scenes. These are relieved often enough by a shift in the scene, or a jump to another scene. I found some of the conversations with Aharon Appelfeld to be seminars in that writer’s work, and far more verbiage is spent on these encomiums than seems necessary or useful to the novel.

In its exuberance, Roth’s novel is not exempt from criticism. It can be  wordy and somewhat excessive; it’s not perfect. First person always forces the author to speak, by design, almost constantly. I’m reminded of ways of evasion, such as DeLillo does in Great Jones Street--a not wholly successful first person narrative. This evasion is one way of escape that a first person narrator can use to avoid the “I”; essentially, this is to talk about everything but oneself. In some way, this is also a strategy Roth uses, though in DeLillo’s novel, the gesture is far more deliberate and part of that character’s enigma. Perhaps because the story in Great Jones Street is about the mysterious actions of the protagonist--with nothing more than his anti-heroic thoughts and curious acts to inform us. 

Though I find writing first person initially limiting, I’m not convinced that it has to be. Roth, bears this out, exploring so many high absurd scenarios--and Cohen, too--though Roth relies on more variety of voices, through dialogue. I think the example does not have to limit the writing of first person to absurdity and humor strictly speaking; there’s as much opportunity to use these techniques in a more nuanced work. Still, there is somewhat of a temptation to go for the humor jugular, in a sardonic way, but the writer should beware of overkill. Perhaps we have moved into a time when the limitations that seemed intrinsic to first person point of view are rife for overturning.

The Life of Reading

I recently finished volume four of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s beguiling and satisfying My Struggle. I was reluctant to get to the end, feeling the immense, possibly false affinity that I get as a reader, believing I’ve found a friend in the writer. (It didn’t help that I pitched him my novel when he was at City Arts and Lectures, and he graciously heard me out.) Eventually, I had to finish the book. But what I realized is that, while reading My Struggle, I had no desire to read anything else.

Now I’m in that strange predicament of looking for another book to whet my reading appetite, and am randomly reading five books at the same time because I cannot entirely give myself over to one as I sort of like them all a bit, and am still unsure where I stand with any one of them. I find myself in that space a lot, probably because there isn’t one book I am wrapped up in. In fact, I’d say I usually read several books at one time, as if a model of my mind and thought process. If a book is good enough, I’ll make the time to read.

I find it hard to just read any book--the time and usefulness trade off is too considerable for me--though I know a lot of people on Goodreads and such that seem to read a lot and varied and widely. I guess I just trust that everyone reads all of the books they claim to read as they indicate on social media, but perhaps this is a facade. I have a hard time not being honest about what I have or have not read (Ulysses: read; Infinite Jest: 4/5ths read; Magic Mountain: One third read; Moby Dick: read; The Brothers Karamazov: half read) Did I read enough of these novels, or do I intend to finish them some day? There’s something of a moral complacency I feel, as a serious writer and reader, by copping out as I must have, and probably will, on so much of my serious literary fiction reading. And then there is the question of which unread masterworks I still, one day, intend to read.

I don’t usually give up. In the case of many of those aforementioned books, I began reading them years ago, and it was years ago when I stopped reading them. My tendency is to find a reason to finish a book: guilt, having to review it (or wanting to), or simply because I like it. Maybe I would be more equipped to see them through to the end, now--or maybe not.

Much of the time I’m doing wide reading hoping one of the books will catch on, though because I’m reading fiction and non-fiction simultaneously, much of what I choose to read then is based on my mood. If these five books I’m considering now had the Knausgaard magic, I’d love them, too. The odd thing is that My Struggle is comprised of 450 page volumes, of which I’ve read four. I can’t quite get through any of the other long works I have had on my night table for awhile (Murakami’s 1Q84 and Vollmann’s Imperial, though I dip into them occasionally.)

I’ve also made a habit of reading toward reviewing, and so I gravitate toward books under 150 pages since I can probably read them reasonably fast. Also, if I am to review it, I will read it right away, even if this means forcing myself to finish it, which might mean that the book is a slog, and thus I probably shouldn’t review it. I usually won’t review it then if I can help it, because somewhere along the line I decided if I can’t say anything nice about a book, I shouldn’t say anything at all. I’m actually wondering if I should reconsider this approach.

When I solicited a number of name authors who I’ve had glancing acquaintance with (which might be considered low level stalking) to read my novel ImpossibleLives of Basher Thomas, in the hopes of getting them to blurb it, they all said one of three things. Either a.) they didn’t read other writers’ work for the purpose of blurbing; b.) they only read their students’ work; c.) they were too busy, etcetera. I got the distinct sense that, having not heard of me, or not remembering me, rather, they were afraid of reading execrable work. So they nip it in the bud. As it is, I happened to have read much of these writers’ work, so in some way, you’d think they might have been willing to humor me, but alas, no.

I’m not one to be given recommendations to, and in this I take heed when I try to recommend a book to someone. I’ll only recommend a book if asked, usually, and then I tend to pile on caveats. I somehow don’t want to be responsible for someone’s bad reading experience--though if that reading experience is good, I’ll gladly take credit. There are some people I naturally can suggest books to, possibly because I’ve had success getting them to read a book I recommended (and they, either truthfully or just playing along, loved it too.) The last book I recommended to so many people was David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Even with that book, I came to feel I suggested it to a few too many people who were not prepared to read a 500 page novel, and couldn’t appreciate the language and story, among dozens of other possible reasons why I liked it so much. There are some friends who have read so much and in such synchronicity with me and my reading, that I might take their recommendations--or used to--without question. Now I’m so selective that I just rely on my gut and a strong sniff test. There are some people who recommend heartily to me a book, going so far as to give me a copy, and rare is the occasion when I will actually crack the thing open and read it. There’s some guilt in not reading it, but not too much. I’m usually already busy reading several other books.

Wide Ranging Interview with Robert Detman at Wisdom of the West

Many thanks to generous fellow blogger Jim at Wisdom of the West, who over the years has left insightful comments on items in this blog. Jim is publishing a serial interview with me about my novel, Impossible Lives of Basher Thomas. This complete interview is available here. The interview took place last month, and covers a variety of items, mainly concerned with character development, themes in the novel, politics in literary production, and the curious question of whether a reader should like or find a protagonist sympathetic.
Here's the introduction to "The Detman Files".
Here's part 1 of the interview.
Part 2.
Part 3 completes the interview.

Rave Review of IMPOSSIBLE LIVES OF BASHER THOMAS from Nomadic Press

Nomadic Press has provided a rave review for Impossible Lives of Basher Thomas:

“This is a novel that will stick with you because of its poetical means of exploring the human condition and Detman’s uncanny ability to weave beautiful, and haunting, imagery.”

Full review here: http://www.nomadicpress.org/reviews/impossiblelivesofbasherthomas

Publishers Weekly's glowing assessment of IMPOSSIBLE LIVES OF BASHER THOMAS a novel by Robert Detman

Here, in its entirety, is the review from PUBLISHERS WEEKLY on the novel:

"Detman pulls together various forms and styles in an ambitious novel composed of transcripts, letters, and footnotes, told in sharp prose. On August 17, 1982, renowned photojournalist Nathan “Basher” Thomas is fatally shot. Decades later, Harry Ogletree, one of Basher’s closest friends, decides to write a screenplay about the murder. Harry visits Basher’s mother to speak with her about the project and collect a box of Basher’s personal effects. The contents of the box spur recollections of a road trip across the Mexican Baja peninsula, arguments in Michigan, and drug abuse in Paris, and also provide insight into Basher’s death. Harry follows these clues to Rancho Nacon, a mysterious Guatemalan jungle villa with an enigmatic caretaker. On his pilgrimage, Harry hopes the people he questions and memories he uncovers will help to deconstruct the mystery of Basher Thomas. Because of the book’s unconventional structure, the narrative is fragmented. Although the disjointedness complements Harry’s fractured search for information and meaning, the story’s momentum is often slowed by passages that are needed to prevent confusion and explain earlier elements of the novel. The best scenes focus on the intimate details and relationships between the characters. Detman’s stylistic choices succeed in the moments when Harry’s memories and Basher’s documents blur into the present, layering various methods of storytelling to create a fresh and intriguing work." 

Link to this review: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-692-24349-7

Please help me out and go to the link, link back, tweet, and like. 

On having to explain one’s work (or that dumbing down logic)

There is the idea that, as an artist, you should not have to explain your work. If there’s any need to explain, it seems to highlight some idea of there being a flaw in the work. If I attempt to explain my work, which I often feel compelled to do, it is usually out of a sense that the work will be misunderstood. Or it is just as much to alert an unsuspecting reader that this may not be what you expect. And since I think I can assume a number of folks who will feel compelled or curious to read Impossible Lives of Basher Thomas don’t normally read novels to begin with, I feel as if I have to brace myself for the impact of their eventual failure to get it--if there’s anything to “get.”

Thus when I asked Ben Marcus that question (http://robertmdetman.blogspot.com/2014/10/ben-marcus-responds-to-my-question-on.html), it was because I wanted to know if he ever felt a need to explain his work. Do I note a bit of tetchy sarcasm in Mr. Marcus’s response, as if I’m acknowledging what he is all too aware of? A lot of casual readers will probably not understand his work. This will continue as he tries to become a more mainstream author. If you are notoriously difficult, you can get shuffled into that gray zone: the experimental folks don’t think you are that cutting edge, and the realist folks find you too abstruse. David Foster Wallace, who would seem to require a lot of explanation, often gets a pass, and gets picked up probably as fast as he’s eventually put down by those readers in search of something new to read. And I’m not sure his explanations were any easier to understand than the work itself.

Not to say my predicament is anywhere near what Beckett might have faced, but for him, the necessity to not have had to explain seems paramount. His writing is hardly accessible. Then there is the curiosity of those who hear you expound on this (favorite) difficult author. Inevitably they turn to you, seeking explanation; explication. And in such situations I feel the onus of literature’s great, myriad, plainly inexplicable project that, rather than having one easily consumed and digestible nugget, is rather a project for a lifetime’s study. But no one seems to know this, or thinks it, particularly when they find something not conforming to their preconceived, even received, notions of literature. I can’t help you, I often want to say, as if committing my approval of a difficult writer’s work then requires me to become the village explainer.

There have been moments of panic, while editing Impossible Lives, that I might need to dumb things down a bit, or at least go further to make explicit why I have written it the way I have. But this is not to say Impossible Lives is so difficult or esoteric that it won’t be understood. When I’ve accomplished anything worthwhile, it’s often because I realized I’ve not had to please anyone but myself. This seems to me the exact opposite of the impulse that the agents and editors of the mega-conglomorate publishing-opoly would require of me. I would never be happy with my work being turned into, essentially, the equivalent of a ken doll. 

This points to the wonderful freedom of writing short fiction, where that dumbing down by others doesn’t usually apply. I think that the nature of short work gives a creative writer wide latitude because, if any publisher wants to consider it, they can read it in a sitting and grasp the whole of it quite readily. Editors are rarely going to come back to you with a ridiculous list of what you could do to your 500 or 1000 or even 3000 word story so that they will consider it. Rather, they take it or they do not. And when it comes to submitting a story, no explanation is required. No synopsis. No handy comparisons to similar works. Try getting a novel read like that. After submitting a short story, you might get a few editing suggestions, but they’re never on the level of fundamentally rewriting what you’ve already written. You’d never bother, if you are wise, and neither would they. Whereas with a novel, in the dumbing down logic, and with considerations by the marketing machine of a large publishing house, where they are literally banking on you, you would have dozens of lame opinions geared toward marketing. I take this information from the piece in Poets & Writers, “A Day in the Life of a Publishing House” (Vol. 42, Issue 5). Who hasn’t read one of these novels that’s been generated from some humble author’s work and found it to be exactly what it reads like: a mess, a neutered hodgepodge?

In other words, the first thing that happens if your novel has been anointed for publishing by the biggies is a disrespect of your work, which, if you want it to be published, you will accept. I can’t think of anything I’m more fundamentally and violently opposed to.

I will continue to read books put out by the industry heavyweights, only too aware how often the quality is off base. Like many readers, I’m a sucker for the hype. I usually need to read the hyped novel for myself to find out what’s so great about the next big thing. I came to Knausgaard early, purely out of curiosity and before there was any hype; now of course, the speculation runs rampant about this work and its quality. I found it eminently compelling, while I cannot say the same of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. It was merely ok, even passable, but it’s hard not to feel like the hype is usually misplaced for so many name writers (add Murakami and Junot Diaz to the list). Much of what’s hyped in the mainstream feels steeped in a narrow mind-set and for me isn’t, in fact, strange enough.

As an avid reader, you know what you like and maybe even why, so invariably you take a chance on a hyped to death work, because you’ll never know unless you look into it. It’s easier to believe a lot of these established writers aren’t being guided by the editorial teams of their publishing houses, though the same probably can’t be said for the marketing department; you can be sure said author’s next work will be promoted as the “revolution of the novel” or whatever.

At least I can say, Impossible Lives is as pure a vision of its original intent as intended. I should not have to explain myself further.

A brief review of Racher Kushner's The Flamethrowers

Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers has restored my belief in first person narratives. She somehow seamlessly conveys this character in a way that is at once sympathetic, and very convincing. Particularly when it comes to the secondary characters, who come to life through dialogue. First person has always been problematic to me, maybe because of the insistence on the voice of one. Yet Kushner delivers on all of these characters (sure, some more than others) which requires the conviction of the narrator/protagonist to convey.

First of all, Kushner has a good premise, though it’s also just unbelievable enough to work. What I mean is that much of her plot seems to rely on highly unlikely confluence of events. But what remains behind is the story, and getting from A to B to C to Z. It’s as if she had these events, in most cases bigger than the usual personal narrative as a kind of stand in for plot, but the personal also intermixes with the larger events. (The motorcycle racing; the riots in Rome, etc.) So she establishes these premises, and brings the narrator to the fore. This structure of the political/historical frames the narrator’s life story in a way we can viscerally grasp. As if to say, “How would I react to this circumstance?” This novelistic approach seems obvious, yet as a writer, you have to look hard to establish what these events/frame could be. In retrospect, these are among my favorite novels, those that do not necessarily fictionalize history, but use an aspect of its drama to inform a novel “in situ,” shall we say.

This is why realism is so much more compelling than genre, which usually feels off to me. I need to believe the story’s fact base. The limitations, and possibilities, with what we have in this world, are enough. I’m more interested in psychology, in relationships. In genre, secondary characters are usually functionary to the main character. Now, it could be said of The Flamethrowers, that the secondary characters are functionary to the main character, but it doesn’t entirely feel this way. It’s more the difference between round and flat characters: you almost have to be willing to venture into those other characters’ lives, and tell their stories, for them to be believable. (This is, incidentally, the same problem that Downton Abbey is having, according to David Wiegand, and I don’t disagree. You cannot take characters that are round and proceed with “batting them about with amateur abandon” to provide entertainment). As soon as you are biased, or create a character merely to hold up some aspect of your main character—or plot line--I think the story goes dead on the page. It’s not necessarily the case with memoir or non-fiction because all you have is the event and the protagonist driving the narrative—there’s a clear line of plot that is to be arrived at. I’m thinking of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, which was an unrelenting page turning wonder. In these non-fiction/memoir accounts, the secondary characters are often composites, or established to best illustrate the narrow, yet highly specific terrain of the story’s premise.

Of this main character, Reno, I’m not entirely sympathetic. I don’t know if she needs the reader’s sympathy, because she is such a strong character herself. As for Sandro, her love interest, he seems to live down to his expectations, and they only thing you might hope for from this relationship, is that she gains some empowerment. I’d have rather not had her equivocation about Sandro at the end, and would have preferred his fall so to speak, to be more dramatic. But I’m sure novelistically, this would have been too easy, perhaps, or even too conventional. And above all I liked this novel it’s willingness to be both feminist and obliquely sexist, ie., true to the characters. (This is an entire other subject that The Flamethrowers complicatedly presents, perhaps to explore in a longer post.) So Sandro is not a total louse after all, just a victim of Italian patriarchy.

Maybe the novel is a bit too invested in imagery—as per Kushner’s closing note/essay—but I feel she pulled it off so compellingly that I accepted it. Pulled it off in smart, hyper-literate prose; not so ultra hip as you might think by the seventies gloss and Technicolor, but hip enough, and hipper than most. I never flagged in my interest in this book, mainly held by this sophisticated prose. And it fits right in there with the novels that I love enough to remind me why I love them (Norman Rush’s Mortals, Bolano’s 2666, Anna Karenina, Cortazar’s Hopscotch.)

Exploring Vollmann’s Labyrinth

There can be a mesmerizing appeal to novels in which something is slightly off. Frankly, this could be from the mind of the author, but it's never easy to pin down. This sounds like it could be a disastrous attraction, but the “off” sense seems to come out of the writing process more than from any plan the author might have had (although, who knows--it could as well be an affectation), and rather than detract from the art of it, this quality usually makes  the novel a more powerful and compelling read. So often, the best writing is rarely picked dry bones perfect; what is better, to my reading, is the bold idiosyncrasy of the writer’s mind revealed in the prose.

A cult-ish and high literary writer generally overlooked by the establishment, and an unclassifiable counterpoint to all of the squeaky clean novelists--whom usually fail to live up to their hype--is William T. Vollmann.

Vollmann is poly-literary: essays, manifestoes, calculi, and novels that he subtitles enigmatically “dreams” that wildly blur the line between fiction and reality. Vollmann riddles text with the footnotes and epigraphs of a lifetimes’ reading, which helps deny convenient demarcations. Notorious for his prodigality, and with a remarkable willingness for excess, I recall him in an interview talking about how he’s nearly destroyed his own hands with carpel tunel from his marathon writing labors.

In The Rifles, Vollmann imagines himself as a member of a failed expedition to find the Northwest Passage that met its tragic end over one hundred and fifty years ago. Vollmann writes as William the Blind, Captain Subzero, Wm. Franklin, et al. Vollmann portrays living a parallel existence in two time periods as he delivers history, critiques of the rampant blood thirsty hunting culture introduced by the repeating rifle, and personal asides, including an inadvisable affair with a partially deaf mute Inuit woman. 

In one of the gripping chapters of The Rifles is a perfunctory survival tale that shouldn’t be. This is when Vollmann went to the defunct weather station at Isachsen on Ellef Ringnes Island near the North Pole with plainly insufficient cold weather gear and tried to replicate the experience of those in that failed Northwest Passage expedition. Why Vollmann would have needlessly subjected himself to an almost suicidal series of decisions that delivers a kind of campfire tale with shaggy dog proportions seems like nothing less than the writer trying to prove himself to himself first, and the interested reader, second. It’s as if he wanted to experience his characters’ ill-fated turns. Vollmann strives, at all times, to make a virtue of fallibility, with a survivalist’s indomitable resourcefulness.

The narrative seems to grow organically and out of its own imperative, and doesn’t feel hemmed and hewed by needless story boarding or scene peddling. A Vollmann narrative can feel less like a development than a conflagration, an uncontrolled burn. In a less confident writer this can come off as stultifying and mannered, and at its worst, arbitrary. But Vollmann trusts his logorrhea, perhaps, an obsessive pursuit of specific, charged detail.

Often defying logic in terms of straight ahead narrative, his novels are mythmaking in their self-references and staggering in their encyclopedic breadth. Some of his thousand pages plus tomes with their dense pages often makes them prohibitive to casual reading, but for the welcome they offer once you are fully engaged with it.

Vollmann the artist illustrates his texts with distinctive pen and ink sketches that reveal a skilled and highly idiosyncratic translation of the world that map, diagram and render talismanic and symbolic self-portraits.

Vollmann’s crackling sentences are of an honest writer seemingly without peer, seeing a world he has as much chosen as made, through an idealistic lens he wishes to translate faithfully. Vollmann makes his poetry incidental, and he’s not self-conscious about it, as in this passage from The Rifles: “He had to wear his headlamp, and it gleamed cheerlessly ahead, reflecting his own black shape in the glass of dead exit signs so that some monster was always coming toward him.”

Once venturing into the Vollmann labyrinth, it is, to me, a very comforting place. He makes no apologies for his investigations and presents himself as the steadfast hero in his formidable travels. His approach is that the “world is my world (and you are welcome to come along)", with frequent ill-advised border crossings, side trips and harrowing misadventures.

The apparent faith Vollmann puts in his fellow beings reveals a rare and magnanimous character, burdened by avid appreciation for the underappreciated of humanity. Though he is presenting what at times seems to be a persona, as a writer he doesn’t seem any less reliable because of it. Vollmann makes no excuses for his predilections, and out-quirks his contemporaries who have got to be thinking: any self-respecting writer would avoid such a profile or risk being labeled a narcissist. To quote Vollmann in the collection of writings, Expelled from Eden: “It is not so hard to be honest, merely a little embarrassing.” Vollmann is often brave, foolish, bawdy and a touch unsettling, but I never question his sincerity. He’s a writer I am grateful to, and read with as much awe as deliberation. But his writing style, inspiring in its risks, often reminds me of the virtue in being passionate, and in particular, how as a writer of vital things one should grasp how big a waste of time it is to worry about what anyone thinks of you. How as a writer of vital things one should trust in their inspirations, however unusual. 

Doing The Numbers

It’s been years since I’ve submitted up to 200 pieces in a year, and from my stats I can see this is the number it takes a year to get published. Though in some cases, I actually had two pieces published from this quantity, so maybe the actual number is 100 pieces submitted for each publication (I have a post on this which talks about stats, and it’s a slightly different equation which I’m not going to bother explaining here). I am confident a story I’ve been sending out this year will soon find a home, and am beginning to think I should self-publish a short story collection, of which most of the stories have already been published in various quality lit mags. (Antioch, SMR, Evergreen)

The difficult reckoning is knowing one has a quality body of work that only a handful of people might have read. So why not just keep submitting? I am, but with much less quantity, though no less lacking in focus than before. I use most often the ready, fire, aim method. Yes, it’s as scattered as it sounds.

In any case, I think I’m mostly done with pursuing agents. I never thought I’d say this, but I have had far more interesting response from publishers for my novels than agents. I will pursue publishers until I’m sick of that and before I give up in total despair and go the self-publishing route.

Yet, I don’t know what publishers are looking for. If anything, I think the strengths of my work that get them interested on a sample, is consistently there through the entirety of the work. It’s not like I wrote a great novel up to page fifty and said fuck it. How did I get all of this other work published? Here’s my litmus test: if James Frey was sitting on one of my novels, you can believe his agent would be over the moon to publish it. Or Dave Eggers for that matter.

I’m as ever, perpetually baffled by the publishing industry. (And maybe that’s the key word to note, it’s an industry).

I’m not an active social media guy. I still feel like I’m going to keep writing and pursuing these specious interests until long after the world has moved on to more remunerative pursuits. A perspicacious admirer tells me that I need to do more social networking; let’s just say this little personal note is my calling card. And I am on Twitter when I can cough up 140 character witticisms. Other than that, it’s called love--of what I do. I vow to keep at it. One thing I can say--frustrations be damned--I am having fun with it.

Novel Postmortem Absurdum

Among the reading public, it’s become fashionable to say "I no longer read fiction," as none other than Philip Roth did last year in the Financial Times. Yet since when has this become a rallying cry of disgruntled writers? Writers, mind you, not readers. Suddenly, writers are saying, "I don't read fiction, either." And the fiction police are waiting in the stacks (of fiction) with their billy-clubs to knock the offenders--or should that be, the offended?--in the kneecaps.

You usually expect this complaint from writers of non-fiction.

This attitude might spring from the epiphenomenon of anonymous comment logs on every piece about so-called dwindling returns of fiction. Maybe the backlash comes from the offended being offended by all those who are writing novels, because it seems everyone is, these days; everyone is also writing a memoir about their salad--or fast food--days, writing it of course after they've learned so much in trying to write their novels after pursuing their MFAs. So, if everyone hates fiction so much, why are they all working on a novel?

With  another announcement of the death of the novel, the success of e-readers and the proliferation of self-publishing, comes, remarkably, more novels to consider, sure, sometimes possibly of lesser quality, and thus more to complain about. But to me, the death of the novel seems closer to the brink when everyone is reading--and praising--the latest Krispy Kreme writers without a dissenting word among them. (Sweden, are you reading? Stieg Larsson? Begs the question of how a member of a certain academy had the gall to call out America’s literary output). But is this any different than any other time? If all of the dozens of novels published in the last year sucked, there'd be no hope, sure. But no doubt more great novels await being written by un-tested novelists who also happen to have memoirs stashed away they are thinking about dusting off.

I too, regularly burn my candle at the altar for fiction, until I find a novel that blind-sides and alters my outlook forever after. Because isn’t that the beauty of a novel, how it can change your life? To me, the novel never ceased being the main game.

I find it hard to believe that Roth would get nothing from A Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Skippy Dies, or The Flame Alphabet. It seems that these days, readers of fiction are almost always just a step away from giving up on fiction. But for someone who writes it? To make a blanket pronouncement implying all fiction has become ceaselessly lame, has to make you wonder if such an attitude--from one who realizes he might have to relinquish his throne--might actually be indicative of a bounty.  

Editing's Not Torture

Sometimes in the heat of editing, I flash upon a feeling of utter despair and futility at the insurmountable task ahead of me. Maybe it’s the vestige of the memory of what I used to go through in the middle of two hundred plus pages of manuscript, long before I knew I would ever see a bit of my work (any work) in print. The feeling came out of wondering if I might be better off spending my time on something more useful and noble to the human cause than the current machinations of fictional characters who can’t possibly have that much impact (any impact) on what ails the world. Then I mentioned to a friend on the phone that I was editing, and I got a second whiff of my old feeling in his groan of sympathetic concern over the futility of my project. I almost wanted to say, don’t worry, it’s not that bad. . .but maybe his reaction came prior to mine and led to mine. Now I can’t remember. In any case, sometimes the intent is there, and the piece is not, and you have to make your peace with it, whether you are going to eventually try to flog it in one of the available marketplaces, or whether you are going to start over again. You are always starting over again, and it’s nice when you’ve worked the proper bit of alchemy and sent something over a transom, even if it means they want you to consider moving this bit here or there. In other words, don’t mess with it too much, but you have to mess with it enough so that someone will want to take it; you have to mess with it enough to allow them to want to mess with it just a bit.

So maybe I don’t really love editing, I just know it is a kind of tricky preparation for the real deal, getting published, that you can never be completely satisfied with.

I’ve never believed in writer’s block because there are so many parts of the writing process that one can be doing while not writing new material--such as editing--and if you don’t want to do them, a lot the time time, if you check yourself, you might just be being lazy. I’m often lazy, or resting on my laurels, but I know I can dig through a pile of papers and find something to edit. I usually carry drafts of pieces around in a one inch three ring binder and look at them fifteen percent of the time. You come to respect editing, I think, after you learn how to edit yourself, because editing is where you will make the piece come alive. Philip Roth said that here (interview on Daily Beast see at 1:14). Which is also why I’m wary and doubtful of writers who claim to not revise (There is a distinction between editing and revision, perhaps, but I’m not making a distinction; to revise is to edit).

In any case, some writers claim not to revise. Besides the fact that this sounds bogus, how can one write unless they revise and edit as if it were a religion? You edit to the point where you reveal the key (to yourself) of your piece, and then tighten it some more. Otherwise you are just proud of yourself for the ability to spew--but does anyone really want to read that?

Maybe they can get away with that, but it seems like if someone (publisher) is allowing that, they are not doing the reading world a favor--nor the writer--and I’d be surprised if any writer could sustain their work if they didn’t somehow have a rigorous self-editing process.

I used to think I could edit the life out of a story, but I’ve since learned that writing is like shaping with clay, or perhaps painting a canvas (and less so is is crafting a chair as I thought and said only a few years ago, unless you are carving the chair.) You take away, and add, and at some point, you might see it. You sort of know when you do.

But that is a lot of work, a lot or re-reading, and hearing it, not just looking at it on the page.

I find that at minimum, a piece needs to go through seven drafts before it’s gotten to the point where I’m not seriously worried about sending it out. As for seven drafts, I can go to more--I can even now, do less. In some situations, I’m onto draft 17 or 18 and I have lost most of what I set out to edit and/or revise in the first place. In which case, if you haven’t sussed out the ghost in the machinery of the piece by then, maybe it should be removed from life support.

One of my favorite quotes is from Marilynne Robinson on the editing and revision process sums up what I’m trying to get at:

“I try to make writers actually see what they have written, where the strength is. Usually in fiction there’s something that leaps out--an image or a moment that is strong enough to center the story. If they can see it, they can exploit it, enhance it, and build a fiction that is subtle and new.”

Robinson goes on further to say:

“What they have to do first is interact in a serious way with what they’re putting on a page. When people are fully engaged with what they’re writing, a striking change occurs, a discipline of language and imagination.”

(The Paris Review Interviews Vol. IV)

I feel like I’ve learned how to edit mostly from reading and taking work apart. It’s still a surprise to me when I can reasonably string words together compellingly. Maybe this is the thing I’m not supposed to admit, but I’m pleased with myself for a.) knowing what I’m doing after all and b.) not being called on too many glaring missteps from editors when they take stuff. It’s amusing to be edited by writer peers who have standards that no legitimate (i.e., titled) editor who has seen the same work feels the need to mess with so extensively. But maybe as a fiction writer you’re allowed--even recognized--to be doing it your own way. It reminds me of my first workshop experience in 1997 where I eagerly and naïvely submitted my first short story to a group and received, to my estimation, an incredulous raking through the coals for work that had more feeling than sense, but I sure learned from the experience. (This is where I thank those people for helping me to open my eyes.)

Cheese Pizza Effect

Nothing is more disheartening to a fiction writer than a rejection letter with a carefully worded reasoning that interprets the entirety of their three hundred and seventy-five page novel based on thirteen percent of it. And yet this is the norm in the industry.

There is often talk of how if As I Lay Dying were submitted to a publisher today, it would never be published. Of course the assumption is of this being a first novel by an unknown writer (it was in fact the sixth novel of the, in 1930, not yet well-known William Faulkner), and that the narrative is just too formula defying and experimental so that no publisher with a tenuous bottom line would touch it. This may be true, but would Faulkner have written As I Lay Dying today if he was also reading “How to Get Published” books?

A formulaic approach can ruin a narrative, yet so often we are told that the “partial” (usually the first 50 pages), unless it hits the benchmark items on an idealized fiction checklist, will fail to be picked up. See any “How to get published” or “How to land an agent” books out there, for example, and invariably these suggestions, as specious and broad as they may be, are touted as “keys” to a novel’s success. If you have a narrative that evades these rules, you may begin to doubt your inspiration--as non-formulaic and deeply satisfying as was the writing of your novel--and may try to second guess your first fifty pages, as that is likely the first and only impression most agents and editors will have of your work.

The problem with formulas is that, beyond an MFA or years of trial and error writing several novels, they don’t assume a writer can trust their own voice. One needs to learn their own rhythms and patterns, and what it is they like, or, more emphatically, what they love. Ideally, one is better off writing a lot so that they come to know their own predilections (know thyself) and discover their own formula--rather than ascribing to one from without. Practice, not formula.

Publishing may try to play it safe, but too many rules and guidelines ignore the subjectivity of the creative act. The inspiration. In design we called this phenomenon the cheese pizza effect: since there are too many options to satisfy everyone, play it safe and order only cheese. I could stretch the metaphor and say you’re either lucky, or maybe boring, if you actually prefer cheese pizza.

For short stories, I wrote about placing emphasis on the opening sentence so that an unwitting reader will want to read further. I think similar narrative strategies can apply to longer fiction, and some rationale is better than none, but re-thinking the first fifty pages of a narrative that works can feel like self-sabotage. Yet, after repeated rejection, how can you say what you have works? As Stephen Elliot in The Daily Rumpus (e-mail newsletter) says: “If you write every day for a long time you should get to the point where you know when your story is working and when it isn't. Not that something is perfect, or can't be improved upon, but certainly if it's good at not [. . .] Otherwise, what have you learned?”

There are plenty of novels out there that wouldn’t have been published but for the singular connection an editor or agent made to it, and few of these novels can be reduced to the items on a checklist. Drawing in a reader is not ultimately only about the success of the first fifty pages screaming out the triumphant success of the novel, though it’s hard not to think about the possibility in preparation for when someone finally does request the manuscript.

That powerful transaction of writer to reader, and reader to writer, is more important, and completely unquantifiable, and completely non-formulaic. There are no shortcuts. Write a good novel first, and you will have a better chance of getting the wheels rolling.

I think as writers we should assume that our ideal reader is out there, someone who is interested in the art that we create. A great percentage of what we do is to rake through hot coals to find a compelling idea because it inspires us; an idea does have to motivate one enough to invest the time. The practice of writing fiction can’t be about filling in a checklist. The pursuit of the craft is private and unique, one shouldn’t try to out-wit an industry. Just make art, not cheese pizza.