Essay Prize

Are you familiar with the Essay Prize, a yearly prize for "the work that best exemplifies the art of essaying—inquiry, experimentation, discovery, and change...the activity of a text, rather than its status as a dispensary of information"? The current nominees are up if you're interested, and you should probably expect a flurry of blogging about these texts over the next few months here on Essay Daily.

Alain de Botton's "A Week at the Airport"

I picked this book up a few weeks ago since the project seemed to parallel certain aspects of a book I'm working on: de Botton is paid to spend a week in the London airport as a writer-in-residence with full access to the facilities (he goes into secured areas, sees how luggage is moved/organized by a system of conveyors, witnesses 80,000 meals being prepared in a day, etc) and a writing desk in the middle of the main terminal. Through his explorations --broken into approaches, departures, airside, and arrivals--de Botton makes a strong case for considering the unconsidered, looking for art and beauty in a place where most of us want to spend as little time as possible. He argues that the airport is just as much of a destination as, well, our actual destinations.

Although the book, in many ways, accomplishes everything I like to see happen in writing about place, A Week at the Airport didn't go nearly deep enough into its subject matter. The book is a slim 107 pages, and there are A LOT of pictures, putting it closer to a long essay than anything. This is fine (I'm not trying to advocate for books being longer for the sake of feeling more like a book, or for getting my money's worth or anything along those lines), but it seems that a lot of the writing here comes up just short of what would really make it interesting. For example, there's a reference to the ways faith and God are necessary to the act of flight that is explained in about half a page and should have gone on for far longer, and could have easily been the heart of the book if de Botton had wanted to go there. It's like if Let us Now Praise Famous Men was a fifty-page essay (including Evans' photos) describing the farmer's field and house. There would be value in Agee's description and characterization of place, but we would miss out on the moments where the writer's voice overwhelms any actual "plot" and goes into the obsessive/frustrated/manic territory that keeps me returning to the book.

A Week at the Airport is a good model of structure for the place essay (he does do a good job of making the book move forward even when 80% of it is physical description), but it's also a cautionary tale for what happens when we stay too close to the surface.

The "Writing" Essay

I just finished reading the Spring 2011 issue of Gulf Coast (I'll probably put up a review a little bit later on) and there was one specific essay that has been bothering me: "Nobody's Friend" by Molly Giles. The essay is about how Molly wrote an essay where her daughter and granddaughter show up as characters, and how her daughter--even though she was presented positively in the story--swears she will never forgive her mother for it. The essay explores typical memoir territory (do we have a right to tell other people's stories? Do we ask permission to write on certain subjects? James Frey, libel, etc) and how it applies to Molly's particular experience as well as writers everywhere.

There was nothing particularly wrong with the essay, and maybe this is my editorial impulses talking, but it didn't feel right appearing in Gulf Coast. I wouldn't mind if this article had showed up in Poets & Writers or some similar venue, but showing up in a literary journal felt somehow inappropriate.

Here, I should admit my bias: it's not that I dislike writing "on writing," but I hate when it appears in literary journals/creative venues. Admittedly, it is mostly (if not entirely) writers who are reading literary journals, but that doesn't mean we should be publishing work that would be of little to no interest for a casual reader. I think literary journals should be pushing in the opposite direction--looking for ways to bring in readers from outside of academia--and the inclusion of writers writing about writerly subjects feels incredibly insular.

Writing this, I feel like I'm being a bit harsh on Molly, and I don't mean to be, but I am wondering what y'all think about the "on writing" essay: does it belong in literary journals? If not, where is the appropriate venue? Does publishing this type of nonfiction close off the genre from the mainstream?

The Nonfiction Reading List

I was just reading this post over at HTMLGIANT and it occurred to me that I've seen a lot of these lists for fiction, but I've seen very few nonfiction equivalents (and, to be honest, those lists all seemed fairly inadequate in terms of variety of styles/gender/ethinicity/nationality/etc).

Anyway, the last week of my nonfiction workshop is next week and I'm going to try and compile some type of master reading list over the next few days to give them all as a going away present. With that said, I'm not nearly as well read as some of y'all here and I'm wondering: what books you would include if you were making a list that adequately covers the entire spectrum of creative nonfiction?

Post your lists/ideas in the comments section or email me and I'll make a master list that I can share with anyone who's interested.

The Georgia Review – Bringing the Finest Writers to the Best Readers

At first glance The Georgia Review looks like the type of journal you'd want to spread across your living room coffee table: glossy, showy, and professionally constructed with attention to the finest details, a journal almost worthy of holographic Christmas giftwrap. The cover of every issue is artfully decorated with paintings, sketches or photographs that beg passersby to pick them up. Inside, the magazine only gets better, as one would hope. Each issue—approximately 175 pages in length—contains essays, fiction, poetry, book reviews and, of course, more eye-catching art (the Spring 2009 issue, for example, subtitled Culture and the Environment—A Conversation in Five Essays, contains a painting of bikini-clad woman cowgirl-straddling her hunky boyfriend on top of a motorcycle while wearing an American flag helmet—need I say more?). Not only does each section contain several submissions—except art, which only displays one artist per issue—varying from one to forty-something pages, but they reap with quality: recent issues contain essays by Albert Goldbarth, Lia Purpura, Scott Russell Sanders, and Barry Lopez; silhouette art by Kara Walker and poems by Stephen Dunn and Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, just to name a few. Don't be discouraged to submit your work, though, as the journal claims to debut between one and five new authors every issue.

As nonfiction goes, the essays range from the academic, literary-types—Anne Goldman's “Questions of Transport: Reading Primo Levi Reading Dante,” Spring 2010—to straight forward memoir, as in Reg Saner's “Back Where the Past is Mined,” Spring 2008. At 35 pages, Saner's essay recounts his Korean War tour as an army soldier, focusing heavily on his self-diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and often drawing comparisons to returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. But his essay is not just a psychiatric analysis of war but a funny, insightful case study on what it means to wear a soldier's boots during a “Forgotten War.” He writes about all the expected war-related themes—machine guns, booby traps, blood and death—but he also provides stories that will make most readers laugh, cringe and turn away simultaneously, leaving the essay with a nauseating smile and puckered asshole. In one anecdote, Saner tells of how he always carried the most recent letter from his stateside girlfriend in his helmet, an ubiquitous habit in all combat zones. During a nasty drought when his soldiers drank oily water used to cool machine gun barrels and toilet paper supplies ran low, and with what he now thinks was a serious case of hemorrhoids, Saner resorted to using his girlfriend's love letters to wipe his behind because the feathery paper she used comforted his bleeding asshole. Thankfully, warfare technology has improved in the past fifty years, so now soldiers fighting the war on terror feel the cool caress of moistened baby wipes and not college-ruled paper.

In another issue (Summer 2009), Judith Kitchen uses her mother's 1930s European travel journal as the basis for a researched essay. Although the essay is eerily reminiscent of Louise Steinman's wonderful book The Souvenir, Kitchen's essay, titled “True Heart”, reconstructs her mother's post-adolescent European travels from her mother's diary entries, sometimes guessing wildly to decipher the meaning of what seems more like coded hieroglyphics than prudent record keeping. The essay, which contains photographs of her mother and actual scans from the pages of the diary—both of which provide a nice visual supplement, focuses on her mother's possible love encounter with a man known for most of the essay only as “True Heart.” Throughout the essay, Kitchen presents herself as her mother's cheerleader, rooting her along as she meets True Heart—a polite, Yale educated Southern gentleman—and engages in a sexy relationship after only a few days. One aspect of the essay that I found especially interesting, beside her mother's inscription “2 Ys U R, 2 Ys U B, I C U R, 2 Ys 4 Me,” was a scan from a boarding ticket given to Kitchen's mother after boarding a United States-bound ship on her return home. The ticket, a warning against contraband possession, lumps tobacco and cigarettes with heroin and other chemicals that in today's America would secure you a prolonged stay in one of Arizona's grimiest jail cells. From what I can tell, passengers carrying heroin, tobacco, or firearms only needed to report their contraband to ship officials; contraband confiscation is not mentioned on the warning flier. Rounding off at 28 pages (including pictures and scans), Kitchen presents the reader with an insightful, passionate essay about a daughter trying to understand her mother's early life—a read worthy of every page.

Although it's tough to judge the quality and scope of a journal from a handful of essays, The Georgia Review appears to be a top echelon publication, the type serious writers should gravitate towards. Perhaps the journal's only vice is that they do not accept unsolicited manuscripts between May 15^th and August 15^th, but I imagine this is typical of most literary journals. And at $8.25 per issue (with subscription), The Georgia Review really delivers “the finest writers to the best readers.”

501 Minutes to Christ--Poe Ballantine

A while ago--AWP 2009--A and I talked about this author, Poe Ballantine. I'd read him once (Best American Essays 2006) and that essay, the title essay of the collection 501 Minute to Christ, really entertained and inspired. I finally found his book at the book conference and asked A if he'd ever read him, he hadn't, and so he told me to "essaydaily" him. Verb form. So here I am, months later, doing that.

The collection was published by Hawthorne Books of Portland (isbn 9780976631194), is Ballantine's 4th book (2 novels, 2 essay collections), and the 11 essays read quickly. Ballantine is a quirky, non-writing program (college dropout, no less) writer in the vain of Kerouac (kerou-wacky) in that much of the material comes from his wanderings across America (there are some Greyhound essays, certainly) and Bukowski in that a lot the rest of his writing comes from real work experience in labor jobs (cooking, boat refurbishing, etc). Often the secondary characters are very animated and strange, as one could imagine on the Greyhound circuit.

Perhaps what I liked most about these essays was the fact that Ballantine is always at the center of the essay, but sort of in this slanted, off-handed perspective. His essays go places, a lot of forward movement. Which I appreciate. He doesn't take too much time interrogating the interior. He sets off on adventures and then figures it out as he goes.

I could see these essays being useful to writers (and students of writing) in that the prose is straightforward yet skilled and the content is a dirty romanticism. They seem to answer that often-tossed-about question, "What's better for my writing: The MFA or Vagabonding?" (Answer: either/or/neither; it depends.)

They fit best in the "Personal Essay" niche of nonfiction writing--I don't find them lyrical or form-driven or natural world bent. Most of these essays were published in The Sun in Ballantine's mid-40s even though he'd been writing for years and years before. I could see The Sun advocating a spiritual or humane worldview from these pieces.

I think my favorites were "World of Trouble" (perhaps my favorite writing on Katrina I've read so far), "My Pink Tombstone" (golden retriever as McGuffin), "Methamphetimine for Dummies" (best Meth writing yet?), title essay, and "Blessed Meadows for Minor Poets" (Ballantine's account of a disastrous relationship with his first major editor/agent after being published in Best American Short Stories 1998 and failing to finish his sold story collection). I skimmed only two (the essay on meeting his wife, the one on plotting to punch John Irving/Norman Mailer in the face). It's a solid collection.

Things I'm fond of that can be found in a review of the South Loop: the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, Russian Tea Time, Soldier Field, ColumbiaCollege

The cover of the latest South Loop Review: Creative Nonfiction + Art is kind of sexy. I feel a slight twinge of I don’t know what (guilt, self-loathing, anticipation of reprisals) saying this—seeing as how the cover art is a drawing of a stripteuse in a very burlesque cat woman outfit, pulled from a graphic essay which I’m pretty sure is a condemnation (or at least a critique) of strip culture, the (wo)men who perpetuate it, and the ensuing degradation of the women being objectified—but I’m going to say it anyway. It is sexy. Sexy and provocative (as in thought-provoking): not only do I immediately want to pick the journal up and look through it, but after that first flip through the corresponding graphic essay, seeing it in its entirety, as I turn back to the cover once more for one more look, I also cannot help but question (and feel slightly uncomfortable by) my initial attraction to the artwork. A successful essay, maybe. A successful cover definitely.

Of course the cover’s allure also comes from the fact that the background is a cool blue the exact tone of a dusky November sky, much of the lettering is the pastel yellow of happy spring flowers, and the smooth mat finish feels so good to my fingers.

That said, I am now going to take a measured step back from the actual journal—volume 12—that I’ve been looking at.

SLR: Creative Nonfiction + Art is relatively young. The journal was born in 1987, but prior to 2003 it featured only the work of students in the nonfiction and literature programs at Columbia College. Today, each SLR volume includes work from established and emerging authors, from folks who have MFAs, who teach in MFA programs, who have published books and won awards, but also from a number of people who appear mysteriously disconnected from the MFA world, and also, interestingly, each volume continues to include work from a handful of Columbia College undergraduates. And the undergraduate work is actually pretty good.

(Yes, I do feel a bit catty saying that, but surely I can’t be the only one preyed by the notion that undergrad work inherently equals less than stellar, and so here, where the work is fairly stellar, I feel the need to say so, though that is not to say the doubt never resurfaces. At one point while reading Volume 12 I may have cried out "What kind of writer quotes Sartre in an essay about despair!?—how jejeune!” But then of course, at the end of the day, when I take off my beret and have a beer and stop being such a pugnacious ninny, I actually really enjoy the essay in question—its calm, and how altogether together it feels. Yes, the references might give the impression that the writer just crammed for the final in a survey course on existentialism, but who really cares?—Sententious references aside, the poise displayed throughout speaks to a greater maturity than maybe I myself can claim.)

Actually, generally speaking, everything I’ve read in the last three volumes of SLR has been pretty good. Goodness seems to be the central (though by no means the only) criterion for inclusion; SLR also wants the work it publishes to hit hard, and to support their mission of giving us “strong, compelling, resonant voices that give insight into contemporary experience, and cultural phenomenon…to present artists and writers who…engage audiences and motivate thought,” and who actively “investigate ways of being in the world.” (This last line is actually ripped from a really fine essay in Volume 12, Deer Come to the City, by Stephanie Dickinson.)

I like words like engage and motivate and being and world, and I like writing that digs deep for some resonant sense of significance, and for the most part SLR seems adept at meeting its mission and giving us just that, which is commendable, very commendable.

Of course goodness and digging deep for significance are only 2/3 of the SLR recipe. The final, important ingredient (imagine a dirty martini without the dirty) is some kind of inspired genre-blending, supra-artistic style. (Or at least some good non-linear narrative denoted by a lot of section breaks.) Anything of that sort, really, seems to be fair game.

SLR features nonfiction (+ art) presented as memoir, poem, as montage, prints of paintings, narrative photos, photos with internal captions, graphic essay, mixed media, as a craft-art project, and of course as the more traditional (blended-genre, non-linear, funktified-in-some-crafty-way) narrative/lyrical essay.

Truth be told, I am totally enamored by the craft-art-project-as-essay thing (Volume 12, page 91), or at least with the idea of it.

The piece bears a title, Untitled, comes with an explanatory epigraph, and “directions for younger readers,” followed by a list of needed materials, said instructions, and an illustration of the final product should one undertake this endeavor. It’s great. What’s not to love? Actually, of course, there is something not to love, and I’ll tell you what it is. Yes, this page-long piece is quirky, and entertaining, and is kind of enjoyably profound in a one-page kind of way, but overall, I wish it did more. I want it to do more. For starters I want all readers (not just the younger ones) to be encouraged to participate. And I want it to instruct me to use my favorite Crayola-color markers, and my favorite color of construction paper—or at least I want the page it’s printed on to be made in such a way that I can use its space for this project. I want the page designed in a way that begs me to actually follow these instructions, to involve myself in the piece. I want the piece to expect me to take part in it.

The piece—as it is presented—doesn’t seem to take itself seriously as the art project it claims to be, and seriously, I love the idea of essay-as-art project enough that I wish it did. I wish it didn’t just help me “investigate ways of being in the world,” but could actually become part of my world. I wish it were made in such a way that I could cut it out and magnet it to my fridge. I wish I were expected to do so.

So enamored by this thing was I, that I contacted its creator, Priscilla Kinter, to see if I could get some insight into the idea behind it, and to ask about the mysterious editorial choices that leave me wanting more from it. She was kind enough to respond, and it seems SLR only published the first of two parts of the piece, and yes, Ms. Kinter does “see the complete piece as an actual construction project…The second part of the essay builds a man, from brown wrapping paper and hide glue, in steps that are meant to reveal the man, but even more so the narrator (which would be me), and/or things about the relationship. Because I made the essay, I have a hard time seeing how either half can stand alone without the other in that each half works to explain, in some way, the remainder.”—and thus I now feel warranted in my reaction to the piece as presented here: Pleasantly enamored, but wanting more, wanting more because apparently there is more to be had.

And thus we begin the inevitable critique of this journal (which I do—keep in mind—really, really like). Here it is: at times, SLR seems more interested in sustaining its eclecticism than with its actual content; they seem to emphasize the variety of its content (at times) at the expense of its content’s artistic concepts (most notably when it comes to truncating longer graphic works).

Yes, there is a super-cool art-project-essay-thing, but no, as it is presented here, it does not actually function as an art project. Yes, there are several wonderful graphic essays (including a spectacular visual rendering of an Argentinean poem in translation), but there are also several presented as excerpts with little or no context, and which end abruptly just when the narrative seems to be really taking off. Yes, there is some stunning photography, but it is only shown in (oh God no!) black and white. I don’t know. This might just be what happens when you only publish once a year, when you cram 32 pieces into 116 pages. Try to fit too much in, in too short a space, and something is lost in the process.

Of course, I understand that every journal operates with certain goals, and within certain limitations. And I appreciate that SLR isn’t boring, not at all. I like that they focus on nonfiction (+ art). I like that they want to publish alternative forms of the essay, and I like the breadth and quality of work they present to us, I do. But still, I hanker—I want the journal to be my idea of perfect. I want it to be A+, and instead, as it is, I think it might be an A-.

Take note, SLR: In the future, I would like to be given art projects I can cutout and tout; I want all graphic essays to be packaged with context, and a beginning, middle, and end; I want color for all photos, and all photos should be printed on glossified paper; I want twelve issues a year instead of one, with dollar bills stapled into the binding throughout; I want pheasant-flavored treats for my dog; I want a free grande latte every Friday; And I could use a shoulder rub.

SLR, I’m not asking for much, just more of the best of what you already give us.