Marcus Speh's Blog, page 12

Consulting Your Own Oracle

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Out in the open: bulletin board interview.

Being interviewed really means interviewing yourself. Interviewing yourself really means consulting yourself as if you were an oracle that doesn't speak with anyone else.

I've given interviews before, but when Open Salon member and poet Lucien Quincy Senna hung her questions for me up for public scrutiny at the Red Lemonade community site, I knew I was in for a special treat.

Over at Red Lemonade, the interview slowly unfolded interactively allowing for a public dialogue, which is so much more interesting for everybody than just publishing yet another writer's vanity record. As for the content: I don't think I've ever given myself so much time and space to answer—but I've also never quite had questions like these.

(Update: the finished interview now appeared at the very snazzy looking nth word in closed form, too, for those who still read linearly, you know, from first to last line etc. with a couple of extra questions by nth word editor Ryan O'Connor.)

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A Serious Chair

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When I saw it in the shop yesterday, this chair said: "My Name Is Marcus And I Am A Serious Chair."

They named a chair after me. I am psyched about this new recliner from the famous furniture store where everybody whom I know goes to get everything they need for their household. I almost built this chair myself (my wife actually did it, but I explained the instructions to her; though she claims I obstructed her, I remain convinced that my participation was essential). The chair is going to boost my creativity, I am sure. It even smells Swedish.

This month, the Interwebs, as some call this global network of callous creatives and suburban shopaholics, will publish a lot of Speh. The serious chair is an early, serious reward for all that and an investment in the future of my novel & my hopefully-to-be-published flash collection, bravely dubbed "the book" in the family & on this blog & now featured on Blue Print Review's book blog (more about that soon).

—Out now: the fall issue of Wilderness House Literary Review (ed. Susan Tepper) with a lot of prose and poetry to survive in the wild. On board of the vessel: my "Three Questions": Who, How and When.

But there's more: just as exciting for me is the (last) return of the Serious Writer (you remember: the guy with the penis) in a multi-part bill:

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The Serious Writer On His Wheel.

— In October, Pure Slush (ed. Matt Potter) will publish "The Serious Writer And His Mother" and "The Serious Writer and his iPad", both of which were written for the magazine, as well as "The Serious Writer And His Hamster", "The Social Life Of The Serious Writer" and "The Serious Writer Cuddles Up". Shot through with allusions and memory fragments from my own life, these five represent my last attempt to contribute to the "serious writer" phenomenon. (Potter says, I was the "featured author", but it actually looks as if "the serious writer", whoever he is, is the featured one. Some say he is the long lost Finnegan Flawnt, others maintain he is a figment of a feverish imagination concocted by throwing a bit of many writers into a literary cauldron…)

[image error]—Atticus Review (ed. Katrina Gray) has published "The Last Story", the last Serious Writer tale. It has always been one of my own favorite stories though not exactly the lightest. McSweeney's held on to it bravely for 475 days and never told me what they thought. I think they got scared. Existentialism isn't everybody's cup of hemlock.

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From: FiftyTwo Quarterly

—Remember 52/250, the fantastic collaborative flash project (ed. Elvy, Chapin, Bjorkman) that ran for one year? The editors have published the last "Best Of" selection from all stories of the project's last quarter, and my short "Message" is in it. The quarterly also contains a medley of the amazing art gathered in the course of this milestone online writing event.

But it's not all "serious writer" all the time: I have received two nominations for "Best Of The Net 2011″ (Sundress Publications) from Blue Fifth Review for "Cahiers du Cinéma" (poetry) and from Pure Slush for "In The Nude" (creative non-fiction). The irony being that I don't see myself as either a poet or a cnf writer, but what gives, I can't classify myself so I let experienced editors do it.

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"A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father …"

—What else? Ah, the Ann Quin issue no. 15 of > kill author includes "THREE BERG PASSAGES: A TRIPTYCH" of flashes. (Click on the picture on the left to find out "Who cares about Ann Quin…" & why you should.)

Recommended background reading for the Friends of Stream of Consciousness: "Reading Ann Quin's Berg" by Giles Gordon at Context No.8,  Dalkey Archives, Dublin.

…Otherwise this will be the last light headed post for a while since my teaching term is about to start…October lights indeed…time to crawl back on my new chair. Please check

the specifications

yourself & imagine me chasing the poetic wind on my curvy chair …

«There was little in this world that he considered worth buying.» (John Gardner, October Light)

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Thank You For Your Time

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Tragedy & Comedy from Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli, Italy.

I'm a little giddy just now, because I finished my very last short short story (aka flash). It feels just right to end my three-year run of writing microscopic fiction & move on to pastures not necessarily greener, but larger, where the wild things are, bursting with characters who long to be felt & written.

I wish you could see me now: I'm balancing a new iPad on my knees. I'm writing on glass. There's a wondrous clicking noise as my fingers hit the touch screen. I love turning pages and writing down the pane with my fingers. I love to be rid of the keyboard (sorry, Mr Mac) and the mouse or the trackpad or whatnot—I hate having stuff between me and my words, but before I found the iPad I didn't know it. I love the new writing app "Daedalus|Touch" from "the-soulmen", who're also the creators of the incomparable Ulysses writing sofware, and for no particular reason I'm proud that these high priests of the computer screen are German, hail from Berlin and that one of them is also called "Marcus". I know, silly me.

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Daedalus|Touch App for iPad2—built on an ingenious new paradigm. Click photo for short video. With waltz.

My very, truly last flash fiction story is called "Thank You For Your Sperm", by the way, will hopefully come out before the end of the year in a print anthology, and makes me think that I may finally have gotten better at finding titles for my own work. God bless.

[By the by: my collection of excerpts of the entire collection of all my flash fiction worth collecting & excerpting is now finished and readable at Red Lemonade. Go see it while it's out there.]

—Don't miss Atticus Review's All Flash Issue here, masterfully edited by Katrina Gray & read the last word on flash publication written by Dan Cafaro, man on a hill, sailor of the seven secret seas, on the lookout for what's next, new and naughty: Dan Cafaro, "Publisher Hooked On Experimental Drug". Simply splendid swordsmanship:

«Flash fiction is the epitome of immediate gratification. At no time does it allow the reader to zone out. At no time does it allow for a slow-paced, steady bout of rope-a-dope while painting the reader into a corner and having him hold on for dear, desperate life. Instead, flash stands toe-to-toe with the reader and demands surefire readiness and mental acuity as it unleashes a fast and furious staccato delivery of rhythms and images. Instead of a deliberate series of verbal jabs, feints, and left hooks, flash fiction abridges the distance between writer and reader by delivering thundering punches, all registering in a swift, precise attack, a flurry of body blows crescendoing with one final death blow to the skull. Flash does not sneak up on us. It knocks us out. Unconscious. Without fanfare. In the first round. Before the ring card girl even gets to earn her keep.»

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I'm In Love And My Feet Are On Fire

[image error]How strange and wonderful to discover a new (yet old) author & love him so much. "First Women In Love" is the first book I ever read by Lawrence. I was reminded of him through Forster's "Aspects of the Novel" (EMF loves DHL), and found my copy (which actually is the first version of "Woman in Love") in a Berlin bookstore yesterday & couldn't stop reading it. Lawrence sets up an almost perfect continuous dream. The way he uses language to draw life, conflict and characters, is astonishing. The complexity of stylistic elements made me feel as if I was dancing on a high wire with my feet on fire. Listen to the first mention of Gerald Crich's mother:

«There came the mother, Mrs Crich, with her eldest song Gerald. She was a queer unkempt figure, in spite of the attempts that had obviously been made to bring her into line for the day. Her face was pale, yellowish, with a clear, transparent skin, she leaned forward rather, he features were strongly marked, handsome, with a tense, unseeing, predative look. Her colourless hair was untidy, wisps floating down on to her sac coat of dark blue silk, from under her blue silk hat. She looked like a woman with a monomania, furtive almost, but heavily proud.»

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Lone Wolf, Kiowa Chief.

"a woman with a monomania, furtive almost, but heavily proud"—what a threesome! Compare the telling of the simpler "furtive" and "proud" with the showing of "furtive almost" and "heavily proud"—Yes, it flows, it flows. The next scene explodes in the reader's face after a most careful setup—re-read the description of the mother above to see how expertly the summative characterization of her as an "old, unbroken wolf" is foreshadowed:

«Her son was of a fair, sun-tanned type, rather above middle-height, well-made, and noticeably well-dressed. But about him also was the strange, guarded look, the unconscious reserve, as if he did not belong to the same life as the people about him. "His totem is the wolf," said Gudrun to herself, "a young, innocent, unconscious wolf." She wondered how innocent, and how far untameable. She would like to know. He looked a man of twenty eight or thirty, but young, unbroached. His gleaming, unconscious candour, his curious look of good-humour, a certain attractive handsomeness, maleness, like a young, good-humoured wolf, did not blind her to the significant stillness in his bearing, the lurking danger of his cunning, indomitable temper. "His totem is the wolf," she repeated to herself. "His mother is an old, unbroken wolf."»

So well done: "young, unbroached … old, unbroken"—and the way he repeats expressions thereby re-tinting the picture…I swoon. This paragraph is remarkable also because it marks the entry of a fantastical element. It shows how, if you use it as delicately as Lawrence, fantasy can turn into a fine dagger. Notice also the effect of juxtaposing the rather simple, fashion-conscious description of Gerald's appearance with the overall description of his inner life (which corresponds to the exact feelings of Gudrun, who is observing here).

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Okay, the heat's on and there's trangression in the air…

The only weakness, for me, apart from a certain overheatedness (owed in part to the times & the subject in those times—women scandalously in love in 1917), is her wondering if Gerald is "untameable". An important motif that, for me, does not fit in the character of Gudrun, who's been described as standoffish, repulsed even. Of course, she is, in this moment, falling in love, that's the whole point, but…to wonder how tameable the fresh object of love is neither fits the previous expose of her character nor the onrush of love. Love!

There is so much more I'd like to tell you—this author, and this book especially, is a diamond mine for the discerning writer, who reads not merely for pleasure but to observe a master at work. Things I learn from only the smallest bit of DHL include: best use of adjectives, letting characters speak for themselves (in this respect he's similar to Forster and Austen [?], though distinctly more modern), scene build-up and foreshadowing, and the mundane placement of commas (always a challenge for the native German).

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D.H. and Frieda Lawrence

DHL really is a novelist who has a "Prophecy" (I wrote about this elsewhere), as E. M. Forster calls those writers with "an accent in the novelist's voice. His theme is the universe, or something universal. The characters and events still have a specific meaning within the story, but they also have greater resonances."

Grand writing that keeps me breathless whenever I open the book — I want it to go on…but of course, I must get back to my own writing, too. Cheerio then.

Oh no, wait—since you're here anway: check out what I have to say about love, far less sophisticated, employing only a fraction of adjectives— "Swingers" today at metazen.

Notes: An earlier, shorter, flimsier version of this review resides at goodreads. "Adjective & Adverb" is the topic that my Berlin writing group is currently dealing with. We've tied our boat to Ursula Le Guin's excellent writing workshop book "Steering The Craft".

 

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"What Is The Best Writing Advice You Actually Follow"

I keep picking the juiciest berries from online conversations elsewhere and lug them here. This stimulating question was asked by Kathryn Mockler on the publishing cum community site Red Lemonade (where I've been busy lately): "What is the best piece of writing advice you've been given or heard that you actually follow?" — What a great forward pass to quote Gardner, whose "Becoming A Novelist" (1983) I'm re-reading — his advice (he's full of it) refers to the novelist's need for "daemonic compulsiveness":

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John Gardner (1933–1982)

«Nothing is harder than being a true novelist, unless that is all one wants to be, in which case, though becoming a true novelist is hard, everything else is harder.»

Here's the context, a somewhat complex passage, which is made more digestible in the book by quotations from books by Herman Melville (comparing the rhythm of his writing as a beginner with the mature master):

«…By the nature of the novelist's artistic process, success comes rarely.The worst result of this is that the novelist has a hard time achieving what I've called "authority," by which I do not mean confidence—the habit of believing one can do whatever one's art requires—but, rather, something visible on the page, or audible in the author's voice, an impression we get, and immediately trust, that this is a man who knows what he's doing—the same impression we get from great paintings or musical compositions. Nothing seems wasted, or labored, or tentative. We do not get the slightest sense that the writer is struggling to hear in his mind what he's saying, the rhythm with which he's saying it, and how it relates to something later in the book. As if without effort, he does it all at once. He snaps into the trance state as if nothing were easier. […]

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Close-up of your and my daemon dressed as a gargoyle.

So—[unlike a short story writer or poet,] a novelist is not likely to develop authority by success after success. In his apprenticeship years he succeeds, like Jack o' the Green, by eating his own white guts. He cannot help being a little irascible: some of his school friends are now rich, perhaps bemused by the fact that one of their smartest classmates is still struggling, getting nowhere, so far as anyone can see. […]

Nothing is harder than being a true novelist, unless that is all one wants to be, in which case, though becoming a true novelist is hard, everything else is harder. […]

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Vincent van Gogh knew all about the blues: not so hot when he was alive, but sizzling when he was cold.

Daemonic compulsiveness can kill as easily as it can save. The true novelist must be at once driven and indifferent. Van Gogh never sold a painting in his life. Poe came close with poetry and fiction, selling very little. Drivenness only helps if it forces the writer not to suicide but to the making of splendid works of art, allowing him indifference to whether or not the novel sells, whether or not it's appreciated. Drivenness is trouble for both the novelist and his friends; but no novelist, I think, can succeed without it. Along with the peasant in the novelist, there must be a man with a whip.»

This…most of it… is advice I try to follow, though the drivenness described by Gardner has strong internal enemies, daemonic forces begging for short term gratification, validation and all those other time-bound things that, according to Gardner (and I believe him), will, at least for the maker of novels, not do to mature into the writer he or she could be.

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The future of publishing?

On a related note: to get my feet wet on Red Lemonade, I have now posted excerpts from my planned collection of flash fictions (2009–2011) on the platform. It was easier than I thought it'd be and I'm pleased with the result — check it out and let me know what you think. This collection, which I'm putting together now, will consist of my 100 or so best (in my view) stories, including several unpublished ones.

Oh yes—call to arms—I'm still looking for a publisher, so if you can spare one, or if you've recently encountered a desperate publisher on a bridge (ready to throw himself down for lack of new talent, crying into your coat because he needs a flash fiction author), do let me know…

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