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Making Love to the Minor Poets of Chicago: A Novel
The Yucca Mountain Project deep in the Nevada desert is the first planned long-term nuclear storage facility. The project is designed to contain nuclear waste for ten-thousand years, the amount of time it will take for the waste to no longer be radioactive. It is an ambitious project, especially in light of the fact that in this century alone we lacked the foresight to anticipate Y2K. Given this daunting responsibility, the project employs an artist, a botanist and an architect to contribute visual warnings to the site, in a manner decipherable to future generations.
Conrad imagines an influential poetry professor who insists that the project also include a poem, a great poem, an epic poem. It is this poem that brings us to the center of an extended circle of minor poets who are continually upstaging, back-stabbing and falling in and out of love with one another. Set against the vibrant backdrop of Chicago, this is a story of science and poetry, manipulation and intrigue, and the lengths to which people will go for their passions.
Conrad imagines an influential poetry professor who insists that the project also include a poem, a great poem, an epic poem. It is this poem that brings us to the center of an extended circle of minor poets who are continually upstaging, back-stabbing and falling in and out of love with one another. Set against the vibrant backdrop of Chicago, this is a story of science and poetry, manipulation and intrigue, and the lengths to which people will go for their passions.
- GenresFiction
432 pages, Paperback
First published March 9, 2000
About the author
James Conrad
51 booksJames Conrad is originally from Minnesota and currently divides his time between Manhattan and Woodstock, New York. He received his B.A. from Northwestern University and his M.F.A. from the Columbia Writing Program. His poetry has appeared in such periodicals as The James White Review, Fruit, and Allegheny Review, and his fiction has appeared in Tin House.
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November 7, 2011Somehow, in the millennial summer's rush of academic novels by luminaries such as Saul Bellow, Francine Prose, and Phillip Roth, Conrad’s début became lost: most people I know have still, over a decade later, never heard of it. And yet Conrad’s novel is in many ways more incisive, more ambitious, and more informed—not to mention more amusing—than RAVELSTEIN, THE BLUE ANGEL, or THE HUMAN STAIN, the respective books of the troika named above. Here’s why: Political correctness may seem like the scariest bugaboo on today’s campus, especially to older generations of teacher-writers, but Conrad presents convincing evidence that PC’s ravages upon higher education are minor in comparison to the havoc being wreaked by corporate-think, market-speak, and consumerism. Furthermore, the twentysomething Conrad implies, these economic forces are already as entrenched in campus life as keg parties and condom giveaways.
Not that MAKING LOVE TO THE MINOR POETS OF CHICAGO is a grimly minatory screed disguised as fiction. In fact, Conrad’s novel recalls another comic first work: John Kennedy Toole’s A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, which was re-issued about the same time in a special 20th anniversary edition. Instead of the irascible, Jesuitical hot-dog salesman and his hilariously low-life friends culled from New Orleans streets, we have two teacher-poets, a highly influential king- and queen-maker for whose affection the poets compete, two miserable undergraduates enrolled in poetry workshops, and a charming blond bisexual sociopath who aspires to the condition of poetry. Instead of the French Quarter, we have settings provided by a small and semi-exclusive liberal arts college, the University of Chicago, the Windy City’s various residential neighborhoods, and a nuclear waste storage project.
But as with A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, the reader of MAKING LOVE TO THE MINOR POETS OF CHICAGO doesn’t suspect from the beginning that the author holds his all-too-human characters in contempt. On the contrary, Conrad makes even the sociopath sweetly wise: Attempting to seduce another workshop member with the promise of travel, he insinuates that the object of his lust might find a trip to Las Vegas enjoyable since “gamblers are a lot like writers. They study forms,” he says. They “spend hours alone trying to get one in a million.”
The monetary metaphor here isn’t accidental. Conrad has a particularly firm grasp on the cost-to-earnings ratios that have many university provosts hollering “bingo!” when they examine their institutions’ creative-writing programs. It’s a good bet that he chose to write about the poetry niches of these programs because poets—unlike novelists, who have at least a fighting chance of sustaining themselves by their writing alone—are these days likely to enter into lifelong bargains with English departments. The 40-hour work week having disappeared from the corporate world at some point during the 1980s, teaching is the only way that poets can earn something close to a living while managing even the scantest amount of writing time. But that writing time can easily disappear when poets gain enough recognition to make teaching at weekend or summer conferences, guest-editing journals, reviewing books, judging contests, and/or reading at festivals seem like good opportunities to pay off creditors and to break the unremitting solitude that is necessary for the work of writing itself. Such activities, of course, tend to broaden poets’ name recognition and thus result in even more invitations, which can mean they find themselves writing less and less—and yet finding more and more means of gaining public validation and even flattery.
In fact, the special genius of MAKING LOVE TO THE MINOR POETS OF CHICAGO springs less from its take on contemporary academia and the state of American poetry than from its macrocosmic, profoundly disturbing comprehension of late-stage capitalism. Conrad sees how corporate marketing strategies have permeated every level of public discourse, commodifying personalities even when those personalities’ creations have little or no commercial value in themselves.
But “value,” commercial or otherwise, isn’t always a synonym for usefulness—even if a poet (or any sort of worker bee) generates little of commercial value, she can still be exploited. Thus, Conrad suggests, minor poets proliferate in contemporary America because they serve certain utilitarian purposes for the universities that employ them. For example, every time poets-in-residence appear in little magazines, every time they’re introduced at public readings, and every time they publish new books, their academic employers’ names are linked with the poets’ own. In the process, the poets become recruiting tools; some high school writers may even set their hopes and sights on a particular school solely because they want to study with a particular poet. This continues at the graduate and postgrad levels until the younger poets have published their first books and procured teaching jobs—sometimes with the help of those earlier teachers—and therefore ensure that the cycle continues.
Yet MAKING LOVE TO THE MINOR POETS OF CHICAGO ends on a strangely, but not manipulatively, hopeful note: Perhaps more strongly than any other artists, poets ultimately serve what Conrad and his various characters call, without apparent irony, “love” and “truth.” What else but these Keatsian fundamentals has a good chance to thrive when nuclear waste—which, the book implies, has many legitimate, funny, yet ultimately tragic parallels with poetry—has long since decayed and evaporated into thin air? The love and truth from which inspiration springs, in other words, just might outlast even the most radioactive ions, which linger through half-lives but must finally succumb to expiration. Which the essence of this novel hasn't, eleven years later: http://www.pw.org/content/2012_mfa_ra... and ttp://coldfrontmag.com/features/letter-to-a..., for starters.
(originally published in the NASHVILLE SCENE / Village Voice Media Group on the date below and updated recently to include the information about MFA rankings--I particularly recommend Samuel Amadon's item on COLDFRONT)
Not that MAKING LOVE TO THE MINOR POETS OF CHICAGO is a grimly minatory screed disguised as fiction. In fact, Conrad’s novel recalls another comic first work: John Kennedy Toole’s A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, which was re-issued about the same time in a special 20th anniversary edition. Instead of the irascible, Jesuitical hot-dog salesman and his hilariously low-life friends culled from New Orleans streets, we have two teacher-poets, a highly influential king- and queen-maker for whose affection the poets compete, two miserable undergraduates enrolled in poetry workshops, and a charming blond bisexual sociopath who aspires to the condition of poetry. Instead of the French Quarter, we have settings provided by a small and semi-exclusive liberal arts college, the University of Chicago, the Windy City’s various residential neighborhoods, and a nuclear waste storage project.
But as with A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, the reader of MAKING LOVE TO THE MINOR POETS OF CHICAGO doesn’t suspect from the beginning that the author holds his all-too-human characters in contempt. On the contrary, Conrad makes even the sociopath sweetly wise: Attempting to seduce another workshop member with the promise of travel, he insinuates that the object of his lust might find a trip to Las Vegas enjoyable since “gamblers are a lot like writers. They study forms,” he says. They “spend hours alone trying to get one in a million.”
The monetary metaphor here isn’t accidental. Conrad has a particularly firm grasp on the cost-to-earnings ratios that have many university provosts hollering “bingo!” when they examine their institutions’ creative-writing programs. It’s a good bet that he chose to write about the poetry niches of these programs because poets—unlike novelists, who have at least a fighting chance of sustaining themselves by their writing alone—are these days likely to enter into lifelong bargains with English departments. The 40-hour work week having disappeared from the corporate world at some point during the 1980s, teaching is the only way that poets can earn something close to a living while managing even the scantest amount of writing time. But that writing time can easily disappear when poets gain enough recognition to make teaching at weekend or summer conferences, guest-editing journals, reviewing books, judging contests, and/or reading at festivals seem like good opportunities to pay off creditors and to break the unremitting solitude that is necessary for the work of writing itself. Such activities, of course, tend to broaden poets’ name recognition and thus result in even more invitations, which can mean they find themselves writing less and less—and yet finding more and more means of gaining public validation and even flattery.
In fact, the special genius of MAKING LOVE TO THE MINOR POETS OF CHICAGO springs less from its take on contemporary academia and the state of American poetry than from its macrocosmic, profoundly disturbing comprehension of late-stage capitalism. Conrad sees how corporate marketing strategies have permeated every level of public discourse, commodifying personalities even when those personalities’ creations have little or no commercial value in themselves.
But “value,” commercial or otherwise, isn’t always a synonym for usefulness—even if a poet (or any sort of worker bee) generates little of commercial value, she can still be exploited. Thus, Conrad suggests, minor poets proliferate in contemporary America because they serve certain utilitarian purposes for the universities that employ them. For example, every time poets-in-residence appear in little magazines, every time they’re introduced at public readings, and every time they publish new books, their academic employers’ names are linked with the poets’ own. In the process, the poets become recruiting tools; some high school writers may even set their hopes and sights on a particular school solely because they want to study with a particular poet. This continues at the graduate and postgrad levels until the younger poets have published their first books and procured teaching jobs—sometimes with the help of those earlier teachers—and therefore ensure that the cycle continues.
Yet MAKING LOVE TO THE MINOR POETS OF CHICAGO ends on a strangely, but not manipulatively, hopeful note: Perhaps more strongly than any other artists, poets ultimately serve what Conrad and his various characters call, without apparent irony, “love” and “truth.” What else but these Keatsian fundamentals has a good chance to thrive when nuclear waste—which, the book implies, has many legitimate, funny, yet ultimately tragic parallels with poetry—has long since decayed and evaporated into thin air? The love and truth from which inspiration springs, in other words, just might outlast even the most radioactive ions, which linger through half-lives but must finally succumb to expiration. Which the essence of this novel hasn't, eleven years later: http://www.pw.org/content/2012_mfa_ra... and ttp://coldfrontmag.com/features/letter-to-a..., for starters.
(originally published in the NASHVILLE SCENE / Village Voice Media Group on the date below and updated recently to include the information about MFA rankings--I particularly recommend Samuel Amadon's item on COLDFRONT)
February 3, 2011
When I first read the book description, I thought: "What the heck does poetry have anything to do with keeping people away from some nuclear storage facility?" After reading the book though, I finally understand. (You need to hear it yourself from the lips of the lovely Joanne Mueller and the tenacious Vivian Reape, as I can't do justice using my own words to illustrate it... So get a-readin'.)
This book, however, is not just about a poem. It's about poetry, and the people who try (in vain or without effort) to assemble meaning in words we all use everyday. The story will show you how difficult/easy it is to be a wordsmith, especially while the world continues to move on each and every second. It will also show you how close and interconnected everyone is to each other, and how relationships are formed and broken with just a single word or touch.
It's deep and thought-provoking (after all, nuclear waste is still an issue for most of us), and while its scenarios are many and its characters complex, the story will give a coherent ending that may (or may not) satisfy the reader.
So sit back, relax, and let the words flow past you.
This book, however, is not just about a poem. It's about poetry, and the people who try (in vain or without effort) to assemble meaning in words we all use everyday. The story will show you how difficult/easy it is to be a wordsmith, especially while the world continues to move on each and every second. It will also show you how close and interconnected everyone is to each other, and how relationships are formed and broken with just a single word or touch.
It's deep and thought-provoking (after all, nuclear waste is still an issue for most of us), and while its scenarios are many and its characters complex, the story will give a coherent ending that may (or may not) satisfy the reader.
So sit back, relax, and let the words flow past you.
December 28, 2013
I wanted to like this more than I did. I mean, gee-whiz, it's about poets, and how many novels are there about poets? Not many. So, I was predisposed to liking it just from that fact alone, and that, in the end, is what kept me reading. It's long, longer than it needed to be, I think, and would have benefited from some editing. There are times when I felt sure it must be a satire (Vivian anyone?)and other times when the sincerity seemed over the top, so what frustrated me more than anything was not being to get a handle on what I was supposed to take seriously and what was being made fun of. That's probably my bad...I'm not known for my sense of humor, though there is much to guffaw about in the world of po-biz, for sure. And I honestly don't know what I was supposed to get from the ending. I don't want to give it away, but though I have thought about it for a couple of months now, I don't understand why Joanne went were she went or what she's trying to accomplish there personally or professionally. I know people who really liked this book, and, if you're a poet, it has more than a few head-nodding and laugh-out-loud moments...so give it a whirl.
July 29, 2024
I loved the idea behind this novel, that a poem is needed to warn future generations that a place in the Nevada desert is the 10,000 year storage site for a huge amount of nuclear waste. Also needed is an artist, a botanist/landscape artist, and an architect, since the warning must be decipherable by our descendants 10,000 years from now. In the novel, when they are discussing this or that building or artwork or poem, it is fantastic. Otherwise it is good, the characters are just not that heroic or inspiring, in fact they are these little people who care for no one, maybe just ordinary poets, but sometimes in literature, you want to be lifted up, not dragged down...
June 14, 2012
Good, solid lit fic about poets in Chicago. I enjoyed the Chicago setting and the inner workings of poets and students in academia. It would have gotten more stars if it were a little shorter and more tightly written.
May 10, 2009
A long read; full of intertwining gay love stories intertwined with various plots. Weird read.
February 22, 2009
Beach read, but still ok.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews