The Fix

A Cup of Sufi Wine

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:30:17 -0400

There is something about circles
The Beloved likes.

When Hafiz wrote these words during the composition of his poem “Circles” in the fourteenth century, he was probably not aware of the lasting power they possessed. Five centuries later, in the mid-1800s, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote his first collection of essays which included one of his most well-known works. This essay was titled “Circles.” And so began a spiritual and intellectual movement in the world.

Khawaja Shams ud-Din Mohammed Hafiz-e-Shirazi – also known as “Hafiz of Shiraz” – was widely acknowledged as one of the greatest medieval poets of Persia (now Iran). At an early age, he learned the Koran by heart, and from the little that is known about him, he was a devout admirer of the Sufi mystics Rumi and Saadi. It is said that Hafiz knew all the works of these Sufi poets by heart. His poems are filled with Sufi ideas of divine union with the Beloved, and Emerson found his God – the oversoul – in the poetry of Hafiz.

A passionate disciple of the Sufi mystics, I began reading Saadi, Rumi, Omar Khayyam and Hafiz at an early age. Years later, while conducting research on Emerson for my Early American Literature class at the University of North Florida, I came across an essay that began like this:

The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end

Goose bumps exploded all over my skin. I reached into the depths of my memory and rummaged around until I pulled out a thin, weak strand of memory. It was a collection of broken but shockingly similar words by Hafiz I had read a long time ago:

…a pregnant belly…fruit…plump and round…something about circles…Beloved likes…

With feverish excitement I came home and pored over the yellowed pages of Daniel Ladinsky’s I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy, a translation of Hafiz. I reread the poem “Circles” and then returned to Emerson’s essay, also titled “Circles.” The resemblance was unmistakable. The only difference was this: for Hafiz, circles are God’s signature upon the world, while for Emerson circles are the very nature of God. Perhaps it was the love of Sufi poetry, or a frantic anxiety at the possibility of unearthing a possible relationship between Sufi thought and Western literature, that this otherwise unremarkable discovery sparked a personal interest in Emerson. I went through his early essays and poetry, and this led to the translations that Emerson had produced on the works of Hafiz.

The poem that has most drawn its influence from Hafiz is Emerson’s completed “Bacchus.” It is an imitation of one of Hafiz’s verses in the Saki Nama (transliterated as The Book of the Cupbearer by Joseph von Hammer). “Bacchus” is acknowledged as an imitation and not a translation of Hafiz, as Emerson himself wrote to Elizabeth Hoar in a letter. Of particular interest in the poem is the imagery of the wine. The meanings attributed to wine in Persian poetry can be traced to their connection with the Sufi mystics. In Sufi literature, wine symbolized a union with divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience with God. “Bacchus” celebrates the wine of Hafiz and regards it as more than the mere juice of the grape, seeing in it instead the power of union with the divine. For Emerson, the oversoul is “that Unity within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart.” And so, the wine of Hafiz becomes Emerson’s oversoul. In this context, the term oversoul is understood as the collective indivisible Soul, of which all individual souls or identities are included. Oversoul has more recently come to be used by Eastern philosophers as the closest English language equivalent of the Vedic concept of Paramatman. (In Sanskrit the word param means “supreme” and atman means “soul”; thus Paramatman literally means “Supreme-Soul”).

A comparison of Emerson’s translation “From the Persian of Hafiz, I” and its imitation “Bacchus” reveals an uncanny influence of Sufi thought on the latter. Both poems regard the wine as a symbol of divine ecstasy. Both celebrate the intellect’s agility, the spirit’s delight, the dissolution of ego, the singing of the soul. If wine is the spring, oversoul is the first sip. If wine is the womb, oversoul is the umbilical cord. The end is always the same – ecstasy.

Today, the presence of Sufi poetry in the world is more palpable than ever. The body of work that Coleman Barks has produced on Mevlana Jalal ud-Din Muhammad Rumi from 1976-2003 is a monument to Sufi poetry. In his introduction to The Essential Rumi, he calls Rumi’s poetry food and drink, nourishment for the part that is hungry for what they give. Barks describes his love for Rumi a different level of soul-connecting and a sense of reckless longing. Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi is an imaginative story of the spiritual encounter between Rumi and the wandering dervish, Shams of Tabriz. The book was an instant bestseller in Turkey, selling more than 750,000 copies. It was published in the U.S. in February 2010 and in the UK in June 2010. As contemporary writers like Barks and Shafak discover, translate, and rethink Sufi thought, it is becoming increasingly evident that modern readers want less of that which is ephemeral and seek more what is eternal – the soul.

—Sana Riaz

It's Okay, You Don't Have to Hide Your Book

Wed, 01 May 2013 10:00:49 -0400

I started college four months after my seventeenth birthday. I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, but I still felt like I had “minor” stamped all over me, especially when someone at my freshman orientation decided it would be fun to find the youngest student among the new meat. Now, it didn’t occur to me to just make myself very small in my seat and pretend to be, say eighteen, like all the normal people, but then I didn’t think I would be the youngest person there, either. I figured, There’s got to be some twelve-year-old genius here. But nope, it was just me. My reward for being the youngest? A tiny tote bag with the university’s logo, a matching mouse pad, a pencil. And a renewed I’m-obviously-too-young-to-be-here complex. There was no way, no way at all, that I was going to let anyone see me reading Animorphs or The Chronicles of Narnia. Even away from school, I sneaked into the children’s section of Barnes and Noble, always with a ready excuse, you know, the I’m-babysitting-a-kid-who-would-like-this kind of thing.

I’m not sure at what point I actually made peace with my love of what literary agent Mary Kole calls “kidlit.” I do remember, however, rediscovering it at some point when I unearthed my copy of Louis Sachar’s There’s a Girl in the Boy’s Bathroom. I remembered liking the book when I first read it in the fifth grade, and I enjoyed it just as much years later. But it was one of the few kids’ books that I allowed myself to enjoy.

I’ve gone through phases in the types of books and authors I read. In middle school, it was anything and everything Agatha Christie, and I eventually graduated to Ngaio Marsh. In high school, I went through a huge Stephen King kick—so much so that my first email address was named for him. I still do enjoy Stephen King, but I think one of the main reasons I was so eager to read him was to prove that I didn’t need any of that kid stuff anymore.

Then the whole Harry Potter phenomena happened (not long before I was singled out as the youngest college freshman). For several years, I turned my nose up at the whole thing, slightly bewildered when I heard friends talking about the upcoming release of the first movie, even more surprised when my parents watched and enjoyed it.

That was more than ten years ago, though, and now that I am comfortably adult (and called “ma’am” too often for my comfort), I not only read children’s literature all the time, but I write it, too. I used to think that reading kids’ books meant that I was holding onto a part of my childhood, unable to move on, and that it would be shamefully obvious to everyone around me. As Mary Kole says in Writing Irresistible Kidlit:

In the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and even the ’90s, the YA section of the bookstore was a very different place. There were some popular and candid stories like Go Ask Alice and the works of Judy Blume, but when most people thought of kidlit, they thought of mass market series like Sweet Valley High or The Babysitters Club or pulp horror from Christopher Pike…

Then came a wizard with a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead: Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. Before Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling hit the shelves in 1998, kidlit was happily broadcasting to the school and library market and wasn’t a major player… Harry Potter showed the world—and publishing executives—that children’s books could break out on a large scale, span audiences (children’s books ain’t just for kids anymore!), and bring in the big bucks, too.

Finally, Harry Potter made it not just permissible but cool to read kids’ books. When I finally stopped being an idiot and joined the wizarding throng in late 2002, I absolutely devoured the first four books. Sometime between my freshman and junior years, it had become cool to read the stuff that I’d tried to, but couldn’t ever, outgrow.

Before I graduated from college one year later, it seemed that most people sitting in the corridors, waiting for classes had one or another of J.K. Rowling’s famous books in their clutches. It was not only cool to read kid books, but it was uncool to be out of the loop. Over the next four-and-a-half years, there was a lot of impatient foot-tapping, along with many theorizing sessions with other Potter fans. And the great thing about reading Harry Potter was that someone would see me and say, “Oh, have you heard of Lemony Snickett?” Or one year, a friend gave me a bag full of adolescent lit for my birthday.

Children’s books have become so much more than “See Spot Run.” Yes, those books are out there, too, and they do have their place, like with kids learning to read. But there has to be something between Dr. Seuss and Charles Dickens. And those books have to be good, folks, or those kids will never want to read Dickens, or anything else, for that matter.

I admit that, in elementary school, I was the kid who pulled all my picture books off the shelf for my summer reading list (no one specified which books I was supposed to read, just that I fill my list with titles). That couldn’t last forever. At some point, I had to pick up the required reading and just suffer through it. Finally, my mom found just the right book to get me excited about reading, and after that, I plowed through my school’s library with a literary hunger. There are kids out there, reluctant readers like I used to be, who just need the right book to get them hooked. The wonderful news for them is that there are more choices than ever.

There is a whole new problem with this, however, one that my parents didn’t have to worry about but that I have to consider with my kids. Since children’s literature is now so popular, so accessible, and so fulfilling for readers of all ages, how many copies of Harry Potter am I going to have to buy to keep everyone in my family happy?

—Sarah Cotchaleovitch

Writing God

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:01:44 -0400

The Torah begins, “When God began to create heaven and earth—the earth being unformed and void…[etc, etc].” In my heathen opinion, this says that the creation of something starts with something. That something is really nothing, though. But that something is going to be more than what it was originally. As you can see, my career as a Rabbi was cut short. If you’re a writer, you might think of it this way: “When Writing God began to create tension and plot—the plot being unformed and void, with a white page over the surface of the deep… and Writing God said, ‘Let there be… um… I guess I could write that story about the narrator being a ghost and not knowing it.’ And so it was!” The most famous story (biblical tale) is of course of Franz Kafka (The Writing One, Blessed Be He) telling his best friend (disciple) (St.) Max Brod to burn his work (on the holy altar) when he died (and eventually would resurrect), but Brod would come to publish the work. We are all writing gods with empty page memories that start as nothing, but with the potential to begin with a first line. The words ‘void’ and ‘unformed’ are worrisome though. They mark a beginning that might never live up to its intended end. It could drive a writer to want his work to be sent back to the dust.

How to say it? In Devin Johnston’s book Creaturely And Other Essays, the question of how to say it is addressed as other-worldly, beyond the human. Not God, but on the wavelength of animals. Johnston is a poet, but his book is a collection of essays about him observing the nature of St. Louis on his walks that escape closed-in spaces. His language is often short, exact, and leaves the reader with the sense each line was an effort in perfection. A writer who is trying to find those right words. And with those right words, there is a personal style that might turn off readers. The beautiful swoop of an owl really has nothing to do with the vomiting of a homeless man below him. But with that fluid and exquisite flight, there are the words which resonate a singular experience.

But beyond the selection of words, Johnston relies on perception. In his essay Creaturely, Johnston states, “If sight is evidential (I saw it with my own eyes), smell moves us closer to essences.” Sight only takes us so far. Even though sight is a certain truth (evidential), it misses many underlying aspects of life. For humans, smell is not the most notable of traits when compared to other animals. Johnston combines time and experience to show conception in the world. He quotes Aidan Higgins: “Is it even possible to think of somebody in the past?” Johnston explains that sight can see the difference between what is now and what is gone, but it is smell that “baffles time” —the object is not here, but its essence remains. When one views the world as a confusion of what is in some senses here but not, and considers that what we objectively perceive is translated through subjective sensory input, without the awareness of other senses and senses that humans don’t even have, then it leaves one grasping for the right words.

Johnson sees the world as the inversion of anthropomorphism: we shouldn’t perceive the world as human. I don’t believe he means for us to flap our pretend wings at night and eat bugs in the air, rather each animal has unique features that open the world through the different ways they experience time and with the senses and behaviors they use to translate their environments. With science, it’s possible to understand how crows learn and what squirrels can map. With enough observation, a group could gather like starlings. But I’m still bothered. The way we use science, the way we learn, is human. And before you bomb this website with dolphins and bonobos, just know that no other animal wants to write like humans do. No other animal wants to pencil and paper their world or sit at campfires to explain the deep crack in the earth near their village. Maybe all animals have words or calls and their own flavors of cognition, but maybe humans are the only ones to question what they call.

How to say it? Some artists were convinced that the only way to truly experience the world is through the innocence of an infant. His senses are pure and new; the world is writing on a fresh piece of baby paper. Others asked, “What is the mind?” Such a question ignored if mind even existed or if it was the right question to begin with. Others wrote pieces with the help of opium, a supposed gateway to believed new perceptions. But the underlying thought is that humans are on the outside of a fenced-off community village. A belief that one must get through the fence to find all the goodies one lacks and to have a final “a-ha!” moment of release. But when it comes to cognition, it is what it is. Our brains, like all animals, have evolved in a certain way, and that’s how they will stay. And I say they will stay the same so as not to predict our evolutionary future, which is another pipe dream. Cognitive tests show what the majority of people will most likely perceive. Dan Dennett, philosopher and cognitive scientist, shows these tests in his TED talks and, in general, does a good job proving that what we want to perceive is not always the truth. To constantly hope for a way beyond our own humanity is fantasy.

I’m falling down the rabbit hole to keep up. When Alice fell, was it that it was deep or that she was falling slow? She has knowledge of the world, but as she falls, is it the right knowledge? In the rabbit hole, in the vacuum of our own world, we assume, and inside, a glimmer hopes it is right. I often sit in the dark and fold my hands to hear nothing in the world, to quiet my mind, in hopes that I will be ready for the right words. But I’m okay if there are no words at all in the void of my own writing god.

—Ben Wolfson

Self-Publishing

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 03:44:03 -0400

“Yes, They’re Real: A Collection of Creative Nonfiction,” now available in paperback, is a uniquely provocative collection of short stories from up-and-coming authors in Northeast Florida. The twelve original works are forever linked by each author’s perspective of what the genre can resemble and their personal vision of the journey that takes place while writing creative nonfiction.

The collection, edited by Fiction Fix author Travis Wildes (FF7) is available in paperback from the Creative Writing League. Below, the CW League shares with us the anthology’s introduction, written by Mark Ari.

Self-publishing is for wusses. It’s the first recourse of the frightened or impatient, the last retreat of the desperately disappointed. It means you couldn’t find one house, not one no matter how small, with folks who thought enough of your work to want to share it with the world. Or you didn’t bother to look. Plainly, your work sucks.

What a load of crap. None of that matters. Composers want to be heard, painters want to show, and writers want to be read. For the most part, they do. So the question for writers is how best to get their work in front of strangers’ eyes. There are plenty of topnotch scribblers who began their careers with self-published works or who took that route later for one reason or another. I’m not interested in providing a list. Google it if you care. And hold your hand to your heart, because the results will astonish you.

The muscled independents are those authors who put their own labor into the process of design, printing, marketing, distribution, etc. Others pay some company, the so-called “vanity press,” to do all that for them. That’s why we view vanity publishing with such disdain. We imagine the well-to-do and doddering neophyte’s yawn, the passed wind of misanthropic self-regard, and the easy-access of cash slapped onto barrelheads with soft, fat fists.

I don’t like soft, fat fists. But some artists have them. Some artists are chumps, too. Some are assholes or dopes or worse. I don’t ask for the author’s CV before I read a story or essay. Later I might get curious, but mostly I don’t care. All that matters up front is the work. Does it ignite the spark gap to spill its charge and burn deep and long? Does it pluck feathers from a human heart to build white pigeons that come to me with lighted eyes? Does it tear my shirt open?

The works in this collection can do those things.

I know every author here. I’ve joked with them. Banged skulls with them. Hovered over their hunched shoulders to witness shaky paws smoothing the creases of crumpled memory. Laughed until my lungs throbbed. And when they thought I wasn’t watching and scuttled to the corners of the room, signaling to one another with signs they made on the air with their fingers, I ignored it. I know when to look the other way.

Travis got it into his head to publish stories and essays he and others shaped in my workshops. He chose the pieces to include. That’s what editors do. And like a good editor, he inspired his writers to make their manuscripts the best ones they could make, and he nurtured them along in the process. He conceived this book as a vehicle. Then he found the means to construct it and roll it out onto the public road. Editor AND publisher. Not the easy way. No deep pockets here. Just sweat and desire. This is where possibilities begin.

There is terrific work in this collection. Such distinct voices. Such varied approaches to putting thoughts into words. But because these authors have worked shoulder-to-shoulder in the same workshops, they are bound together in a unique way. Better than most they understand the work of art—the story, the essay—as a meeting place, a means of connection, a chink cut into the bone crust between writer and reader to let leak, retina to retina, the light of singular minds.

There’s a lot of love in a book like this. I’m astounded at the depth of it. And it’s a damned good read.

—Mark Ari
August 2012

BookTunes

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 03:46:27 -0400

When you live in an apartment building like mine, where a new saxophone player is so desperate to learn his scales that he practices them for four hours to get them right, you know that silence can be wonderful. Especially when you’re trying to read. However, if you’re like me, you also know that silence isn’t always possible in New York City, so you need to find the perfect music to filter through your headphones and crank straight into your brain. And finding that perfect music for reading is no small feat— you need something that allows you to focus on your book while simultaneously complementing it. Below, in the first installation of our series “BookTunes,” we’ve compiled a lovely little playlist with samples of artists that are perfect for listening to while reading. Take a listen, and see what fits.

Musette, “Coucou Anne” from Drape Me In Velvet
Musette – Coucou Anne

Chopin’s “Minute Waltz” performed by Henrik Mawe
Abbey Simon – Waltze No. 6 In D-flat Major, Op. 64, “Minute Waltz”

Ravel’s String Quartet in F (1903) Assez vif. tres rythme
Quatuor Ysaÿe – Ravel: String Quartet in F major (1903) - 2. Assez vif. Très rythmé

Yann Tiersen’s soundtrack for Amelie
Yann Tiersen – La valse d’Amélie (Version piano)

Sufjan Stevens’s The BQE
Sufjan Stevens – Interlude I: Dream Sequence in Subi Circumnavigation

Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday – My Man

Edith Piaf
Edith Piaf – La vie en rose

Bon Iver, “Re: Stacks” from For Emma, Forever Ago
Bon Iver – Re: Stacks

Sigur Ros
Sigur Ros – Hoppípolla

Lisa Mitchell, from Wonder
Lisa Mitchell – Pirouette

Radio Dept. from Pulling Our Weight
The Radio Dept. – Pulling Our Weight

Real Estate
Real Estate – It’s Real

The xx
The xx – Intro

John Coltrane
John Coltrane – Blue Train (Enhanced CD Version)

Andrew Bird, from his instrumental album Useless Creatures
Andrew Bird – You Woke Me Up!

C418, from Minecraft - Volume Alpha
C418 – Subwoofer Lullaby

—Leah Clancy

Go Tell It On The Skyway

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 04:00:06 -0400

The Jacksonville Skyway is often referred to as “the train to nowhere.” It’s an unmanned transportation system that constantly loops around downtown Jacksonville. As it has a very low ridership, it mainly functions as a monument to failure. It is also an apt metaphor for the collective consciousness of our city: empty, one-tracked, on auto-pilot and yet, elevated.

Here are some other brilliant ideas the city has had recently:

cut funding to libraries even though our illiteracy rate is around 47%
ask a Muslim appointed to the Human Rights Commission to “Say a prayer to your God,” implying that the Muslim God is strange, different and even inferior to the Christian God
fail to pass a gender anti-discrimination amendment, thereby discriminating against the LGBT community

Jacksonville needs to claim a new metaphor, employ a new narrative. We are currently re-telling that tired old story of southern poverty and ignorance. We need to adopt a narrative about education and acceptance if this city wants to be the urban center which it claims to be.

Historically, we already have a powerful narrative of resistance to mindless ideals that don’t take into account the humanity of all humans. Jacksonville birthed (at least) two great civil rights activists, Stetson Kennedy and James Weldon Johnson. These men are a part of Jacksonville’s underground narrative, the story that remains untold, or perhaps whispered.

Stetson Kennedy died in 2011 and fought for equality to his figurative last breath. That, in itself, is evidence that we have not come as far as we’d like to believe we have come. Some people cling to the idea of a “post-racial society” in order to push anti-discrimination dialogue back underground where mainstream white culture doesn’t have to deal with it. Such people are usually naive to questions of race or gender due to lack of experience with “the other” and their unique issues. Although Stetson was southern white, he was dedicated to the idea that all life is sacred.

Kennedy was a folklorist, author, and human rights activist. In 1937, he travelled around Florida with Zora Neale Hurston and a massive recording system collecting folk songs and stories for the Florida Writers Project. While in France in 1957, he wrote The Klan Unmasked, a book about infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan, over which there has been some controversy. He marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in St Augustine. He also opened his home to his friend, Woody Guthrie, who wrote a number of songs while on the shores of the Beluthahatchee River.

Stetson Kennedy’s home is now a historical landmark. In contrast, James Weldon Johnson has not been treated with the same respect.

Johnson was born in Jacksonville in 1871. A (Harlem) Renaissance man, he was a lawyer, writer, educator, diplomat, and civil rights activist. He accomplished the following in his life:

he was the first African American manager of the NAACP
he was appointed a diplomat to Venezuela and Nicaragua by Theodore Roosevelt after working on his presidential campaign
he worked to quell race riots in 1919
he wrote the poem Lift Every Voice and Sing, which was set to music by his brother and is known today as The Negro National Anthem
he published over twenty books, including The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and The Book of American Negro Poetry

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is an amazing book which should be required reading for all Jacksonville citizens. Johnson spends half of chapter 5 describing the city around the beginning of the 20th century. Johnson explores ideas of self-knowledge, knowledge of the other, identity, and passing. There are many poignant scenes, one describing a lynch mob who burn a man alive.

This mob scene is difficult to read, but it is important to understand the narrative of oppression to which Jacksonville is, for some archaic reason, still ascribing. We aren’t lynching or burning people anymore — thank God — and we even have a Black mayor (who some would point to as evidence of Jacksonville in a “post-racial era”), but the failure to include the LGBT community in our anti-discrimination policy was a huge blow to our sense of equality and fairness.

Jacksonville is spinning the same old narrative that it’s been spinning for decades. It’s attempting to accidentally create new and powerful LGBT and Muslim activists. If we could let go of our empty-headed Skyway mentality, we could reclaim our strong history of civil rights activism and move forward with the biblical idea that if you love your neighbor as you love yourself, all other commandments would be fulfilled, or like Dr. Seuss’s Horton says, “a person’s a person no matter how small.”

All judgment aside, Jacksonville, every person deserves to be treated with respect. If James Weldon Johnson had received the respect he deserved, he might not have left our city, he might not have written a fictional autobiography in which a talented and intelligent black man eschews his heritage and possible greatness in order to pass as an average white man, and he would have numerous monuments to his legacy in this city and elsewhere in America. Instead, he is all but forgotten, and a fight that should be over is raging on.

— Heather Stafford

The Boogeyman: Alive, Well, and Closer Than You Think.

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 07:38:40 -0400

A riddle:
There was a girl who went to a funeral.
There she met a boy that she really liked.
She did not get his phone number.
Two days later she killed her mother.
Why?

How many people do you know? Think about it a second. Fifty? One hundred? More? Or let’s do it this way. How many people have you ever known? Think about all of the college courses you’ve taken, the various jobs and obligations, pinning you shoulder to shoulder with people who may or may not have become your friends. Perhaps you were hard pressed ten minutes after the meeting to remember some of their names. That’s fine. You connected. Let’s come to a round number just for fun. How about two thousand people? Sound good? Good. Twenty of them were certifiably psychopaths of the Ted Bundy variety. Eighty of them were sociopathic enough to raise red flags in a psychiatry appointment.

History is littered with lives ruined by the sociopath. We remember their names without much prompting. Jeffrey Dahmer. John Wayne Gacy. Maybe you have been around long enough to remember Charles Whitman and his perch in the Texas clock tower. Some sociopaths have stood the test of time, leaving a mark so indelible that lore has been built up around them, like Vlad the Impaler, Al Capone, Lizzie Borden, Genghis Khan, or Lady Bathory. We remember these people and some romanticized version of what they did, but what is it that made them the embodiment of evil? Or more accurately, what does it mean to be a sociopath, and why should you care?

Sociopaths (or psychopaths if you prefer. The terms are interchangeable) lack empathy. They have no emotional connection to other people or living things. In a word, they lack love, even for themselves. Other people are things; they are objects to manipulate and use and then discard once that usefulness is exhausted. It is not a choice for a sociopath to care. They are simply incapable. Imagine it: your life without love and connection to other people, without the joy of having a puppy lick your face, the sadness of losing a loved one, or the elation of that first kiss. Hard to do, isn’t it? Well imagine this: Sociopaths think your empathy is just as hard to imagine. They think it’s silly. For them it’s impossible.

The lack of empathy is just one of the things that make them stick out and captivate our interest. One in one hundred people could remove you from the planet and not lose a wink of sleep over it. One in twenty-five people score pretty high on the psychopath test. Do you know twenty-five people? I do, and after reading the test and a few books on the topic, I could think of more than one person that was suspect. Let’s take a look at the test to get a better idea of what we’re talking about.

The Test

glib and superficial charm
grandiose (exaggeratedly high) estimation of self
need for stimulation
pathological lying
cunning and manipulativeness
lack of remorse or guilt
shallow affect (superficial emotional responsiveness)
callousness and lack of empathy
parasitic lifestyle
poor behavioral controls
sexual promiscuity
early behavior problems
lack of realistic long-term goals
impulsivity
irresponsibility
failure to accept responsibility for own actions
many short-term marital relationships
juvenile delinquency
revocation of conditional release
criminal versatility

These criteria are from the Hare Psychological Checklist. It’s scored on a point system. Score high enough and you raise red flags. Score really high and you are likely a threat to society. These high scorers are your neighbors, friends, colleagues, and if you are unlucky enough they are your loved ones. After reading this list, I’m sure you can think of at least one or two suspect people that you have known, or worse yet know.

So we have the basic definition, but why should you care? There is, of course, the precautionary tale of “buyer beware,” and if they seem too good to be true they probably are, but as a writer how does this information benefit you? The answer is that history is also littered with literary characters pulled straight from the worst that humanity has to offer: the sociopath. Many of those characters are based on real people, but the acts are rarely as awful as the real thing. Remember Hannibal the Cannibal Lecter? He’s based on Robert John Maudsley, one of Great Britain’s most notorious and ruthless killers. Buffalo Bill, also from Silence of the Lambs, would surely fit the profile. Most of us know that Dracula is really just Vlad the Impaler. There is Sherlock Holmes, a high-functioning sociopath, and his nemesis Moriarty. Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey fits more than one of the attributes of the list. Alexander DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange is most certainly certifiable. O’Brien from 1984 is to this day chilling. Fernand Mondego from The Count of Monte Cristo just makes me mad. And the list goes on and on and on. These characters fascinate us. They keep us up at night, safe in our beds and grateful that it was only a story. They live long after the final page and become the boogeyman for otherwise rational adults.

Now to be fair, not all sociopaths are bloodthirsty vampires, necrophiliacs, or home invaders. Most are non-violent con artists making their way through the world just like you and me, or rather by using you and me. They are politicians (yup, you probably voted for one or two. Sociopaths are drawn to politics). They teach college courses and ring up your groceries. They are corporate raiders (remember Gordon Gekko?) and janitors. They are even psychiatrists. Sociopaths fill every station of life because they are as varied as any other segment of society. Housewives and football coaches. Preachers. Childcare providers and the children who blow up frogs (remember The Bad Seed, The Good Son, and The Omen?). They can be all of these things, and they don’t care — not about your welfare or your child or your vote or that frog. They are remorseless con artists who are good at it and come in all shapes and sizes — as do characters in the literary world

Do you need a sociopath in your story? No, not necessarily, but sociopathic tendencies offer a great place to start for some really interesting plot developments. Imagine a housewife with an abnormal appetite for money. What is she willing to do? How about a librarian who spends her time spreading rumors? Or how about this:

Greg is a mechanic. He’s especially smart and can spark up a conversation with just about anyone. He has friends, but likes his quiet time. His favorite food is tacos. In the back of his house are oil drums filled with people parts.

Alicia is a pretty fifteen year old and the head cheerleader at her high school. On weekends she goes to local concerts with her friends. Her car is on its last legs and needs some work, but she is kind of glad. Alicia has a crush on Greg.

Read over the Hare Checklist (the PCL-R officially) and pick just one attribute, then apply it to a character you are developing. Not enough? Add another, and then keep going until you are happy with the person that is coming to life on the page. Let those tendencies make the decisions and see where it goes. If it gives you the creeps you are on the right track, because it will probably give me the creeps too. And just when you think you have gone too far, read a detailed report of Jeffrey Dahmer’s or Ted Bundy’s activities. I promise you haven’t gone too far, but I’ll bet the character you are brewing will be one for the ages.

One in one hundred people are sociopaths. One in twenty-five are leaning heavily in that direction. In the Greater New York City area there are no less than one hundred and ninety thousand sociopaths. Look around. You know them, and they are using or abusing you. It’s time you started using them right back. Write them down and see what they do. I’m willing to bet you will be a bit surprised and maybe even a little startled. If not then you aren’t close enough to reality. And for the record, if you are feeling bad about using a person’s condition as a tool to further your literary masterpiece — don’t worry. Remember, they don’t care if you live or die. You can’t hurt them emotionally, but even if you could, would you care if you hurt Ted Bundy’s feelings? I thought not. Plus, if you’re feeling remorse I applaud you. It mean’s you aren’t a sociopath. Congratulations.

We began with a riddle about a girl and a funeral. It’s just a bit of fun, but it does show how a sociopath might think. Hopefully you have a guess. Here’s the answer:

She hoped the boy would come to her mother’s funeral so she could see him again and get his number.

So… Did you get it right?

Want to know more? Here are a couple of recommended books. Both are great, even if you don’t include a sociopath in your next work.

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout

—Alex Pucher

Image: Ted Bundy on trial.

Moral Authority in Nonfiction

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 04:00:12 -0400

Recently while writing about some past issues, I rendered my family members as characters on a page. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever written, and writing all five-hundred words of it left me emotionally black and blue, a feeling to which one might apply the verb phrase “wallowing in self pity and disgust,” and culminating in a small mental breakdown during which I declared – since obviously nothing was wrong with me – that the entire genre of nonfiction was to blame: “Nonfiction is amoral!” I wrote to a friend. “Nonfiction is immoral. No one should ever write nonfiction!!” I was ready to throw down the gauntlet to John D’Agata and Jim Fingal, as well as everyone else, all the way back to those Neanderthals who told stories about their hunts on cave walls. “Or maybe I’m just being melodramatic,” I added, in a rushed whisper. “Probably the latter” was the reply.

I had just embarked on the second half of a two-week long writing course with David Shields, and couldn’t understand why I felt this way—I read Reality Hunger just a few weeks prior and agreed with it so fully that I speckled the margins with smiley faces, exclamation points, and even the occasional heart.

There are no facts, only art. Beautiful words are not true. Something can be true and untrue at the same time. Genre is a minimum-security prison. The genius of memory is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental. All the best stories are true. Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—

Yes, I get it: the line between fiction and nonfiction is blurry (if it exists at all); memory (not to mention the initial perception) is flawed; and, anyway, what we are trying to do is make art, not a catalogue—I agree with, and feel these things, deeply. So why, as Shields phrased it, was I feeling this objection “on [my] own nerve endings”? I’m not completely certain. But I suppose that for me, a mainly fiction writer, the moral decisions we all make in any act of writing became particularly acute when I started using people I love as characters.

D’Agata’s book About a Mountain is about the suicide of 16-year-old Las Vegas resident Levi Presley. In his NY Times book review, Charles Bock claims that doctoring certain “facts” in the book for poetic license (such as conflating the dates of important events) “damages the moral authority of D’Agata’s voice.” D’Agata’s counterargument, as he presented it at the April 2012 McNally Jackson Event, is that after the book was published, he received a letter from Levi’s parents. “They considered the book a gift to Levi,” said D’Agata. “That, I felt, was the only moral test I had to pass. I was in the field and was doing that work so only I know where that line is. We do have to trust writers that they will do that work, find that line. We can’t impose that line on them.” In today’s overly litigious and information-driven society, that relationship of trust between writer and reader can easily be broken. But the discomfort with (and dialogue about) writing fact-based works is a good sign, because writing, like living, is a series of moral negotiations. There are a lot of questions that a writer asks herself as she puts pen to paper, questions that will be asked of her later by those who read her work. Perhaps one of the most important of these is: Am I doing the right thing? The tricky part is that we may not always know the right answer to that; and we may sometimes be wrong.

In “One Nation, Under the Weather,” her essay defense of illness memoir, Lauren Slater states: “I write to say, you are not the only one.” Though I still feel uneasy when I write about my family, I try to remember that I am not an outsider—I am writing as one of them. Down to the genetic level, we are truly in this together. Viewed through this lens, writing nonfiction could be the most compassionate form of all. I will try to remember D’Agata’s and Slater’s poignant statements as I write. Whether our works are fiction, nonfiction, or (more likely) something in between, they should be nothing if they are not offered as gifts, with great kindness and care.

—April Bacon

A Fiction Fix Design Retrospective

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 07:50:17 -0400

“Good art inspires; Good design motivates.”—Otl Aicher

To me, one of the most important qualities found within a literary magazine—besides the stories of course—is the artwork. When I was younger, I can remember scanning the shelves at my local book store searching for writing magazines that caught my eye. Nine times out of ten it was the most colorful and intriguing covers that I settled on purchasing. Keep in mind that these journals were usually the more well-known ones like The New Yorker or The Paris Review, since the bookstore didn’t stock the smaller journals.

I recall flipping through the pages until the edges were worn and the plastic covers were dented with half-moons. I dog-eared all of my favorite artistic pieces and kept them in a plastic bin under my bed to draw inspiration from later. These pictures are memorable, even to this day, and they all evoke different emotions in me.

Now that I am older, I recognize that the artwork was not only influential in and of itself, but also because of how it was arranged to complement the literary works on the adjacent pages. All forms of art are influenced by one another in some way. A picture could have absolutely no relation to a text, but as soon as they are placed next to each other a connection is established and my senses go into overload.

Nowadays the world of literary magazines is drastically changing: many journals are choosing to go the eco- and cost-friendly route of online publishing. Boxes of literary magazines are being replaced with “bookmarks” of pdf files on a web browser. I was slightly skeptical when the first push towards online publishing and e-readers came into existence. Call me a nerd, but I just love the smell of a new book and having the actual weight of a creative work in my hands. However, being an Assistant Editor at Fiction Fix has made me more forgiving of technology.

For one, without technology, magazines such as ours would not have circulations nearly as large. No longer do the “top” magazines capture reader’s attentions; many readers and writers these days scour the Net for lesser-known gems. Secondly, online publishing allows journals the opportunity for more creative freedom. We don’t have to worry about the costs of printing 4-color process glossy pages. And details that may have gone overlooked can now be viewed up close with a simple click of the magnifying glass tool.

What I think makes Fiction Fix a little different from some other online publications—and what drew me to the magazine in the first place—is the amount of attention we place not only on our writers, but also on our contributing artists. Each issue has its own unique style, inspired by each issue’s artists. Issue six for instance has a soft, serene feel thanks to Renee Press’s water colors. Whereas issue seven is chaotic, abstract, and colorful with finger paintings by Devin Balara and photographs of graffiti by Louise Freshman-Brown.

At Fiction Fix, our staff readers don’t see the artwork until the issue launches, making the publication day just like Christmas. You never know what you are going to get when you open up an issue—everything from water colors, photography, and mixed media, to finger-paintings, stained glass, and digital art. As I “unwrap” the issue, I view the stories in a different light than I had before because of the artworks which now grace their pages. It truly reminds me of those early days scouring the bookshelves for literary magazines.

I personally tend to favor the more quirky artists like Melissa Bryant from issue six and her chair illustrations and Francis Raven’s issue sevens drawings of humorous medicine cabinets. Melissa’s Fiction Fix Family Portrait still remains one of the most memorable pieces as she managed to capture the personalities of the editors of Fiction Fix in chair form.

When I first saw the cover of Issue nine, a photograph by Mathieu Asselin, I remember flipping excitedly through to view all the photographs. My favorite shot is of the firefighter on page sixty-eight. The images are so surreal, crisp, and seem as though each one has a story within itself. What inspires me about JJ Cromer’s mixed media works from Issue ten is the attention to detail, patterns, and the various uses of bold and subtle colors. He is one of those artists that make you happy to have a handy magnifying glass tool!

Being as detail-oriented as I am, I was very thrilled to be a part of the group of readers who viewed the graphic literature submissions for Issue eleven. I was wondering how we would integrate those works with our usual literary submissions. I love how April, our editor-cum-designer, incorporated image detail of David & Petra Press’s Postcards from the Hecatomb on the opening pages as a way to spark mystery as to what would come later in the issue. The story itself is intriguing and unique, but the mixed media use of topographical maps and movie/television frames overlapping with chilling red images of desert iconography is phenomenal. Just another great example of how writing can blossom into something more when accompanied by a work of art.

I look forward to what the future may bring artistically to Fiction Fix and I can’t wait to see the surprises in store for Issue twelve. For my next couple of blogs I will be focusing on all things design related in the literary magazine world. I hope to share with you other great online publications that I feel masterfully combine image and text, as well as talk about the designers themselves. Until next time, remember: there is always more than meets the eye!

—Blair Romain

Writer Seeks Writer. Must Like Rope.

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 03:36:48 -0400

I don’t know how people can work with other writers. To this day, I’ve never been able to do it. I worked with a writer where we would lay on the floor of his apartment and keep asking each other, “So what ideas do you have?” We would then take shots of tequila at a tiki-style/could-this-be-voodoo altar he made for his prosperity god. We never wrote that dream novel, but whatever tequila that was, it was amazing. Other artistic endeavors turned out as excuses for romantic flings. Meet funny person at gallery, go home to “talk” about ideas. As beautiful as it is to giggle under the covers over art, that’s still didn’t lead to artistic collaboration, per se. If someone wanted to finish a novel with me, they would have to agree to sleep shoulder to shoulder in the same bed. This is different from giggling under the covers. Our legs would have to be in synch. Our cabin would be in the woods. Smelling bad would be okay. If my partner was lucky, I might even throw in breakfast.

The reality is, no writer can easily merge their mind with another. In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slapstick, one can only be smart with heads stuck together. Alone, people are ugly, but with heads together, true genius emerges. Fiction can often be a reflection of reality, but it can also reveal desire and longing. What would be better than to easily bonk heads and melt with someone’s mind. How simple to just get someone and understand them and compromise on how to make a thing work. In daily life, it is possible to understand and compromise, but not on the first date. Maybe not even in ten years. Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle is about the narrator meeting his exact double in a foreign country. They both are learned men and yet they initially have a hard time working together. The narrator is actually the slave of his twin, so he really doesn’t have a choice. But they do eventually see eye-to-eye, even to the point where they switch lives. This book is so awesome mostly because there is a naked mirror scene where his twin puts a knife to his neck from behind and they stare at each other. So, there really is this great struggle for a writer to work alone. The ability to reach out, to yourself, to make your writing work, is daunting. Imagine now two different people, trying to do the same thing. Literally a person has to be himself to work with himself.

If a person can win the lottery or is struck by lighting while riding his bike and can get back up, then I could concede that collaborating with other writers could work. It’s not just writing a novel with someone, but any creative endeavor results in passive answers or lonely nights wondering who else in the world could be excited to print a publication. Even starting up a small workshop or book club can result in unreturned text messages. People will say, “I don’t have time.” But to me it’s more of a radical shift in people’s day-to-day lives. People have babies and dogs and jobs and vampire porn. It’s the standard ebb and flow of life, but throw in writing a book together and the brain short circuits on how the hell that could possibly be done. These projects require love and time and what person can make room on their plate? Ask someone to work on a zine and they ask about money, how to find people to publish, and who would read it. Won’t it just be stored in the trunk of my car? A writers workshop is the answer! No, that means actually exposing the self to others. A book club? Ah, time… too much time and balance for everyone to get to chapter two. Well, damn. What could we do? Watch some vampire porn? Cool.

But don’t lose hope just yet. There is always a ray of sunshine. A My Little Pony tattoo on the toughest of skins! There are some ways to get people to work with you outside of kidnapping and slave labor camps. The first way is to move to a town of writers or a college town of writers. There is a higher chance that someone will share your taste in books and writing. A place like Portland where it’s easy enough to knock on the door of Glimmer Train’s office or go to Powell’s Books and strike up a conversation with someone. Conversation intro hints: Hey, nice tattoo. But you might not live in such a town, so you could always take your artist friend’s money. Make a goal and say, “We are printing this shit by the end of the year and you are going to give me fifty dollars now. If you run away, this fifty bucks is mine. If you finish the novel with me, then we use it for a pizza party or we can buy matching suits to show off our literary skills in coffee shops.” The third way is to write while doing something. Writing is painful by itself. It’s more fun to write while hiking or traveling somewhere. Maybe that dude you saw in the diner could be the protagonist of your next novel. Artist friend drives, you write. Switch every twelve hours.

What really compels two people of vastly different genomes to write together? Deep love. Not of each other, but of the world around them. If two writers could tap into that enchantment every day, nothing could stop them from working together. It might be that honesty itself between two people could produce the most heartbreaking story you’d ever know.

—Ben Wolfson

Recommended reading: Borges’ Paris Review Interview. Search for “H. Bustos Domecq.”

Parallel Habits: Running and Writing

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 11:01:58 -0400

In his memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami dabbles in a bit of philosophy, but mostly he writes about his personal experiences with training and racing. Not being a runner, I read this book because Murakami is my newest literary love.

My other current love, Joyce Carol Oates, is also a runner. I came across an essay of hers in her collection, The Faith of a Writer. This essay was published by the New York Times as To Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet. It is an odd coincidence that the two novelists I most admire (at this moment) are the only two popular novelists who have published essays on running and writing.

In her essay JCO writes, “If writing involves punishment, at least for some of us, the act of running even in adulthood can evoke painful memories of having been, long ago, as children, chased by tormentors. (Is there any adult who hasn’t such memories? Are there any adult women who have not been, in one way or another, sexually molested or threatened?)” So Joyce is fleeing something from her past? I think that is apparent in her work, which often explores trauma.

If Murakami is trying to abscond from his past, he isn’t talking about it. He appears to be racing towards something, namely his goals as a marathon runner and triathlete. He’s running for the sake of running, to keep himself in shape, and for solitude. He is also trying to fortify his body against toxins. He writes:

Basically I agree with the view that writing novels is an unhealthy type of work. When we set off to write a novel, when we use writing to create a story, like it or not a kind of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface. All writers have to come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it, because otherwise no creative activity in the real sense can take place.

Wow. What?

This idea is not entirely new, but when writers talk about it they often make jokes, like:

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and bleed.”- Ernest Hemingway
“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” - E.L Doctorow
“Being an author is being in charge of your own personal insane asylum.” - Terri Guillemets
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” - Ray Bradbury

or, more seriously:

“Writing is a struggle against silence.” - Carlos Fuentes
“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.” - Franz Kafka
“If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.” - Lord Byron
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” - George Orwell

There is precedent for this idea that writing is toxic. Further evidence is shown in the many good artistic men and women who suffered so much that they took their own lives, or abused drugs and alcohol until those substances relieved them of the burden.

Why is writing toxic? No one can or will say. Is it that we are not meant to look so closely at human behavior? Is it the strange ambiguity of human motivation, refusing clarity, which drives writers mad? Is it the act of thinking, habitually, for long periods that is incongruent with living? Or is it the toxin which creates the writer?

Regardless of the origin of this toxin, I think we can agree that it exists for some, if not all, writers. Running rhythmically pounds out these ideas. It creates a meditative state where a body can choose to empty the mind or work thoughts out. Murakami tries to empty his mind. He says “I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it another way: I run in order to acquire a void.” While Oates writes, “The structural problems I set for myself in writing, in a long, snarled, frustrating and sometimes despairing morning of work, for instance, I can usually unsnarl by running in the afternoon. On days when I can’t run, I don’t feel “myself” and whoever the “self” is I do feel, I don’t like nearly as much as the other. And the writing remains snarled in endless revisions.”

These two amazing contemporary authors have different approaches to running and writing. Though they are also similar. They are both masters of the craft. They write in the morning and run in the afternoon, every day if possible. They have formed habits around both activities. It occurs to me that it may be the forming of habits that is integral to the writing life.

Of course we all know we need to sit down and write every day. We know that we need to have scheduled writing time. Even though we don’t all do it, we know that we need to make writing a habit in order to be successful. Every “how to” on writing agrees on that point.

Interestingly, it seems that writers also need to have a parallel habit to offset all the thinking that one must drudge through in order to write. Even if that habit just facilitates another venue in which to think about writing, as with Joyce Carol Oates. Though some writers, like Murakami, seek to escape all that thinking through activity. Still others escape through drugs and alcohol. Then there are those smoking writers who can perform both habits at once, wallowing in their thinking as they breath in toxins which feed the writing toxins already at work. My contemporary loves chose running as their parallel habit. I think their choice has produced epiphanous results.

—Heather Stafford

Hemingway House and Museum

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 07:57:32 -0400

“It’s the best place I’ve ever been anytime, anywhere, flowers, tamarind trees, guava trees, coconut palms…Got tight last night on absinthe and did knife tricks.”—Ernest Hemingway

Key West in July. An explosion of tropical colors, pastel bungalows, red flame trees arching over streets and gardenias perfuming the air. Breezeless air hangs heavy; the rhythms of the island, slow and sweat-drenched. I came to join in the Hemingway Days Festival, an annual summer celebration of the author’s larger-than-life persona. This is the time when white-bearded Papa Look-Alikes stroll the streets in safari dress or khaki shorts.

Hemingway first came to Key West in 1928, accompanied by his second wife, Pauline, to pick up a Model A Ford roadster, a wedding gift from her Uncle Gus. Its delivery was delayed several weeks, so the dealership invited the Hemingways to stay in an apartment above the showroom. He worked on A Farewell to Arms there and fell in love with the sleepy fishing village.

They returned in 1931, bought the house on Whitehead Street, and raised two sons. The great thing about the Hemingway House guides is that they tell tales. Some may be apocryphal, but they certainly jazz up the tour. Steve, our guide, blamed the stylish Pauline for our sweaty discomfort. She had all the ceiling fans removed and replaced with electric chandeliers crafted in Europe. With no central air and 20 tourists in our group, we relied on the sad upright fans in each room.

The second-floor balcony gave us a burst of fresh air and a look at the nearby lighthouse. In the 1930s, it offered a beacon to Hemingway whenever he emerged from a bar – Sloppy Joe’s was a favorite – and sloshed his way home. Joe Russell, the bar’s owner and Hemingway’s buddy, became outraged when his landlord raised rent a dollar per month. He and patrons ripped out sinks, urinals, whatever, before they vacated. One of those urinals, flipped on its side, now adorns the Hemingway garden, although Hemingway claimed to have no recollection of how it got there. Today it provides a fresh water bowl for the cats, but when the lovely Pauline first saw it, she protested. Her husband prevailed, arguing, “I passed a fortune through this urinal.”

Forty-four cats – that day’s count – trace their origins to Hemingway’s Snowball, a six-toed (polydactyl) gift from a sea captain. Females are allowed one litter before spaying. Only a few toms roam the property; the remaining males are neutered and serve as “consultants.” Half of all the kittens are born with the genetic polydactyl trait. Steve explained Hemingway believed the polydactyls brought good luck and, since he was accident prone, he needed a larger share of luck.

Pablo Picasso, knowing Hemingway’s fondness for cats, gave him an abstract ceramic cat in Paris. A reproduction sits on a cabinet in the upstairs bedroom because the original, from the 1920s, was stolen in 2000. The thief smashed the cat before being apprehended. Steve snarled that Key West’s old hanging tree still exists, and suggested that lynching would have provided a more suitable resolution than the burglar’s short jail stint. If rope were available to our tour group, I think a mob could have formed.

Hemingway called Key West home from 1931 until 1939 and wrote 70% of his work here, including For Whom the Bell Tolls, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” To Have and Have Not, Green Hills of Africa, and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” The house’s interior reflects Pauline, but the second floor of the old carriage house, Hemingway’s writing study, pulls us into his world. Horned animal heads and fish hanging on the walls remind us of his passion for the outdoors. A small round table holding a typewriter anchors the room. The chair is the kind used by Cuban cigar makers. Visitors showed a greater solemnity in this room because miracles happened here.

Despite the heat, we regretted leaving the compound. The only thing to be done was cross the street to toast Papa, man and myth, with a cold mojito.

—Ann Marie Byrd

The Ambiguity of Poet Justiss

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 03:59:17 -0400

Jacksonville’s poet laureate, Charles Alan Justiss, died on Valentine’s Day in 2011 of semi-natural causes. He left behind some 20,000 poems, hundreds of letters, many devoted friends and a handful of detractors.

Alan’s body of work is currently being housed in the University of North Florida English department thanks to the efforts of Nestor Gil, Clark Lunberry and Mark Creegan. These 3-D artists view Alan’s posthumous office as an installation piece even though it is locked and private. So begin the ambiguities. Alan Justiss received an office (pictured right) at UNF after his death, where he would not have been welcome in his life.

Alan began his life in Yukon, Florida, in 1943. Before it got swept up in the Duval County consolidation, it was just a little southern town. This is perhaps the locus of Jacksonville’s ambiguity; not being able to define itself as country or city. It may be this lack of clarity that inspires its people to leave and also draws them back.

Alan would leave and return to Jacksonville many times in the course of his life. At one point he ventured out to California where he met and fought Charles Bukowski. If you had met Alan, I’m sure this is one of the first stories he would’ve told you. After crisscrossing the country several times, taking a few wives and settling in Texas for a while, Alan came back to Jacksonville in the early 90s to die. He claimed he wanted to end his life where he began it. He spent those years plugging away at his typewriter, creating and deteriorating.

Every place that Alan lived during those years was set up like a monk’s cell. With some sort of cot, a writing desk, a typewriter, a radio that constantly streamed NPR, a coffee pot, piles of books, magazines, copies of the Folio Weekly which featured Alan or his friends. The walls would be covered with portraits of Alan, scattered images and bits of wisdom (from Alan himself, or another source) and his calendars, on which he marked the events of his days. There were spittoons and jars for urine. Alan also saved large red Folgers containers, though I never saw him reuse one, and other junk.

And there was always beer. Often, too, there would be company, those who brought the Milwaukee’s Best. Alan was apparently an alcoholic. Ambiguously, he was also devoted to his art.

His God was poetry. He longed for inspiration, always. Inspiration, he said, meaning breathing. He sat at his desk drinking and giving poetry a body to breath through. He attempted to be a conduit. He said he didn’t sit down and make poetry up, poetry made him up. Of all his self-mythologizing, I believe this.

Alan created in himself a legend. Here he was, the king of a pile of garbage, or what looked like a pile of garbage, and he never seemed to lose faith in his greatness as an artist. His life was difficult to make meaning of. Though not hard to create meaning from.

When Alan was sober, he was humble. He was a good listener and wonderful conversationalist. He was a mentor. He had (and still has) a great influence on many young Jacksonville artists who were fortunate enough to meet him. He had wisdom and he enjoyed sharing it.

When Alan was drinking without his typewriter, he could be difficult. Imagine hanging out at a bar and this wizened old man just stands up and starts projecting whatever comes to his mind. As if he were writing, or performing. You would be hard pressed to get him to stop once he got on a roll. And Gods forbid you interrupt the master poet. He would become aggressive, as drunks will. His good friend, the late Robert Eskew, would stop him simply by saying, “Get back to work, Maestro,” which made Alan laugh. Other friends stole the line.

Alan is said to have done other, less innocuous things, while drinking. I have witnessed him making passes at ladies and even inappropriately touching them. I have heard stories of him urinating and defecating on people’s possessions. I have seen him spit venomous insults at people. I’ve been on the receiving end of some of those myself.

For instance, Alan once gushed that I was “an angel,” so generous, so selfless. Within a few days the drunken Alan spat at me that I only gave people things so they would love me, that I was being manipulative. I was puzzled by this. He was describing the same motivation in both positive and negative light.

As friends of Alan’s, it was in our best interest to keep Alan at a typewriter while he was drinking. He would come up with beauties like You’ll Laugh in the Coming Years, or one of my favorites, Angel’s Blue Hour.

It’s no surprise that Alan, as a native of the difficult to define city of Jacksonville and a dubious fellow himself, often employed ambiguity in his poetry. Take, for instance, this stanza from Angel’s Blue Hour:

Nothing works out
as it should
it only does what
we remember to forget

More of his work can be viewed at Lukalips Destruction Co and Section 8 Magazine. If you’re lucky you might be able to find some of his chapbooks: Freedom at its Worst Angel, Fishing in the Dark, Solidarity (with Al Letson, G Jerome Jones and Nestor Gil), Rise in Love Do Not Fall (with Heather Sielicki) or Raw at a used book store. You aren’t likely to find Peeling Potatoes or Something About a Letter anywhere except among Alan’s things.

The collected works of Alan Justiss (and other detritus) will move from the UNF English Department to an installation at the Karpeles Manuscript Museum. The show, curated by Mark Creegan, will open September 7th, 2012. Nestor Gil Jr. is attempting to digitally and physically archive Alan’s work with the help of Lafayette College and various Jacksonville artists and institutions. Hopefully this will make Alan’s work more widely available.

—Heather Stafford

Images
1. Alan’s tombstone, photographed by Walter Coker.
2. Alan’s posthumous UNF office, picture by Nestor Gil.
3. Portrait of Alan Justiss by Nestor Gil from the series “personal journals,” picture by Nestor Gil.
4. Walter Coker and Nestor Gil balancing the collected works of Alan Justiss, pic by Troy Lukkarila.

Ira Sukrungruang: An Interview

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 03:57:20 -0400

Ira Sukrungruang is the author of Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy. His work has appeared in numerous magazines, including The Sun, Creative Nonfiction, and North American Review. He is the co-founder of Sweet: A Literary Confection and teaches in the MFA program at University of South Florida.

My initial email reached you in Thailand. How often do you visit and how does that country nourish your spirit?

I’ve been going to Thailand every other year since I was three. My family wanted to instill in me this other part of my life. Yes, I was born in America, but I am the product of two proud Thai parents. It’s funny that you asked about how my visit “nourishes” my spirit. It really does. In America, when I’ve been away from Thailand for a long time, I have these moments of yearning, moments of wanting to be in Thailand. These moments are not so much about the spirit, as it has to do with missing family. Since my mother and aunt moved back to Thailand after 36 years working as nurses in Chicago, I don’t have blood relatives in the states. So this time in Thailand is to connect with my mother and aunt and all the cousins and uncles and nephew and nieces. It’s also about learning or relearning another rhythm and pace of life.

You decided to be a Buddhist monk for a month during one of your visits. What did you learn from that experience?

I’ve always had questions about Buddhism. I was born Buddhist, and because of that Buddhism was more connected to family than to religion. As I got older, I realized I hadn’t a clue about what it meant to be Buddhist. I knew the prayers and the precepts and the noble truths, but I didn’t know the meanings behind them. For years, my mother has been urging me to become a monk. All Thai males have this obligation. It’s for the family, for good karma. I’ve been hesitant because I was a vain bugger, and the thought of losing my hair and eyebrows filled me with dread. Since my mother retired in Thailand, I decided why not do it Thailand. Why not be a monk and really try to answer some of my lingering questions?

The funny thing about my month as a monk was by the end I had more questions, questions I’m still trying to sift through even now. I feel closer to my religion, yes, but there are still things I wonder about. I’ve tried writing about it, but too many things enter my pieces. I remember reading Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story, remember how hard a time she had writing about her visit to Egypt. In many ways, I’m still too close to the subject. I need to sit with it a bit, ruminate, meditate on it.

I think I’ll always have questions. It’s the reason I write about religion so often. It’s a pursuit to understand, to make sense of.

Are you planning something as bold on this visit?

No, I think the boldest thing I’m doing on this visit is hanging with my seventy-six year old mother and her funny family. I had a few weeks this time, so I really wanted to saturate myself with family. Plus, my wife joins me later on the trip, and we got married here ten years ago, so

we’re planning an anniversary vacation. I think bold for two writers and teachers who are always working is sitting still and doing nothing. Kinda Buddhist if you think about it.

Tell me about Sweet: A Literary Confection, an online journal for creative nonfiction and poetry. What motivated you to be a co-founder? What have you discovered since its inception?

Sweet is a project my wife Katie Riegel and I decided to venture into. We are now in our fourth year, publishing three online issues a year, and also, we are now publishing handmade chapbooks. When Katie and I got married, we also married two genres: creative nonfiction and poetry. Sweet wants to explore the conversation between these two genres. There’s great

conversation to be had there, better than the fact vs. fiction one that seems to always trail creative nonfiction.

I think what I find most surprising about editing a magazine is how many good writers there are out there. We receive so many submissions, and a lot of them are extremely good. The decision to publish something becomes very subjective. Sweet does not want to overwhelm readers, so we try to keep our issues small. Sometimes the reason we have to pass on a piece is because of space.

There’s been an explosion of MFA programs in the last few decades. What are the pros and cons of this reality?

To be honest, I don’t find anything wrong with having more MFA programs if you are realistic about your expectations as a writer. Don’t expect to be published. Don’t expect a teaching job. Expect three years of writing and reading and learning, and living a writer’s life, a thinker’s life. I am proof that writing can be taught. English is a second language for me, so without great professors guiding me in craft and technique and introducing me to writers that have changed and shaped my life, I wouldn’t be here. The MFA program was a selfish time for me to be an artist without other distractions. I was around others passionate about the art, others striving to write a good sentence. These writers made me want to get better, made me want to perfect my craft.

The MFA program was that first step, for me, as a writer. I’m always thinking of myself as a student of writing. I’m still learning. I’m still challenging myself. I still want every piece I write to be better than the last. I love language, the sound of it. I love the infinite ways one can write a sentence. This keeps writing fresh. This keeps me motivated.

And again, more honesty here, teaching in an MFA program and a strong undergrad program also keeps things exciting. I love my students. I feed off them. They come whole heartedly to learn. Seeing them progress as writers makes me want to do the same. Moreover, we are all in it together. Part of the same tribe. It makes me feel not as alone in the world.

You write creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and memoir. Which one challenges you the most? Which one feels most comfortable to you?

Creative nonfiction opened the doors to other genres. I had to learn about myself, my life. I needed to mature before I could even start writing fiction and poetry. To me all writing, regardless of genre, is about understanding the complexities of the human condition. Writing at the core is about communication. I had to believe what I was putting down on the page was worthwhile. If there isn’t anything at stake for me, then there isn’t anything at stake for the reader.

In terms of comfort, each genre presents its own difficulties. Because of this, I can’t write two genres at the same time. I have to write one genre, be done with it, rest my brain for a bit, before switching gears. It’s a completely different mindset.

Your memoir Talk Thai is infused with humor and poignancy. How do you manage to blend the two?

There are two things I tell my students when they are attempting to write humor:

1) What is the serious behind the laugh? Writing effective humor is about locating the source of the serious. The serious becomes the foundation, becomes what readers will remember most. Without a foundation, your story becomes a bar joke, easily forgettable. One of my favorite comics is Whoopi Goldberg. When she first came on scene, she did a routine that was utterly stunning. She did persona pieces—the crack addict, the abused child—and all I remember was how silent the theater was until she delivered the punch line. The audience erupted. They needed to. They were taken on such a sobering and solemn journey that the need to laugh was essential.

2) We possess different types of laughs. The quiet laugh. The laugh out loud. The obnoxious laugh. Watch a good comic at work, and he or she knows this. The trick is knowing what laugh to pull out at what time. It becomes about timing and execution.

You are a writer, educator, and editor. How do you know when you’re having a good day?

When I can’t sleep. When I’m left energized. Writing a good sentence. Teaching a good class. Finding an incredible essay. All of this feeds me. It makes me feel like I can run a marathon. Makes me feel like this artist’s life is worth it. There is no better feeling, I assure you.

—Interviewed by Ann Marie Byrd

Marianne Langner Zeitlin: An Interview

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 03:54:03 -0400

Marianne Langner Zeitlin is the author of three novels, Mira’s Passage (Dell), Next of Kin (Zephyr Press, which won a City of Toronto Book Award, and the just published Motherless Child (June 2012, Zephyr Press). Recent stories have appeared in Passager, Aethlon, Scribblers on the Roof and Jewishfiction.net.

“The Desecration of the Sabbath” appears in Fiction Fix 11.

“The Desecration of the Sabbath” is set in New York and begins in the moments leading up the 1953 execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. When did you write the story? Can you tell us anything about its history?

I didn’t attempt to write the story for many years after the actual event. I had to digest it slowly over time. When I did so I wrote a number of drafts and discarded them before I finally finished it.

As a Jew, for my generation, the defining historical event was the Holocaust. I was very young when the facts about the extermination camps were revealed and the images were seared into my consciousness. Around sixty of my mother’s family wound up in Auschwitz. Eight years later, the Rosenbergs were executed and for me it was like a mini Holocaust, though the term “Holocaust” hadn’t yet been coined. I believe the night of their execution was a haunting and traumatic one, especially for Jews.

For starters, I’m against capital punishment. So whatever I felt about the Rosenbergs’ guilt, I would have thought the executions were a miscarriage of justice. Added to this is the fact it came during the height of the McCarthy era when all kinds of witch-hunts were in progress. Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here,” a cautionary tale about the rise of fascism in the United States, was still an active frame of reference at the time.

What made this trial particularly horrendous for me, however, was the fact that the main characters in this drama were all Jews. It was Roy Cohn who masterminded the trial, claiming in his autobiography that it was he who used his influence to appoint both a Jewish judge and Jewish prosecutor, and it was he who recommended the death penalty. By so doing he absolved J. Edgar Hoover, who called it “the trial of the century,” and Joseph McCarthy from the possible accusation of anti-Semitism.

Cohn manipulated David Greenglass, Ethel’s brother, to give testimony against his sister and brother-in-law in order to save his own neck. Greenglass recanted later, admitting that he’d testified that Ethel had typed the classified documents in order to protect himself and his wife, and that he’d been encouraged by the prosecution to do so.

At the time I thought there was some guilt involved as far as Julius was concerned, but also thought he and his cronies had been misguided idealists, unlike Aldrich Ames and other spies who did it for mercenary reasons. In the hysteria of those McCarthy days, people forgot the Soviet Union was our ally during the war. But at no time did I think Ethel was guilty of anything except being the wife of Julius. We know from later intercepts of Soviet intelligence that Ethel was never a spy and the material obtained from Julius was trivial. Far more damning was the material from Klaus Fuchs who was a physicist. Klaus Fuchs was tried in England and received a sentence of 13 years. Contrast this with the Rosenbergs’ sentence.

While the Rosenbergs never appear in the story, their pending execution is everywhere in it. The people around Sarah are either indifferent or viciously excited—“they should have torn them limb from limb.” She feels it all so acutely, almost crumpling under the weight of it. Why is she so afraid and vulnerable?

Because of the prevailing political atmosphere, Jews were easily frightened and intimidated. The blacklist reigned and many people denounced other people, particularly in the entertainment world. “Naming names” was the inevitable second demand by the House Un-American Activities Committee, the first being to give yourself up.

In Sarah’s memory of Hebrew School, she is the victim of Mr. Shkop’s summary judgment. He misinterprets her questions, sentences her, and executes that sentence. Her friends turn their backs on her. They are silent. Do you feel there is connection between silence and loneliness? Is loneliness part of her punishment?

Loneliness is the result of silence and abandonment. And yes, it is part of the punishment. There are parallels between Sarah and Ethel’s situations throughout the Hebrew School incident and others. She even has a brother called David who always gets her into trouble.

Sarah’s husband, Shlomo, is not there for her. He has sailed off in his “cell in the ship’s womb” to perform in Europe. A musician’s chair on stage is elsewhere likened to an electric chair. Is he under some sort of sentence, too?

In Sarah’s mood of the moment, all of the characters in her life seem like victims, and even certain settings—the ship, the stage—have associations with what is happening to the Rosenbergs. She sees everything through the prism of that pending horror.

For Jews the Sabbath is sacred time. We are traditionally instructed to put a fence around it to set it apart from ordinary time. In the story, clocks and the machinery of the world tick off the moments as time runs out on the Rosenbergs at the front end of the Sabbath. Sarah struggles to fence the other side by holding off labor. Do you sympathize with her struggle?

Sarah is no longer religious when the story takes place. But Eisenhower’s ironic haste in carrying out the executions to avoid desecrating the Sabbath triggers all kinds of fear for Sarah in her drugged state. And in extremis—the highly emotionally charged state that childbirth elicits—she reverts to the prayers and beliefs of her childhood.

Ethel Rosenberg is a mother and Sarah is becoming one. Ethel’s execution is rushed to avoid desecration of the Sabbath, while Sarah hopes to stave off labor for the same reason. In the end, she can’t. The distance between execution and birth diminishes, and the desecration she was afraid of proves something else when she feels the “warm weight of the mitzvah in the crook of her arm.” Since Mitzvoth are the good deeds by which we mend a broken world, I wonder what you feel is mended here.

Tikkun Olam—repairing the world through social action—is a basic tenet of Judaism. The birth of the baby right after the execution absolutely connects Ethel and Sarah (she is now a mother too), as does the idea of which acts are desecrations and which are mitzvoth. Certainly, nothing can mend the execution. But the birth of a baby brings a sense of life and hope for Sarah, even in the midst of the tragedy that has just occurred.

“Motherless Child,” Marianne Langner Zeitlin’s newest novel, is set in the world of classical music, where a young woman searches for the truth about her family’s troubled past. A suspenseful page-turner, it has just been published by Zephyr Press and is available at www.zephyrpress.org and in bookstores.

—Interviewed by Mark Ari

I used to ride the bus to work...

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 03:56:00 -0400

I used to ride the bus to work every day. It took some getting used to after commuting in my beloved VW for years, but gas prices being what they were (and are) I got the hang of it. The initial shock was profound, though. People don’t always wash themselves. Sometimes they sneeze and the mist settles on your face. I heard my fair share of sly drug deals that weren’t nearly as sly as the dealer thought. Once I got over all of that, though, I became an observer. A fly on the wall. I vanished in my seat once I sat down, often with a book, but rarely actually reading it. People ignore readers. Readers are distracted by words. Under my cloak of reading-induced invisibility, I found that not all of us require a book to be distracted by words. Some of us, about one in one hundred, are distracted by words all day long. On my bus, the CT1, I happened to be in the right spot to watch such an individual day after day as he handled the words that played in his head and slipped from his tongue. On my bus was a schizophrenic.

I’ve read, and can highly recommend, The Quiet Room by Lori Schiller, which recounts the struggles from onset to partial control of schizophrenia from someone who experienced it firsthand. I’ve watched documentaries and read articles. I know what they did to schizophrenics a few hundred years ago (and as recently as the 1960s), and I see people with clearly visible symptoms wasting the day away on a park bench. On the bus, in my obscurity, I watched the condition at a respectable distance for a significant amount of time. From external reactions, I saw a glimpse of what was going on internally. What did I find there? Words, just like the ones I wasn’t reading. I found words, happening in much the same way in his mind as they were happening in mine.

Above: St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Wall of room in Ward Retreat 1. Reproductions made by a patient, a disturbed case of dementia precox.

Now let’s take a look at words for a moment to put this into context. What is thought? Is it a picture of a bicycle? Yes. Is it a computation ingrained along some neural pathway from a long forgotten calculus class? Yes, that too. Most importantly for this conversation, though, it is words. We think in sentences, or fragments, or even individual letters at times, depending on the circumstance. Almost always, a thought that you have is your internal dialogue, a dialogue that has been buried deep inside you since you were very little and you were told “shhhhhhhhhhh” during quiet time, but you still needed that external dialogue to help you get that square block into the circular hole. Once it is buried through the practice of “shhhhhhhhhhh,” we largely forget about it. We all need internal dialogue to navigate our world, whether to type this sentence (I can hear myself if I think about it) or you are rebuilding an engine or replanting a hyacinth. We need that dialogue, and that dialogue is thought.

Schizophrenics generally grow up just as you and I. They build an inner dialogue as they go, amassing thoughts and words without noticing the gears turning in their heads as they unfold the newspaper or put on their pants one leg at a time. And then one day, out of the blue, they are swept away by an unexplainable sense of euphoria and dazzling hope, or plummeted into a hell of agonizing paranoia, and without warning the voices start. The words creep out. Those voices, the ones that keep schizophrenics up for days on end and convince them that the TV is talking to them or that the neighbors (or fellow bus riders) are spying on them, are really just that inner dialogue that we all have. The difference, for reasons that aren’t yet clear, is the part of the brain that tells you “Shhhhhhh, these are internal voices” suddenly gets switched to “Listen up!! Someone is talking to you!” Schizophrenics, it would seem based on contemporary theory, are stuck listening to their thoughts, but can’t tell anymore that it’s just their inner dialogue.

The young man on the bus, we’ll call him Gary because that’s the word my mind attaches to him, was listening to the words rolling around in his head, just as I was as I sat thinking about him. Gary carried on conversations and spoke with his hands, sometimes laughing at or responding to conversations that other people were having – exactly as I would. Often the other passengers would respond to him, and I would wait patiently for the inevitable – slowly they would realize that Gary wasn’t speaking to them. Slowly, invariably, they would recoil and glance at the other passengers to make sure they were not the “crazy” ones. That was the word in their heads – crazy. As I watched Gary over the course of a few months, I quickly began questioning that defense. Was Gary that much different than the rest of us? Other than a thought switch being flipped in the permanent unfiltered position, was Gary any crazier than you or I? The answer, in short, is no. And then, as a writer, I wondered how access to those thoughts, in a much more controlled way, may offer some insight into myself, others, and the human condition as a whole, if only I would hear the words… and perhaps respond to them.

Those voices in your head, the same ones that pester and taunt and trouble a schizophrenic, are at your disposal if only you listen. You have fears that you quash. Don’t quash them. You long for things that society tells you are bad, so you shut it out of your mind. Let it in. You, me, and everybody you have ever known thinks things that you are afraid to look straight in the eye because of what it might mean, perhaps something that you don’t even want to admit to yourself about yourself. Write it.

I felt for Gary as I spied on him from my perch. His life must be confusing, so confusing that some schizophrenics don’t last too long, ending up in an institution or taking their own lives in a desperate attempt to stop those endless, tiring words. From my seat in that bus, I gained a better understanding of what it was to no longer be in control of the characters in your mind that you’ve collected over the years, and for that I will always remember and have limitless sympathy for Gary and everyone like him. But I took away something about myself as well. I learned to really listen to what was going on upstairs. Those voices, those words, are the ones that we should be writing with. They’re already in there and ready-made, so instead of suppressing them, what would happen if we let them fully speak? Where would they take us? What would they say? Some of it, surely, will be uncomfortable, but for all of the discomfort and ugliness there must be an equal amount of poignancy and endearment. There’s a wealth of voices and words, stored and cataloged for as many years as you’ve been alive, waiting to be rewritten as characters and a plot in a book that someone will pretend to be reading on a bus as they sit and spy on the other passengers. And you never know. Perhaps one day I will be holding that book. Perhaps I will be spying on you.

—Alex Pucher

Would you like to know more about these ideas? Click on the hyperlinks within the blog.

And of course, check out The Quiet Room by Lori Schiller: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125424.The_Quiet_Room

See you on the bus…

Censorship: Part Two

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 09:57:30 -0400

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” —Ray Bradbury

There are authors, such as Ray Bradbury and J. D. Salinger, whose novels have been assigned in schools across the nation for decades. A lot of these novels are considered modern classics and have become deeply imbedded in our culture. From the term “catch 22” to “big brother,” from Holden Caulfield to Lolita, it’s hard to imagine a world these books did not help shape. But while these books have been canonized, they have also been consistently challenged, and sometimes even banned. In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at a few of the novels commonly read in high school classes, and why they became so controversial.

Published in 1951, Catcher in the Rye is J.D. Salinger’s most famous work. Its teenage narrator, Holden Caulfield, spends three days alone in New York City after getting kicked out of four schools in a row. His adventures in NYC include flirting with 30-year-old women, watching a man in an adjacent hotel room put on an evening gown and even calling up a woman he’d never met but who (he’d heard) used to be a stripper, believing he can convince her to sleep with him (he doesn’t). The novel deals with issues of identity, sexuality and alienation, something most—if not all—teenagers deal with, so it makes perfect sense that it is taught in high schools. However, the book has been challenged almost from the day it was published. Reasons for challenging the book include (but certainly are not limited to) Holden’s profanity, blasphemy and sexual references. The book has also been challenged on the grounds that Holden is a poor role model for teenagers (he drinks, smokes and lies) and the belief that the book encourages rebellion. In 1960, a teacher in Oklahoma was fired for assigning the book (the teacher appealed and was later reinstated, but the book was removed from use in the school). Since then, it has been challenged, removed from reading lists and even banned in schools across the country, even as recently as 2009. Interestingly, in 1981, Catcher in the Rye was the most censored book in America as well as the second most frequently taught novel in public schools.

Another favorite amongst high school teachers is Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding in 1954. The story revolves around a group of young, well-educated boys who become stranded on an uninhabited island. The boys elect a leader, Ralph, and try to govern themselves, but eventually regress to a more primitive state. Issues in the book revolve around human nature, individual wellbeing vs. common good and the fight between groupthink and individuality. The book placed on both the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list (#25 on the readers’ list and #41 on the editors’) as well as Time magazine’s 100 best English language novels 1923-2005. However, due mostly to the violence and profanity, it also placed #68 on the American Library Association’s list of 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990-99. In 1981 it was challenged in a North Carolina high school because the novel is “demoralizing inasmuch as it implies that man is little more than an animal.” Since then, it has been challenged in schools from Arizona to New York.

I’m going to end this blog on a personal favorite of mine, Slaughterhouse-Five, written by Kurt Vonnegut. Written in 1969, it follows the adventures of Billy Pilgrim, a time-traveler and WWII soldier. Billy is taken prisoner by the Germans and placed with other POWs in a rundown slaughterhouse. He becomes “unstuck” in time, living his life experiences in a nonlinear sequence. He is abducted by aliens who place him in a zoo with a female. These aliens, from the planet Tralfamadore, have already seen and know every instant of their lives. They believe they cannot change their fates but can instead choose to focus on any given moment of their lives. Billy becomes convinced. The novel explores free will and fate, and the illogical nature of humans. Vonnegut also explores fatalism. The book has been the target of several censorship attempts, due to its tone and allegedly obscene content. In 1973, members of the board of Drake High School in North Dakota burned 32 copies of the book because they found it “objectionable.” Vonnegut himself wrote a letter to the board a month later, stating that the book burning was “extraordinarily insulting.” He goes on to say,

“If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.”

The book has also been challenged in over 15 schools or towns across the country, despite being ranked 18^th on the Modern Library list of top books of the 20^th century. It is also considered Vonnegut’s most influential work.

While these books, and countless others, have been challenged or banned, they persevere because of the universal truths they speak about human nature. I hope that schools will continue to teach them, and others like them, for years to come. And even if you’re one of the few students who managed to get through high school without reading a few controversial books, it’s never too late.

Want to learn more? Check out the following links:
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html?kilgore
http://www.ala.org/advocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/challengedclassics/reasonsbanned
http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/

—Laura Hyman

Celebrating Stephen Crane

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 03:49:33 -0400

None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks. —Stephen Crane, “The Open Boat”

These lines open Stephen Crane’s (1871–1900) horrific short story, “The Open Boat.” Based on his own experience, the story reveals the brutality and randomness of nature as four exhausted men, imprisoned in the confines a ten-foot dingy, are battered by frigid winds and treacherous waves.

Captain Edward Murphy of the SS Commodore (pictured right) recounted his crew’s desperate struggle for survival. Actually, the delightful John Mann, a Ponce Inlet Lighthouse volunteer, assumed Murphy’s persona at Lilian House’s 2012 Stephen Crane Festival in March. Stephen Crane recuperated here after his harrowing experience at sea – although nightmares haunted him for the remainder of his short life.

Lilian Place, with its high ceilings, wood crown moldings and heart-of-pine floors, typifies Italianate High Victorian architecture. Laurence and Mary Eliza Thompson, among Daytona Beach’s first residents, built it on the Halifax River in 1884, salvaging their woodwork from shipwrecks. No bridges to the mainland existed, so residents and visitors rowed, sailed or took the ferry across the river (now the Intracoastal Waterway). The Thompson family lived here for 100 years, selling it in 1984. The Heritage Trust Preservation of Volusia County acquired the neglected property in 2009 and set about restoring it. Dr. Nancy Long heads the Trust and relies on an all-volunteer team to bring the house to life. Furnishings, on loan from Daytona Beach residents, create the feel of a luxurious 1884 dwelling. The volunteers deserve enormous credit for their efforts to date. They’ve repaired the roof, tented for termites, fixed water damage, restored the exterior, and repainted the historic building in original colors.

It’s no surprise that the house has attracted a supernatural spirit. Lucille, a ghost, is a long-time resident of Lilian Place. On the second floor, “Lucille’s Room” contains several dollhouses. Lucille first appeared about 100 years ago, wearing a white, button-up high collar. In 1950 she appeared to a renter and said, “Don’t be afraid. My name is Lucille.” Those who grew up in the house have recalled Lucille’s pranks, such as turning on water in the bathroom, locking doors and switching on the vacuum cleaner. Dr. Long said the Lilian Place sensor alarm sounds in the middle of the night about once a week, so perhaps Lucille’s mischief continues.

Stephen Crane, a newspaper correspondent for the New York Press, came to Jacksonville, Florida, to write about gun running. He approached the SS Commodore’s Captain Edward Murphy in the dining room of the St. James Hotel (now City Hall). Crane, 24, already enjoyed a national reputation because of The Red Badge of Courage, a book remarkable for its time because the story’s told from a private’s point of view. Captain Murphy recognized Crane and invited the author and his companion, Cora, to join him for dinner. Crane had met the notorious Cora a few days earlier in a love-you-forever moment. At dinner, Crane broached the subject of signing on as an able bodied seaman, a convenient cover for his correspondent work.

The SS Commodore was the finest of the filibustering fleet. A century ago filibuster meant privately funded military campaigns against foreign nations. The Cuban Junta’s leadership in New York had acquired the Commodore, a former harbor tug, and assigned her to Jacksonville, Florida. She made several successful trips to Cuba at a time when it was illegal to supply guns to rebels hoping to overthrow Spanish loyalists.

The Commodore’s greatest fame, like the Titanic’s, came from her sinking. She went under on January 2, 1897, eleven miles off of Daytona Beach. Why she sank is open to speculation: perhaps the guns and money overloaded her; perhaps running aground – twice – on Jacksonville’s foggy St. John’s River caused damage; perhaps the heavy seas and unpredictable currents finally overwhelmed her.

The illicit nature of filibustering offered allure and excitement because capture by Loyalist Cubans could result in death by firing squad. There was precedent. A couple of weeks before the Commodore’s departure from Jacksonville on New Year’s Eve, 1896, however, filibustering was legalized. Without the worry of harassment, the crew hoped for an uneventful journey.

Crane and Captain Murphy conversed during their two days at sea. On January 2, 1897, while talking to Crane in the pilothouse, the engineer informed the captain that the Commodore was taking on water.

Three lifeboats and a dingy launched into rough, cold waters, the temperature estimated at 56 degrees. Separated from the other boats, the ten-foot dingy held Captain Murphy, Crane (pictured above), oiler Billy Higgins, and Montgomery, cook and steward. They were packed so tightly that any movement had to be coordinated with the others before making the attempt.

One of the lifeboats floundered and those crew members reboarded the Commodore and went into the water with her. A man swam toward the dingy. The captain ordered Montgomery to throw him a rope, and instructed the man to stay in the water so they could tow him. Panicked, the man started pulling hand-over-fist toward the dingy. Captain Murphy made a decision that would haunt him forever: he told Montgomery to release the rope.

They rowed and bailed for 31½ hours. The light from the Mosquito Inlet lighthouse (now Ponce Inlet Lighthouse) offered a beacon of hope. Crane wrote: “It was precisely like the point of a pin. It took an anxious eye to find a lighthouse so tiny.” As infinitesimal as the lighthouse looked to Crane, it is one of the tallest in the country. Its light, magnified by an oil-lamp Fresnel lens, stretched from St. Augustine to Cape Canaveral and 20 miles out to sea.

The dingy capsized as it hit the furious surf near shore. Crane had $700 in Spanish gold strapped to him and quickly shed his money belt. It’s still out there. They reached shore, but any joy at being alive was tempered by Billy Higgins’ drowned body lying on the beach. Crane recuperated that night at the Thompson’s home.

Six miles from Lilian Place stands the lighthouse. On the nights of January 2 and 3, 1897, lighthouse keeper Thomas Patrick O’Hagan and assistants carried the kerosene 203 steps up the tower, as they did each evening, in 40-pound containers. They gave Crane that glimmer of hope. The lighthouse property contains exhibits on the keepers and their families and a lens exhibit. Each night the lighthouse continues operating, although now a 1,000-watt lamp operated by volunteers provides private aid for navigation.

Crane died of tuberculosis 3½ years later in Badenweiler, Germany. With Cora’s arms encircling him he feverishly muttered about changing positions in the dinghy.

For more information:
http://www.heritagepreservationtrust.org/
http://www.ponceinlet.org/

To assist with renovation efforts of Lilian Place, contact Dr. Nancy Long: longnz1@gmail.com

—Ann Marie Byrd

Literary Distractions

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 07:12:39 -0400

Whether you’re an avid reader, a writer furiously scribbling away, or a bit of both, you may occasionally hit a bit of a slump; you’re tired, antsy, you need to take a break and recharge the juices of your literary battery.

Today, Fiction Fix presents you a seemingly brief blog post, in which every single word leads to a literary distraction.

There’s always a point in a novel (that you’re reading, or more impressively, writing), when you need to do some internet surfing. These links might stimulate creativity or tickle your funny bone. Off you go.

—Leah Clancy

Graphic Literature

Wed, 30 May 2012 06:50:00 -0400

In August 2000, I was sitting in a room at The University of North Florida for my first faculty meeting. New to the school and to Florida, I looked like the newcomer I was. In weather better suited for Equatorial Guinea, I was still walking around sweating my brains out in jeans, oxford, and Doc Martens. On the other hand, Brad Simkulet, the teacher who sat next to me that first day, screamed Florida: sandals, shorts, t-shirt, sun-blonded hair. He was also funny, snide and subversive, and went out of his way to make me feel like I belonged there. Safe to say, I liked him immediately. I certainly remember Brad fondly for his generosity, even though he left for the West Coast and bigger and better things at the end of that year. However, I recall Brad specifically here because he first introduced me to graphic literature.

I don’t remember the context for the conversation, but Brad suggested I read this book Maus, by Art Spiegelman. A comic? About the Holocaust? And Nazis are cats and Jews are mice?…Now, I had just completed ten years of higher education in literature. And in all that time, I had never seen a comic or graphic novel on a syllabus, never read a scholarly article that referenced them, and cannot even recall them coming up in any of those innumerable, interminable college conversations about books. Heck, even as a kid, I had read only the occasional comic book. So it’s safe to say that I bought Maus, not because of scholarly interest or because I thought such a book could possibly be successful (I mean, a beast-fable comic about the Holocaust?), but instead I bought it because Brad said I should. Raise a glass to peer pressure…

Motivation aside, by the time I finished Maus, I was hooked. It was an amazing, brave and captivating book, unlike any I’d read before. In the ensuing months, I went about following a ‘trail’ of such texts: from Maus to Moore’s Watchmen to Miller’s Dark Knight Returns to Satrapi’s Persepolis to Eisner’s Contract with God to Clowes’ Ghost World to Thompson’s Blankets, and so on and so on. It’s a trail that, as a reader, I’m still following today. But I distinctly remember thinking, before I’d even finished Maus, “This would be really cool to teach.” So, for the first literature course of my second year, I inserted Maus as the last text we’d read. I confess that I pitched it to students as a “treat”: a fun (easy?) carrot to dangle in front of students, if they worked hard on all those dense poems, Shakespearean dramas, and literary short stories we’d read during the semester.

Instead, what both the students and I discovered was that Maus enabled them to learn more about literature, what constitutes the literary, the art of reading, and the processes of critical thinking than any other text we’d read. It wasn’t that Maus was “fun” or “easier,” or that it was forbidden fruit. For students, as for me, this text tapped into something deeper.

Having taught courses on graphic literature for ten years now, I’m convinced that part of this ‘something deeper’ is our rich graphic lineage. Our earliest preserved stories, like the cave paintings at Lascaux, are graphic. Our Western alphabet—based on the Phoenician alphabet—is originally pictorial (and economic): A’s represented (and counted) oxen or cows; B’s women or households; C’s camels, and so on. The most popular language on Earth today (and one of the oldest) is Chinese, a pictographic language. Philosophically, for centuries Platonic thinkers have postulated our world as a world of images and representations, just as Jung countered Freud by postulating archetypes as our foundational psychology. More recently, cognitive scientists have delved into graphic processes central to all our minds, what Steven Pinker calls our “shared understanding of the truth”: the way our “thoughts are anchored to things and situations in the world.”

But it’s that world in which we live today that provides another attractive exigency. Unless you live under rocks, you are bombarded with visuals 24/7/365. Symbols, logos, ads: graphics, both subtle and explicit. Whether savvy political commercials saturating the media to seek our votes, product commercials that seek our money, or news media that seek our trust and belief, a distinctly graphic discourse runs through our culture. We construct ourselves graphically in this new media too. Whether we did it through MySpace or Second Life, or do it now through Facebook or Match.com or Instagram or Pinterest, evolving social media encourage us to (re)present “who we are” in a significantly graphic way. So thinking critically about graphic texts, learning how to read them, and even working to produce them ourselves are (not to sell it too hard) perhaps survival skills for the 21^st century.

My students and I are not alone in our compulsion for reading, studying and enjoying graphic texts. Comics and graphic novels have never been more culturally popular. Despite drooping sales in the publishing industry as a whole, graphic novels and comics sales continue to rise each year. Specific publishing trends suggest that this is not a passing fad. Within graphic novels and comics publishing, for instance, the children’s graphic novel is the single fastest growing sales demographic. Additionally, digital comics sales/downloads have doubled just since 2010. This spring, webcomics server ComiXology announced that it has downloaded more than 50 million comics since launch, with 10% of that coming in December 2011 alone. And in the theatres, graphic novels and comics provide the substance for hit films and franchises. From Spider-man to The Dark Knight, Shrek to The Avengers, comics and graphic novels provided the source for about one out of six top grossing films of the 2000s.

Academic and scholarly circles are investing as well. In the U.S., there are no less than five museums dedicated to the preservation and study of comics and graphic novels. Research libraries at Yale and Columbia host significant special collections of such texts, as does the Library of Congress. Graphic novels and comics have been the focus of numerous Modern Language Association panels and publications during the last decade. It’s hard to find a college that is not teaching a course on these texts in one or more of its departments. Several respected colleges, including Cal-Berkeley, Savannah College of Art and Design and Emerson College, now even offer entire degree programs in studying and/or producing these texts. And again, other specific trends suggest that this development will continue. Since 2000, at least 55,000 dissertations and theses on graphic literature have been written and accepted in American colleges and universities. This certainly indicates a future in which scholars increasingly embrace, study, teach and publish on graphic texts.

All of this is not to denigrate the written word, whose power and beauty has rightfully been a focus of work, enjoyment and study…not least of which, in the pages of Fiction Fix. However, the current Fiction Fix issue participates in this growing and important graphic discourse: one that recognizes that word and image are correlated; and one that recognizes that a genre that marries word and image on the page is a genre worthy of attention and appreciation. And in this issue, there are several and sundry examples from this genre that are particularly worthy.

“Postcards from the Hecatomb” offers an epistolary pastiche, while “The Clown Genocide” offers a series of woodcuts that channel Albrecht Durer via John Wayne Gacy (or vice versa). “In Need of a Hand” is a travelogue, murder mystery, romance, and a story of self-awareness; it is also, ultimately, none of these things. (Read it. You’ll see.) And “My Life in Gadgets” interrogates those ways in which we construct ourselves graphically and technologically, and then proceeds to participate in just such a construction.

Each of the texts in this issue possesses the power and talent to get a new graphic reader started down a trail that Maus started for me over a decade ago. I hope they do. And if you come to this issue an experienced and committed reader of graphic literature, then I hope the texts in this issue intrigue and impress you, giving you evidence that the future of this genre is bright and diverse. Thanks to all the contributors to this issue for sharing your work with me, just as I’d like to thank all the (new and old) readers of Fiction Fix for supporting the enterprise. Thanks to the editors of Fiction Fix for trusting me to work alongside them for this issue (a decision they must surely regret). They do an incredible job, and they do it passionately. And lastly, to Brad…wherever you are and whatever you are doing, man: thanks.

—Russell Turney

Read the full issue of Fiction Fix Issue 11 at http://fictionfix.net.