FP Blogs

Crikey, yet another new Final Fantasy MP3, this time courtesy of Zoilus. It’s another one from the Lukashevsky-homage disc, (Final Fantasy) Plays To Please; a real old-timey movie kinda tune:

Nancy Mairs is a poet and essayist whose work includes A Dynamic God: Living an Unconventional Catholic Faith, Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled, and Ordinary Time: Cycles in Marriage, Faith, and Renewal. She recently received the 2008 Arizona Literary Treasure Award, which prompted this essay. She lives in Tucson with her husband, George.

"It is my pleasure to tell you," the letter began, "that the Arizona Humanities Council will be awarding you the 2008 Arizona Literary Treasure Award this year." After a second reading, I decided that this was not a form letter (for all I knew there could be a whole chest of treasures out there) or a hoax. Although the name might sound a little silly ("Gee, it sounds like you should be dead," a friend remarked), I was delighted to have my work singled out for such recognition. I took years to call myself a writer—it sounded so pretentious—and then more years to stop thinking of myself as a Boston poet and start identifying myself as a southwestern writer, and now the Southwest has embraced me. This is not a trajectory I could ever have conceived 35 years ago when I arrived, husband and two little children in tow, to spend a couple of years earning an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona. I can no longer recall the visions and ambitions of that young woman. One of the features of getting old, I find, is that I look back time after time and ask myself how the heck I got here.

I am most commonly asked, when I speak with writing students, "How do I get published?" and the only answer I can come up with is, "Beats me." I'm not being facetious with this less than helpful response. But when I look back, I see my writing life as a series of (mostly happy) accidents. I was 40 when my first full-length book was published, and that was by happenstance. The Western States Book Award had just been founded, and Jim Hepworth, the director of what became Confluence Press, asked if he could enter a collection of my essays. I wasn't yet thinking in terms of a book, but I'd written ten essays by this time, which I happily gave to Jim and, since there wasn't any entry fee, I asked whether he would submit a manuscript of my poetry as well. Politely, though unenthusiastically, he agreed.

Just beginning a new job, I didn't give the competition further thought, even when Jim dropped by my office a couple of months later. "Remember the essays I submitted to that contest?" he asked. I nodded. "Well, they won honorable mention."

"That's great!" I said. Jim sat quietly. "Better than nothing." Jim agreed but didn't get up to go. "And the poems?" I finally asked.

"They won." He grinned at my dropped jaw. This was not the outcome he had hoped for, I knew, but he never grudged my joy. The award included $2500 for me, a trip to the ABA convention in Washington with a reception on Capitol Hill, and support for publication. Jim did eventually publish In All the Rooms of the Yellow House. (Even with financial assistance, small presses struggle). I was happy because I think books of poetry are harder to get published than books of prose; the essays could look after themselves.

As in fact they did. An editor at the University of Arizona Press who knew they'd received honorable mention rang me up and asked if he could take a look at them. A couple of months later, he rang again and asked if the press could publish them. Just like that. They constituted most of my doctoral dissertation, so publication had to be put off until I'd finished my PhD. Many people said I should hold out for a trade publisher who would pay an advance, but people who read them loved them and I wanted to make them available to a larger audience right then. I have never regretted my choice. The U of A Press publicist hand-carried the manuscript, Plaintext: Deciphering A Woman's Life, into the New York Times Book Review, which gave it a positive review, and I was off and running. One of the essays, "On Being a Cripple," has been published in many anthologies, including the Norton Reader, and the permission fees have been welcome.

So you can see why I say luck, luck, luck! All I had to do was to write poems, write essays (and I'm not denigrating the work that went into them), and they found their way into print. I'm not reluctant to tell people how I got published, but neither am I the person to ask. Better to consult someone who has experienced the struggles the process can entail and found ways to surmount them. I haven't worked hard enough! I did have an agent, but small presses and university presses don't use agents, although she has been wonderfully helpful since then. I belong to several writers' organizations, such as the Authors Guild, PEN America, and Poets & Writers, whose publications offer helpful information, and I remember years of perusing the Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses and the Writers' Market. I collected a good many rejection letters and published a handful of poems. I even had a pretty little chapbook of my poems published by a short-lived but tasteful small press here in Tucson. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't publish very much early on, because I don't have a lot of juvenilia to live down.

In my experience, a writer's life has been a tranquil one. Perhaps the report of an author of bestsellers would tell a more glamorous tale, but I am lucky to sell a few thousand books. I do not seek out publication in magazines, though I have been sought out for a number of articles. I usually accept invitations to speak, but I don't solicit them. Early on, I think I'd hoped my books would sell by the cartload (in the same way a parent hopes that her child will get the loudest applause in a school play), but hope is no longer a part of my emotional repertoire. Contenting myself with what I have has taken over. I soon realized that the stuff I write is never going to cause a stampede at the bookstore. I could try to write a bestseller (always my mother's choice for my career), but I probably wouldn't produce a very good book. I write very good personal essays, to which my audience of reflective readers respond strongly (although sometimes with shock), dealing with matters I consider life-and-death: the body's frailty and strength, the mystery of the spiritual world in which it is embedded, the actions on which this world depends for survival. Hardly popular material. But except for the money (I have a decidedly venal streak), I feel no remorse about the odd little foot path I have followed.

Lest my placid writing life seem dull, every so often it erupts in wild elation. I was even in a bidding war once! My proposal for the book that became Remembering the Bone House created a little flurry, culminating in an advance of $52,500 From Harper & Row. This was by far the biggest advance I have ever had, but I regretted the choice. Except for my editor and a liability lawyer, no one ever read the book, much less publicized it. I felt I had caused tremendous disappointment, as I felt after HarperCollins (by then owned by Rupert Murdoch) published the next book, Carnal Acts, and so I felt more released than dismayed by the rejection of my proposal for Ordinary Time. My experiences with a trade publisher had been debilitating. "Where do you want me to send it next?" my agent asked, and I responded without hesitation, "North Point or Beacon."

North Point, a wonderful San Francisco publisher of beautifully designed books by authors like Wendell Berry, accepted it but then folded; Beacon agreed to publish the book if only I would write it. Just then (and I mean that literally: I got the news from Beacon as we were walking out the door to go to the hospital) my husband was diagnosed with stage-IV melanoma, and writing a book seemed out of the question. But Beacon had assigned me to an extraordinary editor. Andy was my children's age, ABD in ethics from the University of Michigan, and mine was his first book. When I gave him a draft, he had a gift for asking me questions that stimulated me to rewrite in ways that expanded and deepened the material, leading me to ideas I didn't know I could have. Mine are the pretty turns of phrase in my work. Andy is responsible for their resonance.

I have stayed with Beacon for nearly twenty years, and I plan to die in their stable. Presses sometimes sell the paperback rights to books, for which they may get tidy sums of money. After Beacon sold the rights to an exceptionally successful book, I panicked. "You won't sell me, will you?" And they never have. Maybe they've offered and gotten no takers, but they're too polite to tell me. Whatever the reason, they've published four more books of essays, the last one written at their request. How lucky is that! To belong to a publisher who not only agrees to bring out your work but asks you to write more. My advances have gotten smaller and smaller over the years—but I tell them it's not about the money. At Beacon, everyone reads my books, from the receptionist to the director. I'm treated like a treasure, not a disappointment—and that's a whole lot better for the soul, let me tell you.

I've had other peak moments. I received an NEA Fellowship one year. I wrote A Troubled Guest with the support of a handsome fellowship from the Project on Death in America of the Soros Foundation. My only real regret is that I never won a Guggenheim Fellowship. I applied for more years than I can recall, and every year in March I was devastated by the rejection letter, until I recognized that my grief was unwholesome for my life. I stopped applying several years ago—and now March offers the promise of spring instead of several week of emotional prostration. I can't remember all the projects I fruitlessly proposed, but five do stand out: an exploration of the ways in which my surroundings have shaped my erotic life; observations of ordinary life from the perspective of a Catholic feminist; meditations on living with a disability; narratives about death and its impact on the living; and notes from the radical religious left. Since these became Remembering the Bone House, Ordinary Time, Waist-High in the World, A Troubled Guest, and A Dynamic God, I can't claim that the Guggenheim has been utterly useless.

The lessons of my writing career have proved pretty pedestrian. If you concentrate on the task at hand, without aspiring to a particular outcome—whether wealth, literary acclaim, or audience adoration—something will happen. Something always. I can't tell you whether it will be good, but I can promise you that it will surprise you. You just have to slog along. I don't know whether I'll write another book. I don't think so, but I've said that before. For the time being, I'll relax and bask in my status as a literary treasure. Until I find out Whatever Happens Next.

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that is in some way relevant to their recently published books.

Of all the books I have recommended to friends and family over the past year, none has been as universally enjoyed as Susannah Felts' debut novel, This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record. From young teens to grandparents, the readers' responses have been unanimously positive. Though published as a young adult novel, This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record can be appreciated by adults as well. The coming of age story is told through Felts' always sharp prose, and examines the true meaning of friendship through the rollercoaster of high school life.

Author Joe Meno wrote of the book:

"This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record is an incredibly intimate, thoughtfully written novel, a kind of snapshot album rendered in glimmering prose, one perfect record of the daydreams and nightmares of everyone’s years in high school."

In her own words, here is Susannah Felts' Book Notes essay for her debut novel, This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record:

Two facts about this book, to start. Fact one: One of the cover designs considered for This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record featured a cassette with the tape spooling out to form the title, much as the film does on the cover we chose. Fact two: The title is snipped from the Violent Femmes’ lyrics for “Kiss Off.”

So you might deduce from these facts that music is significant in this book, and you would be correct. I’m not sure I could write anything about teenagers without music being significant. I still feel pretty teen-age sometimes, and I still cling to music the way I did when I was in high school, although I don’t go around wearing headphones nearly as much (back then, one schoolmate started calling me “naked” when he saw me without them). I still get the urge to make mixes for people so they will know who I am and so I can maybe make them like me or at least think I’m cool. God help me, I sometimes still think about life in terms of categories like “lame” and “cool.” I want to know which bands the people whose opinions I respect are listening to. I occasionally judge people for liking music I think is lame. I liked a lot of music in high school that I now dislike and think of as decidedly lame, and I started liking music then that I still think is not lame. I also like music that I know is lame.

All of which may be something to get over, sure. Forgive me, I grew up in the boondocks outside Nashville, Tennessee, with my alarm clock set to the classic rock station; I have baggage. Case in point: Recently I downloaded “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” by Elvin Bishop and proceeded to listen to it repeatedly for days. It’s on my iTunes now, waiting for one of my many sappy and regressive moments. I listen to it and I picture drunk, lonely men and women pawing at each other at last call in small dank bars across America, while some other drunk, lonely men swagger through another game of pool, and everyone smokes. This image satisfies me. Is that because I am it makes me feel cooler, better than one of those sad men and women? Or because I feel a secret kinship with them? I am not sure.

I digress. (Classic rock will do that to you. Beware.) Despite all the truth-talk above about my own adolescence, TWGDOYPR is not the thinly veiled autobiography that some reviewers and readers have taken it for. With that in mind, here’s my real experience some twenty-plus years ago (yikes) of these songs versus their use in the book.

“On the Beach,” “Summertime Rolls,” and “Ocean Size,” Jane’s Addiction

When I visualize the cover of Jane’s Addiction’s Nothing Shocking, one of those albums that definitely Changed My Life, I see myself staring it while seated in my mom’s gray (with faux wood detailing) Dodge Caravan. Mom was driving and I think we were near Rivergate Mall. To reiterate: Me, age 15, in my mom’s minivan outside the mall, staring at that pic of the naked Siamese twin chicks with heads on fire, alone and absorbed in my fascination, with mom in the next seat over. Pretty much says it all. I must have stared at that tape insert for untold cumulative hours, but this is the moment that stuck. Sometimes you wonder why certain moments in time inexplicably stick while so much else is lost. In this case, it makes perfect sense.

In TWGDOYPR, Vaughn—our timid, camera-wielding, good-girl-dabbling-in-bad narrator—gives a CD of Nothing’s Shocking to her wild friend Sophie, to replace Sophie’s old cassette copy. The girls listen to “Summertime Rolls” on Sophie’s new boombox at, you guessed it, the start of a summer night. Naturally, transgression lurks in the hours to come.

“Ocean Size” is pure rage. They cannot move you, man, no one tries. Is there any more fitting quote for an angst-addled teen locked in her bedroom with the stereo cranked and nowhere else to escape to? There is not. And “On the Beach”? This song is either what you want to hear when you smoke pot, or when you lay on your bedroom floor with your ear next to the stereo speaker and wish you knew how it felt to smoke pot.

“No New Tale to Tell,” Love and Rockets

My first serious boyfriend had a very hot best friend who had a long string of girlfriends. One lasted a little longer than the others—she really had him snared. I can’t remember her name, I only met her a few times, but she had huge sexy eyes and heavy bangs; maybe she looked like Cat Power. Maybe she was Cat Power. She fascinated me, which meant that I was nearly mute in her presence. The four of us went out one night and she drove us in her little white Datsun. Love and Rockets was in the tape deck. I associate this song with barreling around an interstate clover exchange, the centrifugal force pushing me against the car door, and as the little car trembled and hurled forth I was more afraid of and awed by that girl than ever.

In TWGDOYPR, Vaughn does something naughty while this song is playing at a house party. Something naughtier than I ever would’ve done in high school. I think I chose this song for the scene because, ever since that night in the little white car, the song has held a trace of incipient danger for me, crystallized in the looping, cascading violin notes at the end. The lyrics—People like to hear their names / I’m no exception / Please call my name—resonate with Vaughn’s attraction to photography and her difficult friendship with Sophie, too.

“Where Eagles Dare,” Misfits

One of my best friends in high school was obsessed with the Misfits. He had hundreds of dollars’ worth of Misfits singles and other paraphernalia, a sum that very much impressed me, as I didn’t have hundreds of dollars’ worth of anything that I’d bought for myself. He didn’t drink and he didn’t smoke; he was a sweet Jewish kid who drove a sweet little standard-shift red Jetta (the super-boxy ones they used to make back before Jettas became sorority girl cars), and I can still hear him singing: Mommy, can I go out and kill tonight. “Wait—just listen to this part!” he’d say, grinning enormously at you while you dutifully listened a little closer to whatever five seconds of a given song really got him going. Eventually he sold all the Misfits stuff, and in college he found a new obsession: Phish, and Phish concert bootlegs. The objects of affection may change; the impulse remains.

In TWGDOYPR, several characters are into the Misfits—but they’re the recognizable type, the ones who, even today, might pin trademark skull patches on their black hoodies. It occurs to me now that my old friend, the most unlikely Misfits fan, is really the more interesting character. I should have put him in the book. What can I say? Fiction indeed. Maybe I’ll put him in the next book. Anyway, Sophie sings along with this song—I ain’t no goddamn son of a bitch! You better think about it, baby!—while she and Vaughn are waiting for Sophie’s friend Jotham, who wears an honest-to-goodness devil-lock, to buy cigarettes at the Mapco.

Anything from Reckoning, Life’s Rich Pageant, Murmur or Fables of the Reconstruction, REM

OK, here’s some common ground between me and Vaughn. She’s an REM fanatic, I was an REM fanatic. Against my better judgment, I will tell you that there exists, buried in the files, a black-and-white self-portrait of yours truly sitting underneath an REM poster in her bedroom, eyes tilted lovingly upward at Michael Stipe. Dramatic lighting and all. Can I change the subject? REM was such a perfect band back then. I always hated that I didn’t catch on to them sooner; like, I missed my chance to see them play the Exit/In in Nashville in the mid-80s (by the time I caught on, they were well into arena shows). Still, they were there when I needed them. I may often feel teen-age, but I don’t think I can feel that way about a band again.

“Add It Up” and “Kiss Off,” Violent Femmes

I wish I could remember how young me found out about the Femmes. I want someone to thank, because I could thank him or her now. I had no idea what that little girl on the cover of the self-titled album was doing there, but I knew this music was like nothing else I’d listened to before, and it paved the way for many more horizon-stretching finds in the cassette aisles at Tower Records, where I idled away no small tally of hours during high school. Now the Violent Femmes are featured in a Wendy’s commercial, where their lyrics seem a great deal less logical than they do as repurposed for the title of this book. I guess that’s how the kids like it now: all that crazy random juxtaposition and shit, and who cares if it’s all to sell burgers, because everything is selling something, right? I wonder what the Violent Femmes think about their music—the infamous celebration of masturbation, no less—ending up as the soundtrack for burger-hawking more than twenty years after its release. I wonder if they’ve made a boatload of money from said use, and if they have, more power to them. I have nothing to offer but a sincere merci, dearest Violent Femmes: your lyric fits snugly with my story on no less than three levels of meaning. Please do not come after me and demand money, because, unlike that perpetually youthful Wendy, I have none.

While “Kiss Off” gave me my title but never appears in the narrative, “Add it Up” was there from the first draft. Sophie dances around Vaughn’s kitchen to it when they are just beginning to be friends. I would love to tell you that I had a friend who delivered the Femmes, and herself, to me in just this way. I did not. Unless I’ve forgotten entirely. Which is a possibility.

Susannah Felts and This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record links:

the author's website
the author's MySpace page
the book's page at the publisher
excerpt from the book

Birmingham Magazine review
The Book Muncher review
Enfuse review
Everyday Yeah review
Nashville Scene review
Switchback Books review
The Ya Ya Yas review
Young Adult Books Central review

carp(e) libris interview with the author
Timetable interview with the author
Venus Zine interview with the author
What to Wear During an Orange Alert? interview with the author

also at Largehearted Boy:

Previous Book Notes submissions (authors create playlists for their book)
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
guest book reviews
musician/author interviews
directors and actors discuss their film's soundtracks
52 Books, 52 Weeks (2008 Edition)
52 Books, 52 Weeks (2007 Edition)
52 Books, 52 Weeks (2006 Edition)
52 Books, 52 Weeks (2005 Edition)
52 Books, 52 Weeks (2004 Edition)

tags: books music fiction ya youngadult

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1, 2, 3, 4, Let's Start A Clown War, originally uploaded by Vidiot.

Surflock
One of the troubles with owning a small(ish) car and traveling great distances for surfing; you inevitably run into the scenario of not wanting to leave a board unattended. This is usually pretty easy to deal with unless…

Now what happens when you want to bring two boards — let’s say your longboard and a fish.

While you’re out sliding around having a great time you have to leave one of those boards somewhere. Bringing them all down to the beach is one option but if the current is strong you can quickly be far from your spot — or on busy days it can be hard to spot / keep an eye on everything.

We found these “surfboard locks” (Couple more photos here on my Flickr account) that we’re pretty cheap (25$) that can either lock through your leash plug (if you have a standard cup/bar one) or around a small slug which you can insert into your fin-box.

We used it over the weekend as Johan had a second board he wanted to bring down.

First thoughts:

• It worked perfectly and quickly.
• It’s really more of a strong deterrent than a rock solid locking system.
• Attaching to the plug is more secure than to the fin-box as you could remove the lock with a screwdriver and some time. To remove from the leash plug - it would be more likely to wreck the board. Update: the designer of this product actually let me know that this is incorrect - he’s right - I hadn’t considered that if the clamp is locked there’s be no way to slide it out of the fin box; if it’s in, it’s staying in!
• The cable is wrapped in smooth plastic finish - no scratches on the car.
• The cable is long enough to reach from rack to plug for almost any length board.
• Still recommend leaving your board inside a board-bag + locked.
• 3 keys included is a nice feature - leave an extra one hidden away in your car always.
• You could lock your board to anything solid.

Find them here:
http://www.surflocks.com

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Being in San Francisco for Slow Food Nation means I get to catch the inaugural week at Four Barrel, Jeremy Tooker’s stunningly beautiful coffeebar in the Mission. I made this timelapse of the scene yesterday.

Big congratulations to Jeremy and the crew.

Aimee Mann talks to Greg Kot's Turn It Up blog.

“I spend a lot of time on computers, but I’m not a huge fan of what they provide,” she says. “They have taken away from us, in a way. It has made available so much entertainment that people are constantly distracted. MySpace and Facebook gave hope to everyone who ever owned a guitar and some kind of recording device. Their music is now available and fighting to get noticed along with everybody else’s. There are millions of singers and songwriters and bands, and when there is too much choice my reaction is I don’t know what to listen to. So my choice is not to listen to anything.”

The Guardian's music blog notes the importance of a good bass player to a band.

Liz Phair talks to the Boston Herald about her early success.

“You’ve got to remember I went from zero to famous and I had no experience,” she said. “All of a sudden I was the (expletive) queen across the nation. I was not prepared for that.”

Paste interviews John Convertino of Calexico about the band's new album, Carried To Dust.

Pattern Is Movement lists some of its favorite things at Pitchfork.

ReadWriteWeb discusses the future of online music.

PopMatters interviews author