Category: Literature

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We Were Just Talking

A couple of decades of online conversation has revealed many thing about our culture, about our selves. One is how little most of us seem to consider what we say before we say it.

I recently saw the term “flaming” used in a description of certain problematic exchanges in a forum I till recently frequented.  I’m sure it’s still in current usage, but I hadn’t thought of the term in some time because I long ago vacated forums and chatrooms where this was a common problem.  One of the more congenial things about FaceBook is that while flaming (and trolling and all such related hate-baiting tactics) still happens, users aren’t locked into the thread where it occurs. With multiple conversations going on all the time among many different arrangements of “friends” it is not a problem requiring something like a nuclear option to deal with.  You just stop commenting on a poisoned thread and move over to a new one, often with the same people.  True, the flamer might move with you, but the mix-and-match nature of FaceBook makes this less convenient.

Unlike a dedicated forum with a regular membership, etc.

You can find one, filled with like minds and congenial conversation, which can run on for some time till one day someone you thought you “knew” (solely from the interactions in the forum) says something wholly baffling and even hurtful, but certainly unexpected and baiting.  Or a new member shows up and after a few days or weeks turns into an aspersion-casting, logic-defying, unreasonable twit.  Such people indulge, usually, in the ancient schoolyard game of “let’s you and him fight.”  They get everyone stirred up, create a toxic situation, and then, often, leave.  “My work is done here.”  People who were once friends, or at least friendly, are now on opposite sides of issues they had no hand in either creating or aggravating.  Mistrust, defensiveness, and a new attention to certain words and phrases dominates the forum and arguments flare at the drop of a phrase.

Partly, it seems to me, this is one of the unfortunate factors in what we know to be human nature.  Some people are only enjoying themselves when they create a mess.  In my opinion, it’s the same kind of mentality that gets off on obscene graffiti, incendiary phone calls to talk shows, or gossips who spread rumors about people they hardly know.  For such people communication was invented in order to sow discord.  People getting along nicely is something they cannot abide because where’s the fun in that?  In a way, this is related to the more refined pleasure of honest debate and philosophical enquiry, wherein positions are taken and defended in order to find a higher accord.  But it has the same relationship to this as Tae Kwon Do has to a drunken fist fight in a bar.

Another part of this, however, is less perverse but more difficult to define and that has to do with the difference between written discourse and casual conversation.  Two people sitting across from each other—at a barbecue, having a beer, over dinner, what have you—just talking do so within a set of protocols that, when transferred to the written word, are at best “loose.”  We rely on a whole suite of cues that have nothing to do with the actual words we use.  Tone, inflection, regional accent, body language, gestures, facial expression, and the all-important momentum of the exchange work to add multiple players of interpretive possibility to the dialogue only the better fiction writers seem able to encode in words on the page.  They manage this by careful attention to which words and how they are placed within a scene and contextualized according to the emotional framework set up.

Which means that great care is taken to achieve a particular effect.

Not something the vast majority of people “chatting” in forums, online, get anywhere near doing.

Instead, we type our words and send them out knowing in our own heads what we meant and unaware that without the full holistic surround of an actual face-to-face conversation such intent is completely absent and the person reading them may have a completely different set of circumstances dictating how those words will be interpreted.

It’s amazing anything meaningful gets transmitted and received at all.  But it does, because many of us, maybe even most of us, learn over time how to write a dialogue, which is a different thing than when we’re talking.

Some never figure out the difference.

Hence the thoughtless ingredient thrown innocently into a stew stirred by many hands, resulting in a soured moil of potential vitriol.

The great essayists make it look easy.  Just write, like you’re talking to someone, and your meaning will be conveyed.  Right.  Of course it will.  The reason we regard great essayists as great is that they make it look so easy.  We can read it and understand it, it ought therefore to be within our power to do the same thing.  It’s just talking.  Do that all the time.

But putting words down is very different than speaking them.  For one, they remain there, precisely as written, to be gone over again and again, to be reinterpreted, again and again, to be copied and pasted in responses that can be shoved back in our faces angrily.  Embarrassment, defensiveness, or egotistical refusals to understand why what we said wasn’t understood for what we meant, all this can feed into an impossible collection of antiphonal postings that quickly have nothing to do with the original topic and are now about hurt feelings, impatience, and perhaps even past events that have nothing to do with the present “conversation.”

Letter writing is even more considered than most of what passes every hour on the internet as epistolary exchanges.  Until mailed, the letter is not finished.  It can be reread, reconsidered,  reviewed. It can be thrown away and begun again.

Theoretically, so can something about to be posted to the internet, but it would seem we treat it more like that face-to-face at the picnic than as letter-writing.  So we dash it off and hit SEND and then what happens happens.

Unfortunately, those words, unless deleted by an administrator, are always there, unlike the unfortunate way you said something at the picnic, which can vanish from foggy memory as soon as the topic changes.  People looking for something to focus on can find them and use them against you.  You were not, no matter what you thought, “just talking.”

Still, even this is instructive for those who will be bothered to learn.  A thoughtful reconsideration of how we say things reveals how much of our conversation is less actual information than ritual.  It could potentially teach us how to say things we really want said instead of just mouthing sounds that are the conversational equivalent of greeting cards.  Understanding the host of assumptions supporting a sentence would be a very good thing for us to learn.  Because even at the barbecue sometimes someone says something so void of any real substance and yet so potentially inflammatory that you know the speaker really doesn’t have a clue what that sentence really means.

Or maybe they do.  And that is instructive as well.  In either case, we should consider our response…carefully.

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Monday Morning Surprise

A friend of mine called while I was out. He left a message (which I thought had to be a mistake) to the effect that apparently my new book, Gravity Box and Other Spaces, made the local (St. Louis) independent bookstore bestseller list of the week ending June 29.  Post-Dispatch page here.

Well, not one to be fooled, I looked it up.  And there it is. (See link above)

I’m stunned.

I’m…well…stunned.  Gravity Box Cover

I mean, the last thing I expected was for something like this to occur with this book.

Not that I had a list of expectations, mind you.  I was just very pleased with the finished product and that it arrived on the shelves.  I was gratified right down to my socks that people showed up at the release party.  (No, that’s an understatement, I was beyond gratified.  I never expect people to pay any attention.  I’m always surprised and pleased and blown away.)  If I got a couple of positive reviews and the book sold well enough to justify my publisher’s commitment, well, that would be great.  Beyond that, no expectations.

Hopes, on the other, I got plenty.

But to be real, it’s a short story collection.  Best seller?  Granted, it is a local list, but even so, I’m in the top three with Gone Girl and Orange Is The New Black.  What?

So right now I am about as happy as a writer as I have been since…

Well, since I sold my first story.  Then sold my first professional story.  Then sold my first novel.  I was elated when I was informed that I’d made the short list for the Philip K. Dick Award.  And again when I made the short list for the Tiptree a few years later.  Yeah, I’ve had some moments in this insane business.

But this!  Wow.

So, what would be very cool would be to see this happen elsewhere.  I doubt this will be anything other than a word-of-mouth success.  That being the case, please—say something.  Push your local independent bookstore into getting it.  Talk to people.  With a little help from my friends (well, maybe a lot of help) I may yet have a decent career.  It would be really strange if this were the book that made the comeback for me.  But I wouldn’t be the least bit unhappy about that.

For those of you who have already bought the book, thank you very, very much.  Picking up a book and laying out cash for it is an act of faith.  One that, I hope, will be justified in this case.

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News and Such

I have another book out, from Yard Dog Press, The Logic of Departure.  More on that later.

I’m having something of a productive year, career-wise.   To recap, the official release party for my first short story collection, Gravity Box and Other Spaces, if this coming Wednesday at Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid, St. Louis, MO, at 7:00 PM.

Also, I’ll be doing another program with the St. Louis Science Center at the end of July.  More on that when things are firmed up.

But on July 11th, we’ll be celebrating the 45th birthday of Left Bank Books and for that we’ll be doing something wild and crazy and insane—you know, normal fare for Left Bank—called Writers Under Glass.  I have roped, er, enlisted the participation of three very talented local writers for this.  We’ll be writing a story in the window of the store. Scott Phillips, Ann Leckie, and Kevin Killeen will be tag-teaming along with me in this endeavor and who knows what we’ll produce, but it will be fun and there will be refreshments and it will be for a good cause and, well, it’s a party and a show, so not to be missed.

I’m writing two books more or less simultaneously, did I mention that?  More crazy, but it needs doing, for many reasons.

But right now I want to talk a bit about the books.

I always considered short story collections to be a kind of marker that a writer had “arrived.”  There was a time when they constituted a substantial part of an author’s published Å“uvre, equal to the novels, but that changed while I was growing up and beginning my career.  Received wisdom in the industry is that anthologies and collections “don’t sell” and hence I came to see such things as the equivalent of “best of” or “greatest hits” album, something not likely to sell as well (if at all) but an indicator along the road that one’s work is worthy of attention.  I saw them as a bone thrown to the writer by a publisher if the sales of the novels seemed to merit it.

Which would mean that I was unlikely to have one.  For many reasons, some of which I’ve discussed here, my sales are…not what I’d prefer them to be.

So it is with considerable pleasure (and pleasurable surprise) that an opportunity more or less fell into my lap when Lisa Miller of Walrus Publishing approached me about a project several years ago.  She was starting up her publishing company, looking for projects, and she asked me what I wanted to do.  I confessed that I would really like to put out a collection.  After looking over some stories, she enthusiastically agreed, and here we are.

Gauging one’s impact in this business is difficult at best.  I’ve published just north of 50 short stories and to the best of my knowledge none of them garnered much notice.  I’ve consistently failed to be nominated for awards in short fiction and I’ve had to date only three stories anthologized (one in a best of the year!) and my production of short fiction fell off after I began selling novels.  For all I know, few people thought much of my short fiction.

Initial reaction to the release of Gravity Box has been surprisingly positive, though.  The echo chamber in which many of us work may be returning some of our early shouts finally.  I choose to be hopeful.

I am very proud of my short fiction.  I never worked so hard at anything.  My inclination was always to be a novelist.  Short stories were not my preferred form, but in order to be a professional I thought I needed to learn how to do them and in fact they taught me a tremendous amount about craft and character and all the small indefinable yet indispensable things that comprise “story.”  Time permitting, I desire to write more of them.  I came to genuinely enjoy the form.

What people will find in Gravity Box and Other Spaces is a collection of stories orbiting around themes involving family and relationships tied to family.  The theme emerged during the process of assembling the pieces.  A third of them have been previously published, the rest are making their debut here.  I ignored subgenres—there are science fiction stories, full-blown fantasies, borderline horror, a lot of “slipstream” and a couple of quasi-historical magic realism types.  I feel they all fit comfortably within my definitions of speculative fiction.  Without wishing to seem presumptuous, I hope they appeal to an even wider audience looking for literary merit.

The second book now out is a happy accident.  Yard Dog Press has published a few of my longer short pieces.  They did two chapbooks for me, Extensions and Diva, both novellas.  Anyone in the business will tell you that novellas are damnably difficult to market.  Not long enough to be a book, not short enough to leave room in a magazine for everyone else.  I’ve written few of them in consequence.  Last year, Lynn and Selena, who run Yard Dog, contacted me to let me know they intended combining the two chapbooks into a single, perfect-bound edition.  At the time I was wrestling with a new story that seemed determined to sprawl into a novella, but which also seemed workable as part of the background world in which these two chapbooks shared.  I asked their indulgence to wait till I finished and perhaps they could publish the three of them together.  It still took me an inordinate amount of time to finish the third novella, now entitled Raitch, Later.  But they were happy with it and now the three pieces, under the title The Logic of Departure, are out.  Serendipity.

Now I’m back at work on the novels, hoping for further good news this year.  We could use some, given certain other things that are going on (and not for public consumption).  Be that as it may, I am thrilled right now and of course I look forward to seeing throngs at the release party this Wednesday.

I will be updating everyone on the other events as details come in.

In the meantime, my thanks to Lisa Miller and John Kaufmann and the terrific people at Left Bank Books.  See you all Wednesday.

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Obsession Point

I have a friend who likes to engage me on our points of departure.  He’s a self-admitted conservative, I am not.  He’s a sincere Christian, I’m an atheist.  Looking around at the current culture, you would think that should make any conversation we might have problematic at best, impossible at worst.

Yet we carry on the occasional hour, two-hour, sometimes three hour conversation and never once descend into anger or dismissive rhetoric.  And yes, we talk about religion regularly.  We talk about politics.  We talk about meaningful living.  It’s the kind of exchange of ideas from different perspectives that seems both rare and uniquely pleasurable.  Would that we taught kids growing up how to appreciate this kind of conversation as, at the very least, an æsthetic pleasure.

Consequently, when he questions me on priorities, I tend to listen.

A couple weeks ago, after the monthly jam session (he runs a church basement coffeehouse to which I’ve been going and participating for more than a few years now) we hung around and started talking about current subjects.  My opening statement concerned the new movie Noah and the absurd fact that the studio has decided to put a disclaimer on it to appease religious reactionaries who are bothered by “historical inaccuracies.”  I expected a laugh over the ridiculousness of this—these are not people who have much patience for that kind of shallow literalism—but instead what followed was a discussion of my obsessive attention to people like Ken Ham and the anti-evolution crowd and biblical literalists in general.

“Why do you pay any attention to them?”

Well, I replied, somewhat glibly, stupidity is fascinating.

Patiently, though, my friend worked at that.  Really?  Aren’t there better things to focus your attention on than the obdurate intractability of intellectual ostriches?  Don’t you have, like, books to write?

At the end of the conversation (which is not to say that it’s over) I had to concede that I spent far too much time and mental energy worrying over the misreadings, misinterpretations, manglings, and malignancies of what is a minority example of entrenched ignorance.  Like watching a neighbor gradually destroy his property (and being unable to do much about it), or watching a slow-motion train wreck, or even repeatedly viewing and complaining about a very expensive yet utterly brainless film, it is both attractive and repellant to observe this particular bit of cultural shadow-play.

The answer to the question has occupied me now since.  Why do I give them so much of myself?

The glib answer is that they draw attention to themselves in such a way as to seem important and relevant.  Paying attention to them feels, on a shallow level, like being engaged.  Noticing them, knowing what they’ve been saying and seeing what they’re doing, seems like being a responsible agent in my own culture.  Every time they manage to censor discussions in schools about evolution or try to force prayer into the classroom or some other culture-war battleground is pushed into the news, being aware of it just seems the thing to do.

A somewhat less glib answer is that the very real political power such groups seem to enjoy worries me.  I don’t want to live in a country designed by biblical literalists.  And determining how they’re wrong and why is basic to any kind of pushback.

And of course, since this conversation took place, we have the incident of the FOX television affiliate in Oklahoma blocking fifteen seconds of the new Cosmos program, the 15 seconds dealing with evolution, and my blood boils.  I react.  I become insensed.   And I immediately go to write a new blog post about how stupid this is and how malevolent this kind of nonsense is and how—

Which is, actually, a waste of my time.  Really, there are better-qualified people doing exactly that.  You can find links to some of them on the sidebar over to the right.  You want to read a better-informed and more current tirade against this kind of thing, go to Freethought Pharyngula—P. Z. Myer is an evolutionary biologist and apparently has more time, energy, and inclination than I do to keep abreast of all this nonsense—or check the science blogs to which I maintain links.

I don’t have to do this.

And yet…and yet…I keep doing it.  Even here,  in addressing a different kind of question, I’m thrashing about and striking back.  Willful ignorance, asserted as if it is a positive attribute, with an insistence that it is Right and Truth and we should all bow to its inevitable godlines MAKES—ME—CRAZY.

Why?

Because, at base, I loathe my own ignorance.  I loathe that part of me that desperately wants to be right, whether I am or not.  Because I am aware of my ignorance and strive to correct it and because I see that as an important fight it disturbs me—more, it frightens me—when others not only don’t see the worth in that fight but are dedicated to preventing the triumph of knowledge.

So, I suppose the simple answer to my friend’s question is—fear.  Those people scare me.  They are the ideological descendents of Inquisitors, witchfinders, book-burners, imperialists of dogma, stone-throwers, and censors.  Because I read Lest Darkness Fall and Fahrenheit 451 and my imagination is such that I can see what a victory for them would mean for people like me.

And because I honestly lack any kind of faith in those who are my intellectual and cultural kindred that we will win this fight.

But that still doesn’t fully address the challenge he laid at me feet.  Why do I  pay so much attention to all this when I could better serve my own purpose and the purpose of the civilization I support in so many other ways?

Because, when combined with all of the above, this has become a rut.  It is easy.  And it feeds my sense of relevance.  But really it’s a paltry diet.  There are richer meals to be had, that would be more beneficial, to me and to others.  So it is an itch which has become easy and habitual for me to scratch.  And in certain company, it’s a sign that I am part of a certain group of like-minded.

It’s a poor excuse.  I could be doing better things with my time and frankly getting more out of my intellectual life.  Because at the end of the day, I’m not going to change their minds, and those who nod along with me when I dive into one of my tirades don’t need me to tell them about this.

I think it is worth paying attention to when tax money goes to something like Ken Ham’s Creation Museum.  That’s an abuse of public trust and a violation of the law, frankly, and should be made public and stopped.

But I don’t need to go on about Ken Ham’s idiocy.

The spot that itches has grown raw and inflamed from repeated scratching and no salve is in sight.  I need to leave it alone.  I have a book on mathematics to hand, another about the history of science fiction, and still another about World War I.  Yes, I have a couple of books dealing with the assault of reason, which is not only from a religious reactionary quarter—reason is under assault from many quarters—but I’m a fiction writer.  My job is to tell stories about the world and because I write science fiction I can do a little prognosticating.  I have to stop pissing away time on pointless subjects.

Besides, I really do think they’ll fade.  When I sit myself down and really examine it, the world view we define as that of Reason will maintain and eventually the nattering naysayers will diminish.  It’s just difficult to see that day to day and believe it when there are people worrying over the “historical” inaccuracies in a Hollywood film about a mythical event.

So I wish to thank my friend for opening a door and pointing out that I’ve been perhaps wandering the wrong hallway for a time.

This is why we must cultivate relationships with people we disagree with.

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Readings

Here’s my stack of to-be-read.  At least, partly.  These are the books I intend to read.  Some I won’t get to.  Many are books I have to read.  Research, etc.  And obviously this doesn’t include books I do not yet own…

 

Reading 2014 2

 

We’ll see how much I get through.  Clearly, I won’t be bored.

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My Friend Has A New Novel

This is my friend, Nicola. She’s published a wonderful novel and I could not be happier for her. I get to talk to her from to time and I love it. I sometimes feel like I could talk to her for days and never get tired of it. (Of course, she’d get tired of me, so…)

Anyway, here’s a half hour of her talking about her new book and I wanted to share it.

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Status Update

It’s winter.  Officially.  Stuff is falling from the sky, sticking to things, and it’s cold.

A couple of things of recent note.  This past weekend, one of my coworkers at Left Bank Books got married.  She held it in the bookstore, after closing on Sunday, and another coworker officiated.  I shot photographs.  It was wonderful.

That morning, I went to the gym and had a surprisingly good workout.  Last year, I was aiming at doing a thousand pounds on the leg press.  I reached 930 lbs before my little abominal abdominal incident put me right back down in the whimpy weights.  Sunday I did 900 lbs.  I don’t think I’ll make a thousand by years’ end, but I feel not at all bad about this.

I have a few more stories to edit for my short story collection, which now has a (tentative) release date—May 10th, 2014.  I’ve seen the cover art already and it ranks with my favorite covers, done by a local artist named John Kaufman, who deserves a look.  I am delighted that the collection will be sporting such a cool cover.

My friend Nicola Griffith‘s new novel, Hild, was release in November—11-12-13—and is doing very well.  I myself have sold half a dozen copies already and it’s on my Christmas Season hand-picked list at the store.  Go check it out, your brain will thank you.

I have been working for the last several weeks on the third volume of my alternate history trilogy, the Oxun Trilogy, and I have run headlong into a number of problems (one of which is that I’m trying to get a novel started during Christmas season when time is at a premium).  I’ve written the first two or three chapters now four times.  I am poring over my research, poking at it, trying to find a way in.  Finally, I had a breakthrough and realized that I’ve been starting the damn thing in the wrong place.  Note to aspiring writers: this is often the problem with stories that will not advance beyond a certain point.  Not the only problem, but a big one.

Of course, this realization has necessitated acquiring a whole slew of new books specifically about—Napoleon in Egypt!  If anyone out there reading this has a suggestion for a fairly detailed history of specifically the scientific mission, I would appreciate it.

Given the above, I’m doing something with this novel that I almost never do—outlining.  I don’t think I have the time to wing it and correct it all later.  I need to know very well where I’m going and when.

Earlier conceptions of the book required an outline of a different sort, and that is still there, but this is different.

Christmas at Left Bank Books is generally a time of insanity, madness, massive customer presence, and long hours.  Which means I may not be making many posts till next year.  I thought I’d let anyone interested know what’s going on.

If I don’t get to say it later, Have A Happy Holiday!

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Small Business Saturday

This happens every year.  I participated last year at Left Bank Books and I’m going to do so this year.

Here is the relevant page.

Local authors, personally selling favorite titles to walk-in customers.  Of course we’ll be selling our own, but we have all chosen a handful of personal favorites to suggest.  And if you can’t take a writer’s opinion about what is good writing, then who can you trust?

This is an opportunity to come in and meet, in a less formal setting, some local authors, chat, one-on-one, and boost local business.  Look at the line up we have this year.  Ridley Pearson, Eric Lundgren,  Curtis Sittenfeld, Antony John, Heather Brewer, Michael Kahn.  (Me.)  St. Louis has a wealth of auctorial talent.

I’m putting this out there because I would really appreciate a turn-out.  Come in and get some early Christmas shopping done.  Tell your friends you chose this title or that at the recommendation of an author of your acquaintance.

While you’re there, I can tell you about a couple of things coming up that I’m involved with.  I’m starting up a reading group, hosted by the store.  First meeting will be January 4th, a sort of let’s-get-together-and-meet before the book discussions start up.  I’d like to tell you about that.

I’d also like to tell you about my forthcoming projects (and yes, I will be posting about them here, but a little face time would be good, don’t you think?) and of course I’d love to tell you about the books I’ll be promoting on the day.

So this is notice for my readers nearby, in the St. Louis area:  The 30th of November, the Central West End location of Left Bank Books, between 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM.  Come in, meet an author, buy some books.  I’d love to see some of my friends, my casual readers, even—dare I suggest it?—some of my fans (if I have any).  It will be fun and we can talk books.

Okay?  We’re good?  You’ll show up?  Great.