I’m bogged down in dissertation-land this month, trying to finish a chapter before I start teaching in mid-July.

Things I have been doing lately, in addition to writing my dissertation:

• Pondering the confluence of events that leads pets to get sick immediately before one’s partner leaves on a scheduled trip.
• Washing a lot of bedding. See previous point.
• Watching season 1 of Leverage and pondering the caper plot. It’s a silly, fun show with a ridiculously sentimental frame story, but it’s also surprisingly ambitious — a caper a week?
• Preparing teaching materials for my fiction workshop, including a basic website. (Not totally complete yet.) Wondering why Drupal is so much more annoying than WordPress.

Links to recommend:

• Alexander Chee’s great series of posts on MFA programs: when an MFA degree is a good idea, how he chose his own program, etc. Start with this post — the others are linked from it, including this brief FAQ about MFA programs, which is worth a look.
• This NPR story on a neurologist who studies the brains of psychopaths — and who found his own brain scans somewhat unnerving. (Not dissimilar, in a sense, to the book by Jessica Stern that I mentioned last week, in which she connects her own traumatic history to her study of terrorism.)
• The formation of a new continental rift valley in Africa.
• Tuscany via Henry James.
• Ernesto Neto’s installation at the Hayward Gallery at the Saatchi in London. A friend posted photos on Facebook; just beautiful.
• The sweetest story of a marriage I’ve read for a while.

One of the most fascinating first-person narratives I’ve read recently: Jessica Stern’s WaPo op-ed about how trauma shaped her professional career and her personality. Stern asks: “Why does the threat of violent death alter some of us, even if subtly, forever? Why does it make us unusually numb or calm when we ought to feel terrified?” Well worth reading, and I imagine Stern’s forthcoming memoir will be too.

(I don’t discuss much plot stuff at all, but if you want to remain totally unspoiled about The Passage, do not read this post or the linked reviews.)

It will surprise no one who’s read Alcestis that I’ve thought about death often in the last few years. Partly this is an occupational hazard of writing about the underworld; partly it’s related to my own life, as my father was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2003 and died in late 2008, while I was working on the last revisions of the book.

If you read this blog regularly, you also know that I talk frequently about genre fiction and literary fiction, and that I’ve been on a tear of reading YA novels.

I think a lot, and care a lot, about what it means to try to write something emotional and immediate and accessible and fun and still beautiful, still “literary.” Still artistically worthwhile, in the way that something like Twilight, satisfying as it is for teen readers and the employee of the blood donation center (!) near my apartment who has a “Forks or Bust!” sticker on her (his?) Ford Explorer window, isn’t.

I read Justin Cronin’s The Passage because about five people on Twitter recently posted about how it “lived up to all the hype!” I remember first learning about it because of the hype, since the world seems to be tremendously amused by the idea of a writer of literary fiction — Ron Charles calls Cronin’s first two books, one of which won the PEN/Hemingway award, “a couple of small literary novels” — producing a big sprawling genre book and then, gasp, selling it for a load of money. I remember reading about Cronin’s book deal a while back and being totally tickled that a fiction writer with an academic job had hit it big with a post-apocalyptic vampire novel. As always, I’m a little wistful about the suggestion that it takes a literary writer to make genre tropes shine. (Read Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker. Read Maureen McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang and Necropolis and “The Naturalist.” Read Alice Sola Kim’s “Beautiful White Bodies,” which I just discovered thanks to Wiscon and the Tiptree shortlist.) But Cronin himself is hearteningly sensitive to false distinctions of this sort, too:

I think literary is shorthand for appreciated, and commercial is shorthand for sells. I did not undertake the writing of this book thinking that it was one thing or the other, or even that books in general have to be one thing or the other. Those are descriptions of what happens to a book after it’s written.

I read the book in a day and a half, and now T.’s racing through it — he started reading it while I was working and has been agitating for me to finish. Verdict: The Passage does live up to the hype. It’s not perfect; the ending is a little weird because it is the first in a (giant) trilogy; some bits are a little slow even for me. (Also, there are a surprising number of typos and misspellings, which my resident editing/typography nerd cannot forgive.) But you know what? It’s better than The Road. It’s as grabby as Tana French’s The Likeness or as The Secret History. It has a sense of humor, one that penetrates the very structure of the book — a few times, when reading, I could picture Cronin (and his daughter, with whom he apparently plotted much of the book) thinking something along the lines of: “You know what would be even more awesome? Nuns!” or “And then, they watch Dracula!” This is fabulous; this is what Kelly Link was talking about in the post I linked a few days ago. You put what you like in your book, and that makes it appealing.

What makes it appealing to me is its mixture of joy and melancholy. Many people die in this book. (Some others don’t, and that’s just as bad.) Here’s what Cronin said about that in the Times interview I linked above:

“The vampire narrative deals with the fundamental question, the basic human question, and that is, what part of being human is defined by the fact that we’re mortal?” Mr. Cronin said. “If you got to be immortal, would you be trading away your humanity? It’s the fundamental question of what is death to being alive. The vampire story gets at the heart of that. It reassures us that we’d rather be human.”

I wasn’t entirely sold on some of the more mystical aspects of the book, but nonetheless it made me think. What I’ve been thinking about most is the Colony, the group of survivors’ descendants who live in a walled town defended largely by banks of lights run by aging batteries. These lights aren’t just a “peculiar plot point,” as Janet Maslin calls them. For me, at least, they seemed far more central than that. Some of the inhabitants of the town are able to forget that the lights will go out eventually, and some aren’t. How they handle that knowledge, how it controls them — this is at the heart of what happens to the townspeople and the rest of the world.

Maslin’s review mentions the creepiness of reading Cronin’s projection that the future Gulf of Mexico would be an oil slick. I’ve spent way too much time in the last month reading and retweeting appropriately outraged articles about the spill and BP and our terrifying reliance on oil. I signed petitions and made some donations, and I tried to plan ways for us to cut our household energy consumption further. But once I’d done those things, I can’t say my reading those articles, or any of the other links I find on Twitter to the horrifying things we do to each other and our planet, really did much good for anyone, including me. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since reading Alexander Chee’s fine blog post — some good things do come from reading links on Twitter! — about the urgency that online news sources often make him feel, and the anger their content inspires. I feel conflicted about my own relationship to Twitter and to online news in general. I think the act of being outraged about something that you are not forced to experience personally can be absolutely necessary for change, and I fully realize that the choice to step away from something horrible is the epitome of privilege.  But sometimes that moment of outrage before retweeting, etc., isn’t leading to any real change at all. Sometimes it’s performative of identity, consciously or unconsciously: I will retweet this thing because I am the kind of person who is outraged by this thing! Which is not to say that the outrage itself is any less vital or valid. But sometimes it’s also a reminder, a little wearing reminder, that the lights will go out someday. There are some things none of us can step away from, and among them are death and grief. I loved The Passage because it acknowledges that — honors it, even — and also acknowledges that the world is beautiful, even when you’re in the dark woods, unsure of what’s waiting for you in the trees.

This morning, after I’d finished reading at 1:30 last night, I found this post via Shauna James Ahern and Elizabeth McCracken on Twitter, another post that, like this one, starts with the death of a parent but means to talk about love and joy more than about death:

The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of it. And, Johnny, on this front, I think you have some work to do.

…

Don’t be strategic or coy. Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying the word love to the people you love so when it matters the most to say it, you will.

We’re all going to die, Johnny. Hit the iron bell like it’s dinnertime.

Let’s.

Remember to visit Gwenda Bond’s post with all the entries archived. Today’s is about generating and loving your very own story ideas, and contains some great exercises that I am now planning to incorporate into my workshop class this summer.

Kate Pullinger, whose The Mistress of Nothing will soon be released in the US, wrote a great post last week about historians who dismiss historical fiction (in this case, Antony Beevor and Niall Ferguson):

According to reports, Niall Ferguson says he never reads historical fiction because it ‘contaminates historical understanding’; Beevor says he thinks that historical novelists ought to mark in bold type ‘the bits they made up’.Nice to see two such hardy fellows claiming their unparalleled access to the truth.

Pullinger then quotes from a talk about history and historiography¹ delivered by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in 2006 and printed in the NYRB., in which Schlesinger argues that “All historians are prisoners of their own experience and servitors to their own prepossessions. We are all entrapped in the egocentric predicament. We bring to history the preconceptions of our personality and the preoccupations of our age.” Beevor and Ferguson, no matter how pristine they consider their own historical understandings, are just as time-blind as everybody else — if not more so, because they’re so submerged in their own cultural context that it’s become invisible to them. (This is the same problem I have with Stanley Fish’s frequent tirades in the NY Times about bias in the classroom: the underlying assumption that choosing not to discuss one’s political beliefs in the classroom means that bias is eradicated. Right.) I’ll put the bits I make up in bold when Beevor agrees to do the same thing.

Pullinger concludes: “this is why fiction can sometimes be the only way to tell the truth.” In essence, she’s making a point pretty similar to that of Sarah Dunant’s recent piece in the London Times, which presents historical fiction as a means of “penetrating ‘otherness.’”

I agree with Dunant, and I loved Pullinger’s post, but I’d drop the “the” before “truth” in her last sentence. The point of Schlesinger’s essay, as Pullinger points out, is that there is no historical “truth.” It doesn’t exist, and even if it did, in some rarefied ideal form, we wouldn’t have access to it. But here’s the thing: for historical fiction, it doesn’t matter that there’s no one truth.

Schlesinger says that “the historian is committed to a doomed enterprise—the quest for an unattainable objectivity.” Writers of historical fiction aren’t. When I write historical fiction, I’m trying to make art. I want the art I make to be truthful, but I don’t pretend that I’m identifying or recording the truth about history.² (I don’t mean to suggest that Pullinger or Dunant would claim this either, though I assume that Beevor and Ferguson think they would.)

I don’t think most readers care if historical fiction represents “the truth,” either. Some do, of course, and I think most readers respond negatively to the obvious importation of contemporary attitudes or speech patterns or modes of thinking into historical settings. But the word that kept coming up in our Wiscon panel discussion about historical fiction wasn’t truth but “authenticity” — the feeling of truth, in other words. The bits we make up as historical fiction writers are there to add to that feeling of truth, whether they’re accurate or not, and the feeling of truth and recognition is crucial to the success of any kind of art. Human understanding — that’s what we’re after.

______

1. “Historiography” is one of my favorite things and one of my favorite words.

2. “Even things that are true can be proved.” (To keep company with the “stark postmodernist sentiments” Schlesinger quotes from John Lothrop Motley’s 1868 lecture.)

I’m having one of those desperate OH GOD I HAVE TO FINISH THIS SECTION dissertation days, which means my brain is all scattery, which means — you guessed it — links.

First, the fabulous Gwenda Bond, describing and collecting the posts in Kelly Link’s amazing blog tour in support of Pretty Monsters. Links to Kelly’s tour posts are appearing all over Twitter, with very good reason. They’re intense and beautiful pieces of writing, and I agree with Gwenda and Colleen Mondor (see the comments on Gwenda’s post) that they read like magazine essays, not at all the usual “a short and perky blurb about my book” fare of the blog tour. The first two essays are about the birth and early days of Kelly’s daughter, Ursula, who was born extremely premature; the third is about Kelly’s take on paranormal romance in the title story of the volume. Check Gwenda’s post again later in the week for updates on the remainder of Kelly’s tour. (And buy the book, too, of course.)

And more:

• Crime statistics in San Francisco displayed as elevation maps.
• A sensible post about copyright and piracy, written as an open letter to Scott Turow.
• A review essay about dystopian YA fiction by Laura Miller in the New Yorker — focusing on Hunger Games, of course.
• The four stages of fear that result when you get attacked by a mountain lion.

Apparently today is “talking about MFA programs” day in the blogosphere, and I’m happy to join in. I wrote up a post about my own MFA (MA, really) experience a few months ago, but the question of what participants in MFA programs actually get from their two years of journeyman study is always an interesting one.

Tayari Jones on Twitter pointed to one of these two posts by Danielle Evans about MFA programs. In order of posting: Stupid conversations about MFA programs, and Smart conversations about MFA programs. Both of them are very smart and well worth reading. I think I’ve talked here before about the issue of being a novelist in the short-story-centric world of MFA study, which Evans addresses sensibly. But I want to highlight this point in particular (from “Smart conversations”), which could be applied to so many cultural institutions, especially in the realm of education and academia:

MFA programs didn’t invent hegemony, but that doesn’t mean they’re not an important place to look for ways to stop reproducing it.

And on a lighter and snarkier note, from “Stupid conversations,” demolishing the frequent comment about how students in MFA programs ought to be out learning about the real world instead:

If you are 22 years old and it has never occurred to you that most of the world lives and thinks differently than you do, the problem is probably not your MFA program.

Indeed. This post explains neatly why MFA programs hardly allow you to escape the “real world,” and why signing up for a small stipend and time to write can be a safe and wise decision.

Here are a few other MFA-program-related links, in which the bloggers share their own MFA experiences: a post by Raquel Henry, and a roundup of opinions at Writers Digest.

Wiscon! I went, I met a bunch of wonderful people, I had a seven-day-long migraine. Thank god for marathons of Law & Order on hotel cable when one isn’t up to anything more strenuous than lying down with an ice pack. (Ice machines: also a thing to be thankful for.) When there are gaps of time in the con report below, just picture me listening to the familiar tones of Sam Waterston in a darkened room.

I got to Madison later on Thursday than expected thanks to some goofiness on the part of Delta, who had decided, for kicks, to swap our full plane for a smaller plane and boot 20 people off. This did not go over well, as you might expect, and the process of finding a larger plane meant that we arrived about 2 hours late.

Wiscon itself is fascinating. This was my first con-attending experience of any length; I stopped in at World Fantasy in 2006, when it was held in Austin, but only to meet the two people I already knew who were attending. At Wiscon I was lucky enough to be guided around by Jen Volant, who knows everyone and happily introduced me to them all. When I say “everyone,” though, I mean “writers” — it seemed to me that there are at least two Wiscons happening simultaneously, a writer-centric one and a fandom-centric one. There’s certainly crossover between these groups, but on the whole, they seem to run in parallel.

And then there was the little pride of feral fourteen-year-old girls, daughters of older con attendees, all long-legged and bare-footed, who were clearly having their own shadow convention. We were particularly taken by their habit of occupying the elevators and demanding that visitors to their domain answer personal questions. When I got on, two of them were lying on the floor and punching the elevator buttons with their toes.

Friday I went out to breakfast with Jen and her friend Jessie, dropped off some copies of Alcestis at the Broad Universe table, later worked the Broad Universe table for a little while, went out to dinner with Jen and a huge group of people who I won’t try to name here because I probably would feel like a weird name-dropper, and finally ended up back at the hotel in the evening, observing karaoke shenanigans in which I did not participate.

Saturday I went for a short run (down fraternity row, by accident) and hit the farmer’s market briefly, though I’ve been spoiled by the Texas growing season and forgot that it would be all green onions and garlic. I love green onions and garlic, but it might be unwise to eat them raw in your hotel room, especially if you’re meeting a bunch of people for the first time. Madison is charming, but the layout of the downtown, the narrowness of the bit of land between the lakes, is the most fun part. There’s something really odd but pleasant about running down a normal block in a small city and then glimpsing the lake through the buildings ahead of you. (UW, any chance you want to hire a fiction writer soon?)

I got back to the hotel in time for the 10 am “Craft of Writing YA” panel, which I enjoyed but wasn’t blown away by. Maybe this is because I do tend to read YA writers’ blogs where many of the same issues are discussed. The panelists were all interesting and articulate, but I’d been hoping for something different, I guess — not that I have any idea what. Here’s a transcript of the panel, which is worth a look.

That afternoon I moderated a panel called “What’s the Future of the Past?” I haven’t found any transcripts of it yet, though somebody was live-tweeting it. Now that I’ve moderated one panel on this topic, I feel like I’d actually be prepared to moderate a panel on this topic well — I don’t think I did a great job this time, though I appreciate the great participation of the panelists, who muddled through quite well despite my cluelessness. As on the YA panel, the panelists were conversational and interesting and had clearly thought a lot about the topic, but it seemed to me that the conversation still sometimes felt like we were summarizing notions about historical fiction that have already been expressed rather than reaching for anything new. I think panels of this sort — the “gather a group of people to talk about a certain generic form” panel — may need a firmer moderating hand, and I wasn’t sure how to employ one, given my lack of experience with con panels versus academic panels at which everybody shows up with a prepared talk. This is something I want to think about for next time so that I can facilitate a discussion that moves into more complex territory. Also, note to self: next time, don’t have a migraine.

Saturday I also attended a fabulous reading by Jen, Meghan McCarron, Alice Sola Kim, and Anthony Ha — definitely a highlight, and I hope to be able to read what I heard in print soon.

Sunday morning, bright and early and migraine-y, I was a panelist on the “What is Feminist Romance?” panel, which was packed despite the 8:30 hour and was very ably moderated by Robyn Fleming. We talked about romance novels and about romantic storylines in other genres, and Robyn did a great job of distinguishing between those generic conventions. The same kind transcriber also recorded this panel, which I’m glad to see, because I think we ended up having an excellent and varied conversation (even if we did tend to get sidetracked listing features of romance novels/romantic storylines that are not feminist).

Sunday afternoon I participated in the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading. It was scheduled against a reading by Karen Joy Fowler and Carol Emshwiller and others, sadly — I’d have loved to go to their reading! But we had a great audience and I enjoyed hearing snippets of work by other Broad Universe members, including Gwynne Garfinkle, another Team Diana Fox author.

And Monday I made it back to Austin without any complications, unlike just about everyone else traveling home from Wiscon, apparently. I had a great time and I am really hoping to be able to go again next year.

Books I bought or am planning to buy soon:

• Christopher Barzak‘s One for Sorrow (bought on my Kindle, so I could read it before the con)
• Greer Gilman‘s Cloud and Ashes (same, though I haven’t read it yet; I had a friend’s ms to read instead on the trip up to Madison)
• Neesha Meminger‘s Shine, Coconut Moon (Neesha was also on the Feminist Romance panel)
• Emily Horner‘s A Love Story, Starring My Dead Best Friend (Emily, too, was on the Feminist Romance panel!)
• Karen Healey‘s Guardian of the Dead, which falls into the ever-growing category of “books I’ve heard about and keep meaning to buy but haven’t yet.”

And there are so many people I met who are currently looking for agents or publishers for books — I want to read all of those, too! And short fiction. Argh. So much wonderful stuff to read, so little time.