Dystopias R Us?

Earlier this year, I claimed to have reread my all-time favorite, Fahrenheit 451. But the fact is, I did no such thing.

Let me be clear: I began my reread, and I got halfway through the book. The reason I posted about finishing that reread is because I thought for sure that I would be done with it by the time the post went live. The reason I didn't finish my reread--and still have not, all these months later--is slightly more complicated.

The thing is, even my beloved book is tainted at the moment. We're living in a world where our President is allowed to get away with almost anything, from arbitrarily revoking press passes to refusing to hold a so-called ally accountable for a despicable murder, from blaming California for its own deadly fires to skipping out on ceremonies commemorating World War I. I could go on, but I think I don't need to, as you've all lived through the same issues.

America, I'm sad to say, feels like it's turning into a dystopia. At the very least, it's become a sideshow laughingstock. And when you see this sort of tarnishing firsthand, it's so tough to continue reading about it on the page; fiction becomes too factual to stomach.

I realize this is a bleak outlook, and I hope to feel better about the world soon. In order for that to happen, though, we have to pull together as a country and demand better of our leaders. A bit of that did happen earlier this month, when voters (including myself) raised their voices at the polls and elected many new Representatives, governors, and other officials to displace those currently in power. If this new group of lawmakers can band together and effect some positive change, I'll be glad. 

In the meantime, I continue to resist, and I encourage you to do the same.

-Cate-

Summer Book Report 2018

Y'all. It's been seven months since I blogged, so #failcatefail. But that's not even the worst part: I barely have a post to write here at all.

This wasn't the greatest summer for my reading life. I've been a slacker all year, in fact. Since January, I've only read 20 new-to-me books, although to be fair to myself, I also reread the entire Harry Potter series in January, which is an accomplishment in itself. And I did buy a few (read: 20 or more) volumes to read in the future! These are the stores I've been to recently to accomplish such a feat.

- In September, I returned to McLean & Eakin in Petoskey, MI. This is one of my favorite bookstores, which is saying something, as I love most bookstores I visit.

- Also in September, I went to Between the Covers in Harbor Springs, MI. This was my first time at that store. It's small but has a good selection and reminded me a lot of Lorelei Books in Vicksburg, MS.

Sadly, I have yet to go to any other stores, except for my local Barnes & Noble (I know, okay?). However, I should have the opportunity in October to go to both Brilliant Books in Traverse City, MI, which I already know, and Horizon Books, also in TC, which I've never shopped at before. If I have the time, I'll also stop at Landmark Books in TC.

In other bookstore news: for those of you who don't know, the Lansing branch of Schuler Books has closed; however, their Okemos and Grand Rapids locations are still open for business!

In other bookish news, I've suspended my Book of the Month Club subscription, although I do highly recommend the service. Their curation and price point are spot-on; I just found myself more interested in other books I found elsewhere, but don't be surprised if I tell you in the future that I've reactivated my account.

I'm sorry my first post back isn't more exciting than this one, but I hope you find it informative and discover your new favorite bookstore this way!

-Cate-

To Be Read

You have one. I have one. Everyone has one.

The dreaded pile of books "to be read."

No, dreaded is the wrong word. It's a pleasure to have that stack available. Because you never know what you might want to read next, right? It could be that historical biography, or perhaps a novella. Maybe it's a celebrity memoir or the hottest YA novel. In other words, the "to be read" pile represents a world of possibilities.

But what do we do when it gets unmanageable? Because it will, eventually, become so large as to seem insurmountable. Perhaps you found a ton of books on sale at a library or flea market. Or maybe you've rediscovered some cache of volumes you put aside years ago. Suddenly, there is nowhere to store all of them. 

Personally, I am a fan of culling: sitting down and being honest with myself about whether or not I will ever get around to a particular title. I've impulse-bought more books than I can count, and it's important to me to reevaluate from time to time, in case I realize that a certain topic isn't really the best thing for me to explore. 

In an ideal world, there would be enough time for us to read everything that interests us. But we live in an imperfect place where time isn't as abundant as we would like--or need--it to be. We do the best we can, including tackling that pile to the best of our ability. 

-Cate-

Process, or, Cate Hates Craft Books

Thanks to some excellent teamwork between Dunes Review, the official publication of Michigan Writers, and Traverse City's Brilliant Books, the unofficial coolest bookstore around, I was recently able to participate in both an in-store reading and an online interview as the author of a poem--"Rn (86)"--featured in the most recent issue of Dunes. Caitlin Marsh, the social media manager at Brilliant Books, gave me the option of answering some or all of the questions she posed, and I exercised my right (write?) to ignore a few of them, because I didn't think I had good answers. They were all about the writing and manuscript-sharing parts of being a writer.

Turns out I hate to talk about process, because it's boring. Not unimportant, mind you: mundane, uneventful. This is probably why I rarely made it to the end of any craft book ever assigned to me (five years out of grad school, now I can say things like this with impunity). Except for John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist. Fuck that book, which I stopped reading on its own (lack of) merit.

This is undoubtedly coming across as a little hypocritical of me, seeing as how much of my blog content stems from me trying to give advice about how to write. But I'm doing it in a way that makes sense to me: a little at a time, one topic at a time, not unlike the way Writer's Digest and other periodicals address craft. Too much, and it feels either preachy or stifling.

But I recognize two things here: first, that process IS important to all of us who write, and we can't ignore it. Second, that writers are lucky to have people who can--and are willing to--talk about it so we can deepen our understanding of the writing life. Many thanks to those people (yes, even John Gardner). You do important work, even if some of us are stubborn about addressing it.

-Cate-

What We Talk About When We Talk About Plath

When we talk about Sylvia Plath, we talk about Ted Hughes, the poet-husband who nurtured and tormented her. We talk about the way she died, and occasionally the downstairs neighbor she nearly killed in the process. We talk about her overbearing mother and monolithic father. We talk about her confessional style and how this relates to Anne Sexton and Robert Lowell. We talk about her infamous mental health issues.

What we discuss less often, outside of criticism and academia, is how formidable she was as a writer. The personal struggles she faced have eclipsed this fact in popular discourse, and as a result, the public keeps Plath pigeonholed. Hers is the domain of madwomen in the attic (or, in her case, the basement), mothers needing their little helpers, females who act out when they are spurned. While she was certainly aware of her own issues--she was often medicated and had a close relationship with her therapist--she was far more than a depressive girl crying huddled in her room. 

Just after they met, Plath wrote a poem about Hughes called "Pursuit," in which he is a panther. She knew then that Hughes was dangerous. What she neglects to mention is that she was a God-damned tigress.

*

Tracy Brain, in her essay "Unstable Manuscripts: The Indeterminacy of the Plath Canon," featured in Anita Helle's anthology The Unraveling Archive, makes a compelling case that the reader and/or scholar cannot fully rely on Plath's published works--particularly Ariel (including the Restored Edition) and The Collected Poems--because Plath's archives reveal typographical discrepancies between manuscripts and "finished" products as well as Plath's own working manuscripts and notes, and those notes especially reveal contradictions and changes we can't fully understand, as Plath was dead by the time the bulk of her work fell onto editors' desks.

While this issue shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, we are, thanks to Ted Hughes, largely left to rely upon printed material as "definitive." Even if we can never know whether "Edge" was truly the last poem Plath wrote (Hughes seemed to think so, based on his sequencing in The Collected Poems, but the argument for "Balloons" is equally valid), we must work with what we have been given and rely on Hughes' judgments.

"Her attitude to her verse was artisan-like," he tells us, and "if she couldn't get a table out of the material, she was quite happy to get a chair, or even a toy." This is not the idle speculation of a husband who took walks as his wife scratched away with her Shaeffer pen. It's the keen observation of someone who often wrote by her side and who trusted her with his own words, both as typist and workshopper. He knew her prowess with words, and her capacity to wound with them: he was the subject of many of Plath's more powerful poems ("Daddy," "Burning the Letters," "Words heard, by accident, over the phone," and more), and though he was in a position to suppress their publication, he chose to go ahead with them and make sure that the world knew her name.

*

No one has ever written a truly "authoritative" biography about Plath, because her legacy is complicated. 

Ted Hughes, by his own admission, destroyed her final diaries after her death, eliminating the possibility of scholars gaining personal insights into her final, powerful poems. 

Aurelia Plath, Sylvia's mother, worked diligently to expunge certain unfavorable communiqués from the record when she published Plath's collected Letters Home. (Not coincidentally, this is the same reason Plath delayed the publication of The Bell Jar so long: to spare feelings.) However, the originals remain largely intact, mainly in the Lilly Library at Indiana University but also elsewhere; the first volume of Plath's wider collected correspondence is set to be published this fall. 

Olwyn Hughes, Ted's sister and the executor of both estates until her death in 2016, was notorious for refusing to cooperate with anyone who might criticize her brother too much. Plath herself was not a fan of Olwyn, but Hughes trusted her implicitly.

The net result of this is that most biographies of Plath lean heavily in favor of either her or Hughes, depending on who the author cozied up to during the research process. Aurelia died in 1994, but not before she assisted Paul Alexander while he collected information for Rough Magic. The biography is problematic in some ways for the reasons listed above, yet it remains the best available overview of the poet's life.

Fans of Plath almost uniformly come down on her side, and her grave was repeatedly vandalized; rather than gravediggers, she was disturbed by headstone editors, who would rip the "Hughes" off the marker so it read Sylvia Plath rather than Sylvia Plath Hughes. They would rather Ted Hughes be punished in perpetuity, Plath be rid of him in death.

For my part, I think Hughes made some mistakes. Undoubtedly, a few of them were even cruel and contemptible. And he had no right to do what he did to Ariel prior to its publication, though he was, in general, a capable advocate for Plath's work. And as a poet, he is unassailable; his work is not my style, but he knew what the Hell he was doing.

Further tangling the matter of biographical scholarship are two obvious figures, one innocent toddler, and a much-maligned woman: the Hughes children, Frieda and Nicholas; their half-sister Alexandra, called Shura; and Assia Wevill, the most widely recognized of Ted Hughes' affair partners. Frieda Hughes has gone on record, sometimes in verse form, to criticize those who are obsessed with her mother and who have fired shots at her father. Nicholas Hughes committed suicide in 2009 after pursuing his love of nature and ecology, no doubt following his father's example (Ted Hughes' fascination with the outdoors is one of his trademarks); the younger Hughes was always reluctant to discuss his mother publicly. 

Shura died at the age of four in her mother's murder-suicide. As for Wevill, it's no secret that she was married to a poet (David Wevill, a respected Canadian writer) before meeting Plath and Hughes and later chose gas as her weapon of choice when she killed herself and her daughter. These are not mere echoes of Plath, and Wevill is often a reviled figure in the Plath mythos.

But again: these are things people always discuss when Plath comes up in conversation. Except for the most casual readers, everyone knows at least that the Plath-Hughes marriage was torn asunder and that Hughes' actions after Plath's death--all the way up to his own demise in 1998--led to controversy. What they might better discuss is how each of these people appeared in print. (Shura, born two years after Plath's death, is exempted.)

*

Aurelia  Plath became the focus of a few of her daughter's works, as any parent of a serious writer might expect. Yet she attempted to be even-keeled about the matter, at least publicly. "One observation I can make," Aurelia wrote in 1983, for a piece in Paul Alexander's anthology Ariel Ascending, "[...] involves Sylvia's tendency to fuse characters and manipulate events to achieve her own artistic ends." In truth, this statement might apply to every writer who ever lived, and I believe it is both a fair assumption on Aurelia's part as well as her fervent wish as a parent that it be completely true.

Plath could be cutting when she directed her words at specific individuals, however obliquely. And Aurelia did feel that sting: "[...O]ther poems [...] involve the mother figure as the whipping boy, so characteristic of the Fifties." She also mentions that in The Bell Jar, Plath "transformed personalities into cruel and false caricatures." However, as one might expect of a mother, she asserts that "I had faith in [her] genius."

No amount of faith, though, can change the fact that the title of "Electra on Azalea Path" contains a name that sounds awfully like Aurelia Plath, nor the fact that Mrs. Greenwood in The Bell Jar is, in the main, a character who hews closely to Aurelia as Plath experienced her during that electroshock summer.

*

Ronald Hayman speculated in The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath that Plath intended to kill her children when she took her own life in 1963, but this is based on a reading of some of her final poems, including "Edge," and not supported by the documented facts of the incident. And anyway, the opposite argument can be made using different pieces; Plath often wrote about her children, in pieces like "Nick and the Candlestick" and "Morning Song." It's likely that she did this for the same reason another writer might: they were readily available subjects, like their father and grandmother.

If you subscribe to the notion that turnabout is fair play, it's worth keeping in mind that three out of those four had their own say in various works published later, as we see above. Call it a literary circle of life.

*

In the main, Assia Wevill has been unfairly castigated. Yes, her final act--killing Shura--is unforgivable and must have been the source of much anguish for Ted Hughes (who later dedicated Crow, his 1970 collection of poetry, to the memory of both Assia and Shura). But in life, Wevill was no different from a million other women: a little bit wild, prone to making mistakes, desperately in love.

Of course, one can also understand why Plath despised Wevill. She was a woman who committed the highest form of girl-on-girl violence: man-stealing. But Plath wasn't utterly unreasonable; she also laid the blame at Hughes' doorstep, where it belonged. (Ultimately, neither Wevill nor Hughes can be held more culpable than the other, but Hughes' betrayal was worse, as he broke the vows he made to his wife.) 

As in other cases, though, Plath was vicious in her descriptions of Wevill, particularly in "The Fearful." And Wevill was not unaware of Plath's ire. She--like many others--ended up haunted by the specter of her (ostensible) rival. But like Plath, she was also haunted by her own past and by the invisible scourge of mental illness.

*

I know what you're thinking: "Cate, please. You've only given us examples of poems about Plath's family. So why SHOULDN'T we snoop around and learn things about her personal life?"

And that's totally fair, if you didn't listen to the thing Aurelia Plath said about situations and characters transforming in Plath's--or any writer's--imagination. And again, it's totally fair, if you're willing to ignore Plath's craftsmanship and Hughes' statement about it. And sure: it's totally fair, if you're willing to ignore the criticism Frieda Hughes levels at everyone she feels has co-opted her mother's legacy.

And once more: it's totally fair, if you're willing to forsake all other possible critical responses to Plath's work, or the multiple angles the biographical method could use: an American woman living abroad, a scholarship girl coming up in a privileged environment, a pre-feminist powerhouse, a deeply academic personality, a poet living with and surrounded by other poets. 

This is about so much more than just mental illness and interpersonal drama, and we must acknowledge that, or we are doing Plath, and ourselves as readers and critics, an enormous disservice.

*

Sometimes I wonder if Plath deserves better than us: the avid, trenchant fans who think she is somehow a projection of ourselves and that--as a result--we can claim some ownership of her. I attempt not to be that person, but I admit it: I get defensive of her, and I am often dismissive of those I deem clichés--the sad girls dressed in black trying desperately to be serious--even though I am exactly the same. On the other hand, fame (especially the posthumous kind) comes at a price, and devotees are one item on the bill of sale.

And sometimes I wonder if we deserve better than Plath: a woman who was nearly always on the edge of becoming unhinged, who threw Holocaust metaphors around to describe her own pain, who once destroyed some of Ted Hughes' manuscripts in a vindictive bonfire. On the other hand, if we threw out Plath, we would have to get rid of the Conrads and Hemingways and Fitzgeralds of the world, as well, to avoid committing the double crimes of sexism and hypocrisy.

*

I spend a lot of time thinking about Sylvia Plath.

It's true that I arrived at her doorstep, as most of us do, when I was a moody teenager struggling to fit in. This is a detail I can't help and won't deny. But I think it's worth noting that the bulk of the time I've spent with her was in my early 20s, near the end of my college journey, at a juncture when people were starting to refer to me as a woman rather than a girl. As it happens, I was also about the same age Plath was when she made the suicide attempt later immortalized in The Bell Jar.

It was a time when I loved boys and eyeliner and the idea that my future might actually turn out the way I wanted. But I resembled Esther Greenwood, the protagonist of The Bell Jar, too much for my own comfort, so I chose to focus on Plath's poetry instead.

Years later, I return to her work again and again, and I do so happily. And if I didn't know all the things I know, it never would have occurred to me to write about her now.

I composed this essay, as I compose so many things, in fits and starts between other activities, and it took me about a week and a half to draft. My memory of facts learned over eight years ago was surprisingly solid, which I take to mean that Sylvia Plath has never been far from my mind. I did have to retrieve my collection of books by or about Plath (and Hughes, and Wevill): 18 in all. 

For a complete accounting of my Plath collection, see the list following this post. Some books are either out of print or difficult to locate; many of my volumes came from Better World Books or Thriftbooks, both excellent online sellers for academics searching for titles your average used bookstore doesn't carry. There are many, many more titles out there that I've never seen or read; Plath has her own cottage industry now.

I do encourage readers to seek out resources that will illuminate Plath's craft, as well as those which properly contextualize her in both American and British history as well as in the continuum of literature. There are so many things to explore in her work that lie outside the confines of biography.

And when you talk about her, remember that she was both human and hard-working.

*

Resources

About Plath
Ariel Ascending: Writings About Sylvia Plath (ed. Paul Alexander) 
Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath (Judith Kroll)
The Death and Life of Sylvia Plath (Ronald Hayman)
Her Husband: Hughes and Plath: A Marriage (Diane Middlebrook)
Rough Magic (Paul Alexander)
The Savage God: A Study of Suicide (A. Alvarez)
Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life (Linda Wagner-Martin)
The Unraveling Archive: Essays on Sylvia Plath (ed. Anita Helle)

By Plath
Ariel: The Restored Edition
The Bell Jar
The Collected Poems (ed. Ted Hughes)
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams
Letters Home (ed. Aurelia Schober Plath)
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (ed. Karen V. Kukil)

About Hughes
Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet (Elaine Feinstein)

By Hughes
Birthday Letters
Difficulties of a Bridegroom

About Wevill
Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's Rival and Ted Hughes' Doomed Love (Yehuda Koren and Eliat Negev)

The Best Part of Being a Writer

As you may know, I'm an official Goodreads author, and one of the coolest functions of an author's profile, as far as I'm concerned, is the part where we get to answer questions. Recently, Goodreads sent a question to me that piqued my interest in such a way that I wanted to take an entire post--rather than a short paragraph--to discuss it: what is the best thing about being a writer?

This question is so wide open as to lend itself to debate, and indeed, I can think of several options that may be worth exploring. But for me, the best part is having the opportunity to move people.

For many years, I resisted poetry because I was taught by teachers who espoused some variation on that old saw: "This is the only valid way to interpret this poem." I wasn't about that life, and it put me off the idea of verse. When I was in college, however, new ways of approaching all types of literature, and especially poetry, were available to me. It was then that I decided something important about my own work: as long as the reader gets SOMETHING out of it, I have done my job as a writer.

This doesn't mean that I don't have my own ideas about what an individual poem or story says. Obviously, I know what I was trying to convey. What it DOES mean, however, is that I want to hear what others have to say about my work, and my biggest wish is that they will be able to make some meaningful connection with any given piece. 

Because if I'm putting my writing out into the world, there is no point whatsoever in producing it only for my own sake. There is (I assume/hope) a reader on the other end who may have an unexpected reaction to my words, and that's okay, and I want to hear about it, too! If you're having a bad day and feel relieved because one of my poems let you know that someone else was experiencing the same thing, great! If you're in love and one of my stories speaks to those feelings inside you, fantastic! Even if you're reviled by something I've written, I have still elicited a reaction, and I want to know about your disgust. 

Basically, I most enjoy having the chance to interface with others. As an introvert, it can be incredibly difficult for me to make new friends or even acquaintances, and readers help me as much as I aim to help them. Other writers may say they most love creating their own worlds, or the thrill of seeing their name on the cover of a book, and nothing is wrong with either of those motivations. I'm simply approaching it from a more humanistic perspective.

Read on, y'all. And tell me what you think about my words!

-Cate-

Historical Preseveration

When I was in elementary school, our curriculum included educational role playing simulations, which is a fancy way of saying that we, unruly children that we were, pretended to be historical figures in the name of learning. One of these programs was about the American Revolution generally, and about the Continental Congress and other such important developments more specifically. The other was a slice of Michigan history featuring Père Marquette, Antoine Cadillac, and others. 

While these activities primed me to appreciate the intricacies of nation-building and the great American experiment, they didn't prepare me for the reality.

For example, no one told me that a man who essentially lied his way into respectability and power--Cadillac--could become such an essential figure in the development of North America as we now know it, and today, I'm facing down the fact that a charlatan holds the highest office in the land. Nor did they delve into the reasons why there were so few female roles for the girls to play; we just had to accept that the men ran the show.

This is part of why I'm so adamant about reading books and exploring historical topics as an adult: it's important for me to find the facts that were left out of the lessons I learned as a child. Especially in this uncertain and tumultuous age, I can't possibly stress the importance of this enough. Go out. Read a book. Learn something. 

It just might save us.

-Cate-

The Book (Buying) Ban

On 16 July, I declared to the world that I was going on a book-buying ban, and I asked everyone to wish me luck. Book-buying bans are, of course, unnatural to anyone with a preference for reading over anything else. But there came a point when I desperately needed to do something. 

This crisis was triggered by the state of the bookshelves I maintain at my parents' house. The bulk of my reading material resides there, far from my actual residence in Louisiana. It, of course, pains me to be separated from my books, but needs must. During my summer visit to Michigan, I became overwhelmed by the disarray and the fact that so many of my tomes remained boxed up in the basement, victims of both multiple moves and a lack of shelf space.

And then I went on a rampage.

Every single book I had access to came out and was stacked, sorted, and rearranged in the living room. Little Dog was so freaked out that she went and hid in my bedroom to avoid the chaos. I toiled for the better part of a week, until I had weeded out volumes I no longer wanted or needed, things I realized I would never read, or duplicates I'd collected over the years.

The bulk of those discarded books were either donated to the local library for their thrice-yearly fundraising book sale or shipped out to three of my friends who were fascinated by my stash and not averse to their own piles growing larger. This worked out in everyone's favor, which relieved me.

At that point I reorganized, reshelved, and reboxed as necessary. Things I had yet to read were all put out on the bookshelves so I would have easy access to them. The problem with this strategy was that I then came to the realization that I had a huge "to be read" stack. Big enough that I might possibly have enough to keep me going for the rest of my life. (As if that's even possible. Please.)

I blame my mother, who taught me to read when I came home disgruntled that I hadn't learned in school. I blame my father, who has never not bought me a book when I asked for one. I blame Visa, which company should have cut me off long ago when they saw how many transactions I was making at bookstores. And I blame myself, for not having the self-control to say, "No, I do not need to buy these seven books at once."

Hahahahaha, no. That last part isn't true at all. Vive les livres!

And yet. I was--and remain--absolutely serious about this. But I admit that I have broken twice so far. Still, two books in three and a half months is not bad. I am trying my best to focus on the books that are already at hand, and I hope I can stay strong.

-Cate-

Adventures in Rejection: When Literary Magazines Die

In this wild world, where large publishing houses are closing or consolidating and small presses face huge hurdles to keeping their doors open, it should come as no surprise that literary magazines often fail. 

And yet, somehow, that feels like the worst rejection of them all.

It's one thing to see an individual poem turned down for publication. But when an entire lit mag tanks for whatever reason--lack of funding, low readership, the demands of the editor's day job--it hurts me. Even when an outlet has declined to disseminate my work, I like to see them succeed, because it means that other writers are getting exposure and that other readers are discovering new pieces that move them. If a lit mag shuts down, those opportunities are negated for everyone involved.

Is this because of a lack of interest from the larger public? Because no one has surplus funds to donate? Because the editors are being crushed at their other workplace (let's be honest: most people are doing this as a passion project, a side gig that is often thankless)? I can't say. What I do know is that it makes the literary world a less diverse place, and that is never a positive thing.

-Cate-

The Way to Treat Your Books

Any person who is a relatively serious reader knows that there is only one way to treat a book. But a problem arises when no one can agree on what that way is.

In the past months, I've learned some interesting things about the various approaches my friends and family members take to the act of reading. Take, for example, my mother. When she gave me my birthday presents, she discovered that she had accidentally left a price tag on a book. She hastened to remove it, though I told her the price didn't matter because I love a good book deal. But she responded in a way I didn't expect: "I hate when there's a sticker on a book."

I've known my mother quite awhile now--all of my life and half of hers, to be precise. And yet, I never could have told you that she has this quirk. Only a few days earlier, a similar situation had arisen with my father, who took pains to explain that the crease on the cover of a book he'd borrowed from me was not his fault--a charge I hadn't made against him in the first place, as it happens. That's when he informed me that he strives to treat my books with care because they are mine and not his.

While I appreciate the consideration, I was a little surprised by this information. I'm not overly gentle with my books in general. If a spine cracks, I don't get upset. Although I use bookmarks much more frequently now, I used to dog-ear pages all the time, particularly in college and grad school, when I wanted to leave myself visual clues as to the amount of reading I had left to do. I don't know how many books I've highlighted over the years, and not always for class; sometimes I do it to revel in the brilliant turns of phrase I've found.

My friend Sharon, on the other hand, is one of those people who can't stand the plight of "mistreated" books. She made a Facebook post awhile back about a particular moment on Gilmore Girls, writing, "This episode is why I hate Jess. He steals Rory's book and THEN WRITES IN IT. WHO DOES THAT CRAP? THAT'S NOT HOW YOU TREAT BOOKS, YOU HEATHEN! ESPECIALLY SOMEONE ELSE'S BOOK."

This rant of hers led to over twenty comments from various people. While I concede that it's rude to write in a book that isn't yours without permission from the owner, I disagree that the act of writing itself is unacceptable. As I pointed out to Sharon, making notes, underlining, and highlighting passages is normal behavior among scholars and (certain) book people.

I suppose the adage, "Different strokes for different folks" applies here. In my case, I'm less inclined to mark up a book that is rare or vintage, and for reasons unknown, I am averse to highlighting hardcovers. Meanwhile, you will never catch Sharon doing any perceived harm to a volume. And these are simply two different ways of showing appreciation for the words you're consuming.

-Cate-

PS The images intersperse throughout the text are photos of my own copy of Fahrenheit 451, which I have had for approximately 15 years. With each re-reading, the spine weakens a little more and I fall in love with a new line or paragraph. Someday, it will succumb to the ravages of time and use, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

All Booked Up

Living with my parents again is, occasionally, a hilarious thing. For example, several months ago, Mom wanted to rearrange their bedroom furniture so she could have easier access to the large window in the room. In the course of this turnaround, she got a little frustrated by stuff (you know--the objects you accumulate over the years). I happened to be present when she delivered a stern warning to Dad: "From this point on, you are only allowed to have one book in the bedroom at a time."

Well, this is more or less the most shocking thing you can say to a person in this house.

Given my current circumstances, two bookcases are in my bedroom, with the majority of my books packed away in cardboard boxes in the basement, which pains me greatly. In an ideal world, I would have a separate room to use as a library; alas. And because I have no night stand, books are just piled up next to the bed. As I write, there are no fewer than four volumes and two magazines that have been partly read.

Surrounding myself with books is one of the things that makes me feel better. Just being near them--their spines declaring titles proudly, their covers all colors imaginable--brings a sense of order to my life. I figure that as long as I don't veer into hoarder territory and make a book maze through which I must struggle in order to sleep, I'm in decent shape.

When I asked Mom about the one book edict before I wrote this post, she sighed and said that neither she nor Dad could stick to it. Apparently I'm not the only one in this house who enjoys the proximity.

-Cate-

In Which the Inner Critic Tells Me I Need to Stop Being So Silly

I'm in a writing rut, I think.

Not an act-of-writing rut. That's the same as it has been for years now: I write when I have to, when the words come to me (and sometimes when I just want them to come). This is different. It's more of a subject, or possibly style, rut.

This epiphany came to me while I was reading a book by an author who shall remain nameless. The main character in his book--a first-person narrator--read, to me, as the same kind of character this author had written several times before. On the one hand, this is somewhat comforting: recognizing his voice, his characters. On the other, it alarmed me that such a hard-working dude could fall into a rut.

As for myself, every poem I've written in the past year or so feels very angsty, schlocky, sophomoric to me. Sometimes I wonder if I'm 20 years old again, funneling my naïveté and absurd assuredness into my pen and then onto the page. This is, perhaps, a function of my inner critic, who swears to me that nothing I write will ever be good enough.

How, then, to shut out that voice? It's useful when it comes time to edit, sure, but when you're writing? Punch that bastard in the face, lest he/she should prevent you from even opening your notebook. And tell him/her I said hi!

-Cate-

What YA Reading?

So. Word on the street is that adults who read young adult (YA) books should be ashamed of themselves.

I know that this is old news by now, but I wrote the bulk of my summer blog posts months ahead of time to accommodate my ever-evolving situation, which is why I'm just now getting around to addressing the recent furor over this assertion. My friend Rachel Heston-Davis did a bang-up job of responding to Ruth Graham's article, as have many others. But of course I feel the need to add my voice to the dissenting crowd, because that's how I roll.

A stack of (mostly) YA books).

A friend and former professor of mine shared an article about the lack of discussion surrounding male YA readers (and, to an extent, authors). It's a quick yet illuminating read about true YA demographics. My friend, however, noted that she "Couldn't help wishing, though, that the male YA writer quoted in the article hadn't said he might not read YA if he didn't write it" because she was "Not sure that helped sell the concept." Below you'll find my response to her, as well as some comments I made when I first read Graham's screed (note: I've edited this since I spoke with my friend for clarity as well as the sake of redacting personal information).

***

Things I Said When I Had a Strong Gut Reaction to Ruth Graham Slamming My People
1) Tuck Everlasting is not YA. It's a children's novel. Neither is The Westing Game. It's a middle-grade novel. Freaking look into it.
2) As a matter of fact, the quality of YA fiction HAS improved greatly over the last 20 years.
3) Go read Inexcusable and tell me again that there's no such thing as moral ambiguity in YA fiction.
4) How is it not a good thing when adults take teenagers seriously and are able to connect with them through shared reading experiences?

The Luxe, the first book in one of my all-time favorite YA series.

Things I Said When I Read The "Dudes" Article

To an extent, I understand people who say they wouldn't read the genre if they weren't writing in it, since part of the process of writing a certain genre involves knowing it (current trends, past masters, et cetera) and NOT reading it would open them up to read other things/work on other projects, but at the same time, I come from the school of "read everything. Read it now," since I think you can find influences everywhere. Which is to say that I understand your frustration with someone making that declaration.

Even before I switched from fiction to writing for young people (WFYP) in grad school, I would occasionally read something from that group (mostly revisiting YA titles, and occasionally middle grade stuff, that I'd enjoyed when I was in that age range), but I will readily admit that I read more YA/middle grade stuff now than I did before, both because I want to know what's going on in that world and because I had some great professors whose work I'll read whenever I can get my hands on it.

With two of my WFYP homies (Elizabeth and Jamie) after our graduation.

One of the things that bothers me more about these conversations--and honestly not just because I dislike John Green--is the fact that the same big-ticket authors keep coming up as examples of what adult YA readers are (or should be, or should not be) reading, particularly Green, Rainbow Rowell, and Suzanne Collins, much though I may love The Hunger Games. Maybe I'm more sensitive to it because I personally know or am acquainted with some YA authors who deserve to be read, or am familiar with works by authors who are sort of on the margins.

I'm thinking here of Jack Gantos (who has had an interesting life and wrote an incredible novel, Desire Lines, which deals with homophobia and bullying), Sara Farizan (who is helping add some diversity to the genre, being both Persian-American and part of the LGBTQ community), Chris Lynch (he maybe kicked my ass a little--okay, a lot--in grad school, but why more people don't read and take to heart Inexcusable [which I will take any opportunity to plug] is beyond me), and even someone like Cherie Bennett (her Sunset Island series is akin to the Sweet Valley High books, which some people dismiss but I firmly believe have a place in the literary world, since they're fun and have a wide appeal).

Gantos' phenomenal work.

I will say that I appreciate people highlighting the fact that dudes read--and write!--YA and middle-grade books, not just ladies. There was a weird disparity between our faculty and our student body during my time at Lesley; out of eight profs across two years, four were male, but I only knew one guy who was a student (Scott Weems, who, interestingly enough, actually had his PhD in cognitive neuroscience before he came to Lesley for his MFA in WFYP and then went on to publish a non-fiction book about humor and why we laugh, going back to his neuroscience roots), although there have been a few other men whose time didn't overlap with mine. They're underrepresented in YA almost as much as women are in literary fiction, people like Green, Scott Westerfeld, and David Levithan aside.

 Dr. Weems, a seriously nice guy.

It also bugs me that YA authors are simultaneously held to the same and different standards than other authors. You can't sit there and tell me that YA is crap because it's not "literary" enough (which is patently bullshit) and also say that it shouldn't appeal to adults (or else that adults shouldn't find it appealing). That's like saying that a high schooler can't appreciate Steinbeck or Faulkner or that most vaunted of titles, To Kill a Mockingbird. Why SHOULDN'T adults appreciate YA? Not to get all Whitney Houston here, but the children are our future. Let's go ahead and take them--and what they read--at least a little bit seriously. Besides which, does rallying against the adults reading YA also mean that no adult should be writing it? Because every YA author I know, and most of the authors I can think of, is at least in the mid-20s age range, if not older. I'll return to the example of Chris Lynch, who is in his 50s and is a grandfather. Should this disqualify him from penning another YA novel?

 My favorite YA person named Christopher, with the possible exception of Crutcher.

This is all very frustrating to me on a general level. Rachel [mentioned above] in particular has been very vocal, both on Facebook and her blog, and she and I are forever sharing articles back and forth, or else one of us is commenting on whatever the other posts. I actually have an anecdote from my last semester of school that kind of sums up how I feel about all of this: our entire cohort (about 32 of us) had a meeting one morning to discuss student and faculty graduation speakers. Everyone had the opportunity to offer up names, and the other WFYP ladies asked me to recommend Tony Abbott as the faculty representative. Before I got a chance to do so, however, one of the Writing for Stage and Screen students piped up and said, "I want to nominate [one of the WSS profs], because I feel like the WSS people are really disregarded in the program." There were two problems with this declaration. 1) The WSS people were the rock stars of the program. 2) NO ONE (and I mean freaking no one) took WFYP seriously at all except for those of us who were pouring our heart and soul into it.

And that battle rages on today. YA is dismissed by certain critics because it's not "worthy" of adult attention. It's kind of a tunnel vision effect, I guess: you only appreciate what you think belongs on your path. But that's the way you miss out on some pretty awesome stuff.

So now that I've written a manifesto, I'm gong to go take a nap, and maybe read some YA.

-Cate-

Images of The Luxe and Desire Lines via Barnes & Noble.
Image of Dr. Weems via his website.
Image of Chris Lynch via Lesley University.
Images of stacked books and badass ladies via my own Instagram feed.

The Poet Laurie Ate

So. A thing happened in North Carolina last week.

In the course of normal state business, NC Governor Pat McCrory (no relation to Helen, as far as I know, and all the better for her) was called upon to appoint a Poet Laureate to follow in the very able and completely awesome steps of Joseph Bathanti.

He's just a regular Joe. (GET IT?)

Governor McCrory made his decision, choosing Valerie Macon of Fuquay-Varina as Bathanti's successor. There's a problem, though: McCrory made his decision without following recommended guidelines set forth by the North Carolina Arts Council or taking official nominations. It would seem that he saw fit to move ahead without guidance on this matter, and the NCAC has supported this action. (Bathanti was named Poet Laureate by McCrory's immediate predecessor, Bev Perdue.)

There are four upcoming inductees into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, any of whom would have made an excellent choice for Poet Laureate (full disclosure: I know one of them personally and have met two of the others). As Ed Southern, Executive Director of the North Carolina Writers' Network--to which I belong--points out, "[I]f any of them had been appointed poet laureate in such a sudden and apparently arbitrary way, we would be right to object" to them, as well. Southern is correct, and that's the rub of it: the arbitrary nature of this situation does not agree with any of us, regardless of the merit of the poet's work.

Ron Bayes: poet, homeboy, soon-to-be NC Literary Hall of Famer.

However, as Dannye Powell of the Charlotte Observer points out in an article published on 14 July (link above), Macon, who is a State employee, has been misrepresented as a compelling choice. Macon has neither served as the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet--she was a student poet, as I was once upon a time--nor been properly nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Moreover, her two collections of poetry have been self-published; while self-publishing is far less stigmatized than it used to be, it is still regarded warily by the poetry world.

Given McCrory's disregard for the citizens of North Carolina, as evidenced by his terrible comments about liberal arts education and questionable approaches to reforming public education, I'm not surprised by this move on his part. I do think, though, that he has waded into dangerous territory. As funding decreases for the arts and humanities across the nation, more and more writers face financial and societal difficulty; few people--aside from other poets--take poetry seriously. 

But as a friend of a friend of mine pointed out on Facebook, North Carolina poets are in a tough spot now. If they protest too loudly, McCrory may take the opportunity to dismantle the Poet Laureate program altogether by way of teaching "jealous" poets a lesson. If that sounds like extreme logic to you, you've clearly never been on the wrong end of an arts/humanities budget cut or faced loud criticism over your choice of major.

We writers tend to huddle together as a result of living under fire. And I would love to have supported Valerie Macon, if I felt she had the experience necessary to serve as Poet Laureate. (She herself does not appear to have any faith in her own abilities, as she resigned from the post less than a week after the announcement.) As it is, I cannot do that. It makes me sad to see North Carolina writers put into the position of having to reject their Poet Laureate, too, because the position is vitally important. I hope that McCrory is able to see the error of his ways and that Macon will have the grace to admit her lack of qualifications and reach out for help, which would no doubt create some goodwill among other writers in the state. 

-Cate-

Images via my own Instagram feed and St. Andrews University.

What to Read

Way back in 2012, one of my early blog posts on this site was about what I read. I subsequently added a post about the poets whose work I reference most often. Maybe I was prepping myself, however subconsciously, for today's discussion.

What should you read? There are two basic schools of thought: the canonical purists and the laissez-faire experimenters. Guess which kind I am.

Yes, I'm a do-what-you-want kind of girl. To tell you the truth, I think the idea of an academically-defined canon is bullshit. What I consider essential, required reading differs greatly from the next person's idea of necessary novels. For example, I believe every fiction writer should read Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. Meanwhile, when I was in grad school, I had a professor who was one of the dreaded Raymond Carver devotees, and I found Carver to be a waste of time. (Yeah, that's right; I said it. Come at me, bro.)

The American Revolution was fought over the canon; forces employed cannons. Or something.

Ray Bradbury wrote that we should read anything and everything. I happen to concur with that advice, since "anything and everything" can be interpreted to mean "anything and everything that will meet YOUR needs, rather than those of some fusty old scholars." (No disrespect to scholars in general; I'm a reluctant member of your ranks, but we all know that there are those rude people who scoff at anything other than what they deem essential.)

So get out there. Read some books. Or magazines. Or cereal boxes. Whatever piques your interest and makes you think! I'll be doing the same on my end, of course, and I can guarantee you the books on my list are ones that work for me.

-Cate-

Image via some defunct website. I had to search Yahoo Images for "firing cannon" instead of "cannon" because "cannon" takes you to an endless stream of pictures of Canon cameras. Someone needs to learn how to spell, and it's not me.

My Mundane Life

When I finished grad school, about a year and a half ago, I was so burned out on writing fiction that I more or less quit doing it for awhile. My immediate fallback was poetry, and I'd like to think I've produced a decent number of poems in the past 18 months. But one day, I decided to try my hand at personal essays.

This was new territory for me, although I've since finished a handful of pieces and read several memoirs along the way. My main frustration during this process has been encountering a goodly number of pieces in which the author is 1) boozing constantly, 2) bed hopping like it's a contest to be won, or 3) both drinking and fucking.

There's nothing inherently wrong with either of these things, as long as you're not damaging yourself or anyone else (everything in moderation and all that). Almost everyone I know has a secret stash of liquor for emergencies, or else someone they can call when they're feeling, ahem, restless. But I'm starting to wonder if everyone with a book deal is an alcoholic nymphomaniac. 

Perhaps in an effort to push back against this, I write about pop culture, family, home,  tattoos, and my mental health. This may not be compelling in the same way a binge drinking-fueled orgy is, but everyday life is not necessarily extraordinary, and people need to know that their experience is valid. This is part of what's great about social media. People say stupid stuff on Twitter and they post really banal things on Facebook. Maybe it's annoying sometimes, or spectacular in the "Thank God I didn't say that" kind of way, but it's also comforting to know that other people get as bored or as silly or as outraged as you do. And so this is the beauty of a non-drinking, non-sexyfuntimes essay: you see that someone out there GETS IT. 

No disrespect to the authors who've sprung to mind (and shall remain nameless) while I write this post; they are often good writers, and I'm sure they're not bad people. And God knows I've done my share of stupid shit. But I can't help wondering how they function if they're always in bed with a hangover or else a new partner. I have way too many things to do with my life to spend it like that. 

-Cate-

"There Must Be Things in Books, Things We Can't Imagine" (From the Archives)

I will take literally any opportunity I get to talk about my favorite book, Fahrenheit 451. Since I first read Fahrenheit when I was in high school and another school year has just begun across the country, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts about the book with you in another From the Archives post.

***

One of the greatest touchstones of my life is, and has been for a number of years, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. I have read it multiple times, written numerous papers about it both in high school and college, and given copies of it to my father and my best guy friend, among a few others. It means that much to me.

I've never been able to properly explain my attachment to Fahrenheit. Part of it is the batshit craziness that is Clarisse. Part of it is the near-android detachment of Mildred. Part of it is the dedication that Faber shows to literature. Part of it is the megalomaniacal antics of Beatty. A larger part of it has to do with that greatest of Firemen, Guy Montag.

But mostly it's about the writing itself. There is one passage that I repeatedly point to above all others to showcase the simple beauty of Bradbury's language: "[...T]he heart is suddenly shattered, the body falls in separate motions, and the blood is astonished to be freed on the air; the brain squanders its few precious memories and, puzzled, dies" (158). For me, words like that represent the ultimate culmination of centuries of literature that came before; it is poetry, it is drama, it is truth, it is fantastic. It makes me want to be a better writer.

I could expound upon the merits of Fahrenheit at length. But, this being a blog, I feel that it is not the proper forum for doing so. However, I will leave you with the truest words I have ever encountered, from the coda: "There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority [...] feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse" (176-7). And it is because of Bradbury that so many authors have been willing to break free from such oppression--he proved that he could do it, and so should we.

The HUMANities

Alexandra Petri, a columnist at the Washington Post,  wrote an interesting article at the end of June in which she discusses the need for humanities studies as we move into the future as a society. By far the best part of her argument is this: 

My biggest problem with all the people speaking up to defend the Humanities is that they seem to be coming at it from the wrong end of the telescope. “The future will still need the human skills that the liberal arts promote, and perhaps will need them more than ever: skills in communication, interpretation, linking and synthesizing domains of knowledge, and imbuing facts with meaning and value.” Is that really all it is? I didn’t realize I was gaining skills in imbuing facts with meaning and value. I thought I was lucky to get to reach back 300 years or 3,000 years and see how the people alive at that time struggled with the most fundamental and fascinating questions of existence [...]. In a nutshell — What is human?

If you don’t realize that these disciplines are inherently exciting because they have a monopoly on these questions, [...] I quake for the Humanities.

I'm just now getting around to piping up with my two cents because, well, I was too busy doing the things that humanities-centric people do: reading, writing, no 'rithmatic. In other words, I was:

- blogging

- conducting research for a paper I'm writing about Madonna's Ray of Light

- rewatching the Harry Potter movies

- hating on Twilight

- promoting a book I recently edited

- pondering the cosmos

Okay, that last one is an exaggeration. But think about what I WAS doing:

- reaching out to people with my words

- helping to expand the understanding we have of popular culture

- reexperiencing something that changed the world

- contributing to the discussion of a very important topic

- bringing joy to readers by helping someone share his work

This probably makes me sound a little snobby, like I have a very high opinion of myself and my activities. But please don't misunderstand. This is how I feel about the humanities on a general level. I have the same amount of respect for the sciences, because they expand our knowledge of the physical universe, and that's important, too. 

What I do not respect, however, is the way the humanities are consistently shunted aside in favor of other things. The humanities are the best way we have to understand ourselves as humans. That's why they're called humanities.

-Cate-

Freebies

Pssst. I have a secret for you. There's a place where you can borrow books FOR FREE.

It's called a library. Some of you may have heard of these things--primitive versions of the Internet. And while I, having completed my studies, no longer spend much time in libraries, I am a big fan of them. Not only can you borrow their books for your reading pleasure, but they can help you find new authors to love, information about your local area, or even your family history!

Libraries are important places, which is why I want to give them a plug today. Many offer children's programming, and all provide a quiet place for research and reading. Some even have gift shops where you can purchase items to support the library with your money, and a select few have extra perks; for example, my home library in Michigan has a gallery used for local artists and student shows, and the Greensboro Central Library has some tricked-out conference rooms. Moreover, librarians are staunch defenders of free access to information as well as fans of saving people from the tyranny of those who would ban books. (This part particularly excites me.)

When I was a kid, the library was my favorite place to be. Nowadays, I buy most of the books I read, but walking through stacks still excites me. I can only hope that a few of you feel the same thrill, or that you're willing to check it out. Just think of all the interesting--and free!--things you'll find there.

-Cate-

Review: The Fifty Year Sword

Mark Z. Danielewski

The Fifty Year Sword

Pantheon, 2012

288 pp.

$26.00

Strictly speaking, in terms of length, Mark Z. Danielewski's The Fifty Year Sword is not a novel (the word count puts it solidly in short story territory). In terms of scope, though, it's so much more. Danielewski has long been an experimenter, playing with notions of what fiction is, what it should be, and what it can be. This, his third book, is the perfect synthesis of his first, House of Leaves, and his second, Only Revolutions. The use of multiple narrators and occasion illustrations recall both, the color-coded narration OR, and the typographical quirks HoL. I wouldn't go so far as to call him a genius because of his approach, though I don't think it's out of line to label him an important innovator. 

The reason I hesitate to endow him with the laurels of genius in this case is because of the uneven writing craft on display in FYS. On the one hand, the five-plus narrators of this story act as a sort of Greek chorus, mimicking the strophes and antistrophes of classical plays such as Oedipus Rex, their voices barely distinct from each other and often overlapping as they interweave their dialogue. On the other hand, the reason such a device is necessary remains unclear to the reader from start to finish. Furthermore, as ghost stories go, this one is what one might consider standard. Yes, there is tension. Yes, it falls outside the realm of "ghosts," though it is certainly supernatural. However, it doesn't expand the genre in the same way House of Leaves did over a decade ago. Some might reply that if the genre isn't broke, we should not fix it; however, in this age of upheaval, the time is ripe (as Danielewski himself proved with HoL) to plumb further depths. 

But FYS is not without its merits. Danielewski's language is, by turns, cummings-esque, Whitman-esque, and--most importantly--Poe-esque. After all, what kind of writer would Danielewski be if he didn't pay homage to experimental authors of the past? FYS also has the distinct advantage of being less dense than its predecessor, Only Revolutions, which I must admit I never finished reading thanks to its complex eight-pages-at-a-time structure (those of you who have encountered it will understand this; those who have not might heed my warning to give it a wide berth). And it perhaps serves as a gentler entrance point for anyone interested in Danielewski's work. After all, House of Leaves is a complex and intimidating tome that--if I am to be honest--scared the hell out of me, though I'm not known for my fortitude when it comes to horror stories, though I'm not sure I'd be so impressed with Danielewski if I had started with FYS instead.

Ultimately, Danielewski still makes me want to be a better writer, or at least a better book designer. His imagination is boundless and labyrinthine, his tics unmistakable, and his influence undeniable.