Look for the Marfa Mondays podcasts to resume in early 2022. By Jove & by Jimmy Dean, this will happen.
WORKSHOPNEWS
In 2022 look for my monthly workshop post on the second Monday of every month.
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CYBERFLANERIE: ROB BRAXMAN ON THE NEURAL HASH NEW WORLD EDITION
Big Tech companies have their own political agenda, and if you don’t happen to be on board with that— whether now or, perhaps at some point in the future— they have some other ideas about what information is good for you, dear writerly reader, to be able to access and to communicate. Are you on FaceBook or Whatsapp? Do you use gmail and/or Google search? Do you have an iPhone? If you can answer yes to any of these—and many more such questions— you might appreciate learning about the astonishing new ways that Big Tech companies have to identify you, your relationships, your locations, and much more about what’s in your mind than you might imagine, and thereby, to their advantage, game the information that you see and don’t see. Cookies and trackers are “old school” now. Herewith, a selection from Rob Braxman’s tech savvy advice on how to handle Big Tech’s Neural Hash New World.
“I’d rather read in person than on Zoom. In person, the audience can (usually) see the whole body, not just the face, of the reader, and I like to think that larger picture is part of my delivery. “— Thaddeus Rutkowski
Thaddeus Rutkowski reading “Right and Wong”
It was in an AWP Conference Book Fair some years ago that Thaddeus Rutkowski first popped up on my writerly radar. Then, at the 2019 AWP, I attended the Gival Press authors reading. Wow! Rutkowski reads his poetry like no one else. No surprise to later learn (check out his bio on his website) that he is a one-time winner of the Nuyorican Poets Café Friday slam, the Poetry Versus Comedy slam at the Bowery Poetry Club, and the Syracuse poetry slam. He lives in Manhattan but travels afar to read. If you ever have a chance to attend one of Rutkowski’s readings, or can catch one on Zoom, throw your schedule to the buffalos!
Rutkowski’s latest publication is a collection of poetry, Tricks of Light (Great Weather for Media, 2020), and apropos of that:
C.M. MAYO: What inspired you to write Tricks of Light? Can you talk about its genesis?
THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI: In 2018, I started writing poems for a new book. I’d published my first book of poems, Border Crossings, in 2017.
Jane Ormerod of the small press Great Weather for Media heard me read from Border Crossings and asked if I had another book like it. I didn’t, but I thought I could write one. I told Jane I would work on it, and I kept in touch with her about the project.
I began with pieces about the sights and sounds from my daily routine in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. But I needed some pieces to fill the beginning of the book, which goes back to my childhood. After about a year, I completed a new manuscript and sent it to Jane. She was very patient in waiting for it.
C.M. MAYO: If a reader were to read one poem in this collection, which one would you suggest, and why?
THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI: I’d pick the one the editors of Great Weather—Jane, Thomas Fucaloro, David Lawton, and Mary Schlecta—chose to promote the book, “Farmers and Dove.” I wrote this poem while sitting on the front steps of my mother’s house in central Pennsylvania. Across the road, a couple of farmers were harvesting corn. At the same time, a mourning dove was calling. The scene reminded me of my childhood in this same village; it also reminded me of my brother, who had recently passed. But the reference to my brother isn’t spelled out; I refer only to “what’s lost.”
The publisher made a handout of this poem to give away with any book purchase—mainly at book or poetry festivals.
C.M. MAYO:Which of these poems is your personal favorite? Why?
THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI: What comes to mind are the poems that are family snapshots. A number of the poems are snapshots of my current family: my wife and daughter. So all of those would be favorites.
While I was working on this book, our daughter was living with us. She is now in college in Ohio.
C.M. MAYO:As you were writing, did you have in mind an ideal reader?
THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI: This doesn’t answer your question, but as I was/am writing, I have in mind an obligation to the reader. That is to be clear as I can be, so that the meaning that is taken is what I intended. This is not to say that everything is spelled out, but that the tone is clear, whether it is ironic, humorous, observational, etc. Ideally, I will be able to connect with the reader cleanly and directly.
C.M. MAYO:Which poets have been the most important influences for you? And for Tricks of Light in particular?
THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI: When I was younger, I read books of poetry by Richard Brautigan and Raymond Carver. I never heard Brautigan read live, but I understand he was a great reader. I heard Carver read prose, not poetry—I believe he is better known for prose.
Also when I was younger, I would photocopy W.S. Merwin’s poems from the New Yorker—the trade magazine where I worked had a subscription. I probably still have those photocopies. I also saw Merwin read aloud once, at the New School in Manhattan.
I have enjoyed hearing a number of poets read live: Paul Beatty, Russell Edson, Reg E. Gaines, Tess Gallagher, Thom Gunn, Joy Harjo, Charles Simic, James Tate. But perhaps the most compelling was Patti Smith—I’m talking about her spoken-word performances, not her singing, though I’ve also heard her with her band. When she spoke, you paid attention, and there was the feeling that, true or not, she had some wisdom to pass along.
C.M. MAYO:Which poets and writers are you reading now?
THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI: For myself, I’m reading only Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She opens up the world from the point of view of an African Black woman who travels the United States. The view is as complete as it needs to be; it is expansive. It is sort of the opposite of my own Minimal approach.
C.M. MAYO:How has the Digital Revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to call down the Muse with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, social media, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share?
THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI: I understand the internet is distracting—for me as much as for anyone. But I also see the upside. Research has become easier; I can look up facts, people, concepts more quickly than before. Also, it allows people to connect with one another—an effect that is both good and bad. Good in the sense that one has more connections. Bad in that much information is misunderstood and misused.
Good or bad, the digital universe is part of life. I can’t imagine (anymore) the times without it.
C.M. MAYO:Have you done readings on Zoom? (How has it been to read poetry on Zoom? Do you see the future all Zoom-y?)
THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI: I’ve done a number of readings on Zoom. The launch of Tricks of Light was on Zoom in 2021, and it went well. It allowed people from all over to “be there.” We haven’t had an in-person launch for this book, and at this point I doubt we will.
That said, I’d rather read in person than on Zoom. In person, the audience can (usually) see the whole body, not just the face, of the reader, and I like to think that larger picture is part of my delivery. I saw on the TV news yesterday that the stock value of Zoom is going down. This could be a sign.
C.M. MAYO:For those looking to publish a book of poetry, what would be your most hard-earned piece of advice?
THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI: My advice, other than to take as much care as possible with the writing itself, is to be aware of and connected to the poetry world. Go to readings, take workshops, read in open mics, keep in touch with like-minded people. Your writing might be strong enough to find its place without these other factors, but if you’re like me, you’ll need all the help and support you can get.
C.M. MAYO: What’s next for you as a writer / poet?
THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI: I think my next book will be a collection of flash fictions, but hopefully it will be something more than a collection. I’ve been gathering short prose pieces and arranging them in what I hope will be a linked sequence. It’s what I’ve done with my earlier books Roughhouse, Tetched, Haywire, and Guess and Check. My book Violent Outbursts was different; it was a collection of unlinked short prose pieces, most of them begun as exercises with my workshop students.
My next project probably won’t be a book of poetry, because I’m mainly a fiction writer. Still, I write poems, and I save them, so maybe they will be collected in another book.
By Thaddeus Rtkowski From Tricks of Light
FARMERS AND DOVE
When sunlight hits the higher points and the lower places remain in shadow, two farmers harvest corn together. One drives a pickup truck, while the other follows alongside, stripping ears off stalks and tossing them into the truck bed.
On a telephone wire above the farmers, a mourning dove coos for what’s lost, for some unspecified thing that’s missing The calls aren’t sad for the dove, only for those who are listening. For those of us who know what’s missing, the sounds of the bird remind us of what’s lost.
EMPTY NEST
I have a feeling that something is missing, because our child is no longer living with us. I was focused on her, and on her only, and now I’m not focused on her unless she contacts me, and she doesn’t contact me often.
I could contact her, but I would need a good reason. She and I aren’t in the habit of waving at each other over distance, in cyberspace just for the sake of waving.
I can see this emptiness as freedom, a space in which to do what I like. I don’t need to fill the space with someone else to take care of, someone like a pet: a dog or a cat. I don’t need a pet to feed and/or walk on a regular basis. I don’t need to worry about a pet’s survival when I go away from home for a while. A pet wouldn’t make me happier, though I would make a pet happier.
BY C.M. MAYO — January 17, 2022 UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).
This blog posts on Mondays. In 2022 on the third Monday of the month I post some of or something related to my own work.
This Monday finds me working on my Far West Texas book. More about that anon. Meanwhile, an essay from the archives:
TULPA MAX OR, NOTES ON THE AFTERLIFE OF A RESURRECTION by C.M. Mayo Originally published in Catamaran Literary Reader, summer 2017 (and in Spanish in Letras Libres)
Coffin used to transport Maximilian’s body from the Cerro de las Camapanas. The table it sits on is the table used for embalming the body. Photo by C.M. Mayo
In a manner of speaking, we historical novelists are in the resurrection business. But who, or rather, what precisely is it that we bring to life? These characters infused by our imaginations, yet based on beings who were once flesh, blood, and bone, can they escape the page and, like the tulpas of Tibetan esoteric tradition, take on a will of their own and haunt their creators? In the case of Maximilian von Habsburg, that Archduke of Austria who ended both his reign as Emperor of Mexico and his life before a firing squad in Querétaro one hundred fifty years ago, and whom I made a character in my novel based on the true story of Agustín de Iturbide y Green, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, I must confess that yes, he haunts me.
To start with, soon after the novel’s publication (more years ago than I would care to count), Tulpa Max, as it were, prompted a little avalanche of correspondence that continues rumbling into my email inbox to this day.
Had I seen the mega alebrije, “Amor por México, Maximiliano y Carlota”?
Did I believe that Maximilian was a Mason?
What did I think of the legend of Justo Serra, was he really Maximilian, having escaped that firing squad to make a new life in El Salvador?
From another reader, Maruja González, friend of a friend in San Miguel de Allende, I received, along with her generous permission to post it on my blog, a family story about the dessert prepared for Maximilian on his visit to that city in 1864. It so happened that Maximilian had stayed in her great great grandparents’s house.
“…and there they made him a very solemn banquet with music and soloists, and the all ladies, their hair coiffured, lamented very much the absence of the empress, Carlotita, as they were already calling her with affection. All these ladies of the cream of San Miguel society jostled to outdo each other in making the most elaborate, brilliant, and exquisite delicacies. One of my aunts had the honor of preparing some pears in syrup for the monarch, who turned upside down in praise for this most wonderful dessert… “
An email as if from beyond the tomb, for it literally had to do with a tombstone, came from Jean Pierre d’Huart, great grand nephew of the officer shot in the head on the highway near Río Frío in March of 1866. That officer was a high-ranking member of the delegation that came to Mexico after the death of Carlota’s father, King Leopold of Belgium, and the assumption to that throne of her brother, Leopold II (yes, he of Congo infamy). That bandits would so brazenly attack such a party on that highway—the major artery connecting Mexico City and Veracruz, gateway to Europe—was at the time and to this day widely considered, both in Mexico and abroad, a turning point for Maximilian’s reign, a harbinger of its end. I had it wrong in the novel, my correspondent gently informed me. The Baron d’Huart murdered near Río Frío was not Charles, then serving in Mexico with the French Imperial Army, but his distant cousin, Frédéric Victor. Attached was a photograph taken in Tintigny, Belgium of the very tombstone, wreathed in vines and its base tufted with moss.
But the most Edgarallenpoe-esque email to date came from a friend, Roberto Wallentin, with the Spanish translation by his father, Dr. Roberto Wallentin, of an Hungarian newspaper article of 1876 by Dr. Szender Ede. Experts on the period will recognize Dr. Szender Ede as the individual responsible for the grotesquely inept embalming of Maximilian’s corpse. Dr. Szender Ede tells us:
“While I was working on the embalming, and afterwards as well, many people asked if I could get for them some of the personal belongings of the deceased. To my knowledge, during his imprisonment in Querétaro, through varios different people, he sent all of his personal belongings to members of his family. The only thing left in his room was the iron frame of the bed in which he slept. Dr. Rivadeneyra assured Dr. Basch that the Emperor had promised him that and so, on good faith, Dr. Basch authorized the “donation” to him. On the other hand, Dr. Licea (and this was also commented upon in the Mexican press) made a genuine business with objects that, according to him, had belonged to Maximilian. I kept some clippings of Maximilian’s hair, and most of those I gave to my friends in San Luís Potosí.”
More than messages from the depths of cyberspace, however, Tulpa Max prompts comments, generally kind ones, but on occasion cutting. As the latter have revealed, and not entirely to my surprise, many Mexicans are dead-certain that, for having published a novel that has to do with Maximilian, its author must be enthralled by both the red-bearded charms and anachronistic political philosophy of that antique aristocrat. Obviously, such persons have not read my book, in which, closely following the documented history, Maximilian is capable, as in his dealings with the young American mother of Agustín de Iturbide y Green, and in his Black Decree (that anyone found with a weapon could be summarily executed), not to mention his reinstating slavery, of dunderheaded heartlessness. True, I bring as much empathy as I can muster to my portrait of Maximilian, but empathy—seeing with the heart—is the novelist’s first, best, and most powerful faculty, and it does not necessarily imply sympathy for that character’s actions or ideas.
There are many ways to buy a yacht; uness your name is J.K. Rowling, writing a novel is not one of them. By far my richest reward for having resurrected Maximilian has been the cornucopia of opportunities for “the feast of reason and the flow of soul.” I quote the English poet Alexander Pope, as I like to think Maximilian would, to describe tete-a-tetes with readers, fellow writers, and scholars of that exotic, bloody, labyrinthian and transnational firecracker of an episode of Mexican history.
And there was one shining moment of an afternoon on the cool and plant-filled terrace of the Centro de Estudios de Historia de México in Chimalistac when I chanced to talk with Luis Reed Torres about one of Maximilian’s undeservedly forgotten generals, Manuel Ramírez de Arellano, who escaped a firing squad only to die of fever in Italy.
I went to Puebla just for the joy of listening to Margarita López Cano talk about operas by Bellini and by Verdi in the time of Maximilian.
Most memorable was an entire afternoon of a lunch with Guillermo Tovar de Teresa in his old (and assuredly haunted) house in Colonia Roma—lace tablecloth, and rain pattering on the windows. I had always wanted to meet the author of that glorious book about Mexico City, La ciudad de los palacios (The City of Palaces). We talked until it grew dark about Maximilian and the Iturbides and Miramón and the rarest of rare books.
Speaking of rare books, I treasure my autographed copies of the works of Austrian historian Konrad Ratz, untill his passing in 2014, a tireless researcher into the life and government of Maximilian. It was a great honor to have presented his and Amparo Gómez Tepexicuapan’s book, Los viajes de Maximiliano en México (Maximilian’s Travels in Mexico) one twinkly night in Chapultepec Castle, no less.
Tulpa Max, who so loves nothing more than to hear about himself (even his dessicated corpse with eyes pried from a statue of the Virgin laid over his orbital sockets, and his legs broken so as to fit into the box), is standing a little straighter now. The color has risen to his cheeks and his eyes shine open and bright like a fox’s. He runs a gloved hand down his beard, and he sniffs what he wishes were a sea breeze. But it’s just the humble perfume of my mug of coffee. No garlic, not yet.
Now if you will excuse me, dear reader, I must check my email.
A few years ago I gave a talk for the Women Writing the West conference, “On Seeing as an Artist: Five Techniques for a Journey Towards Einfühlung.” I recently reread it and, rare for me to say, I wouldn’t change a word (although I did fix a typo). Of late, I’ve had some conversations on this very subject, so I thought I’d take it up again for this second Monday of the month’s writing workshop post.
If you’re ever flummoxed for something to write about, a rich source of narratives you can do endless permutations upon are fables and fairytales. Something is at stake, characters are at odds— go to it! Make the fox who doesn’t want sour grapes, say, a stockbroker who doesn’t want that condo in Aspen. Make the princess and the pea a university student who tweets about her upset with outrageously insensitive professors. Rename the tortoise Ludovika and make her a STEM major; the hare, that’s her cuz, Jimmy the Adderall-addicted skateboarder. And so on.
Speaking of seeing, one of my personal favorites among that vast corpus of European fables and fairytales is Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor Has No Clothes” (sometimes translated as “The Emperor’s New Clothes”). Dear writerly reader, I am confident that you are already familiar with that story, so I won’t recount it here, but if you need a refresher or if you grew up in, say, the highlands of Papua New Guinea, here is an English translation. (And if you did grow up in the highlands of Papua Guinea I sincerely ask you to tell me the equivalent fable from your culture; I have no doubt that you have one!)
As I often take pains to point out in my workshops, reading as a writer is a very different endeavor than reading for entertainment or for scholarly purposes. Of course most people would come across “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in a children’s book, and read it for entertainment. The hero of the story is the little child who cries out: “But the emperor has nothing on at all!” Most readers are most entertained when they can identify with the hero. What’s to identify with? His shining innocence, his honesty, his courage in speaking truth to power. We can be sure, he’s as cute as Jackie Coogan, too.
Jackie Coogan wows the investors in the Charlie Chaplin film “The Kid”
As for that foolish emperor and his hypocritical courtiers, we give them the big, fat, farty raspberry!
Jackie Coogan, much later in life, in character as Uncle Fester. Well, OK, whatever he’s doing, let’s call it raspberry-esque.
What I would suggest to you, dear writerly reader, is that the more interesting characters in this fairytale, and that are worthy of exploration and fleshing out in literary fiction, are the emperor and his courtiers. What might they think and what might they say after the child, in his innocence, has broken the spell?
We know from the story what the emperor thinks and feels in that moment—he knows that the child is right, he recognizes that the crowd of his subjects agrees with the child, but he, in his underwear, and his courtiers, their hands in the air “holding” his imaginary train, continue the procession more seriously than ever.
But what about that night? The next day? A week later? A decade later?
At the end of their lives?
Use your imagination to go to those points, and tell us how, concretely, the life of the emperor and his courtiers lives have been upturned— or not? With whom are they now allied / upon whom do they now depend ? And what it is that, a day later, a week later, a decade later, or on the last day of their lives, they deny, although it is plainly before them? Describe the state of their self-images, and of their souls. You might use imagery, specific detail that appeals to the senses, dialogue, action.
For symphonic effect, tell about, say, their relationships with their dogs. Or, dogs in general. Do they prefer beagles? Or German shepherds? And so on.
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Speaking of emperors, courtiers and clear seeing, a few months ago I began a side project of translating Eine Reise Nach Mexico, a German language memoir by Countess Paula Kollonitz, an Austrian lady-in-waiting who traveled to Mexico as part of Maximilian and Carlota’s entourage in 1864. (It is a memoir I originally read in Spanish translation, and I made use of many of the details she recounts in my historical novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire. For those unfamiliar with the history of Mexico’s Second Empire, I warmly recommend my podcast interview with M.M. McAllen, author of the superb narrative history, Maximilian and Carlota: Europe’s Last Empire in Mexico.) You can read Eine ReiseNach Mexico now for free in the original (if you can handle Gothic font) and in a 19th century English translation on archive.org. My purpose, apart from a more modern English translation, is to provide an introduction and notes.
Eine Reise Nach Mexico by Paula Kollonitz
Countess Kollonitz writes about her journey some two years afterwards, when it was obvious to even the most deluded adherents that Maximilian von Habsburg’s Mexican adventure was doomed. It makes for uncanny reading— and it’s interesting to note what she, a lady-in-waiting from the Hofburg, dares to say, and what she doesn’t say, but that would have been obvious to her either at the moment she chronicles, or later, as she was writing. Eine Reise Nach Mexico was published in Vienna in May of 1867, the month before Maximilian’s execution in Querétaro. It so happens that I saw the elaborately pleated shirt Maximilian wore for that occasion, on display in a museum in Mexico City. It was pierced by several bullet holes and stained with blood.
I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.
BY C.M. MAYO — January, 2022 UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).
This blog posts on Mondays. In 2022 first Mondays of the month are for Texas Books, posts in which share with you some of the more unusual and interesting books in the Texas Bibliothek, that is, my working library. > For the archive of all Texas-related posts click here. P.S. Listen in any time to the related Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project.
“I believe that if you make a film properly today, it’ll be watched by people in fifty years time”—George Stevens
Last month I devoted the first-Monday-of-the-month “Texas Books” post to several works related to the iconic movie Giant, which was based on Edna Ferber’s best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. It’s nigh impossible to exaggerate the influence of that 1956 movie on shaping popular concepts and imagery of Far West Texas—although, strange to say, neither the author of the novel it was based on, nor the starring actors, nor the director of Giantwere Texan. George Stevens (1904-1975), who won an Academy Award for Best Director for Giant, was a liberal Californian through-and-through. But unlike most of his fellow Hollywood directors, Stevens volunteered to serve in World War II, in which for a mobile film unit he documented, among other events and places, the liberation of Dachau. Two of the films he directed, The Nazi Plan (1945) and Nazi Concentration Camps (1945) were screened as evidence in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.
Stevens, who got his start filming Laurel and Hardy comedies, and later directed such stars as Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, was to become one of Hollywood’s first major producer/ directors. However, his directing career was cleaved by World War II. Prior to the war, he made myriad light comedies and entertainments; afterwards, the serious and meticulously researched dramas, including Shane, the epic Giant, and The Diary of Anne Frank. As Stevens told one interviewer, “After seeing the camps I was an entirely different person.”
So who was this person, this Hollywood Californian, who had become another person whose vision of Texas in the mid-1950s has had such a powerfully lasting influence?
I devoured the editor’s excellent introduction, chronology and filmography, and all the interviews from 1935 to 1974— spanning nearly four decades.
A few quotes that stood out for me:
From the interview given to William Kirschner, Jewish War Veterans Review, August 1963:
[On the liberation of Dachau] “It was unbelievable. What is there to say about such enormities and abuse. A fellow in my unit who was something of a linguist wrote letters for the dying to their relatives without interruption for days and nights at a time. It was like wandering around in one of Dante’s infernal visions. (pp.18-19)
“Nothing has disturbed me in my life as much as the Hitler outrages. It’s the reason I got into the war, and I finally wound up in a concentration camp on the day it was liberated. I hated the German army. What they stood for was the worst possible thing that’s happened in centuries.” (p.21)
[On the wartime experience] “It was an elaborate change in my life… Professionally, I knew I wanted to do very different things to what I’d done before. In this respect, the film that was very important to me was The Diary of Anne Frank.” (p.21)
[On films in general] “The business of people gathered together in great numbers to look at a screen and agree or disagree upon ideas as acted out in front of them, I think it’s one of the great adventures of our time.” (p.23)
From the interview given to James Silke, Cinema, December-January 1964-65:
[On films in general] “I think all people are very curious about experiences, experiences that in this little life span they may not experience for themselves. A film is a remarkable way for people to experience things they would not have had the opportunity to experience in any other way. And I think the best in films occurs when they bring the response, ‘That’s it!'” (p.48)
From the interview given to Robert Hughes, 1967:
“This is what the theater does so well. People gathered in a large group, finding a little something about themselves. When the audience was truly moved, it was absolutely quiet. They were in communion because they were learning the truth about themselves. They were there for discivery, not entertainment. They say film is a narcotic, an escape. But when film was done right, it asked real questions: Who am I? Why am I? Why do I do this? Real theater and film is therapy for the audience.” (p.60)
[On Dachau] “After seeing the camps I was an entirely different person. I know there is brutality in war, and the SS were lousy bastards, but the destruction of people like this was beyond comprehension. This is where I really learned about life… We went to the woodpile outside the crematorium, and the woodpile was people. I remember there was a whole area for Yugoslavs. The only reason I knew they were Yugoslavs was because they had a tag on their coats or a broad purple crayon mark on their chests. There was a dissecting thing in the crematorium where they cut people apart before they put them in there.”(p.65)
From the interview given to Bruce Petri, 1973 (reprinted from A Theory of American Film: The Films and Techniques of George Stevens, Garland Publishing, 1987)
“So I keep the camera back in a position that is not going to help the audience too much…We’re curious creatures, and we like to discover for ourselves. In the world that we’re living in, in the film, the film is exposing life to you for your convenience. It must, to a degree, and it can under many situations without resentment; but I think it’s an enormous waste not to give the audience its priority of discovery, as much as you can.” (p.90)
From the interview for the American Film Institute, 1973:
[On Giant] “The structural development of the picture, I believe, is what saves it. It has an excellent structure design, which has to do with the audience anticipating and looking some distance ahead all the way to the finish, which is a reversal on how this kind of story would normally end— the hero is heroic. Here the hero is beaten, but his gal likes him. It’s the first time she’s ever really respected him because he’s developed a kind of humility— not instinctive, but beaten into him.” (p.102)
[On film in general] “It’s all about making sure the film bounces off that sheet and comes to life in the mind of the audience. What is a film outside the audience’s mind?” (p.104)
I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.
This fourth Monday of the month I’m dedicating this last Q & A of 2021 to some of the answers I have received to a question many of you, dear writerly readers—and workshop students— might find especially interesting.
C.M. MAYO: For those looking to publish, what would be your most hard-earned piece of advice?
DAVID O. STEWART: Nobody asked you to write that book. You’re doing it for you. If you can’t get it published, accept that they’re all a bunch of morons and move on.
SUSAN J. TWEIT: In the writing stage, be honest. When you get to a scene or place or event you want to skip over, stop and ask yourself, what am I afraid of? And then go there. Find the universal threads in your personal story—memoir works when it reaches beyond the personal into the territory that anyone can learn from. And when looking for an agent or publisher, be perseverant. Memoir is a crowded field these days, and yours has to be the best it can possibly be to stand out, and it also has to be so compelling that an editor or agent simply cannot put it down.
JAN CLEERE: Do your research before querying publishers and agents. You will save so much time if you know whether the publisher or agent you are querying accepts the type of book you are writing. There are several good websites that list publishers and/or agents and describe what they are looking for.
KARREN ALENIER: If a publisher says s/he likes part of your manuscript, ask immediately if you can send a revision. Don’t delay by feeling sorry for yourself or thinking someone else might like the whole thing. Take your openings when they present.
SOLVEIG EGGERZ: Don’t waste years seeking an agent, a large publisher, a small publisher, or anything. Instead invest time and money in getting your work read and vetted 1) by your favorite writers group and 2) by an excellent developmental editor or mentor. Once you feel confident that you’ve written a good book, do what feels right regarding publishing.
KATHLEEN ALCALÁ: Before submitting anything, research the market. If looking to publish in a magazine, purchase half a dozen or so that seem to be likely venues for your work. Look at them carefully and see if you fit in. This is a good place to start, rather than submitting book length manuscripts to publishers, because book editors read these magazines, too. It also gives you a chance to learn how to work with an editor, to receive suggestions and shape the best possible piece for the magazine.
CHRISTINA THOMPSON: Don’t be too impatient and don’t try to publish work that isn’t ready. Also, I do recommend having some readers for your work-in-progress: a writing group or a class can really help you identify weaknesses in your writing that you might not be able to identify on your own.
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My own hard-earned advice about publishing? Chances are, you’ll make some mistakes, some minor, others appalling, so why not lessen the number and the pain by learning from the mistakes of others?
My favorite answer is David O. Stewart’s: “Nobody asked you to write that book. You’re doing it for you. If you can’t get it published, accept that they’re all a bunch of morons and move on.” I would add to that, don’t overlook the option of self-publishing. But again, and with self-publishing especially, it helps to learn from the mistakes of others. (On my writing workshop page, scroll down aways and you will find a batch of posts on publishing.)
May 2022 be a year filled with health, happiness, prosperity, and inspiration for you and yours. And if you’re looking to publish, may your path be blessed!
I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.
BY C.M. MAYO — December 20, 2021 UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).
One of Ours by Willa Cather Brilliant and profound, One of Ours is the American novel about that episode of madness known as the First World War that will ring through the centuries. It has been a few years now that I’ve been working through Cather’s oeuvre (so far: The Professor’s House, O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, Death Comes for the Archbishop); my main wonder is why I didn’t start sooner. (For those whose children attend high schools which faculty have seen fit to remove Cather from the English class syllabi, I point to Jonathan Leer’s Radical Hope, listed below.)
Child of the Sun by Lonn Taylor Historian Lonn Taylor’s last book, a beautiful and moving memoir of his childhood in the Philippines. P.S. You can listen in to my interview with Taylor about Far West Texas here.
The City of Hermes: Articles and Essays on Occultismand The King in Orange by John Michael Greer It was during and after writing my own work, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, that I came to appreciate how rare and excellent a scholar of the history of metaphysical religion and of the occult we have in John Michael Greer.
In most of the manuscripts I’ve seen in writers workshops, the characters… sort of… ummm… float kinda sorta in space? When they do appear more concretely, their bodies, gestures, physical interactions with other bodies and things tend to be generic, e.g., the tall black man stood; the short blonde woman was sitting; the Asian man nodded. She looked. He shrugged.
It gets kind cardboard-cutout-y.
Oh, and these characters also do a lot of taking sips of drinks.
Well, OK, sometimes a character’s black or Asian or blonde or whatever, and he or she or zhe’s gotta stand and/or nod and/or shrug and/or take a sip. But it isn’t gain-of-function research to grab a floccule more oomph from the Vividness Department. Take just a moment to dig around there in your imagination—and this could, literally, cost you less than 20 seconds in some instances— and then, with your thoughtfully selected detail (or two or three), you can guide your reader to see your characters and the scene with more specificity, that is to say, more vividly.
(But what about clutter? You might hasten to ask. I do the whack-a-mole on clutter here. )
How to come up with vivid detail? One of the best ways to get click-your-fingers fast with vivid detail is to read as a writer. Reading as writer is not the same as reading passively, for entertainment. Nor is it reading to bag some trophy-worthy-theme as for your PhD thesis on race, class, gender & intersectionality, but rather, simply, when you spot something you—you the fellow literary artist— think an author does especially well, take note. I would suggest that you check it or circle it or underline it (or all three) with your pencil and, should you feel so moved, copy it out in your notebook. Then, perhaps take another moment to try some permutation exercises.
Recently I was reading Bernard DeVoto’s The Western Paradox when this struck me:
“We headed toward Flagstaff from Bakersfield. In August the lower end of the San Joaquin Valley is wrapped in a brown heat-haze which I have never fully understood, for assuredly there is no water vapor in it. A reek of crude oil goes with it; the sky is a steel-white; one does not rest a forearm on the car door.“ —Bernard DeVoto, The Western Paradox (p. 195)
Rest a forearm on the car door—Bingo! Dear writerly reader, is this not by a league more vivid in your mind than, say, “it was a really hot day”? We’re no longer kinda sorta floating around; we are in a body— a body with a forearm that avoids resting on the car door!
As I went on to read Willa Cather’s novels My Ántonia and O Pioneers! I kept an eye out for how she handles bodies— not only in how she makes the characters more vivid and/or grounds them in the scene, but has them relate physically to each other. (And I would wager that any author whose work you especially admire and enjoy reading is doing this splendidly well— else you wouldn’t be bothering to read them and so admiringly. So I would suggest that you go to your own bookshelf of books you have already read and loved, and reread one or two with an eye to how these authors handle detail relating to the body.)
Cather never disappoints.
“As Ántonia turned over the pictures the young Cuzaks stood behind her chair, looking over her shoulder with interested faces. Nina and Jan, after trying to see round the taller ones, quietly brought a chair, climbed up on it, ansd stood close together, looking. The little boy forgot his shyness and grinned delightedly when familiar faces came into view. In the group about Ántonia I was conscious of a kind of physical harmony. They leaned this way and that, and were not afraid to touch each other. ..” —Willa Cather, My Ántonia
“Three three pretty young Swedish girls who did Alexandra’s housework were cutting pies, refilling coffee cups, placing platters of bread and meat and potatoes upon the red tablecloth, and continually getting in each other’s way between the table and the stove.” —Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
“Frank went into the house and threw himself on the sofa, his face to the wall, his clenched fist on his hip. Marie, having seen her guests off, came in and put her hand coaxingly on his shoulder.” —Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
She put her hand on his arm. “I needed you terribly when it happened, Carl. I cried for you at night” …. Carl pressed her hand in silence. —Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
“Emil rubbed his knees thoughtfully” —Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
And from some random other reading:
“But it is true that a lot of work gets done over two-hour ceremonial luncheons, and more than once, after such an occasion, I wobbled out like a stunned ox, vowing to change jobs before I acquired gout and a faintly British accent.” — Michael Collins, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys
By the side of this fortress-door hung a heavy iron bell-pull, ending in a mermaid. When first Mrs. Lucas had that installed, it was a bell-pull in the sense that an extremely athletic man could, if he used both hands and planted both feet firmly, cause it to move, so that a huge bronze bell swung in the servants’ passage and eventually gave tongue (if the athlete continued pulling) with vibrations so sonorous that the whitewash from the ceiling fell down in flakes.” —E.F. Benson, Queen Lucia
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A WEE WRITING EXERCISE
As one character is speaking, what else can another character do besides, say, “rub his knees thoughtfully”? Oh, plenty! Here goes:
Joe slowly rubbed his elbow.
Elmira dabbed a finger under eye, as if to remove a fleck of mascara that wasn’t there.
Patsy slipped both hands, palms out, into her back pockets.
Lou took up his cup of tea and then, with a nearly inaudible sigh, leaned sideways into the pillows.
A wee exercise: To this list, add 5 more examples of your own and use the names Puddleton, Jamilla and Fred (because I say so). Absolut Verboten: nodding, sitting, standing, looking, shrugging and sipping.
BY C.M. MAYO — December 6, 2021 UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).
This blog posts on Mondays. This year, 2021, I am dedicating the first Monday of the month to Texas Books, in which I share with you some of the more unusual and interesting books in the Texas Bibliothek, that is, my working library. Listen in any time to the related podcast series.
Without question the iconic image of Far West Texas in the 20th century and into our day in the 21st is that of James Dean in character as Jett Rink, sprawled in the back of an open automobile. Unless you were born yesterday, or grew up in, oh say, the highlands of Papua New Guinea, surely you will recognize it:
It is a still from Giantwhich was filmed on a stage-set, no longer extant, on a ranch just outside of Marfa, Texas. Here’s one of the many movie posters which incorporate the image:
And here’s a more recent DVD package cover:
And don’t think you can get away from James Dean-Jett Rink if you go to Marfa! Last time I was there, Giant was playing nonstop in the lobby of the Paisano Hotel, and there were postcards galore for sale featuring the James Dean-Jett Rink image. In Alpine, the town next-door (in Far West Texas next-door would be a half hour’s drive), the bookstore incorporates James Dean / Jett Rink into its logo:
The movie Giant, based on Edna Ferber’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and starring James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, and directed by George Stevens, was a smash hit in 1956, and to this day it remains, in the words of film historian Don Graham, “probably the archetypal Texas movie; it contains every significant element in the stereotype: cowboys, wildcatters, cattle empire, wealth, crassness of manners, garish taste, and barbecue.”
Here’s my copy of Ferber’s novel:
The movie Giant now seems integral to the very weave of Texan cultural identity, yet when it was being filmed, many Texans who were familiar with the novel and its vociferous condemnation of prejudice and segregation, made threatening noises. One Texan told a Hollywood columnist, “If you make and show that damn picture, we’ll shoot the screen full of holes.”
For her saga of the family of cattle barons (Bick and Leslie Benedict, in the movie played by Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor) versus the upstart oilman (Jett Rink, played by James Dean), Ferber did her research—that would be another post. However, Ferber was no Texan, she was a liberal Jew originally from the Midwest, resident in Manhattan, member by the way of the Algonquin Roundtable, and she had made a career writing blockbuster ready-for-Hollywood novels. Texans generally came to embrace the movie Giant, but at the time the novel came out in 1952, the Texan attitude was more, Who was this highfalutin’ person to judge, never mind attempt to write about, Texas? Quoted in J.E. Smyth’s Edna Ferber’s Hollywood, one reader’s letter-to-the-editor of the Ladies Home Journal, which had serialized the novel, sputtered: “I thought I had heard very misconception of Texas and its people and every form of ridicule possible to small minds, but you have left me speechless with astonishment— such colossal ignorance I have never encountered.” Another reader claimed there was no racism in Texas, however, if any Texan “made the mistake of marrying a Mexican, she certainly would not be entertained in the living room”— and so on.
Apart from the James Dean scenes— all of them— the scene from the movie Giant that has echoed over the decades is the diner scene, also known as The Fight at Sarge’s Place. In Ferber’s novel, Mrs. Benedict (the cattle baron’s wife, played by Elizabeth Taylor), with her Mexican daughter-in-law and grandchildren, is refused service in a roadside café. From the novel:
“You can’t be talking to me!” Leslie said.
“I sure can. I’m talking to all of you. Our rule here is no Mexicans served and I don’t want no ruckus. So— out!”
In the movie, however, Bick Benedict (Rock Hudson) is with his wife Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor), the Mexican daughter-in-law, and the grandchildren. They have been seated, but when the owner, Sarge (played by Mickey Simpson) rudely refuses service to a Mexican family that came in after them, Bick protests. A slugfest with Sarge ensues, and the now elderly Bick ends up sprawled on the floor, unconscious. Sarge grabs his sign from the wall behind the cash register and throws it on top of Bick:
WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE.
So it was in certain parts of the United States in the days before the Civil Rights Act— and that sign, in the words of Don Graham, “was the most famous emblem of racial discrimination in that era.” (Graham, Giant, p. 198)
Side note: Here’s my copy of Scene from the Movie GIANT by Tino Villanueva (Curbstone Press, 1993), an exquisite book-length poem about a 14 year old Mexican American boy watching that very scene in a movie theater.
From Tino Villanueva’s Scene from the Movie GIANT:
That a victory is not over until you turn it into words;
That a victor of his kind must legitimize his fists Always, so he rips from the wall a sign, like a writ Revealed tossed down to the strained chest of Rock Hudson. And what he said unto him, he said like a pulpit preacher Who knows only the unfriendly parts of the Bible.
After all, Sarge is not a Christian name. The camera Zooms in:
WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE
Here’s my copy of Giant: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Edna Ferber, and the Making of a Legendary American Film by Don Graham:
Writes Don Graham in his history, Giant:
“[Director George] Stevens held a strong belief in racial equality, and he meant Giant to tell a story that would compel viewers of the film to consider their own prejudices instead of blaming them on other people. In Stevens’ mind, Giant would prompt people to examine their own hearts.” (p. 198)
George Stevens’s own heart had been opened as by a chainsaw.
In the decade before World War II he had been turning out feature films starring such legends as Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, Betty Grable, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers, James Stewart and Cary Grant. Then, to do his part in World War II, he set his career aside. For the US Army Signal Corps’ motion pictures unit, he filmed the Normandy Invasion, the liberation of Paris, and the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. Writes Graham:
[W]hat Stevens saw in Germany was almost too much to absorb. He shot footage at Nordhausen, where the ravaged bodies of slave workers bore the grim evidence of starvation, torture, and murder. But Dachau was worse. There was nothing worse than Dachau. He shot boxcars packed with skeletal Jews; he shot ditches filled with the dead. He was in a world of indescribable horror. ‘We went to the woodpile outside the crematorium, and the woodpile was people.’ He filmed the extinct and the living. He filmed German officers and forced them to look at their handiwork, and he filmed German citizens, deniers all, in nearby villages, pretending they didn’t know what had been happening just down the road. He smelled the unbearable stench of the sick and the dying, and he saw signs of cannibalism among the heaped-up bodies.
“After seeing the camps,” he said, “I was an entirely different person.”
Stevens’ documentary films, includingNazi Concentration Camps, were entered as evidence in the 1945-46 Nuremberg Trials. When Stevens returned to Hollywood to make feature films, they were of a different order of seriousness. And these included the hard-hitting film based on Edna Ferber’s novel Giant.
From J.M. Smith’s Edna Ferber’s Hollywood: American Fictions of Gender, Race and History:
“Stevens appreciated Ferber’s attack on Texas racism. He also shared Ferber’s commitment to creating unusual perspectives on the American past… His independent film company bought the rights in the summer of 1952, and then convinced Warmer Bros. to put up the money for the production and distribution… [Stevens’] desire to condemn racism and enshrine the old-style toughness of the western hero would result in a deeply conflicted western.” (pp.201-202)
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The back cover of J.E. Smth’s Edna Ferber’s Hollywood shows Jett Rink’s creators, writer and actor:
It was on location in Marfa that Ferber, who was old enough to be his grandmother, became friends with the brilliant young actor from Indiana. It must have seemed that Jimmy Dean had a long stretch of life before him, but in fact he was living out his last days. He would die in a car crash in California while Giant was still in production. In Ferber: Edna Ferber and Her Circle, Julie Gilbert quotes Edna, saying that, once home, she had received from Jimmy a photograph of him in character as Jett Rink:
It was not characteristic of him to send his photograph unasked. I was happy to have it and I wrote to thank him: “… when it arrived I was interested to notice for the first time how much your profile resembles that of John Barrymore. You’re too young ever to have seen him, I suppose. It really is startlingly similar. But then, your automobile racing will probably soon take care of that.”
I was told that the letter came the day of his death. He never saw it. (p.148)
In a uncanny way, Giant has become James Dean’s film, and the image of him sprawled in the back of the automobile, wearing his crown of a Stetson, gloves loosely, as if royally, grasped, cowboy boots up, that monstrosity of a Potemkin construction in the distance, the whole of it a talisman of the pump-jack power of American cool. Wrongly so perhaps, but Ferber and Stevens are no longer household names, but relegated to mentions in scholarly works and footnotes.
What is that magic eros that James Dean had, that for all these many decades he has managed to spark and hold the passionate interest of not only so many movie viewers, but other actors, and writers and poets? One could explore that question from a variety of disciplines for 500 years and forever, but here’s one illuminating and entertaining work, co-edited by my amigo, Richard Peabody: Mondo James Dean: A Collection of Stories and Poems About James Dean.
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PS: TWO VIDEOS ON THE NUREMBERG TRIALS
The Nuremberg Trials were very present for me when I was a teenager, in part because World War II was then relatively recent— the older people in my life, including my parents, had all lived through that war, and I knew many people who had come to the US as refugees—or their parents had come as refugees. Moreover, my high school French and German teacher (she taught both languages) had served as a translator at the Nuremberg Trials.
So when I learned that George Stevens’ filming had played such an important role in the Nuremberg Trials, I went a ways into looking for videos around that issue. Here are two that I would warmly recommend watching.
Ashton Gleckman’s “I Am the Last Surviving Prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials” The Story of Benjamin Ferencz:
Dr. Lee Merritt’s talk on Dr. Karl Brandt, who was condemned to death in the Nuremberg Trials. The story is complicated and important.
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Look for my next Texas Books post on the first Monday of next month. You can find the archive of the Texas Books posts here.
You can also listen in any time to the 21 podcasts posted so far in my 24 podcast “Marfa Mondays” series exploring Far West Texas here.
I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.
BY C.M. MAYO — November 29, 2021 UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).
This finds me working away on my Far West Texas book which, unavoidably, concerns Mexico. Meanwhile, it’s time for the fifth-Monday-of-the-month newsletter and cyberflanerie, Mexico edition.
Delightful Mexico-related items have been landing in my mailboxes— both email and snailmail! First of all, the pioneering consciousness explorer and interviewer Jeffrey Mishlove has won the Bigelow Prize of USD $500,000—you read that right, half a million dollars— for his essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death.” The news relevant to Yours Truly and Mexico is that, in this essay, Mishlove mentions mywork about Francisco I. Madero, the leader of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, who also happened to be a Spiritist medium. A few years ago in Las Vegas, I was also greatly honored when Mishlove interviewed me at length for his show, New Thinking Allowed.
You can read Mishlove’s award-winning essay “Beyond the Brain” in its mind-blowing entirety for free, and read more about the impressive panel of judges, and the also impressive runners-up for the Bigelow prize at this link.
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Another delightful item to land in my mailbox in this drizzly-gray season was the pristine copy of Lloyd Kahn’s 1999 newspaper, El Correcaminos, Vol. 1. No. 1, Los Cabos, Baja California Sur. In the photo below, my writing assistant, Uli Quetzalpugtl, lends his presence to the wonderfulness! Gracias, Lloyd!
I’ve been a big fan of Lloyd Khan’s many endeavors (including this one) for some years now. Among other things, Kahn is the editor-in-chief of Shelter Publications. Check out his website and blog.
For me, reading this first 1999 issue of El Correcaminos was like stepping into a very personal time machine, for that was the year that, having concluded several years of intensively traveling and interviewing in and researching about that Mexican peninsula, I started polishing my draft of the manuscript that would appear as Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico (University of Utah Press, 2002).
Here’s a photo of El Correcaminos’ page of recommended books— ah ha! Anne Zwinger’s A Desert Country Near the Sea, Graham Mackintosh’s Into a Desert Place; Walt Peterson’s The Baja Adventure Book: These are some of the books I’d kept on my desk, and even carried with me on my travels. I’m smiling as I write this. How books can be like old friends! And sometimes their authors can become friends, too! (Hola, dear Graham!)
More Mexico news from Denver, Colorado: My amiga Pat Dubrava reads her translation of “The Magic Alphabet,” a short story by Mexican writer Agustín Cadena for Jill!
Dubrava and I both translate Cadena— he’s vastly under-appreciated in English, and we’re aiming to change that.
Another big part of the wonderfulness of Mexico City is its Centro de Estudios de Historia de México (CEHM) in the southern neighborhood of Chimalistac. Its director, historian Dr. Manuel Ramos Medina, reads a letter from the Empress Carlota to Señora Dolores de Almonte—this being one from the vast cornucopia of treasures in the CEHM’s archives. For those of you who speak Spanish and have an interest in Mexican history, check out the website for information of the innumerable free online lectures they offer.
His wife, my amiga Araceli Ardón, a writer I have long admired and some of whose fiction I have translated, is offering a free series of outstandingly good lectures on Mexican literature and on her Ardón method of creative writing— in Spanish. Highly recommended.
