eavesdropping on 5th graders

We never get to read. We only get to talk about reading.

~Kristi, age 10

Coetzee and being American

"A few days ago I heard a performance of the Sibelius fifth symphony. As the closing bars approached, I experienced exactly the large, swelling emotion that the music was written to elicit. What would it have been like, I wondered, to be a Finn in the audience at the first performance of the symphony in Helsinki nearly a century ago, and feel that swell overtake one? The answer: one would have felt proud, proud that one of us could put together such sounds, proud that out of nothing we human beings can make such stuff. Contrast with that one´s feelings of shame that we, our people, have made Guantanamo. Musical creation on the one hand, a machine for inflicting pain and humiliation on the other: the best and the worst that human beings are capable of."
J.M. Coetzee: Diary of a Bad Year (2007).

touring in N.Bend

Last week I gave readings, along with other Oregon Book Award winner/nominees, in N Bend and Eugene. The picture above was taken in N. Bend: Ben Saunders, Paul Merchant, myself and Shannon Riggs. The tour was fun. (As fun as something like that can be for an agorophobic like me.) The best part was the other authors and their wives and Susan Denning, who arranged everything.
ps support the arts: buy their books

Today a woman told me that she had borrowed my second novel, Twenty Questions, from the library. She decided to read it on the recommendation of a friend who said it was a "good, light read." Yikes. Oh, thank you, I said.

concerned 4th grader

Feb. 24, 2001
Louise McDonald left a Jehovah Witness pamphlet on my desk today. "For Alison," it said.

ps Of course her name is not really Louise McDonald, don't worry.

Yes, it was sad all right.

I was reading the preschoolers a book called My Dog, Toby when 4 year old Brennan interrupted to say that he had a dog one time but his father threw it out the back door and it died. He said, "That was sad, huh."


ps I don't write about kids who are in my school now. The stories I use when I write about my school are from journals I've kept over the years.

no witches, but food

We went to a town near the volcano called Fuego, which means fire. People say that there are witches in the town. We didn't find any, but we did find a good restaurant.

who would have guessed

I thought I couldn't write here. I thought maybe my writing required a cynical state of mind and I can't feel cynical here, on the Jalisco Coast of Mexico, but today I wrote three pages of my novel, Finding Rhonda Honey.
Last night we went to a drag show here in this little town. The guy from the taco stand was a beautiful woman. Who would have guessed. People brought their children and the kids danced, too.

not a secret

I'm on the Jalisco coast, in a town called La Manzanilla. I used to keep the name a secret, but the town isn't a secret really, so there it is. La Manzanilla.
It's December and I am wearing my flip flops. If I look up, I can see the ocean.

cult following

Denis Johnson's new book, Tree of Smoke, was chosen for the National Book Award. I've been a Denis Johnson fan for years—my friend Laurie knows his sister-in-law and promotes her parties by claiming that he just might show up. I find it hopeful that someone like him, with a cult following but not, from what I can tell, a lot of success otherwise, could be recognized with a National Book Award. My editor told me once that I have a cult following, but they seem to buy one book and pass it around.
If anybody knows Denis Johnson, tell him to go to Laurie's next party, would you.

the unbearable lightness of being

Today I heard on the radio that the people in Burma were happy when, during the recent demonstrations, films were made and broadcast for the world to see. Unfortunately the world saw and very little has happened. And now the junta is using those films, checking them frame by frame, to hunt down protesters.

Avoiding the Appearance of Shameless Self Promotion

Okay, my sister says: what the hell does that mean, left edge suzy? She's from Texas and they are very literal. Also, this is how she said it: wut the hail duz thet me-un?
And here is the answer: I don't want to give the blog my own name because that seems narcissistic, but maybe personal blogs are inherently narcissistic and who am I fooling?
I named it left edge because I live in Oregon and Oregon is the left edge of the map. There used to be, by the way, a great newspaper put out by Billy Hults in Cannon Beach, Oregon, called The Upper Left Edge, but I didn't copy him.
Suzy is the name of the character in the first short story I ever wrote, Suzy Joins the Sex Club. Even though I think Suzy is dead wrong about feelings being the most important thing in the world, I do admire her honest passion and I like her name.

Wordstock, competiton and Margaret Atwood

This past weekend, I taught a writing workshop for teachers and gave a reading at Portland's annual book festival, Wordstock—a big, noisy, raucous event. I was lucky to be chosen to read with Cai Emmons from Eugene.
I've been thinking lately about competition. I've been thinking that the worst thing for me, creatively, is when I set myself up next to others, when I scrutinize myself and second guess my writing, when I begin to wonder, who is better. As if that's ever the point.
Years ago at a workshop Ken Babbs said that we should never begrudge another writer's talent or success. Every piece of good writing, and every acknowledgment of it, is a success for each of us.
I'm reading Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride. I heard her read and lecture thirty years ago and for some reason the only thing I can remember is that she talked about pornography. She described a horrific pornographic photograph and ever afterwards, sorry Margaret, I have not been able to unlink that image from your name. Babbs gets his bit of wisdom, but you get rats in the vagina. Not fair, but that's memory for you. I have two thoughts when I read someone as good at Atwood:
1. I can never be this good
2. look what the written word can do

not our fault

Today I heard an NPR report about US troops shooting and then bombing a group of Iraqis, killing 27 people. They blew up houses. They flew over, shooting people as they ran or cowered behind walls. It turns out that it was all a mistake, although they didn't call it a mistake. It was due to faulty intelligence, but it was a “good shoot,” according to a commanding officer. Well, that’s a relief anyway.

Dance on Their Graves

I have every current Oregon Book Award contestant book I can find sitting in a pile on my table. I spent yesterday reading All God's Children, Inside the Dark and Violent World of Street Families, by Rene Denfield. A well- written, important and compelling book. Denfield focuses on a particular Portland group of street kids that was violent, sadistic, and disturbingly anonmic.
anomic---alienation and purposelessness experienced by a person or a class as a result of a lack of standards, values, or ideals
I hung out with street kids when I left home at 17 and lived in Madison, but in those days it was all peace and love. I don’t think anyone would have tortured or killed anyone else, or burned them up or killed their dog. We saw ourselves as part of a revolution. We were the real thing, the ones who had left our families, who had left school and everything we knew, who didn’t need any of it. We were inspired by Jerry Rubin. He never talked about killing anyone, from what I can recall, but Anita Hoffman did say we would dance on their graves. It was a metaphor, I think.

tell the BLM no

This is one of the trees that will be cut if The BLM's new forest management proposal, WOPR, (Washington Oregon Plan Revision) goes through. This tree is in the Alsea Valley, Oregon.

the good part of rain

It's raining and all the little creeks and rivers are filling. Last night the salmon began to swim up stream.

what's it about? (I always ask the same thing.)

“A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word of the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what the story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story.”
~Flannery O'Connor

Oregon Book Award

Last week Literary Arts sent me the list of finalists for The Oregon Book Award. I was reading the nominees to see who was chosen for kids' books, thinking about the library, you know. Then...hmm...hmm... wonder who they picked for the novel........ !?me?! What a great surprise.

pick your battles

Today I got an email petition from a relative. Sign this if you want to save our Social Security system from illegal aliens. I try to stay away from these things. I don't want to argue over whether it should be called a Christmas tree or a holiday tree (my cousin from Texas) or whether Hugo Chavez is a totalitarian dictator (a friend of my Uncle Joe's) or whether Saddam Hussein is al-Qaeda (my hairdresser in Philomath.) But today I couldn't hold myself back. I replied-all to point out that the petition was
1. inaccurate (they do pay taxes)
2. meanspirited
3. whoever wrote the petition didn't even use correct punctuation. You do not use an apostrophe to make a plural, for crying out loud