Monsters

In a post in late February, I wrote about an experience teaching a wonderful book called The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff. As I explained then, this experience was the inspiration for this blog. Allow me to quote myself:

[from 2/28/08]
"Recently, in a class I teach at Temple U, we were discussing a great new book, The Monsters Of Templeton, by Lauren Groff. After a lively two-hour discussion about the book, my students still had more questions. They wondered things like: How long did it take her to write the book? Where did she get those photographs she used in the book? Also, some of the content made them wonder if the author has an interest in the supernatural.

After listening to a few of their questions, I had an idea. “Do you want me to ask her these things?” I asked the class. They responded with enthusiasm. So I emailed my questions to the book’s publicist, who forwarded them to Lauren Groff, who took the time to answer me directly in great detail. She told us everything we wanted to know! What a thrill for all of us!"

In April of this year, The Monsters of Templeton was listed on the 2008 shortlist for the prestigious UK Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, and the book is getting amazing reviews and endorsements from the likes of Stephen King.

Here is my Q&A with Lauren Groff. . . (starting tomorrow -- I'm leaving now for the Book Expo in LA...)

More Comments on Book Reviews

Michelle Latiolais adds:

I think serious writers of poetry and prose should be asked to review more often, and I think they should take up this task as a responsibility. Most of the smartest response to writing comes from writers showing us something about the writing, and kind of showing us from the inside. Carol Muske Dukes wrote a column for several years for the Los Angeles Times just because she felt the responsibility to create a forum for poetry if she could. Ron Carlson--my colleague at UC Irvine--just wrote a marvelous review of Peter Mattiessen's Shadow Country that was published in the Los Angeles Times. It was a writer writing about the craft he perceived in another writer's work.

One aspect of so much reviewing today that I find startling is the inability of the reviewer to enter into the world of the book. Instead, the book is flogged with some measure of reality that the reviewer perceives as not only operable, but exclusive of all other realities. You've heard these criticisms ad nauseam. They go something like "this is not believable," or "no mother would do . . . ." I'm always startled. John Updike does it in a recent review of Andrew Sean Greer's new novel that was published in The New Yorker. It seems to me that the one itty bitty thing someone might have observed along the way is that all manner of behavior is not only possible, but present in the human condition.

More from Michelle Latiolais on reviewers

I guess you want me to respond to Jonathan Franzen's remarks. [Note: Franzen's comments are reported at: http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=523349]

I'm not sure I want to add to the nastiness, but I stopped reading Michiko Kakutani years ago. Let's just leave it at that. I always read John Leonard in Harper's--actually I usually read all the reviews in Harper's. Here I am claiming I don't read reviews and when I think about it, I actually do read a fair number, but I'm careful, oh so careful who I read, because I really can be furious for a week. I remember a review of some memoir written by Edmund White's nephew that wouldn't have been published if he hadn't been Edmund White's nephew and the reviewer dismissed all--ALL--of Edmund White's work as self-absorbed and autobiographical. The irony was of course beautiful, a memoir that probably shouldn't have been published and wouldn't have if his uncle weren't famous, but here was a chance to discuss why Edmund White's first two novels are so important, and particularly important to young men trying to find their way in the world, whether homosexual or not. In other words, White's work and how the nephew came to be better in the world after living with his uncle are connected. Instead, the review thought it just fine to toss away a lifetime's work with one sentence, and to not even mention White as the extensive biographer of Jean Genet. Just stupidity. That was yet again a New York Times review.

--ML

Latiolais on Wieseltier

Note: the comments below refer to the following review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/books/review/Wieseltier-t.html?_r=1&ei=5090&en=1877d09dd77c7181&ex=1367121600&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

Thank you for sending the Leon Wieseltier review of Martin Amis' The Second Plane, a review that I thought seemed thoughtful and contentious and very specifically skeptical of much of what he characterizes as Amis' bluster. I don't see anything wrong with that. Quite the contrary, this review seems as though it would spark a very good discussion, and a much needed one on secularism and morality. Not too long ago, a Harvard theologian was interviewed on NPR and was asked if he thought atheists could be moral and he answered "no." I was choking with indignation, particularly since his religious authority shouldn't be allowed to just stand in for unassailable moral rectitude, which might or might not exist, but he wasn't questioned further, and I wondered why.
Too much is said in America and left unresponded to. I do hope that this Leon Wieseltier review is responded to, and seriously, as much of what he accuses Amis of, he seems somewhat guilty of himself, and yet I do take his point about secularism. I believe Saddam Hussein was a secularist, and though he was brutal, I think the argument is made that he kept all the various factions of Iraq together because he was secular. Of course, that's not all he was! So, claiming higher moral ground for secularism might be dicey in many instances. I don't know; I'm not a very good historian. I have always said that man will find some rationale for killing his fellow man, if not religion, some other belief or credo, or gold or diamonds, or what have you. I'm not very hopeful that way.
Another aspect of the Wieseltier piece that I think might be discussed is aesthetics and truth. I don't see aesthetics as necessarily undermining seriously intellectual discussion--or the search for truths--but Wieseltier seems to feel there's a cheapening of rigor. I'm not sure he's right, but it depends on the writer, of course.

Book Reviews and Book Reviewers

Dear Michelle,
Your comments about reviewers are harsh indeed! And yet, clearly, your feelings are shared by many other authors. A recent piece (4/27/08) in the New York Times Book Review by Leon Wieseltier critiquing Martin Amis has drawn much commentary…
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/books/review/Wieseltier-t.html?_r=1&ei=5090&en=1877d09dd77c7181&ex=1367121600&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
… and just last week Jonathan Franzen was quoted in the Harvard Crimson disparaging reviewers and saying:
“The reviews tend to be repetitive and tend to be so filled with error that they’re kind of unbearable to read, even the nice ones,” Franzen said. “The most upsetting thing nowadays is the feeling that there’s no one out there responding intelligently to the text,” he said. “So few people are actually doing serious criticism. It’s so snarky, it’s so ad hominum, it’s so black and white.” “The stupidest person in New York City is currently the lead reviewer of fiction for the New York Times,” he added, referring to controversial, Pulitzer-Prize winning reviewer Michiko Kakutani.
[as quoted in The Harvard Crimson]
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=523349
At the same time, publishers are so eager to get reviews, as they can really help book sales (even negative reviews are often helpful!), and they complain that the number of review venues is dwindling.
And finally, I remember a great story I read in the Times years ago about an author whose book had just been published and received a stellar review in a major paper. Encountering the author at a cocktail party, someone said to him: “Congratulations on the good review!” to which he responded (haughtily, no doubt): “I didn’t write the review!”
So what can be done to improve the state of reviewing today? Any further comments on reviews and reviewers and/or advice for authors and publishers regarding reviews?
Thanks!
Lynn

Claustrophobic Writing

from Michelle:

I think pretty much what is meant by "claustrophobic" is interior, a concentration on the psychological, though certainly I've heard complaints that a piece of writing doesn't leave a certain room, and that that is claustrophobic. My response is "so what?" If that's what the writing is about, someone who doesn't leave a certain room, and that's what a writer is giving me is a deeply felt sense of this interiority, I'm your reader. Give me that any day over writing that is psychologically simplistic, which so much writing is, and yet that might be necessarily so, too. After all, no writing could actually capture all the intricate psychological circuitry of any given moment of a character's head. Right? This is all smoke and mirrors, this trying to get at fully rendered psychological worlds.

I don't read many reviews. I stopped some years ago, because I could lose a week being so flabbergasted that someone's three nasty and moronic paragraphs was considered an appraisal of a piece of art. The pathetic state of book reviewing has hurt both male and female writers; I'm not sure anyone has been spared. This said, I admire the New Yorker and The New York Review of Books for still making room for serious reviews.
http://www.newyorker.com/
http://www.nybooks.com/

More Questions for Michelle Latiolais

Dear Michelle,

Referring back to the comments posted on May 2nd, a few more questions:

You said that “claustrophobic” is a term reviewers often use for women writers. Why do you think this is so? Does this have something to do with women traditionally having been limited to the domestic sphere and has this in some way resulted in a focus that’s narrower and deeper? Or is there no truth to the criticism? Do you feel that a number of reviewers are biased toward women writers?

And can you elaborate a little bit on what you mean by claustrophobic? Maybe give us some examples? Off the top of my head, I’m thinking someone like Carol Shields might be called claustrophobic, as opposed to a writer like Annie Proulx. Your thoughts?

Thanks!

Lynn

And Now, A Word from Our Editor...

In her last note, Michelle Latiolais mentions her editor, Erika Goldman. I (Lynn) have known Erika for years. In the early 90s, when I was a literary agent and Erika was an editor at Scribner, she acquired a book I represented, Failing at Fairness: How Our Schools Cheat Girls, by two of the country's leading experts on sexism in the schools, Myra and David Sadker.
[for more on this great book, which is coming out next year in a second edition, see:
http://www.amazon.com/Failing-Fairness-Americas-Schools-Cheat/dp/0684195410/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209841600&sr=1-2]

Then Erika joined me one summer speaking at the Jackson Hole Writer's Conference. I remember being greatly impressed by her when we went on a hike (all uphill, of course). She was many months pregnant at the time, and that didn't slow her down at all!

Anyway, aside from being a good hiker, I know Erika to be a very smart editor, so I thought I'd get her perspective on how the manuscript for A Proper Knowledge came her way. Here's a brief Q&A with Erika Goldman:

How did the manuscript for A Proper Knowledge happen to come to you?
I first heard about the manuscript from Varley O’Connor, author of Bellevue Literary Press’s first published work of fiction, The Cure. I admire Varley’s work so much that I was excited by the prospect of having a chance at any manuscript that she would recommend to me. I sent the message back to Michelle via Varley that yes, I would love to see it. And shortly thereafter the manuscript arrived in the mail, courtesy of Michelle’s agent.

How/when did you know you wanted to publish it?
I knew it was “the real thing” by the end of the first page. Fine writing makes itself known right off the bat. Of course I read it to the end to see how Michelle would develop her characters and plot—and because I couldn’t put it down. I knew that I wanted to publish it when I realized I had fallen in love with it. We publish only two works of fiction a year, so I won’t take a novel on unless I’m passionate about it!

The Author Responds, Part II

More responses from author Michelle Latiolais, author of A Proper Knowledge to the questions:

Had you at first thought the manuscript unpublishable?
Did the book change a lot from that version that was in the garage to the published version?

HER RESPONSE:

I have never thought in terms of publishable/unpublishable, as I'm not all that sure what measure that would be? I'd have to say I've read plenty of writing that somehow managed to get published, but quality could not possibly have been the reason. So, I don't think as I'm writing whether the work will be published or not; that's not even something I have much control over, so why would I bother. There are, I suppose, writers who can write to markets, but that's not why I write, nor would that ever even remotely interest me. That said, I deeply care about certain readers I have in my life. If I've taken something I've written to them and they shake their heads in dismay, well, you know, I change my wanton ways.

You ask if the book changed a lot when I did a final rewrite for Erika Goldman at Bellevue Literary Press. I would say no, but I think she would say, yes, awfully. When I went off to Ucross in Wyoming (http://www.ucrossfoundation.org/index1.html), I hadn't really looked at this novel in almost four years. It was almost as though someone else had written it, and really someone else had. Being widowed makes a very different person of you, believe me. I was stunned that the novel was being published, and very grateful, and I wanted to make it as good as I could possibly make it in two weeks, which was the amount of time I had at Ucross. I worked every day for about eight hours and did entirely rewrite it, by which I mean I polished every page. But I don't think I changed much fundamental about it. Ron Carlson had read it for me and had made me see that certain characters only lived when Luke was there in their lives, but they of course did have lives when Luke wasn't around and so I made those lives up, made them full, imagined them. Interestingly, those were "normal" lives. I'd spent so much attention writing the case studies, I'd neglected the lives without pathology.

The Author Responds, Part I

Dear Lynn,

I had just finished a draft of this novel when my husband suddenly died in January 2004. Putting the novel away--along with so much of the rest of my life--was what I did, or what happened. Just how much this novel is about grief is not something I was all that aware of, but as I've been doing readings from it, I've realized this. Someone close to me recently said, "Michelle, it's prophetic," and I suppose now, with all I know, it is, but you know, if you'd asked me in December 2003 if I was writing about grief, I'd have cranked my face up a bit.

I actually don't remember when I first started writing this novel. Years ago, but even years before that. I've been interested in autism since I was about seventeen and first encountered mention of it in a psychology course at San Francisco State University. I was interested immediately because of the individual worlds these children often live in, and perhaps, to be honest, my interest was fanciful, or associative. I was a huge reader as a child and I think I was because reading provided an alternative universe to live in--thank God! I think I was also fascinated by children who didn't really care what their parents thought or felt, or weren't capable of knowing what their parents thought. Children who couldn't read their parents' faces. Wow. What an idea, not knuckling down under some glance from one's mother. (I was a very dutiful child.) So, I've been thinking about autism for many years, but I suppose I started this novel sometime during the year of 2000. I had returned to the University of California at Irvine as a professor; I had been a graduate student there, and I had written a second novel--also unpublished--about two sisters, and I'd put that novel away. So, I needed a new project, and I was always being called a "claustrophobic writer," a little something reviewers like to call women writers. Maybe I was a little in their faces, too, a little like, "here, you want claustrophobic! Let me show you claustrophobic!"

[more to come from Michelle's response tomorrow...]