Writer Friends: Sara Pritchard

In keeping with my promise to spend this week introducing you to my writer friends, let me present Sara Pritchard, author of Crackpots, Lately, and innumerable short stories. I am introducing you to Sara first for a number of reasons; she is a writer whose work I greatly admire, reading her work will make you a better reader, writer, and/or person, and it’s so close to Thanksgiving that a good chunk of my time the last–and next–few days must be devoted to preparing the meal. Thankfully, I can fall back on letting Craig Seligman of the New York Times do a good bit of the introducing for me. From his review of Crackpots:

As it happened, I read ”Crackpots” just after finishing a celebrated novel by a precocious young writer that had irritated me because, despite all the talent, it clobbered you with pathos and delivered wisdom that clearly came straight out of books. ”Crackpots” does the opposite. The writing is dazzling, yes, but Pritchard allows the pathos — and there’s a lot of it — to rise out of her sentences like a scent. You discover it instead of being pounded by it. The author’s work has gone into constructing sentences that would contain, not sell, the emotion behind them, and she’s in love with a whole range of feelings. In the middle of tragedy she makes you laugh out loud.

Sara writes sentences that I could reread every evening for the rest of my life and still find lovely. Her characters have an emotional depth that takes the reader beyond feeling that she knows them and into a place where she feels she has befriended them. It is impossible, for instance, to read “The Pink Hotel” from the short story collection Lately without wishing to invite not only the narrator, but also her pragmatic and seemingly unflappable Aunt Dizzy, for lunch. Sara writes with an intimacy that leaves the reader missing her characters when their stories are told, and happy when they sometimes reappear in other, linked pieces.

Tune in a few days from now (once the dishes are done and the leftovers safely tucked away in the fridge) to meet Ethel Morgan Smith.

Writing Friends…

I am lucky enough to have several friends who are accomplished writers. Over the Thanksgiving break, I’m going to be taking a look at some of their works on this blog. But before I start looking at the individual works, I wanted to take a moment to just talk about what it has meant to have these writers as friends.

Writing is a lot of work. Some of the work is apparent; it takes place at the keyboard and produces a growing (and then shrinking) number of pages toward a completed work. It is easy, during this part of the process, to say to friends and loved one, “Sorry, I can’t do that right now, I’m working.” Much of the work, though, is less apparent. It might be done sitting on the back porch, staring out over the grape arbor, trying to puzzle out a specific memory that is needed in an essay but which you can’t quite pull up in adequate detail. It may involve laying on the living room floor playing an old Patti Smith album that triggers the sense memories of your college dorm room to adequately capture the smells of bong water and old laundry in your writing. Or, and for some reason it seems every writer I know has this experience, working may mean standing in the shower thinking over some plot element or structural problem while using up the last of the hot water.

Your loved ones may not be able to tell that you are working, and this may make you come to doubt that you are working. Your writer friends can reassure you that this does indeed count as “productive time” and that you aren’t being an unreasonably selfish person to find the hours of quietude you need. They may, though, if they are thoughtful writer friends with families of their own, suggest that you shower after everyone else who shares your hot water tank.

Writing is also scary work. What if you aren’t any good? Worse yet, what if you are genuinely bad… so bad, for instance, that you some day become known as the Rod McKuen of your day, or find your work being compared negatively with those paintings of big-eyed children from the sixties? What if you are both this bad and somehow still able to be published?

Your writer friends will tell you if something isn’t ready to send. They care about you, and they also don’t want to discover they’ve published a story that wasn’t yet ready to be out in the world.

Of course, this means finding writer friends you trust. There are, indeed, writers who are awful human beings and will find fault with your work just for the joy of feeling superior. Do not make these people your friends! Think charitably of them, be kind to them, but keep them at arm’s length. Work can ALWAYS be better. A good writer, though, is as good at pointing out what is working as she is at pointing out what is not. And you want the opinions of good writers, don’t you?

I am blessed to have as friends many wonderful writers, and during the upcoming week I will be sharing some of their work with you. Because this is also part of being a good writer friend: share your audience, your connections, your insights. The writers I’m going to share have been generous with their time, energy, and resources and helped me immeasurably. But that isn’t why I’m sharing them with you. I am sharing them because they are good writers, and you will be happy to have read their work.

Hallowe’en, Part II

Last year, we had three folk come by dressed as Obama. One of them was a young black boy who lives across the street. He wore a suit and very proudly announced that he was dressed as our next President. It seemed a hopeful thing, and a moment when the world changed at least a tiny bit.

This year, his older brother–who is white–ran down the street in a KKK hood made from a white kitchen trash bag singing either Fight the Power or White Power, I could not tell which. He didn’t stop and ask for candy, just made a mad dash down the very center of the street while the younger children in Princess and Transformer costumes brought me their plastic pumpkins to be filled.

I did not, do not, know what to make of it.

The young woman who lives next door, and who knows him, said only, “Oh, he’s funny.” She did not think he meant anything vicious by it, though it was a startling thing to see.

I do not know what to make of this; whether to be troubled by it or simply to see it as passing strange. But it was such a sharp contrast to last year I am unable to let the image go.

Hallowe’en

Last year, you may remember that Trick or Treat reached almost epiphanic proportions around here when the most common costume was that of then-candidate, now-President Obama. And the sea change that seemed to foretell has indeed come… whatever your politics, it is true that no one can ever again say, “Oh, the US isn’t ready for a black president.” No black child will ever again grow up believing that to be true. And if you think that, in and of itself, isn’t something to celebrate… if you can’t put aside the politics of the thing long enough to be glad for that… well, you might want to ask yourself some difficult questions about your own feelings on race. I’m just saying.

I don’t expect this year to have the same dramatic impact. I imagine we’re mostly back to Princesses and Superheros around here, with a few Transformers and a WVU football player or two mixed in for good measure. I’ve bought nasty, nasty candy this year in the hope that we won’t eat any of it: Milk Duds, Starburst Sour Gummies, and Crabby Patties. The last look like burgers for GI Joe to me. It already hasn’t worked. I’ve had two fun size boxes of Milk Duds since I did the shopping yesterday. All I can say is that the count would be much higher if I had bought Snickers bars and Reese’s Cups like last year.

So, come knock on our door and hold out your bag! We’ll be here.

Back to Blogging…

There are several really good reasons to stop blogging. It bores you. It bores other people. It interferes with your cocktail hour. You fail to let it interfere with your cocktail hour and accidentally post the one thing you promised your mother you would never, ever write about.

Or, you start teaching Freshman Composition.

Here is the thing about teaching Freshman Comp. The students–who cannot themselves spell, use punctuation correctly, or write a thesis statement–have the uncanny ability to identiy every little grammatical error and rhetorical flaw in an instructor’s blog. They will print out blog posts and bring them to class with things circled in red pen. Sometimes, the circles will have been drawn by their great aunts who taught English for a thousand years in one room school houses on the prairie and sent each and every one of their students on to Harvard.

They will also read about your picking up a homeless guy and giving him a ride back to town or stealing the neighbor’s berries and assume you are much, much more cool than you actually are, so you will be a great disappointment to them. But, then again, you were going to be that no matter what you did.

Anyway… next semester I am moving on to teach English 102, where the students are both too hung over and too jaded to even check my rankings on RateMyProfessor.com, much less correct my grammar. So I’m back!

Peace!

Sarah

Playing for Change

Playing For Change | “War/No More Trouble” – Song Around The World from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

The Playing for Change song-around-the-world Stand By Me has hit Morgantown… three friends have emailed it to me today. And I am in love… with the song, the idea, the individual performers, and the possibility that we are not beyond salvation. But as much as I love the song Stand By Me, I think it lets us off the hook a little. Here is the same organization’s take on the War/No More Trouble. Buy the DVD for someone you love.

http://www.playingforchange.com/

P.S. Yes, Sherry, I posted a song with Bono in it, and I am not even going to say a single snide thing. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maximum culpa.

Fifteen Things at Semester’s End

1. I will miss the oddness of the 8:30 class, where many of the best students sat in the back and at least one of the students who often fell asleep sat in the front. It made me like all of them all the more, somehow, that they arranged themselves backward.

2. There was someone, I never figured out whom, that filled the room with the smell of freshly brewed coffee and just-baked bread every morning. I will miss that smell.

3. One of my students, a pretty girl trying to slide by on as little work as possible, really didn’t like me at all. She began every class by rolling her eyes at me in that annoyed teenage way. It inoculated me against every other insult the day threw at me.

4. Anika, you will have to start a blog that keeps the rest of us updated on your hair color! Personally, I have been waiting hopefully for black-to-red-to-orange-to-yellow, like the flames on a tricked-out Camaro.

5. What will you all grow up to be? What will you do in the world, and who will you become? I hate that I will never know.

6. Leggings aren’t pants.

7. Why did one of the smartest girls I have had in class to date do so badly? Her papers were clearly turned in without any editing; her work was shockingly sloppy. And yet, each time, she seemed surprised to find I minded and that it hurt her grade. I wish I understood, and so perhaps could be more lenient, but it’s a mystery.

8. Was there a reason–beyond coincidence–that so many of us got papers on light beer ads that looked at the exact same brands (but were not clearly plagerized) during the Genre Analysis unit?

9. No, really, I mean it. Leggings aren’t pants.

10. What has happened to the word “because” and why has it been replaced by the phrases “and so, as a result” and “due to” used incorrectly?

11. So, seriously, did you really think I couldn’t tell who was a wake-and-bake? I am dying to know if you think I am that dumb, or just that old.

12. If you go out and drink until 3:30am, you are probably NOT sober by 8:30am. Don’t schedule one on one conferences and then show up drunk! Particularly if you know you are an obnoxious drunk. Coming in stinking like stale beer and telling me that I have to give you an A or your parents will call my boss doesn’t help your chances at all.

13. If you choose to write about binge drinking, drug abuse, or skipping class to go skiing, you really shouldn’t be so shocked when I doubt you the third time you tell me you have strep throat.

14. Really, I can’t say this enough: LEGGINGS ARE NOT PANTS!

15. This semester, no one failed. No one was even in danger of failing. Thank you all for that. You have no idea what a gift that is to an instructor… we hate nothing as much as we hate having to stop teaching and start parenting. None of you made me do that this semester. I am grateful.

Sarah

Play List for a Lousy Day…

Road Movie to Berlin — They Might Be Giants
I’m Your Man — Leonard Cohen
12/26 — Kimya Dawson
Good People — Jack Johnson
Brokedown Palace — The Grateful Dead
Love Kills — Joe Strummer
Smells Like Teen Spirit — Patti Smith cover of Nirvana
My Girl — Nirvana cover of Leadbelly
Skin and Bones — The Foo Fighters
Meanwhile Rick James — Cake

Yep, it’s been that kind of day. Play it loud in the car and just keep on driving…

After Our Blood and Tears…

Barack and Michelle Obama have walked up Pennsylvania Avenue, waving to the cheering crowds as the President and First Lady of the United States of America. We are a different country now; a better one.

If you are one of my rare friends who is unmoved by the historic meaning of this moment, I ask you in kindness and in love to examine your own heart and see if there may not lurk there some burden on your soul.  For the rest of us–those of us who are prouder and more sure of ourselves as Americans than we can remember being–today is a victory over the real enemies of our country:  fear, hatred, xenophobia, and jingoism.  

You can tell I’m moved because everything I try to say about this day is pretentious.  I can’t find work-a-day words for an event of such great moment.

So I’ll shut up, and leave you with Aretha, who sings what we can’t speak.

First Day of Spring Semester…

…and I am already feeling guilty for having, once again, bogarted all the best English 101 students.  I have students who are artists, musicians, film makers, smart people, interesting people, kind people, and even one who is missing a rib.  There are boys with ponytails and boys who are just back from serving in Iraq.  There are girls who play rugby (who do they scrum? I’ve always wondered) and girls who fight injustice and poverty.  There are fans of Modest Mouse and Neil Young, an undreadlocked Bob Marley devotee, and no one who claimed Buck Cherry’s “Crazy Bitch” as his or her favorite song.   There are, all told, forty-four sets of stories who will be sitting in my classroom tomorrow, just waiting for me to ask them to be told.

How lucky am I?