HOBART

On Craft Essays

 

This last year, I had to (well, really, got to) teach a creative writing class for the first time. I was excited but also realized: I had no idea what to do. So I started reading a bunch of different craft essays. And what they taught me was: I don't really like craft essays. 

But one of the books I picked up was You Must Be This Tall to Ride, edited by Hobart buddy, B.J. Hollars. Its basically an anthology of about 20 "coming of age" (loosely defined) stories. And they're all great. But it also includes, as the subtitle says, "contemporary writers take you inside the story." And what these taught me is I kind of love behind-the-scenes types of essays. I love director commentaries on DVDs and documentaries on how movies and other things were made, a love for which inspired the "bonus materials" websites we do for every print issue.

 

What the anthology is is the aforementioned 20 stories and then a short 2-4 page essay by the author about the writing of that specific story. What happens, more often than not, is these become perfect little craft essays but with the context of this being how this specific author wrote this specific story. I love them for the cool, interesting, and somewhat voyeuristic aspect but there's something about knowing how an author wrote a story that both demystifies it and kind of endlessly reminds me, "oh yeah. You can get at a story like that, too. Or, like that. Or that."

Along those lines, I've been slowly working my way through Rose Metal's great Field Guide to Prose Poetry for weeks -- been meaning and wanting to write something about it forever but instead just keep going back to it and reading, rereading, thinking about. From the preface: "They (the editors) made clear that while they both enjoyed and respected the power of the critical essay, they found the lack of personal essays about prose poetry to be a gap that they wanted to fill." Yes! Personal essays! That's what I want!! And then, still from the preface: the "Field Guide to Prose Poetry operates not unlike a field guide to wildlife, plants, or tress in that it surveys and showcases what the field has to offer while encouraging active engagement with that landscape." More yes!

 

I think what I like so much about these kinds of essays, and these anthologies specifically, is really a few-fold:

1) Reading something and recognizing myself in it. When Christopher Kennedy (one of, if not my sole, favorite prose poets) writes that his "sense of how I became anything is spotty" I think, "phew. It isn't just me!"

2) Reading a "how I write" that is completely unlike anyway I've ever written anything myself and just that reminder of how everyone works differently. It's fun to know other people's processes, no? Whether you have any desire to try to mimic it or not.

3) The pure fun of reading behind-the-scenes pieces by some of my favorite authors.

4) Reading an essay by an author I'd never read before and kind of coming to the writer backwards -- finding their personal essay interesting and so reading their poems excited to find a new voice. (Which, in a collection like this, being a fiction dude and not really reading much poetry, was a lot. How can you not be won over with a first line like David Lazar's "I had one one good idea in my life, and it turned out to be a bad idea." And I absolutely loved both pieces by Jeffrey Skinner, but especially "The Experiment" and I'm now in a hurry to track down more.)

Which is a long way of saying: pick up these books. 

Brad reviews: Summer

Remember those old days of Hobart, before we had any clue at all what we were doing? (Not that we have all that much figured you now but... you know... more.) Remember when we posted weird, random reviews of stuff? Remember when a good percentage of those reviews were written Brad and we made fun of his lack of desire (or ability?) to use proper grammar or, often, make much sense at all, but we posted the reviews as they came in anyway, sans editing, because we thought that was all part of the charm? Remember when he guest edited a web issue, and most of the stories were about pirates? (sidenote: clicking through those links can be a kind of fun look back at the various looks of Hobart over the years.) 

If you remember those times, and if you are like us and spend too much time looking backward with fond nostalgia, then you miss Brad and his kooky reviews. Lucky for you... he's back! So, with nor further ado, here goes...

 

lets see here... been a while... 

and we just traded cliff lee to texas for a guy who hits .209.  i could punch myself.  

on to reviews.

i will review......... SUMMERTIME!

it goes, like this:

ah summertime.  sweet, sweet summertime.  long days, hot nights, pools, and the smell of sunblock means its summertime!  summertime, summertime, summertime.  SUMMERTIME!  i consulted with experts from around the world about this topic and their contributions to the list of summertime reviews basically sucked.  i was forced with no other recourse than to substitute my own.    

pools *******

now, obviously im going to give pools lots of stars because pools are awesome.  if i have to explain this in greater detail then you are stupid.  

slip n slides ********

or should we call them, "slide n scabs"?  you might be asking yourself right now, "but why so many stars if he thinks they should be called slide n scabs?"  well, for starters, this IS the low review.  and second, i dont think they should be called slide n scabs, i KNOW.  not even a well-timed tuck and roll will help - just plan on getting jacked up on one of these.  its summertime - just go with it.  

longer days *******

the days are actually longer.  think about that.  the days are actually l-o-n-g-e-r.  scientists are still baffled at how this actually happens, but not every scientist should be expected to explain annual three month rifts in the space time continuum.  Just let it go. 

july 4 ***********

indian reservation and a wad of cash = THE BEST TIME OF YOUR LIFE AS YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES RUN FOR THEIR LIVES! 

july 4 in california *

unless you like shelling out $35 for a crappy fountain that lasts .5 seconds and nobody has to run for their lives, please, by all means, enjoy your 4th in california.  

water parks *************

see aforementioned pool review x10. 

water slides with tiny gaps at the point of intersection where two pieces of the slide are joined *

cousin to the scab n slide, badly sealed gaps in a water slide will cause pain and, as i have found out, have the potential to remove moles, hair, back acne, nipples, and smiles.  one star is awarded because, hey, at least you're on a water slide!

working during the summer 

the careful observer will note there are no stars given for obvious reasons.  

going bare foot ********

not the hippy version of going bare foot, where you are not ever allowed to wear shoes, shave, use soap, or be normal, but the good summertime version of going bare foot like when you go out to check the mail across the gravel, skateboard, sprint through the water park, mow the lawn, or comb the beach at night.  

bbq's ***********

granted this can and should be done year-round, but in the summertime you can bbq bare foot!  

blisters on the bottom of your feet from going bare foot ***

half badge of honor, half homage to summertime, half painful infection.  

jet skis ********************

my buddies and i all agreed that when one of us ever won the lottery, the winner would, out of the goodness of his heart, buy a jet ski for all the guys.  the sitting down kind, not the stand up kind that requires circue de soleil balance to even stand up on it.  make no mistake about it - the standie ones are hard to get going, plus you'll most definitely have a massive bruise on your leg by the end of the day from the jet.  a warning: you wont know about this bruise until the next morning when you get out of bed, and it will scare the crap out of you.  you will then try to figure out how the heck a bruise that big and dark could ever end up on the entire region of one of your upper thighs, and many scenarios as to how this happened while you slept will play themselves out in your mind.  this will frighten you.  then, shortly after breakfast, you will come to understand that it came from hours of impact from the jet as you tried to maneuver yourself from a prone position to a standing position while giving the jet ski ample throttle.  sitting jet skis.  sitting indeed.  

watermelon ****************

one time my wife brought a HUGE watermelon home from the store and she had to cut it into cubes so it could all be refrigerated.  after she cut it she put the cubes into a HUGE tupperware bowl and brought it over to me to have a "few" pieces.  after i finished the entire bowl she was like, "you ate ALL that watermelon?!" i was like, "chill, baby.  its watermelon.  you should have known."  

wetting the bed after eating a HUGE watermelon **

theres nothing really cool at all about adult-watermelon-induced-bed-wetting, or AWIBW, but then again, its summertime.

Take Heart Young Lions!

There are a myriad consolations for the struggling fiction writer. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of profiles, interviews, and essays in which accomplished writers describe the frustrations of their craft, the deepest of which may be the artist's despairing battle against his or her personal demons. This week on the Rumpus, Steve Almond takes up this theme in reference to the New Yorker's "20 Under 40" project, which showcases 20 of America's best young fiction writers. After confessing the jealousy and depression he feels about not being included, Almond sums up with this artistic call to arms:

It is perfectly natural – perhaps inevitable – to dream of being “discovered” and rocketed to the top of the Bestseller list. As Americans, we’ve been trained to dream in this way.

But the real life of a writer resides in showing up at the keyboard every day, with the necessary patience and mercy, and making the best decisions you can on behalf of your people. It’s a slow process. It often feels hopeless, more like an affliction than an art form.

Most of us will have to find our readers one by one, in other words, and against considerable resistance. If anything qualifies us as heroic, it’s that private perpetual struggle.

But for every anecdote about writing, there is an opposite and equally compelling counterexample. Generalizations about writing, it seems, are impossible to draw. Here is the Q and A on the New Yorker website with 20-Under-40 writer C.E. Morgan, whose story "Twins" is featured in the June 14 and 21 issue:

Q:    How long did it take you to write your first book?

A:    The first draft was written in fourteen days.

In fairness, she goes on to say, "the editing was completed in the course of two semesters in graduate school," but still.

-- Sean  

The Best of The Best of (What’s Left of) Heaven -- a guest review

 

The Best of (What’s Left of) Heaven, a new release from Publishing Genius, is a collection of poems compiled from Mairéad Byrne’s blog, Heaven. The collection is ordered into thirteen parts and there’s a sense of slow build-up, of climb, climax, and linger.

The opening sections “Calendar” and “Everyday Lunacy” are whimsical and provocative, flirt with the reader. There’s a shift in tone and emotion once we arrive at the third section “Found.” I sat straighter in my chair, fully engaged. Each line from the second poem, “To Skin a Muskrat,” vibrates and the last line hums: “This is nothing like writing poetry.” Overall, the writing throughout “Found” is visceral, exact, and mesmerizing. 

The sections “Interviews” and “Numbers” return us to a sense of playfulness, yet for the most part remain thought-provoking and moving:

HAPPINESS LEVELS 1994-2004

1994: 8
1995: 7
1996: 9
1997: 10
1998: 8
1999: 7
2000: 8
2001: 7
2002: 2
2003: 3
2004: 7

THE MIDDLE

I’ve got to the middle
Whew!
I’m middle-aged
Whew!
I didn’t get killed
Whew!
I didn’t kill myself
Whew!
I’m middle-income
Whew!
I’m alright
I’m OK
I’m acceptable
Whew!
Yay!

 

The section “War” begins with the haunting prose poem “Baghdad.” To my great surprise, from the very first line, I realized that I had met Mairéad Byrne several years ago at a reading in Dublin. There, I had the honor of hearing Byrne perform “Baghdad” and other poems. Byrne’s vibrant, lyrical voice, the relentless pelt of “Baghdad, Baghdad, Baghdad” has stayed with me all this time, as any writing about war should—any worthwhile writing period. The work in “War” is startling and skillful, and left me rightly unsettled and a little stunned:

CROP

I THOUGHTXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXBECAUSE YOU SAW ME
XXXXXXXXSLICED &XXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXTORN OPENXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXX&XXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXTHE SHINING CHILDXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXDRAGGED FROM ME
XXXXXXYOU WOULD HAVEXXXXX
XXXSTAYED WITH USXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXFOR LIFEXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXBUT NOT SOXXXXXXX

I also enjoyed the stirring section “Family”:

FRIDAY NIGHT

I’m a miserable person:
What have I in life
but my two daughters,
Wine,
& poetry?

 

OPEN HOUSE

Come into my house.
I do not want it anymore.

 

FIELD TRIP

On the yellow bus with the children—
in their seat belts of shout.

From the section titled “Poetry”:

how long does it take to write a poem?

time stands still

The sections “Providence,” and “Dedications” deliver further keen, compassionate, and shocking observations and moments.

“Family,” “Instructions,” and “Everything is Unlikely” tie with “War” as my four favorite sections. Just as we eased into this collection, the tiny section “Everything Else” gently takes us out—a loved one leaving, the sun going down.

I saw so much of myself, of my Irishness, in these poems and white spaces. While there are few surface references to Ireland, she permeates everything. I recognized the Irish obsession with the weather and place, with routine and everydayness. I saw how we use humor as salve, deflector, and to save our sanity. I also witnessed our psychic scars from colonization, brutality, and patriarchy. Our great joy and searing sadness. Strength. Courage. Imagination. Uniqueness.

I heard our gift of the gab and our stubborn silence. Above all, I heard echoes of the great Irish writers that have gone before us and that remain among us. Brendan Behan, Flann O’Brien, and Eavan Boland are just three that will buy Mairéad Byrne a pint in heaven. And if anyone points out that Eavan Boland isn’t in heaven yet, then you haven’t read HEAVEN from this collection. But you should. You should read this collection in its entirety. Then reread it.

I do wonder at the order here. I worry that its initial whimsy and obliqueness might lose readers. More, some of the poems read like lists and scraps, and I found myself glossing over them. Overall, though, it’s an order and a collection that works, and works well.

I remember shaking Mairéad Byrne’s hand that long-ago night in a dim pub in Dublin. I also felt her hand come out through these pages and touch me again. Byrne boasts a down-to-earth voice and style that are devoid of intonation and affectation. There are eight words of Gaeilge in this collection that translate to “an educated heart.” Mairéad Byrne’s generous, educated heart sings from these poems and white open spaces.

-Ethel Rohan

On Small Moments

So, OK, yeah. Short Story Month was a bust. (Round here, anyway; not as a whole.) Personally, I seem to find it hard to ever find time to blog, what with everything else on my plate. Like... you know... for starters, having to hit refresh on my email and facebook so often, and all this bourbon to drink. But also, the semester ended, and with all this free time, I found myself wanting to sink into some novels and so just didn't read many stories. I read about half of Keith Lee Morris's new collection, and it reminded me of this story that he read here in town a year or so ago, which I wanted to track down but was unable. In the meantime, what I did track down was his first novel, The Greyhound God, which I just finished today. 

  

One of the interesting aspects of the novel is it is written primarily from the protag's, Luke's, POV, with two short exceptions -- once in the middle of the middle of the book, and then again for the final chapter -- where it switches to that of Jenny, Luke's wife. What's interesting is not just this shift in POV, but that it happens so little. (About 22 pages in the middle, and then 21 pages at the end, out of a total of 314 pages. So... what's that? About 15%?)

Interesting though that is, and as much as it could be used to talk about POV advantages, what especially struck me about it was what Morris does with voice. Throughout, Luke narrates in his often unsure of himself, circular speech pattern. The second sentence of the book:

Sometimes during all my travels, and working in various places in different town and states pretty much all over America, I've come across people that are I don't know exactly what you'd call them, more sophisticated maybe, and they're usually dressed nice, and usually a couple, like a man and a wife, and I'm just like that -- curious about people and where they're from -- and they'll at some point get around to asking about me, the guy's wife mostly.

One of the places this book shines is really in Luke's voice; Morris seems to know how to pepper in just enough of this kind of forward and then back-pedaling and then forward again speech to really help flesh out Luke, but never so much that it gets annoying, like over-relied on "dialect" can. 

That said, like POV, voice isn't really what I want to talk about either. Not directly anyway. One of the most enjoyable moments, for me, was in the final pages, when it the POV has shifted to Jenny and she quotes's Luke:

"It's kind of quite a bit of money," Luke said. "A what would you call it -- a nest egg."

I don't know what I am getting at exactly except to say, it can be the small moments in novels that are the most enjoyable, no? That simple echoing of Luke's voice, from first person narration to dialogue via someone else's narration, really made me smile. It worked. It reminded me of that quote from Almost Famous, which I'm going to drop the last line or two because then it becomes about "what you leave out" instead of just "small moments" but the truth is still there:

It's not what you put into it. It's what you leave out. Listen to Marvin Gaye, a song like "What's Happening, Brother," there's a single "woo!" at the end of the second verse … that's what you remember. It's the little things, the silly things, it's only one of them and it makes the song.

-Aaron

SSM: video games & repetition in stories

 

Possibly the best thing I've read online recently is Brian Oliu's "Zelda Revisited." As such, I've been wanting to write about and try to point more readers in its direction, but I have kind of struggled with what say say beyond, like, "wow," and "awesome," and just kind of pointing my finger at it and nodding.

After reading it a handful of times, one of the aspects that has really stuck with me is how well Oliu is able to draw inspiration from a game that so many of us are probably familiar with and remember fondly. I mean, throw a Zelda reference into just about anything and I'm all but assured to like it. That said, and as easy as that is, I think it can be really hard to then grow above that and write a story that works on its own terms and where the video game / pop culture references don't feel like a bit of a cheat. (Along these terms, I actually remembered Kevin Wilson's "Mortal Kombat" that I wrote a bit about last year. Also: Mike Alber's "Magic: The Essay" and Matt Bell's "Ken Sent Me: Lost in the Land of the Lounge Lizards" are both among my favorite of pieces we've been lucky enough to publish in Hobart for their ability to use gaming as an element to something larger. (See, also: Matt Bell's "Mario's Three Lives."))

Where "Zelda Revisited" shines is in its language, and the way it has really re-envisioned such a familiar scene. Written with the tautness of the best short shorts, the story is lyrical like a prose poem and sucks you in, almost hypnotically. In fact, my favorite parts are the very-hypnotic repetitions -- first with its "Unlike before... " and "We will... We will... We will..." and finally, in the last paragraph, the amazingly circular, "I will wake up and think you are dead. I will wake up and you will be dead... I will wake up and I will be dead... I will be dead and you will wake up..." etc. 

Yes. I know, right.

In fact, just to plug a couple more favorite recent stories, it reminded me a bit of the repetition in our own Jensen Beach's " We Cannot Cross the River" and "Family," both stories that use repetition in their own different ways but to the best of effect.

-aaron

SSM: stories v. novels, featuring DFW

 

Phew. Finally. The semester over. Final seminar paper is written and turned in, grades are done, and even took the weekend to drink and relax and basically not do anything at all, and now... now, back to work. Which means, we're going to try to kick some action back into this blog. For real. And what better time to do that, than short story month? Nevermind the fact that the month is half over. 

First up, I just finished reading Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, which, as my mantra has been going, is maybe not all that great as a book, but is kind of amazing and fascinating as artifact. Here's a snippet from Wallace, which I thought ties in nicely to short story month, and is also an idea and concept I've thought a lot about, here and there:

...I meant that's probably ultimately why novels and movies have it over short stories, as an art form. Is that if the heart of the short story is dishonest, there aren't enough of the little flashes to keep you going. Whereas in a novel or a movie, even if the central project doesn't work, there are often ten or fifteen great, great, great things.

Hm. Thoughts on this? Of course, one could argue that, then, if the heart of a short story IS honest, it has the possibility of maybe even being the "greater" art form, what with it being like a small, crystalized, perfect thing with nothing around it to taint it. I don't know. 

 

On a similar note, I remember hearing something year ago, on NPR I believe, where this guy referenced a Japanese term (again, I believe; my memory of this actually happening is really, really fuzzy) that basically referred to something being better because of its faults -- the novel with the moments that don't quite work, the album with its "weaker" tracks instead of any kind of best of, etc. I've reference this, in one way or another, tons of times over the years, and I really, really wish I could remember the interview or the word or phrase. But. Anyway. Not sure where I was going with this, but I think it's interesting and wanted to throw it out there.

From now until the end of the month I am really going to try to read and blog about a story a day. We'll see how that goes.

-Aaron

A Conversation With Jean-Philippe Toussaint

My friend (and yours) Jim Ruland had a chance to speak to Jean-Philippe Toussaint recently, and sent this interview. I was going to run it on Hobart, but the schedule didn't allow for it to appear in a timely manner there. Instead, we are cross posting it here on Hobart's lovely blog and at HTML Giant to get the interview as much attention as we can. —Matthew

Jean-Philippe Toussaint is the author of nine novels. Originally, published in France, the slender books have secured the Belgian author a reputation as a stylist who favors impressions over plot, comic situations over character development. Since 2007, Dalkey Archive Press has been publishing Toussaint’s work in English, trickling out two or three novels a year to a growing audience of eager enthusiasts for the quirky little books. The most recent novel, Self-Portrait Abroad, released earlier this month, features a Belgian author traveling to cities in Europe and Asia. A sensual train trip to Prague, a visit to a strip joint in Nara, a victory in a lawn bowling tournament in Cap Corse are described in Toussaint’s quintessential style. We’re never told the purpose of these travels, or even if the voyages are connected. Nothing much happens and there’s little to link the vignettes save for a curious epigram:

Every time I travel I feel a slight dread at the moment of departure, a dread sometimes shaded with a soft sliver of elation. Because I know that any trip brings with it the possibility of death—or of sex (both highly improbable of course, yet not to be excluded altogether).

This is Toussaint in a nutshell: A deeply felt impression that trumps experience, a seriocomic tendency to editorialize, musical language and a whiff of the absurd. As Toussaint’s visits to the United States are infrequent, I was fortunate to speak with him last month after his book signing at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

Ruland: What is it like to come to a new place, where your books are appearing in a new language for the first time, even though they were written many years ago?

Toussaint: Yes, it’s a strange feeling because Self-Portrait Abroad was translated in English ten years ago by a friend of mine, John Lambert, who had already translated Monsieur for a British publisher. Afterwards I tried to find a publisher in the United States, but nobody wanted to publish it. With Dalkey it’s possible to publish the book in English. So it’s quite strange. But I know my books. I wrote some texts 15 years ago, but I know them very well. They are my texts, my characters. I feel very close to them.

Ruland: That’s very interesting, especially since, there’s a strong autobiographical element. The protagonist of Self-Portrait Abroad is an author very much like yourself.

Toussaint: Yes, it is, it is. It is the only book I wrote where the protagonist is clearly myself. A Belgian writer, he has the same wife, the same children, the same age. The same questions. He is myself. But I introduce also some element of fiction. It’s not only autobiography. So I think it’s interesting to introduce some element fiction. The other books, like Running Away, it’s clearly fiction, but of course there’s some element of my real life. For me it’s not a problem. I could say that everything is autobiographical even if I don’t really live it in the real life, because I live it when I write it. I experience it with my senses. Everything. I think everything is coming from me.

Ruland: Is there a lot of autobiography in your earlier work, such as Camera?

Toussaint: Well, yes, of course, but it’s not so clear. It’s not exactly me. But of course, I feel everything, and I know very well the main character, the narrator.

Ruland: As a reader who is encountering your work in English chronologically, the novels have this progression of incredible stillness to almost manic movement.

Toussaint: I would say the priorities are different. In my first book, there is more humor. And there are, I would say, for every new book that I write, I have always the same problems. I think a real writer writes always the same book. But it’s important also to renew some things. In The Bathroom and Camera I think I would like to express a view of the world and I try to be funny, the humor was very important. And now it’s quite different. Especially with the last books Making Love, Running Away, and Self Portrait Abroad, and the next one to be published in English, The Truth about Marie, there is more gravitas, there is more melancholy. Different as I get older. Maybe that is the reason.

Ruland: The humor in your early novels is very pronounced. But I think once you learn how to read your style, you can find humor in all the books. You’re not going for the joke as often, but the humor is always there. Would you agree with that?

Toussaint: Yes, maybe, but with some books, like Television, humor was really a priority. Now it’s different. It’s not a priority. I can write some pages without humor and it’s okay. Before if there was no humor I would find it no good, not interesting. When I read the books for an audience and if people didn’t laugh I was very sad and thinking it’s not a good book. That was the criteria.

Ruland: But there plenty of funny moments in Self-Portrait Abroad. The lawn-bowling scene… I find the grandiosity of the narration hilarious.

Toussaint: It’s quite difficult to speak about humor. What’s important is the efficiency of humor. It’s a question of feeling. I have some ideas about literature, but about humor, it’s really difficult. It must be instinctive.

Ruland: And also very much about context. Television is the most slapstick of your books. There’s a kind of literary situational comedy where the protagonist is set up to fail.

Toussaint: Yes, there is humor of the situation. The situation is really funny. I try really hard to create the situation. For Television, it was a priority. I think Television is my funniest book.

Ruland: My favorite is Monsieur. He’s an amalgamation of poses. And some of these are so out of touch with his surroundings, that it becomes very funny. In other novels, when the narrator recognizes these poses in other people, he skewers them with editorial digressions and parentheticals that electrify the prose in a very funny way.

Toussaint: Monsieur is a theoretical character. He looks like an idea of character. He is like other characters in literature: Palomar, a character by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. Also there is a character by a French writer Valery, Monsieur Test—like Mr. Head. He is always thinking, he is very theoretical. With Monsieur, I tried to create such a character.

Ruland: Mr. Palomar is similar to Monsieur. He only exists in terms of his impressions and ideas.

Toussaint: Yes, exactly. I would like to create a character like Monsieur Palomar. A character without qualities. Instead of Monsieur Something, Monsieur Nothing.

Ruland: Moving on to more recent novels, I read somewhere that Making Love influenced the film Lost in Translation.

Toussaint: I think it’s a coincidence. My book was issued one year before the film. So she [Sofia Coppola] really had no time to read it and make an adaptation for cinema. I think it’s a coincidence. But it’s the same places in Tokyo. It’s the same hotel. It’s very funny. There’s a lot of coincidence.

Ruland: You have a very elastic definition of what constitutes a novel. Have you met much resistance to your books, that they aren’t long enough, don’t contain enough narrative, or are in some way lacking as a novel?

Toussaint: For me I don’t mind. It’s not a question. A novel is a notion. You can do what you want. For me, you can write non-fiction in a novel. You can do poetry in a novel. I think the genre novel is very interesting because it’s very free. Very open. That’s why I write novels. If I had written in the 19th century, I think I would have written poetry. Nowadays, the genre is so open you can do what you want.

Ruland: In the anthology, Best European Fiction 2010, you refer to your piece, “Zidane’s Melancholy,” as a novel.

Toussaint: It is a very short text. A sort of interrogation about a literary genre. It is at the same time nonfiction, an essay, poetry, something like psychoanalysis, something like literary criticism. Everything inside. Not a novel. It’s not even a short story. It’s everything.

Ruland: What would you like your readers to take away from your latest book Self-Portrait Abroad?

Toussaint: I would say it’s a very funny book. It’s very light. It’s also really the only one where things are autobiographical. I experience everything I’ve narrated. There are some very funny situations.

Ruland: It feels lived. I read it while traveling, waiting in airports and flying from once city to another. I found that it awakened me to the wealth of sensory impressions around me. All the information that one chooses not to take in while traveling. Many of the scenes are simply exquisite observations. As soon as something like a story takes shape…

Toussaint: That’s always my idea. It’s not telling stories. Here it’s clear. What I’m talking about is absolutely uninteresting. I am talking about things that I lived. Very little things. Uninteresting things. Always daily life stuff. And it’s my life. I try to make literature with my life. It’s my project.

Ruland: It’s a wonderful project. The next novel to be published in English…

Toussaint: The Truth about Marie. It was the last book to be published in France, last September. I think it’s a very interesting book because there’s some reflection about literature.

Ruland: How different is it from Self-Portrait Abroad?

Toussaint: It’s not so different. There’s a cycle. A cycle about Marie. Because in the last three books there is always a narrator and the character of Marie. Making Love, Running Away, and The Truth about Marie. I am always speaking about Marie. Marie is more and more important. In the last book, she’s really the main character. I think that’s maybe different. I have never had such an important feminine figure.

Ruland: Marie makes a very bold impression, yet she’s extremely elusive. Is she more present in this next novel?

Toussaint: Maybe not so much. It is always my style. It’s all that I can do.

Ruland: What are you working on right now?

Toussaint: Maybe I will continue with Marie.

Ruland: You travel quite a bit. Is this your first time in California? T

oussaint: No, ten years ago I was invited by the Film Festival of San Francisco for my film Ice Rink but I stayed just a week. I don’t really know California. I discover it now.

Ruland: And have been here long enough to get a favorable impression? Or will it show up in a novel someday…

Toussaint: I have always impressions. I don’t know what I can do with this impression. Impression I have, but I don’t know what to do with it.

Keep Up the Great Work!

You may have noticed that our humble Hobart Blog was recently spammed in the comments section.

I finally went into the dashboard section and erased the spam (there wasn't a lot of it), but I couldn't cast it into oblivion without noting, for the record, how polite it was.

Here is what each spam message said:

hello !!!Great to see a collection of blog posts that includes thoughtful and perceptive commentary. Keep up the great work!!!

Nothing about barely-legal teens subjected to activities described with inscrutable slang. Nothing about vile bodily functions you didn't even know existed and didn't want to know about in the first place. No desperate pleas from overseas monarchs looking to shelter their fortunes. No! In their place, a simple and even genuine-sounding compliment about our content.

Who says culture and society are lost in perpetual decline? Here is evidence that one small aspect of the culture -- comment-section spam on tiny literary websites -- is actually getting more civilized.

I read somewhere once that blog posts generally get the comments they deserve. Maybe that is true. If so, we can report that the Hobart blog, while it doesn't get a LOT of comments, gets the most polite and civilized robot-spam on the entire internet.

Thank you kind robot-spam readers! We salute you!

-- Sean Carman

p.s. Now I'm imagining a room of robots chained to their desks and tasked with leaving spam messages on blogs around the internet. If you were such a robot, wouldn't you get tired of the work? No wonder some of these robots are rebelling by sending us conscientious messages! You would to, if you were subjected to their pain.

In Praise of "Water Liars"

Moved by the past week's internet tributes, I read my first Barry Hannah story, "Water Liars." It is the first story in "Airships," Hannah's first short story collection.

On the surface, "Water Liars" is about a few old men who gather on a pier to tell stories about the spirits that dwell on the river. Their stories aren't true; the point of their ritual is not to report the truth, but to top one another with increasingly fantastical and mystical tales.

The dialect Hannah uses is more vivid than any other detail he could have rendered, and the old guys are funny, too, and their tales are mesmerizing. But "Water Liars" is about something profound. It is about our need to find redemption for the small mean things that make us human.

The narrator tells us he is a Baptist, and has just turned 33, the year Christ was crucified on the cross. The story opens with him recounting the jealousy he felt upon learning that his wife had had other lovers before she met and married him. Now he's traveled to this pier, to witness these old men in their storytelling ritual. The lean against the rail, telling stories that get increasingly mystical, until one of them, a geezer who doesn't quite know the rules, tops everyone by recounting the time he accidentally surprised his daughter in the middle of a sexual encounter with an older man, in a canoe in one of the river's sheltered coves. "My own daughter," he says, still shaken by the trauma and the shame of happening upon her and her lover.

It's a story no one wanted to hear, and the other old men castigate him. These stories aren't supposed to be true, they tell him. But the older man's story has an unlikely effect -- by holding up a mirror to the narrator, it grants him a kind of redemption.

The beauty of "Water Liars" is that its holds up the same kind of mirror for us as readers, and offers us the same sort of gift.

-- Sean