Yesterday, on my way to teaching at Penn, I took a small detour to see a Paul Strand exhibit in the Fine Arts building. Then climbed the steps. Took out my phone. And snapped this shot through the window.
Damn, I thought. How lucky am I to be a spring semester adjunct here. This campus. This place. This Creative Writing arm of an English Department
USA Today just ranked second in the nation.
Last year, Avery Rome and I joined forces and hosted
Michael Sokolove (Drama High) as a special guest. Michael thrilled our students, taught us many things. This year, I'm enormously blessed to be hosting Daniel Menaker, who edited fiction for
The New Yorker for 25 years and served as the Executive Editor in Chief of Random House, acquiring books by some of my favorite writers. In his various editorial capacities, Daniel has worked with Alice Munro, Elizabeth Strout, George Saunders, Charles McGrath, William Trevor, Norman Rush, Katha Pollitt, Colum McCann, Amy Bloom, Antonya Nelson, Salman Rushdie—and many others. He has also written a memoir I loved,
My Mistake. I wrote about that
here—a blog post that initiated an unexpected conversation.
Daniel will be at the Kelly Writers House on February 24, beginning at noon, when he and I will be talking about the vagaries of the publishing industry. The larger community is welcome. At 1:30, my class will join with Lorene Carey's class to talk in private about
My Mistake.After Daniel was in touch regarding my words about his book, Jeff Hobbs, the wholly compassionate and deep-seeing author of
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, got in touch about
this blog post, in which I spoke of how I was incorporating his book into my teaching plan. Jeff, who lives in California, offered to come visit my class as part of a larger east coast tour. When the dates weren't quite working out as we had hoped, a Skype visit was planned instead.
And so my students will have the opportunity to meet two authors whose books and lives inspire. My students—who are teaching me words like "jawn" and authors like Maira Kalman, teaching me narrative photography and the nuance of talk, the pronunciation of complex cloud forms and the Black Scholes equation. We are learning memoir new, and we are learning it together, and I am beyond delighted that the neon lyric of our conversation will be further radicalized by Daniel and Jeff.
Someday I will find a way to express the (what is the word?) (joy?) that I experienced yesterday as Michael Sokolove, the phenomenally gifted author of
Drama High, among other books, and the equally gifted editor, Avery Rome, joined my class and Avery's class at Kelly Writers House on the Penn campus.
Michael read, we talked, we learned, we appreciated.
My students wrote and asked and listened.
It may have been raining like the world was ending yesterday.
But inside our room, we were all just getting a good, fresh start.
Thank you.
In a week or so, a video tape of our conversation and mini workshop will be available. I'll post that link when I have it. Then, at last, you can see for yourself how lucky I am to adjunct at Penn, to work with editors like Avery, and to invite a big-hearted, super writer like Michael into the midst.
Wait until you see.
My dear friends Elizabeth Mosier and Chris Mills sent me this photo last night, following their excursion to Radnor Memorial Library.
We writers live in the forest of doubt, or at least this writer does. This photo startled me—this idea of a dear librarian (Pam Sedor) taking the time to locate my books and to place them all on one wall. This idea of a celebration going on while I've been going on elsewhere.
I forget, often, about the words I've left behind. I focus, too often, on what must be done
right now, on what isn't done yet.
I neglect to pause. This celebration at Radnor Memorial Library—discovered by friends—is cause for a pause.
We'll be celebrating
Going Over at this very Radnor Memorial Library on April 30, 7:30. This will be my only formal reading from the book, and this party is open to all; cake will be served. Please join us.
In the meantime, today, I am celebrating the work of Michael Sokolove and editor Avery Rome at the University of Pennsylvania's Kelly Writers House. My class has read Sokolove's fantastic
Drama High. We have questions. We look forward to reflection, to a deep and true conversation.
Thank you, John McPhee.
Here I am, set to begin the narrative profile component of English 135.302 at Penn, set, as a matter of fact, to teach the art of the interview this coming Tuesday (this very one), and there you are in the pages of
The New Yorker, with your essay
"Elicitation."Your timing, as always, is impeccable.
I am tempted to quote the entire piece back to my students, back to the world. I will honor the rules of borrowing and quote just a tad. Here we go:
Whatever you do, don't rely on memory. Don't even imagine that you will be able to remember verbatim in the evening what people said during the day. And don't squirrel notes in a bathroom—that is, run off to the john and write surreptitiously what someone said back there with the cocktails. From the start, make clear what you are doing and who will publish what you write. Display your notebook like a fishing license.
And:
You can develop a distinct advantage by waxing slow of wit. Evidently, you need help. Who is there to help you but the person who is answering your questions? The result is the opposite of the total shutdown that might have occurred if you had come on glib and omniscient. If you don't seem to get something, the subject will probably help you get it. If you are listening to speech and at the same time envisioning it in print, you can ask your question again, and again, until the repeated reply will be clear in print. Who is going to care if you seem dumber than a cardboard box? Reporters call that creative bumbling.
In two weeks, Michael Sokolove will come to Penn and speak to my class as well as the students now being taught by my friend Avery Rome about this interviewing thing. He'll talk as well about his exceptional book,
Drama High. John McPhee, you've given us more to ponder. And I (as I always am with you) am grateful.
