Philadelphia long ago discovered the gem who is Nathaniel Popkin. He shows up at Emmy Award celebrations, on the jackets of wonderful novels and nonfiction collections, in the pages of
Philadelphia magazine, as book review editor at
Cleaver. He is, as well, a force behind Hidden City, and what I say here is the truth: few people know more about this city, or think about it more deeply, than Nathaniel Popkin.
So it was a distinct pleasure to be interviewed by him for
Hidden City. Our
conversation about walking, seeing, thinking, and believing (and Philadelphia) can be found here. I always learn from the questions he asks.
Thank you, Nathaniel.
We're
launching Love: A Philadelphia Affair at the Free Library tomorrow night on a stage that will sparkle with the warm wit and intelligence of broadcast pioneer Marciarose Shestack. We hope you'll join us.
Dorothy Allison is one of three Kelly Writers House Fellows hosted this semester by Penn professor and poet
Julia Bloch. Yesterday she sat among us, in conversation with us. There, beside Julia, she is.
Oh, I liked her. So very much. She's everything you've been told she will be. Iconoclastic. Irreverent. Touching. A firebrand of deep opinion and great craft cares who may believe in the act of revenge on the page, but only when the author holds him- or herself equally accountable for the unforgivable past. We writers, we survivors, may not be the heroes we think we are, Allison reminds us. We have responsibilities. Work that lasts is work that is rich with a felt sense of responsibility.
Any writer who believes that writing is a mere game—a toss-off and toss-up of the randomly odd, the
relentlessly clever, the tried and true brand—must spend a bracing hour and change in the company of Allison. Sitting beside my friend Nathaniel Popkin and just one row ahead of August Tarrier (Jamie-Lee Josselyn waving a hand from the near distance, one of my students a few rows back, Lily Applebaum at the mike ready), I filled my little notebook with Allison's words. I'm going to share a few of them here—transcribed as nearly as I could, but not always verbatim. Spread them, oh ye writers and readers who care.
In response to Julia's questions about craft (comments from across the conversation, gathered here): Craft sharpens the contradictions. It produces prose that takes the reader by the throat. Craft requires writers to read as writers, not as readers, and so we writing readers cannot merely wallow; we must assess. To make a reader care, the writer must keep paring the prose down, constructing the truth, acknowledging one's purpose. You are going for the long reach, not the quick tears. You want to haunt a reader six months on. The more talent you have, the more responsibility you have.
On writing with compassion: Recognize that you will never get it right. Recognize that those who survived, who got out of there alive, are in some ways the cowards, the ones who had to compromise. Hold yourself accountable for the choices you made. Recognize that you have a higher moral authority to tell the story right. This applies, by the way, to both writers of fiction and nonfiction.
On life's purpose: I don't want to be rich. I want a different world. I don't want the hatefulness of this world. I have a conviction about justice and social responsibility, a concept of citizenship at great variance with what I see in this world.
Paradise: is having an audience.
What the world is: We don't know what the world is until it is shown to us in story.
A story, much condensed (forgive me, Dorothy Allison, for this condensed version). In response to a question I asked about when Allison knew teaching was joyful, she first spoke of how she made sure to make teaching as hard for herself as it was for her students (amen to that, oh yes, amen to that), then told a story about one of the most talented students she ever had—a woman who didn't know where sentences began or ended, but knew vivid and had material. For nine weeks, Allison worked within a workshop and outside the workshop with this "baby" writer. That ninth week, they had a conversation about the writer's future. The student writer had a question: How much would she get paid for the stories she wrote? How much for a collection of stories? How much how much how much would she get paid—and how long would it take? Allison painted a picture of the future, spoke of the rewards that aren't numerical, finally confessed, when pushed, that her own most recent collection of words had received an advance of $12,500. "I earn that in tips a month," said this student writer. And that, pretty much, was it. The end of this genius writer's aspirations.
And so, Allison reminded us, one has to have more than a gift. One has to have desire. One has to cherish the audience, the chance to speak, the conversation—for that, in the end, is what matters most, that is the gifted writer's only sure provenance, that is where responsibility begins.
Let's get less caught up in the noise about books and more invested in making extremely fine ones.
This morning, before the gears on the work-a-day-world began to turn in earnest, I read "Gabriel: A Poem," Edward Hirsch's book-length elegy for his departed son.
It is hallowed and hollowing, a work of pristine mourning. Memories seamed and broken. Threads that fall away until we see the soul of the boy himself— adopted, challenged by tics and relentless recklessness, the bright splash in a room. He is a child no one can keep safe from himself. A child who goes out during Storm Irene to a party he sees advertised on Craigslist. A child who does not return and cannot be found for four terrible days.
And then he must be buried.
It ransacks the soul, reading a book like this. We peel away as the lines peel away; no periods at the end of any line, no finished sentences. We look and we cannot stop looking until Gabriel, and his searching father, are a part of us.
It is a poem. It is also memoir. Like Jacqueline Woodson's
Brown Girl Dreaming it suggests, again, another form for the hardest and most important stories lived. The most important things lost and lifted to the page.
Words:
In his country
There were scenes
Of spectacular carnage
Hurricanes welcomed him
He adored typhoons and tornadoes
Furies unleashed
Houses lifted up
And carried to the sea
Uncontained uncontainable
Unbolt the doors
Fling open the gates
Here he comes
Chaotic wind of the gods
He was trouble
But he was our trouble
With thanks to Nathaniel Popkin, whose
craft essay in Cleaver Magazine last week reminded me that I had meant to buy and read this.
This is the summer, it seems, of friendship. Of deeply meaningful lunches with friends whose stories have evolved, so magnificently, through the years. Of an afternoon spent in the glorious Brooklyn home of a very dearest friend. Of long conversations with neighbors—conversations that began a long time ago and that pick up right where they ended, as if many seasons and much weather had not intervened.
How have you been? How do your seeds grow? How is your daughter, your husband, your mom? Of reunions with high school friends. Of saving grace phone calls and long walks. Of conversations with poets. Of former students who write or who appear in bookstores; they are growing up, they are growing up so beautifully. Of new friends, too, who kiss me on the cheek as if I have known them forever, or present me with a beaded lei and an ALOHA. Of emails that make me laugh out loud or astonish me or leave me with that happy something that erupts, naturally, when another's dream has been fulfilled.
They have waited, it has happened, it is good—and I am soaring with them. I am glad to be their friend.
The summer of friendship.
I've been thinking about that. Grateful for that. And, today (and for a long time, for our friendship is a long one, too) I am also grateful to a certain Nathaniel Popkin, who writes more beautifully about this city and about books than anyone I know. The man knows things, and he is a poet. Last evening, driving home from a perfect New York City day, I found these
Hidden City words that had been Tweeted out to the world, and to me. I don't know what to do about words like these but to say, again, thank you. Thank you, Nathaniel, for your generosity.
Here are some handpicked titles from our Coming Attractions page. Want to include your book? Just read our Share Your New Book with GalleyCat Readers post for all the details.
Saigon Survival by Simon Miller: “This condensed volume combines the essentials of both a guidebook and travelogue in one indispensable package. Save thousands of dollars, avoid countless scams and never have to wonder what that bucket of water in the bathroom is for. Take it from an experienced traveller who spent over a year in Saigon and learned so much about life there he had no choice but to put pen to paper to bring you this book.” (September 2013)
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