State of Mind: Boston, Doolittle, Crime Fiction and the Necessity of Fiction in Tragedy

When I was in high school, the welding shop in our small town exploded.  A spark landed where it shouldn’t have and my hometown got its first taste of this kind of tragedy.  Those who were inside survived, but not easily.  Randy Rhodes had third-degree burns over 90% of his body and even at the hospital, he needed to be revived several times.  I didn't know him well, but I knew who he was.  Over the course of several months, he received skin grafts and fought infections, his fingers and toes had to be amputated, but he survived.  I remember seeing him once and the large diamond shapes on his arms, the result of the skin being pulled tightly to cover him.  I remember when he was finally well enough to remake his life and he started making wooden toys.  He joked that they were handmade—no fingers involved.

Last week, Sean Doolittle came to UNL to talk with my fiction class about his novel Rain Dogs—which begins with an explosion in a small town in western Nebraska.  It was an incredible time in my classroom, getting to talk with a writer about the book we’d just finished, to ask him all that we’d been wondering about process and craft, the line between crime fiction and literary fiction.  That afternoon, I assembled a diverse group of panelists to talk about crime literature in the academy—from the fiction writing side, with Sean and Joy Castro, the literature side, with Wendy Oleson and Jackie Harris, and the critical theory aspect, with Roland Vegso.  Bailey Library was full, to my very great surprise and pleasure.  The discussion was lively, lively enough that I didn’t want to cut it off to shift to the Q&A portion—and that provided some incredibly interesting perspectives I wish we’d had more time to explore.  Overall, though, it signaled to me that we have a lot to talk about—and I hope we can continue the discussion in another time and place. (I'll post separately about my class's conversation with Doolittle.)

But as I got up this morning to the aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombings, afraid to pull up the news on my computer—because I don’t have a television or cable—I couldn’t shake my 9/11 flashbacks, the cold, the nausea.  When 9/11 happened, I was living in Spokane, unpacking my first apartment, and I didn't have cable then either and the entirety of my first impressions was my imagination.  When classes started, we were all hyper-aware of how our students would be dealing with the aftermath and this morning, as I prepare for my classes today, I want to teach them how to channel what they're feeling into their writing.  Partly, it's catharsis, but partly, it's also using the energy of that grief that has nowhere to go.  When 9/11 happened, I ended up writing thirty, forty, fifty pages in my novel, channeling all that grief and impotent rage into one of my characters.  How do we make sense of the senseless?  (It’s another conversation entirely that this was my first disaster that I followed solely via social media.  That’s an interesting way of telling a story—I wonder what that would look like, on a page, if the story was told in tweets.)

In my 252 class, though, we're going to be talking about Sean Doolittle's visit to our class last week—and I want to ask them to consider some other aspects:  Rain Dogs begins with an explosion and the (eventual) death of one of the boys caught in it.  We're doing the second workshop of their short stories (which are due next week) and it's become a running joke in that class that it's very dangerous to be a character in our class, because nearly every single story has killed off at least one character, if not all of them.  Why do we consider violence to be entertaining?  What is our responsibility as writers?  It's not the Boston Marathon Bombings that's the hot point—it’s the fear and the grief and the motive and the aftermath that's the hot point.  There is more to conflict and drama than death—even incredible acts of terror like we saw yesterday. 

Is tragedy necessary for fiction?  And is fiction necessary during a tragedy?  (I do not mean conspiracy theories.)  Is fiction what we need to give voice to things we cannot say?  It's an interesting question.

The point is not that this week is the most dangerous time in America—from 15 April to 20 April—that Patriot’s Day (the 3rd Monday of April) to Hitler’s birthday is the time when the majority of terrorist activity happens inside our borders.  It’s Waco, it’s Virginia Tech, it’s Oklahoma City, it’s Columbine, it’s Boston.  The conflict and the drama is what happens after the terror subsides:  it’s how we trust and distrust, it’s how we respond to the people around us.  9/11 really did change us—and not all in good ways—and it was something I noticed before I had to turn off the looping video of the bomb:  this is the first American bombing (that I’m aware of) where our instincts are now to run towards the bomb, not away, and those who were not close enough to run towards the bomb found their first instincts were to donate blood.  I don’t want to make any sweeping statements about how tragedy brings us together, how we’re all Americans and we won’t be cowed—because that’s not the point either and actually, that rhetoric isn’t particularly helpful. 

The reality, as I see it, came to me as I was driving to campus this morning, on the sixth anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings that reminds me that I am not safe even in a learning environment:  one of the interviews I saw this morning was with one of the emergency trauma surgeons at one of the Boston hospitals and he was talking about the types of injuries he was seeing.  Traumatic amputations, shrapnel, lower limb trauma.  The kinds of injuries you see in a war zone.  He said that the other surgeon he works with is a military surgeon, with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.  And all I could think was we’re not at war—these types of war injuries should not be feeling familiar.  But then, we are at war.  We’re at war with ourselves.  It’s impossible to listen to the news anymore—and it doesn’t matter if you lean left or right—without hearing incredible and dangerous rhetoric.  Language matters.  This is what happens when we forget that what we say and how we say it matters.  And as writers, what is the responsibility and the opportunity of art to respond to these situations?

I don’t know what to make of violence as entertainment.  I don’t know what my students and I will talk about later this morning, but I’m looking forward to the conversation.  Maybe it’s not that we’re writing violence to be entertaining—maybe we’re not reading crime literature to be entertained—but maybe it’s that we need to write our greatest fears, write through them so they’re not stuck inside us.  If crime literature is based in the greatest fears of a society, than individual works must be based in the greatest fears of a writer.  Maybe the act of writing gives us some way to reconcile the senselessness we see in front of us and forging a way forward when the way is filled with smoke and blood.

But really, I don't know.  And I don't expect that feeling will go away anytime soon.  Fellow teachers and writers, how will you address Boston in your classes?  In your writing?

Eng. 250 & 252: Spring Break to the End!

Today, in both of my classes we start new units and I'm ridiculously excited about both.  

In my fiction class, we started talking about Sean Doolittle's novel Rain Dogs in preparation for their final craft paper due at the end of the semester.  I structure this class around short stories at the beginning of the semester and a novel in the last part, because while they're writing short stories for me, most of the time, they'll pick up a novel for fun.  So, it's important for us as writers to pick apart how a novel is put together.  The crime lit aspect of it is a bit of an accident.  This is the third time I've taught this class--the first time, when I chose Krueger's Iron Lake, its mystery-nature was an accident.  I chose it because I wanted to teach it.  The second time, with O'Connor's Star of the Sea, I was coordinating with a friend and I picked the book because she'd already chosen it and submitted her book order.  That it was a murder mystery was an accident.  This time, I figured the universe was trying to tell me something, so hence, Doolittle's Rain Dogs, set in the Nebraska Sandhills.  Crime happens everywhere--and other than crime, stuff happens everywhere--and that's all fair game for writers.

We talked about the difference between novels and short stories (beyond the obvious length) and the discussion was terrific.  We talked about the visual rhetoric of the cover (dark colors and block font)--and since I was passing around a few Irish noir books (my proposal on the craft of the urban in contemporary Irish noir was accepted this weekend for the annual International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures conference), the similarities between Declan Hughes' The Color of Blood and Doolittle's were striking.  We talked about long strands of narrative, short strands of narrative.  We talked about the imbalances that keep us reading.

Then we hopped into groups and started talking craft:

• What is the voice here?  How would you characterize the tone?  On the sentence level, what do the sentences look like?  Some of my students commented on how the tone and pacing seemed lethargic, so we talked about how Doolittle did that--and why he did it.  We talked about Tom's drinking and the (below) very distant POV.
• How are the characters introduced, on a craft level?  (Refer to notes on characterization.)  How do we come to know what we know about these characters?  What is the POV?  How does the psychic distance of the lens affect the telling? 
• How is the place—Valentine, Nebraska—created as a character in these beginning chapters?  How are the characters crafted in relation to it?  How is it already acting as much on the characters as they are acting on it?   We talked about the beginning, where every time Tom tries to speak, eighteen wheelers and other traffic on the road outside drowns out what he would say.  So, on a very active level, the town doesn't want to hear what he has to say.
• Contrast the direct dialogue, the indirect dialogue, and the use of silence and gestures.  How does Doolittle craft these?  What flavor does this give the narrative?  Why did Doolittle make the choices he did?  We talked about the lack of speech tags and the use of gestures, how they create this feeling of empty dialogue.  

I can't wait to get further into this book!

In 45 minutes, I'll head down to my 250 class and we'll start our nonfiction unit--the first time I've gotten to teach nonfiction in a creative writing class since my MFA.  To say that I'm excited is not even in the ballpark.  Right now, I've got thirty nonfiction books on my officemate's desk, each with certain parts marked with orange Post-It's.  Here's what the lesson plan will look like:

1. Pass out books, ask students to read the marked passages.  Allow 10-15 minutes.
2. If they don’t finish, that’s okay.
3. Talk about the versatility of the genre.  Can do anything from memoir to personal essay to history to science to travel to nature writing.  There’s nothing you can’t do in nonfiction—except lie.
4. “How many of you were reading something kinda cool?”
1. What about it was cool?  Subject matter?  Writing style?  Approach to the subject?
2. Small subjects (Dirt); short-shorts
5. Subject matter is often the first thing that attracts us, but it won’t hold us without the craft.
6. “So how many of you were reading something that you could detect craft?—anything from writing style and language to structure to a unique perspective on the topic?
7. Essential to nonfiction—truth, not fact.  Contract with reader.  Use of memory.
8. Essential:  warrant.  Not only is it essential to know why you’re writing something (just because something happened to you isn’t a good enough reason), but it’s also essential to establish, somehow, why the reader should care.
1. How many of you can discern the writer’s warrant?
2. Is it obvious (can you underline it) or is it intuitive?
3. What about why the reader should care?  Why should the reader care?
9. How many of you were reading something that you really want to finish?
10. Prompt:  Best Opening Line Ever:  Bill Bryson, “I come from Des Moines.  Someone had to.”  Start there—write that piece.  You may think your hometown is borning, but that doesn’t mean that someone else won’t be fascinated.
11. Essential:  Read everything.  Read the work you like—read it as a writer, not just as a reader.  But be careful.  If you read too much of the same writer, you’ll start to sound like that writer, rather than developing your own style.  (The same is true of your teachers—don’t just take one teacher.  Don’t do more than one degree in one place.  Ie, if you get your bachelor’s somewhere, don’t get your masters there.  Same for a masters/PhD.)
1. As you read, learn which writers will teach you—which ones will teach you about language, the ones that will teach you about narrative, about structure.  You’ll not find one writer who will do all of that.

And then we will do this writing exercise from Mimi Schwartz:  ¨

• What is your name?  Write only the verifiable facts of your name:  what it means, how it’s spelled, what your nickname is, who else has your name.  What is the image presented by your name (sexy, no-nonsense, boring, etc.)?  Leave your POV and what you think about your name out.
• Now write about your name from the inside out.  Make it as subjective as possible.  How do you feel about your name?  Do you like it?  Is who you are with your full name different than you with your nickname? 
• What does your name have to do with your identity?  

And watch this video of the awesome Dinty Moore, because it follows the writing exercise: