Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Steve Almond 101

And so tonight on behalf of Harvard bookstore in Boston University's C.S. writing program I am so pleased to welcome Steve all meant he's here tonight to speak about the craft of fiction as well as his two locally produced books the first entitled This won't take but a minute honey incorporates short fictions and essays in a unique format with three count them three cover options His latest book just out of rolling off the presses a couple weeks ago and is entirely entitled excuse me letters from people who hate me. The new book is hilarious and makes me laugh and also makes me nervous for Mr. Allman safety as many of the people in the book do you really really hate him. Harvard Book Store however does not hate Steve Almond we love him very much he is one of our favorite local authors and has been overwhelmingly kind to this bookstore as most of you know Steve Almond is a writer that you can find all over the web from the rumpus where he recently wrote an article entitled presto Book 0 or why I went head and self published into salon dot com where today he wrote a book about Canada as a limpet blunders. He's also written from a Huffington Post Boston Globe poets and writers and elsewhere and through traditional publishing outlets. Steve has also authored several

books including my life in heavy metal the evil b the candy freak and not that you asked. His next book will be published this coming April entitled rock n roll will save your life and Harvard Book Store intends to help him host a reading slash rock concert over the Brattle Theater. Join us for that. But thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thanks for your patience. Please join me in welcoming Steve Almond. Thanks for coming out I know it's really blessed me out there. So thanks to Harvard bookstore for doing another one of these and especially to Michelle Hoover for forcing who's been forced here tonight. I just want to get a sense. Don't be embarrassed I know it when I was your age just like you. So go ahead and raise your hands nice and high so I can see how many civilians there are and how many there have been. OK taking role exactly. OK. You know if any school would allow me to teach I would probably do the same thing and

force students to go to readings I certainly did when I taught. What's the worst that could happen. They might feel more alive. Oh my gracious. I guess the worst could happen would be that they would be bored. And there are already from my recollections of college I spent most of it bored although pleasantly I don't remember that because I was also so stoned during much of that. So here's what I'm going to do. I would like to answer questions. Questions were submitted by Michel students and I must say that these questions are rather hard ass or that these students strike me as fairly hard assed students I was somewhat intimidated by them and also occasionally smartass but never done that. Unfortunately never flat or smelly ass so I'm happy about all that. And so I want to answer some of those questions and I'll by way of doing that I hope to do some reading from the books and then I guess at the end if there's any time I would and at any point during the course of my wanderings if you have a question

that isn't being answered then raise your hand. I don't or just even shout it out or throw something at my head. I don't want us to kind of be all tense during this. It's not root canal. It's especially important to you because this is the way that I think I really enjoy most selling books as an actual human gathering. All of us in the same place. So that's part of the reason that I started making books in this in this unusual way and for now it's unusual I think pretty soon it's going to be much more accepted. So let's just jump right in with questions and I will show you guys the different covers. So you probably saw this but for those of you who don't have a copy weren't forced in essence by your teacher to buy one of these. There are three different covers. There's the lady with the whip and the nurse motif there's the skull motif this is a book that got a little bit crooked. And then there's Where's the thorny lady.

There's. This goal. Oh OK well there's a really hot thankyou think you can you just look at that. This was supposed to be on the cover of my life in Heavy Metal my first book of stories but the publisher was like no. Titties. And I said oh we can cover him up. And they said no sorry she's upside down. She also storms coming out of her but I think the designer who I work with Brian Stauffer has all these covers are amazing and you can buy anyone I'm sorry he's going to. It's ok I got some at home. And then also there's this crazy book Letters from people who hate me and I recommend you read the blurbs and I'll talk about that one later. So let's get to these questions and I'll try to answer them as well as I can Brooke Brooke with an E at the end.

Hey Brooke you look really proud and happy to be identified. So here's what Brooke had to say when she's talking about it in this in the essays in this book because half of them are essay short essays about writing and half of them are stories she says in chapter 10 you say a writer should always love their characters for their weakness and iniquity. I know you don't mean that a writer should admire or respect their character but I've read many stories where I would find it very hard to believe that the writer loves their character are there instances in which a writer might not love his or her character. OK so let me read what the chapter that she was talking about Fortunately these are just pages long very short. It's called What I mean when I talk about love. For many years I was reluctant to tell my girlfriends I was in love with them. I viewed love as a code word for certain emotional promises I had little hope of keeping and therefore made the typically scuzzy masculine argument that love was an arbitrary threshold who really knew what it meant and what mattered was how we behave not the terms of fix to those behaviors. This was the part of the story just before I got dumped.

I still think of love as a pretty fuzzy word routinely debased by pop stars and infomercial hosts but as a writer I've come to see love in more precise terms as an act of sustained attention implying eventual mercy. There's nothing more disheartening to me than a story in which the writer expresses contempt for her characters. It's the one failure I can't abide because it amounts to a conscious decision to shit on art whose first and final mission is the transmission of love. That's what's happening by the way when you read any great piece of literature the love transmitted from the author to her characters is being transmitted to you the reader which is why I continue to continually exhort students to love their characters at all times. I don't mean by this that you should protect them. On the contrary it is your sworn duty to send your characters barreling into the danger of their own desires nor do I mean to endure some bland form of moral absolution. I mean something much more like what the authors of the New Testament ascribed to Jesus Christ that you love people not for their strength and nobility but on the contrary for their

weakness and iniquity your job is not to burnish the saint but to redeem the sinner with your help your characters will hurl themselves into all manner of trouble they will behaved despicably. It is at this point that your mettle as a writer and what the hell human being will be tested when you turn away from them in their time of need. So in essence what I what I'm trying to say is and I think Brooke is I think picking up on some of this anyway. Not that you approve of your characters when you're writing fiction or nonfiction fiction for that matter. I can think of lots of examples for instance Lolita we can imagine that you know chances are no book off didn't approve of most of what Humbert Humbert does and some of what he thinks. But I would warrant that he certainly identifies with it to some extent and has some sense that I mean look there are two narratives that we walk around with the kind of person we want to be and think of ourselves of in the best moments in the kind of people that we know ourselves to

be inside. Right. That's basically the two stories of yourself that you're constantly telling and fiction is I think most exciting when those two versions collide. The safe obedient well-behaved good to his friends and family version vs. the real ugly petty disappointed enraged horny in appropriately so perhaps illegally so people that we actually are inside if we're honest. So you know that's I think the collision of those two stories is where to me fiction gets interesting and dangerous the central dangerous self-revelation. But I want to be clear in saying that you can completely disapprove of a character and still be paying very careful attention to them. And that's what I think love is. I think it's paying attention. I think that's the first and final act of love that you pay attention to what somebody is going through whether that somebody in your life or that's a character on the

page. OK. I would also point you to an incredible novel called money by the writer Martin Amos as anybody read that here. Anybody going to make my heart sing. OK that's all right. You have a treat in store. The narrator of money is the most despicable person you could possibly imagine and I totally love him and I can tell that Martin Amos loves him too because even the most despicable person runs into the possibility of coming to know themselves better. And that ultimately is what redeems people that's like the one thing I think the only people who I really really would say I quote unquote hate would be people who are unable to face themselves at all. And even if I hate them that's not the opposite of love. The opposite of love is indifference hate is a kind of identification. You hate people because they represent and body parts of yourself that you don't

like and are ashamed of. If I were to write a story about Dick Cheney for instance. OK that's a guy who I can think of much of his conduct is just disgusting to me it's despicable more illegal. But you know what. He's got a gay daughter and his views on he strikes me as somebody who despite the rest of the bad data of the way he behaves in the way he believes the country and its citizens should behave he loves his daughter and he's quite beautiful in his articulation of it's kind of brave in the face of how conservative most of his views are that he speaks about repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell or what you see what I mean. Dick Cheney I mean all Dick Cheney is a loving father who accepts his child regardless of you know who she wants to sleep with. God bless him. OK. So I've a number of questions about plot. Carla where you Carla. I did get a great seat and Yara

OK. And and Carl again sort of pelted me with these questions. Do you believe character is more important than plot. If so what are your top three reasons why. Because like I want three reasons from you not just one. You put a deep emphasis on character development when writing a story but your whole plot is an important literary element as well. And then Karla follows up if you had to. How would you expand upon your definition of plot. I think what they're basically saying is Hey dude what's the matter with you don't you think plot matters at all. If I can kind of restate their question and I would answer Basically here's my definition of plot this is as long as this chapter is it's the whole chapter plot is the mechanism by which your protagonist is faced forced up against her deepest fears and or desires period. And of my formulation of plot. I don't think plot exists independent of characters. I don't know that I would say that every single time.

Character equals a lot the Aristotelian construction. But I would definitely suggest that for me anyway. I don't think what's my plot. I think who is my character and how do I get him in trouble and how do I not bail out when they're in trouble period. That's how I try to write my short stories and when I'm doing nonfiction that's how I try to think about my own life. I'm not interested in the moments that don't make me ashamed in some way. OK. OK Anya Anya. Is no Anya. Fucking don't even show up. Man I'm going do a question. It's cool Anya we're going to skip so don't make excuses for Anya here. This is deeply upsetting. So far Sarah sorry OK. You state when talking about where plots go wrong that introducing number of plots will take away from the emotional connection to the reader is this always true can several plots be intertwined as long as they have a feeling of unity. Or

is it always best to condense down to one or two plots. And what I would say is hey there are plenty of people probably much better writers than I am that can introduce three or four plot strands and have them incredibly intricately synthesise in the space of a short story. I can't and I think what we turn to fiction for and all literature for is radical depth radical subjectivity and radical depth. And for me I do better when I focus on. Again just one character and how to propel them into the danger of their own hearts. Pretty much that's. But that's not a prescription for how everybody else should do it. What I will tell you is that I see a lot of writers earlier in their career who use multiple plots as avoiding getting too deeply into one of them. They stack up four or five different plots in a 16 page story and there's one plot there's one. Possibility of danger that's the one that really brought them to the keyboard but they don't want to face that. So they you know they use the kitchen sink approach

and start throwing in multiple plots really as an evasion as a way of avoiding the tough emotional and psychological work of bearing down on one of them. So it's OK to lump Kelsey. I say OK do you believe a story needs to have a reversal recognition that the conclusion does a character always need to learn something about themselves at the end of a story. Kelsey Yes. No. There's an entire genius of fiction and I guess maybe some nonfiction but mostly fiction where the where the protagonist is what we call unreliable in some way. If there are a narrator then we call him an unreliable narrator they have no clue about themselves and the reader in fact has more information about them than they have about themselves. I think actually this is true of all of us. People recognize our bullshit so much more than we do. We just can't face it. So in that sense we're all unreliable. You know like

when my if if I forced my wife to tell me everything I do that was annoying. I would be astonished and perhaps on the brink of suicide. OK. And so in that sense I'm an unreliable narrator because it kind of trips through you know the house thinking I smell good and I look good and I'm real smart. And in fact I'm incredibly annoying in many ways and ugly and sad. What has to happen is something has to change. And that might be the reader's perception of the character. So for instance you know why limit the P.O. or any famous story the story that woman is never going to recognize the way in which she's colluded in her own ostracisation from her family. But the reader comes to recognize it so that has changed within the reader. And for me this as I said the central danger is that a character is forced to a point by you the courageous author where they have to recognize.

Something about themselves and suffer a moment of real painful self revelation and that in of itself is I think kind of the redemptive impulse in most fiction. Something has to change. I'm not interested as I say in the book and slice of life stories. Get a webcam if you want to show somebody a slice of life it's your job since you call yourself a writer to write about the slice of life where everything fucking goes to shit and your character's actual internal life is challenged and exposed. That's really your job as a writer. OK. Amalie Emily. She says in this in this chapter can I get a what what. You state that which I'll try to read here maybe I won't like it. You state that the reader should not be confused as to what is happening in the story and you use the example of a girl being pregnant in the boyfriend coming to visit her. Would you suggest for for instances where you do

not want to reveal everything completely to the reader but instead want them to learn as the character learns or would you suggest that you can't that that's a possibility that you could try that strategy in other words the reader would only witness the point of view of the character. Absolutely best example I can offer of that is the story where you going where have you been by just Carlos who's been forced to read that. Dude it's a lonely room for us. It's one of the most remarkable short stories around and it is a perfect example of this where what makes it so terrifying is that the heroine this young girl Conny only comes to recognize as the reader is recognizing the kind of trouble she's in. She's confronted by a strange man who appears at her door who she knows a little bit and it's part of the great amazing just skin crawling tension of that story is that she's figuring out that she's in a lot more trouble than she initially thought and the

readers figuring out it figuring that out at the same time. But the reason that I generally urge writers to give us more at least as much information the characters and perhaps more is because I don't think the essence of suspense is what a story is about. I think that's something we should just all understand as early as possible. The essence of suspense isn't what happens it's how and why it happens and to what affect who gets hurt who gets burned who gets naked who gets fucked. That's what's the that to me is the interesting stuff what happens the basic events of the story I think should be absolutely clear. And there's a lot of tension to be wrung from a story in which we as the readers know more than our characters. Right because we can sort of say to them no don't you ever seen a horrible horror movie where the coed wanders or think about that damn movie. Cloudy silence the Lambs. Remember when she goes downstairs in the basement I hate when people cite movies and

my students do it I bark at them so fuck me. But it's a good example. And she goes downstairs and she's got the nightscope vision and you as the viewer know that Buffalo Bill crazy psycho killer is down there. Well there's a lot of tension there because the character knows less than we know as the viewer and that circumstance or desire to take care of her and make no and you know our sense that she's in real trouble is probably just going to get it is part of what keeps us on the edge of our seat. If we had no idea where she was and what was going on when she walked down into that basement it just wouldn't matter. She might get you know shot by by Buffalo Bill but wouldn't. There would be no sense of suspense suspense is when you're suspended on the edge of a possibility usually a bad outcome. That's what it means that you're trying to figure out what the heck's going on. OK a number of people were confused I think by this concept of the merge. Do Michelle's students want to admit how confused they were. The

merged Narrator OK. Or you could just grumble under your breath that's even better. So Emily again writes I was a little confused by the Show us the narrator How would the narrator be shown if the story is written in first person. OK what I'm talking about here. I'll just give you examples. Consider since he just passed away. Holden right Salinger's Catcher In The Rye. Consider Holden Caulfield. He is the protagonist the hero of that novel but he's also the narrator. So they're performing the same function whenever you have a first person story in this is true of Lolita it would be true of Henderson the Rain King the Saul Bellow novel or any short story that's told from the eye point of view. The narrator is automatically the same person as the protagonist but the author controls the narrator. And so in the case of Holden Caulfield the opening of that novel sets out because Salinger needs needs us to understand the exact

circumstances of what this kid is has gone through and what the novel is going to be about. You probably want to hear about all this David Copperfield crap but I don't want to talk about all that. I want to tell you about this madman stuff that happened in New York before I ended up here in the asylum. He is saying to the reader this novel is about a kid who goes who has a nervous breakdown. And that's what the novels about Humbert Humbert says this is going to be the story of an illicit love affair illicit and illegal love affair that tore my heart out and you know sort of made me an outcast from myself in society. Jean Henderson says this is going to be a story about a guy who loses his shit and goes to Africa to try and find it again. Right that is the author saying if I'm going to have a first person narrator I want that to be a narrator who guides the reader because that's the job of the narrator. And if you think about the great literature of the 18th century as I'm sure you guys do constantly probably twittering about it constantly. If you think about Jane Austen or toll story or any of these cats their narrators

act as a guide for the reader. They've got a big cast of characters with lots of motives and lots of different interactions and the narrator is there basically to make sure that the reader understands everything they need to so that the scenes pound us with the emotional and psychological significance that are intended. That's the narrator's job to serve as our guide. OK. Kid Emily apparently is getting a lot of extra credit. She she writes in your essay What work does it do you remember you mention removing every in essential word. How would you go about accomplishing this. OK let me read the question again. In your essay What work does it do you mention removing every in essential word how. Same thing right. Agreed. What work is. Would you go about accomplishing this.

Doing. You all have to learn to interrogate your sentences and figure out which words are actually performing a narrative function and which ones are there's filigree where it's throat clearing or as a you know polite polite test for the reader. It's just interrogating most of the words I write in a first draft are unnecessary I'm just not sing around I'm just wasting time. And the amazing thing. I mean I hear this sometimes from students when I give them a publish story they'll say God you know it read so quickly. The reason it reads so quickly is because they've edited out all the inessential words they've gone sentence by sentence and interrogated every sentence and gotten rid of every lazy non function where if I say I was just furious out of my head so pissed off. I mean you don't need three reiterations of the same basic emotional statement. Just find the one with the best language the most unexpected in precise language.

And then Joyce asks where's Joyce. I geve to assess how should we choose or should we choose our words if we want to avoid sounding over the top but not too informal. And so I want to read a little section about voice because I think it might be relevant to that question I think what you're really asking is how am I supposed to find my voice. What's the right way for me to tell a story. For many years the mantra in writing circles was find your voice. This was back in the 70s the colors were wide the mustaches were thick fellatio had yet to become a marketing tool. The big anti-depressant was downtown brown. That's a kind of very shitty quality marijuana. I will tell you case you were wondering and writers were and had much of it and many headaches as a result. And writers were supposed to find their voices as if these voices were something that might be under oath via asked sessions or primal scream therapy or captured in the jungles of Costa Rica like a

rare bird. This conception of voice appealed to folk such as Norman Mailer and Tim Robbins for whom writing serves as a kind of performance more often voices what emerges when you stop performing. When your voice on the page flows from your voice off the page it's a particular tone and vernacular. I can't tell you how many genuinely funny students have handed me pieces whose dreary minimalism all but screams take me seriously as a writer damn it happens every time I teach some student with a great personality a great sense of humor hands me some self serious piece of work in which they've essentially just tied one hand their good hand behind their back and said OK here it is I'm going to be the next Hemingway. I think fiction is most successful nonfiction for that matter when you simply tell the truth about the things that matter to you the most deeply in as natural a voice as possible. I don't mean with likes and add it yourself into eloquence but I mean that the particular rhythm and

even some of the word choice should just be like your natural voice. Consider this story about a young American writer living in Paris he produced two depressing novels and was what was at work on the third one one sunny morning heading to his studio he noticed the water release from municipal hydrants tracing the curbs and iridescent currents it was. He recalled just the sort of thing that makes us loonies cheerful he resolved then and there to allow himself as much freedom of movement as that water. The result was the adventures of Augie March whose delirious prose marked the liberation of Saul Bellow from the prison of respectability here. At last the full range of his personality reached the page. The wise profane voices he had he had absorbed growing up. The infectious rhythms of the four languages spoken in his home. There will never be a writer whose sentences are as supple and electrifying as bellows but it's go worth pursuing in the same manner he did forget finding your voice. It's there already in the hydrant of your past awaiting release.

OK. I hear for especially from chronologically young writers nothing interesting has happened to me and I don't have any material. And how am I supposed to write. Everything that really is of emotional significance to you has happened. It has been inflicted or you have been a party to it already. All the people who you love most deeply or the lion share you already know they're your family and your closest you know friends but most of your family and there's nobody who doesn't have a rich and complex inner life and and an area of expertise a part of the world that they know intimately and and and voices whether that's your older relatives your parents your grandparents your roommates your brother. Any voice that to you sort of resonates in that you're enchanted by should find its way into your fiction. If you're sufficiently enchanted by it. OK. Carrie Where's Carrie Carrie. She writes you

discuss plot and character amongst other elements but where do you think a story begins or rather what sparks a story's creation. And I try to suggest really it can be anything it could be anything for me. I don't like to be drawn doctrinaire and say well it's always a character it's always a story or fragment of dialogue or an image or whatever could be anything but what I would say is that it's inevitably something that I think that sticks in my craw that I cannot get rid of by other means Travis had a question about this that I cannot get rid of by other means I try to give you an example of a number of years ago I went up to visit a friend of mine in Maine and his dad his mom had just died and his dad was visiting also. And this friend of mine had just had a baby so it was like a family gathering. And I walk into their house. Up there in Maine and the dad is this kind of nervous guy and he meets me in the kitchen and Tom my friend Tom introduces us. And rather

than us proceeding to the room where the fire is in the baby and kind of joining the family he starts telling me this crazy story because he finds out I'm an adjunct and I'm teaching. And he starts telling this crazy story about a time when he was my age probably roughly and he was just about to marry his wife and he had to do what they were living in separate cities. And he had to identify the body of one of his students who'd been in a horrible auto accident and had died. I mean it was very weird because I felt terrible for him and I knew that he was avoiding interacting with his family because he didn't quite know what to do. And I knew also that on his mind was death and a body because he missed his wife terribly and I imagine that she had been the go between you know in the way that that happens in relationships where oftentimes there's one person usually the woman but you know the one who kind of serves as an emotional go between for the world and that story stuck with me I couldn't get rid of it.

I was obsessed with that. And so I just had to write the story it was my version of it I put all my own stuff that popped up from my artistic unconscious but it was that essential story about this guy telling telling this story to this young guy about having to identify this body. All right. So I don't know why I was obsessed with it. OK I don't know why it stuck in my craw. And you don't have to know that either in fact it's probably more useful if you don't. But the book that this story is in finally comes out my life in heavy metal and you know it's filthy if anybody's read it it's absolutely just filth. My dad reads it and sends me a very nice note saying well you know Steve the family is quite quite impressed they have a book in the world and we do carry it around in a brown paper bag and there are some of the families no longer speaking with us but you know it's an impressive thing to get a book in the world. And let me just say one thing about that story among the EAC the one that I've been talking about my dad said listen I I didn't realize that I was such a distant father. And I reading this you know Boston he lives in California sort of sat

back on my couch and said well wait a second thought I wasn't writing that story. You know that story stuck with me because of my concerns about connecting to my father and how connected he was to the family in the way in which my mom is sort of run interference emotionally. All our lives. But if I consciously set out to write a story about my distant father I'd just fuck it up. I guarantee you because self-consciousness is the death of art. That's why you're artistic. That's why your unconscious seizes on certain stories fragments of dialogue images feelings smells moods and you have to pay attention to those things that stick in your craw. They're your material. They're trying to tell you that. Don't sit there and go oh my God I've got to figure it out tell a story that will eventually get you to that. But you know my dad never read that. I would never know I would just know that it was a story that felt important to me and I had to get written. OK.

Now there was a question Yarra where are you. You're over there you are. So you had this question. You strongly believe that every story is at least semi autobiographical do you think it's possible for someone to write a good story that is in no way connected to his or her life. And I hope what I've suggested to you is that it is possible to write a story that you think is unconnected to you or your life. But the reason you're writing it is because it's connected to you or your life. Where do stories come from. Where did Holden Caulfield come from. He came from the deepest part of J.D. Salinger who was obsessed with preoccupied with the idea that we have this period in childhood where we're innocent of the phoniness and artifice of the adult world and he gets crushed in us everything that was deepest and most beautiful about J.D. Salinger was embodied in Holden Caulfield. There's no such thing as a story that is has nothing to do with the author. Now

autobiographical is a different matter. I never I would not suggest that you have to write autobiographical fiction or nonfiction. I don't care just as long as it is getting at your preoccupations and you all know what that is you sick East. You know what you really care about and what's keeping you up. And that's what you have to write towards. In my very bullying formulation of it. OK. Dan Where's Dan. He didn't talk about how writers expose himself on the page is this true for stories like The Da Vinci Code Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings. Well it's a good question and I would say yeah but to a lesser degree you know those guys are concerned with moving the reader through a series of imagined events. They are not concerned with moving us into another person and their psychology and their emotional state. I mean in moments. Right. But what drives most what we call genre writing is that it's plot

driven and we sort of imagine ourselves as Harry Potter or whoever it is flying around in whatever it is that he flies around on and encountering risk in the possibility of getting laid whatever it is encounters I don't know I haven't read it. That's what I encountered in my own imaginative version of Harry Potter in this epic saga a young boy is plucked from the midlands of England flies on a broom encountering potentially. A lover. OK I've never read the book but I know that all of this genre fiction movies is through plot events really quick and it's kind of exciting to read. But it's a different experience from the kind of writing that I'm interested in that's all I'm talking about here is what I'm interested in. I'm interested in writing that that wants to you know break my heart consciously that is making an effort to tell me something or remind me something of something about myself or some set of unbearable feelings that I BOTH am living in an effort to get away from but also know is sort of what makes me

human. I wouldn't say that's what they're doing but they're doing a certain kind of work and it's not like it is an honest work. They're good writers they they just have different priorities. They're selling all of a lot more than I do promise you. OK and then sorry ass. You said that all writers have some deep dark secret that they're trying to get down on the page. Are you implying that there is no such thing as writing simply to be creative or that only stories written by messed up people are any good. Yes. That is what I'm saying. Fortunately I know you all to be deeply fucked up people. OK the definition of people. And but so far as asking about the same thing I think is Dan. Can I have a different intent. Do I have to be Mr emotional intense so fuckin you know. No that's just what I want when I read stories and when I can. When I moved to the world I want art but a lot of people just want a distraction an exciting story that will get them through a

plane flight or a subway ride. And that is fine too. I happen to feel that what art does is awaken us to our moral responsibility for other people suffering so that it is important that it's part of what keeps the species from destroying itself. And that if the species is in fact destroying itself it's partly because we are not consuming enough of this weird fucked up intense art stuff that I keep talking about and are instead immersed in a world of distractions. OK so I do have a moral agenda about that but so does every artist. OK. And then Josh Where's Josh. OK. He writes in I don't want your stinking ideas you say how you prefer stories about the emotional lives of the characters rather than sophisticated poses. What's your opinion of Ann Rand's novels most notably after the shrug considering they're essentially thousand page essays on philosophy with archetypal characters built

in and then Kelsey writes Do you think of a message purpose for your story before you begin writing. And you know the fact of the matter is I don't at all. You know I don't think that anybody read The Great Gatsby. Yes. Now look at the beginning of that book. The author says I'm going to tell you a little bit of what I think about the American story about class and how you how you can transcend it. OK. And that's interesting and he writes it well. But what you remember is Daisy and Gatsby and the parties and the shirts right in those eyes you know on the billboard whatever it is you remember the people. I think ideas are really most successfully conveyed and they resonate with us because they're happening to people that we come to care about. We've been fooled into caring about. Let me try to read you a story and see if I can

make that more clear. I want to buy the guy a drink This is from the story section I want to buy the guy a drink. In the dead of a scowling New York January spots My Great Aunt Meda on sixty fourth and Central Park West staring doubtfully at the icy crosswalk and who this guy some handsome young fellow on his way to a bar with friends to drink. Turns back races across the street takes her arm in his and escorts her to the other side. The two of them leaning in walking slowly not unhappily somewhat sexily in the voluntary lingering of what youth knows of what it is to be old and more so after shepherding her under the awning of the restaurant where she will dine he turns back in front of all his friends and says Can I have your number so that all Maida can do is smile and shyly demure and her humming Rhineland accent an accent as rich as pot roast simmered for hours and delicate and beautiful this moment one for the ages

one to make us young again. All of us and foolishly hopeful as in love. Now look I can say to you we remain emotionally romantically and sexually alive until the day we die and you go oh OK oh man that sounds good. Yeah I hope so. But the purpose of fiction in part is to make these ideas real because you attach yourself to a character who's really a part of you or an extension of you. OK. And it doesn't mean that there isn't a place for you know for for sort of the conveyance of ideas. There certainly is essays and plenty of nonfiction. But I think the way that we basically receive most of the important emotional and psychological data and this is the way it's always been is through storytelling. This is what myths are about. This is what religious myth is about you know the idea that somebody is going to take care of us and care whether it's whatever God you

choose or UFO those are the great cosmic force of you know go home whatever it is. OK. Then where is decent. Do you say how is that am I getting your name totally wrong OK. All right well that's about the last time we're going to agree to sing you stress the importance of not confusing your reader. But none of the short stories in this collection are clear on what they're about. Sometimes it seems like you were just showing off your ability to manipulate language. I know I am trying to take it I'm taking it right up the. All right. You know I love it. You're right I mean this is. Yes. Would you say you're following your own advice or is your advice mainly for novice writers and you believe you have transcended their limitations. Yes. Let me just translate. Who in the fuck do you think you are. And why should I listen to your bullshit.

You can just kind of translate that. Yes the sun is saying that my shit sucks. But you know and maybe it does and maybe it does for her and that is absolutely her right. I mean you know come on man. It's like when you put your work into the world sometimes people dig it and resonate with it and think it's you know it speaks to them and other times it's like I don't get this yet at all. And it's not because they're dumb or it's probably because they're just distracted or you didn't do a good enough job for them and their sensibility and what their needs are as a reader period. So you know I can take it although later I will weep. That being said I hope that the little stories and part of the reason that I want to put out a book of these little stories is I really don't like being confused when I'm being told a story. I want to know everything and I want to know what fast and I want to know it hard. That's what I'm interested in stories that come at

me with great velocity and empathy. And so I want to read just one story that I hope anyway you will not find confusing or obscure because I think in essence it actually risks being too obvious. BONNIE RAITT It's the first story in the book it's called at age 91. Anna schmaltz of the commercial unit speaks. And the commercial unit was the unit of the Russian army that was out in front of the lines looking for the leaders of the German army at the end of World War 2. We knew this on April 28 one thousand forty five in the Reich Chancellery Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun he kissed her hand and made her his wife. She wore a blue dress and a gray stole. Four days later he and Braun entered a sitting room. She swallowed a cyanide tablet and kicked over a flower vase. Hitler bit into the pill and shot himself at the same instant he had heard reports of Mussolini hung like a sausage in the public square and feared the bombs of

sleeping gas he ordered his body in bronze burned. Some days later a story circulated about Hitler's valet that he had fed bits of the dead to Blondie his German shepherd. We never were able to confirm this though we heard the dog upon our approach howling at the artillery. The rooms of the bunker were low and dark padded like coffins. We found in one the notes written by the physician who attended Hitler. His penmanship was exquisite. By the end he was prescribing the future ninety two different medications for cramps insomnia cocaine in his eye drops and fed amines with his tea a vial see brown liquid on to the linen bed covers in another room. We found Goebbels wife her six children were laid out on cots as if awaiting a bedtime story. Poison chocolate on their tongues. Above ground in a fountain lay a man who resembled Hitler the same pallid face and black smear of hair. One of the fellows in our unit began to scream it's him it's him. The commander came walking quickly after a quick inspection he scoffed. This man wears

darn socks. Just before dusk the commander found his body and that of his new bride. They were in a shallow grave outside the bunker. They had been partially burned. Later the commander came to my tent. He had been drinking and his eyes were full of tears. Schmaltz he said I want you to guard this with your life. He handed me a box no larger than a heart though that exact shade the commander said his teeth are in us. I don't know why he gave that box to me which contained the last remnants of the Angel of Death. It is always the women who handle the dead. We allow history to pass through us like a violent wave and we hold fast to the present. I have nothing more to say. I don't think of that as obscure. I think of that as if anything maybe a little bit too obvious but it's my little freak so of course I think that and I guess what good writing

consists is making sure that your very particular and necessarily subject subject of view of the world is conveyed in that story is as understandable to as many people as possible. Not by dumbing it down by but by really making it lucid and precise. And I have clearly failed to do that for do so which is OK. You know you can't win em all. And finally there's a question from Shelby and Kevin where you guys will be Kevin's over there. And so why'd you decide to self-publish your book and how do you think the reader benefits. And Kevin says Why'd you choose this method of publishing over more conventional methods. And you know OB just very quickly because I want to read a little bit from the new book and then we'll all you know hang out. But very quickly we'll just tell you why I decided to do this. The publishing world the world in general that you guys and I guess I mean the 20 somethings in here are

growing up and it's radically different. And you hear this all times fucking cliche at this point but technology has provided us and the amount of time we spend in front of technology and screens is radically different than when I was growing up. You know I brought a typewriter to college and I don't consider myself that old. Certainly like grumpy but not THAT old. I had a typewriter all the way up until the end of college and like finally figured out what a computer was the begin of ation when I was in grade school that blew us away was this machine that could add and subtract and multiply and divide. And if you turned it over on a little tiny LCD display and if you turned it over it spelled boobs and big boobs. You guys I would warrant you know you were interacting with computers I know my kids are in there one in three in

you know their entire outlook in terms of what's possible and sort of how people spend their times is so radically different. We spend so much more time in front of screens and immersed in six or seven different narratives at the same time often. And reading unfortunately is this is this experience for me anyway where I just can't be focused on other things it's too it's too hard it's too much an active imaginative collaboration. Now that's the side of technology that makes me feel like it's opposed to books in the survival of books that they're just going to sort of become a cultural artifact that's more and more marginalized and become sort of arcane and vaguely embarrassing. But technology has also democratized the means of producing books that machine that some of you will go see can produce a book that doesn't even look that bad I think it looks pretty fuckin spiffy in four minutes. Based on a file that I send in half a second.

That's remarkable. The musicians in the crowd will know that this is exactly what's happened in the music industry. You don't have to pay Capitol Records. You know you don't have to get in a huge contract with Capitol Records and pay $20000 to go record your demo. You can just do it on your computer. This is what's happening with books and as that's happening the possibility exists for books to move into the world in a much more personal and organic way. I add something new every time I do an edition of this book. For the latest edition it's or less a list of recommended readings and recommended albums in the middle of it and I could put essentially whatever cover I want on. And I even changed some of the content based on how confusing some of it is based on some of your questions. I'll just go back in and do some rewriting because I didn't do a good enough job the first time or didn't I wasn't careful enough. That to me is incredibly exciting. And as traditional publishing starts to break down I realize

that these little books that I want to make are not going to make anyone any money. That's not their purpose. And that I would rather basically have them be artifacts that commemorate a human gathering rather than commodities that sit on a shelf and are treated as an economic property because that's not what these little freaky things are. They just know what they are for me. Now there are other books this rock and roll book that's coming out in April that's with the big publishing house and I hope that it sells a gazillion copies and everybody's just bathing in money. And I think that'll happen but I hope that happens. But for these books with their much more personal little audience I'd rather do it like this. And you can only get these books at a reading that I'm doing. I'm not interested in how and here at Harvard bookstore and on the web from Harvard bookstore Thank-You Harvard bookstore. But see they're part of my community as well. I'm not interested in Barnes Noble or Amazon or the fuckin cluster fuck Twitter sphere I don't I'm not I don't care.

That's happening it's out there and when I need to speak in that way to reach people I guess maybe I will but this is how I prefer to do it with these little books and I'm going to continue to I was so excited about doing this little guy that I decided to. Create this little book Letters from people who hate me because as I'm sure will come as no surprise to any of you having spent about 45 minutes blathering at you there are a lot of people who hate me and so I'm going to read a couple of quick pieces from this and then I'll take if there are any other questions great and if not let's just if you want to buy a book do it or see how they're made or talk with Bronwyn who's back there who's making a whole bunch of different books at this point and all of them beautifully. We can we can do that. So let me read to you. That's basically I write sometimes op eds for The Globe and sometimes the right wing kind of gets a hold of them. And then I get a lot a lot a lot of hate mail. I resigned a few years for a few years ago I resigned my part time job at B.C. because they'd invited Congolese

Rice to be the commencement speaker. And I you know didn't like the sound of that. And as a result I got like 800 emails from people and I never got a chance to answer them and this is what this book is for in part. So here's one of them. Hey asshole. So are you resigning because your feelings are hurt due to Condi Rice speaking at the BBC commencement What's the matter. Upset because she has bigger balls than you. You are such a sanctimonious hypocrite you're a typical lib racist judge mental hypocritical and amoral signed Nathan Scott. Ok dear Nathan It is painful to hear you say it so pointedly. But you're right. Congolese or rice does have bigger balls than me. I realize you may find this entertaining that you probably sit around with your buddies and make jokes about Armand in his tiny little chickpea testicles. But I want you to consider how it would feel if you were the one whose balls were smaller than our female secretary of state. What would it be like to move through the world in this kind of doubt like Suppose you at some party and you're making a

play for this hot chick and suddenly she mentions how good the homemade sushi is and you think he can. Sushi rice bottles. And then how does that make you feel. Or say you actually managed to get this girl home and you get to the point where the clothes come off and she looks down at your junk and she gets this expression on her face and suddenly you know exactly what she's thinking she's thinking what are those of Christ are those his balls. Look Nathan All I can do is appeal to your mercy as a fellow dude one who probably at some point in his life has felt doubts about his own to stickier endowment. It's an awkward thing to bring up another man's genitals. This isn't easy. None of this is easy. I'm just going to read a few of these. There are so many. Allman Joy I would like to buy a copy of your book the name of the person I'm buying this book for is lick my balls you faggot.

I'd like the inscription to say I'm a fucking liberal coward. Deer will lick my balls you fag. Thanks for your request. It is always inspiring to hear from readers. I'm curious about your name. It sounds Scottish. Am I close. Hey Stevie you're nothing more than a left wing anti-American racist piece of shit. Dr. Rice and her accomplishments seem to have exposed you for the sorry excuse of a man you are your indoctrination of your students with your anti-American propaganda during a time our country is threatened by Islamic fascists cannot be tolerated a fine university like Boston College. You are the enemy of my country just as much as bin Laden and Zarqawi I see no difference. You want to see an immoral character look in the mirror Stevie Apparently you have quite a few shortcomings good no fucking drop dead. Signed David Gearhart David.

Do you ever worry about Tom and Katie's baby. I do. I worry because I read what Tom said about how people shouldn't go to psychiatrists or take pills because feeling bad or crazy in your head is a sign of weakness and it made me wonder what would happen if their child their little daughter ever felt bad or crazy in her head and needed some kind of help and instead Tom would grab her by the neck and shake her head around and smile with his big murdering teeth. I'm not sure that would help. OK I'll read a couple more of these and then. Steve you're leaving Boston College to a high school aged McDonald's employee quitting his or her position at the drive thru. As it turns out in terms of salary you're you're exactly right.

I mean come on Pal the arguments brought up in the DaVinci Code have a better chance of being truthful than your claims of the Bush administration blatantly lying to the public. My only gratification comes with the inevitable truth that your career is essentially over and you'll never again be taken seriously whether by colleagues or the general public. In addition your family should probably disown you. Well I actually find that kind of poignant because he's kind of saying like your total fucking ass wipe and I can't stand you. But then he can't say for sure whether my family should disown me. Like they probably should. I mean you just but I can't quite definitively. The only letters we should be writing to the government are those that praise them for effectively guiding this country through crisis after crisis signed Ryan Donovan Ryan. I'm thinking now of my grandmother Annie Rosenthal. She taught grade school at P.S. 113 in Harlem and later she became an assistant principal there. She grew up during the Great Depression and perhaps because of what she saw she came to believe that the bounty of the

Earth should be divided more or less equally among its inhabitants. This was a dangerous view to hold during the 1950s and she was eventually asked to testify before the New York City Board of Education. This was all part of the work done by the House Committee on Un-American affairs which you should read about. If you haven't in the end and he didn't testify she took an early retirement instead. She was lucky compared to a lot of other folks. I knew her mostly as my grandma a tiny energetic woman who seemed also a little broken. Summers in college I used to take the A train up to the Bronx and get off emotionally Parkway and walk to her sweltering co-op apartment on Sedgwick Avenue where she would stuff me full of bialys and roast chicken and a thousand butter cookies. She stood by the table while I ate and looked at me and laughed. The last time I saw her she was nearing 90. I came by to take her for a stroll. She didn't walk anymore so I pushed her wheelchair around the grounds of the lousy retirement home we'd stuffed her in. It was spring. The flowers were in

bloom. She knew the names of everyone. We passed a cluster of pale Violet and she'd whisper snapped. Her voice was faint and raspy from cigarette still with the lilt of Yiddish. The bees were out to bouncing bullets of gold. One landed on her wrist but she didn't notice. I knew she was going to die that this was the last time I was going to see her but I couldn't feel what I needed to feel until it was too late. That's what's killing us Ryan. It kills us a little more each day. OK that's definitely too heavy to end with someone to read one more. Okay this one's pretty good so I also wrote an op ed about using that sort of mantra of support the troops and how I felt that that was in many ways preventing there from being moral and and democratic oversight of our military adventures. And you can. The responses were quite

remarkable Dear asshole. You are a fucking idiot and your daughter in the picture on your website looks like a maggot. You are disgraceful American and it would have been so nice if you had been a passenger on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Towers on 9/11 no one signed Joseph Kelley. Dear Joseph. OK you got me. My daughter does have kind of a maggoty look to her. For a while there my wife and I were able to delude ourselves I guess all parents do we tell people her skin was alabaster sometimes pearlescent. We thought it might be the kind of soap we were using but I think in our heart of hearts we knew something was wrong with her. Then came our first interaction with Carrie and it was some kind of dead animal in our backyard my wife says it was a rabbit but I'm almost certain it wasn't a possum.

Anyway Josephine somehow got wind of it and we found her out there burrowing into the things I socket. The neighbors came out to watch. It was kind of awkward. I guess it would be sort of like if you Joseph Kelley found yourself talking to some buddies at a party and said you know that Steve Almond guy I totally wish he'd been killed in the 9/11 attacks. And this voice behind you says yeah totally We should have killed that filthy infidel almond and you turn around hoping to maybe give the guy a high five only to discover it's Osama bin Laden. So awkward. Let's see. I just I haven't read these in public before so it's really enjoyable for me. OK I'll read you guys OK. OK well it like you can say no stop this guy Brian Holmes right Steve. You are such a

pussy. And he spelled p u s s I e. Brian. A couple of things. First the word pussy is spelled p u s s y not P U S S I E E which I think would lead most people to conclude that I suffer from an excess of pus. I do not. Nonetheless I get your point you're not saying that I'm literally a vagina. You're saying that I'm a cowardly person. I'm not sure how the slang expression for female genitalia came to mean cowardly but let's leave that aside for now. Here's the important thing I am not a pussy or a coward. I'm a chickenshit. There's a big difference in US chickenshits don't take kindly to being lumped together with all the pussies and cowards and wimps and wishes and scaredy cats and Lily livers and yellow bellies

chicken shit EVERY isn't just some fad for some trendy lifestyle decision I am deeply committed to running away from any physical conflict while shrieking in a womanly manner. It's in my blood. The truth is I come from a long line of chickenshits. My daddy was a chickenshit and my daddy's daddy and his daddy before him and so on that way back to the days of intake Woody. In fact according to family lore one of our aunts ancestral forebears was a radical homeless pacifist who flounced around the Sea of Galilee Saying chickenshit stuff like If someone strikes you on the right cheek turn the other to him also and blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the Sons of God. You can just imagine what happen to that fuckin pussy. All right well that's enough of those. If you really care. Thanks. If you really just want to get a sense of what the book is about you should read the blurbs on the back

what they're saying about the author. So it's a really really enjoyable. I think maybe unless there are urgent questions let's just do books if anybody has a question they want answered I'm happy to answer it but maybe just one or two. Are we done. If there are any questions that haven't gotten answered from folks who aren't from BE YOU ARE THEY STILL. Yeah sure. Did I get permission from the writers of the letters who call my daughter maggot and threaten my life and so forth. And if I did were they happy to give their permission. In fact it's an interesting issue. This is a copyright and the person who provoked it was J.D. Salinger because a number of people wanted to publish letters they'd received from him. In fact it turns out that anything you write is essentially your prop intellectual property. So technically speaking if I had an ISBN number and if I was trying to make money off of this I would have to seek their permission and I in fact plan to change their names or use use initials

rather than their full their full proper names because as it turns out I was simply not aware of this. I mean I figure if somebody sends you an email saying your daughter looks like a maggot you kind of can you it's yours. That's like a little gift that the kind of crazy. Like the crazy part of the country has given you this gift the gift of their irrational self hatred projected onto you. But as it turns out you can't. Now I do not plan to seek out these fine gentlemen and women who wrote me these notes. I'll probably just in future editions go to initials or change names. Yeah it's a good question though really. You know I had no idea I thought like hey fair game you know. So all those you guys are all published writers you publish like thousands of words every day on your emails. One of the things I would say I'm. So the question is What do you say about work that is challenging experimental unconventional and that isn't an easy read and isn't intended that way.

And what I would say is that that. If you have figured out how to tell a story straight and you're no longer interested in that and you want to set out certain kinds of a static challenges and narrative innovations have at it. If that's the way that you want to tell a story but don't knowingly and willfully obscure what you mean to say and those two things I think are frequently confused. The Infinite Jest is difficult to read because it's just incredibly long and it has all these intersecting plots and so forth is one of those books like Ulysses that kind of everybody says they've read but if you gave them truth serum like five people have read it. They all love it but it's just five and they know each other because they get together on the Internet. But one of the things that I will say is that writers like Ben Marcus or Gary lots who are considered a bender maybe to a lesser degree who are considered

unconventional writers make a very powerful point which is that part of what keeps the language alive is an organism and storytelling alive is that people are constantly coming up with new ways to tell stories and maybe that limits the number of people who can pay attention and puts them further out on the margins. But believe me being a short story writer at this point is like being a poet. I recognize that I'm way out on the margins of the culture and that if most of you weren't forced to be here by your wonderful thank you Professor you would not be. You would be doing something else with your Tuesday night no harm no foul. I GET THAT I EXIST way out on the margins of the culture as it exists right now. But brothers and sisters the revolution is coming. I honestly think that in some point we're going to fuck things back up badly enough that cheap oil is going to end and a lot of the modern conveniences going to and people are going to be around campfires again unless we tear each other to pieces and might even be considerably happier to have things slow down. But the

writers who are doing this incredible innovative work are keeping storytelling alive. They're doing it at the expense of the number of readers who will still pay attention. But their D familiarizing the language for us. They're making it new by not settling for the easy convenient decisions. I totally salute them. Somewhere outside Seneca you want to read it. So people are on the same page. If you like I know you already know but some people don't know it. I knew a man who knew where the carnivals were who appreciated the subtlety of a good fraud the glance averted the palm kept close to the mouth. I met him somewhere outside Seneca and a Greek place going at his back. Beard first. His fingers confetti had with file o. I was to say this gently of need. Wearing the crust of bus stop in Plaza. No plans were drawn. No hands shook in this way a cord moves forward with action. I drove his Mercury as he dozed the brutal distances between cities. I knew upstate

as a place of cold Birch bars full of men dangling from threads of yeast. But here was spring green redolent of pear blossoms the sun dying goal. We awoke to the scent of funnel cake colored lights ripping the night men in walrus mustaches taking tickets lowering bars ride lurching into violence wandering the grounds I dumbly pondered our need for our hunger for commotion. The music of past years howling out the particulars of hope even afterwards with the car aimed toward Ilium our stomachs yawning on diner food. I felt less content than relieved. Often we were shot at and departing. The last I knew of methods the better he said. Men. But men make of life a certain bargain. Greed scrubs us of our qualms. I spied on him booth to booth His manner was courtly slightly forgetful he spoke names with care stroked his beard as if to remember. He offered them only what he knew they would lose. I want to say he was good

to me at a time I needed goodness. I want to say he traveled without complaint in the dignity of reason indifferent to pain but his kindness was circumstantial an arrangement with the fates. And now these years later these years later I can wish I had never struck him behind the ear a figure falling heavily in sawdust red for the rain to find his roll of bills was gone before tossed into pleasures I knew by my body only which lunged ahead of me lured on by noisy amusements. He's a con man. That's the guy a young guy who signs on with an experienced con man and then kills him. He cons the people who have I don't know how much time he spent at the carnival probably a lot but I obviously have spent a fair amount of time Karpal a lot of people with a lot of cash at carnivals because it's usually a cash business and if you have the right thing you can con them not that I have. The point of the piece is not really.

I'm sorry that it wasn't clear to you but this is part of what your colleague there was talking about. When you tell a story quickly and when you're trying to get a lot of information in there and even quote Seneca which is what I was trying to do and talk about sort of how me and reacts to adversity and the different ways that that can send I'm either towards productivity or destructiveness. When you're trying to pack all that into a page story and you're trying to have language that is making the language new a little bit you lose some people. So you're asking about filter. What is the filter. Where's the FDA of literature. I got it. There are several questions but that's basically what you're asking. What's where's. I got it. Well what is the filter. How do you know that there's you know that there aren't eyeballs in your ground beef. Well look there are two different questions and one is is it good art. Meaning does it move us effectively and the other is will it sell.

And then if you do a Venn diagram of those things there's some overlap. You know Joshua Ferris or Daniel Mason or Dave Eggers or Lorem or Toni Morrison they're great writers I believe and they're also commercially successful. But the central question that a publishing house has to ask is Can I make money on this. And yes they would love to put out great art and this is the same question that a Harvard bookstore has to ask when they figure out how to display their books and where and which ones to buy and how many. So there's a commercial question and there's an artistic question. My argument would be that increasingly people are doing the kind of work I'm doing literary work are not really profitable for a big corporation and that it's much more natural for me to put out the work myself in that way. But you're asking Well so how do I know it isn't just crap in the woman behind it would be like it is crap. I totally don't get it at all. But

but let me talk about my work for a second. OK. The ONLY FOR AN HOUR frankly the only thing that you have is as a filter is your apprenticeship is the time that you spend at the keyboard making better decisions. Less bad decisions and gradually better decisions. And in the world of self-publishing there's a zillion books out there and you have no idea whether they're any good or not at least the publishing houses do have a filter mechanism. Part of it is will this make money. But I think encompassed within that is is it good prose. Has the writer done their work and done their apprenticeship. All I can do is say I feel like I make it. I'm pretty careful to not let bad writing get into my books. You might not like it all but I try to make good decisions and spent years and years trying to do that. I do not recommend that other young writers early in their career try to put out their own

books. I think they need to do an apprenticeship. That's the ultimate filter is you working with the language every day alone in a room for however long you have and you try to make better decisions and you if with any luck you're in a class or a group writing group with other people who are also at that level and you start to spot their mistakes and eventually realize learn to recognize them in your own work. But that takes a long time. I got a you know started writing short stories 15 16 years ago and only got published about five or six years ago. So I say to everybody who thinks oh great I can now publish a book and be a published author. You can but you'll spend all your time walking around with the sandwich board ringing your bell for work that isn't the best most human work you can do. Don't do it every artist every responsible artist does. Do an apprenticeship spend your time alone trying to figure out how to get better. That's part of the reason I publish this friggin book. Because I've seen so many students

and I say to them the same things over and over again and I felt like fuck it I'll just put it in a book. The bunch of totally inscrutable short shorts. OK. I'll be around if people have other questions thanks so much for coming out if you want to sign a book I'm happy to.