This time Mr. Gibson was juxtaposed with a taxidermically-themed art exhibit, which made it appear among other things that a bear was enthusiastic and amused and a deer was pensively, almost sternly contemplating his words. This photo, which I did not take, gives you a bit of an idea of the effect:

One thing I always find slightly disconcerting at readings, and which was definitely in evidence at this one: people who follow along in the copies of the book from which the author is reading. To make sure the author isn’t deviating from the printed text? Because you like to look at words on a page while hearing them pronounced by the person who decided to put them in that particular order? If you do this, I would love to know your reasons.

I enjoyed the reading itself — selections from his essay collection, Distrust That Particular Flavor — but his answers to audience questions were especially good. Gibson is eloquent and funny even in his casual speech — although I suppose you could argue that any public speaking is by its nature not casual. But his nonchalant delivery makes his smart and well-turned phrases feel more off-the-cuff than they perhaps are, and the effect is extremely pleasant.

So mostly what I did was scribble quotes, or near-quotes.

About influences:

“Being human, you tell people you like who you think it’ll sound cool if you say you like.”

“As writers, how we learn what is good is from everything we read — a personal microculture of literature.”

“Someone setting out to write sf who has only ever read sf is at a certain disadvantage.”

I can’t remember what question this next bit was in response to — I think someone asked if he considered himself a watcher? (Were they thinking of Juvenal? Or Alan Moore?)

“…a watcher in the sense of an anthropologist without any of the discipline…also a flâneur, walking about pointlessly in large cities…”

Someone asked if the Blue Ant books were meant to remind us that we’re living in someone else’s future:

“I write novels to find questions, not because I know the answers…the only conscious purpose of the Blue Ant books was that I realized after All Tomorrow’s Parties that the yardstick I used for measuring cognitive dissonance on the page as opposed to the world outside was an eighties yardstick. So I wrote Pattern Recognition to update the yardstick.”

“Google Streetview changed how my imagination worked — you could spend the rest of your life describing a single block — inadequately.”

I wanted to ask him what he thinks about the way search tools are increasingly being designed to bring us the Internet they think we want, but I did not get a chance. Next time, Mr. Gibson.

SR: Your bio says you learned to fly at 18. What got you excited about flying in the first place, and how did you go about learning to do it? 

CM: I learned to fly as part of my first degree, which is in Aviation Management. My stepfather was a pilot & he really wanted me to fly and I graduated in 1986 when Top Gun was the biggest movie in the world and flying seemed like a good idea to me, (and a way to meet boys) so I obtained my private pilot license as two elective courses my freshman year.

SR: When you worked for the Company, did you ever want to be one of the pilots?

CM: The reason I never tried to fly professionally is that it was not easy for me. I was a competent pilot but “behind” the airplane. That’s not a problem when things are going fine but if you are in trouble you need to be ahead of the airplane; you need to be anticipating what will happen next. I think knowing how to fly is essential for people in the aviation field (it has helped me in countless ways) but I never wanted to do it professionally; I know my limits.

SR: I was really struck by the way you shift the voice from a collective “We” to an “I” to a more neutral journalistic tone in different sections of the book. How did you decide on this approach to the narrative?

CM: I wish I could say the shift in voice was easy but it’s actually something I worked on a lot and my agent and editor helped me with. The journalistic sections were easiest as I really was conducting standard historical research when I wrote those passages but it was harder to maintain balance between “we” and “I” in the narrative. At first I was too much a part of the story and then I was too little. Finding the balance was something I worked on until the end; this was where the writing really got tough.

SR: I wondered a lot as I read about gender dynamics in the Company. It seemed like the pilots were almost entirely male — were there women in other departments, or were you more or less on your own? How did you make a place for yourself in the organizational culture? (I’ve been the one-girl-among-the-guys at various times in my life and I’m always curious about how other women negotiate it.)

CM: There were other women in the office (accounting mostly) but we made up only about 10% of the employees. There was one female pilot at the Company; I knew of less than a dozen who flew statewide while I was there. (The reason I made all the pilots at the Company males in the book was to protect her – a female pronoun would have made it obvious who I was writing about.)

I never was belittled because I was female and I made the best friends of my life at the Company but I did have to get tougher, both physically and mentally. I loaded airplanes to gain respect from the cargo guys, I stood up to more than one jerk (mostly passengers) who was threatening and I learned to be assertive. The biggest thing was being willing to work – to get out on the ramp and deal with the mail and talk to the mechanics and sort the baggage and on and on.

It’s a job where everyone had to work hard; in the past women in my position had claimed they couldn’t do some of the work because they were girls. I wanted to be respected on every level so I did the work and showed that it didn’t matter if you were a girl. That’s a big part of why I was so successful.

SR: I also wondered about the Bosses and the Owners. When you were in the process of writing this book, did you try to interview any of them? (Or did you even want to?)

CM: Part of why I referred to the owners and bosses by such general names is because they are basically the same at every small airline in Alaska. They all do the same thing, say the same thing and cause the same problems. I wanted them to be interchangeable (much as the “company” stands in for all airlines up there as well.) I didn’t talk to the specific ones from the Company when writing the book though – I already know what they think and I’m sure their version of events will never be the same as mine. (Some things never change!)

SR: And of course, the ever-popular question: What are you working on now?

CM: You know, I’m working on several different things right now because I’m still a bit overwhelmed by what I have to do to help market MAP. I’m just not up to a big project right now. (I don’t have the organizational time for it mostly.) I’m primarily working on two essays – one about Jack Kerouac and my French Canadian family and one about the mystery surrounding my great grandfather’s grave on my NYC Irish side. I am sure that the next big project will be another combination of history and memoir – it’s what I seem to be best at writing.

SR: Thanks so much, Colleen — I’m looking forward to whatever’s next from you!

New Kids grew out of an article Hauser wrote for the New York Times in 2008, “This Strange Thing Called Prom,” about how students at the International High School — many of whom had no idea what a prom was or why they might want to attend — planned one. You’ll find out more about the prom in the book. You’ll also learn more of the individual stories of several students — how they arrived at the school, what their lives are like outside it, how the school staff supports them, and the limits of that support.

School stories in YA often take place in particularly privileged settings — fancy boarding schools in contemporary realistic (for some) novels, equally fancy schools of magic in fantasy. I’d like to see more stories set in schools like the International High School.

First I went to see Emily Warn and Ursula Le Guin, both reading poems. Warn read several, then Le Guin read one long magnificent one called “The Conference;” a conference, it turned out, of gods.

I loved Warn’s evocation of the mind as an off-kilter wobbly gyroscope with flimsy wiring and dull mirrors.

I asked a question during the Q & A, and I was vaguely taken aback by my own intensity as I asked it. Le Guin had spoken about discovering A.E. Housman at thirteen, which was, she said, a good time to discover him because “you got the big gloom that tasted so good at thirteen;” and Warn had talked about poets that she’d read in high school, without analyzing them, without any training in literary theory. I demanded to know how they read now without taking the work apart analytically. (I find it harder and harder to fall into books without trying to reverse-engineer or otherwise deconstruct them.)

Warn said that you had to find work you love, and also work that you can’t even try to imitate. Le Guin said that she’d never been trained to read critically, and that she’d studied Romance languages in college instead of majoring in English precisely because she wanted to avoid being told how to read.

Also, Le Guin’s mention of A.E. Housman made Warn recommend A.E. Stalling. Based on “A Lament For The Dead Pets Of Our Childhood,” I will definitely seek out more from her.

Also also: this short interview with Le Guin, about Portland literary culture among other things, is worth reading, too.

During his first year in Mexico City, even the air seems hostile: “My throat feels like a cat pissed in it and my head feels like it’s spent four hours listening to the same Daddy Yankee song on full volume, on loop.”

So what brought Hernandez to the Distrito Federal, and what’s kept him there? He explains early in the book:

“Mexico’s history, like any nation’s history, is not a tale of black and white, but a parade of gray. The Conquest, the Colonial period, the Inquisition, Independence, the Reformation, the Porfirian period, the Revolution, the era of modernization and authoritarian rule under the Institutional Revolutionary Party — all markers in a story of multiplying layers, where mestizaje is not only a state of ethnic mixing but of historical mixing as well. From a young age, figuring out where I fit into that story became my objective.”

Hernandez has been doing a lot of interviews about the book. I particularly recommend this one with DJ Rupture on WFMU, a conversation punctuated by music.

He was kind enough to answer a question from me, too.

SR: What struck me most in reading D&D was how you had to be simultaneously a participant and observer in order to access the scenes you were writing about. Were there times when you wished for a bit more journalistic distance? And, conversely, were there times when you wanted to lose yourself completely in an experience without thinking about how you might write about it? I’m just generally interested in your take on the relationship between journalist and subjects and how it can shift depending on what you’re covering.

DH: I definitely sometimes wanted more distance and definitely sometimes wish I had total freedom in an experience.

Sometimes with a source a relationship is formed. Sometimes I find myself suddenly involved in someone’s personal life. On the other hand, sometimes you’re having so much fun, or watching something so illegal or inappropriate for a family audience, you wish you didn’t have to document. That’s usually when I draw the line. This is too good for the page. Why share it all? I love editing and shaving anyway. Less is more.

Some stuff is just yours and not the readers’. Something else totally belongs to the reader and not you and you have to be responsible with it.

My one rule is to always keep in mind that your subject, the person or place you’re writing about, will one day read and consider what you wrote. Or should. I always try to keep that in mind. Will this person feel they were treated unfairly by the end of reading this? If so, I’m doing something wrong.

I am not one of them.

My inner critic, who resembles a very angry prosecuting attorney, starts second-guessing before my first guess is fully formed, doing her best to demolish the shoddy alibi that I have the temerity to be thinking of as a story. Frequently during a writing session, I spend more time trying to address her objections than advancing the plot.

I’ve just learned a technique for shutting her down. And I’m pleased to report that I learned it from Tina Fey.

Actually, I’d heard of the technique before — Ms. Katie Lane wrote a great piece about it in the context of negotiation. But it took Ms. Fey describing it as it’s used in improv to make me see its utility for writing.

You see, I’ve been listening to the audiobook version of Fey’s new book, Bossypants. Contrary to what you might expect, I wasn’t a big fan when I bought it. I’ve never seen 30 Rock or Mean Girls, and although I did admire her impersonation of the former Alaska governor, I have a nerd’s deep suspicion of anything or anyone too, you know, popular. But Bossypants makes the third time that I’ve come around to being interested in a celebrity creator’s work via encountering them talking and/or writing about their background and process. (The other two, for the curious, are Joss Whedon and Russell T. Davies.)

So one of the things you find in Bossypants is Rules for Improvisation. The first rule is “Yes, and.” This account of an appearance on her book tour quotes her explaining it in a slightly different form than it appears in the book:

The first rule, always agree. Say yes. Say, “yes, and” to things. For example, if I enter a scene and say, “I have a gun.’ And you say, “No, you don’t. That’s your finger.’ That’s terrible. Now we’re done. Saying “yes” means you’re basically agreeing to honor what the other person is creating. The next part is “yes, AND …” which means to contribute something on your own, like, ‘I have a gun’ and you say, ‘but you’ll never get the gold because I put it in my butt.’ I wouldn’t recommend THAT … but that’s the end, you’re contributing. It’s an exercise in being in the present. To follow your partner, to ask questions.

But Sara, I hear you protest, when you’re writing you have no improv partner! You’re just talking about what’s happening inside your head!

Yes, and because I often experience what’s happening inside my head when I write as a debate between a creator and a critic, it’s useful to reframe the critic’s objections.

How do you mean?

Okay, let’s take an example from The Thing I Am Working On.

Inner Critic recently screeched that it made no sense how my protagonist was unaware of the existence of a particular aspect of the world. (Why yes, I’m being deliberately vague.)

Inner Creator responded: YES, she IS unaware of it,  AND that’s because she’s grown up on a houseboat and it doesn’t work on water.

Inner Creator’s explanation led me to figure out several more things about the world I’m creating.

Without “yes, and,” I could’ve been derailed. I might even have scrapped the premise entirely. (Much to the consternation of my agent, who’s been nagging — I mean, gently encouraging — me to finish writing this book for longer than I care to admit.)

My Inner Critic’s objections, despite what I sometimes think, don’t always come from a place of pure self-sabotage. Inner Critic often has a point. She’s excellent at identifying inconsistencies in character, gaps in world-building, consequences that Inner Creator would blithely ignore.  The trick — or one of them — is to use Inner Critic’s objections to push Inner Creator’s creativity that much further. Thanks, Tina Fey!

The Mod-Mod Read-In Paperback Book List was produced in 1970, under the auspices of the Young Adult Services Division, the precursor of the Young Adult Library Services Association. From the titles, it seems to be an ancestor of both Popular Paperbacks and Quick Picks. It was part of a project called “Operation Opportunity;” apparently the Jaycees’ response to the Great Society.

Before I show you the titles, here’s the promotional insert:

I can’t help hearing this exhortation in the generic narrator voice from the Coronet Instructional Films.

I wonder if the Mod-Mod Read-In list made it to the “ghetto areas” and migrant camps its compilers hoped it would reach? And did any reluctant reader ever carry it in their wallet?

But enough about the trying-too-hard design and earnest message. How are the books?

Basil Davidson, Elliott Skinner, Hope Newell, and Lerone Bennett all seem to have led very interesting lives. Margaret Walker‘s Jubilee is still in print (with a great cover!). Victoria Holt (aka Eleanor Hibbert, and her other pseudonyms) is still read and remembered with fondness. Hunter’s Green concerns a chessboard of evil.

The Me Nobody Knows became a musical that’s still being performed. Mary E. Vroman‘s use of Harlem Summer as a title predates Walter Dean Myers.

Philip Sterling was married to Dorothy Sterling; they’re the parents of author and scholar Anne Fausto-Sterling. My Lord, What A Morning is named for the spiritual. Before publishing A Choice of Weapons, Gordon Parks came to Washington D.C. to work as a photographer on a fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Fund; the fund, a friend explained, was “set up for exceptionally able spooks and white crackers.” A few years after Choice of Weapons appeared, he directed Shaft. Carl F. Burke is also the author of God Is For Real, Man, which became an album that a kind soul has made available for download.

Light in the Forest became a film that Eric Brightwell names as an example of the Through Blue Eyes genre. Catcher in the Rye was already 25 years old. The Trouble With Angels became a film with Rosalind Russell, Hayley Mills, and a cute animated title sequence. Two Dick Gregory titles; he’s still going strong. Rosy Is My Relative treats an elephant fond of alcohol; its author was, as well. Elsie Archer’s Let’s Face It was reviewed in The Crisis. I hope the Eric W. Johnson who wrote about improved spelling and plain language for love and sex is the same Eric W. Johnson who wrote more recently about cocktails. Interesting to learn that when William H. Armstrong wasn’t writing about (spoiler!) dead dogs, he was concerned with the nation’s study habits.

I’ll end this linkfest by commenting that the Mod-Mod Read-In Paperback Book List is forty-one years old, and it contains more books by and about people of color than I’ve seen on many more recent lists. Diversity in YA and others, keep up the good fight.

I loved Fortress of Solitude, but I was often aware while I read of references passing me by, or simply detonating with less force than they would have if the comics Dylan Ebdus pores over had been part of my mental adolescent landscape.

Whereas in Among Others, Jo Walton is loaded for bear and I am the bear. Robert Heinlein! J.R.R. Tolkien! Ursula K. LeGuin! Susan Cooper! Mary Renault! It’s as though she surveilled my bookshelves circa 1985.

And I know her protagonist Mor. There’s a particular sharply intelligent pragmatism, juxtaposed with utter dismissiveness about anything she doesn’t respect (such as social mores and pop music), that I’ve encountered numerous times in the sf/f community.

But it isn’t simply the shock of recognition that made me love the book, though it absolutely contributed. It’s the precision with which Walton evokes the way Mor experiences her world, and how she keeps just enough obscure and unstated for the reader to draw her own conclusions about certain events.

I’ve already mentioned Fortress of Solitude; it also reminded me a little of The Saskiad, another book with a protagonist who is deeply influenced by her reading.

I don’t know how Walton chose Among Others as a title, but one thing it makes me think of is a crowded bookshelf, where you can’t look at an individual title without also seeing nearby spines, each book always among others. I’m happy that Among Others will join my own crowded shelves.

I’m glad I had the chance to meet her through her friend and agent Jennifer Laughran, and glad, too, that we spent some time together in the warm community of Portland’s YA authors. If you didn’t know her work, here: read Flash Burnout and The Mermaid’s Mirror.

I keep going back to these lines she wrote. They’re posted at Paper Fort, but I’m selfishly reposting them here so they become part of my own archives.

“There are lots of books out there about writing. How to begin … how to keep going … how to plot … how to create memorable characters … there’s probably a book out there on how to write interesting website copy. I should have looked for it!

It’s good to read those books, but don’t feel guilty if your process is different than what they advise. The main thing is to WRITE. Some days it might be 2000 words. Some days you might tinker with two sentences until you get them just right. Both days belong in the writing life. Some days you may watch a “Doctor Who” marathon or become immersed a book that is so good you can’t stop reading. Some days you may be in love or in mourning. Those days belong in the writing life, too. Live them without guilt.” — L.K. Madigan

Tonight I’m trying to take Lisa’s advice — the no guilt part, but the WRITE part, too. The fact that her words are helping to console me is its own testimony.

The movie Boy. Not just the film itself, which is fantastic, but experiencing it as part of the Portland International Film Festival. It was my first time at PIFF, seeing a whole new community of people serious about an art form, and they’ve been here all along, right in my town.

The Happiness Myth by Jennifer Michael Hecht.
In this book Hecht helps us out of the stew of cultural assumptions we spend our lives cooking in, explains various ingredients in the broth, and shows some ways our particular stew differs from recipes prevalent in other places and times. The reader stands refreshed and dripping. The book is frequently funny and profoundly smart.

The audiobook of True Grit, as read by Donna Tartt. No, I haven’t yet seen the Coen Brothers movie. Right now I’m just falling into the voice; both the narrative voice, Mattie Ross as created by Charles Portis, and Donna Tartt’s very effective rendering thereof. A whole worldview, concisely and amusingly evoked.

And since I saw them a few weeks back, I can’t stop listening to The Handsome Family, whose music brilliantly combines doleful and joyful. I don’t know how they do it but I’m very glad they do.