Esoterica / Part One

Being an esoteric reader, it is common to find books that are really off the beaten path for mainstream readers. Sometimes, it makes complete sense that these books aren't consumed by a lot of people because they fall into the experimental, obscure, or disconnected genre where they may have originated. But it is from these lands of "esoterica" that some really fascinating stories, ideas, and designs emerge from writing. If there is a land of writing and thinking that is worth exploring, to me it is on the edges. It is from these places that new ideas, new approaches come into focus. And while they may remain obscure and strange, they may also push the form and act of the storytelling into new places. 

Take that vision of reading to Mikhail Shishkin's Maidenhair, and consider what you are reading and why. It isn't for the faint of heart or the casual reader. The story is based on the life of Swiss officers who guard the border and interview Russian asylum-seekers where they are subjected to the stories of the oppressed. The book is written in a long prose question and answer style that meanders and moves through ideas and connections. Some of it seems like myth and tales. Other stories are complex and dark. And it begins this complex tapestry that takes its toll on the guards. 

While reading this novel, which is not difficult to read thanks to the translation from the Russian by Marian Schwartz, it begins to feel like something else. Shishkin is doing more than crafting a plot. He is plotting to change the reader in a different way. The conclusion? What if this isn't a novel, but an ethical guide to understanding why we write, why stories are important, and the significant weight of being in possession of the stories we tell. There are times in this book when I am reading and following the life a soldier, or hearing some sad story from an orphanage. And then suddenly, there are one hundred ideas coming to mind, or the basic weight of truth as it pertains to fiction. And suddenly, you don't care about the story, but only in that, it happens to you. And you start to think about the unwritten stories you have yet to write, and you start to wonder why you haven't valued your own stories like your life depended on them. 

"Those speaking may be fictitious, but what they say is real. Truth lies only where it is concealed. Fine, the people aren't real but the stories, ho, the stories are! It's just that they raped someone else at the orphanage, not fat-lips. And the guy from Lithuania heard the story about the brother who burned up and the murdered mother from someone else. What difference does it make who it happened to? It's ways a sure thing. The people here are irrelevant. It's the stories that can be authentic or not. We become what gets written in the transcript"(24). 

Make the point that the transcript is an official document of record, making it feel important and factual, although this is all about the way things shift and move in terms of fiction, stories, and the world. What part of this do we accept? It isn't about facts, but accepting truth as it is. We know that rape, violence, war, and other terrible things happen, and it validates the story. So, what part of belief do we accept? The line between the plausible and implausible is based on the writing, the style, and the ability of the writer to tell that story into plausibility. 

"In the wee hours the interpreter woke bathed in sweat and with a pounding heart; he had dreamed of Galina Petronvna - except the boys all called her Galpetra, out of sheer meanness - and it had come back to him - the lesson, the blackboard - as if all these decades lived had never been. He lay there looking at their brightening ceiling and returned to himself, clutching at his heart. Why be afraid of her now? And what exactly was in your dream - you forget right away and are left with just your schoolboy fear. It's a nasty feeling, too. You never know what empire you're going to wake up in or who as"(26).

This paragraph relates to understanding the 

In terms of writing about writing, we find great style and how-to writing books. I think Stephen King's On Writing is a great approach to understanding a writing life. But once writers immerse themselves in books about character, plot, getting into a routine (and the hundreds of other elements to writing), the writer need a deeper understanding of the relation understanding of texts and storytelling. It is time to move out of how and why we write and move into a higher understanding of what it is we do. We might find this in something like Annie Dillard's The Writing Life * or in the essays of Scott Momaday and his culture of oral tradition. We are convinced that we can define the nuts and bolts of writing, but we need to connect to its higher plane. Some of that is seeking out people who have connected to that thought level. The other difficult part, is having the vision as a reader searching out that information.  This article series discusses the value of defining and searching for texts that change the way we think and write. They can inspire, but they can also remind us of the deeper value in the writing and thinking we create as writers. In this day of diminished word counts, technological distraction, and polarized points of view; it is important to find that place, time, and room to make the a writing life more than words on the page. 

Mentoring

Lidia Yuknavitch and the The Misfit's Manifesto

I work with college students, more specifically, emerging college students, so they are constantly on the cusp of things that are coming to them. We develop skills, we tell them that they need to improve just to cut it in college. We also tell them about what it means to have a traditional college experience. In reality, a traditional college experience is a myth. We aren't going to live in some kind of strange 1950's vision of academics. 

Our emerging students are not traditional at all. They have had to fight, push, and work much harder than the people around them. In fact, in most cases the students are satisfied just blending in, just being around a higher education experience. They can be self-defeating, battered, wounded learners. 

I've read The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch and I admired her unabashed honesty and the focus of her writing. It was one of the first memoirs that changed the way I think about the form. More important, her writing has connections to failures and finding the most unlikely paths to success. Having followed Lidia Yuknavitch on Twitter, I received a message from her that we all should post our misfit manifesto out to the world and diminish the voice of abusive people. What a great idea. They need to do this. They need to tell me more than what could be gleaned in college writing. They need to write a Misfit Manifesto. They need to write about how improbable success is to them, and how terrifically they have failed. 

When I wrote the assignment sheet for the students, I felt like I had to give them some really good examples of this idea. I used samples from The Mistfit's Manifesto, and I also spoke about specific stories where people feel different and why they may feel this way. Not only was I asking them for specific misfit moments in their lives, I was also asking them to be introspective and thoughtful about their place in the world. 

It was really interesting to hear the reactions to this concept. Some students really didn't understand how this idea would fit into their lives. They had spent so much time assimilating that to think about those misfit moments or times was really part of their lives they didn't want to reveal. But my favorite response was, "Shit, this is going be the easiest assignment you've given us. I've been a screw up all my life." I couldn't wait for that essay. 

One thing I really wanted from them was a personal statement. Not a college application essay, but something unique to their own experience. I told them it is easy to find collective success, but mistakes and other missteps in life are uniquely their own. It reminded me of the Tolstoy quote at the beginning of Anna Karenina when he says, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." 

We also discussed what misfits look like in literature, what they felt like in words. We discussed movie characters, and experiences they saw in the world. We talked about Holden Caulfield, Of Mice and Men, and superheroes. We also discussed time and space for misfits. "Literature is the land o the misfitted." (The Misfit Manifesto).

Most of the essays were simple. They were small things that made them different. For some, it was a bully story or a changing school story. But the story I liked the most was the story from the student who said this is will be easy. And he wrote about being with a group of friends who all got along, and slowly they all turned on him. And for years he was picked on, beat up, and told that he was worthless. And through it all - he somehow, kept it together and waited out his time until he was able to prove himself to the world. That is what he is doing now. It was one of the deeper stories where something held him on a path that (amazingly) wasn't beaten out of him. He never turned. 

As we got through the assignment, I asked that he had a few minutes, I wanted to discuss his paper. He came to the office and was nervous. He asked if there was anything wrong. I showed him the grade. He smiled and said thank you. I told him earned it, from year and years of not giving in. He didn't say anything for a minute -- he flipped the paper over and said, "all that shit's behind me now." 

As I mentioned, some writers played it safe, some played it with some uncertainty, but they all considered their lives with a different slant. In one student paper, it was clear that it might've put to bed some ghosts. Yuknavitch says, "If you are one of those people who has the ability to make it down to the bottom of the ocean, the ability to swim the dark waters without fear, the astonishing ability to move through life's worst crucibles and not die, then you also have the ability to bring something back to the surface that helps others in a way that they cannot achieve themselves." This assignment is difficult because you are asking people to look at their darker side, their past, their missteps, and wrong fits. The other paper that I really admired was a letter that a student wrote to his future grandchildren - explaining how screwed up the world is and how - if they are reading this - they should be in a better place. And that he was a good person who cared and wanted to right the wrongs of the world. I thought that was a noble approach to his life. 

My students did a good job thinking about this idea. And when you read Lidia Yuknavitch explain her life in The Chronology of Water, you can get a sense of how we have all lived our own misfit lives and why they are so important. It reminds me that we need to be brave, creative, and take risks with our students. Some will feel challenged and frustrated but think of those who needed it most. They've been waiting for a long time to say these things. 

Try it in the class, try it in your writing groups, write your own manifesto. It will change the way you see the world. 

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Note: Another writing prompt that taps into some significant reflections is Letter to Humanity or this project I worked on awhile back. It is a great tool for reflective nonfiction. Letters to Humanity