Isla McKetta, MFA, Author at A Geography of Reading

Witches’ Dance, Madness, and Artistic Genius with Erin Eileen Almond

November 22, 2019 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Far too often the narratives of genius and madness are entwined to the extent that they appear inseparable. The story of artistic becoming and success then becomes a drama where the highest achievements happen only when the artist sacrifices their entire self to this daemon. It’s a dangerous narrative and a seductive one and I was grateful with my entire being when I realized that Erin Eileen Almond was writing against this trope in Witches’ Dance. Don’t get me wrong, Witches’ Dance is as deeply seductive as it is intelligent, but what makes this book extra, and very much worth reading, is the way Almond twists and unweaves our expectations of greatness.

The Maestro

Fortissimo the prelude to Witches’ Dance as brilliant violinist Phillip Manns steps onstage for a performance at the peak of his career. The audience, filled with other characters who will become important to the plot, sits rapt as he performs Paganini’s “Witches Dance.” Almond’s language is so deft in this opening that I was as rapt as the audience as the scene of his triumph built to a crescendo… and then Phillip took one step too far, declaring himself to be Paganini and running offstage and down the street. Almond uses the confusion in the audience to tease out how Hilda, the other most important character in this novel, succumbs to Phillip’s magnetic performance in ways that will alter her life forever.

The Student

Cut forward a decade and we meet Hilda again at 16, a strong violinist who hasn’t had the chance to fully immerse herself in the art… yet. I hope it’s not revealing too much to say that the forces of fate (and a skilled author) bring Hilda and Phillip together to play off of one another as she becomes his student and muse. But this is not really a Pygmalion story and as much as Phillip shapes Hilda, she shapes him (and that’s where things get really interesting).

The Music, the Magic

Almond does a beautiful job of working music into this book, both in the pieces and instruments the characters play and also in the lexicon she uses. Almond also incorporates subtle fairy tale touches that emerge wonderfully toward the end of the story. The blend of the music and the magic is in the wolf tone that can be heard on stringed instruments. I’d never heard of this before, but it forms the perfect bridge between Hilda and Phillip’s playing and the monster Phillip is battling inside.

The Madness

Not surprisingly given his unorthodox behavior at that initial performance, Phillip tries to kill himself later the first night. This happens offscreen and is introduced later to give us a flavor of his struggles. Another aspect of his struggles is his mother, Domenica, now deceased but apparently manic depressive, alcoholic, and still visiting Phillip on occasion.

My summary sounds flip, but the experience of reading about the madness in this story is anything but. Almond brings many human frailties together in her characters, each one a creative in their own field, in ways that feel very familiar to anyone who’s spent significant time around artists of any type. Hilda’s mother is a ballerina who quit young to have a child. Hilda’s father is a failed musician who still believes his own hype. There’s an artistic rival as well as some people who end up working close to the artists because they did not themselves commit to the grind. We watch all of these characters struggle against and embrace their human and artistic frailties. Then we watch the consequences.

The story was all too relatable for me, a writer who struggles with depression. Sometimes I feel like my sensitivity to the world around me is the only reason I can be a writer. Sometimes it keeps me from writing. Sometimes my depression makes it impossible to pick up a pen. Sometimes I think the self-critique that comes with it is the only reason my writing has gotten any good. And when I take that anxiety/depression questionnaire at the doctor’s office that asks if I ever suffer from delusions of grandeur, I lie, because of course I do, I have to in order to believe that the words I put on paper have value beyond my own writing of them. It’s a little lie, though, because I know I’m not Paganini and I have no intentions of rushing offstage anytime soon.

I could tell you more about The Witches’ Dance, but if you’ve ever wondered in the least about whether artistic genius and madness really have to be coterminous, I think you should read the book. The depths Almond explores are ones I’d like to read over and over again as I consider my own narrative.

Pick up a copy of Witches’ Dance from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

All of My Friends Are Publishing Books!

September 22, 2019 by Isla McKetta, MFA 2 Comments

The cliché about MFA programs (and arts degrees in general) is that the percentage of graduates who are still practicing a decade later is pretty poor. I’m delighted that my classmates appear to be the exception as the (then tiny) writing program at Goddard College in Port Townsend is where I first met the authors of four of the five books listed below. It’s a big year for these writers, especially since most of these are first books, and it’s a big year for me because I get to help celebrate them. Please join me in showing them ever so much reading love…

Natasha Oliver’s The Evolved Ones (Awakening #1)

In a world where humans are evolving, people are more curious than afraid. They look for answers from a handful of scientists who try to uncover why some develop abilities yet the vast majority to do. For most humans, it’s an exciting time, but for EOs— the evolved ones—it’s a game of hide and seek that ends with far too many of their kind disappearing, permanently.

Natasha is the writer I envision when I explain to people why I can’t (and won’t) write fantasy, because her creativity and world-building are so wonderfully alive that all I could hope to do is kneel at her altar. She’s been working for a long time on this book, the first of what promises to be an amazing series full of excitement, deep human insight, and a great story, and I’m very much looking forward to reading it the second it’s released in the U.S. in 2020. I suggest pre-ordering it now as a little present to your future self or flying over to Singapore where it’s available right now.

Cody T. Luff’s Ration

Cynthia and Imeld have always lived in the Apartments. A world where every calorie is rationed and the girls who live there are forced to weigh their own hunger against the lives of the others living in the building. It’s a world where the threat of the Wet Room and Ms. Lion always lingers, and punishments are doled out heavily both by the Women who oversee them and the other girls.

The two things I want to tell you about Cody are that he writes some of the deepest, darkest work I’ve ever read and also that he very tenderly officiated at my wedding. In that contradiction lies the heart of a man who is full of kindness and generosity and also is not afraid to be very real on the page and in person. Because Cody lives a little closer to me than Natasha these days, I was lucky enough to attend one of Cody’s readings and am pleased to report that this book will be dark, gory, and feminist. I’ve been saving my copy to read on a very bad day because I know it will be very good. Get your copy of Ration from Powell’s.

Nita Sweeny’s Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running With My Dog Brought Me Back From the Brink

It’s never too late to chase your dreams: Before she discovered running, Nita Sweeney was 49-years-old, chronically depressed, occasionally manic, and unable to jog for more than 60 seconds at a time. Using exercise, Nita discovered an inner strength she didn’t know she possessed, and with the help of her canine companion, she found herself on the way to completing her first marathon. In her memoir, Sweeney shares how she overcame emotional and physical challenges to finish the race and come back from the brink.

Nita was a year or maybe just a semester ahead of me at Goddard but her kindness stuck with me and I’ve held tight to the friendship over the last decade. Though I haven’t read this book yet (parenting ate my reading time), I am certain that it’s as warm, sincere, and thoughtful as Nita is. She’s the one who told me years ago that the word “husband” never gets old… and she’s right. Let’s both pop on over to Powell’s this second and order copies of Depression Hates a Moving Target. Nita also offers a wealth of inspiration and opportunities on Twitter.

Karen Hugg’s The Forgetting Flower

Secrets and half-truths. These litter Renia Baranczka’s past, but the city of Paris has offered an escape and the refuge of a dream job. The specialty plant shop buzzes with activity and has brought her to a new friend, Alain. His presence buffers the guilt that keeps her up at night, dwelling on the endless replays of what happened to her sister. All too suddenly, the City of Light seems more sinister when Alain turns up dead. His demise threatens every secret Renia holds dear, including the rare plant hidden in the shop’s tiny nook. It emits a special fragrance that can erase a person’s memory—and perhaps much more than that.

Karen was one of a very select group of beta readers for Polska, 1994 because she knows her shit about writing. She even honored A Geography of Reading with a few reviews many years ago. Karen is not only an artist with words but also a devoted gardener (talents she merges in this book), and I have every confidence that her worldliness and creativity make The Forgetting Flower a fantastic read.

Elissa Washuta’s Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers

Just as a basket’s purpose determines its materials, weave, and shape, so too is the purpose of the essay related to its material, weave, and shape. Editors Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton ground this anthology of essays by Native writers in the formal art of basket weaving. Using weaving techniques such as coiling and plaiting as organizing themes, the editors have curated an exciting collection of imaginative, world-making lyric essays by twenty-seven contemporary Native writers from tribal nations across Turtle Island into a well-crafted basket.

Elissa is the only writer on this list I did not go to school with. Instead I met her through Hugo House and the Artist Trust Edge program and have been glad to follow her career ever since. The most established writer on this list, Elissa is not only one of the editors of this collection but also a contributor. This is the one book I have already read and I can tell you that it’s very much worth a read. Not only did it stretch my worldview, the essay by Stephen Graham Jones knocked me on my creative ass and got me writing deep in a time when I was lost, lost, lost. I’m certain that every reader of this book will have their very own favorite essay. Please read Shapes of Native Nonfiction and tell me all about yours.

As ever, most of the links above are affiliate links. If you purchase something using them, I receive a tiny commission that then funds my reading habit. Thank you.

Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being: The Book that Wrote Itself for Me

July 9, 2019 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

The idea that a book is brought to life by its reader is not new. A writer pours all of the details and plot that they can into a work and then the reader comes along and makes it their own by keying into the things that matter to them and ignoring the things that don’t. This conversation and co-creation between writer and reader feels like magic when we allow ourselves to surrender to it. Yesterday, though, Ruth Ozeki took me beyond that magic to make me feel as though A Tale for the Time Being was not only written for me, but was being written for me as I read it. I wanted to go back and re-read it immediately to see if it changed. I also wanted to have you read it immediately to see if it was a completely different book for you. It probably isn’t (not really) but it’s very much worth a read either way. I’m going to delve into where the magic came from for me. Just go buy the book if you want to avoid my spoilers.

Metafiction Toys with Reality

A Tale for the Time Being is two books in one. The first is the diary of a teenage girl living in Tokyo in the nearish past. The second is the story of a writer, Ruth, living on an island on the west coast of Canada actively avoiding writing her next book, a memoir about her mother’s death from Alzheimer’s. Now if you look up metafiction, you’ll see that the form of authorial insertion is often used as parody. Yes, if you’re talking about Kundera. It’s also used as a tool to “explore the relationship between literature and reality, life, and art.” This is more what you see with writers like Paul Auster and it often feels like a stilted lecture. Weird, but stilted.

Ozeki, on the other hand, brings a rich humanity to metafiction that allowed me to bring my whole being to the book and not just my intellect. I’ve loved two other books by Ozeki before and I can’t recall her ever using herself as a character before, but she did it brilliantly here and it was just the right effect for this book. Part of the reason it worked so well is that she engaged my emotions first. Granted, it was the emotion of annoyance as I met an angsty Japanese teenager, Nao, who I though was being glib about metaphors as she called herself a “time being.” I pushed past that (thank God) and kept reading. Ruth’s story drew me in more easily because it is, at this point in my life, easier to engage emotionally with a writer who should be writing her masterworks but isn’t always. Ruth finds Nao’s diary and some other papers washed up on a beach in Canada and begins reading.

Through the relationship of these two stories, A Tale for the Time Being effortlessly whisked me through major events like the Fukushima meltdown, 9/11, suicide, and what it was like to be a kamikaze pilot in World War II, hitting each from a deeply human angle. Because Nao is a Japanese girl who was living in America but then moved back to Japan we also get a Japanese perspective on these events and more which was incredibly interesting and humanizing. There’s also lots of Buddhism. In gentle, washing waves that stretched my thinking and made me feel at home. The metaphor that had initially seemed pat expanded gloriously and this book wrapped around me and made me think deeply.

How This Book Wrote Itself for Me

At first it was easy to gloss over the details that were personal to me. Nao’s great-grandmother, Jiko, is 104, wise and dying. This year I lost my Djiedo at 104. Like Ruth, I’m a writer living in the Pacific Northwest (and most days I’d rather be on an island). She’s married to an artist (as am I). They’re both trying to find their place in the world—worried about being too isolated, too in the mix of things, not making enough work or the right work. Ruth had some complicated health stuff with her mom, something I’m navigating this past month (and for the last 30 years). Nao is a complicated, unhappy teen-aged girl (as I once was). And Jiku, a pacifist Buddhist nun, has to navigate her son going off to become a kamikaze pilot in World War II while I’ve worried about sending my son to war ever since I first heard myself sing “Taps” after “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” in a night of misguided lullabies (that I couldn’t seem to stop repeating for as many years as he still let me sing to him).

This is the spoiler part. There is a moment when Ruth opens Nao’s diary and finds that what was once written is now blank. That was the switch that flipped for my tired, busy brain and made me think that maybe it was no coincidence that I picked up this book, the copy of A Tale for the Time Being that I was holding, this week, a terribly busy week near the end of a terribly busy eight months in which I find myself writing book reviews at 5am and all that Buddhist balance I’ve been craving isn’t something I’ve even been able to look for. As Nao sat with Jiko practicing zazen meditation, I felt myself breathe. And it was everything.

I don’t know that this book will write itself for you the way that it did for me, but I hope you do have that experience of magic someday. Either way, Ozeki’s writing is fantastic, always.

Pick up a copy of A Tale for the Time Being from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Eight Minutes in Rome with The Pope’s Left Hand by Friedrich Christian Delius

June 8, 2019 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Phillip Lopate once said, “The reason I read nonfiction is to follow an interesting mind.” The best nonfiction example I’ve ever seen of this travel is Virginia Woolf’s “Street Haunting” in which she goes out in search of a pencil and we learn everything there is to know about everything she sees along the way (along with all the associations those things bring up). This meander through an interesting mind is less common, though, in fiction, especially in book-length fiction. This is likely because it’s very hard to sustain over a long period and also because most fictional characters don’t have the breadth of knowledge that makes a mind truly interesting. The Pope’s Left Hand by Friedrich Christian Delius is a wonderful exception.

A Back-Alley Tour of the Corruption of Rome

An 88-page novella about the five to eight minutes that a German tour guide in Rome watches the Pope during a visit to a Protestant church, this book races rather than meanders through topics as varied as “the complete fabrication of the life of St. Francis of Assisi,” the Numidian stallions, and why a Roman police car might park empty in front of a fashionable store. While many of these tangents have corruption at their core, each digression is diverse and detailed enough to be fascinating in its own right (and would have led me on countless Wikipedia dives if I had been anywhere near a computer).

Reading The Pope’s Left Hand is like having a drunken dinner with a disgruntled and wildly intelligent tour guide as he goes off on a city that he’s grown weary of but can’t get off of his mind. It is both fascinating and entertaining. I learned countless things about the personalities attached to the Catholic Church, the Roman Empire, and the Nazi invasion of Rome. None are subjects I would have considered myself ignorant of, but Delius took me deeper and tied the stories together in waves that enhanced my understanding. There are remarks on tourists, a history of the relic of Jesus’s foreskin, and more than a few pokes at Augustine.

Grounding the Reader in a Non-traditional Narrative

One of the things I have hated about Roberto Bolaño is the feeling that I’m trapped next to him at a bar and he just won’t shut up. Which is to say that I’m not always down for a chatty narrator who thinks I should be interested in what he has to say. In The Pope’s Left Hand, though, Delius draws me in with his careful observation, applying an archaeologist’s eye to every detail of the few minutes the narrator is in the Pope’s presence. This gives the reader something concrete to hold as the diversions start. Most importantly, Delius returns us again and again to our close observation of that hand. It’s these loops that give the book a strong enough structure to hold the digressions together.

“There are sights more exciting than the pope in profile, and I felt little inclined to stare at one side of a milky, careworn face. I just peered over at the partially shaded hands, hanging, resting, supporting, on their fingers no sign of the ring that his subordinates and the devout are wont to kiss. Turn on your brain camera, I commanded, point the zoom at the hands.” – Friedrich Christian Delius

In the beginning it’s necessary for Delius to intersperse these observations more closely to build the groundwork for us to return to. As the book continues, though, he’s free to wander farther and farther because the moment is built and we know already what we’ll be coming back to.

My only advice when reading this book is to find a place where you can sit with it uninterrupted for a couple of hours. That’s the closest you’re likely to get to the full feeling of spending the evening with Delius’s fascinating narrator.

To tour millennia of Rome’s corruptions with Friedrich Christian Delius, pick up a copy of The Pope’s Left Hand from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

On Red Clocks by Leni Zumas and Reading the Dystopia You’re Living

May 25, 2019 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

What a couple of weeks to be reading Red Clocks by Leni Zumas. The story of a world very much like ours, an America where nothing has changed except that abortion is suddenly, radically illegal turned from dystopia into reality as Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Missouri began passing deeply restrictive anti-abortion laws. Red Clocks is not just a timely book, though, it’s also a gorgeous and thoughtful read, one I’m glad to have had by my side as conservatives chop away at women’s rights.

Interweaving Women’s Stories

The best fiction is exploratory rather than didactic, and Red Clocks delivers a rich and thoughtful experience. Zumas explores a group of women and girls living life in an Oregon beach town. There’s a Biographer and a Daughter, a Wife and a Mender. There’s even a female polar explorer, a woman whose life the Biographer is researching and whose interludes beautifully shape the rest of the text. And a wide range of women’s experiences with motherhood are illustrated in the text—from infertility to motherhood to unwanted pregnancy. All of this rubs up against a world where women have lost the power to make decisions about their own bodies. I especially loved the inclusion of the Mender as a reach back to the knowledge we used to have about our bodies before that power was given over to men in white coats.

Because the town is small we get to see the characters bounce off of each other in ways that feel real and not forced. We get the see the characters as they seem themselves and as they are seen by others. This adds a depth to the limited third person Zumas uses throughout the book. As a reader I was given just enough distance from the characters to form my own thoughts and emotions—something that made me feel for each of them all the more deeply.

I loved reading this book. I loved the characters and the story. I loved the writing. On any average day, Red Clocks would have made me more proud of my womanhood. Now, though, it made me want to stand up and fight.

Women’s Rights are Human Rights

As a child of the 1980s I had no idea until very recently how much misogynist bullshit I had taken at face value and then perpetuated. Women (and only women) running around naked on screen because our bodies are art? That should totally be in every movie. Women doing a lion’s share of the child rearing and housework? Yup (though luckily my husband’s more progressive than I on that front). The fact that a woman like Anita Hill would get up and lie in front of Congress just to smear the name of a good man? We don’t have much power, but when we do it’s manipulative and we’ll do anything to take a good man down.

In that way I’m grateful to the Trump regime. Because seeing all this crap as a grownup is making me reassess everything. Being pregnant had already taught me that while life is a gift, bearing and raising a child is work and the decision should not be taken lightly. Another way to say that is that I have never been more pro-choice than since I became pregnant and had a child. Even then, though, I failed to really look in the face the things that happen to me every day. The small ways I am ignored and dismiss and ignore and dismiss myself. The big ways that I fail to celebrate the power of my body to make life. Yes, sperm is a necessary ingredient, but sperm didn’t cradle that growing creature for 40 weeks as it rearranged my organs and fed off of my body. Sperm can’t pull forth the liquid of life to then feed that child for as long as they are willing. I’m not knocking males, I live with two of the best of them. But the fact that I have to even feel like I have to write that last sentence because celebrating women is taking men down says a lot about the baggage I’m still carrying.

While I have felt this awakening in my body, it took the Trump regime for me to open up my mouth and say, “No.” My body is mine. Women bear the unique burden of pregnancy. Some women will not survive pregnancy. Some babies will not survive pregnancy or birth. I adore my son and the idea that I could ever have had to make the choice to abort a baby makes me well up with tears, but if ~~a woman and her doctor decide~~ a woman decides that she cannot carry a baby to term, that is her choice to make.

If you can, please help women who are being stripped of the power over their own bodies have access to abortions should they choose. Donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds. I have. And I will continue to.

Shedding Shame

As I raise a small boy, the research I read about how to make him and empowered little human who understands consent often begins with frankness about the body, with answering his questions and naming his parts. Which challenges me. I run around with what’s probably an average amount of shame about my body, hating some of the changes maternity brought, unwilling to say genitalia-related words out loud in daily conversation, but I know I need to be better for him (and for me too). So when my neighbor saw me reading Red Clocks with Lauren Harms’ wonderful illustration on the front at the bus stop and said, “Is that women’s genitalia?” I smiled big and said, “Yes, it’s a vulva.”

To read about what might happen next, pick up a copy of Red Clocks from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.