Isla McKetta, MFA, Author at A Geography of Reading

Micheline Aharonian Marcom on A Brief History of Yes

October 6, 2013 by Isla McKetta, MFA 4 Comments

As a writer, how do you critique the work of friends? In private you read drafts of their work and point out the parts you love and areas for improvement. You both know you can’t be objective but that red-penning a draft is in fact a loving act that will make the work stronger. With any luck you are different enough writers that you can learn from each other but also at similar stages so that it’s an equal exchange.

But how then do you review the work of your teacher, your advisor, the person who helped shape your voice? When reviewing a book, I always try to look at the best of what the book has to teach, so I wasn’t worried that I’d review A Brief History of Yes by Micheline Aharonian Marcom in a negative light. I did know, however, that Micheline will always be my mentor and that when I read her words on the page I hear her voice.

When I told her that I wanted to write about her book here but that I wasn’t sure that I could be objective, she graciously offered to answer a few questions. So what you see here, rather than a straight-up interview, is me asking both questions about the book and the questions that would help me continue to find my way as a writer.

A Brief History of Yes

“He still lies in the mind of the Portuguese girl, for as the lover of yes knows, the absence created by the end of a love affair is another form of presence.” – Micheline Aharonian Marcom, A Brief History of Yes

A Brief History of Yes by Micheline Aharonian Marcom is the portrait of a love affair from beginning to end between the Portuguese Maria and an unnamed American. The way the book is structured, we know always that the affair will end, but the writing is so gorgeously inhabited that I was deep inside the emotional thrall of the ups and downs from the thrall of new love to the deep loneliness of knowing something is about to end.

With echoes of Clarice Lispector, Fernando Pessoa, and William Faulkner, Marcom’s carefully crafted blend of lyricism and concision is inimitable. I know, I’ve tried. She plays gently with grammar, combining words and changing punctuation, so that I always feel the possibilities of language are opening before me. And the way she reveals the unsaid is something I’m still ruminating on, even months after reading the book.

Interviewer: You’ve led such an international life, how has that shaped you as a writer? Is that part of the reason you read trans-nationally?

Marcom: I think that literature, like painting or music, cannot be appreciated from the vantage point of only one culture or country or epoch—it would be as if I only looked at American painters, for example, and skipped Cézanne, Picasso, Klee, Velasquez, Goya, the ancient Mayan sculptures…. I seek the books that are “aesthetic achievements,” that make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Wherever and whenever they were written.

I: I loved the way you revealed the things that were “not said” between Maria and her lover. Is this something you started with or did it evolve as you wrote and rewrote?

M: I can’t any longer remember. But I don’t think that it happened in revision, and more or less emerged that way. Although, of course, I did revive the book extensively. But I am a writer who follows my intuition, who “listens to the voices,” as Faulkner said. So although I revise continuously, I also allow for the strange and unpredictable. And I am always interested in what people don’t say to one another, as much as what they say.

I: The events in A Brief History of Yes are not at all chronological and yet the book has an inherent logic. How do you think about time as you are writing?

M: When I’m writing first drafts, I don’t think, I follow my obsessions, my interests, my inklings—as I said: I tune in and listen. Later when I have material I shape and trim and work to cull a book’s final form. But I usually find the pattern had already been made and it then becomes my job to “lift” it to its final shape.

I: What are you reading?

M: Right now re-reading Faulkner’s The Bear for a literature class I’m teaching, and all the Lispector I can fit into my day for an essay I’m writing on her work. So, as you can see, I’m returning to the tried and true.

If you want to read A Brief History of Yes, pick up a copy from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

The Road Home Asks: Who Are We On the Inside?

September 29, 2013 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

I understand why we use stereotypes. They are easy shorthand in a world where we don’t want to take the time to look deeply at the people around us–beyond their clothes and their gender and the color of their skin. But running around judging each other based on these exterior factors means we miss the richness of the lives around us. Rahul Gandotra’s short film The Road Home beautifully exposes this paradox.

The film starts with a young boy running away from boarding school in the Himalayas. And it’s easy to assume from his brown skin that he belongs there, but his blue polo and nattily knotted sweater stand out. It soon becomes clear that this boy, Pico, doesn’t speak Hindi at all and he’s running home to England. He hires a local cab driver (Kuldeep) to drive him to New Delhi but Kuldeep hassles him about not knowing his heritage so Pico decides to walk the rest of the way. Along his journey, we start to see how out of place Pico really is–both in India and the world.

“But I Don’t Feel Indian Inside”

Director Gandotra is a true third culture kid having grown up in eight different countries and the screenplay (co-written by Gandotra and Milja Fenger) captures that feeling of being from everywhere and nowhere.

That third culture kid feeling (or as Pico Iyer calls it, The Global Soul) is one I share but not one I talk about very often because I feel like there are so few people who truly understand it. My family is white and I was born in Idaho, but I spent time in Chile growing up and my brother learned to read in Spanish before English. I crave hard white rolls from a certain German bakery and when I say Neruda speaks to my soul, I mean something slightly different than a lot of people do. When I read Isabel Allende’s memoir of exile, My Invented Country I felt that I too had invented Chile, at least in my memories. And then there’s the time I spent in Poland…

I am an American and I mean that in the richest possible way. And sometimes I feel like I have more in common with the Somali girls giggling in the mall in their half-traditional, half-American outfits than I do with the woman at the pretzel shop. But I suppose I don’t know her story either. I never thought to ask.

What Does “Worldly” Mean to You?

In The Road Home when Pico has to be taught how to eat daal by a French woman named Marie, I felt for him and how out of place he was. Then we learn that Pico’s father has sent him away so that he’ll have the proper credentials to get into the London School of Economics and later Harvard so that he can become an international businessman. There was something so elite about it all and yet it rang true. Pico’s experience abroad was a check box for admissions, but he wasn’t ever going to be expected to mix with the locals just as we sometimes travel abroad and have drinks at the Hilton where the bartender speaks our language.

I thought for a moment that I hadn’t aimed high enough with my own admissions process, but I didn’t want to see the world from that pinnacle either, I wanted to be part of it.

When Pico runs into a British couple on holiday. They assume that he’s local and the man tries to speak to him in Hindi. It’s only when the woman addresses him in British English and Pico replies with an accent that’s much more posh than hers that we see he doesn’t fit in in England either–at least not where the couple comes from. He is out of place everywhere.

“What’s So Wrong With Being Indian?”

As I’m writing this, it’s been barely a week since the first Indian American Miss America debacle. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just imagine a group of people who can only see “other” and how that must terrify them. Poor knowledge of geography and racist comments aside (not that it’s easy to ignore either), these events reminded me how one-dimensional we ask the people around us to be, and I wonder how far we can really get as a world when we fail to see the richness of experience and heritage in other human beings.

So when Marie asks Pico, “What’s so wrong with being Indian?” and in return he asks, “What’s so wrong with being English?” what’s important is that Pico isn’t either. He’s both, and the beauty of this film is how he starts to find that unique blend of his own identity. I’ve spoiled most of the major plot points for you, but this film isn’t about what happens, like the best literary fiction, it’s about how the moments are portrayed. Go watch it. You might be surprised how much you can learn about yourself in only 23 minutes.

Mia Couto and The Tuner of Silences

September 22, 2013 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

I wrote recently about a book so rich with description I didn’t know where to focus. How perfect it was, then, to open The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto–a book so cleanly written, so tightly edited that every word matters. With this extraordinary concision, Couto leaves room for the reader and I became deeply invested in the story of Mwanito and Ntunzi and their father.

What’s most surprising to me about this book is how it can be so spare and yet so rich. If I said Couto’s language was like poetry, you might misunderstand me and think it is difficult to understand. Instead the language in this book is like looking into a crystal clear lake and being able to see every detail of the fish, vegetation, and geology while at the same time seeing your reflection and that of the sky and the trees behind you. Like the best poetry, Couto has placed on the page the framework of an extraordinary story but it’s in your mind that the full magic of the world comes to life.

Some of my impressions of the book are fragmentary because I’m still mulling it over. Although my writing won’t create the same magic Couto’s does, perhaps these fragments will inspire something in you.

A Life Contained

“I was eleven years old when I saw a woman for the first time, and I was seized by such sudden surprise that I burst into tears” – Mia Couto

From that enticing and strange first sentence, I was hooked on this book. It doesn’t take long to understand that the speaker of that line, Mwanito, has been hustled by his father out to an abandoned game preserve where they have lived with Mwanito’s brother Ntunzi, a soldier named Zachary, and a donkey for eight years–ever since “the world had come to an end and we were the only survivors.” The only contact this odd group has with the outside world is Mwanito’s uncle, Aproximado.

This is not a dystopian novel. Instead it is the story of a man who could not deal with the real world and so he ran away with his children. It is the story of a son who from the age of three was assigned the vocation “to take care of this incurable absence” left by the death of his mother. And it is the story of the other people around them who are trying to cope with the world Mwanito’s father created.

Here Boys Come to Be Made Men

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve found myself reading a lot of coming of age novels about boys. From A Separate Peace to Out Stealing Horses to The Tuner of Silences and The Storyteller, there’s a definite trend. Perhaps the big milestones and emotional growth spurts happening around me, not the least of which is my baby brother’s wedding this coming weekend, are calling me to better understand the men in my life.

“Some people have children in order to get closer to God. He had become God when he became my father.” – Mia Couto

Of all these books, the boys in The Tuner of Silences become men in the least desirable circumstances. Although their father is present physically, Mwanito and Ntunzi have the doubly difficult job of finding their own realities inside (or outside) their father’s delusion. It’s a sad circumstance, but an all-too-common one. Part of the magic of how Couto engaged me with this book was setting me up to think about what these boys would miss along the way to manhood and who they would become. I thought a lot about my childhood and those of the people around me. I thought about the kind of parent I would want to be.

Reality Intrudes

It’s obvious from the first sentence of this book that the outside world will intrude. But I kind of wish it hadn’t. As much as I wanted the boys to escape their father and find control over their own lives, I didn’t love the way it went down. I won’t go into details, but it does involve a woman and the story changes significantly from there.

The Aphorist

“Every silence contains music in a state of gestation.” – Mia Couto

Every sentence in this book sings and I found myself wanting to underline section after section. I also started to wonder about aphorisms in this age where so many of us are seeking wisdom and guidance. The first aphorist who comes to mind, one I see quoted frequently, is Paolo Coelho. But although Coelho’s lines often seem deep at first glance, sentiments like “Stop being who you were and become who you are” quickly start to feel pat and hollow.

Meanwhile, there’s a world of thought contained in Couto’s subtext. One of the pleasures of this book was returning to some of his lines to mull over their full implications. I guess when I look for guidance it will be from someone who teaches me how to think rather than telling me the answers he or she has found.

I loved this book and I will read it again. I have a feeling because so much of the experience of this book is the merging of the text and what I bring to the text that it will never be the same book twice. I will be very interested to see what Couto inspires me to think about next time around.

If you want to make up your own mind about this book, pick up a copy of The Tuner of Silences from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Nance Van Winckel Gives Voice to the Dead in Pacific Walkers

September 15, 2013 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

The world is full of strangers—people we’ll never know and those we once knew but will never see again. I come from a small town in northern Idaho and there I left behind so many former friends who are strangers to me now. Reading the poignant poems in Pacific Walkers by Nance Van Winckel, I began to wonder if I knew any of those Jane and John Does—if any of the friends who are lost to me have also been lost to the world.

You see, Van Winckel pulls her inspiration for many of the poems in this book from the records of the Spokane County Medical Examiner’s Office—a place not very far from where I grew up. She also gives life and stories to the people in old photographs. Van Winckel is humanizing what we have all left behind and some of the writing in this book is simply stunning.

Anonymity

“the question won’t pertain to tattoos

or unmatchable DNA, but to what
world, under what sun, in what situ

we go on finding each you, each you,
the not-missed, the never missing.”

– Nance Van Winckel, “Last Address”

I felt weird writing “left behind” above, but the word I really wanted to use was “detritus” and that felt worse. We’re talking about, and Van Winckel is writing about, human lives—a man found dead in a landfill, another in a railroad tunnel a premature baby girl found at a water treatment plant—and these are the lives of people we’ve left behind, who might never be claimed. People who are missed in some absent part of our brains that wonders only occasionally “What ever happened to…?”

And that’s part of the point, of course, of writing this book. That part of the experience of reading this book struck me so hard that I couldn’t even write about it for a week. Van Winckel touched on things I did not want to think about. I can barely leaf through old photo albums at the Salvation Army because I find the discarded memories so sad. Here she gives full stories to those people. The language is restrained, as it should be, and Van Winckel leaves me to sit in this uncomfortable place of wondering what’s happened to those I left behind.

The Detritus of my Life

“you were all the world I had to leave” – Nance Van Winckel, “Afraid of My Rays, No One Comes Near”

I remember a boy in junior high. I thought he was the cutest. I never dated him—I was dating other people and he never seemed to notice me—but I always knew when he was near. He didn’t have a lot of money and so he wore the same jacket for all the years from junior high through high school—not that I think he graduated—so it was easy to catch a glimpse of him on a street corner. I don’t know his first or last name—I only have his nickname and a hazy memory of where he lived. I know he got hard into drugs like a lot of his crowd did. And Spokane would have been a natural place for him to end up.

As I was reading this book, it was this boy I kept thinking of. When Van Winckel placed descriptions from the coroner’s office near the poems, I read them extra hard to see if any were him. I hoped they weren’t, but I wouldn’t have been surprised. There were others who were acting as lost as he was at the time, but they had bigger personalities and people to catch them. This boy, I don’t know… I hope he’s out there somewhere living a happy life surrounded by people who love him.

Poetry for Strangers

“Taped into the space
Where a window had been,
that newspaper: it must
be scanned… each day
another fact aglow
with sunlight,
each night the same war.” – Nance Van Winckel, “Compromised State”

So I want to tell you more about the language and form in Pacific Walkers, but I can’t. Maybe the level it affected me on says it all.

This weekend Rebecca Bridge and I are putting the finishing touches on our book of writing prompts and one of the things we suggest is taking a photograph and making it into a story. If our readers do have as well with that exercise as Van Winckel, they’ll be in great shape. My cousin Elisabeth finds inspiration in strangers every week and pulls it together into Poetry for Strangers.

Perhaps writing is a way we can catch people who might otherwise fall away.

“By May / I’m a dashed-off note with promises / of more where this one came from.” – Nance Van Winckel, “I Am My Own Assistant”

If you want to connect with the people in this book or to actually see what the writing is like, pick up a copy of Pacific Walkers from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Exploring Sun Alley with Cecilia Ştefănescu

September 8, 2013 by Isla McKetta, MFA 2 Comments

This week I am surrounded by Romania from a thought-provoking post about what people will do for a better life to a search query for my favorite tea that instead returned an album of Romanian celebration music (in French). It all started in Sun Alley, Cecilia Ştefănescu’s award-winning novel about the intoxication and torment of forbidden love.

From the moment the young Sal first sees Emi joyously cutting apart his friends’ most prized magazines, he is enthralled with her and does everything he can to overcome the friends, parents, and life that try to keep them apart.

Central Mystery

More than a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, though, Sun Alley allows the characters to grow up. In fact, what I enjoyed most about this book was the split in time. Just as we are preparing to find out what happens when Sal and Emi prepare to run away from Sun Alley together, the time period flashes suddenly forward to an adult Sal and Emi. We discover that their attempt to flee was unsuccessful (as seemed inevitable) but we don’t learn why or how until much later.

Instead, Ştefănescu keeps the unfinished quality of their love affair in sharp focus. Though they are married to other people, they again find that they cannot bear to be apart and embark on a long, adulterous affair with all of the usual stakes. I’m not trying to be flip, but it’s obvious that husband, wife, and children cannot keep Sal and Emi apart any more than friends and parents could.

Their childhood separation is alluded to over and over as the chapters flash back and forward in time which creates a delicious tension because although we know they are (somewhat) together now, we are constantly reminded how fragile that relationship is because it has been broken before. The wonderful structure conceals as much as it reveals and I started to think about how our shifting memories betray us over time.

Other Mysteries

“He cringed in terror. He knew quite well what was on that table. It was someone. A human being, a body, a creature.” – Cecilia Ştefănescu

There is a second mystery in this book, that of a dead body young Sal finds in a basement one afternoon. It’s a truly creepy scene and made me think about how children really act versus how we like to think they act. I think this book erred on the side of how they really act, though, and it was a good lesson for me about not being squeamish about letting your characters follow their paths. I’m glad Ştefănescu didn’t take a more restrained approach to Sal’s interaction with the body, but I do wish that the body subplot was a more integrated part of the story throughout. There were echoes of it and the resolution (which I will not spoil for you) is just right, but I lost the trail sometimes as I focused on Sal and Emi’s love affair.

Significant Detail

Details show a reader where to focus. When something is important, a writer will often layer in more and more detail to signal to the reader that it’s time to really examine a scene. In the case of Sun Alley I was lost in the detail for nearly all of the first chapter. There are readers who love having every sense titillated along the way as they enter a world. I usually look for a bit more guidance and this overly detailed beginning left me grasping for understanding.

“He thought a while and then lightly touched the cockroach’s hump with his nail. It stopped, curled up and slowly moved its legs, seemingly begging to be left alive. Sal lifted his finger and sat down on the kerb next to the cockroach.” – Cecilia Ştefănescu

This is a stylistic choice and some very popular books like Atonement use the same approach. On rereading this beginning, I found that Ştefănescu does as good of a job at tying these descriptions to her overall theme as McEwan does (which is to say she does it very well), but it still drives me a little nuts.

Writing True Dialogue

One of my favorite parts of the book is a fight that Sal and Emi have at the end. I won’t quote it for you here because I don’t want to reveal too much, but writing a good, tense dialogue is something I struggle with. Here Ştefănescu lays out two characters who are standing their ground firmly and we as readers can see that there are moments when they are talking about completely different things without realizing it. So there is conflict and tension and possible resolution but the scene is so well written that I can easily believe one might never see what the other is truly saying. That’s an art and a delicate balance and Ştefănescu does it very well.

Although the ethnologist in me hoped that something about this book would come off distinctly Romanian and I’d learn more about Ştefănescu’s country of origin, I was not at all disappointed to find instead a book that will appeal to anyone who has ever experienced the joy and suffering of forbidden love.

If this review made you want to explore Sun Alley, pick up a copy from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.