Literary Chicago

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Film Row Cinema is packed, so much so that Randall Albers instructs members of the audience, twice, to squeeze together more closely to allow others to sit. The chairperson of the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College, founder of Story Week Festival of Writers, and host of today’s Story Week panel discussion, “The Future of Publishing,” Albers has to get the crowd ready for the big fight. After all, at the center of any discussion about the future of publishing lies the “great debate” between print and digital media—and few topics can ruffle the feathers of academic types more than the possible extinction of The Book as We Know It.

Book reviewer Donna Seaman (Booklist) and book artist/designer Craig Jobson (A Field Guide to Urban Fowl) both seem ready to defend the endangered animal, while Dan Sinker seems poised to attack, having created a “mobile storytelling initiative” called CellStories.net and, more recently, become famous for impersonating Rahm Emanuel in a Twitter account. But the positions of the other panelists are not quite so easy to guess at. Joe Meno (The Great Perhaps) and Steve May (One Chance) are both award-winning fiction writers and playwrights, the former having once regularly contributed to Sinker’s influential underground culture magazine, Punk Planet. So which side of the great debate will they support? And will the gloves come off after positions are declared?

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A WAYWARD WRITER ARTIST

Audrey Niffenegger uses the word “wayward” to describe Chicago artists. Although there is only, as she puts it, a “smattering” of them represented in the modern wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, she feels that their work there is a good illustration of how windy city artists tend to wander, creatively speaking. She should know. Aside from her powerful and wildly popular novels, The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry, Niffenegger has created prints, paintings, drawings, comics, and “artist’s books” that she printed and bound by hand in editions of ten. (My own copy of The Adventuress is not one of these rare pieces of paper art but, rather, a commercially published replica that wears a sticker saying, “A Novel in Pictures by the Best-Selling Author . . .”)

On Wikipedia, Niffenegger is referred to first as a writer, then as an artist and academic. But during today’s conversation at Film Row Cinema, she says, “I never actually decided to be a novelist. I tell people it’s my hobby. At the moment, I’m headed toward ballet.” This is not impetuousness. Although her career may be as multifaceted as J-Lo’s, its progression seems to be a natural and lifelong unfolding of artistic and intellectual curiosity. She started out making prints as an apprentice to William Wimmer in 1978, began exhibiting her work at Printworks Gallery in 1987, got her MFA from Northwestern University’s Department of Art Theory and Practice in 1991, and only started writing her first novel in 1997. Even now, after getting a five-million-dollar advance on her second novel, Niffenegger still seems to consider herself first and foremost a visual artist and, at Columbia College Chicago, she only teaches writing courses that “specialize in text-image relationships” (www.audreyniffenegger.com).

However wayward Niffenegger may be, it seems that she will forever be grounded in the visual. In a review of “The Night Bookmobile,” an illustrated short story due to be published in September, an unnamed New City critic writes:

“Niffenegger’s art has often been compared to Edward Gorey’s, and justifiably so: her work incorporates the same stark, haunting figures and her stories, like Gorey’s, are often dark and chimerical. Niffenegger’s drawings, however, are more intimate than Gorey’s and, even when dealing with death, they manage to be infused with life” (http://art.newcity.com/2009/07/20/review-audrey-niffeneggerprintworks-gallery/).

Given her talent for both visual arts and storytelling, one cannot help but wonder what cinematic masterpiece would have resulted if New Line Cinema had consulted her in making the movie adaptation of The Time Traveler’s Wife, which one hopes would have been the case if, as IMDB asserts, the production company had succeeded in securing Steven Spielberg, Gus Van Sant, or David Fincher to direct it. According to Niffenegger, New Line refused to honor even three modest requests: that the movie be filmed in Chicago, that it “not have a sucky soundtrack,” and that its ending be faithful to the book. (SPOILER ALERT! Skip to the next paragraph if you haven’t yet read The Time Traveler’s Wife!) “Pretty early in the movie-making process,” she says, “it came down from on high that we could not cut off his feet.” She doesn’t seem bitter, however, perhaps understanding that, as a member of tonight’s audience pointed out, “The book and the movie are each playing to very different audiences.” Let’s just say the movie was aimed at audiences that love the soft focus.

Maybe after she’s put up her September exhibit at Printworks Gallery, and after she’s finished writing her third novel, The Chinchilla Girl in Exile, and after she’s had her fill of ballet, she will explore the medium of film and show them over at New Line how it’s done—or, rather, how it can be done when you are a wayward artist with a unique appreciation of human nature. She may tell them, as she tells us during the conversation today, “You cannot make false assertions about human nature because the reader will object.” Only she’ll say viewer instead of reader, which seems only natural for someone who is first and foremost a visual artist.

EVENT: CONVERSATION WITH AUDREY NIFFENEGGER | TUESDAY, MARCH 30, 2010 AT 3:30PM | FILM ROW CINEMA | AN EVENT OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO’S CRITICAL ENCOUNTERS SERIES

Mark Twain has often been attributed as having said, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” It seems that every member of the Story Week panel entitled “Genre Bending—The Faces of Fiction” can make the same boast. Mort Castle, Maggie Estep, and David Morrell are all unapologetically writers of genre fiction, in the categories of horror, mystery, and thriller, respectively, and Kevin Nance, while not a creative writer himself but, rather, a contributing editor at Poets & Writers, preserved his childhood love of comic books, Lord of the Rings, science fiction, and mystery, even though, as he puts it in tonight’s discussion, “When I went to college, I learned that everything I thought I knew about writing was wrong.”

Like Nance, I, too, grew up blissfully unaware of the distinctions regularly made between “high brow” and “low brow” literature. Those who taught in the low-income neighborhoods where I was raised would have been happy to see us reading just about anything. It wasn’t until I took an education course at the college level that I heard teachers and future teachers debating about whether or not teenagers should be allowed to read genre fiction or even young adult fiction in their classes. Many believed in a strict adherence to the “classics” and were particularly averse to popular series books such as Harry Potter, Cirque du Freak, Twilight, and Midnighters. Even The Hobbit was called into question, a book that, according to Nance, is a “gateway drug for a lot of boys.” Quoting Ron Hansen, Castle says, “As a writer, my job is to educate and entertain, and I cannot educate if I don’t entertain.” Shouldn’t the same be true of teachers? Why, then, would many of them want to deny this kind of drug to their students?

David Morrell offers a somewhat surprising answer to this question. While some may argue that genre fiction is denigrated because it’s poorly written, or plot-driven, or formulaic, or calculating, or commercial, Morrell says it’s because we Americans are a bunch of Calvinists at heart. When he describes the deeply-ingrained American belief that “if we enjoy ourselves, it’s wrong,” I am reminded of H.L. Mencken’s definition of Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” (After the event, I would wonder whether or not writers and critics in other countries shared our attitudes towards genre fiction. Any thoughts on this, dear readers???)

Although, as Joe Meno, the event’s moderator, mentions in his opening statements, the American literary establishment was “rending its garments” in reaction to the news that Stephen King had been awarded the National Book Award in 2003, and thereby joined the ranks of John Updike, Arthur Miller, Toni Morrison, and Philip Roth, it seems that the tide is turning in favor of genre fiction. In “Invasion of the Genre Snatchers,” an article originally published in Poets & Writers, Nance says, “Aspects of detective and crime novels, thrillers, science fiction and fantasy, horror, westerns, comics, and other subgenres are increasingly showing up in variously transmogrified forms, with and without quotation marks, in works of literary fiction.” Among the writers he cites as examples are Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Cormac McCarthy, and Joyce Carol Oates. If what Morrell says about Calvinist sensibilities being at the root of our distaste for popular literature is true, then maybe we’re having a collective religious awakening of sorts.

No one on the panel suggests that there isn’t bad writing out there, or that a lot of it isn’t genre, per se. Morrell even goes so far as to name names (David Baldacci). But he and his fellow panelists seem to agree that what distinguishes a good story from a bad one has nothing to do with genre and almost everything to do with honesty. (Almost.) They all warn against “chasing the market” as opposed to being true to your own voice and vision. Meno says “follow your curiosity” like it’s something he’s repeated a million times in the classroom. And Castle advises each of the aspiring writers in the audience to “be a first-rate version of yourself and not a second-rate version of someone else.” It’s advice well worth heeding, both in fiction writing and in life.

EVENT: GENRE BENDING-THE FACES OF FICTION PANEL DISCUSSION | WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17, 2010 AT 2:30PM | HAROLD WASHINGTON LIBRARY | AN EVENT OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO’S STORY WEEK FESTIVAL OF WRITERS

Chicago owes a great deal of its literary presence to Columbia College. Starting this Sunday, March 14th, the school will be hosting its 14th annual Story Week Festival of Writers, themed “Genre Bending: The Faces of Fiction.” I’ve marked my calendar for several of the festival’s readings, panels, and performances. Given the number of times that I have seen Joyce Carol Oates, and the number of books she’s written, I concluded long ago that she’s managed to successfully clone herself. Although it will still be good to see her again, I am particularly looking forward to attending the “Genres From Afar” event that features Achy Obejas. I have been following Obejas’ work since the beginning and I will, no doubt, have quite a bit to say about her when I blog about her reading and conversation. Others in attendance include Bonnie Jo Campbell, David Morrell, Aleksandar Hemon, Marcus Sakey, John Dale, and Maggie Estep. And there will be a special performance on Thursday by the Bread & Puppet Theater. A good time will be had by all. Visit http://colum.edu/storyweek for details.