Guest Columns
Lundgren’s Lounge: “H is for Hawk,” by Helen Macdonald
categories: Cocktail Hour / Guest Columns / Reading Under the Influence
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Helen Macdonald
Living with a bird is an education. I recently heard an ornithologist point out that, regardless of how long a bird has been a member of your household, that bird will always remain a wild animal. I was reminded of this one Sunday last winter when our morning coffee was interrupted by a wild cacophony of screams and shrieks from Ruby’s cage in the kitchen (Ruby is an umbrella cockatoo that we adopted years ago); rushing out we were astonished to come face to face with a hawk, perched on the railing of our deck peering in at Ruby. The hawk was magnificent–breathtakingly majestic and with both talons firmly planted in a world of unfettered wildness far beyond our limited and merely human comprehension.
Lundgren’s Lounge: “All Involved,” by Ryan Gattis
categories: Cocktail Hour / Guest Columns / Reading Under the Influence
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All Involved, despite its rather pedestrian title, is an astonishing work of fiction chronicling the events around and in Los Angeles in the six days following the Rodney King verdict. Over two decades after the riots that ensued following the acquittal of the three white LAPD officers, author Ryan Gattis offers up a riveting, nuanced, multi-perspective account of the six days of rage. In the aftermath of recent civil unrest in Ferguson, MO and Baltimore and the inevitable question (raised by mostly white pundits and talking heads), regarding why “these people” would destroy their own neighborhoods as a form of protest, Gattis provides some possible insights… regardless of whether or not it’s what we want to hear. Continue reading →
Anxious is Back, but in a Minor Key
categories: Cocktail Hour / Guest Columns / Jukebox
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Anxious Bode
Rachmaninoff was a minor composer. Not minor as in of no importance, he just composed a lot in minor scale. Depressed third if you wish. I feel it, that’s why I don’t play too much Rachmaninoff. Except when I’m depressed, but then, it’s roll over Rach, you want to hear what depression sounds like, I’m the undisputed king, I get free depression just from waking up. I know, it’s unfair, why me. Because someone has to give. I get all the blessings, but the blessings mean nothing, if they’re not shared, that is given. I give, so I can live. My name is Anxious Bode, professor of panic and sleep disorders. I teach at night, when I can see more clearly. It’s also the time at which I wake up. I have Parkinson’s disease. My nights are short.
Lundgren’s Lounge: “Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America,” by Jill Leovy
categories: Cocktail Hour / Guest Columns / Reading Under the Influence
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Jill Leovy
Recent national events make it clear that W.E.B. DuBois’ famous observation, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line…” is every bit as resonant today to describe twenty-first century America as it was when first uttered, over a century ago. Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland, Madison… the drumbeat of places where young, unarmed black men have been killed by the police rolls on and the disconnect in the convoluted conversation between communities of color and the mostly white power structure are maddeningly unproductive, as though the dialogue is being spoken in different languages.
Lundgren’s Lounge: “The Whites,” by Harry Brandt, aka Richard Price
categories: Cocktail Hour / Guest Columns / Reading Under the Influence
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We live in a culture that is obsessed with specialization and categorization. Things that don’t fit easily into a preordained niche make us nervous. The result diminishes work that is unique and difficult to classify, but it also does a disservice to writing that becomes pigeonholed into a category that does not often receive the serious attention it deserves. Continue reading →
DFW on CNF: Deconstructing David Foster Wallace
categories: Cocktail Hour / Guest Columns / Reading Under the Influence
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“. .. personal essays and memoirs, profiles, nature and travel writing, narrative essays, observational or descriptive essays, general-interest technical writing, argumentative or idea-based essays, general-interest criticism, literary journalism, and so on.” —David Foster Wallace’s syllabus definition of creative nonfiction.
As a teacher and writer of nonfiction, I devoured the late David Foster Wallace’s recently released creative nonfiction syllabus. Salon, which published it, called the document “mind-blowing,” evidently referring to its tough-love language. In this blueprint for a night class he taught at Pomona College once a week in Spring 2008—so roughly six months before his death, presumably when he was already suffering from deep depression—Wallace prosecutes a rigorous, distilled aesthetic. He builds toward it in his opening “Description of Class,” which notes that “nonfiction” means it corresponds to real affairs but that creative “signifies that some goal(s) other than sheer truthfulness motivates the writer and informs her work.” Continue reading →
Lundgren’s Book Lounge: “The Remedy For Love,” by Bill Roorbach
categories: Cocktail Hour / Guest Columns / Reading Under the Influence
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Living in Maine or anywhere with a real winter, we’re all familiar with the hyperbolic ‘storm of the century’ and the panic that ensues as grocery store shelves are emptied, cars shuttled about, gas procured for the snowblower and emergency supplies (batteries, water etc.), restocked. And of course what usually follows is anticlimactic as the storm blows offshore or the storm track veers off to the west (or east or north or south).
Lundgren’s Book Lounge: “Joe,” by Larry Brown
categories: Cocktail Hour / Guest Columns / Reading Under the Influence
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Larry Brown
The mysterious alchemy that brings books into my life has always fascinated me. I seldom fail to finish books because it’s always so evident that the book in my hands is there for a timely reason, as though there is a god of reading that has placed it there. Often titles appear off the lips of a network of fellow bibliophiles and so recently when friends Monica Wood and Robert Vitesse, voracious readers both, mentioned the astonishing impact of the fiction of Larry Brown on the same day, I immediately went to my shelves and pulled out a copy of Joe and began reading. Continue reading →
My Shadow Syllabus
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour / Guest Columns
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- I’ll tell you exactly how to get an A, but you’ll have a hard time hearing me.
- I could hardly hear my own professors when I was in college over the din and roar of my own fear.
- Those who aim for A’s don’t get as many A’s as those who abandon the quest for A’s and seek knowledge or at least curiosity.
- I had bookmarked a citation for that fact, and now I can’t find it anywhere.
- The only way to seek knowledge is to open your hands and let your opinions drop, but that requires even more fear. Continue reading →
Anxious Bode is not Like Other People
categories: Cocktail Hour / Guest Columns
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Anxious Bode
It was another day of quiet thunder. A day where the sky took notice of what was happening below and prayers rose to all souls glow. For ninety minutes, the star neurologist whom I met once in my hospital inferno days eight years ago, sat with me and my mother, for a visit. He remembered all about me, and smiled as he listened, speaking softly while his mind mapped a multidimensional world of knowledge and possibilities. I had dyskinesia, I moved too much, and we talked about what could be done and he asked what I did, and took note of photography, painting, singing, writing, piano playing and composing. He said, “You don’t really have inactive periods in your day, do you?” and I said, “you’re probably right.” Then he mentioned a possible deep brain stimulation and explained which part had anesthesia, and I said “There is no global anesthesia for this part, I like it.” He turned to me. “You do?” And I said, ‘Yes, I want to be awake, I want to be there.” He said, “everybody says they want to sleep, that they don’t want to be awake, but you do.” There was a pause. “You’re not like other people.” My mom laughed. Then he reached for a microphone to dictate his letter to my physician, describing in detail what had been said and decided. I was seated, without speaking, not a muscle moving, looking at him and he was dictating the description of my unwanted muscle moves when he realized that all he was describing had vanished. His slowly put the mic down. He said “It’s all gone. Your dyskinesia is gone.” And I said “Yes. When I don’t speak, I have none. I am glad you could see this.” And we talked about art and Parkinson’s, how he wished I could have helped the hospital with their collaborative work with the museum and I showed him my youtube page where I play piano while having the disease and he wrote down the address of my channel and I said, “What you did with the museum, you cannot do again, it’s too much work as you said. But for me, that’s what I do, every day.” When we parted he gave me the program for the past exhibit and set our next meeting in twelve months. It was a day, of quiet thunder and furiously beautiful love. An unbearable grace. Continue reading →
