A reader left a review of Chouette recently that quoted this passage from Chouette:
‘I stay up a while, alone in the kitchen, drinking my twig tea and A reader left a review of Chouette recently that quoted this passage from Chouette:
‘I stay up a while, alone in the kitchen, drinking my twig tea and watching the spiders weave their webs. At times like these, the old voices resurrect themselves, and I grow restless for my old life in the gloaming, where my life was full of music, sweet songs that made the light hum and the trees sing. When the wind blew, the tree trunks clapped together, and they sounded like the deepest-plummet clatter of giant wood chimes. I could fly in those days. I could hear the earth’s heartbeat. Sometimes the sounds pulsed through the air like blood through living veins. Sometimes the sounds pulsed through me, and made my body sing itself to sleep and dream soft dreams. The Bird of the Wood taught me how to play songs on my hunting bow, with strings of catgut. I could pluck and bend and warble. I could make the colors come.’
And it reminded me that I've never yet written about how much The Tempest was ringing in my head as I wrote this novel, in particular, Caliban's soliloquy, here:
"Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices, That if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked I cried to dream again."
And this final heart-breaking soliloquy of Prospero's, here:
“This rough magic I here abjure, and, when I have required Some heavenly music, which even now I do, To work mine end upon their senses that This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And deeper than did ever plummet sound I'll drown my book.”
Maybe just the word "plummet" is all I took from the second passage, but I loved that word when I read it first in high school, so here it is in my novel, although with a different and more abstract meaning. In fact the word "plummet" doesn't make much sense the way I wrote it but I loved the sound of the word so there it is.
There are scraps of beloved poems and plays in everything I write. Sometimes I recognize the source as I write the words. At other times I just have a vague idea that there is something I'm drawing on that I've read before, maybe decades ago. Maybe all writers do this? Hear echoes in their head, as they write, of things they loved, as readers, and these echoes make their way into the words they write on the page?
Anyway, thank you, Sister Veronica, for teaching The Tempest that year....more
Recently I returned to Morgan Thomas's collection Manywhere to rediscover how Thomas presents nonbinary and alternative genders in these stories, becaRecently I returned to Morgan Thomas's collection Manywhere to rediscover how Thomas presents nonbinary and alternative genders in these stories, because most of my working time, right now, is focused on a novel I'm calling a "trans picaresque." And I have questions.
More than any other writer I've read, Thomas has figured out how to write gender nuance and alternate identities into a prose style that never feels forced, and never feels anything other than the best English-language writing. I learn a lot from these stories.
Granted, it's not as hard to do this in English as it is in a deeply gendered grammar like, say, Italian. But believe me, there is a lot to think about whenever you're writing a character with anything other than a cis/het identity. Here are some of the questions that come up for me as I write: What do I call this character's identity, in the text itself? How does the word/s I choose to signal a trans identity affect the reader? How do avoid making assumptions, by the very words I choose, about the reader's awareness of transness? How can I be accurate, and not anachronistic, when language regarding trans identity is evolving so rapidly?
And, more questions: What would my CHARACTERS call their own identities? How aware are they of these identities, themselves? How likely would my characters be to call themselves an alternative pronoun if their story is set in the 1950's or the 1890's? How accepting or denying are my characters of other trans people, other queer people in my story? How much do my characters want to reveal of themselves to the people in their lives?
And also: (especially if I as an author am writing in 1st person): if my characters are reluctant to reveal themselves to the people in their lives, then why would they want to reveal their identity to any random reader who picks up the book and begins to read it? Wouldn't some characters want to hide their identities, sometimes, from whomever might read this thing? Shouldn't the writing itself reflect these hesitancies and questions that my characters have, instead of blatantly spilling the beans in some obvious way on the page, for example if I were to write something in the story like "I'm trans and it's a secret?"
I'm a nonbinary writer and I go by they-them pronouns but I've yet to write a they-them character in my published fiction. If I ask myself why, then the reason has something to do with my feeling that assigning "they" to a character feels like I am personally making assumptions about my character's gender. Granted. These characters are my creation. But I'm not their god. I think of them as complex individuals with complicated minds, genders, and sexualities of their own.
About 1/3 of the characters I wrote into my novels Chouette and Poor Deer are trans, gay, or both. BUT these characters are all also living in situations where they might prefer, or be forced to go along with their assigned genders and sexualities. Maybe they're still working it out for themselves, or maybe they aren't ready to disclose their identities to the world, or maybe it would be dangerous for them to do so. If I called my characters "they," it would feel like I was outing them on the page.
Anyway. It could be what I've written above is complete nonsense to anyone but me. But: thinking about gender and language is kind of what I'm about, as a writer, in many ways. So now I've shared with you some of the maybe-strange thoughts that preoccupy me, sometimes, when I sit down to write.
Getting back to Manywhere, I strongly recommend it. You should read it. Morgan Thomas has thought deeply about the semantics of gender, and how to write truthfully to the characters, wherever they may be on the journey toward self-actualization. But that isn't the only reason to read these stories. Read them because they are also great, unique, exhilarating stories.
Here is my NYT review of this collection, published January 2022:
Thomas writes in a musical, incantatory style that approaches poetry. Their stories aren’t linear, but a series of memoiristic recollections that fit together like beads on a string. Thomas takes extraordinary care with syntax to let queer characters fully express themselves on the page. It’s almost as if Thomas needed to create a new language to tell these stories; ours is still too binary.
In “Taylor Johnson’s Lightning Man,” Thomas avoids misgendering the historical figure Frank Woodhull, a Canadian immigrant to the United States who was born Mary Johnson. Woodhull had lived as a man in America for 15 years until 1908, when officials at Ellis Island declared Woodhull to be a woman. What gender did Woodhull identify with? We don’t know and never will. Thomas circumvents the need for a gendered or even gender-neutral pronoun by addressing Woodhull in the second person throughout: “I suspected even then you weren’t a woman or a man. You were a lightning man with a knock like thunder.”
In “Bump,” a transgender woman outwardly expresses her yearning for a family by wearing a synthetic baby bump, and pretending she is pregnant. So fierce is her longing that when the bump breaks, it feels like a miscarriage — not only to the narrator but also to the reader. It’s a gorgeous meditation on the pointlessness of biological reductionism when it comes to human wants and desires.
These breathlessly imaginative stories are all the more remarkable for the elegant, organic ways in which the author unhooks language from its entrenched assumptions about gender....more
The second of two writing projects I'm working on just now is a small dark book of psychological terror, like, scarier than what I think I'm able to wThe second of two writing projects I'm working on just now is a small dark book of psychological terror, like, scarier than what I think I'm able to write but maybe not.
Writers aren't supposed to answer the question "what are you working on next?" because answering that question supposedly will tank the current projecWriters aren't supposed to answer the question "what are you working on next?" because answering that question supposedly will tank the current project by messing with the writer's head by making them commit too soon but oh well. The fact is I'm working on about six things at once, two of them seriously i.e. two are taking up most of my writing time...and who knows if either will go anywhere... but for now they are very fun to write. The first one is a small dark book of psychological terror. The second one is a bawdy bighearted ridiculous transpositive picaresque. As usual I'm doing a lot of research, in my own way, by re-reading books that capture a mood and/or deal with subjects I want to write about, and/or are examples of writers who break conventions in magnificently confident ways.
This is my current reading list for the second project.
I just wrote a book about a child who is forced to confront death's reality when she is far too young to understand it. As I wrote I studied the worksI just wrote a book about a child who is forced to confront death's reality when she is far too young to understand it. As I wrote I studied the works of other writers who have told this story.
My favorite treatment remains John Gardner's short story, "Redemption," published in the Atlantic in 1977 and available online to read here:
I also read the works of two Dutch authors, and You Have Me to Love by Japan Robben, and The Discomfort of Evening by Lucas Rijneveld.
Both of these novels are extreme, ruthless, relentlessly bleak studies into the nature of guilt, and the impossibility of atonement. It doesn't matter how innocent you may be--redemption is impossible, and there is no forgiveness. I love these novels for their pure and ruthless judgments on their innocent protagonists, and I hate them, too, for the same reason.
is the conclusion each novelist reaches in their novels a reflection of a strain of Calvinism running through the culture? Maybe. You Have Me to Love is not quite as merciless as The Discomfort of Evening (it would probably be impossible to be as merciless as Rijneveld is in their novel). Robben allows for grief as a way to heal and move on. But his protagonist is permanently stunted and his life is bleak nonetheless. Unlike Rijneveld's protagonist he gets to live another day, at least.
I learned a lot from reading both of these novels. I'm glad I read them. I'm glad I decided to write a book that tried for an alternative vision, one that allows for the possibility of moving beyond the innocent mistakes of childhood, however deadly those mistakes may be....more
I re-read this novel in preparation for writing a scene in my novel Poor Deer, one that involves a car, plus some intense emotions.
I don't know a lotI re-read this novel in preparation for writing a scene in my novel Poor Deer, one that involves a car, plus some intense emotions.
I don't know a lot of writers personally but the ones I do know seem to write very differently from the way I write. They go out in nature, take a walk, come back with their heads beautifully clear and sit down and write the scene. Or so they say. Me, I think "this is the scene I want to write next," and then I think about all the books I've read in my life until I come up with maybe a dozen books where I've read that sort of scene inside of their covers, or at very least, I have read a scene that has the mood of the scene I want to write--and then I make a stack of these books, and I read all dozen or whatever of these scenes over again, and I take time to really parse these scenes, down to their last recorded syllable, to understand how they work, how they scan, how they pace, how they begin and how they end...and then I write my scene. I think I'm saying I write like an AI program writes. I need to go ponder that now. So honestly I'm so glad I have a big library of books because I always, always need to have a book at my fingertips that has the scene I want to read in it or it mucks me up terribly and I waste the day watching Star Trek TOS....more
My next novel is coming out Jan 2024 and it's beyond way-too-late in my life to acknowledge the tremendous impact The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes haMy next novel is coming out Jan 2024 and it's beyond way-too-late in my life to acknowledge the tremendous impact The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes has had on me, so much so that it might be considered the Ur-text of Poor Deer, to be published in Jan. 2024, by Ecco.
To this children's book I owe much of the wonder, the amazement, and the joy of telling and hearing stories. Was I eight when I read it? Maybe younger? What I remember is the electric zing to my heart at the way two little girls, Amy and Clarissa, make up stories together, and their stories come to life, and change their world. Wow. The idea that our stories can shape our reality seemed so amazing to me, and also, true, and the wonder of that realization has never left me.
Poor Deer is also a story about two little girls. In my story, though, the girls are tragically separated at a very young age. One of the girls is left on her own to make sense of the loss of her friend. She does so by making up stories, of course, and then her stories come to life in unexpected ways. In other words, I've taken the premise of one of my favorite childhood stories and shaped it into a literary novel.
I knew I was thinking of The Witch Family as I wrote Poor Deer but I didn't realize the extent that Eleanor Estes had influenced the shape of my novel until just now, when I took my old copy down from a shelf. I recognize, from the first page on, the way the rhythms of Estes's sentences, as well as the way her story unfolds on the page, have influenced my own story. My reading memory isn't exactly mnemonic. It's nowhere near that precise. But I can hear, in my head, the memories of certain words and rhythms and clauses that I've read in the past, and these memories speak to me in my mind's ear, and they can't help but influence how I write.
Amy's hair was the color of moonlight. Clarissa's was the color of sunlight. -- The Witch Family
Penny’s hair is the color of crumpled leaves. Glo’s hair is the color of soft rain. --Poor Deer
Now I'm going to re-read The Witch Family, with gratitude and tender care. This book was out of print for a while. What a loss for the children who, when they were the right age to read it, never found it on a bookshelf, because it wasn't available in those years. It is back in print now....more
I recently came back to the big red book of John Cheever's stories--I have two copies of this edition!--and rediscovered its many perfections. If I evI recently came back to the big red book of John Cheever's stories--I have two copies of this edition!--and rediscovered its many perfections. If I ever taught creative writing I would begin here, with John Cheever's stories. It's here where I learned all that I know about writing dialogue, and also, how to interleave the mundane with the surreal, in ways that equal "the truth about what it means to be human."
Here is a link to one of my favorite experiences of John Cheever, Richard Ford reading the very-short story "Reunion" for the New Yorker podcast:
I love Lois McMaster Bujold's books, and I love that she is best known for creating Miles Verkosigan, a man who was born with severe disabilities and I love Lois McMaster Bujold's books, and I love that she is best known for creating Miles Verkosigan, a man who was born with severe disabilities and yet is in every way a fully realized and extraordinary character, one I've followed through, oh, maybe 11 or so novels...but my favorite novel of all, and the one that has deeply influenced me (as a disabled writer who writes about disability) is Falling Free, a side-trip in the Verkosigan saga that stands on its own.
Falling Free is about human beings who have been genetically altered in vitro to be born with four arms, with four hands on the end of them, all of which have opposable thumbs. And it seems quite monstrous, and obviously these people (known as 'Quaddies') didn't give consent, and they happen to be getting exploited by an evil corporation in this novel...
BUT
The fact remains that, as four-armed people, Quaddies are perfectly adapted to living in their zero G environment, whereas the rest of us, as clumsy 2-footed/2-armed creatures, have bottom halves that leave us 'disabled,' when compared with the Quaddies, if we ever happen to find ourselves living and working in Zero g.
It's the best novel I've ever come across for the argument that disability rights are human rights. The novel makes it deeply, beautifully, abundantly clear that "disability" is all about context, and not about the inherent worthiness of one kind of body (or mind) over another. It had a big influence on me when I first sat down to imagine a novel about a child who didn't fit into her world--but might be perfect for another one.
(I write my reader reviews on Goodreads as my fashionable alter-ego lark benobi and I invite you to come follow or friend me over there if you like! Here on my "Claire Oshetsky" page I'll be posting occasional reviews of books that helped me as a writer.)...more
I'm writing this review exactly 30 days after the U.S. publication date for Chouette. 30 days is nearly long enough to forget why I wrote my novel to I'm writing this review exactly 30 days after the U.S. publication date for Chouette. 30 days is nearly long enough to forget why I wrote my novel to begin with, or what I meant by it. That's a good thing. Books tell their own stories.
But I do still remember that I wrote Chouette in part as a personal response to Doris Lessing's novel The Fifth Child. I owe Lessing's novel a great debt. What follows is an explanation of how I related to Lessing's novel as I wrote my own, and it has broad spoilers in it for both novels.
Lessing had the audacity to write a mostly-realistic horror story about an ambivalent mother, Harriet, who is frightened of her monstrous and animalistic fifth child for good reason, and yet, also loves this child and wants what is best for him.
Unlike the book I wrote in response, Lessing's book offers no magical peaceable kingdom where Ben can escape to live out his days happily as himself. Ben is destroying the family. He's a danger to Harriet's other children. There is no harmony when he is present. “It’s either him or us,” Harriet's husband says. And he's right. There is no middle ground in the novel.
Harriet chooses her other children and sends Ben away. Then she rescues Ben and puts his needs first again. And then she equivocates a few more times. She never overcomes her ambivalence. She never knows what to do. The novel is a brave depiction of the all-encompassing struggle of trying to do the right thing when your child has no intention of cooperating with your good intentions.
The Fifth Child is a bleaker book than my book. I gave my mother-protagonist unconditional love for her child and a deep well of optimism, and then, to top it off, I imagined a world where my protagonist's child could escape, where she could live happily and successfully as herself. I imagined this "owl-baby" living joyfully beyond the end of my novel. In part this reflects my own optimism and belief that many people who are considered disabled or even dangerous in our culture would lead meaningful, joyous lives, if only their needs were acknowledged, and their differences championed.
In addition to being a bleaker book, The Fifth Child is a more ambivalent book than the book I wrote in response. Harriet never chooses. My protagonist chooses. She knowingly destroys the rest of her family by choosing to put her child first.
Even if I wrote a different outcome for my "owl-baby" (Lessing calls her problem child "goblin" but I think we're talking about the same thing more or less) I love The Fifth Child precisely for its bleakness and its ambivalence. If it were longer it would be intolerably bleak and ambivalent but as it stands at ~100 pages it's perfect. (And that is probably why I'm not a fan of Lessing's sequel to this novel, Ben, In the World).
A Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe is one of the most harrowing portrayals ever written about the pain, confusion, despair, and grief of learning, afteA Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe is one of the most harrowing portrayals ever written about the pain, confusion, despair, and grief of learning, after your son is born, that the child is so disabled that he will probably not survive.
And then, when the child doesn't die as expected, the novel becomes one of the most harrowing portrayals ever written about the pain, confusion, despair, and grief of learning that your child will survive but that caring for him will take all of your love and strength and resources, and all the hours of the days and years of your life.
The father in this very short novel--it needs to be a short novel, to survive reading it--is possibly the most clear-eyed of all the characters. Certainly he is the least sentimental. His clarity and lack of sentimentality leads him to ardently wish for his child to die quickly. His wish for that outcome leads to some of the most painful scenes I've ever read, in which the father at first tries to encourage his child's death by delaying necessary surgery, and then removes the child from the hospital prematurely, in the hope that his son will expire through a neglect that isn't entirely benign.
This is very difficult reading. There isn't a single redemptive line in it. Okay, maybe one line.
Why you should read it: Because even if it's fiction, it's the most bone-deep-honest portrayal ever written about what it must be like to live through a very human experience. However harrowing it's so obviously written with love. The ending will change you. The entire read will change you.
At the time Oe wrote it he was still a young father, facing similar circumstances as his protagonist. A companion memoir that I recommend reading along with this masterpiece is A Healing Family, written three decades after A Personal Matter.
This novel influenced how I wrote Chouette in significant ways, and it gave me the courage to write of similar situations and feelings, but there is nothing like this book. ...more
What I love about this novel most is that it's driven by an internal logic all its own. Inside its pages, the story makes perfect sense. It follows anWhat I love about this novel most is that it's driven by an internal logic all its own. Inside its pages, the story makes perfect sense. It follows an inexorable and ever more claustrophobic path to its horrifying ending, and I, as a reader, could do no more than helplessly follow where it led.
If you pick up this extraordinary novel and begin to read and at some point find yourself thinking: 'hey, wait a minute,' or: 'that doesn't make sense-does it?' then please order yourself to stop thinking in such real-world-logical terms, and surrender. Give yourself up to this twisty tale. You won't be disappointed....more
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