Franzen picked the essays for this compilation based on a theme: Risk. As he writes in his introduction, “The writer has to be like the firefighter, whose job, while everyone else is fleeing the flames, is to run straight into them.”
Indeed, I love the saying that if something keeps you up at night, you have to write about it. That can mean writing a piece that you can’t stop thinking about… or writing about something that feels so embarassing or painful that it would be a risk to even put it out there. That’s the writing that most makes you and others feel alive, un-alone, less afraid.
It reminds me of the most recent edition of True Fiction, which I read on my plane rides this weekend. The piece, “Unmolested” by Michael Lowenthal, is about the writer’s role as an openly gay guest-star counselor at the all-boys’ summer camp he adored attending as a kid. The camp had recently been under fire as a counselor had been accused of molesting a camper.
Lowenthal writes about being the object of an adolescent camper’s crush. And his own attraction to teenage boys.
I was impressed with Lowenthal’s bravery to “go there” and write about a complicated, potentially dangerous subject. He handles it deftly, with empathy and precision. It’s beautiful and has my vote for Best American Essays 2018.
I love that quote. Here’s my other favorite Pippi saying:
“Don’t you worry about me. I’ll always come out on top.”
I’m re-reading this for an upcoming writing project. I loved Pippi Longstocking as a kid, but I didn’t really remember why. I knew I loved that she had her own house and could do whatever she wanted. There was something about her natural affinity for independence that I found appealing and familiar as a child. As an adult, I appreciate her resilience. She wasn’t independent just because she had her own house and horse. She was independent because she had to be. She found a way to be happy and goofy despite all her loneliness, loss, and need.
Every writer I know loves this book. It’s Anne’s funny-fueled guide to writing and life, because usually the lessons for both overlap. Like, perfectionism is a dream killer. So is procrastination.
In fact, our human (and particularly writerly) tendency to procrastinate when we’re overwhelmed was what led to the anecdote that’s inspiration for her book’s title.
“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brothers shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”
As a kid, when a soft spring gently moved aside for its showy sibling summer, like a cloud rolling on to its next destination, we’d pull up the box fans from the basement.
They’d be dusty with skin and sweat from the year before, as well as whatever accumulated on them while they sat on ice for the winter. These reserve soldiers were a sign that summer, finally!, was here. Let the fun begin.
Each bedroom would be curated to hold their rickety form, crunched into a carpet, battled over for the best position of glorious, magical air flow toward one of two kids’ beds. This worked best, meaning a resolution was most peacefully acquired, in the girls’ room when my sister and I got bunk beds and the box fan could spend its season in the sun sitting on the thigh-high vanity we shared. Direct hits for both sleepers.
The sound of a box fan. That constant whir. That restless hum. It’s a lullaby.
Recently, Justin and I got a hyper quiet, new-fangled fancy fan. FIVE TIMES THE AIR FLOW. QUIET QUIET QUIET!
But tonight, for some reason, I turned it off and found myself pulling out our own dusty box fan and clunked it to our bedroom. It’s not so much the old-school style breeze I was searching for. It was the sound.
I have a distinct memory of one childhood summer night, sticky with sweat and anticipation. I couldn’t sleep. The next day was our show day at the county fair. The box fan kept me company as I lay wide awake, as restless as that hum, dreaming of the next day.
Maybe that’s why I pulled it out tonight instead of any other. Tomorrow I go home to Ohio.
I’ve found this one sentence particularly helpful during a buck wild week of blowing my capacity levels by a country and city and outer space mile. … And also reading writers a million times better than me, which is wonderful but also makes one feel like getting a day job back sometimes, ya know?
God speed, friends.
Anne Lamott from “Bird by Bird”:
“The only thing to do when the sense of dread and low self-esteem tells you that you are not up to this is to wear it down by getting a little work done every day.”
Involvement Series by Wanda Pimentel, 1968-69, vinyl on canvas
Brazilian artist Wanda Pimentel began her series titled “Envolvimento” (or Involvement) in 1968, the year the country’s military dictatorship decreed one of 17 major institutional acts that gave the regime authoritarian rule and mostly threw judicial review in the can.
So, her dissent of the country’s politics and violence toward the powerless had to be somewhat veiled lest she and her work face censorship… or worse. At the same time, in other places across the world, pop art and nouveau realism were rubbing their graphically shaped stones together and making lots of boldly saturated sparks.
In the Involvement Series, Pimentel painted in vibrant colors but a reduced palette. Her flat scenes uncomfortably cram together interior objects, from which there seems to be no escape. Body parts hint at the humans in the rooms, but their disembodied, naked status comment on the feeling that humans can be props, just like the objects of consumerism they use and discard, use and discard.
“Everyday objects crowd compressed interiors and suggest acts of corresponding domestic labor. Figures are fragmented,” states the AIC placard. “In this canvas, two disembodied feet emerge below the red ironing board. Their owner is otherwise only indicated by the closet full of blouses and the ready iron, the trappings of consumer culture through which we assume and care for our external appearances.”
Trouble inside. Trouble out.
But there’s some exciting expression in the series too, again subliminally disguised. “Messy piles of clothing, pools of spilled liquid and slowly dripping faucets seem to reflect the recent collapse of the political order, but also the excitement of sexual self-discovery,” writes Frieze.
E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G in Ricky Gervais’ new Netflix special “Humanity”
Ricky’s thoughts on free speech (and the left’s weirdly ironic recent infringement on it), people, and the wild weird world of Twitter trolls is so cathartic.
“That’s what the world is like. People take everything personally. They think the world revolves around them, particularly on Twitter. I’m not tweeting anyone, I’m just tweeting. I don’t know who’s following me. I’ve got 12 million followers. They can be following me without me knowing, choose to read my tweet, and then take that personally. That’s like going into a town square, seeing a big noticeboard saying “Guitar lessons”, and you go, “But I don’t fucking want guitar lessons!” What’s this? There’s a number here. Right, call that. Are you giving guitar lessons? I don’t fucking want any! Fine! It’s not for you, then. Just walk away. Don’t worry about it.” From “Humanity” by Ricky Gervais
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“I am poisoned with the rage of song.” From “Orion Dead” by H.D.
“Good as Hell” by Lizzo
I kind of forgot about this song until I saw it in a scene from the movie “Blockers,” a charming new comedy starring John Cena, Leslie Mann and the best Uber joke I’ve ever heard thanks in part, fittingly, to its perfect timing. Anyway, this song is so fun and feels as good as summer, ice cream and self-love taste!
This sweet snack
As I try to eat better and quit smoking (adfljkadf!!!), I fend off sugar cravings with this simple-to-make snack: two apples cut in fours, slathered in JIF natural creamy peanut butter (“Moms like you, as well as recovering addicts, choose JIF, choooOOOOose JIF!”), sprinkled with Viki’s blueberry almond granola.
Pro tip: This tastes 5% better when granola is sprinkled on a la Salt Bae.
This drawing by my nephew
I haven’t much time to find more to love this month. I’ve been working my little tail off more than usual in preparation for some time off ahead.
So much so I won April’s Family Member of the Month Award!
I guess I love that I am able to get work that supports me and my family, work that is adjacent to other things I love and requires a skill I am ever thankful to have and be good at. But that doesn’t make for a fun post.
So here’s this shark attack drawing by my 10-year-old nephew that I keep on my bulletin board by my office computer. He showed me this via FaceTime one evening. I was so impressed by it, I asked my sister to save it for me:
Look at this god damn Renaissance-y masterpiece; there’s so much happening in it. I look at it a lot while I’m working. It reminds me to play. To have fun. To be creative. To do what I love and, oh yeah, tell the people I love I said hi despite a mounting to-do list.
Also it reminds me of this: Never enter shark infested water without a badass robot submarine that can shoot spears while effortlessly arm wrestling a hammerhead into cat food.
Michael McCormack’s new book, Born Fanatic: My Life in the Grip of the NFL, began as a letter of complaint to his father, who was a world champion football player (Cleveland ftw! For once!), NFL coach, and hall of famer also named Michael McCormack.
But he never envisioned what writing his story would turn into: A balm of healing for some of the wounds left behind by their dissonant relationship.
Similarly, Born Fanatic is a football memoir, but it’s much more than that. It’s a tale of father and son, country and game, money and love, addiction and recovery.
McCormack’s painfully honest retelling of his family’s football fanaticism and his father’s abuse and its influence on his own addiction is destined to pay that healing forward. Readers will find threads of their own story woven throughout the tough pigskin of his.
It will also offer hope. The pair slowly began to mend their relationship through their undying love of football. As McCormack wrote, he began to understand his father better. In this is an important lesson: Forgiveness doesn’t have to mean you think what happened was OK.
Set for release on April 24, get your pre-order today. I watch football for the tight pants and still found a lot to love in this book. McCormack, who works as a lawyer, writer and speaker in Seattle, answered a few questions about the book in anticipation of its release.
He signed off his email, “Be well.” I think he wants that for everyone.
***
Why was telling the story in this book important to you?
I didn’t set out to write a memoir. Rather, in the aftermath of my father’s death, I ramped up my journaling, trying to sort out life-long confusion, pain and anger. Then, several off-field pro football stories motived me to consider the work as a memoir told from the perspective of an uber-fan. Even once I started down that path, I had no idea where I would end up.
Now in the aftermath, I’m reminded of a metaphor to help explain what’s become most important to share: Providence puts a diamond in our pocket because it knows that’s the last place we’ll look. In the challenge of searching for it, we learn to treasure it more. I’m moved to share how my search unfolded and what my diamond turned out to be.
The prologue of your book is really powerful and, I think, relatable for many even for those without football playing dads. What was the most difficult part of writing about your relationship with your father?
Writing it meant feeling it. All of it. That included feeling my own complicity and dysfunction as a son, a football fan, and a person. I couldn’t have written the book without facing up to some responsibility, but there were many, many moments when I REALLY didn’t want to do that. I came close a couple times to deleting all saved versions of the manuscript and burning all paper copies.
What was the most rewarding experience or outcome for you of writing this book?
The most rewarding experience was the most surprising, namely that in writing, I discovered forgiveness. That discovery led to the diamond in my pocket. That is, my father’s legacy and what I intend will be my own.
This family football story is such an American story… especially for the generations we see in this book and the way family history impacts us in the present every day. Do you have any anxiety about the book being published or are do you feel excited to share this story?
I have felt a lot of both, anxiety and excitement, over the past year as we prepare to publish. Sharing the project with my mother and siblings was not easy, and that’s still a source of heartbreak for me, as the memoir displays. But the anxiety and excitement have given way to something more valuable: gratitude. I’m grateful for what I’ve learned about myself and my father. In terms of publishing the book, I’m grateful for the people with whom I’ve worked and for the conversations with fans, media, and journalists like you. If we don’t sell a single copy, it was worth every drop of blood, sweat, and tears.
What do you think is the general public’s greatest misunderstanding about addiction?
Understanding that I’m no clinical expert, and there’s a lot to unpack here, I offer this from personal experience. Addiction does not come from a desire to use per se. It comes from having only two choices: Use or Die. Within the throws of addiction, the option to live a full life free of substance abuse isn’t on the table. Life in that sense is a blind spot altogether.
PS – Fanaticism at its most extreme is an addiction.
I think one of the most difficult elements of writing real stories is knowing what parts of the story to include or not include. How did you edit down or decide on what scenes to include in this book?
Spot on observation! At one point, the memoir was twice as long as it is now. That was two years ago, and after two years of work. I was certain at that time I was finished. I walked away for a week, came back to the manuscript and realized I was not done for the very reason implied by your good question. With the help of a patient and persistent editor (Bryan Tomasovich of The Publishing World), I lashed myself to the mast of one theme: the relationship triangle between my father, pro football, and me. Everything not explicitly within that theme had to go. Looking back over the last two years, I bet I undertook that process of walking away, returning, then cutting fifty times more after I was certain the book was done.
Do you have a daily writing routine or schedule when you were working on this book? If so, what is it and how does this help you get the work done? (Basically, we fellow writers love any advice on getting the job done!)
I had to stick with my day job as an attorney. And even though that involves a lot of writing, it’s a much different style, which was not helpful. So, finding a routine for creative writing proved difficult for a while. Things flipped when I committed to making my creativity the most important thing in my life. As soon as I woke (sometimes, many times, at 3 a.m.), my personal writing came first. It also helped when I quit judging the quality of the words when they first hit the page. I would just write, then organize and clean it up later. I also tacked to the wall a quote I found on the internet: It’s not that good writers have a particular gift. They just write. A lot.
What has been inspiring you lately?
Wood, water, stone, air, and fire. My wife and I are on the cusp of an empty nest after raising five kids. So, I have more time for listening to nature. I want and need more of that.
If you could invite three people, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would they be and why?
Abraham Lincoln has always been at the top of my list for questions like this. According to history, he overcame a lot of failure in business and politics. He was challenged by depression. And yet despite those challenges – or maybe because of them – he made obviously positive contributions to a greater cause.
Second, I’ll pick Brazilian writer Paulo Cohelo, author of The Alchemist, an all-time favorite, although I’m most smitten with his work The Fifth Mountain. I would have to learn Portuguese though, I bet.
Last, I would invite my father. He and I have some unfinished business.
Something I’ve had to come to terms with in sobriety is that I can’t “have fun” in the ways in which I used to. Parties are pretty boring to me now. Womp, womp. My first couple years sober, this was challenging. I had to find new ways to let myself escape or enjoy life beyond the basics. I didn’t do a very good job of it.
So my goal for year three (which I enter next week!) was to invest in some things that could be fun for me. I know, planned fun sounds the least fun, but it was an important step. Here are three things I put the money saved not drinking toward that have proved worth every penny. You might enjoy them to, cocktail in hand or not.
MoviePass
It works like this: For $100 a year, I get to go to one movie a day in a participating theater. Participating is a key word here. You can only use MoviePass at theaters that accept it, but in Chicago, there are a lot of them.
Through the app on your phone, you check into the theater around the time the movie starts. Then you use the MoviePass card, which looks like a credit card, to “purchase” your ticket in the theater.
Justin and I got our MoviePasses in February and they’ve almost already paid for themselves. We’ve seen Annihilation, The Death of Stalin, Black Panther, A Quiet Place, and a few others. In 2017 we probably only went to watch a movie in the theaters once. (It was Fast and Furious, Justin’s pick, and we, ironically enough, got rear ended on our way home afterward.)
I love that MoviePass puts dinner and a movie into our date night rotation. Seeing movies on the big screen is so fun! But not when you have to stomach the sometimes $13 entry fee. Going to movies now feels like we’re going for free–and soon we pretty much will be.
Also, there’s something to be said for sitting in a theater with the phone off and your attention focused only on one thing. And it’ll be wonderful once summer hits and we can go watch a movie in the air conditioning after a day spent sweating it out in the sun.
Art Institute of Chicago Membership
OK, also $100 a year, but for $20 a pop if I wanted to visit as a Normal, it’s been worth every penny. Plus, it supports an organization I believe in, so can’t go wrong there.
Having my AIC membership gets me early access to exhibition viewing, and I don’t have to wait in the ticket line, which was a particularly beautiful experience when I went last weekend and it was f-f-f-freezing outside, where the general admission line draped.
This “basically free” entry means I go to the galleries a lot more. It too has already paid for itself and it’s not even May. Plus, that place is huge, so I don’t feel rushed or overwhelmed with trying to see everything just to get my twenty bucks worth.
And here’s the bonus: I get another adult in for free with me. When I have out-of-town visitors, it’s number one on our must-do list.
Oh also: Free coat and bag check, suckas!
Magazine subscriptions
In my 20s, when I had little to zero disposable income (thanks, student loans/ binge drinking!), magazines seemed like a frivolous expense. Ouch, goes my magazine journalism degree.
So for Christmas last year I bought myself yearly subs to three things: The Atlantic, Creative Nonfiction, and InStyle. ‘Cuz I’m a fancy bitch.
Nothing screams THIS IS ADULT FUN quite like creaking open my rusty apartment mailbox to find printed treasure awaiting inside.
The dark horse favorite has been InStyle. I don’t need/want all the stuff they try to sell me in there, but it’s inspirational, aspirational, sobriety-reaffirming in reading about and seeing women who seemingly have their shit together, even if it’s only that they know how to put a together a dope outfit.
I had to add Clarissa Goenawan’s new novel “Rainbirds” to my list of books to read this month because I somehow got an early-enough library hold on it and the next library patron in line WAS GOING TO HAVE TO PRY IT AWAY FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS.
Speaking of cold dead hands. The book is about a newly minted college graduate who lives in Tokyo. His older sister was just murdered in the small, mysterious town that she moved to about 10 years prior. He goes to the community to gather her things but ends up taking her teaching role and living in her old room, which, by the way, is in a creepy mansion that belongs to a suspiciously cold politician. Oh, and his wife. Who doesn’t speak. And stays in bed all day. And their daughter died mysteriously.
It’s excellent so far, and I recently skipped to the back of the book (careful not to catch a glimpse of any words of the last few chapters, lest a big reveal be exposed!) to see if she had written any acknowledgements.
I love reading author acknowledgment pages. They’re more in-depth than a front-of-the-book dedication and often give some clues or insights into the author’s personality or writing process. I love when they feel a little loopy or giddy; like the writer just can’t believe they pulled this huge feat off and are, justifiably so, as happy and as exhausted and as over it as they’ve ever been.
If a great story ending is a free piece of gum at the bottom of the Cracker Jacks, the acknowledgement page is the cartoon folded in the gum packaging.
Clarissa didn’t have an acknowledgement page, though. Instead she had an author’s note, a variety of which I was unfamiliar and, thus, presently surprised. It told me a story about her. And reminded me why I read.
Enjoy (then go wait in line to get the book to read “Rainbirds”!):
“I used to read a lot as a kid–at least a book a day. I would spend my recess periods in the library with my best friend. I loved getting lost in the new and fascinating world of each story, and I knew I wanted to be a writer.
However, when I went off to college, studies became my priority. As I struggled with mounting academic work, I no longer picked up books I hadn’t been assigned. By the time I began my first job in marketing, reading had become a thing of the past.
Then, one day, a colleague recommended a book to me. ‘I’ll lend you my copy,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’d like it.’
I politely turned him down. ‘I don’t have time to read.’
But he insisted I give it a try, so I relented.
That book ended up changing my life. It rekindled the wonder I’d once felt, and the dream I’d once had.
Thank you for picking up ‘Rainbirds’. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. And if you have, I ask that you share it with someone. A friend, a family member, or a colleague–especially one who has not been reading for quite some time.”
So this guy, Otis Kaye, lost all his savings in the stock market crash of 1929. This loss had to have pissed him off or at least left him a little numb to and/or disillusioned by the financial world’s proclamations of glory, right? Right. He began making more and more forms of currency—coins, bills, etc.—the focus of his incredibly detailed paintings.
Decades later, in 1963, he created this oil on canvas masterpiece, “Heart of the Matter.” It “represents Rembrandt’s ‘Aristotle with a Bust of Home’ (1653)—which had been purchased two years earlier by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for a record-breaking price—torn into pieces and surrounded by and even interlaced with money,” according to the Art Institute of Chicago’s placard by the painting. “At the very center appears a suspended stack of bills; the ‘heart of the matter’ is thus the close connection between art and commerce.”
Now, before you go judging the irony of an artwork with these anti-capitalist undertones now living in an art museum itself, consider this: It was given to the AIC as a gift by Anonymous.
Me + “Heart of the Matter” + my heart… of all matters.
File this under “Books I’ve Been Meaning to Read for a Really Long Time.” Long time meaning 2016, when this autobiography came out. As I write about the song “Born to Run” for a side hustle project, now seemed like the perfect time.
I love Springsteen’s lyrics and it’s no surprise this book has been enjoyable for me, though a lot of the recounting of technical musicianing and craftsmanship is over my head—so over it I skip. Here’s one of my favorite passages thus far (it’s a chunky lil tome… he has had quite a life and quite a story, after all). In this quote, he’s talking about writing the song “Born in the USA,” which he also said “remains one of my greatest and most misunderstood pieces of music”:
“I knew it was one of the best things I’d ever done. It was a GI blues, the verses an accounting, the choruses a declaration of one sure thing that could not be denied… birthplace. Birthplace, and the right to all of the blood, confusion, blessings and grace that come with it. Having paid body and soul, you have earned, many times over, the right to claim and shape your piece of home ground.”
Oh la la! A novel that’s billed as “a novel in clues”!
The Severys are a family of genius mathematicians and a few normies, like Hazel, our main protagonist and the adopted granddaughter of the title’s Isaac. After his mysterious death, Hazel gets a letter in the mail from him, with a message that he was murdered and the directive that he’s counting on her, of all people, to destroy the last of his work.
This book is turning out to be more about family drama and the brokenness inherent in the bonds of love more than a murder mystery. But it has its pros, despite, I think, its brain-teasey marketing pitch: Nova Jacobs writes lovely descriptions and there are bits of wisdom—non-mathematical, praise be—woven throughout. As the estranged, bitter Aunt Paige says:
“Your generation could stand to live in the pursuit a bit more. You’re all rushed to get to the end. To succeed. … It’s an empty way to live, in constant pursuit of the trophy.”
I picked this up at the Chicago Women in Publishing conference at the end of March. Columbia College Chicago was there recruiting for its MFA in writing program. You can read Punctuate. (as well as author interviews, book reviews, and other writerly goodies) here.
