"Goodbye To All That "
Joan Didion
The Electronic Typewriter


This piece felt immensely more descriptive than anything I have read so far by Eula Biss. Didion uses strong sensory details-- "I could taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on my legs and I could smell lilac and garbage and expensive perfume."  The voice is self savvy while still claiming innocence and questioning the world. She asks questions and makes statements on matters thought to be understood but never mentioned-- "I know now that almost everyone wonders something like that, sooner or later and no matter what he or she is doing, but one of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before."



The  essay is  written in retrospection so while the reader is following Didion as she grows to understand New York they are aware in a tonal sense where the essay is headed. It is formatted chronologically as she changes and experiences different parts of city life. Though the story isn't one continuous the sections and thought process are told through a rising action formula.
Questions:
Quotes:
When I first saw New York I was twenty, and it was summertime, and I got off a DC-7 at the old Idlewild temporary terminal in a new dress which had seemed very smart in Sacramento but seemed less smart already, even in the old Idlewild temporary terminal, and the warm air smelled of mildew and some instinct, programmed by all the movies I had ever seen and all the songs I had ever read about New York, informed me that it would never be quite the same again


What specifically happened at the end? Does she blame NY for her depression?
Why did she initially decide to move to NY

I could write a syndicated column for teenagers under the name “Debbi Lynn” or I could smuggle gold into India or I could become a $100 call girl, and none of would matter.

 It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself. To think of “living” there was to reduce the miraculous to the mundane; one does not “live” at Xanadu.

Scenes and Sound

The boy driving is a maniac. He his gangly and bordering on sickeningly skinny. He has hair that bounces up to brush the ceiling of the car. His black springs press against cigarette burns on the fabric-y interior. I feel justified in proclaiming him nuts since he is my best female friends ex- fling. He was a tornado of intellect and anger. The other two boys in the car could combine to make him. One equally skinny and dark and the other small and hobbit-ish but with thick tumbling hair and a charming face. I sit my knees nearly hitting my chin trying to contort around the limited leg room hair whipping into the face of the boy, the stocky one, Andrew, next to me. The windows are done because there is a heat wave oozing through the east coast and the air conditioning in the car is broken. The music is everything around us. It is turned up past maximum to challenge the barking wind and tired motors of cars on the highway. Brandon had called me and asked if I wanted to drive to Hershey. There is nothing to do in Hershey we are driving the hour and a half there to drive the hour and a half back. I said yes because slow sloppy summer days were piling up and I needed something to do for the memory.

Dinner at my Aunts

I feel blurry with food. Rice has expanded in my stomach and is inching its way up my torso. The curry has made me ache with thirst but there is no room left for water. A handful of other people spill over comfortably tattered armchairs and dog haired couches echoing my feelings. Rugs and thick magazines and pottery clutter the space.  I burble something about the movies I saw over the weekend and there is a smattering of generic responses. My conversation attempt dissipates into a wisp of smoke melding with the steam from the fire place.  I try again true to form perpetually uncomfortable with silence even with these people who I have grown up with, some with whom I share blood.

"I am auditing a class"

 My Aunt shifts and the moment settles on her. I am my mothers daughter and she is my mothers sisters. She too is itched by the need for the comfort of something verbal.

"Wow, why don't you take it as a normal class? Who teaches it? Did you buy the textbook? Suzanne might have the textbook? You probably don't even need the textbook? What other classes do you have?

Feeling mentally at ease with the sea of questions I answer as my mother does . I tell her where I think of living next year and whom with. The words don't matter so much as the audibility. The lack of I imidiate family is strongest here, with my aunt and uncle. The Goshen Students from my Lancaster Church congregation invited over for Indian food. My aunt tattles about her sons son, their first grandchild.

" I just got a photo she took with a Polaroid camera. Can you imagine she has a Polaroid. She bought it at a flea market they have tons of those in the area around her house. They have gorgeous handmade crafts..."

I am content with my stomach full of rice and my ears full of words.

Land Mines
Eula Biss
Notes From No Man's Land

I connected least with this story out of all of the ones I have read by Biss so far. While in the past I have praised her braided technique I felt this one was disjointed and compartmentalized. The pieces of history on the emancipation felt forced. That could be perhaps the story for once was nearly one whole tale. The topic was focused solely on the education of children and the teachers part and desegregation. The story would have worked better with just one section or with more such as the previous essay's. The stories on teaching were all drawn from personal experience or hearsay and the historical portions were all purely factual which also could have lead to the fractured feeling.

The piece is broken into 9 blocked sections with paragraphs within each section but the breaks are less obvious then "Three Songs of Salvation"

An overarching theme is fear of the innocent. Before African Americans and children are given the opportunity to be shaped and molded with societal norms there is greater chance of actions that people cant understand and with that lack of understanding comes fear. She also comments "They are aware of injustices we have learned to ignore."

Questions:

How did Biss move from teaching to writing?
Does she have any of those inspiring teacher stories or had her experience teaching been wholly negative as the essay has led the reader to believe?

Three Songs of Salvage

Eula Biss

Notes From No Man's Land

The piece is divided into three sections. The first is about keeping track of ones life. What is worth remembering and how does one wish to remember it? With emotions? With facts? The second is about her mothers enthusiasm and whole bodied devotion to the Yoruba tradition and the last is about loss and reclaiming either a new form of the lost or something new all together. The three sections are tied to together through quotations from religious pamphlets Biss has been handed while on the street and descriptions of those who publicly advertise and sell spirituality.

Biss is able to grasp some fundamental ideas of what religion means to people through unconventional means. She juxtaposes the people who hope to help her find salvation through God pamphlets with how she actually came to understand it. "The more distance my mother put between herself and what she knew, between her mind and the words it understood, the closer she felt to the unponderable."

Compared to the other pieces of Biss's I have read this far this one is significantly more personal. Even the more factual elements, quotations from pamphlets and the history of relatives, come from her life.  The essay is wonderfully descriptive. Biss uses imagery since her thesis seems to be that experience is where spirituality comes from she places the reader in the moments she has had in order for them to grasp her full understanding. "We watched the drummers sweat and the dancers shake, and we ate salty beans and rice with the other kids."

Questions:
Why did she begin collecting the pamphlets she had been handed?
How did her mother come accross the Yoruba tradition?

A Place

Our Veranda had white concrete floors, it had long, horizontal long, smoggy windows. They were always open. It was bright light in there. A glossy sun warmth warped the hard white room. A blue-green circular woven carpet was supposed to be in the center of the room but was constantly scooting one way or the other. My brother's and I's pulsing, pushing feet bunched it this way and that. There was a small red table, with two small red chairs. The table was sized for children 8 and younger. It was always sticky with the glue not thick enough to pull off. I would squirt Elmers glue on the table and wait for it to harden. Tugging the the gooey white bubbles from the table was so satisfying. The cornerstone of the room was a tepee. It was a conglomeration of beige's. The pointy top had a little tuft of straw poking out. It was supposed to be authentic. A hole is carved out the side I have to drop to all fours to scramble in. Inside it is a furry sanctum. The light is splintered, probing through the thin material. Stuffed animals, blankets, and pillows are piled three thirds of the way up, some spill out the opening. It is always hot and we don't have air conditioning so the fluff of the objects is slightly matted by humidity and the sweat of my brother and me. It isn't complete comfortable in there not just because of the moisture but because of the books we drag in. The corners of Make Way for Ducklings and The Very Hungry Caterpillar jab in your neck and behind your knees.

Young Adult

Where's Waldo

My parents brag that I could find Waldo at 16 months. It sounds accomplished. Makes them seem accomplished by the transitive property.

Little House on the Prairie

 My dad read to me every night sitting on the floor by my bed. I would peer from a hole in my nest of turned-grey teddy bears and beanie babies with tags still on because they were going to be “worth something someday.” I liked seeing the words while he read. I couldn’t read ahead but the visual aid of the slick sliding words relaxed me. Sometimes I would pop a hand out from the pile and rub my dad’s head. I didn’t particularly like the feel of his stubbly hair but he liked head rubs. He read to me every night until high school.

The Giver

My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Pyle, loved loaning me books. It was okay, though, because in fourth grade it was still cool for the teacher to like you. I think she thought she was keeping me away from drugs. She loaned me The Giver. I read it sitting in a musky, army green armchair in my Grandmother's basement. I cried and cried. I had no control since confusion was making me cry, not sadness--confusion that wouldn’t let me process how to stop the tears. I didn’t read the last couple chapters of the book till 5 years later. It was the closest i'd come to not finishing a book.

Algebra 1

I was on the cusp of young adult literature; teachers no longer applauded me for consuming books with secondary characters, subplots, and symbolism. Books with chapters were no longer "chapter books" they were novels. I was transitioning from "some pig" and magic tree houses to broken families and self harm. I was fascinated by books on the Hollocaust. I wondered if that made me a bad person. No one had ever told me if it was wrong to watch people die in your mind. I read bulky paperbacks bent into my math textbooks never got in trouble. I 

The Princess Bride

Favorites were very important in middle school. The term “best friend” is a pact not with just said friend, but with the society of adolescence. My best friend was- Milena, my favorite movie was Dirty Dancing, my favorite book had been A Wrinkle in Time. When I finished The Princess Bride I went through the turbulent process of changing loyalties. I took pride in my favorites they made me feel self- actualized.

The Hobbit

A neighborhood boy and I were playing the messy game of self-aware pre-dating. We would have sharp moments of talk, bursting laughter, and stinging silence.  I told him my favorite book was The Princess Bride, it was a book with enough quirk that I thought I came off as open and sophisticated. His was The Hobbit. I hadn’t read it so the conversation bumbled back to The Princess Bride. The boy said he had read it and thought it was funny how some people thought that the author was being truthful during the personal anecdotes. I had thought that the author was truthful. I felt dumb and lied to. 

Breakfast of Champions

The summer after high school graduation I fell in love with Kurt Vonnegut.  I worked at a warehouse and spent eight hours a day counting merchandise-- earrings, love god statues, marble geese-- into recycled chicken crates.  My co-workers were special needs adults and volunteers from an assisted living home for the elderly. Ricky volunteered from 2-5 on Wednesdays. He would tug a scratchy stool over to my work table and smear price stickers onto items while I processed them. Ricky had a large face, he had a wife that proposed to him when he was 21 and was supposed to have three children but she hadn’t worn her seat belt. I spent every break reading-- J.D. Salinger, Chuck Palahniuk, Khaled Hosseini—and Ricky noticed. He gave me a tired back broken copy of Breakfast of Champions. He asked every Wednesday how I was liking it. I told him it was eloquent and inspiring, I think he knew I wasn’t reading it. I finally read it my first week of college. The people and social life I had been told would dominate my time hadn't appeared yet. So instead I fell in love. I used my complimentary college pen to etch "So it goes" and "Etc." onto the crease in my elbow. I was flirting with the idea of a tattoo. I knew I didn't yet have the commitment capabilities but I also knew someday I could.

Relations
Eula Biss
Notes from No Man's Land

The format of this essay seemed to closely parallel the first essay I read by Biss "Time and Distance Overcome." Both began with engrossing stories that transition into her main point in unexpected ways. I didn't expect the custody battle over a child to turn into a race issue that pulled on past feelings of slavery and ownership. I would love to find a overarching topic that can be used to draw force a variety of personal experience and clinching historical events and stories like Biss is able to do. She connects memories of her mother, living in different areas of New York with her cousin, a mixed race women, census's, doll studies, and twins all within this one essay and yet until I wrote that I hadn't noticed how many topics she covered. She moves form one to another so seamlessly it seems like the natural course the thought process would go. She keeps the reader hooked by braiding the topics through each other and beginning the next anecdote before concluding the one she was on.

I drew enjoyment from Biss's unexpected humor. She brought forth a inquisitive and relatable voice. For example she threw in statements such as "there is something moving to me now about the idea of that man, who left Germany in the 1920s, just as the Nazi party was gathering power, laboring at his lathe, perfecting the fancy legs of a maple dining table for a beloved toy known as Black Doll."

Questions:

How does she find stories such as the one of the mother who had biologically unrelated twins?
In her personal stories how much does she rely on emotional truth?

Introduction
Ira Glass
The New Kings of Nonfiction

I grew up with Ira Glass. He narrated errands with my mother and drives to youth group in the next burrough over. He is through and through a story teller. In his writing you can feel his excitement at sharing with the readers all the stories he has collected. Every time he mentions a story or an author included in the larger text he has to give the reader a brief synopsis. Glass is able to make a story enticing in just a few lines-- "Coco Henson Scales describes what happens inside a trendy New York restaurant and-- even more interesting-- inside her head as the hostess there. in her story, celebrities show up and preform  exactly as you'd want them to, but never get to see in print. it is possibly the greatest New York Times "Styles Section" feature that will ever be written." I found his melding of personal thoughts on creative nonfiction and specific excerpts to back up his claims very smooth. It worked well since he set a precedent for it from the beginning, he started with a story.

I love his advice on having empathy for ones subject. Give stories warmth. Glass informs the reader immediately on his take on Creative nonfiction. He thinks it can be informative and fun. His voice is strong and chatty as he states "Phooey" to all who think journalism should avoid amusing. I found his excitement contagious and after finishing the Introduction went on to skim the remainder of the book reading whole chunks from stories.

The piece is organized through different touchstones Glass sees essential in creative nonfiction going from entertainment to plot and ideas, then empathy for your subject.


Questions:

How did Glass end up at a place where he had the authority to edit a book on creative nonfiction?
How does he go about finding such unique stories?

On the Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting
Lee Gutkind
Creative Nonfiction

This essay took awhile to find its stride. Gutkind's voice didn't feel developed until he began to chronicle his life. I began to feel invested in his story once he began writing. His first college English class which hooked him on writing hooked me as a reader. The prologue and first section felt dry and informative without the spark of creative nonfiction he was championing. Some information was essential to set the stage of what people believed of creative nonfiction at the time but other pieces felt overdone. There was too much name dropping and details of authors and specifics I knew wouldn't reappear enough in the following sections to be worth my time.

I enjoyed the way he let us discover the magazine with him. Even though as readers we are aware of the ultimate outcome as we hold the 50th edition, he carries us along as he hunts for sponsors and submissions.

Tension is built well in the final scenes before he speaks at the AWP conference. The essay is mostly informative so the lengthier description within this section set it apart-- "so i walked around town and drank an extra coffee, with my heart literally pounding with anxiety."

If he had to what would Gutkinds simplest definition of creative nonfiction be?
What does he feel the current attitude to creative nonfiction is like?

Field Guide to Resisting Temptation
Sarah Wells
Brevity

Wells begins by creating a connection with the reader through mention of topical practices-- song lyrics on Facebook and Youtube music videos. I thought Well's divulging that the "you" was having an affair was brilliant. "When you think of something funny text it to your husband," she writes. This was such a subtle way to slip into what began as breakup angst that something larger was going on. I think that is what I would most like to mimic from this author, her ability to create tension. The story isn't suspense but she propels you through it by taking her time leaking exposition material. For example the line "Later they will know it wasn't , was you, all you. And him. And him" is so strong as information is slowly shared. The reader feels how the author both completely blames herself but also him. The blame isn't split but entirely whole for each of them.

I was captivated by the specifics in the world created-- "baked sweet potatoes and guacamole" doesn't just offer description but offer insight on the type of person the "you" is. She is someone how eats sweet potato fries over regular. That is a concerned person, someone who has planned in advance. 

I would like to question the author why she decided to use the second person. I am a fan of the third person but wonder what she thought it would add to her story. I would also like to know why in such a short essay she spent so many words setting the stage with the anecdote on online communicating.

Course Reading List

1) "Time and Distance Overcome"
Eula Biss
Notes from No Man's Land
Biss writes of lynching and the racial attitude in the early 20th century from the approach of the telephone poles used to hang them and the idea of a communication network that links the country.

2) "The Cruelty We Delivered: An Apology"
Ira Sukrungruang
Brevity
A man reminisces on his distance and cruelty to another child-- a boy who lived with his grandmother. This boy was mischievous and rowdy. The boy hung himself years later.

3)Old Habits
Laure Lynn Drummond
Brevity
A woman senses a fight about to break out between two men at a toy store. She steps between them and manages to stop it. She is an ex-cop.

4) Field Guide to Resisting Temptation
Sarah Wells
Brevity
A woman gives herself tips on how to avoid seeing the man she was cheating on her husband with. She attempts to rationalize it to herself.

5) On the Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting
Lee Gutkind
Creative Nonfiction
Gutkind assesses the temperament to creative nonfiction when it first started out and his own relationship with it as it led him to create the Creative Nonfiction Journal.

6) Introduction
Ira Glass
The New Kings of Nonfiction
An Introduction to Creative Nonfiction and the collection of essays Glass has compiled.

7) Relations
Eula Biss
Notes from No Man's Land
Race in relation to how society responds and reacts to the past history of extreme racism.

8)Goodbye to All That
Joan Didion
The Electronic Typewriter

9)Goodbye to All That
Eula Biss
Notes From No Man's Land

Dear Dad,

I fear it will disappoint you to know that my strongest memories of Bangladesh involve the American Club. I do remember the people. I have mental portraits, not scars, of loose skin, bare feet, eyelashes caked with fleas. Those images were my ordinary they were my way to school, they were windows, they were my front porch. The memory that stands out as my first one is one of the American Club we were part of. An unnaturally green oasis surrounded by walls shielding us from a dust world. I remember the shimmery blue pool that I would swim laps in, the chalky white diving board that taught me back flips, and the gnarly driftwood picnic tables where I would savor the reliability of the snack I would order whenever we were there. I know you remember the Shirley Temples because still it comes up sometimes. I haven't had one in years. I still I hate maraschino cherries. They used to settle still plump at among the ice at the bottom of my glass when I was finished. I would also get cloud candy. You and mom would never have had anything like this at home it was sticky and soft. I know now it was just cotton candy in disguise but it used to be a real cloud. You think I would have known better having flown through clouds, having watched them wisp away as the airplane cut through. I would daydream about the packaging about sitting on a cloud. Being somewhere downy and warm and bright with never ending spun sugar.

Love,

Elizabeth

My Family's Hips

My fathers hips are a little more than masculine. They are of the largeness that I associate with Dads. Dads are big in a way that other men and women are not. His stomach is not flat but doesn't sag or wobble likewise his hips are not the trim of youth but don't look like excess. My mother is a tiny women. I towered over her sooner then I would have chosen. She is delicate-- slender legs, dainty arms, small belly. Her hips are likewise small but for her body wide, baby hips. Jeans slide on my brother's narrow boy hips. Society has created in him a workout, body building, call of the wild so his tapered hips are not skinny but thick in a muscular lithe way.

My own hips were soft in middle school. They began widening in 9th grade, the flesh dispersing comfortably then straining.My hip bones press gently out the skin thin.  They poke noticeably through papery shirts. They sit below my waist above my thighs.

Earliest Memory

I am dripping with heat. Not sweat because it isn't the sticky heat that often winds around Dhaka but a sun heat, it glints. Water runs in rivulets down my calf's as my legs kick under the water weary picnic table. My swimsuit straps press into my shoulders and squeak when I reach for the my glass protesting against my back fat. The glass is chilled which my Mom tells me is something I should like. The street vendors always sell their soda warm and I have developed a palette for tepid beverages. I have a Shirley Temple and cloud candy. It is my regular at the American Club. The packaging for cloud candy is blue and crackly. The candy itself is pink. On the back of the wrapper is a picture of a skinny big mouthed girl on a pink cloud. There is the story of how cloud candy was discovered. This awkward child had the power of flight and flew up to a cloud to see what it was like. While chilling out on a cloud she happened to sample some of the puff and it was sweet and good so she grabbed hunks to bring back to earth for everyone to enjoy. I read and reread the story. I picture myself pigging out on a cloud. I like the idea. My belly rests happily on my thighs and I sip my Shirley Temple.

I have to be around four in this memory I have no idea if it is practical that I am reading at this age but I am sure I must have because neither of my parents have any recollection of anything called "cloud candy" though they do remember me ordering Shirley Temples.

I think I remember this because it is so different from what my life usually was. My family lived in a small cement house. We were surrounded by dust, people, and poverty. My parents tell stories about how my brother and I could have cared less were we where. They tell stories about us chasing sickly chickens for fun.This story is so different from that. It is about the ways that while we lived in a third world country we still had the capabilities to get away from all that even if for a little bit. We had a club we were apart of where we could order drinks with ice. I think I remember this because the contrast was so startling.

Time and Distance Overcome
Eula Biss
Notes From No Man's Land

1) The voice is very straight forward. Biss comes off as trustworthy because she doesn't flit around the subject. She doesn't pass judgement just states the words as they are and allows the reader to do with them what they may. "A postcard was made from the photo of a burned man hanging from a telephone pole in Texas, his legs were broken off below the knees and his arms curled up and blackened." Biss is descriptive but in a literal rather than flowery sense. The piece ends with a glimpse at Biss's own attitude but even then it is abstract and undemanding-- "Nothing is innocent' my sister reminds me. But nothing I like to think is unrepentant."

3) Biss paints an unnatural beauty to the telephone poles in one of the final paragraphs. The image is striking in comparison to the bleak world she has so far created. "I believed that the arc and swoop of the telephone wires along the the roadways was beautiful. I believed that the telephone poles, with their transformers catching the evening sun, were glorious."

6) Biss often writes in short lists. Paragraphs are full of snippets of related ideas such as different lynching cases. It is written like an investigative journal article and in a couple places newspapers and sources with authority are quoted. The paragraphs are equally short giving the essay an urgency.

7) There are two obvious sections to this piece. The beginning follows the creation of a telephone network focusing on the dissent to it. The second part is about the racial attitudes during the time, the lynching that took place, the bodies that hung from the telephone poles that so much controversy went into raising. I was thrown when the topic went from the chaos in resurrecting telephone poles to race riots. Biss makes the leap smoothly but it is still jarring when a topic you are invested in and feel the writer is invested in telling you about is swapped for another. The two pieces come together at the end when Biss shares her thoughts on the bipartisan nature of the telephone poles themselves.

8) There are two areas of this I would love to emulate. First off I would love to write a piece that winds creativity and story telling with facts. Which, incidentally is what creative non fiction is so I assume I will have ample opportunities to do that. Second, I admired how she to took seemingly unrelated topics and connected them in a way that felt at first unnerving but became natural by the end.

10) When and why did she come to connecting telephones and racial attitudes?
       Why did she chose to only turn to first person in the very conclusion of the essay?