I’d urge you not to use fiction as a vehicle for social engineering. Readers don’t need to be fixed or repaired. Instead, I’d remind you of Tom Spanbauer’s directive: Write about the moment after which everything was different.
A Postcard from the Tour
His coat wasn’t a coat you’d normally see at the Dollar Tree. That’s why I saw it. First in aisle seven at Candles, he appeared again in aisle four at Bath Products, the young man wearing a coat with a stand-up collar, like a little fence, like a wall around his neck. That and the length, a Dr. Zhivago length, hitting his legs below the knee. Then this coat walked around to aisle nine and stood at Household Fasteners. When it showed up in aisle eleven at Gift Wrap, then, then it had to be following me.
It’s a wonderful warm feeling, being watched and pretending you’re not aware of the attention. Being stalked, but in a nice way. It’s the opposite of being a suspected shoplifter, and I’ve had that feeling, too. Plenty of times. No, when you’re a public figure the feeling is like when you’re a little kid, demanding, “Mom, watch me! Mom, are you watching?” The eyes on you are a validation. They turn any ordinary errand—to buy a ribbon and a box to wrap a birthday present—into a graceful performance.
It used to be different. If a television interviewer needed B-roll footage. Told me to relax and walk casually across some grassy lawn, for example, my every step faltered. My arms flailed.
Anymore, the greedy, attention-whore part of me soaks up the spotlight. It bestows upon me a noble calm. Even at the Dollar Tree.
The remarkable coat stood just at the edge of my vision.
We all want to be pursued. The way every dog tries to get chased by other dogs at off-leash. Now the coat’s getting bigger until he’s standing at my elbow. My mouth prepares something gracious to say. Something self-effacing, maybe with dulcet tones of gratitude. These encounters always feel like you’re accepting an Academy Award.
One time, this one time in Barcelona with David Sedaris, I complained that I never knew what to say to readers who approached me. And Sedaris looked at me and shrugged. “Don’t say anything,” he told me. “You’ve shared so much with them through writing. When you meet a reader, it’s your turn to listen.”
David Sedaris
I prepared myself for the shower of accolades. The gushing.
“Mr. Palahniuk?” The coat guy. Young. Shorter than me. “I was at your reading at Broadway Books…”
He had to mean the first time we’d staged the Adult Bedtime Stories. We being Monica Drake, Chelsea Cain, Lidia Yuknavitch, and me. A sold-out crowd had come wearing pajamas and bathrobes as requested. A television station had shot a segment as we’d made everyone run a race around the block. For the Broadway Books event I’d ordered cases of oversize stuffed animals. Carnival-big giraffes. Amusement-park-prize big. Lions and white tigers and the like, so big they dwarfed the adults holding them. Chelsea had bought us all bunny slippers. It was a bitch to run down a sidewalk in bunny slippers.
I was listening.
“The day before that reading,” the coat guy said, “my brother had died.”
I was really listening.
“I was so close to him,” the man said. “I was in shock. But I had a ticket. I didn’t know what else to do. I just went.”
Those words reduced me to nothing but my ears.
“I didn’t know how I could go on with my life,” he said.
What to say wasn’t an issue. All I could do was listen.
“I was standing there,” the man said, “and you gave me a giant stuffed penguin.” He smiled. “Then I saw that life still had some surprises left. Good things could still happen to me.”
Tom always told us, “Write about the moment after which everything is different.”
Our lives are saved by such ridiculous moments. Language isn’t any help. Especially the words part.
Maybe we shook hands then. Who knows? I’m sure we shook hands. A transcendent moment was taking place in the Dollar Tree. Instead of being starry-eyed and tongue-tied, this stranger was the gracious one. I sputtered and stammered. My throat, go figure, but my throat had gotten so tight. I needed to say something. I stood in shock.
He’d stolen my part.
“Language,” as Tom always taught us, “is our second language.”
The young man was about to walk away. Then he was walking away, aisle ten, aisle nine.
I called after him. I wanted to say, “Thank you.”
You have to talk, otherwise your head turns into a cemetery.
I called out, “That is a great coat!”
Reading List: Fiction
In the first writing workshop I attended we were required to read John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, which we never discussed or referred to in any way. Thank God. Its constant references to classic literature were lost on me. I’ve found that most writers fall into one of two camps. The first rise from academia and write gorgeous stuff with very little plot momentum or drive. The second camp of writers emerge from journalism and use simple, clear language to tell stories rich in action and tension.
My degree is in journalism. My method, journalistic. Instead of reading John Donne I was reading Jacqueline Susann. More people are well read in a lowbrow way, and I wanted this book to appeal to people swamped by books such as Gardner’s. Likewise, the fiction I suggest here will be mostly story collections and short novels. It’s easier to reverse-engineer short fiction. You can hold the total story in your mind and discover the purpose of every word.
In alphabetical order, they are:
Airships by Barry Hannah
Campfires of the Dead by Peter Christopher
Cathedral by Raymond Carver
Drown by Junot Díaz
Faraway Places by Tom Spanbauer
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland
Heartburn by Nora Ephron
Honored Guest: Stories by Joy Williams
Jesus’ Son by Denis
