J. Michael Lennon

J. Michael Lennon, longtime friend of Norman Mailer, a master editor and writer himself, Mailer's authorized biographer, and this last week of August and first few days of September the facilitator of the week-long creative non-fiction workshop at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony. A man of stentorian voice, "thunderstorm eyebrows," and the most expressive face I've ever seen - if you watched Mike talk but couldn't hear him, you would still get a very good idea of the emotional content of whatever it was he was talking about.

J.Michael Lennon, Mailer Center, Provincetown, MA September 2, 2011

Yet fear not - despite bearing a small resemblance to Boris Karloff & despite the suggestion of a latent volatility in his stern countenance, J. Michael Lennon is a generous, encouraging, perceptive instructor who conducts a hugely positive workshop. Thanks and praises to this man. Go hear him read, buy his books, study with him if you can.

Provincetown: Thoughts, Snippets, Recollections

No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better. (Fail Bigger).

"Prepare to make the imaginative leap. But you must be prepared to work and in particular to research. It is all about desire, stamina, perseverance."

For Gogol,  the true, unwritten last line of every story is: "And nothing was ever the same again."

Argh! Novel Panic! Beware! Beware!

Find the most obscure detail and make it yours! Find the small detail that reveals the wider world.

No ideas but in things. For example, what is "joy?" Joy is an idea (or an emotion). But how to represent joy? What "thing" might convey joy? How about a table of writers singing Irish drinking songs and show tune classics around Norman Mailer's dining room table on a Friday night in summertime after a week of hard workshopping? Yes! Carouse and tumult, song and toasts.

"I came home on a Tuesday night, as drunk as drunk could be ..."

"Is that bottle nailed to the table down there?!"

"Art is a way of coping with the world by bringing it under the microscope of detail."

"The specific must reveal the grand canvas."

What is the moment of the story?

Reflections on Colum McCann

Imp grin, eye twinkle, mirth and high jinx (he pick-pocketed a stranger's wallet because he could ... and then gave it back). Broad smiles, shouts, the wisdom of enthusiasm, an enthusiasm for wisdom.

Surfeit of empathy. The result of creating such realized characters? Because he can put himself in the shoes of his characters, it follows that he's able to put himself in the shoes of those with whom he interacts - workshop attendees, university students, friends, other writers, reference librarians.

Always send a thank-you note! The power of expressed gratitude.

Vast reading! A deep knowledge of the work of others. All week referencing particular works to illustrate a given discussion. He was familiar with just about all the authors & novels we brought up in discussions. Astounding! A small list:

Michael Ontaatje Coming Through Slaughter
Ann Michaels
Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Malantes
Peter Carey
DeLillo, in particular Underworld (he considers it the most important novel of the last 25 years)
Stoner by John Williams
Redemption Falls by Joseph O'Connor
Aleksander "Sasha" Hemon
Toni Morrison
Annie Dillard
Roddy Doyle for dialog

A force at the table! Songs songs songs. Fill the glass, raise your glass, give us a song! A poem! Give us a poem! Read the poets. When you're stuck, read the poets. As research for place/time/setting, read the poets.

Read Read READ. There is no substitute, no alternative, no shortcuts.

Standing on the street in front of the Mailer House waiting for the Gay & Lesbian Carnival Parade to come down Commercial Street, we talked. He rode a bicycle around the United States in 1986, from Massachusetts to Florida to New Orleans and into Mexico. This was before he'd published any fiction. He kept journals of the ride but has no intentions of publishing from them. He threw away scads of early written work as worthless, embarrassing. He admitted to doing the Kerouac thing - he actually bought a huge role of paper that he fed into his typewriter a la "the Scroll." His view on Kerouac today? Relevance has diminished with time. His favorite Kerouac is "The Dharma Bums." He called it "kind."

"I came home on a Thursday night, as drunk as drunk could be ..."

Firm handshake. Eye contact. No guile there. The glow of the Wide Embrace.

From Let the Great World Spin: "Good days, they come around the oddest corners."

Provincetown: Friday

Personal lesson of the week - even the wild improvisational Blow of Plenty requires quiet consideration.

Singing Each Other's Praises

Provincetown: Carnival

The Carnival Parade started at 3:00 and came right down Commercial St, from the East End to the West End. We stood in front of the Mailer House radiating good vibes. And taking the good vibes in.

Five Writers Waiting for a Parade

Colum and Caitlin

Galt, Sasha, Hercules, Hades, Ignu, Crepe and an Elephant

Derrida, Zydeco and Francois

Electric Craniums of Paz

Witch Bollocks

Assignment: Manifesto

Colum wants us all to write a manifesto. That's our assignment. He insists upon it. It's vague. He's given us quotes. It's about writing. A manifesto. By Friday. Tomorrow.

Provincetown Manifesto

Don't just look; see. Don't just see; feel. Don't just feel; understand.

Embrace gorging but be prepared to fast.

Remember that you're alive! Run amok! Then calm down and consider why it feels so good to run amok.

Be amazed by something everyday. Every fucking day. Reject boredom as a failure of the imagination. Consider boredom.

Question culture.

Never lie.

Remain intact.

Provincetown: Days 3 and 4

Back Deck, Mailer House

Time gets away. There's so much to do, conversations to have, quirky Provincetown streets and galleries to stroll, writing to be done. SO much writing to be done! You're here, you're 100% here, you can go to the Mailer House and sit in chairs that Mailer sat in and BE in the space that housed the Uncontainable, the Mailer Life Force. You exchange work with fellow attendees, discuss phrases, words, sentences, you exult about favorite writers, favorite books, you jot down names and titles that others love, you listen to Colum McCann like you're listening to Miles Davis or Thelonius Monk or Frank McCourt, you cannot NOT listen, you're rapt, mesmerized, awed, you absorb every word, every Irish-brogued pronunciation, you suddenly (or maybe gradually, but eventually) realize embrace admit the most important thing, the thing you've been avoiding, the thing that has terrified you and paralyzed you and daunted you and taunted you - you declare yourself a Writer.

***

All the attendees live in different types of quarters; small rooms in guest houses, or B&Bs on Commercial St or, in my case, in a three floor condo across rt. 6 (a shared condo). Voila - my workspace.

Condo Bedroom Office, #1 Seashore Park

Provincetown: Day 2

            From the Mailer Deck at Low Tide, August 18, 2010

Details! Details! Details! "The specific must reveal the grand canvas." And I think "No ideas but in things." 

Blakean minute particulars. "You are a guide in a foreign land."

And character. What did your character eat for breakfast? What did they want to eat for breakfast? And so on. The need to know each character. To really know them.

                Norman Mailer's Deck Chair, August, 2010

Provincetown: Day 1

Outstanding opening workshop, candor, Irish charisma, rules for writing, the Basics Who What When Where Why and How and what they Mean for the story the novel the Work. Perceptive reader commentary, individual insight proffered heard received. We sit around the large square table that is poorly lit. One whole wall of the room is glass and looks out onto Provincetown Bay. Colleagues sitting across the table are silhouetted against the window's light pour, become shadows, outlines. No lamps to fill the room's confines or suffuse the room from above. Though no matter finally. Everyone's engaged, no blather, bluster, blah. There is the Master, Colum McCann, and there are the nine of us, and we are all assembled in the home of the megalomaniac himself, Norman Mailer, the Colossus, the novel's Champion, our benefactor. We're walked upstairs to the third floor by Guy Wolf and shown Mailer's attic writing studio, a room in situ, an artifact placement, a preserved moment when Norman Mailer actually sat and wrote at this desk in this chair alone for the last time, that's what we see. The last throes of the Master's vibe in a room of his own. The papery shards of evidence, his handwriting. An animal skull of some kind. A toy soldier, Napoleon-like, standing defiantly, one leg on the ground and one propped on a miniature drum. A stone-carved rhinoceros figurine.

Later, after the afternoon session ends, cycle to Race Point and all around the dune roads and bicycle paths. The day started with rain but cleared as the day progressed. We're surrounded by the sea. This is the very tip of the peninsula, the last little lanes and mews on this eccentric spit of landscape. The dune wash. The shifting sands and light spill and vision games.

Arrival in Provincetown

Arrived in Provincetown this afternoon and checked in at the Norman Mail House at 4:00 to get my condo assignment and meet Jessica Zlotnicki, the liaison for the Norman Mailer Writers Colony workshops. Unfortunately for me, because I have a car, I've been slotted into a big condo on the other side of rt 6, at least a couple miles out of downtown. What's worse, I have a condo-mate, a guy named Paul from NJ. Not what I'd bargained for. I'd been imagining a quaint little writer's studio apartment where I'd cook delicious meals for myself, spread my stuff all over, keep odd hours, make mail art, and, most importantly, write. Instead, I'm in a summer condo rental, big yes but just more space to be shared. Being hyper-considerate, now I'm hesitant about making dishes, being too much in the kitchen, am self-conscious about drinking a beer (or more), about leaving my stuff around, etc.

BUT ... the workshop. That's the point of my being here at all. Tonight the nine attendees gathered at the Mailer House and met with Colum McCann. There are some very interesting people among us, accomplished ones as well, people who've published books, who work in publishing, who have literary resumes. I'm in the deep water now and need to remind myself that I can swim pretty well myself and not to worry. Among us is a UN international aid worker; a Black guy from Philadelphia who reminds me for all the world of Walter Mosely; a psychologist from Northampton; a gay Indian guy who works for HarperCollins. We all went around the table and talked a little about ourselves. At Colum's behest, we all noted who/what we like to read. When my turn came, I said I recently enjoyed reading Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives, that I'm reading the Ginbserg/Kerouac letters (just released), and that I was considering having a go at Infinite Jest (a comment that brought sighs and expressions of recognition, as if others had either read it or tried to).

Then there's Colum. Instant good vibe from him. Strikes me as very intelligent but with a round, sort of quilt-like intelligence, soft, not like, say, a whip smart debater's honed intellect. Colum has depth, intensity, is well-spoken, confident, obviously skilled at what he does, comfortable in the workshop setting (he teaches at a college in NY too). Really looking forward to listening to him this week. When he looks at you, he really looks right at you and talks right to you; no whiff of posture or pretense; sleeves rolled up, he has strong forearms.

Sunday night's first session is about an hour, mostly we decided who gets workshopped when. I'm up on day two. The schedule is: 2 stories worked tomorrow, 4 on Tuesday (of which I'm one), and 3 on Wednesday.

Oh, and I'm not the only one who brought an excerpt from a novel, I think two others have as well.

Memorial Day Weekend Musing

New England breathes easier this Saturday morning of Memorial Day Weekend - the Celtics closed out the Eastern Conference Finals in Boston last night and now have their sights set on the Finals, whether against the Phoenix Suns or the Los Angeles Lakers is not known yet. Having gone up 3-0 against Orlando, the Celtics couldn't finish the sweep at home, lost game 4, then lost game 5 in Orlando giving rise to a region-wide sports anxiety attack - Gulp! What if the Celtics, storied in so many ways, became the first NBA team to lose a series after being up 3-0? That terrifying prospect seemed possible, collectively spooked as everyone was given the Bruins' collapse just two weeks ago (they, too, had been up 3-0 and then lost four games in a row and the series against Philadelphia).

But all is right this morning, the long weekend that inaugurates the beginning of summer commences with the stars in alignment and the sports headlines all trumpeting the Celtics' triumph. Four victories are all that's now required to claim banner # 18.

The Giro D'Italia continues, Ivan Basso now in the pink jersey as the race attempts the last mountain stage, the Passo di Gavia - if, that is, the weather cooperates and snow doesn't fall. Snow plows have allegedly cut swaths through the massive piles and opened the way for the riders. I haven't paid near enough attention to the Giro this year, I'm saving myself for the Tour in July, a Tour once again shrouded by scandal. So much is written about cycling and doping however, that I intend to avoid the topic throughout the rest of the racing season. Lescaret's incipient coverage, the Bonques On Tour postings, will focus on other, more interesting subjects such as food, wine, and the Lantern Rouge.

Finding time for dedicated sports-watching is now complicated by the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, a sporting event of such awesome global proportions that it will be impossible not to be completely swept up the frenzy of that mad spectacle. Occasional dispatches from viewing stations in North America (read, the TV in the living room and the now-and-then ethnic cafe or bar in Boston) will, of course, be necessary.

In literary developments, the Norman Mailer Writers Colony has added blogging to their website, though no entries as yet. The blogs are organized by Fellows, Workshop Attendees, Faculty, Staff, Miscellaneous. I considered the idea of contacting fellow workshop-goers via email or blog postings but then thought again. I don't want first impressions, either others' of me or me of others, to be formed by cyber communications. My preference is to meet people face-to-face and go from there. Perhaps others feel the same way. Or maybe the new blog options on the Colony's site just haven't been discovered yet.

Lastly, happy 50th birthday to a fine photographer, cyclist, epicurean rustique, and all around honest soul, Ben Barnhart. A loud and gustatory dinner party tomorrow at his hillside compound in Conway, MA, champagne on the deck, a table laden with Turkish slow-cooked lamb, grilled whole red snapper stuffed with tropical fruit compote, fried polenta cakes, various salads, breads, cheeses, and numerous bottles of wine including luscious Rombauer chardonnay, a favorite of this crew of celebrants. Huzza!

Let the Great World Spin

What's considerably impressive about Colum McCann's Let The Great World Spin is the subtlety with which he weaves the characters' lives into each other's orbits. And he so very ably conjures the world of 1970s New York City, convincingly situates his characters in that time and place. The novel works so well not because of dazzling prose innovation or experimentation but because the storytelling is masterful and evocative.

McCann is teaching a summer fiction workshop at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, Aug 15-22, 2010 called "Becoming Other: Characters Places Scenarios." I'm grateful to be one of the applicants to receive a scholarship to the workshop.

http://www.nmwcolony.org/