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I know, I know….some of you around the country are experiencing unprecedented snow storms, rainouts, and generally crappy weather. You will have to excuse those of us who live in Portland for not giving a damn. Before this past glorious weekend came along, we hadn’t seen the sunshine since they last gave out a Pulitzer in fiction. I was beginning to think my arms would never turn pink again.

Alas, the forecast says clouds of gray will soon be returning to the Rose City. In order to help keep the dream of Crocodile Mile alive, we turned to some of our 2012 Workshop faculty, posing the question: What books most remind you of summer?

Matthew Zapruder-When I was a kid, right after the end of the school year I would get my parents to take me to the bookstore. I would look at the shelves and pick out the thickest science fiction and fantasy novels, so they would last as long as possible, all through those long summer hours. I think at the beginning of every summer a part of me that still thinks that way. This past summer was busier than usual, with teaching, planning a wedding, etc. But still I had the great pleasure of working my way through a very long novel by my favorite prose writer, Javier Maris, Your Face Tomorrow(published in the U.S. as a trilogy). It’s a very interior book, a kind of spy novel of the intellect, with not much action, which paradoxically creates an enormous amount of tension. I found the desire to sit for hours turning the pages, finding out what was going to happen to the characters, almost unbearably pleasurable. Marias is in my opinion the finest novelist writing today, and I loved every summery second of reading his words.

Ann Hood-My first thought was the Nancy Drew series because I spent the summer I was 8 reading all 100 of them, eating root beer Popsicles in front of the fan.

Dorothy Allison-I go back to James Michener and all those sweaty historical novels he wrote. Hawaii and The Source and such. I think each and every copy I read was gritty with sand and stained with suntan lotion. Childhood Summers of smeary paperbacks and books like bricks. Best part was that when you got sleepy headed you could put the book under your head as a pillow and be up off the dirt while dreaming up your own summer epic.

Robert Boswell- The Great Gatsby is shaped by summer. The novel grows in one’s memory, but it actually covers just one summer, ending in the early fall, leaves falling into the pool alongside Gatsby’s body. Also, there’s that great Alice Munro story “Labor Day Dinner” and the wonderful Cheever stories: “The Summer Farmer” and “The Day the Pig Fell into the Well.”

Antonya Nelson- Alice McDermott’s Child of My Heart. Nostalgic, summer, sweet adolescence

D.A. Powell- The novel that most reminds me of summer is The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers. Most of the action takes place over a long, dull summer as a young girl named Frankie is growing into womanhood. Her constant companions are Berenice, the maid, and her kid cousin John Henry. While she loves them both, she also wants desperately to belong to some social circle that’s larger, grander, more glamorous. She changes her name to Jasmine and meets a soldier. She concocts great schemes, and she throws herself into the unrealistic fantasy of moving away to Winter Hill to live with her older brother Jarvis and his soon-to-be wife Janice. Mostly, I love the book for how McCullers’ characters proclaim their love for Hoppin’ John. Frankie tells Berenice and John Henry that she reckons Hoppin’ John would revive her in any situation. She says if there’s ever any doubt, a plate of Hoppin’ John should be waived under her nose. If she doesn’t stir for peas & rice, she must certainly be dead. I, too, feel that way about Hoppin’ John, especially if accompanied by a thick glass of buttermilk and a generous piece of skillet cornbread.

Aimee Bender- Last summer I read The Summer Book by Tove Janssen on a friend’s recommendation and it was wonderful. Scandanavian island summer fragmented stories about a girl and her grandmother and sometimes just pure loveliness.-Bender

Jonathan Dee- I’ve never been to southwestern France, but when as a lad I worked at The Paris Review we decided publish in its entirety a hundred-plus-page novella by W.S. Merwin called “Shepherds,” which later became part of a book called The Lost Upland. In it, a newcomer to an ancient French village takes over and restores to life a ruined garden. That’s it. Every paragraph is a master class in the prose of poets, in Conrad’s ideal of fiction as an art that appeals primarily to, and through, the senses. The heat and smell and loam and majesty and transience of summer do everything for the narrative that plot conventionally does. I left that job two decades ago but I still reread “Shepherds” every year or two.

For those of you in Portland, we hope to see you at our little party this evening. Doors open at 7:30.

For those of you elsewhere, why not be impulsive? Hop on a train, buy a plane ticket, commandeer a ship.

Or better yet……

You’ll Want To Bookmark This.

When I was a kid, the periodic delivery of the latest Hammacher Schlemmer or Sharper Image catalogue was a highly anticipated event. I’d sit cross-legged on the front porch, eagerly flipping through the shiny pages and circling the futuristic items that would transform our mundane home into something out of Inspector Gadget. This was before iPhones and iPads, when my idea of cool technology was an electric blue shower radio or a heated, full body massage chair. I did convince Mom and Dad to buy the former; it broke within a week. But I didn’t care much. Soon, there would be another catalogue—and another must-have toy.

Over the years, the pace of our consumer culture has only grown more rapid. Today’s novelty is tomorrow’s commodity. Our desire for the product du jour morphs from want to need faster than you can say Kindle. Some have called this trend disturbing. Others, like French artist Jacques Carelman, have called it hilarious.

In 1969, Carelman published his own catalogue of sorts. His Catalogue of Fantastic Inventions contained precisely what its title suggests: objects that make perfect sense in theory, but are totally nonfunctional in practice. Examples include a glass-headed hammer for “those delicate jobs,” a remote-control iron for doing chores without getting up, and a two-piece jigsaw puzzle of the Mona Lisa, “ideal for inexperienced beginners and those not blessed with patience.” Carelman’s inventions did not exist in real life. The 200 sketches that comprise his book were meant as parodies of the items one typically finds in a mail-order catalogue. “My objects are perfectly useless,” he said, “the opposite of the gadgets our consumer society is so greedy for.”

The first edition of Carelman’s book sold 100,000 copies in France, and was subsequently published in the United States. A few years later, Carelman decided to build his popular illustrations into three-dimensional objects. His collection became a critically acclaimed traveling exhibit, finding audiences at the Louvre and in New York. Today, his “coffeepot for masochists” (in which the handle and spout are on the same side), his “lace condom,” his “comb for bald men,” and many other absurd creations are still available for purchase. The book, however, has virtually disappeared from shelves. It seems that Carelman’s marvelous Catalogue, like so many novelties before it, has gone the way of the Walkman.

Still, there are lessons to be learned from Carelman’s whimsical take on consumer culture. “I make people take another look at things that are so familiar they don’t see them anymore,” he said of his work. “I clean people’s eyes.” This idea of “cleaning people’s eyes” applies to all art forms, particularly to literature. As readers, our favorite books are often the ones that strike us as surprising, yet real. As writers, our goal is to depict the ordinary in extraordinary ways. When we hit on a detail, a gesture, or a phrase that brings to light some small truth that has gone unrecognized, it has been a good day at the keyboard. For me, these moments don’t happen often, but I try to remain conscious of this question: How can I turn the familiar on its head?

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This week we bring you Lan Samantha Chang’s Readable Feast from issue 28. Warning: don’t read this before lunch.

The End of Laughter
Lan Samantha Chang

How can I tell the story of our love affair that never took place? There are no words for it. It was not a liaison, a dalliance, or a fling. It was not friendship and not family. It’s an attachment, I would say to you. An attachment with no usefulness in real life.

It happened in a city on a faraway coast. In that hilled city, winter shadows lengthened early, and so our attachment flourished in the dark. Our darkness was not frightening or cold. Our darkness gleamed with happiness, it was sustaining; it wrapped around us like a curtain and kept us safe from gossip. You were beautiful and I was old, and we were both with other people. We were not allowed to touch. We never held hands. We never made love and so, instead, we ate.

We ate hamburgers and sushi and pancakes with pecans. We ate chicken fingers, tapenades, French chocolates, and ice-cream shakes. To carve out time, we had late lunches, early dinners, and frequent duplicate meals, reassuring each other that we had not eaten recently and could use a bite. We ate for love, for sympathy and fun. We ate out of confusion and emptiness and lust. We ate our meals in public and kept our true hungers a secret. Continue reading →

Disclaimer: The writer of this article is a past participant of the Tin House Writers’ Workshop. She was in no way encouraged—either financially, or otherwise—to say that the Tin House Writers’ Workshop is better than any other writers’ conference, though, of course, it is.

Amendment to Disclaimer: Blackmail is the currency we trade favors for.

So, you’re going to your first writers’ conference! How excited are you!? First things first: put your right hand around your left shoulder and your left hand around your right shoulder and give yourself a hug! It takes courage, patience and a substantial amount of financial sacrifice to consider oneself “a writer”, but you are going to a writers’ conference. You got it done!

Regardless of where you’re going to, or for how long, we’ve compiled some been-there-done-that tips to help you have the best, safest, and healthiest workshop of your life. Without further ado, writer, here they are:

Have your elevator speech ready: As a writer, you spend most of your time gallivanting in an inflatable fun palace where people share your love of Garamond and get your snarky jokes. Alas, not everyone lives in your bouncy fun house. Many people do not understand what a writers’ conference is, and this will include the supervisor who is allowing you time off and the people who are going to be looking after your offspring/pet(s)/plant(s) while you’re away. You would be well advised to come up with a one-line description of the place that you are going that does not make you sound like a fanatic narcissist. Can’t come up with one? Use mine: “I’m going to a summer camp for writers.” Yes, it makes me sound like the ambassador of dweeb, but it’s better than, “I’m going to study under the illustrious writer such and such to have him reconsider the syntax of my thirty-five page prose poem in the bucolic town of whosie-whatsit….” Snooze.

What to pack: Because of Machiavellian event planning, many conferences will stick you in a small room with a complete stranger to sleep. Here’s what you’ll need to make the most of this situation:

• Ear plugs

• Scented candles

• Flip flops, a robe, towels. (Be aware that “linen service” means “two terry hand cloths.”)

• Ok, I was just testing you with the scented candles. A lot of people out there have olfactory sensitivities, be courteous!

• A framed picture of your cat

• Clip-on reading light

• Aspirin

• If you’re anything like the roommate I had at the [redacted] writers’ conference, you’ll want to bring a pack of Post-Its to write passive aggressive notes on. Just stick ‘em on your roommate’s pillow. Yes!

• Sleep mask

• Flask

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Hypnotic and disquieting, The Listeners, Leni Zumas’s debut novel, is about not looking at things—loneliness, guilt, Iraq war footage, a sister’s death—and what happens when these things insist on being seen. From the first line the prose is glorious: honest and hallucinatory—like a lucid dream. The wonderfully talented Luca Dipierro created a trailer that brings to life the strangeness and beauty of Leni’s book.

The Listeners from Luca Dipierro on Vimeo.

During the winter of 1999 I was living in Eugene, Oregon with my twin brother Michael Dickman and the poets Carl Adamshick and Michael McGriff. At the time, Portland was still enjoying (the now sadly absent) Poetry Downtown Series. The series brought in dynamic poets from all over the country and on one cold and rainy night Adrienne Rich was to read. My brother, Carl, Michael, and I borrowed a friend’s car and drove up to Portland for the event which was taking place in an old church along Portland’s South West Park Blocks; a beautiful church with simple architecture and stained glass windows.

May 16th, 1929-March 27th, 2012

When we arrived it felt like Easter Sunday. The church was packed with the Congregation of Poetry. There was a long introduction enumerating all of Rich’s many books, awards, and honors. Then Adrienne Rich approached the pulpit. She walked slow and with the help of a cane. She seemed, from my pew, weak, unsteady. But when she opened her pages and began to read her first poem there was a strength that seemed to descend around her like…well…like a holy spirit.

Perhaps what happened on that stage, poem after poem, her energy rising with each stanza, was like a Holy Spirit or something like Lorca’s Duende. We, the faithful, were witnessing something ecstatic, something special and we could feel it in our bones. After the reading Rich sat patiently and signed over 200 books and broadsides, though I can’t imagine how tired she must have been. When I stepped in front of her, nervous, a copy of Midnight Salvage in my hands, I said “Ms. Rich, thank you so much for everything” and she looked up at me and said “Thank you, thank you for being here”. I know how that must sound. It must sound plain to you, a remark a famous writer says over and over in infinitum. But the way she said it, the warmth, the caring in her voice, it was true. And it was true for everyone she met that night. Thank you for being here. Thank you for surviving this world with me.

Adrienne Rich was, as the New York Times pointed out, a poet of vision who was at the forefront of modern feminism; an intellectual who affected how people thought of poetry, of their sisters and mothers. She was also a poet of great heart, of wild love, and care for the human being in all its different bodies. After the reading my small group of Adrienne Rich Pilgrims drove back to Eugene in a storm that became a soft but constant fall of snow. Perhaps we, four white males, are not the pilgrims you would imagine for Ms. Rich. But it is through poems, through art, through readings like Ms. Rich gave, that one finds transcendence into human compassion, into the beautiful song of The Other. We sat in the snow-quiet night, on the front porch of the house we shared, drank Grappa out of little cheap glasses and read Rich’s poems to each other. We could not get enough. And either could the night: with every poem it seemed like the snow fell a little harder, a little more, and with grace.

As I write this it has been raining for two days, beginning with the morning Adrienne Rich died. It feels like it will rain forever. It feels like the loss of someone like Ms. Rich is limitless… because it is limitless.