Alizah Salario

Whenever I walk into a bookstore, certain novels mock me for not having read them. Tender is the Night. Rabbit Is Rich. Lolita. Anna Fucking Karina. I can practically hear the spines screeching from the shelves: “Hey, English major! Former English literature teacher! So-called lover of stories and language!  How have you been on this planet for 30 years and not found the time to read us?

Maybe, like the Pulitzer people, I’ve let fiction down. (Sorry, low dig, but I’ll get to that.)

Digression: in a culture fueled by celebrity, the literary world isn’t immune to the virus of building up and then tearing down its own superstars. So it’s no wonder that a book like Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding would emerge as an instant classic – or that B.R. Myers would take issue with the hit novel.  In this month’s Atlantic magazine,  Myers argues that Fielding is mediocre at best, and that it became last year’s must-read because the public needed an “it” book to knit them closer together. Is he right? Do readers need a popularity grid so everyone can feel they’re on the same literati playing field? #nopunintended.

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When I was little I wanted nothing more than to be She-Ra, princess of power. But that’s beside the point, sort of.

This NYT article speaks to the ongoing obsession with The Hunger Games, specifically with the character of Katniss. A conversation with A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis about the film went down a cinematic road, but wound up in a literary cul-de-sac: for a female character to be a warrior in body and spirit, must she exist in an alternate reality?

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I grabbed my canvas bags on my way out the door for my weekly shopping trip to the Park Slope Food Co-op and felt a twinge of guilt. I’d written about last week’s vote on a vote to ban Israeli products from the store with more than a slight twinge of snark. Since my article was meant to be an unbiased take on the hummus hubbub it didn’t delve into my unwavering affection for the co-op.  While debate over six Israeli products may very well deserve every bit of mockery it elicited, there’s more to the story than the vote. I am a proud member of the PSFC, and the idea of a food co-op itself deserves some thought. Now excuse me while I get serious and personal.

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In grad school, I took a course on Personal and Professional Style with the legendary movie critic Judith Crist. Sure, she’s an octagenarian, but still sharp as a tack. Judith didn’t make the trek up to the Morningside Heights campus, which meant that six of us hoofed it down to 90th  and Riverside for “salons” in her living room each week. On paper, the class was designed to develop our distinctive writer’s voices and hone pithy and piercing prose. Who better to learn from than Judith, who, rumor has it, sunk CLEOPATRA with a single cutting review?

I dreaded class. Judith was indeed a harsh critic. Each week I painstakingly obsessed over each word, every comma, even the way I slugged my page. It all felt very old school, back when teachers would ask you to pull out three-hole punched loose leaf and use only Pink Pearl erasers because they didn’t leave a mark. Once Judith even wrote “You Failed” in bright red ink on the top a critique of New York magazine I’d written. I’d never gotten less than a C in my entire academic career, much less a scathing stamp of failure.

But how could I take it personally? Regardless of how great or awful I thought my work or that of my classmates was on any given week,  she inevitably ripped us all to shreds. We left with our tails between our legs, humbled, yes, but also invigorated to do better next time. She also gave us coffee and Oreos every week, and on occasion I went to her back den, brilliantly wallpapered with yellowed movie posters, where we smoked Virginia Slims on break. On the last day of class, she ordered pizza and let us have free reign of her liquor cabinet.

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Warning: for those sick and tired of reading about #AWP, don’t read on.

My intentions for going to AWP were mostly pure. While it would’ve been nice to be “discovered” by an agent or editor, primarily I wanted to learn. Besides, had I experineced a stroke of luck, I’d have to drop my whole self-deprecating schtick, and that might hurt my brand. I went to learn in order to improve my writing so that one day I could find an editor the old-fashioned way: by struggling. Naturally, (I refuse to use “natch”) I gravitated toward panels that pertained to my particular subject matter, and as such, the seminar on writing about the East was perfect.

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Yesterday my entire literary life funneled its way into the narrow slot of a single day.

I heard Nikki Giovanni speak. I’d fallen in love with Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day, one of her first poetry collections, when I was in high school. I even joined the forensics team so I could read it aloud (that’s forensics as in oral interpretation, not the dead body kind.) I met people whose books I’ve reviewed, listened to a reading at the Poetry Foundation, and sat in silent awe as Sugar/Cheryl Strayed read her Write Like a Motherfucker column. I’ve adopted the column as my own manifesto as I try to finish what feels like a never ending story.

Do you remember that movie? A NEVERENDING STORY? There’s this scene where the little boy hangs on the back of a mystical winged creature. I remember being carried away by that movie, and how real that imaginary world felt. It’s harder for me travel to those faraway places these days, but I suppose that’s why it’s all the more important I make the trek.

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I know that anyone who throws her hat into the nonfiction ring isn’t supposed to say this, but sometimes I really abuse the facts. That’s not to say I don’t have allegiance to them, but the way people like me parse, manipulate and selectively spotlight them warps their meaning and importance. It’s hard to know what to say about story truth versus real truth, especially because this Slate essay and this follow-up in Salon wrangle the subject, hogtie it and then put a bow on top. I mean, they’re really good, and there’s not much that I could add in terms of insight.

Well, there is Tim O’Brien, and I have a special, tortured relationship with The Things They Carried because I taught it to high school seniors multiple times a day for two years. Not long in the grand scheme of a teacher’s career, but long enough.

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From the NYT's Cityroom blog

From my window, I could see about a dozen cops in riot gear on the patio below. Off to their left, a few men stood in the cold without jackets, smoking and looking smugly in the direction of the main attraction: Occupy Wall Street protesters. I thought of the day in March 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. I’d rode around Los Angeles with an activist art collective and wheatpasted  “It’s a Globe, Not an Empire,” signs on bus stops and mailboxes.  I thought of marching down Hollywood Boulevard in protest of the war, and of going door to door to encourage people to register to vote and vote democrat, vote for John Kerry. (I only lasted one day on the job.) I thought about why I became a teacher, and then a journalist. And then I thought about how I ended up here, on the 15th floor of the World Financial Center, looking down on the protesters.

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I had every intention of writing about Caitlin Flanagan’s Girl Land, but then I thought the better of preaching to the choir. The New York Times and Bookforum already butchered it, and honestly, I couldn’t get past the Kindle sample. Besides, it’s not really fair to knock a book because my views differ from those of the author. Flanagan did bring up this fabulous little Mystery Date game that looks like the predecessor to my beloved Girl Talk and that’s about all you need to know.
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