[Offutt among his father’s output, mostly porn. NYT photo, William Mebane.]
Chris Offutt’s writing advice resonates as America regroups.
Cast a cold Eye
On life, on death
Horseman, pass by.—tombstone of W.B. Yeats
When Chris Offutt was ten, growing up in an Appalachian backwater, he asked a librarian for a book on baseball. She gave him J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Its writing was a revelation, “personal, told in an intimate way, about family issues of supreme importance.” He never read another book for juveniles, and he became a writer of short stories, novels, screenplays, and multiple memoirs. Back in May, I read Offutt’s My Father, the Pornographer: A Memoir, one of the more interesting books I’ve read this year.
This powerful story concerns his brilliant, driven, awful father. In part, My Father, the Pornographer is a portrait of Appalachian Kentucky. Offutt’s town had a toxic charcoal briquette factory and that was it. He was the smartest kid in school, sometimes beaten by teachers who resented him for that and for his quiet defiance of authority. His Kentuckian father, from a farm in the western part of the state, had picked the tiny company town in eastern Kentucky to be a big-fish insurance salesman. He was that, and increasingly a terrifying tyrant to his children. Especially when he quit his lucrative office work to become a freelance writer. As his oldest child, Offutt got the job when he died of archiving the man’s published and unpublished science fiction, fantasy, and pornography. Literally a ton of novels, stories, and comics. Offutt pere could write a novel in three to seven days.
His secret, parallel 50-year project was the creation of extremely sadistic comics. Sometimes he wrote them for patrons, wealthy collectors. Other than a brief description of these comics, the memoir is not unduly graphic. But it’s sad and disquieting. What Offutt endured from his father and this environment turned him toward literature. Even so, he grew up with the permanent wound of feeling unloved. Part of the book’s brilliance, saturating its deft syntax, content, and structure, is that it escapes self-pity while making you feel for Chris’s experiences and what seems his ongoing burden. The New York Times Magazine ran an excerpt.
[Offutt – Buzz Orr photo.]
Writing is the most difficult task I’ve ever undertaken, which is perhaps why I do it. For much of my life, I cared about little except the act of writing. Writing taught me to trust myself, which enabled me to trust others. This resulted in marriage, and within a year my wife convinced me to apply to an MFA program. I did so reluctantly and with no alternative. We’d moved back to Kentucky, where we were living without benefit of plumbing, heat, or jobs. The summer I turned thirty, we borrowed a thousand dollars and headed for Iowa. This decision literally changed my life.
“The Eleventh Draft” takes us through his process, including his learning to love revision. Today, his average short story takes ten or eleven drafts over two years; one took 35 versions over eight years:
The move to revision became so complete that I no longer cared about the story as a product. What mattered was the evolution of the act of creating. I spent many joyful hours merely shifting material from one narrative to another, gauging the success of the integration, attempting greater risks on the page. Plot was a loose form I could rely on in the same way that poets might utilize a sonnet or a villanelle. . . .
The only way I can create anything worthwhile is to concern myself solely with the moment, to maintain as much freedom as possible during the interaction between my mind and a narrative. This has led me to write what I need to write, instead of what I want to write. My work, both fiction and nonfiction, is about my current emotional state, my past behavior, and my recent thoughts.
Offutt’s essay is one of the best accounts of learning to write, and what writing teaches, that I’ve ever read. It affirms that, as for me, writing is hard. Especially when I lose faith in the process. Or receive a painful rejection, as I did last week. But as Offutt reminds us—and as anyone knows who has written anything worth reading, whether an office memo or an epic poem—writing takes recursive effort. Maybe it takes caffeine and chocolate too. It sure did for me today, along with bowls of pinto beans simmered with smoked ham hocks—Mom’s proven answer: life goes better with soul food.
Then, back to work. And try to be wise about victories and setbacks. The work may weary you, its outcome disappoint you, its reception pain you. But only action, not brooding, will lift you from the hole you’re in. If quitting is your answer, did you truly believe, which is to say love, in the first place? At base, worthy belief arises from love. That must come first. And, if it began there, that’s where it must continue. That’s my hope for myself and my work and for our nation and its work.
[Hillary Clinton before Detroit rally, Friday, Nov. 4. NYT photo, Doug Mills.]
I appreciate the down-to-earthness of this post, Richard. The writing life and the political life do have a lot in common. Hard work, a willingness to bounce back, and above all, love.
I pledge myself to the same, although today is hard. I’m grateful, however, for the reminder of the connection between love and resilience.
Also, for these photos, especially the one of Hillary. Was it taken since last night?
Thank you, Shirley. That photo of Hillary was taken before a rally last Friday, can’t remember which one! Trying to find it again . . .
Found the reference and added it to photo. Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election-night-2016/the-emotion-ofa-historic-vote
Richard, the title of that book reminds me of an early scene in Bird by Bird. I first read that book about twenty years ago. I’d gone to stay with my father after his shoulder replacement surgery. I thought he was asleep in his room across the hall when I began reading the scene where Anne and a friend began reading her father’s latest novel under the covers with a flashlight. Anne did not realize the book was porn, or at least it seemed so to their tender eyes. I howled with laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
“Just this book I’m reading…” I was not about to share that scene with my aging father. We didn’t talk about stuff like that. Fortunately his pain meds kicked in or something and I didn’t hear another word.
Offut’s book sounds more solemn, less likely to be humorous, but still important. I look forward to reading it. And triple thanks for the link to the essay. That’s awesome, powerful material.
Thanks so much, Sharon. Offutt’s memoir isn’t light yet isn’t grim, despite the subject. He has a lot of distance and the ability to reflect. Also, it’s a detective story as he learns what he hadn’t really known about his father, so that’s a real carrot.
Thanks for your post, Richard. Keep on keepin’ on.
Thanks, Victoria. Here’s Michael Moore’s to-do list for Democrats—a little bitter, but he did call Trump’s threat all along:
http://www.salon.com/2016/11/10/michael-moore-reacts-to-democrats-stunning-defeat_partner/
Dear Richard. Thanks for the link to Moore’s piece, but it popped up a serious security warning on my computer, that moreover tried to hang on and forced me to shut the computer down totally to free it from the connection. I did hear Moore talk on Tuesday night on tv when they interviewed him, and his message then was not only to all the regular Republicans who voted for Trump, but also to the disaffected who have put their hopes in him. He believes that Trump won’t really do anything for them, and that they might be finding that out even as soon as two months down the road.
Sorry, Victoria. Not sure why it would have done that—it’s just Salon. I just tested it again and went right there . . . Anyway, we’ll see on Trump. His promises were so outrageous, I hope those times he was lying.
Thanks, Richard, for the recommendation and for the culinary suggestion: “bowls of pinto beans simmered with smoked ham hocks—Mom’s proven answer: life goes better with soul food.”
Amen!
Thanks, Richard. I very much like your insight that writing best arises from love. That will help me to find a toehold for proceeding.