Author Archives: Michael Kardos

AWP…easy as 1-2-3

AWP is coming, AWP is coming.

Yes, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs is holding its national conference next week, and for many people, this annual event brings excitement. For others, dread.

As the conference explodes in growth year after year, I seem to come across more people who either have vowed never to go again or who treat the conference as a sort of necessary suffering. The complaints are many: writers sucking up to bigger-name writers; writers sucking up to journal editors; every smile or laugh weighed down with opportunism;  long lines for hotel coffee and lousy pastries; all those tortoise-shell eyeglasses.

Don’t get me wrong, the conference is overwhelming. I’m always glad to get back to my hotel room at night to decompress. But here’s the thing. Ten years ago, I was living alone in a tiny apartment in Metuchen, New Jersey. I had been working steadily on a novel for about three years. The novel was awful. I didn’t personally know a single other fiction writer. Not one. I owned a bookshelf full of novels and had started reading craft books. All my efforts to improve as a writer—and they were considerable—resulted in making the novel slightly less awful.

At some point I noticed that the biographies on the back covers of some of the books I was reading mentioned that the authors had received their MFAs at various places. I looked online (this was the late 90s, and I’d just gotten a super-slow dial-up connection to the internet) to see what an MFA stood for, and I learned—to my astonishment—that there were graduate programs where you could go and surround yourself with other writers. Actual people. 

In addition to the novel, I had written a few short stories over the years. I reread them. They ranged from terrible to sort-of bad. I wrote a few more, and chose what I thought were the best of the bunch for my application. Because I had been a music major in college and had graduated years earlier, I didn’t have any professors who could write letters of recommendation on my behalf. So I asked the lead singer of my band to write one. No joke.

A year later, I moved to the Midwest to start my MFA program. The creative writing faculty must have seen a glimmer of potential, I guess, because my work surely wasn’t ready for prime time, or even for the late, late hours when brawny men sell juicers.

My point is that standing in the middle of the AWP bookfair, in the midst of five-hundred publishers and three thousand writers, is nothing compared to that first meeting at grad school when I came face to face with twelve other students and six faculty members who all shared my strange and intense desire to write—and not just to write, but to work on writing. To figure stuff out and get better. A year earlier, it didn’t seem possible that there could be eighteen people on the planet who were anything like me. Suddenly we were all in a room together. I felt overwhelmed, and I couldn’t believe—still can’t believe—how lucky I was.

Complaints stemming from the overabundance of writers at AWP is the complaint of the privileged, the complaint of those, like me these past ten years, lucky enough to be in the proximity of other writers more than once a year. Yes, one of the defining aspects of being a human being is our propensity to become irritated. And there will be moments next week that will irritate me. I know that. Many of us are natural introverts, after all, and we don’t do extroversion very well.

But I also know that the people all around me at the conference—unlike the people outside the conference—will understand implicitly my aspirations and fears and preoccupations, because they share them.

For that I’ll stand in a line thirty deep for a hard, tasteless scone.

Michael Kardos (michaelkardos.com) is the author of the story collection One Last Good Time and co-director of the creative writing program at Mississippi State University. If you’ll be attending the AWP conference next week, he would love to meet you, and can be found at the Press 53 table on Thursday, Feb. 3, from 2-3 p.m.

On Huck Finn and Greg Brady

The publisher New South’s decision to put out a revised version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn scrubbed clean of its most inflammatory words has sparked a debate about censorship, both self-imposed and other-imposed. The new version contains an editorial introduction that explains the publisher’s motives. “Unquestionably,” writes editor Alan Gribben, “both novels [The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn] can be enjoyed just as deeply and authentically if readers are not obliged to confront the n-word on so many pages.”

Lorrie Moore broadens the discussion beyond that of a single inflammatory word to speak about the novel itself—its standing as a literary classic and its place in the classroom. “Huckleberry Finn,” she writes in a New York Times piece, “is not an appropriate introduction to serious literature.” She argues that the novel can’t help alienating many readers and is better avoided altogether in high school and saved for the college classroom, where “Twain’s obsession with the 19th-century theater of American hucksterism—the wastrel West, the rapscallion South, the economic strays and escapees of a harsh new country—can be discussed in the context of Jim’s particular story (and Huck’s).”

Moore’s argument to keep the novel away from the classroom of younger readers concludes, “What would be helpful are school administrators who will break with tradition and bring more flexibility, imagination and social purpose to our high school curriculums.”

Based on my own experience, I’d argue that tradition—if by that Moore means an allegiance to the traditional canon—isn’t exactly at the root of why this novel, or many novels, get taught in the high school classroom. I think the reason is more about economics: the reason why many books get caught is that schools already own lots of copies.

I first got assigned Huckleberry Finn in the seventh grade. What other novel did we read that year? Shane. Why? Because the school owned a lot of copies of Shane. Why? I have no idea. I’m not even knocking Shane. I’m just saying that the reasons for assigning those two novels, as opposed to all others, had less to do with literary judgment and more to do with A) the school’s possession of multiple copies of those two novels, and B) that teacher’s past experience teaching them, probably as a result of A.

An era of extreme school budget cuts will mean more of the same. I’m guessing there are school administrators with “flexibility, imagination and social purpose.” But when money is tight, and you already have a closet full of books that have served you well, or well enough, in the past. . . .

There’s a Brady Bunch episode in which a talent scout convinces Greg that he’s got what it takes to become the pop star Johnny Bravo. Greg soon learns, however, that the reason he got singled out for the role had nothing to do with vocal talent. Rather, he fit the suit that the record company had already purchased. We can argue the merits of Huckleberry Finn—whether this version, that version, or no version ought to be taught to younger readers—but the reason it gets taught so much, I contend, often has less to do with actual, ongoing assessments of the work and its effect on students, and more to do with the fact that many schools, long ago, bought the suit.

Michael Kardos is the author of the story collection One Last Good Time. While earning his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri, he served as Contest Editor for The Missouri Review. He currently co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University. His website is michaelkardos.com.

One Last Good Edit

Next Tuesday will be the fourth class period of the introduction to creative writing course that I teach. The fourth class of the semester is always special for me. It’s when I spend all seventy-five minutes leading “Grammar Boot Camp,” a hodgepodge of mechanical points that my students need to know as fiction writers. In truth, Boot Camp involves more than grammar: we cover everything from formatting and punctuating dialogue to the proper use of commas—the difference between “It’s time to eat, Grandma” and “It’s time to eat Grandma”—to the difference between “who” and “that” to the conjugation of “lie” and “lay.”

And I explain without apology, on the first page of my Boot Camp handout, why it all matters.

It’s not just that you must master these technical points in order to do okay in this class, or to demonstrate that you’re on your way to becoming a writer. The stakes are actually much higher than that. Failure to master these points signals to an editor/teacher/reader that you are less than fully committed to your own work. And if you aren’t committed, then why should anyone else be?

That’s the fourth class period. The fifth class period, I give an exam on everything covered during Boot Camp day.

In other words, I’m sort of draconian about all this, but that’s only because I happen to believe in it. I believe that students armed with sound mechanics not only command more authority as writers but also know they command more authority, giving them even additional authority. As a bonus, I also believe that my students appreciate the endeavor, even if they groan about it a little at the time, and that they face the rest of the semester with more confidence than they would otherwise.

Over the holidays, I received the page proofs of my forthcoming collection. It was my last chance to read the book and catch any errors before publication. By this point, the stories had been revised and revised again. Many had already been published in journals. They had been edited and copyedited. I’d read each of these stories, in other words, about a zillion times and had already caught, surely, every error there was to catch.

I ended up with a bulleted list four pages long.

To be fair, some of these corrections had more to do with being consistent among stories than with mistakes per se—like using a lowercase “t” in “t-shirt,” or indicating time as “two p.m.” rather than “2:00 p.m.” or “2 p.m.” or “two o’clock.”

But apparently there was something about seeing the whole book formatted that caused me to see the work anew and catch mistakes that had up to that point eluded me. One story included the sentence “I twisted opened the bottle” instead of “I twisted open the bottle.” A few times, an entire word got skipped: “That my dad look foolish” instead of “That made my dad look foolish.”

My usage errors included “some time” where it should have been “sometime,” and having people “hone” in on my character’s weakness, rather than “home” in on it.

Reading the entire book start to finish, I also discovered how often I used the word “in” when I really meant “into.”

My biggest sin of all for a book set on the Jersey Shore was my mention of the boardwalk game “Ski-ball” rather than the properly spelled “Skee-ball.” This, from an expert Skee-ball player! (I have the unredeemed tickets to prove it.)

As the list of corrections to my supposedly “finished” book grew from a half-page to two pages to four, I couldn’t help thinking about my new crop of students and the Boot Camp we’d soon face together, and how no matter where we are as writers, the errors in our work that we must home in on never really go away.

Michael Kardos is the author of the story collection One Last Good Time, forthcoming Feb 1. While earning his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri, he served as Contest Editor for The Missouri Review. He currently co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University. His website is michaelkardos.com.

Location, Location, Location

For an essay I’m currently working on, I’ve been thinking a lot about place in fiction. I’ve never been a reader who’s drawn to a book specifically because of geography. I absolutely enjoy literature that sheds light on regions and cultures about which I previously knew little. It’s just that I don’t choose fiction with the express purpose of learning about a particular place. I recently read Martin Cruz Smith’s novel Gorky Park, but not because of an abiding interest in 80s-era Moscow. Rather, a friend recommended it as a superb detective novel. (I agree—it is.) I don’t know whether the Moscow represented in Gorky Park is anything like the real Moscow, but neither do I particularly care, because it was Cruz’s Moscow that the story demanded.

Tobias Wolff once said in an interview, “The London of Charles Dickens is not London, it’s a London that is in his mind and his spirit, his way of looking at the world. That’s his London.” Wolff’s words imply that place in fiction, even in a work of realism, is an imaginative, subjective construction. We’d be foolish to rely only on fiction to teach us about a real place. There’s no requirement, in fact, that fiction teach us anything. Or rather, the only pedagogical imperative of fiction is that it teach the reader how to read the work currently being read.

So my questions are: a) How important is geographical setting to other readers? b) Are there certain places—cities, countries—that in a work of fiction inherently draw you in or drive you away?

Michael Kardos is the author of the story collection One Last Good Time, forthcoming in February 2011 from Press 53. While earning his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri, he served as Contest Editor for The Missouri Review. He currently co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University. His website is michaelkardos.com.

Coffee Creep

So you could read Slate’s slightly insightful, mostly irksome article about the so-called divide between “MFA” and “NYC” literary cultures, or you could read about my solution to a more immediate and vexing problem. I’m talking, of course, about coffee creep.

The Coffee Creep

It used to be that when I wrote for long hours in a stretch, I’d drink a lot of coffee. Too much. (And yet I don’t think I’m addicted to coffee as much as to the ritual of working beside a soothing, hot drink. Were America a chicken soup culture, I’d be drinking that instead. But we aren’t a chicken soup culture, we’re a coffee culture, and so that’s what I drink.) If you’re like me, then you’ve noticed how easily a cup can become two, then three. Or, in Starbucks lingo, how easily a “tall” becomes a “grande,” then a “venti.”

The trouble is that too much coffee, according to the Mayo Clinic, can cause:

• Insomnia
• Nervousness
• Restlessness
• Irritability
• Nausea or other gastrointestinal problems
• Fast or irregular heartbeat
• Muscle tremors
• Headaches
• Anxiety

I don’t especially like any of those things. So a couple of years ago, I went scientific, studying my own coffee-drinking habits, and determined that as long as the coffee stayed hot, I sipped. But when it cooled, I gulped so that I could get a hot refill.

Enter the mug warmer.

This handy device, yours for around ten bucks, will keep your mug warm, yes?

No. Trouble is, nearly all mugs have recessed bottoms, meaning that only the mug’s bottom rim touches the heating device. After an unsuccessful search for a mug without a recessed bottom, I discovered a workaround: the plastic cap. If you can cover your mug so that the steam doesn’t escape, even the slow-acting mug warmer will do its job.

Because I love infomercials, I happen to own the Magic Bullet blender. And the Magic Bullet’s cap fits perfectly over my mugs.But any solid piece of material will do as long as steam won’t ruin it. Use a coaster! Or a first aid kit!

Your coffee will stay hot, and you’ll cut down on your coffee intake. You’ll feel less restless, achy, and irritable.

Unless you’re just an irritable person. Then you’re on your own.

Michael Kardos is the author of the story collection One Last Good Time, forthcoming in February 2011 from Press 53. While earning his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri, he served as Contest Editor for The Missouri Review. He currently co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University. His website is michaelkardos.com.

Answers to the Top 20 Questions about Writing

1. Don’t worry about that. It’s like snipe hunting.
2. The word “chiaroscuro.” And any phrase that begins, “the geometry of. . . .”
3. Probably, unless it’s the name of a childhood bully. In that case, your revenge will be leaving it unchanged.
4. Kurt Vonnegut and Stephen King have both answered, “for one person,” and they’re pretty smart.
5. No, that was Hunter S. Thompson.
6. It isn’t a rule, but it is a rule of thumb and worth considering.
7. Regular mail is fine.
8. One million words. That’s what I was told, anyway.
9. You’re kidding me, right? Is this issue really still up for debate?
10. Sure you can. And it’ll make your parents proud. But it won’t leave you much time to write.
11. Yes, but that’s a rare exception.
12. Because the author might be lying, or might not even know for him- or herself.
13. It isn’t bad advice if you don’t take it too literally.
14. Joyce Carol Oates.
15. Because she’s the faster runner.
16. When you see the work in print. And maybe not even then.
17. Of course it’s a perfect epigraph. Who do you think Thomas Parke D’Invilliers is, anyway?
18. Yes.
19. Yes.
20. The truth is, you’ll never know.

Michael Kardos is the author of the story collection One Last Good Time, forthcoming in February 2011 from Press 53. His website is michaelkardos.com.