Author Archives: Mike

About Mike

Mike Petrik is a Fiction and Creative Nonfiction Intern at The Missouri Review and a second year PhD candidate in creative writing with a focus on fiction.

The Hazards of Writerly Style

October 12, 2011 by Mike | 1 Comment

Not the usually discussed sort of style...THIS kind of style. And yes, Nabokov definitely has some swagger.

 

Lately I’ve been working diligently to grow a non-ironic mustache.  Dear God, why, you might ask (and my wife, Bethany, certainly has).  Well, it has to do with a concept that’s been on my mind of late, that of the need to create some sort of writerly persona.  I clearly haven’t gotten very far with my own persona, as the only major conclusion I’ve had is the likely erroneous one that a mustache might imbue some sort of writerly panache.  The idea of affecting a writerly persona may seem a bit silly and is definitely vain, but it also seems pertinent.  Not long ago, the concept of persona was central in an assertion that Jeffrey Eugenides had based a character in his forthcoming novel The Marriage Plot that was based on David Foster Wallace.  A large reason for this claim is that said character wears a bandanna and work boots (Eugenides has denied the connection)–tropes of the public image of DFW.  Clearly, there is some power in the style and persona a writer creates, no matter how considered that style might be (I am looking at you Tom Wolfe).  Think of your favorite author’s book jacket photo.  Don’t you think that at one point or another he/she sat agonizing over a table covered by nearly identical snapshots?

You know Willa Cather tried on a few hats before she settled on this one.

Taking a break from the effort of growing a mustache, I considered authors who had definitely notable and concrete public personae.  Very few of the authors that came to mind were contemporary writers.  And of the contemporary writers that did come to mind, most were more aligned with the persona of someone like Thomas Pynchon, whose persona is the lack of a public image.  You may remember that he famously voiced himself for a Simpson’s episode where his cartoon persona appeared with a bag over his head.  Last week my colleague and sometime nemesis Arijit Sen wrote about the impact Facebook and its ilk were having on the novel, and I think that a lot of what he said also rings true for the idea of affecting a writerly style.  Everything we do seems so considered and is so thoroughly narrated in the age of Facebook, that it is very difficult for an author’s style to seem natural or spontaneous.  I can think of a number of contemporary authors’ writing styles, I can call to mind their appearances, I can even often remember their political and aesthetic leanings, but I can’t think of how to describe their personae.  Maybe this is a personal failing and some of you out there see a lot of writers who have this type of mystique, but for me it lies largely with those who resist publicity like Pynchon or Cormac McCarthy.

Really, I’m interested in this because I feel unsure of how I could create some sort of memorable persona.  Sure I could be myself, but as my wife assures me, I am getting too old for graphic T-shirts depicting my favorite animals ( I am having as much trouble saying goodbye to these as I did saying goodbye to sweatpants in my post-elementary years).  To ease my transition, and probably with the hopes of distracting me from mustache-farming, Bethany has been pointing me to the website Nerd Boyfriend where she hopes I’ll ditch the penguin T-shirt for the classic styles personified by writers, artists, actors, and musicians from the past (I might be on board with a few of David Bowie’s earlier looks).  So, have you succeeded in creating your own writerly style?  If so, some pointers would be just fantastic.  Here’s one great style for the road…

 

Just Truman Capote in a very candid shot

 

Art and Activism

September 14, 2011 by Mike | 4 Comments

Recently I’ve embarked on the task of reading for my PhD comprehensive exam.  One of my focuses is on contemporary environmental fiction, and while assembling a list of representative works, I found myself constantly wanting to add works of environmental creative non-fiction—works that strongly advocated for various ideas on conservation.  I’ve been trying to resist this since my own emphasis is on writing and studying fiction, but have also been forced to ask myself why is it the case?  Why does it seem so much more natural to look to nonfiction for activism?

Plenty of environmental or conservationist writers work in both genres.  Wendell Berry, Barbara Kingsolver, Barry Lopez, Annie Dillard, and Rick Bass all come to mind.  But if I wanted to examine their activism, I feel that I would turn first to their essays.  This makes sense.  An essay can potentially be more directly argumentative and assertive of a specific world-view, can develop pathos for an author’s explicitly stated perspective.  It seems common for environmental nonfiction to present a direct and powerful argument, complaint, or advocacy.  In Rick Bass’s book-length essay The Nine-Mile Wolves, for example, while Bass is interested in the narrative and artistry of a well-told story, he is always clearly moving toward a final argument for the continued re-incorporation of wolves into the American environment, as well as for a more balanced relationship between nature and humankind.

Much more difficult to call to mind are works of fiction that are as explicit in their activism.  The most iconic is Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang.  Though he is also greatly respected for his conservationist nonfiction, Abbey’s activism seems most remembered as tied to the environmental warfare that occurs in the The Monkey Wrench Gang, as represented by the dam-busting and eco-sabotaging characters that the reader is so clearly meant to empathize with and root for.  But this novel seems the exception.

When I think of other works of environmentalist fiction, such as many of T.C. Boyle’s novels or the works of the aforementioned contemporary authors, the conservationist perspective seems much more subtle and sublimated in the narratives and characters and settings and conflicts.  The activism may still be there, but it is buried beneath an emphasis on the story, versus in activist nonfiction where the story is being wielded to best assert a point of view or ongoing question held by the author. Maybe it has to do with the frequent advice young writers of fiction get to avoid writing stories with strongly stated morals, or from a fear of appearing didactic and heavy-handed—all of which seems like good advice.  However, in environmentalist fiction and poetry (as well as in the best environmental creative nonfiction, now that I consider it) art is the emphasis, not activism.

It seems beneficial to have both modes of environmental advocacy.  An explicitly activist essay might have much more success accomplishing or advocating for some concrete goal like the reintroduction of wolves, the dangers and need for regulation of industrial pollution (as in Rachel Carson’s now famous Silent Spring), or other such causes.  And a subtly environmentalist essay, memoir, poem, story, or novel might have a unique potential to gradually alter a nation’s environmental worldview or encourage some degree of increased empathy with an issue.

I wonder what others make of the connection between art and activism, and whether the same sort of division of focuses might be going on in other sorts of activism?

Why Jennifer Egan deserved the Pulitzer

April 21, 2011 by Mike | 1 Comment

When the time comes for Pulitzer announcements, I am usually waiting eagerly to hear who wins the fiction award.  If I’ve read it, I feel a self-satisfied vindication that I am keeping my finger appropriately placed on the pulse of contemporary fiction.  If I haven’t read it, well I usually go ask my wife, who diligently pays attention to new fiction, not half-pretending to as I am.  Last year, she’d read the winner Tinkers, and had been nudging me to read it for a solid month when the award was announced.  This year, I was right there with her, having read A Visit From the Goon Squad for a graduate class just a week before the announcement.  Of course,  plenty (ok, ok most) of the books released this year I’ve yet to read, but that doesn’t take anything away from Jennifer Egan and her work.  This book deserves the Pulitzer Prize; I’ll do my best to explain why.

First, a bit of a summary for those who haven’t read it: A Visit from the Goon Squad is what might be called a novel in stories or linked short stories or a short story cycle.  Semantically these all mean slightly different things, and I’m not sure exactly where Egan’s novel falls, but that doesn’t seem all that important.  What is important is that the stories in A Visit jump through a large cast of interrelated characters and a large expanse of time.  They are connected not only through their relationships, but also through the music industry.  It is a book, though not chronological itself, that is largely concerned with time and with the way people rise and fall along the course of their lives.

Now, why it deserves it: It seems that the best novels in stories are able to collectively characterize a time and a place and an atmosphere.  An iconic example is Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, which not only represents a small town in a rapidly urbanizing America.  Egan takes this form, and lets it play out on a much larger scale.  A Visit isn’t geographically confined.  It spends a great deal of time in San Francisco and NYC, but also moves to a safari in Africa and a visit to an unnamed dictator in an unnamed out of the way country.  It also isn’t constrained to depicting a sliver of time, rather an era–within which whole lives are lived and characters rise and fall and rise again.

Another cue Egan takes from writers of this form such as Anderson is the use of a central character around which the others seem to revolve.  For Anderson it was the young journalist George Willard; for Egan, it is Sasha, who is everything from a runaway teen to a kleptomaniac assistant for a music mogul to a mother.  Many of the characters recur and many of the characters are protagonists at one point or another. Egan’s skill in organizing the narrative  is such that at times I could guess whose story we’d get next, because a special attention was given to some peripheral character lurking at the edge of the narrative, waiting for his/her chance to speak.  But Sasha seemed the heart of this overarching narrative, and she was certainly a compelling one.

Egan expands or elaborates on the form in other ways as well.  She plays with point of view, voice, narrative style, and even structure.  The latter occurs most significantly on the books B-side (a clever divide Egan sets up to reflect the sides of a record), in the story “Great Rock and Roll Pauses By Alison Blake.”  This story is in fact a sequence of powerpoint slides constructed by a young girl in the near future.  I was hesitant and worried the structure might become a conceit or a gimmick when I saw this story, but after reading it, I am convinced it is the books finest moment.  In the end it doesn’t feel all that experimental because Egan so deftly creates narrative in the unusual form.  It is the most effecting and complete short story I have read in quite some time, though I believe that is brought about by perhaps Egan’s greatest success.

In my opinion, this greatest success is that the stories in A Visit work together and build something much greater than the separate parts.  Taken alone, more than a few stories were well realized, interesting, and, finally, not all that compelling.  However, when stories such as “Safari” or the aforementioned “Great Rock and Roll Pauses…” came along, they brought the book to a new and much more significant level, and similarly granted significance to everything around them.  If this book was the record it imitates, these stories would be the singles.  However, as with the best records, experiencing those singles alone can’t elevate them to the level they reach as a part of a whole when experienced with the entire work.  A Visit From the Goon Squad‘s success is brought about by the deftness with which characters and times and places and conflicts and narratives are interwoven.

I was happy to see it justly recognized with a Pulitzer. A big congratulations to Jennifer Egan and to all the other Pulitzer recipients.

Mike Petrik is an intern at The Missouri Review, and a PhD candidate in creative writing at the University of Missouri.

Cereal Box Serial Fiction

April 13, 2011 by Mike | 1 Comment

 

Growing up (and no, that picture isn’t of me), I spent most mornings before school sitting at the kitchen table facing a wall of cereal boxes.  They were useful as a Great Wall of sorts from my barbarian little brother on the other side, but more than that, they were something to do.

Now, as documented in The Telegraph, British supermarket Asda has had a bright idea–putting fiction on the backs of boxes, rather than the usual jumble of word searches, mazes, and the like.  They are starting with excerpts from Roald Dahl–which seems to me an excellent mix of entertainment with quality writing. What a novel idea!

Puffin, the publisher collaborating with Asda seems to be on to something.  There is undoubtedly much more demand on our attention, particularly for young people, so why not slip them a bit of literature when they are still bleary-eyed enough to be easy targets.  And someone must be reading these boxes if the big brands are bothering to print them (on the back, I am sure, of oodles market research).

As of now, Puffin is planning to use punchy excerpts from Dahl’s more popular novels, but who’s to say they won’t turn the Asda brand box-backs into a cereal-serial,maybe even one featuring new work.  Wouldn’t it be fantastic if children were waiting as impatiently for the new box of Count Chocula as they are for the next episode of Phineas and Ferb or the release of the new Pokemon game (word on the street is it’s pretty good).

Would the same thing work for adults?  Would anyone ever say by the water-cooler, “You’ve got to check out the latest Special-K.  It’s the chapter of Don Quixote where Sancho Panza throws up all over Don Quixote.” (Ok, maybe not that chapter, it is a bit too well-rendered for breakfast reading).  Maybe this isn’t the right media for adults, but the idea isn’t too far out there.  Dickens serialized most of what he wrote, as did many of his contemporaries.  There may be an opportunity for a resurgence of serialized fiction, even if it doesn’t happen in newspapers or magazines.

There are novels now being published on tweet at a time, so why not.  Perhaps the adult equivalent to the cereal boxes would be serial fiction on Starbucks cups or desktop tear-off calendars, let alone all the various electronic media.

It’s early and I’m bleary-eyed and I haven’t had my cereal yet.  So give me a hand, where else could we slip in some literature, be it for the kiddies or the grown-ups?  I’m off to see what my generic frosted mini-wheats box has to offer.

Mike Petrik is an intern at the Missouri Review, and a PhD candidate at the University of Missouri.