The Mumpsimus

If I were preparing to teach a course in fiction writing (something I haven’t done for a few years now), I would be tempted to assign Joan Samson’s 1975 novel The Auctioneer , because it is both not a bad book and also a book with some specific flaws that prevent it from being a great book. These are the most instructive texts. I started reading The Auctioneer with great hopes. For one thing, it is set in central New Hampshire, where I live, a place often ignored by fiction writers. (You might be surprised how few notable works of fiction are set in rural New Hampshire, a place that has attracted plenty of writers to visit or live, but fewer to write about.) It has the reputation of being a lost classic, a book that got good reviews in hardcover, sold about a million copies in paperback, got optioned by Hollywood, and then disappeared, probably because its writer died tragically young of brain cancer, and so a promising career became a single pretty good book. In recent years, it has...

  Choosing a favorite Shirley Jackson story is nearly impossible. "The Lottery" is of course the famous one — easily among the most famous short stories in the English language — and because it is so ubiquitous, we (that is: I) can sometimes forget that it's also basically perfect. It is hard, though, to claim such an inescapable story as a favorite; to favor something, it mustn't feel as if it is always there.  For a long time, I've said "One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts" is my favorite, and it is certainly up there, a story of wonderful surprise and weird malice. So, too, "The Summer People" and "The Intoxicated" and plenty of others. But if we're talking about the story that I have read the most times, the story that I have returned to again and again to study how Jackson achieved what she did, then my favorite is clear: "Pillar of Salt". I first read it in the later 1980s when I was in middle school and got The Magic o...

Years ago, I picked up a couple of issues of Poetry  magazine that Donald Hall had gotten rid of. I don't remember where. A yard sale or library sale, maybe. A random table in a random shop, a random shelf in a random hallway. I have no idea. I remember, though, that I almost passed them by. But I happened to look at the address label. Donald Hall. Eagle Pond Farm. Danbury, NH.  No bookish New Hampshire native would have been able to resist. If you aren't from New Hampshire, or don't live in New Hampshire, Donald Hall's name may not mean a lot to you — maybe you know he's a poet, maybe you remember a children's book he wrote, maybe you read one of his essays in The New Yorker , maybe you heard him on NPR, maybe, maybe... But for us New Hampshirites, Donald Hall is  poetry. His death at the age of eighty-nine (a few months short of his ninetieth birthday) feels, in a literary sense, as monumental as the day the Old Man of the Mountain fell to rubble.

Let me begin with disclaimer: This is not a review of Liz Ahl's first book-length collection of poems, Beating the Bounds . Liz is a longtime friend who sometimes writes about the place where I live and people I know, so anything I say about this book's qualities ought to be suspect. Further, I'm not very good at writing about poetry. I read a lot of poetry — well, "a lot" in comparison to most Americans, certainly, and probably in comparison to most writers who are not themselves poets — but have no facility for writing about poetry with much more insight than, "I like this line," or "Doesn't that sound nice?" What this post is, then, is not a review but a notice, plus quotations and anecdotes. Notice: Liz Ahl has published her first book-length collection of poems, Beating the Bounds . No book better captures what it looks like, smells like, sounds like, feels like to live in rural central New Hampshire than this book. That may s...

     Dawn again, and I switch off the light. On the table a tattered moth shrugs its wings.      I agree. Nothing is ever quite what we expect it to be. —Robert Dunn Katherine Towler's deeply affecting and thoughtful portrait of Robert Dunn is subtitled "A Memoir of Place, Solitude, and Friendship". It's an accurate label, but one of the things that makes the book such a rewarding reading experience is that it's a memoir of struggles with place, solitude, and friendship — struggles that do not lead to a simple Hallmark card conclusion, but rather something far more complex. This is a story that could have been told superficially, sentimentally, and with cheap "messages" strewn like sugarcubes through its pages. Instead, it is a book that honors mysteries. You are probably not familiar with the poetry of Robert Dunn , nor even his name, unless you happen to live or have lived in or around Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Even then, you may not ...

art by Lena Yuk The August 2013 issue of Nightmare Magazine  contains my story "How Far to Englishman's Bay", which is all about why people from New Hampshire should be careful when they travel to Maine. The story will be available online for free next week, but why wait when you can have it for $2.99 and also get stories by  Jennifer Giesbrecht, Robert McKammon, and Clive Barker, plus part 2 of a great interview with Joe Hill. There's also an "Author Spotlight" interview with each writer, including one conducted with me by Erika Holt, who asked some fun questions. I'm especially pleased to be in an issue with an interview with Joe Hill, because years and years and years ago, back when I was young and easy under the apple boughs, I interviewed Joe about his short story collection 20th Century Ghosts , at that time only available from PS Publishing in the UK. Back then, he was just a mysterious short story writer who seemed to have popped up o...

While many of my friends (particularly the ones with Twitter and Facebook accounts) have been at BEA or heading to WisCon , I've spent the week spent doing little other than grading student work and then in the evening, when the brain had fizzled, watching various cable TV shows or movies like Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life and Stargate . I've spent 12 years telling myself that during the next term I will figure out some way to create more simple, clear, and efficient methods of grading. And each term, I've failed; indeed, each term, I seem to increase the grading burden on myself.  I have seen the enemy, and it is me. More than most terms, I noticed some of my students' creativity. For instance, one wrote of a gospel song called "Go Down Mosses". Another wrote that, "Without a patriarchal society, women could have voted from the gecko." Their creativity, and my brain's fizzlement, seems have had an effect on me. I spent th...

In an attempt to promote racial, ethnic, generational, and aesthetic diversity in a state best known for its rock, the New Hampshire Department of Cultural Resources is devoting $7.50 (half its budget) to an effort that encourages the Granite State's citizens to create what Governor John Lynch called, "That hipping-hopping music, so popular with the young folks nowadays." Because the indigenous music of New Hampshire is something akin to sea shanties played on kazoos and small accordions, there will be a steep learning curve. But the state's commitment is strong. Van McLeod, Commissioner of Cultural Resources, said, "In honor of the great strides New Hampshire is making toward becoming one of the big playas, I'm officially changing my name to MC Loud, at least for today." The first product of the state's new initiative takes up the gauntlet thrown down by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys:

New Hampshire is a small state, so we only have a few daily newspapers. We're most notorious for the Union Leader , but the state paper that's won a Pulitzer (among other awards) is the Concord Monitor . And today the Illustrating VanderMeer exhibit that I helped put together at Plymouth State University got a big feature story in the Monitor , with a particular focus on New Hampshire's own Eric Schaller. The web version has the full text, but I was blown away when I opened up the paper and saw it was almost the entire front page of the arts section: And just a reminder that Jeff and Eric will both be in Plymouth on the evening of November 23 for a reading and discussion. Huge thanks to David Beronä and Jennifer Green at Plymouth State for their work in putting the exhibit together, and special thanks to the Public Relations department at the University as well for helping it continue to get great coverage. And if you haven't yet bought Booklife or Finch , the only ...

I taught for nine years at the New Hampton School , an independent boarding school in central New Hampshire (from which I also graduated as a student). During my first three years, I lived as a dorm parent in the oldest building on campus and one of the oldest in town, Randall Hall. Randall was a legendary building, having been hauled across town at the beginning of the 20th century brick by brick and rebuilt. By the time I lived in it with 30-35 junior and senior boys (mostly hockey players), it was in desperate need of repair. During my third year in Randall, I had become, by default, the dorm head, in charge of everything having to do with the dorm. There are few things in the world I hate more than being an administrator, and so I did what I have always done with such positions: used it to get the heck out! I lived the next six years in an apartment in a house owned by the school. Despite its historical value, Randall could not ultimately be saved. Structural engineers report...

Posting here has been light because at the moment I'm in rehearsals for The Winter's Tale in Sandwich, New Hampshire . It's the realization of a lifelong dream -- I am getting to play the King of Bohemia! (Otherwise known as Polixenes , but I insist everyone refer to me as the King of Bohemia. I rule over many cafés and have my own line of designer liberal guilt.) For anyone who happens to be nearby, the show runs August 11-16 at the outdoor stage of the Sandwich Fairgrounds at 2pm, rain or shine. Also, I haven't yet had a chance to write about my experience as a participant in the first of the Write On Golden Pond playwrighting/screenwriting workshops offered by Whitebridge Farm Productions here in central NH. I've known workshop leader Ernest Thompson (winner of one of them Oscar thingies for writing an obscure indie flick called On Golden Pond ) for longer than either of us would care to admit, and for five or six years I participated in an informal play...

There's a lot of stuff I've liked about former Supreme Court Justice David Souter over the years -- he's a solitary, independent-minded fellow from New Hampshire, after all. And he's got a passion for books. When the Washington Post ran an article a few months ago about his life at home, it included this sentence: "Souter is a ferocious reader -- he has thousands of books piled up in the farmhouse -- and friends said he is eager, finally, to organize them into a library." Organizing your books into a library may not be as easy at it sounds when you live in a colonial farmhouse, though. Justice Souter recently had to find a new house: Gilman said Souter told him one of the reasons he decided to move was because his Weare house wasn't structurally sound enough to hold the thousands of books that make up his library. "He said there was just so much weight from the books, it would be too much for the house to support," Gilman said. My opinion o...

Because of what is called, I believe, in technical jargon "bureaucratic wrangling", it took a little bit longer than expected -- but yesterday the governor of New Hampshire, John Lynch, finally signed into law a bill allowing same-sex marriage . This has a direct effect on the lives of some of my family and friends, so it was pretty big news. That the state went for the idea does not surprise me too much -- we're notoriously conservative economically up here, but socially relatively liberal -- but Lynch's support is a surprise, even if it took a lot to get him there. The added language providing super-duper-double-extra-gay-proof-yay-for-God protection against churches having to perform same-sex weddings is mostly window dressing to mollify people who think their churches are suddenly going to be overrun with people they hate ( Gene Robinson will be comin to yer cathedral, spreadin teh gay on yer altar!), but as the commenters at John Scalzi's blog (and elsewhe...

In January of 2008, civil unions for same-sex couples became law in my home state of New Hampshire. This was a wonderful advance for us, and I had friends and close family members who were civilly unified. Now, it looks like we're about to take the next step toward full equality. From Governor Lynch's press release yesterday: This morning, I met with House and Senate leaders, and the sponsors of this legislation, and gave them language that will provide additional protections to religious institutions. This new language will provide the strongest and clearest protections for religious institutions and associations, and for the individuals working with such institutions. It will make clear that they cannot be forced to act in ways that violate their deeply held religious principles. If the legislature passes this language, I will sign the same-sex marriage bill into law. If the legislature doesn’t pass these provisions, I will veto it. We can and must treat both same-sex coup...

from The Concord Monitor : Is Franklin Pierce due for a promotion? Pierce, the only New Hampshire man elected to the White House, is a perennial nominee for Worst President Ever. But as that office's current occupant finds his own reputation under attack from many historians and the public, Pierce could move up a notch from the bottom of the presidential rankings -- a boost Pierce partisans say is long past due. "When I speak to groups, somebody always asks, 'How does it feel to know your man is no longer the worst?' " said Peter Wallner, author of a recent two-volume biography of Pierce. "I take a little bit of pleasure in the fact that (President George) Bush is viewed by them as worse than Pierce." Actually, Pierce is generally not listed as the worst, but rather one of the worst -- James Buchanan, Millard Filmore, Warren G. Harding, and a few others make all the lists , and when the lists are ranked, Pierce is seldom number one. But still. Mr....

I'm safely back in New Hampshire and beginning to settle in. Most of my time has been taken up with packing and unpacking -- moving into a house that was already fully lived in is quite a task. My father's aesthetic was not minimalist, and he'd lived here since the early '70s. I'm also discovering all the many joys of home ownership as I realize how much work needs to be done here (windows that really should be replaced before winter; dry rot that has to be dealt with; the many surfaces that need a coat [or five] of paint; the flying ants that have a secret entrance into one room...) It's magnificently peaceful here, though, and more than anything else I needed some peace, so really I have no complaints. Posting will resume within the next day or two. (During my absence, the entire internet seems to have gone insane, but I shall not confuse correlation and causation...) Readercon is coming up next week, where it looks like I'll be on a couple of panels : ...

Since leaving my home state, I've become something of a New Hampshire chauvinist. So it gives me great pleasure to see that the new U.S. poet laureate is Charles Simic , who has taught for many years at my own undergraduate alma mater, the University of New Hampshire (yes, I was at NYU longer, but UNH is the place that gave me a diploma, so I've got some loyalty to them). Last year, New Hampshire's Donald Hall was the poet laureate, and now it's Simic (who is, I must admit, a poet far closer to my tastes than Hall, but I have tremendous respect for Hall's work as an editor and promoter of poetry, and he's absolutely wonderful as a reader of his, or anybody's, work). Selections of Simic's work are available online at the Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Foundation websites. I highly recommend his Selected Early Poems , the prose poems in The World Doesn't End , all of his essays and memoirs, and his book about our beloved Joseph Cornel...

I am at the moment looking for a new job, because I've been at my current one for long enough, and so it is possible, even likely, that I will be saying goodbye to my beloved New Hampshire. Stories like this one make me all the more reluctant to go, because where else will I find a state where the former governor -- a man who was once the Chief of Staff to the great and powerful President George H.W. Bush; a man who co-hosted that fine contribution to American culture known as "Crossfire" -- accepts and celebrates his latest official title: Hog Reeve of Hampton Falls.