Cary Tennis's Open Salon Blog

Pat Schneider's "How the Light Gets In": Not really a review

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:04:16 -0400

Rather late in the game, it occurred to this writer that in promising her publisher and others that he would review Pat Schneider's new book "How the Light Gets In," he had gotten himself into a tight spot, ethically speaking, as book reviews are properly written by someone with distance and perspective.

This writer realized he did not have any distance or perspective.

So he awoke very early and dressed in the dark and drove to the Stonestown YMCA for a swim. As he drove, he "asked God" what to do. God said he should just write the review and "fuck it." "God" actually said "fuck it."

This god apparently had no regard for journalistic ethics and standards, which led the writer to suspect that God was messing with him, or really didn't care, or that perhaps he had contacted the wrong god, someone else's god, a merciless, mercantile, utterly selfish God of pure energy and survival, perhaps even a cannibal God.

This God business reminded the writer that the book "How the Light Gets In" was in certain ways about God. It occurred to the writer that maybe that was why God said go ahead and write the review, that maybe God was just as self-interested as writers are, always promoting his own agenda without regard to even his own rules. This reminded the writer that the Pat Schneider book, which is about writing as a spiritual practice, refers to this "god" idea as "mystery." Such remarks placed the writer perilously close to actually writing a "review" of the book but he persisted in believing he could skirt the ethical issues by being amusing.

A further reason the writer could not write a review of the Pat Schneider book was that his behavior must stand as an example to younger journalists. Journalism is a way of knowing and this "way of knowing" depends on a set of rules that define how close or far the writer is from the subject, and apearing on stage to interview the subject in front of an audience at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley in a free event on Saturday, April 27, 2013, at 7 p.m. would put him rather too close to the subject. Having dedicated his book "Citizens of the Dream" to Pat Schneider would also seem to place him rather too close to the subject. Not to mention the fact that the writer actually uses Pat Schneider's workshop method to conduct workshops of his own, which he promotes separately and for which he charges a reasonable sum of money.

Now, on the other hand, the method is readily available to anyone who might want to adopt it for use among various populations of the voiceless and oppressed, and concern for the voiceless and oppressed competes strongly for attention in the author's mind with equally strong concern for making a buck. This led the writer to reflect that in his early years he thought poverty and homelessness righteous until he experienced poverty and homelessness and realized it just sucks.

Also, moreover, the author realizes that his appearance in Berkeley with Pat Schneider on Saturday, April 27 at 7 p.m. for free at Pacific School of Religion is only a small part of a bigger picture. The bigger picture is that Pat Schneider is an important person who has changed many lives for the better and the writer is, relatively speaking, not so much. Contact with inspiring people can have a net positive effect on a great many people, adding weight to the argument that one ought to do all one can to publicize and promote such appearances if one has the "megaphone," so to speak.

"'Don't abuse the megaphone, punk,' would sound good coming out of Moses's mouth, I think, but then I was never religious," thought the writer to himself.

Pat Schneider's having been rescued from poverty by the church, and then leaving the church in order to pursue writing as a spiritual practice is not lost on him. Unlike Pat Schneider the author never even went to church but just occasionally peered inside down South when they were singing. Nor is it lost on him that in seeking to do what he thinks is right, he might encounter deep biases in his own makeup concerning not only Christianity and organized religion but the practice of any kind of capitalist business too.

In the end, the writer concludes that he cannot resolve these contradictions but at least he can make them transparent in a "playful" way. The possibility that being playful about serious things might be misconstrued as mockery concerns the writer, but he feels confident that the rules of journalism make subtle understanding possible by, among other things, making it possible to understand motive.

Part of understanding motive is understanding that motive is complex.

So anyway, the author woke up at 5 a.m. and went for a quick swim but was nervous and unsettled and did not swim long. He showered and while driving home got behind a bus that was behind another bus. The buses made him think of an elephant and her cub. He thought of himself as also a cub, another cub joining the procession of buses. On the rear of one bus was a picture of a diamond ring. It said, "You won't be jealous when your friend gets the newer, smaller version." This struck the author as both beautiful and crass. He began to think about buying his wife a huge engagement ring for no apparent reason nearly 20 years after the wedding. He thought about how she might walk around with a big rock on her finger just for the hell of it. In thinking this, he reminded himself of God, how God might enjoy such a thing too, just for the sheer outrage, and the power.

It then occurred to him that it might have been God, operating through the church, that brought Pat Schneider out of poverty. He recalled that earlier that morning God said to go ahead and write the fucking review. Then he thought, God is so blunt. He lacks subtlety. God is all about going in headlong, full-force. That does not seem to be the modern way. God seems kind of old fashioned.

As a final note, it should be noted again, "for the record," that it will be possible to see Pat Schneider on Saturday, April 27, 2013 at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, for free, in celebration of the publication of her new book, "How the Light Gets In." The plan for the evening is that she will be toasted and honored and then will do a good bit of reading, and then the writer of this non-review will interview her for a short time on stage.

It is possible, when employing a strategy of obliqueness and suggestiveness such as this one, to continue long after its possibilities have been exhausted and everyone else has stopped having fun. So let's quit while we're ahead, the writer thinks. Perhaps the ending could be to simply reiterate that for persons who have an interest in the practice of writing as it relates to larger personal and political issues, the work of Pat Schneider will be worth investigating, on Saturday April 27 in Berkeley for free at 7 p.m.

Perhaps if the reader goes to this event the writer may greet the reader personally and words may be exchanged about the advisability, or not, of such pieces of writing as this one.

Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

Writing is hard

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 10:10:05 -0400

Writing is hard. But you knew that. I am always looking for ways to make it easier. Not that it will ever be easy easy. But just so that it is easy enough that it will actually get done.
Did you read my Oct. 18 column? I got an email the morning after it went up that said it was going viral. As of right now it's got about a million zilliion Facebook likes, more or less. I think that's a lot. I obviously touched a nerve. I just let loose. I just spoke from the heart about how work sucks -- (a lot of work, that is, not all work). Part of why work sucks is that we sense our dreams slipping away. We sense all that we love being eaten up like cancer eats bone. The rest of our lives: What about our lives, motherfuckers? That is how we feel, stuck in cubicles.
So I'm lucky not to be in a cubicle. But I have taken big risks not to be in the cubicle. I have been poor and hungry and without power and means. Not everybody has to do that. But everybody can find space in which to give voice to their inner lives. That is what I figure. And many people can also complete novels and short stories and actually sell them for publication. It's true. It can be done.
So I have two things coming up in which I express my desire to help make that happen. One is the creative getaway at Marconi Conference Center, Nov. 2-5, 2012.
And another is where I will be with Robert Olen Butler and Jane Smiley, two amazing and brilliant writers, at the Santa Barbara Author-Mentor conference, February 28 - March 2, 2013, which I am doing with Michael Neff, a friend and mentor whose in-your-face, real-world publishing know-how is the yang to my soul-based, nurturing, California woo-woo yin.
I think you need both. I think you need to love yourself enough to be able to go into the fires of the unconscious day after day and contemplate what you find, and have the spirit of fun and exploration so you can allow voices you don't understand to be spoken through you. And you also need to get your ass kicked by the publishing business, which is scary and market-driven. I figure if you are meditating enough to be utterly serene, if you've done your mantras and all your steps, like me(!), then you can eventually develop enough self-esteem that you can turn your manuscript over to some know-nothing hack who will tear it to pieces and leave you in tears. And that will be ... OK!
I don't really mean that. Actually, people in the publishing business care about books. They do their best to be kind. But most manuscripts are rejected. So it can seem a hard world. And I do have neurotic fears about rejection. I am not the only one. So I am trying to find a practical method for preparing manuscripts that can actually be sold to publishers and succeed. And I think Michael has a very good way of going about it. Plus I like Michael. He's funny. We have a lot of laughs. So we will be down there in Santa Barbara in February 2013 with also agent Kimberley Cameron and the amazing film producer and agent Ken Atchity.
So in preparation for being with Jane Smiley and Robert Olen Butler I am reading more of their books. I loved A Thousand Acres and Good Faith by Jane Smiley, and her book 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel is a wonderful, personal and wise look at some of the most important novels ever written. And it has the very useful, because simple, definition of a novel: A novel is a lengthy written prose narrative with a protagonist. That's it.
I like that so much.
I'm also reading a lot of stuff by Robert Olen Butler, including his short novel A Small Hotel and his lectures on the creative process From Where We Dream, which is really amazing. One thing he talks about in there, not by any means the most important thing but something which is significant to me today as I write, is the importance of writing fiction every day. Or in my case doing the writing I do every day. I do not write fiction every day but I try to write the column as if it were a form of fictive art; I write it as though it were an ongoing epistolary novel. Even though, hey, it's not always there. But writing every day is very, very important.
Which is why I'm writing this today. Because I have to do this every day for a while. Or I forget.

So ... It's been nice spending this time with you. Look forward to spending more time with you tomorrow.
Cheers!
ct

This post does not actually exist

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 19:09:43 -0400

You never saw this. This never happened.

OK, I kinda still love San Francisco

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 19:09:43 -0400

Get on the bus in the rain and sit up front in the handicapped and old peoples benches and a guy says nice hat. He’s wearing a white shirt like he’s going to work and a black jacket like maybe he used to be a punk and is looking at his cup of coffee like [...]

Scooter and Justin, or, “Justin Bieber’s Dream”

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 19:09:43 -0400

Justin Bieber and his manager, Mr. Braun, had separate bedrooms. Justin, being younger, always went to bed first. His manager, Mr. Braun, not Lloyd Braun from “Seinfeld,” but Scooter, or “Scott” Braun, liked to stay up a little later, smoking his pipe and thinking about the sound of 30,000 young women screaming his client’s name. [...]