I am petty and shallow

[ilanarama]

As at least one person reading this knows, I'm a big fan of Pam Houston. She was in town last night as part of "celebrity author night" at our local independent bookstore, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

She writes short stories about outdoorsy women in the western mountains and deserts, mostly, river trips and hunting and backpacking with men who aren't worth it and dogs who are, and you can tell she's been there. Her novel is coming out in January. She also has a collection of essays out which are pretty much the same thing from a nonfiction perspective. Her writing is impressive and her stories are amazing, ridiculous deathmarches (heh, you thought mine were bad) and fly-fishing in midwinter in Montana in freezing water to her chest because she got invited with a group of guys and didn't want them to think she was a weak woman. That sort of thing.

When she walked in, the first thing I thought was, "gee, she's gained a lot of weight since her book jacket cover photo was taken. I could out-hike you now, fat girl."

Yeah, I pick the one thing I can assert my superiority in. She's still a more famous writer than I am, though.

And when I commented that I really enjoyed her essays and asked if she was writing more nonfiction, she basically said, "oh, essays are just what I toss off to make money, they're nothing, my fiction is all that I care about." Made me feel like I have poor taste. And that all my nonfiction writing is for naught. If I want to be a Writer I must write fiction, I suppose. Oh well. At least I've got a better body.

Comments

[saramwrap.livejournal.com]

Pish posh.

Writing comes in all flavors, and I have immense respect for many authors who can write enthralling nonfiction. I think it's often harder to make real-life sound exciting, interesting, and appealing, since we all live it. While fiction writing definitely has its own challenges, it upsets me when people dismiss nonfiction.

I'm sure that Pam Houston is a wonderfully talented author... and so are you, missy. And you have a better body. :)

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Aw, thanks. And yeah, there were two other authors at this event, and both of them are nonfiction writers, so I imagine they were a bit peeved as well.

It is just hard sometimes when I say I'm a writer, and when people ask me if I've been published I tell them yeah, in these magazines and newspapers, and I can just see the, "Oh, I thought you meant you wrote *novels*" in their faces.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

In my (perhaps also shallow) experience, that seems normal! You meet a person who is just so far above you in some skill, you need to find at least some little thing that you're better or equal at!

"Gah! She's the president and is giving out millions of dollars and saved a litter of kittens... but I have better breath!"

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know intellectually that life is not a zero-sum game, but I still tend to be way competitive in stupid ways.

[caitlinburke.livejournal.com]

I'm struck by how graceless her reply to your compliment was. People really underestimate how insulting such remarks are - at least I hope they do, because the idea that they know exactly what they're suggesting is so unpleasant.

So here's hoping it's just a touch of the ol' social awkwardness - and not only is your reaction justified, if problematic in its own way, but hey, at least neither of you gals is Anne Rice (http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/AB4F6UHL20U95/ref=cm_cr_auth/103-6747848-6084611) (scroll down to her remarks on Blood Canticle).

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Heh, Anne Rice boggles the mind. Or to quote a poster on Fandom_Wank (http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/515245.html) "Hi, I'm Anne Rice. My ego is so large that it's crushing me to death under its enormous weight. Please help me."

Actually, I suspect that Pam was just so up and excited about her new novel that she wasn't paying attention to what she was saying. As I commented to Sara above, the other two writers at this event were nonfiction writers (Katie Lee and Russell Martin).

[mehitabelmmoss.livejournal.com]

I think fiction writers are like that. I recently asked a neighbor for help w/ a book I'm starting - and the first thing she asked was if it was fiction.
That said, I also had a friend who wrote non-fiction books (and wrote for the NYT and was teaching to boot) and he was pure journalism.

I guess we all have our predjudices - I like good writing and interesting stories whatever......

PS - I agree that her response was rude. She could have just said Thank you to your compliment and left out the put-down.

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

I suppose we all tend to value what comes hard and what we are recognized for. And by the way, if you haven't read Pam Houston's essays - the collection is called "A Little More About Me" - I think you might enjoy them. Very good reading for the outdoorsy woman.

[caitlinburke.livejournal.com]

Or to quote a poster on Fandom_Wank....

Yeah, well, to me it sounded a little more like, "My ego is so large, you'd need a crane and a wrecking ball to get it out of my lovely New Orleans home, which you can find at this address, and I certainly don't need any of your help, you nattering nabobs of negativity, because my prose, like my hero, is deathless. Deathless, you hear me!? By the way, who are you?"

And yeah, I guess by comparison, I'd really rather hear, "Oh that! I just knock those out." Although I guess I also sorta like to hear, "It's a knack, I guess!"

Come to think of it, I've had a couple of conversations like this with talented artists lately. Both of them have basically dismissed the products of their talent casually to me, saying they didn't have to work at it, and it didn't satisfy them the way honing the things they really care about did. It sounds like Houston, too, is coming from that rough area, no doubt pleased that she can find a market for that stuff, and (one hopes) aware that it beats a day job temping, but wanting to be honest and open about where it fits in her Maslovian pyramid.

Those talented friends of mine, by the way, are both guys who are losing their hair, whereas my hair is thick and lustrous.

[alembicresearch.livejournal.com]

Apparently she is also "director of the Creative Writing Program
at University of California, Davis".
(BTB, a possition once held by Gary Snyder, the famous beatnic
who was the inspiration for Jack Keroac's "Jaffie" [sp?] in the
"Dharma Bums"). Which probably contributes to the enormity
of her imminence.

However, before you mentioned her name just now, I had never
heard of the well-feed Ms. Houston.

Since I had never heard of her, how great can she be? :-)

Maybe she's cares more about her fiction,
because it doesn't pay the bills. It's the un-achieved goal ...

It's that psychological thing, where you don't appreciate
what you've got. (How's the song go: "don't it always seem to go,
that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone".)

A great re-tort to her snide answer might have, "well,
if you stop selling your essays and go back to being
a starving artist, it would help quality of your fiction writing".

Anyway, I'll take you and your great body, any day!

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Heh, you're sweet, John! But actually I think you might like her essays if not her fiction - good outdoorsy stuff. Even if you're a guy :-)

[alembicresearch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I like outdoorsy stuff ...
even when they're written by women.
Maybe I will give it a try one of these days.
I'll take a look next time I'm at the library.

A while back I read a couple of Nevada Barr
mysteries ... kind of a fun change of pace
from my normal more serious reading.

Right now I'm in the middle of another Bill
Bryson book: "Made in America" sort of a follow
up to the book I mentioned last week,
on the English language and how it got that way.
This one deals more with the American English,
and how it got that way (sort of).

[littleamerica.livejournal.com]

Of the books I've read since the start of last year, I think two or three are fiction. I far and away prefer non-fiction to fiction, so I can't immediately jump on board with the attitude that seems apparent in her comment.

In her defense, though, being a writer on the book-pushing circuit can be a profoundly weird, personality-warping experience. I'd encourage you to cut her a break and not take anything she says too seriously.

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

Hm. I wonder if her fiction/non-fiction comment is also partly because she finds writing fiction (more) difficult? At a much lower level, in my t.b days I found it pretty easy to write "lab reports", but difficult to construct pieces of fiction which I didn't hate. I'm not sure if this is because I "care" more about the fiction and therefore demand more of it, but it did have a side-effect of making me want to write fiction more, to prove something-or-other to myself...

Oh, and GIF GIF GIF! (someone had to say it)

[(Anonymous)]

I _am_ a moderately outdoorsy guy, and her essays are poor - a vapid exploration of a tenuously-tethered ego. Consider the half-congratulatory way she describes crapping out on her Grand Canyon trip associates. This was presented as letting herself have permission to relax from the standards of a 'real' boatman and let her inner little girls have permission to pule, whine, and disintegrate. The point is - as you well know -- on a Grand Canyon trip, boatmen have to be able to rely on one another. Put another way, do you want firemen or policemen who give themselves permission to fall apart on the job? There really are situations where the reliance of other people on us has to be met with something more than self-exculpatory disintegrating narcissism.

Pam may have run rivers, but she never was a boatman. Her writings betray none of the technical accuracy that a real boatman enjoys and obtrudes. Remember her description of that rapid in Cataract Canyon that drops as much as 7-story building? Right. It doesn't exist. And did you ever notice that she has never, in her essays, done anything but run the most dangerous rapids in the west? Every time? Did you ever meet a real boatman who had to pass this bogus currency about every river he ever ran? This woman is a puffball trying to pass as a bolete.

I'd also call your attention to the female characters in Cowboys are my Weakness. They do a lot of adventurous stuff: but only as appendages to men, who aren't worth it, yes, but who are dominant. The women are nothing but passive. The type location - all the stories show it - is the time when the lead character in the lead story caves in to a man whose values she dislikes, a deceptive rogue of a hunter. Because of the outdoor setting and the incessant bragadoccio about the most dangerous rapids at the highest water, it is slightly disguised, but these women are straight out of standard bodice-rippers. Unfortunately, her heroines (and herself) are less spirited and more passive.

On the body bit. Recollect that essay where she gives herself permission to transcend the American body image focus and be the full-bodied woman she is. This is of course presented with Pam's charm, but what's actually happening is she's permitting herself to bloat up. Squeeze the drivel out of it, and how does it differ from those pathetic office mates who simper about how they just can't resist chocolate? You do have the better body, and that's because you've decided to.

Why don't you send her a copy of Total Woman?

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Ooh, kick her in the balls, why don't you.

All of us women are seekritly scared that men will figure out that we're all faking it, you know. Oh, hell, I said it, now they'll kill me.