Addendum to Learning from Michael Martone

I've "done my homework" since my post called Learning from Michael Martone. Well, a little homework. I've been enjoying Michael's posts on Facebook, although he moves a lot faster there than I do, like one of those swimmers in the fast lane that I notice from time to time as I do my leisurely laps.

During his reading at the 2014 Writers at Work conference, he read excerpts from several different distinctly personal genres, including his 25-word flash fictions (with titles that are not bound by the word limit). The July 2014 issue of elsewhere features a sample of these. Go ahead and follow the link--it's a quick read.

I mentioned the book Four for a Quarter in my previous post as well and now can provide a link to further information. That book is from 2011.

A few days ago, I finished reading The Blue Guide to Indiana, which was the only Michael Martone title left at the conference book table by the time I brought my wallet. Exploiting the possibilities of the expert guidebook authorial voice, this book offers detailed (nearly always fanciful and/or prepostrous) information about travel in Indiana and the sights to be seen. The voice reminds me in its formality and broad reach of topic and vocabulary of another Indianan's--David Foster Wallace. Wallace's obscure Latinate words and infinite sentence structures make him sound like a voice from another world. Michael Martone's syntax in The Blue Guide makes heavy use of nouns and noun phrases, often unusual ones, giving it a quality of Adamic naming.

In the chapter called Practical Information, there's a section on Inoculations and Required Vaccines. I've used italics to highlight a few such (extended) noun phrases (21):

Inoculations and Required Vaccines

Indiana has one living American Elm tree. It is preserved in a specially constructed arboretum on Elm Street in Elmsville. Consequently, the state requires visitors to provide documentation attesting to inoculation against the Dutch Elm Disease. The state parasite is ringworm, which is, as ringworm is a fungus, also the state fungus. Thus ringworm is a protected species as is its habitat. As of August 1955, the state has suffered an outbreak of hepatitis H which requires the wearing of plastic gloves by everyone at all times except when eating. Allergies to latex and PVC gloves are pandemic. Most municipal water supplies have been treated with fluoride as have all sources of Eucharist bread and wafers. The vaccine to ward off crying is suggested for those planning to visit Indiana, as are boosters to prevent dreaming and whistling.

I offer that excerpt as a sample, wondering just how such a text comes into being. Perhaps the starting point is Dutch Elm Disease, leading to ringworm being both a parasite and a fungus, leading to plastic gloves and fluoride, and the ultimate lift-off from reality into the vaccine to ward of crying. The final note about boosters to prevent dreaming and whistling takes us into a realm of something purely funny--the idea of vaccines and boosters for these conditions. But there's an ominousness, too, that these activities could be liabilities for the visitor to Indiana. [Coincident to drafting this section, I blogposted about pansies and China and deadheading and the trolley swing in my grandparents' backyard. I believe there was some Martonian influence.]

The second section I want to discuss comes from the chapter called "A Parade of Homes." This subsection called out to me for a number of reasons, and I will copy its one longish paragraph in its entirety here. (96-97)

The Bill Blass BirthplaceFort Wayne

A plaque next to the front door of this modest bungalow attests to the fact that Bill Blass (one of this nation's premier designers and clothing manufacturers) was born in the back bedroom attended only by a midwife who performed an episiotomy (a result of a breech presentation), the stitching of which was the earliest memory of the newborn sartorial star. Stories are still told of his prodigious talent designing and sewing much of his own layette once he dismissed the prenatal collection of gowns and onesies as uncomfortable, impractical, and out of date. By two, with the aid of an apparatus for reaching the foot treadle of his mother's Singer (preserved and displayed at the birthplace), Bill, as he was known by the neighborhood, had already established a thriving custom alteration business, independently contracting tailoring services with the Patterson Fletcher Department Store downtown, as well as providing most of the south side of the city with coordinating window treatments, still evident to this day, in what would become his signature palette of colors and fabric. In high school, Blass provided the school mascot, the Archer, with an entire trousseau of tunics, hosiery, caps, capes and codpieces, along with the matching accessories of bow, arrow, and quiver. Examples of all this early work are represented in the birthplace's holdings, including the entire portfolio of drawings rendered for his junior prom, providing the evening ensemble for the entire class cotillion. Also on dispaly at the birthplace, Blass-designed wallpapers, wall paint, carpet, area rugs, upholstery, toweling, napkins, flatware, perfume and toiletries, belt buckles, basketball uniforms and shoes, sunglasses, shoes, underwear, shower curtains, and stationery, examples of which are all available for purchase in the gift shop. An additional ticket is required to view the 1974 Ford LTD in navy blue pearl coat and taupe leather trim which is parked on the adjacent lot. The birthplace also possesses the most complete collection of timetables for the midwestern lines and routes of the Pennsylvania Railroad, a hobby of the young Bill Blass, which he passionately maintained and added to, up until the very moment of his own departure for New York City, on the Broadway Limited, the day after he graduate from South Side High School.

Why this passage? For one, Bill Blass is part of the cultural fabric of my lifetime. I remember a label of back to back Bs. For another, try saying Bill Blass several times in a row and not ending up with Blill Bass. The flow of the paragraph from episiotomy to sewing machine to window treatments to "trousseau of tunics, hosiery, caps, capes and codpieces" to "blue pearl coat and taupe leather trim" delights me. Most of all, the collection railway timetables (railroad history being a recurrent and intriguing topic throughout the Guide) leads like a jet on a runway to the departure of Bill Blass from Fort Wayne, the moment he was free to leave.

That is the sort of fun you can have with The Blue Guide to Indiana.

Learning from Michael Martone

I first heard of Michael Martone in 2010 during a fiction workshop with Melanie Rae Thon at the University of Utah. He was one of the gurus she cited during the course (English 5510) along with John Edgar Wideman, Carole Maso, William Maxwell, John Berger, and numerous others. He has resided among my files as "EXPERIMENT #8: THE MARVELOUS MICHAEL MARTONE." Melanie's exercise suggests re-imagining a common object (like Martone's "Chatty Cathy Falls into the Wrong Hands" story) or a disturbing historical fact (his "It's Time" essay about people hand-painting clocks with radium) or any revision at all using Martone's "remarkable sense of detail as inspiration for your own work."

Experiment #8 was heavier lifting at the time, what with needing to find the Martone texts in the special coursepack in the English Dept. office, so I'm glad it worked out to meet Michael in person at the 2013 Writers at Work conference and to see him again there this year. He's very entertaining, and the lifting is light indeed when you get to listen to him read or talk. He's likely to make you laugh. Pretty hard.

I want to note that I saw Michael Martone and Melanie Rae Thon in conversation during a break in this year's conference at least once, and I realized the situation: both of their names end with the syllable "tone." So, of course. Not that many names do, after all.

Michael Martone, University of Alabama
Website: http://english.ua.edu/user/84*
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Martone (not the hockey player)
Workshop title: The Four C’s: Cut, Compress, Context and Collage

*a website that appears to contain an actual bio rather than a fictional "contributor's note," however yesterday the site was down and who knows about today?

June 4, Opening Faculty Panel: Why are we writing?

Michael got the conversation going with a reference to William Stafford, who said if you can't write, "lower your standards." Writing is not the same thing as writing in a publishing-oriented way. In fact, Michael deplores the displacement of our sense of the pure value of text. In schools now, children receive coupons for pizza as a reward for reading a book. Not great, Michael says. It used to be that "reading was the pizza."

Michael brought up the "everybody writes" vs. "special people write" divide exemplified by Jack London on the one hand and Henry James and Edith Wharton on the other. He cited critic Frank Norris' dismissal of the "tragedy of the broken teacup" in works such as those of James and Wharton. I located a discussion of this idea in Michael Martone's 2005 book, Unconventions: Attempting the Art of Craft and the Craft of Art. I won't pretend to have read the full discussion there, but I share the title because it's emblematic of the sort of thinking Michael does on a rigorous and regular basis: What can be reversed and thought about completely differently?

The idea of publishing is in flux, Michael says. The old "publication equals validation" equation is fading. Now the "means of production" are in the hands of the writers. The concept of vanity publishing is not the same as self-publishing. Roles are intermixing--writer, editor, publisher--cultural "gate-keeping" is less a power of the publishing industry.

The panel ended with comments about genre specialization being too extreme (Robin Hemley) and Ellen Bass' comment that you're a writer if you're writing and not if you're not. Michael gave a push for innovation: look for a new way everyday; the greater culture expects progression.

What I learned about Michael's workshop from my "spies"

As with the fiction workshop, my infiltration of the multi-genre workshop was somewhat desultory. I knew from friends on the inside that things were interesting and fun, but exactly what they were up to, I can't say for sure.

One day at lunch, Chelsea Blackman walked through the dining room with a handful of paint samples, four colors on a strip of paper. She was distributing them for an exercise in the Martone workshop. “I’ll take one!” I said, greedily. I love colors, and paint swatches are a great place to look for color names. So is the Wikipedia List of colors (although it’s alphabetical, not by actual color, which can be tedious) and the Wikipedia List of Crayola crayon colors (which is a trip back into deep memory).

What I forgot to do was ask about the exact assignment. I expect Michael had something specific and perhaps counterintuitive in mind. Nonetheless, I’ve done the exercise. I did it this way: use all four color names in a text. What I enjoy about this sort of prompt is the way it challenges me to imagine things I've never seen before and to play them out for a little while. Here's my text.

Luncheon 

A silver half dollar, soldered on the underside to an unseen ring, gleamed from its perch atop the rolled cloth napkin, next to a setting of silver salad fork, fork, empty white plate with dimpled rim, knife, and soup spoon. A Kennedy profile, staring off to the left: round and round the table, the Kennedy napkin rings stared. 

The napkin, sharply pointed top and bottom, slid out from the ring and opened as a white diamond, corners folded toward the middle like envelope flaps. A veritable lap robe, so large and crisp and white. 

Tall cylindrical glasses, filled moments ago with water over perfectly square cubes of ice, sweated in a ring at the interior of the table, just inches from a silver platter beneath the central arrangement of lilies. Light from the window bounced off the platter, pierced the glass, and projected a peculiar illusion: iced cube silver. 

Knees and thighs brushed against chantilly lace. Ice rattled in glass. John F. Kennedies rolled sideward. Crisp damask sails snapped open and disappeared. Lilies dropped crumbly dark pollen. Teeth thudded on silverware. Forks clanked against porcelain. Breadcrumbs lodged in crochet. Ice vanished. Coffee spoons dripped. Napkins fell like white mountain ranges when knees pulled back and away from lace.

(Now I wonder if I ought to have included or not included a broken teacup...)

June 6, Reading by Michael Martone on Friday night

I spent Michael's reading being a pleasing mixture of baffled and entertained--so much so that my notes are spare. He gets you thinking, for example about "the four nows." That's the now of the story, the now of writing, the now of reading, and the now of talking about the above. Concepts like "now" find themselves on shifting ground. Michael led off the reading with a few "Contributor's Notes," familiar from his reading last year and fun to hear again. He's created a small genre: false or perhaps semi-true biographies that follow the form of the literary bio. When asked for an "actual" contributor's note for the real back section of a book, he tends to send another of this genre instead.

Michael read from a series of 25-word memos, a form that derives at least half its power from the titles (which are exempt from the word limit and tend to be hilarious). No notes; I was laughing.

Ditto for whatever he read called "Amish in Space"--a collage piece that falls under "Indiana Science Fiction" and puts Amish space travelers in no gravity with livestock.

The Martone book I purchased at the conference is The Blue Guide to Indiana. I believe he read from it (about the Bob Ross Museum) because my notes indicate that and I've heard Michael read that bit before, but I have a blank spot in my memory from this particular evening--could I have been so completely entertained as to not remember it? (So it goes). The Blue Guide is a "fake" travel guide. I haven't read it the full book yet, so I'll just give you Melanie Rae Thon's blurb from the back jacket: "Michael Martone is a man with a mission, a fabulous inventor of history and memory, landscape and people. His quirky, magical tours hurl the reader across the borders between fact and fiction into a country of the mind where what we desire and fear fills our senses. Take the tops of your convertibles and fly! Trust The Blue Guide to Indiana to point you to some of the most delightful places on the planet."

Michael concluded his reading with something quite new: Four for a Quarter (as in the old-style photo booth where the camera took four separate shots in rapid succession). He called it fictions of things in fours. The piece he read is called "Four in Hand" and talks about knots in neckties: Windsor, Bow, Half-Windsor, and Four in Hand. The piece is very touching--how he knotted ties over the years for his father, who died earlier this year. Michael told me my own reading the evening before about my son's death had given him a nudge to present this work.

More on this topic, Michael has just had a photograph called "Curtains: My Father Dying, April 8, 2014" published by Ascent magazine, complete with a contributor's note.

June 8, Closing faculty panel: How we got here and where do we go from here?

Michael presented collage, one of the topics addressed in his workshop, near the opening of the panel discussion. It's about juxtaposition and recontextualization. Found objects, natural collaging, randomness, fragments, association, improvisation. It favors velocity (not perfection). One of my favorite quotes of the conference: "Quantity not quality." To underscore the point, Michael cited Joseph Stalin's position on military tanks: "quantity has a quality all its own." Michael advised us to think of the work as expansive. "Write this and move on."

Another favorite one-liner I've already shared with writer friends: "Remember, a page a day is a book a year."

When asked about stepping out of genre, Michael said the human impulse is to order and sort. He encouraged us to confuse and rearrange. Rather than accepting categories like "good" and "bad," he said we need to "worry the categories." He stressed, as he had in the opening panel, to find in writing a different value than commodity.

I now see that my notes do not contain a "favorite exercise" from Michael Martone. Is this another black hole in my note-taking, or have we in fact been short changed here? Some category worrying going on right now...

I can report that I applied learnings from Michael almost immediately (in addition to the stolen paint chip). The day after the conference ended, my last day on US soil for an undetermined period of time, I finally made it to Nordstrom Rack, where I tried on some summer dresses. In the end, I couldn't make up my mind. So, I bought three. That's what you meant, Michael, about quantity and tanks, right?