THE LITBLOG CO-OP

LBC Podcast: Marshall Klimasewiski

Nominator: C. Max Magee

Nominee: Marshall N. Klimasewiski

Subjects Discussed: Drawing upon compartmentalized personal experience, writing unpleasant characters, sabbaticals, maintaining an ever-shifting narrative, writing short stories vs. novels, characters stuck in environments, protracted scenes, human connection vs. work, locals vs. vacationers, John Ruskin, Charles Dodgson, co-opted misfits, and invention vs. personal experience.

Excerpt from Show:

Klimasewiski: The odd thing for me -- and I don't know why this is -- is that I found Cyrus so much easier to write, even though I don't think I'm a writer with a really terrific memory.  And so therefore I don't have this great sense of exactly what it was like to be nineteen, or to live inside my own nineteen year old mind.  And yet he was so much easier for me to write than the cottagers, who demographically are much closer to me and to people I know.  Yet I had a terrible time making them seem to come alive or feel credible in some way in my mind.

Backup Link: (MP3)

(A co-production of the LBC, Pinky's Paperhaus and The Bat Segundo Show.)

LBC Interview: Marshall N. Klimasewiski

The following is an interview with Marshall N. Klimasewiski, author of The Cottagers (Norton, 2005).  He currently is a Writer-in-Residence at Washington University in St. Louis.

Dan:

Thank you Marshall, for taking some time out of this near the end of the semester craze to answer some questions.

Marshall:

My pleasure.  Thanks for the questions.

Dan:

Were you a big reader as a youngster?  Is there an incident from your youth that you recall that might have been the spark towards your becoming a writer?

Marshall:

I wasn’t a big reader, compared to other writer friends I have.  I always had deep attachments to certain books—that old, red-covered volume of Winnie-the-Pooh first, then The Lorax, then From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler—but I don’t think I read especially widely, for a kid.  But yes, I also had a third grade teacher who gave us an assignment to write a story, and who then typed up and mimeographed the story I turned in, passed it out to the class, and read it aloud.  I’ve always said I decided I’d be a writer at that moment, while her voice enunciated my sentences, and I think it’s really true, even though I went through long stretches of my youth neither writing nor reading much.  It was as if I’d secured a future that didn’t require my present—as if I’d decided I would be a doctor when I grew up.  But then I did only apply to undergraduate colleges that offered creative writing as a major, and not surprisingly, I arrived at mine (Carnegie Mellon) a truly awful writer.  I still remember a couple of my teachers there having a good, long laugh together, one day when I was a senior on the verge of graduating, about just how bad I was when they first saw me—they could recall in detail my early poems and stories, and quoting them still brought tears to their eyes.

Dan:

Besides reading and writing, what aspects of pop culture (if any) grab much of your attention?  For instance, growing up in Harford, CT, were you by chance a Whalers fan?

Marshall:

Ah, the Whalers—you couldn’t avoid them.  And in my youth, coaches Calhoun and Auriemma hadn’t yet arrived so UCONN basketball was nothing, making the Whalers all we had to cling to.  I was (and remain) a huge sports fan, though hockey wasn’t a favorite.  Last summer a writer for The New York Times traveled around Connecticut, interviewing people and visiting sports bars, trying to trace out the border where Yankee territory gave way to Red Sox nation, and my town was right on that line.  Because my family was full of Red Sox fans (well, mostly—my mom had a crush on Mickey Mantle), I became a dire Yankee fan.  I had a poster of Thurman Munson in my bedroom (and his was my first experience of death).  I remain one, too.  Sorry.  Though with how much better your Tigers have been lately I have nothing to be sorry about.  I do love pop music, too—sometimes write while listening to it.

Dan:

Your debut novel, The Cottagers, came out last year.  How much reviewing attention did it receive?  Was it about what you expected, or a surprising amount (in either direction)?

Smells Like Sooke Harbor

Setting is crucial to The Cottagers and Marshall Klimasewiski gets it all right. The Cottagers concerns two couples, academics on summer vacation on Vancouver Island. One of the great pleasures of the book is how precisely and accurately he describes the dark woods, the smell of loamy balsam, mist, salt, and kelp. As the Brooklyn couple emerges from their car, the smell hits them--intense, both new and familiar.

The loneliness and resentment--Marshall’s word from Wednesday morning and the right one, I think--of a small, northern town on the verge of being a vacation resort is something I know intimately, love deeply.

If, like me, you’re longing for a hit of that intensely contrasting landscape of deep forest greens and icy pale blues, salt and balsam, a waft of blackberries mixed with the deep, wet smell of fertile soil, then The Cottagers gets the setting--dark and fertile, just right.

You can take the Rhode Islander out of Rhode Island

In 1978 or so, eagle-eyed me spotted an ad on TV for a kids-fly-free-and-grownups-cheap deal from east coast to west. I don't remember if it included Disneyland, but that's what leapt to my keen 11-ish mind. Mom, Dad, little sister, me and Space Mountain! What could be better?

Somehow this caught on with my phenomenally cheap, unworldly family. My parents -- nice academics, who liked rocks and books, put Joshua Tree on the agenda. We'd drive through Palm Springs. And yes, we'd go to Disneyland.

We got in very late, and they had to upgrade our car -- to a Lincoln Continental. Rather than being a cause for celebration, this offended all our sensibilities (2 years later, my Dad would buy a K Car, the Cheapest Car Ever). Despite the desert, Dad refused to run the air conditioning. I kept my window down all the time, but it was electrically powered, and my dad was always turning off the car and getting out before I remembered to roll it up. Much yelling.

When we went to Disneyland, we stayed at the Disneyland Hotel! So in the morning we popped on the monorail and, with the other hotel guests, were the FIRST PEOPLE INSIDE DISNEYLAND. My sister and I cried Space Mountain! The Matterhorn! But alas, we were shuttled by my parents to ... a gift shop to buy film. Yeah, like my dad really wanted to capture the expression on my face after that in kodachrome.  We could have been first in line at Space Mountain, man!

When we went to Joshua tree, one member of our family touched a fuzzy-looking cactus. We all knew better. But it was irresistably fuzzy. Much excrutiating pain. Also, plenty of derision. Little to be done on either count.

Then Palm Springs; I imagine the car made us look like we belonged. What I remember is that we went to a breakfast place where there were women in bikinis. Macrame bikinis. Unlined macrame bikinis. My parents were scandalized, my sister was scandalized, I was scandalized. Palm Springs! The horror!

Then, at some hotel someplace, ordering the cheapest thing on the menu as usual, I asked my parents if I could get dessert. They relented. I wanted the fancy thing the waitress had told us about: an eclair. When she delivered it, she said, "For the young man." This is, perhaps, the worst thing that can be said to an 11-year old girl. My family thought this was hysterical. Me, I was so mortified I couldn't eat the damn eclair (and you know, I'm still not fond of 'em).

Sorry, no poop or pee from me -- just your basic adolescent hell.

This Explains Much, or Why I Never Drink and Drive: A Vacation Memory

I've had my fair share of bad vacations, mostly when I was a kid and had little control over where we were going, how we were going to get there, or who would be traveling with us, and as you'll see, little control of my bladder.  For instance, there was the time that my mom kept getting on my nerves and my thirteen-year-old self finally gave in to the urge to tell her to "Shut the fuck up!", meaning that there would be no goofy golf in Gatlinburg for me that night.  Or the time my dad ran off the road into a west Tennessee ditch, the car spinning and my dad uttering words that I'd never heard in those pre-HBO days, one of which I would use again a few years later to get my mom off my back.

But the absolute worst vacation moment for me came courtesy of my now deceased grandmother.  After spending a week on the road with my grandparents when I was ten, visiting such sites as Memphis and Little Rock and finally Nashville, we were on our way to Birmingham to visit a bunch of relatives who had gathered at my aunt's apartment to welcome our arrival.  Apparently running late, my grandmother, always the driver so that my grandfather could criticize her skills all the while chain smoking Salems and doing crosswords, decided that she could not stop to allow me to rid myself of the Slushie I'd been treated to earlier that morning as reward for being a good little traveler.  "It ain't much further," she'd say in her most kind, grandmotherly voice, sincere as she could be yet probably knowing that it was a 50-50 proposition at best that I'd be able to hold back the Slushie.  After hearing that about five times, I began a devolution of sorts, going from the mild-mannered kid sitting in the backseat of the gold Oldsmobile Cutlass enjoying the secondhand smoke and the Marty Robbins 8-track, to a hyperactive caged hyena pacing back and forth, tongue hanging from my mouth willing and ready to bite my arm off if needed just to free myself from this trap, to a kicking donkey, hopping up and down in the backseat, braying his hee-haws of "how much further, how much further!" only to be met with those same "ain't much"s.

To a flounder swimming in his own water.

I can't really put into words the thoughts that went through my mind when I realized that I would have to face all of my cousins, most of them my age or a little older, cousins who lived to make fun of other cousins, to find a weakness and exploit.  Thanks to my relatively new pair of Wrangler jeans there would be no hiding my "going problem" from them and because there was only one way into the apartment and a horde of aunts waiting there to hug and kiss and be aunts, I had no place to hide.  And in the end there would be no convincing them that I spilled a drink, a Slushie perhaps, because the whole event caused quite an argument between my grandparents, one that followed us inside where my grandfather would berate my grandmother for not stopping to let the boy pee.  "See what happens, Annie Jean?"  Indeed.

It would be the last time I would vacation with my grandparents. 

One Crappy Vacation

Oh, how I wish I could claim that was not an intended pun, but alas ...

My parents, perhaps sensing that with one child and another on the way I was putting myself in a financial position to perhaps soon not be able to take great vacations, offered to bring my family (at the time, myself, Alicia and our one year old - and again, Alicia was 6 or so months pregnant with what would be our daughter) down to Sanibel Island, FL (gulf coast) for one week of the two they'd be vacationing down there.  Wow, great start - how could this be bad?

On the flight down, one of us (which was me) started sweating rather profusely.  It didn't help that the little one wanted to sit on my lap the four hours of flying time.  So, I assumed that was causing my warmth.  Sadly, not the case.  Nearly three days later, I had seen exactly twelve seconds of sunlight and ocean, and maybe fifteen seconds of pool time.  I'd "seen" about 33 hours of the now sweat-soaked couch, and had spent the remaining few hours, mainly each of those that I was awake during, in the smallest room of the condo - again, sorry for the cheap pun in the post's title.  Turns out even if you aren't taking in food or water, you can expel it for a good two to three days.

By week's end, I'd guess percentage-wise, I'd spent 80% of my "vacation" on the couch, 17% in that little room, and approximately 3% of the week outside, pretending I had recovered enough to enjoy myself.  Oddly enough, when my family discusses this vacation and starts conversations with "Remember ..." I have to say that I do not.

Electra in the Badlands

Well, not Electra really. Let’s just say, very bad teen behavior.

The summer before my junior year of college, my mom and I hatched a plan: we would drive together from Seattle across the country. We would see the West and then stop for a few days in Indiana. She would spend time with her cousin in Indy and I would go down to Bloomington (where, ironically enough, I’m blogging from today), to see my boyfriend.

Somewhere in South Dakota, things went horribly wrong.

Our 1974 Checker--a very cool and much lamented car--was making an ominous knocking. We stopped in Mitchell, South Dakota to get things checked out. A few hours turned into a day, then two, then three. With each passing hour, my time with my boyfriend--a hard won commodity--shrank. With each passing hour, my panic, my pure, egotistical sense of the unfairness of it all grew.

We were trapped. We spent our days in a budget motel off I-90. We would wander over to the GM dealership and track the progress of the massive repairs to our engine. Parts were retrieved from across the Dakotas. We would wander back and catch a few game shows. I remember, in a calmer moment, agreeing with my mom that it would be good if “that nice teacher from Michigan” kept winning since he was so agreeable to watch.

That seemed like a bad sign.

I remember, too, walking across an empty, grass-grown lot and raising my arms to the sky in a passionate scream.

My elegant and calm mother was horrified. So was I.

And I remember crying, and crying, and blaming my mother for ruining my life. And begging her--humiliating myself to beg her--to use the phone to just talk to my boyfriend again.

Somehow, through three days of this, three days of my tears and recriminations, my operatic expressions of grief and entitlement, not to mention the meager, unchanging salad bar across the street from our motel, we made it out of Mitchell. And, miraculously enough, the boyfriend is long gone and my mom seems to have forgiven me.

We had a couple great posts on suspense yesterday. For my mom and me, suspense was focused on how long it would take the parts department flunky to get back from Grand Forks. Still, it was a plenty bad vacation. To read about more of that pit of your stomach bad behavior--the horrible things that jealous and unhappy people say, do check out The Cottagers…

The Bad Vacation

At its heart, The Cottagers is the story of a vacation gone terribly, terribly wrong.  Two couples set out for a peaceful spot, to recharge and unwind, but they've picked the wrong town and the wrong week and they run into the wrong local kid.  It's just these little things, these random decisions that taken together turn the good vacation bad.

In many ways, vacations are a fragile thing, prone to being ruined.  It takes so little to wreck the best laid plans.  And while, thankfully, few of us have had vacations as bad as the cottagers', most of us have likely had a vacation run off the rails.  A wayward sip of tap water can send the whole thing down the drain.  An impolitic or drunken tour guide can leave one, quite literally, stranded.  Broken down rental cars, monorails, theme park rides, and golf carts can jar one out of blissful relaxation.  Sticky fingered hotel staff and roving pickpockets can turn you into one of those poor saps from the credit card commercials making desperate phone calls to get hard-earned funds replenished.  Missed trains, missed planes, and luggage fiascoes have been the bane of many a holiday.  On some vacations, one's haggling skills are put to the test, on others, you just shell out the dough for the "all inclusive" package and hope for the best.  Poorly timed vacations can lead to run ins with Spring Breakers or overwhelming crowds at the Louvre.  Sometimes, something as minor as a steady, persistent rain can throw off the delicate balance of fun and relaxation that all vacations seek out.

Funny thing about bad vacations, though, they make for really good stories, whether in book-length form, as in The Cottagers or just as a tale to tell to friends upon returning home, as memorable as Big Ben or the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China.  And so, as part of Cottagers week, we'd like you to share your bad vacation stories in the comments of this post.  A lucky winner will be randomly selected from among the entrants to win their very own copy of The Cottagers.

And look out for "bad vacation" stories from LBC members coming throughout the day.

More Musings on Suspense

Max's post below started me thinking about suspense and how good it can be. Why is it that suspense seems to work better visually in a movie say, than in a book. Everyone's watched a movie and started yelling at the screen, right? It work so well when you the audience is given information that the characters aren't and you have to watch them work against that. In books, it works so differently in my opinion.
Why does The Cottagers work so well? We know how Nicholas died, we knew from the first chapter that one of these cottagers was probably going to die. So after he dies, how do you sustain the narrative? Why should we keep reading? What worked well in this book I think was that I couldn't wait to see how the characters would react to Nicholas's death. And how would they react to the intense questioning from the authorities? And the ending, well, I won't give it away here. But suffice it to say, I wasn't expecting it really. I loved that Klimasewiski chose to go without the neat wrap up at the end. It didn't have the same suspenseful punch of watching Hitchcock, but I think that's what makes this book work.

Suspense: The Painful Pleasure

For some reason, suspense and the contemporary novel don’t seem to mix all that much.

Insomuch as suspense is a fairly key element of storytelling, I don’t think we need to couch a discussion of suspense in terms of “genre” fiction versus “literary” fiction. Instead we can ponder why suspense is often squeezed out of many contemporary novels.

Classically, the selective omission of information and methodical pacing are employed to imbue a plot with suspense. Here the stingy storyteller parcels out information bit by bit to satisfy the hungry reader who works to piece together the fractured details. But to provide just a puzzle is not enough to bring about the painful pleasure of suspense. There must be peril, uncertainty, or unease as well - dark clouds on the horizon or just overhead.

Hitchcock was a master here. He could imbue a story with menace, build up expectations of a disaster and string the viewer along until the string was taut to the point of breaking. And more recently, some contemporary novelists have experimented with suspense, testing its limits and breaking its rules - I’m thinking Paul Auster here and The Horned Man by James Lasdun, a suspenseful favorite of mine.

Many modern novelists seem to eschew suspense, however. They willfully remove the story from the heat before it can reach a boil. A flash-forward or flashback will reveal some critical point in the early going, and the reader’s focus is guided back to subtleties.

In The Cottagers, Marshall Klimasewiski sticks with the suspense. First, it is the menacing sort. From the opening pages, when we first meet creepy, young Cyrus, peering through the brush at his new temporary neighbors, we know something terrible will happen to “the cottagers” who have arrived for an extended stay in sleepy East Sooke. Then, once that terrible thing has finally happened, the detective story begins, though Klimasewiski turns this on its head by letting the hapless yet self-important “scoutmaster,” Constable Cortland be our Sherlock Holmes.  And finally, once the chain of events has more or less been sorted out, we are left with how the protagonists will go on from here.

The cottagers’ lives are shattered by their trip to East Sooke, but rather than the plot petering out or the unveiling of a moment-of-truth epiphany, that lingering legacy of Joyce (“the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling upon all the living and the dead”), Klimasewiski delivers a payoff here that is completely unexpected and prompts the reader to reassess the entire book.

Hitchcock’s memorable silhouette comes to mind once again, pointing to Norman Bates’ mother.

Suspense, in itself, is not enough to sustain a story. As the storyteller builds suspense, the reader subconsciously builds expectations and comes to expect revelatory plots points that conform to those expectations. The skilled storyteller can take that built up emotional capital and shatter it with a final virtuoso twist that confounds everything that comes before it. The epiphany was meant to replace this final twist in fiction, to evolve it. As James Joyce and his many descendants have shown us, the epiphany can elevate fiction in its way, but readers should not deny themselves the satisfaction of suspense.