THE LITBLOG CO-OP

A Good Press

One of the things I enjoyed about seeing Garner chosen as the Read This! selection this time around, beyond the fact that I loved the book, and was happy to see a debut author seeing some recognition and discussion of her work, was the fact that the book was published by Coffee House Press.  Coffee House Press is one of many fantastic, smaller, independent, non-profit presses in this country and they greatly help fill in the literary landscape to my mind’s eye. 

Frequently the story behind the current day press includes some lover of literature cranking out handmade books and that happens to be the case with Coffee House Press too.  In 1970, Allan Kornblum launched a mimeographed magazine called “Toothpaste,” and he further developed the idea two years later when he began publishing handset letterpress books under the imprint of Toothpaste Press.  In 1984, he incorporated Coffee House Press as a non-profit and has since moved the operation to downtown Minneapolis. 

What did I mean earlier when I said small?  Coffee House Press has a staff of six individuals.  Six people and they are putting out 8-10 books per catalogue and they are finding incredible new writers as well as continuing to work with established authors that pull in great reviews, and have other authors talking about them, and have small, devoted readerships. 

And new writers?  As of this last catalogue, Coffee House Press has given 47 authors their first opportunity to see their work in book form.  They have received numerous awards and seen many of their books translated into foreign language editions.

These smaller houses often find publisher/editor combinations with a willingness to acquire and publish literary writing that may not be expected to sell copies in the five and six figure numbers, but instead, are happy to be publishing such excellent work and exposing it to as many people as they can.  In the case of Coffee House Press, over the past 22 years they’ve published such writers as:  Maxine Chernoff, Frank Chin, Andrei Codrescu, Stephen Dixon, Gary Fincke, Albert Goldbarth, Judith Kitchen, Clarence Major, Raymond McDaniel and Lon Otto (who was writing flash fiction back in the late 80’s, maybe even before it was known as such).  And of course, Kirstin Allio.

I think the Coffee House Press mission statement makes it pretty clear:

"To promote exciting, vital, and enduring authors of our time; to delight and inspire readers; to contribute to the cultural life of our community; and to enrich our literary heritage.  Coffee House Press publishes books that epitomize literary excellence; books that present the dreams and ambitions of peoples who have been underrepresented in published literature; and books that help establish a new common ground for all Americans."

If you’re scanning the shelves in your local bookstore, and see the Coffee House Press imprint on the spine, pull the book down and give it a shot – they tend not to waste your time.

LBC INTERVIEW: NEA DIRECTOR OF LITERATURE DAVID KIPEN

When LBC member Mark Sarvas read the Funders acknowledgement by Coffee House Press on the last page of Garner, he noted a mention of an NEA grant - which prompted him to get in touch with David Kipen - author, former San Francisco Chronicle Book Editor and, most recently, Director of Literature for the NEA - to talk about how the work the NEA does with small presses.  Herewith, their Q&A:

MS: Thanks for joining us and for agreeing to answer some questions about the NEA and its small press support. In the back of Garner, Coffee House Press specifically acknowledges the NEA for its support. What sort of support is the NEA giving to small presses these days?

DK: We do an annual literary publishing round of grants, for which nonprofit presses with specific projects are encouraged to apply. We only fund project support, not organizational support. Coverable costs are things like printing, salaries, distribution, promotion, marketing, travel perhaps to tour your writers, definitely payment to writers. Panels often like to see that you pay your writers. Know that if you end up getting a grant, you won't likely get what you asked for (such is the climate here at the NEA). So, for example, an applicant may ask for a certain amount, say $40,000. If the organization is recommended, it's likely I'd come back and say you got, say, $15,000, and that you'll have to revise your budget accordingly (e.g., do fewer books for the grant). Make sure this can work for you.

MS: So I'm a small press and I want a little NEA love. What's the process?

DK: If anybody out there is interested, the deadline is March 13th, and that's a postmark deadline. Be careful of that. Anything after that date will automatically be sent back. Remember to FedEx your package. Snail mail to the government is a messy business these days (because all our incoming correspondence gets routed via Ohio to get irradiated). I'd encourage you to apply online if you can. You have a choice this year, but soon you won't have a choice, so you might as well get used to the online application while you have a fallback. You'll need to have your own 501(c)3 status by the deadline. We do accept independent component relationships, which it to say that if you're a journal that's part of a university, the university can apply on your behalf. Last year our largest grant was something like $60,000. Grants are more likely to be about $10,000-$25,000. You can check out our website at www.arts.gov to see last year's grants in this category.

MS: You've gone from being the chief book critic at the San Francisco Chronicle to the head of a sizeable and probably underfunded federal bureaucracy. How do the imperatives differ? Presumably, you're less free to follow your idiosyncratic nose? How are you adjusting?

DK: As Peter Marshall used to say on The Hollywood Squares, I'm afraid David doesn't have a bluff for that question. Translation: So much for the boilerplate -- I'm winging it from here on in. First of all, don't overestimate how restrictive my government paymasters are -- or underestimate how restrictive my newspaper paymasters used to be. I have all the freedom I need at the NEA. Besides, the two jobs are fundamentally different. My imperative as a book critic was to find interesting books to write about in interesting ways. My marching orders at the NEA are to dragoon smart people into sitting in judgment on literary grant applications. That, and to get America reading again, so that America's few remaining book critics will still have a public to write for. As for my adjustment, I'm coping -- especially since I moved onto a houseboat on the Potomac.

MS: No one will consider us alarmist for suggesting that there is a legitimate reading crisis in the country. Even if we allow that every age considers its problems to be uniquely dreadful (radio kills reading; TV kills radio; internet kills TV; etc.), the percentage of the population reading serious literature seems smaller than ever. Short of hand-delivering a copy of Gravity's Rainbow to every citizen of the republic, what's the best way to arrest this slide?

DK: As the NEA's own Reading at Risk study showed two years ago, your alarmism is well-founded. Reading is down in most if not all demographics, and it's sinking fastest among the young. We're unveiling a program in May that won't turn this around overnight, but may just help get those numbers inching back up where they belong. More anon, Mark. As for Pynchon, I think hand-delivering a copy of 'The Secret Integration' (from Pynchon's 'Slow Learner' collection) to every citizen of the republic will work better. That's your gateway drug. Gravity's Rainbow is the hard stuff.

MS: Tell us about some of the specific plans and innovations you hope to bring to the NEA.

DK: Point of order, Mr. Speaker. My boss and fellow Californian, the poet Dana Gioia, is the one with most of the specific plans and innovations. Still, he recruits folks he believes will be innovative and energetic, and so far I've got him snowed. In other words, Mongo only pawn in game of life. As I said, he's given me the charge of helping to get America reading again, and a fair degree of latitude in going about it.

MS: What's the NEA doing to support small presses that focus on literature in translation?

DK: In addition to our literary publishing grants, we also do an annual panel to fund worthy individual translation projects. Also, to promote wider access to literary voices of Mexican artists in the United States and American writers in Mexico, the NEA, the US Embassy in Mexico, and Mexico's National Fund for Culture and the Arts have joined to support a proposed three-year program of anthology publication and public outreach. In the first year, Sarabande has been named publisher of the poetry anthologies. Contributors on this side of the border include Kay Ryan, Larry Levis, Thomas Lux, Marilyn Nelson, Ron Silliman, Molly Peacock, Amy Uyematsu, Jorie Graham, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Naomi Shihab Nye, and more. As part of our literary publishing grants, we also provided seed funding for and continue to support Words Without Borders, the terrific online magazine of linternational literature.

MS: Many small presses like Coffee House are doing great work, and yet struggle to create awareness of their books in the marketplace, particularly with the decline of book coverage in newspapers - something you are uniquely well placed to understand. Is the NEA aware of this problem? If so, what is the NEA doing to help?

DK: Other than hiring curmudgeonly book critics away from their newspapers, you mean? As a matter of fact, the NEA has been running annual Arts Journalism Institutes around the country to develop the next generation of classical music, theater and dance critics, and I'll do everything I can to ensure that book critics get their turn as soon as possible.

MS: Given that you are now smack dab in the heart of the vast right wing conspiracy and this is an administration that doesn't exactly appear to value the arts, how much support do you expect to receive for your efforts? (It's worth noting that the majority party has been working for years to do away with the NEA.) And how can you show some ROI (Return on Investment) to an MBA presidency? And if you can't - given the intangibles of such things - what do the NEA's long term prospects look like?

DK: I'm afraid your givens aren't as given as you -- or, once upon a time, I -- might have thought. The NEA budget has increased every year under the current administration. The '07 budget is scheduled to give us level funding in a year when many agencies in the discretionary budget have been cut. Near as I can tell, that level funding is a show of faith in the NEA's mission, and in the Chairman's vision for the endowment. In other words, support for the arts isn't nearly as partisan an issue as it used to be. Having said all that, there's plenty of Return on Investment in arts funding if you know where to look. For every $1 the NEA gives, $7-8 more are generated. Cripes, an NEA panel picked Maya Lin to design the Vietnam Memorial, and that's been known to bring the odd tourist dollar Washington's way. And the taxes that erstwhile NEA writing fellows like Jane Smiley and Oscar Hijuelos pay constitue a pretty handsome return on our investment in them. This isn't why we fund literary excellence, of course. ROI is not king, except in France. But for those who doubt the value of literature for its own sake, examples like these should help take some of sting out.

MS: It's 72 degrees here in L.A. and its 32 in D.C. with piles of snow on the ground. Not to rub it in or anything but what do you miss most about L.A.?

DK: Besides you, Mark? It sure isn't the weather. The trouble with the great weather in California is that it blinds folks to all our other advantages. Frankly, I'll be ok for another couple of months. But when May rolls around, if i can't find a stand of jacarandas to rival the one on North Palm Drive, south of the old Santa Monica Blvd. railroad right of way, I may just prove inconsolable.

From Kirstin Allio

Thank you to the fine readers so generous with Garner. This (suspended, electronic universe!) is a wonderful format for literary conversation.

The ambiguity of the who-dun-it is certainly not meant to be coy or, for that matter, particularly experimental. I think it more closely tracks with how we experience life – elliptically, with imperfect or unreliable information and perspective. I hope that Garner shies away from the literal, while courting a resonance with the real shadows it was drawn from.

Ambiguity provokes tension. Ultimately, I think the story is more powerful if it remains less delineated. I hope the tension in Garner is compounded by Willard Heald’s voice bleeding into the text – he is that dangerous person who tries to speak for all. Where does Heald stop and Garner begin? Where does he read the town, read the mail, write the town, love the girl?

That being said, there are clues everywhere (Chris! You are letting people off the hook!), and I hoped very much to elicit close readings. Words are shifty characters.

Flannery O'Connor says, "In fiction, everything that has an explanation has to have it and the residue is Mystery with a capital m." I do hope there is residual mystery in Garner.

Bring on the questions! Thank you, lbc -- and Dan Wickett in particular -- for the wonderful support for Garner and Coffee House Press.

From Coffee House Press

From Editor Chris Fischbach:

Garner: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Text

Oh, I love this book. I’m glad you love it too. But I gather that some readers have been frustrated with what they see as a lack of definite closure, or explanation, in Garner. I won’t lie to you. I was too. But now I’m not.

Maybe I should reveal all the secret correspondences that Kirstin and I had about what actually happened? Sorry, no can do. I’m sworn to secrecy.

Actually, as an editor of experimental fiction and poetry, I knew from the beginning that I wasn’t supposed to get wrapped up in plot and story, and that I wasn’t supposed to care who actually did it, right? How bourgeois? I was supposed to enjoy the journey, or revel in the postmodern inexplicability of it all? Sure, rationally, I could do that, but like everyone else, I secretly wanted to know, and suspected that behind the text, in the notes, or in the margins somewhere, I could find out the truth.

It’s an editor’s dilemma in the same way that it’s a reader’s. I figured I could get Kirstin on the phone and say, “Come on, between us, what happened, really?” I won’t tell you what she said, but I can say that she and I did work to make the text more, let’s say, interpretable. There’s enough there, trust me. But it’s not a puzzle. That’s my hint. Try to stop worrying about it and love the text.

The acquisition of the book happened in a very old-fashioned manner, and it’s how I’ve found nearly all of my favorite acquisitions. The manuscript came in unsolicited, sent to us because Kirstin admired our list, and I picked it up, read it straight through, loved it, and we accepted it as soon as possible after that. Like much of the fiction we publish, Garner had, first and foremost, a stylistic boldness and confidence, a kind of rough-hewn beauty, that is the first thing you notice. Secondly, its narrative structure was adventurous and original, formally. If you look elsewhere on our list, you’ll find other authors whose books share these traits: Gilbert Sorrentino, Laird Hunt, Norah Labiner, Selah Saterstrom, Karen Yamashita, Paul Metcalf, Mary Caponegro, and others. I’m always looking for bold, innovative fiction, and I love the slush pile.

Having worked with both Paul Metcalf and Selah Saterstrom, both of whom use white space and collage exceptionally well, I was also drawn to Garner for Kirstin’s expert use of white space and typography. We spent a lot of time making sure that the spacing, indents, dingbats, type size, and so on, gave the reader subtle yet effective cues and clues as to how to navigate the narrative weaving that can sometimes be difficult for readers. I’m very pleased with the result, and the book itself is a beautiful object, great to hold in your hands, and, I think, very pleasing to the eye. We’re very proud of it. I hope this helps it get the recognition it deserves.

From Publicist Lauren Snyder:
My mother is a Vermonter, her parents very staunch and unemotional life-long New Englanders. So when I was reading Garner for the first time, I was nodding and shaking my head, knowing instantly these people that populate this small, secular New England town. What blows me away about Kirstin’s writing is that she is able to convey this mentality so beautifully to all readers, even those without direct knowledge of the New England sensibility. And she does it without making the Garner townsfolk seem like cardboard cutouts or inhuman stereotypes. Kirstin’s skill is in making us see below the surface of each character to feel the complexity of emotion and motivation behind their unwavering exteriors. Her inclusion here and her recent appearance at the New Voices weekend hosted by Misty Valley Booksellers in Chester, VT, along with warm receptions at Toadstool in Peterborough, NH, Brown Bookstore and the Providence Athenaeum in Rhode Island and great reviews in The Believer, The Chicago Tribune, and a number of other publications tell me that others are taking note of her talent, as well.

Okay, Chris and I can answer any questions you wish to pose.

Last, but certainly not least, many thanks to the LBC for choosing Garner as the Read This! pick. And, of course, special thanks to Dan Wickett who has championed this book from the very beginning. Let the questions begin!

The Magic of Voice

From a technical perspective, writing is easy. You get your words in the right order, your punctuation in place, and let one paragraph follow another. There you go -- you are a writer.

Of course, if it were just that, we wouldn't revere the written word. We wouldn't trace our fingers over a paragraph, trying to absorb the syllables into our bloodstream. We wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night and sneak out of bed to reread a passage one more time. If the technical rules of writing were what makes a writer special, then reading would be a dull experience, indeed.

The thing that sets all writers apart from each other is the most elusive aspect of the process: voice. You can take all the classes in the world, but you can't learn voice. Voice can be honed and harnessed -- it can even be changed -- but voice comes from within. It is, in a way, your soul.

But for all of its magical qualities, voice is a tool. Some writers have voices so bland as to be almost generic; you can read their work without a twinge of pain. These voices go down easy because they're like wallpaper. Then there are the voices that threaten to overwhelm you -- the strong, bold, sometimes brash voices. They ricochet in your mind, and sometimes, if you're susceptible, tie up your own voice and lock it in a closet. These are the the authors I can't read while I'm writing. They are the friends I adore, but only when I'm up for the challenge. These voices can be too much.

Very strong voices often become characters of their own. You know them immediately. Bland voices never take on shape and form. You wouldn't want that. Then there are quiet voices. These are not to be confused with bland voices -- quite the opposite. Quiet voices demand your full attention. You turn off the stereo, maybe head to a corner of a your backyard, away from the everyday life sounds. You don't want to miss a moment of the voice. This is reading at its best. You become one with the book.

Kirstin Allio's Garner is a wonder for a lot of reasons, but it was her voice that left me awestruck. She takes a particular tone, old-fashioned yet very readable, and never loses it. Her voice is a character in this book, it's the voice of the town of Garner. It can be stately, it can be rowdy, it can even be girlish like Spring. It is solid. You know that you are in this place, this book, this story.

Our town is no longer somebody's kitchen garden, the selectmen said, and the postman recorded this also. We must plan for growth. As with a child, our town needs a strong hand to guide it.

And this town found just that -- a strong hand to guide it.

Interview with Kirstin Allio

The following is an interview with Kirstin Allio, author of the wonderful novel, Garner (Coffee House Press, 2005).  She has taught creative writing at Brown University and has degrees from both Brown and New York Universities.  She was born in Maine, and currently lives in Rhode Island with her husband and children.

Dan:

Thank you, Kirstin, for taking some time away from your writing and family to answer some questions.

Kirstin:

You are very welcome!

Dan:

Were you always interested in reading or writing?  Did you foresee working with words for a living when you were a child?

Kirstin:

I wanted to be a cellist and a modern dancer.

I had the privilege of taking reading and writing for granted. I mostly went to Rudolph Steiner schools, where the curriculum is based on the retellings of world mythologies. My favorite was fourth grade, Norse mythology, although its influences on Garner are not obvious.

Dan:

With what authors did you study under at Brown and New York Universities?

Kirstin:

Chris Spain at NYU is one of the finest teachers I’ve ever had – wise, artful, generous. Brown is a charged atmosphere, magnetic. Imagine a kaleidoscope of professors, visiting writers, and fellow students shifting and tumbling and repatterning against the backdrop of a green gem of a campus.

Dan:

What method did you employ as a teacher of creative writing yourself?  Did you find yourself drawing from different aspects of those you studied under?

Kirstin:

I used a lot of structured, under-the-gun, in-class writing exercises. It seems to help kids get out of their own heads – and sparks a healthy adrenaline rush. From Carole Maso at Brown I took the essential practice of critiquing within the sphere, or coordinates, of a piece– and having students in a workshop learn to do the same.

And if there are three R’s, they are reading, reading, reading.

Dan:

Garner, the novel, seems so meticulously developed – the language draws the reader right into 1925, the descriptions of the land pulls one into the fields of New England – how long did you work on it?

The Mystery of Garner

I've always had a penchant for odd mysteries: mysteries that have no mystery, mysteries without answers, mysteries that aren't about the mystery at all.

There's a body at the beginning of Garner, a dead girl floating in a creek in the forest. No detective walks the roads and paths of Garner; no police make even the slightest appearance. Yet the girl lies dead, and someone is responsible.

Not unlike many mysteries, after we've seen the body, the book rewinds, and we see the girl, alive. As the book traces her last days and weeks, one can easily forget her impending death. In fact, her death is clearly not the most important aspect of the book. I'd venture that the star of the book is the town, the landscape, its roads and forests, farms and farmers, main street and history, not in the way that stories tell of the dark side of small town life, but in an everyday, seasonal way that looks into the past and present of the inhabitants.

But, the mystery is the part of the book that haunts me.

On first reading, I was baffled. Who killed Francis? Why? The ending was so subtle, I wasn't sure I was understanding correctly. Even after a second read, I doubt what I think is the answer. I don't want to believe it, but I also find myself re-evaluating parts of the books, statements and passages. I try to see things in the light of a discovery of murder.

I am not even sure the book has any definitive solution. The narration of the book is filtered through so many different characters that, with the beginnings of suspicion, one can doubt the veracity of every statement and event. Any solution, any revelation of a murderer feels contrary to the opinions I want to have of the various characters. I am implicated in the murder by placing it in the hands of one of the characters. As a reader, I have to create the conditions of motive and means. Even the actual cause of death remains unclear, another gap that we must fill.

The book also denies us the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth that often accompanies the "death in a small town" genre. A story that so often reduces any death to melodrama and "life changing" moments. Garner loops around from the death in the beginning, back to the past, and then forward to the death again, never reaching the moment of grieving, tears, and recriminations. Like the seasons of the year, life follows death, death follows life.

In these ways, Garner diverts from the paths of convention in ways that attracted me to the novel, though this would all be moot if the writing were not so evocative and mysterious in itself.

READ THIS! - GARNER by KIRSTIN ALLIO

The Litblog Co-op is pleased to announce its Winter 2005 READ THIS! Selection: Garner by Kirstin Allio. The weeks ahead will include chats with Allio and others involved in the publication of the book.

We’ve made one major change since last time. We will continue the practice of unveiling the other four considered titles over the next four days, and having week-long discussions and posts by LBC members taking up the pros and cons of each title. The change is that instead of discussing Garner next week, we will discuss the other four considered titles first. The intention is to allow as many LBC readers as possible the necessary time (five full weeks) to get a hold of a copy of Garner, read it and be able to participate in the discussions we will be having during the week of February 20th.

Now we’re happy to present Dan Wickett, who nominated Garner, as he explains why we think you should Read This!

When I found out that I was going to be nominating a title for LBC consideration, I immediately knew which title I was going to suggest. It was only a few weeks earlier that I had stopped by home on the way to running a few errands. In the mailbox was a package from Coffee House Press containing a review copy of Kirstin Allio’s Garner. I decided to bring it along with me on my errands, in case I got stuck in any lines. As the errands included both going to the bank, and paying a bill, I did indeed get stuck in a couple of lines. Long enough to read about the first 15 pages of Garner and generate the need to get back home so I could sit down and continue. Sometime just before midnight that evening, I put the book down, completely surprised at how this novel that I’d never heard of, by an author I’d never heard of, had totally sucked me in to the story, the characters, and the place and time of the setting.

How had Allio done it? I pick up books by the dozens every week and read the covers, the author notes, and usually read the first few paragraphs. I end up reading many of these books, but it is rare, maybe once per quarter, that I start one and find myself setting it down hours later, unaware that it had turned dark outside while I read, and that I will need to get up a mere 2 or 3 hours later.

In Garner, Allio pulled me into a small farming town in 1925 New Hampshire and didn’t let me go until she had finished telling me everything I needed to know about it. Her writing not only described the time period and area to the point where I could see it in my mind, but also captured the cadence and pace of said period and area. Her writing voice is amazingly consistent, especially when one considers the structure she utilizes to propel the story forward, switching narrators from section to section. This structure, while having a very modern feel to it, blends in seamlessly with the story Allio is telling.

The town of Garner could be considered the story itself, what with its 200-some residents, all as stoic as can be. The farming business has not been as profitable in the recent past and some of the residents have taken to bringing in summer boarders from big cities – folks who both enjoy the seeming simplicity of the country life, as well as their assumed superiority to the locals. The Giddens family is one who has taken on boarders, and their daughter Frances, who is approaching womanhood, is the character who pushes this novel forward, both in her life and death – and it is the discovery of her dead body that Allio uses to set the novel in motion.

Frances’ body is discovered by Willard Heald, the postman of Garner, as well as self-appointed town historian. It is from his vantage that the first section of the novel is written and he sets the tone for Allio. It is a great choice as he considers himself “a man of the perimeters” and one who “will watch over the far borders.” As the postman, Heald even takes it upon himself to determine what mail should be delivered and when.

This leads to an action Kirstin Allio has taken that grabbed my attention: she has given her readers not just one, but many unreliable narrators. Heald leads off the book, and is followed by Malin Nillsen, a New York socialite summering at the Giddens’ farmhouse. Her section is being remembered some decades after the summer in question. The next section is told from the view point of a city couple who, not content to just summer in Garner, had purchased a farm for back taxes.

In each section the reader receives nuggets of information about various characters that will help piece together the summer of 1925 and what led to Frances’ body floating in the river where Heald found her. With her usage of different unreliable narrators though, Allio forces the reader to question their own beliefs about what happened – even as they are developing.

It is this blend of great writing, a unique setting that I never would have guessed I could be interested in, and a really interesting story, and this different method of telling it that wouldn’t allow me to put this book down once I had started. It is for these reasons that I point to Kirstin Allio’s Garner while suggesting that you Read This!

I want to thank Lauren Snyder of Coffee House Press for sending a copy of this gem to me, especially considering it was not at my request. I’d also like to thank the other members of the Litblog Co-op, for their help in selecting this book as one they want to put their collective support behind.

Interested in Reading This with the Litblog Co-op? Members of the LBC, as well as Kirstin Allio, and individuals from Coffee House Press, will all be involved in discussions of Garner during the week beginning February 20. Again, that’s five weeks from today to give non-LBC members a chance to get a copy - and Powell's is offering it at a 30% discount - and read it before we discuss it. We hope to see you there!