Interview with Chicago Book Review

I'm pleased to report that after some communication problems (I forgot to press "save" on my email to confirm the interview, and then Kelli Christiansen didn't get my phone message because her answering machine wasn't working) I survived an interview with Kelli Christiansen at the Chicago Book Review. It was a pleasure in fact, so why do I worry? Kelli brought order out of chaos. You can see for yourself at http://www.chicagobookreview.com/ or by clicking the above link.
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The Death of a Dog

photo by Tim Barker

For a writer everything is material, including (I suppose) the death of a dog. Our Norwegian elkhound, Mishka, died two days ago. I’m not ready to write about his death yet, but I’ve written about the death of our previous dog, Maya, in a novella that I’m planning to call The Truth About Death. In this passage Olive, a black-lab mix like Maya, has just been diagnosed with liver cancer:

            That night, on the way back from our walk, Olive stumbled again on the stairs. Just a little stumble, as if she’d misjudged a step. It was hard to be sure, but I was sure, and it broke my heart. That night I talked to her and we made a list of all the things we were going to do in the next couple of months. I hadn’t been planning on going to Lake Michigan again, but I changed my mind. I looked into her eyes and she looked into mine. I thought she was trying to explain to me why things were the way they were, how they were all tied together.

            Put my face in her thick ruff and then kept my hand on her head while I made arrangements about the cottage. We’d never been there except in the summer. I asked about the heat. There was electric baseboard heating. Not a problem in November. A fireplace too, which we’d never used. Didn’t think Olive would be able to walk down the sixty steps to the beach, but there was another way down, from the park down to the public beach.

            That was on a Monday. On Thursday, coming back from the park by the depot, she stumbled badly, but made it up the stairs. She ate her supper. Half an hour later she threw it up. I cleaned it up and sat with her in the living room.

            About nine o’clock she got up to go to bed. Walking down the hall she had a seizure. Frothing. Flailing around. Banging into the walls, then falling down. I called Dr. King at home. He said to meet her at the hospital right away. Olive was able to walk. Went down in the elevator. Gilbert went with me. But then she had another seizure in the garage. When it was over we managed to get her up into the back of my Mazda hatchback.

            Dr. King and his assistant were waiting for us Animal Hospital on Freemont Street. He said that the medication to control the seizures would feed right into the tumor and kill her. We decided to put her down. I kept my arms around her while the doctor inserted the needle into her shoulder–acepronaciner and ketamine. She kept her eyes open for a bit, but she didn’t look at me. She was looking past me. Then the eyes closed. Olive was dead. And that was about as close to the truth about death as I ever got. Not something you can ‘tell’ anyone. You have to experience it.

            Death is like life. Like poetry. Like great art. Like the blues. It doesn’t mean anything. It just is. This is what Olive was trying to tell me. Maybe. Or, any ‘meanings’ you assign to it–like the meanings we assign to life, to poetry, to great art, to music–are trivial compared to the experience itself.

            As I said before, I’ve never rejected the conventional wisdom about grief, but Olive’s death pushed me to the limit. brought me to my knees, not to pray, but because I couldn’t stand up. Maybe it’s that we can’t explain death to a dog. Not that we can ever ‘explain’ death. But at least you can talk it over, the way Simon and I did. You can… I don’t know what you can do.

            I didn’t call anyone that night. Knew I wouldn’t be able to talk. But I sat in the tower. I was lonely, but not exactly lonely. Not the way I was lonely when I first went to college and was homesick… but in some other way.

            I’m aware of the limits of great art. You can’t eat it or drink it. You can’t curl up on it and go to sleep. It won’t keep you dry if it’s raining or warm if it’s snowing. It won’t keep you afloat if you’re drowning. It won’t clean your blood or set a fractured bone. But… Well, you can’t explain great art either.

            I was waiting for something to happen. I didn’t know what it was. I was still waiting when I drifted off to sleep in the big chair-and-a-half in our bedroom. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I reached down for Olive, but she wasn’t there.

Like cheap sex with an unlikable stranger

Last week my daughter said she’d been looking through the Amazon responses to The Fall of a Sparrow and had seen one that was very moving. I hadn’t looked at the responses for several years, so I took a look for myself and was very pleased to find the response of March 28 2002. I was also a little unnerved to be reminded that some readers hated this novel with a passion, as in the response of March 4, 1999. Whoa!

 

LIKE CHEAP SEX WITH AN UNLIKABLE STRANGER, March 4, 1999

I read it all and afterwards had to take a hot shower to wash it off. I thought maybe, just maybe Woody would become more than a shallow, self-centered bumbling fool, but he never did. However, what bothered me most was that every female character in the book was written to be either cheap or simple. The authors attempts to write from a woman's point of view are as unbelievable and pathetic as a 6'5, beer bellied, hairy transvestite in a pink slip. The continual references to sex in the banal, self-absorbed way they were portrayed became like unexpected flashes of a pervert. When I think about this book, the time spent reading about "Woody" I feel angry, like I have been mislead and taken advantage of. I give it one star because the landscape imagery was well done. (March 4, 1999)

One of the most fortunate reading experiences of my life, March 28, 2002

This masterfully told novel was my constant companion and best friend in the months that followed the accidental death of my twenty-four year old son. The book was given to me by a man who had read my own novel, and who saw some similarities in the blending of ancient and modern perspectives. Little did this man realize that "The Fall of a Sparrow" would come to mean much much more to me than his flattering perception of literary affinity. In fact, Hellenga's heartfelt wisdom was a lifeline that helped initiate whatever is positive in my life since that time. I only wonder at the strength and motivation this writer had which would lead him to create, and therefore live with, the very difficult circumstances he so realistically portrayed. I hope that the author will see this review and know of the gratitude I am yet feeling four years later for his profoundly effective, nearly-perfect, ultimately life-affirming story.  (March 28, 2002)

Wanting to write vs. wanting to be a writer

“Part of the grace of losing self-importance was the simple question ‘Who cares?’ More importantly, he didn’t want to be a painter, he only wanted to paint, two utterly different impulses. He had known many writers and painters who apparently disliked writing and painting but just wanted to be writers and painters.”

—Jim Harrison, The Land of Unlikeness (ch. 12). In The River Swimmer: Novellas. New York: Grove Press, 2013.       Amazon          BarnesandNoble

Setting the Table, Eating What is Served

I first saw Lisa Ress's “Setting the Table, Eating What is Served” in the Washington Prize announcement in Poets & Writers (March/April 1988) and was blown away. Some years later Lisa came to teach at Knox and we became good friends, and she’s allowed me to crib some lines from the poem in two different novels. I couldn’t find any other words that would to the job. The poem appears in Lisa's Object Relations.

 

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