I was reading Joy Williams' review of Brad Gooch's biography of Flannery O'Connor in this morning's NYTBR and followed a link to an editorial blurb mentioning, more or less, the difference between Joy Williams & Flannery O'Connor. They quote Joy Williams as saying,
“Flannery’s illness kept her put, and I’m sure she felt it was a powerful instance of grace bestowed,” Williams said. “Many writers today are wanderers. There is not only an unhousedness in language — how to convey, to say nothing of converge — but an unhousedness of place. For better or worse, I live in Tucson and Key West. Though sometimes, Maine. Currently I’m in big beautiful Wyoming, teaching at the university.”
I read no less than four critiques of MFA culture/poetry's fate in Academia, etc. over the past week alone, and none of them mentioned the nomadic life of a successful academic career.
Certainly not limited to creative writing positions, of course, but I've watched even the rolls of less-than-top-notch universities shift and change, since better or more-famous writers attract better students, and the less famous or talented are swapped out under the direction of one more-or-less static and most-famous chairperson. So much of interesting writing, historically, is tied to a strong sense of place, yet I can't name any contemporary writer whose literary work is immediately and specifically associated with the area in which they live (with the possible exception of NYC). In fact, I would go so far as saying that work that attempted that bond would be considered immature and solipsistic, not to mention the kiss of death,
not widely marketable.
What takes the place of authentic attachment to geography in a culture that prides picking up and moving on after any given semester? Is abstraction a buffer against forming a home in a place that will only be taken away? Are we so stuck in the cerebral because it's the only world that moves with us? When writers stop trying to make a living teaching, will our homes return to our words? Was local color writing just a passing (though decades-long) fad and has our world now expanded exponentially, through the internet, into a place that we all can talk about without specifics and truly feel at home no matter where we are? Do we have to make pop-culture references and refer to tabloid news stories to keep a wide audience for our work? What is my record for consecutive questions?
Did you hear Denny's has announced a new special in honor of the Octo-mom? It's 8 eggs, no sausage, and everyone else in the restaurant pays the bill.
