MQR Online

On “Desert Boys”: An Interview with Chris McCormick

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“I think most fiction is fundamentally about people who, in one way or another, are both insiders and outsiders at the same time. Kush—who’s half-Armenian and half-white—is destined for it. He’s got the privilege of access to this place, but feels othered by his bicultural life. I wanted a narrator who felt like a visitor in his own home. He can’t put his finger on why. He feels like he’s living in the wrong place, and then he thinks he was born at the wrong time in history: he listens to music from the 60s and 70s, he wishes he were alive during a more politically-engaged era, he believes he could’ve been a man of significance in a different set of circumstances.”

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Manly Beauty–The True Ambition, and more

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Excerpts and curios from around the web:

Walt Whitman’s guide to health and better living, the grudge narratives of LIGO scientists, and Lord Byron’s apocalyptic poetry. Plus: Hulu adapts The Handmaid’s Tale for the small screen, and Catherine Nichols explores the character adaptability that makes a novel addictive: “The adaptation technique isn’t just an efficient way of telegraphing psychological depth; it hits the reader like rock n’ roll.”

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On “The Refusal of Suitors”: An Interview with Ryo Yamaguchi

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“Above my desk is this line from Wallace Stevens: ‘In the world of words / Imagination is one of / The forces of nature.’ I think of the city that way—it’s a force of nature. It can enrapture you with its pulsing marquees or literally blow broken glass in your face. Where I live especially, the wind blows, and it’s either the smell of chocolate (from a nearby factory) or sewage. A stranger starts talking to you and you don’t know how to feel—you are guarded, but then you are friendly. You love this and you hate this. You are tired because it’s hard, and you feel strong because it is. And anxiety pulses beneath all of this, it (here we go with Heidegger) wakes you up to yourself, and in the very best situation, it makes you remember that you are the city.”

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Narrative Power: On the Writings of Robert Caro

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Caro’s writing is linked to a deep moral obligation to get the story right, not just as an unassailable set of facts, but as something more democratic, as strange as that might be to say about a set of giant books about the elites of the country. His books are ultimately about power. But as Maggie Nelson said during a recent talk at the AWP writing conference, “Every book invokes its own ghost,” and around a book about power lingers the ghosts of the powerless. Caro knows this. He says, “Somewhere in The Power Broker I write that regard for power means disregard for those without power. I mean, we’re really talking about justice and injustice.”

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How Do You Recommend a Favorite Book?

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I had forgotten that I was allowed to talk about my feelings when recommending a book. Not just allowed, but encouraged. Not that I wasn’t “allowed” to talk about how a book made me feel when surrounded by other writers or students; it just seemed that one’s feelings were beside the point. Yes, yes, this book made you feel happy, the characters made you feel like you knew them, but why did it make you feel that way? My further education was always trying to break me out of this mold of feeling without thinking.

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Automaton Lit, Clever Macaques, and more

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Excerpts and curios from around the web:

The literature of mechanical life, debunking “the ladder of nature,” the legacy of the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, and more. Plus: A look at Klaus Theweleit’s Male Fantasies in relation to the current election cycle: “Trump may look like a rancid creampuff in a Brioni suit, but his crass language serves the function of a ripped physique in a ripped T-shirt, projecting a Stanley Kowalskian virility.”

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At the Piano: Remembering Lorraine Geller and Portland’s Jazz History

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Recorded in Los Angeles in 1954, At the Piano came out in 1959, a year after Lorraine died. Jazz trios are a dime a dozen, and piano trio albums can sound so much alike that they seem interchangeable. The worst have too many standards. Too little fire. Not enough swing. They can sound stiff, safe, almost classical in their polish. Lorraine’s, though, brims with life.

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Should We Teach Compassion In Creative Writing?

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Today, when I read student work that relies on a clever conceit—such as a piece of fiction that is, ultimately, an elaborate joke; when I read stories that are technically functional but devoid of insights, I cringe. I prefer a piece that is overly sentimental but that is trying to get at something true to the undergraduate’s experience, such as love, longing, heartbreak.

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Unsolved Histories: Hitler, Histrionics, and My Hometown’s Almost-Obliteration

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I first caught wind of Fort Wayne, Indiana’s almost-obliteration after reading Michael Martone’s essay/story, “Fort Wayne Is Seventh On Hitler’s List.” As a Fort Wayne native, I was shocked by the title’s claim. Impressed, too—at least a little—that our city was once important enough to warrant Hitler’s wrath. Admittedly, being seventh on a bombing list is a bit of a dubious honor, and, as the Fort Wayne Visitors Bureau knows all too well, one that hardly translates to tourist dollars. Yet what we lack in tourism we make up for with hometown pride; the old timers are still known to puff out their chests and recount stories about the time we were nearly in Hitler’s crosshairs. So why did Hitler allegedly take an interest in our city?

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