MQR Online

Home Visits

Leave a Comment /

Many of my friends live all across the continent from me, in San Francisco, in Cambridge, in New York and Philadelphia. They live in places that are built for visitors, with landmarks and historical sites and an actual nightlife. So when they choose to visit me, I get anxious. Ann Arbor is a lovely place to live, but to visit? To do what? I can hardly take my guests to Costco, where I spend my weekends, treating myself to a hotdog and a drink for a dollar fifty. I can’t take them to Kroger and scour the manager special aisle for deals on stale cupcakes and irregular bacon. I get scared that my friends, coming from their cosmopolitan cities, will get bored. They will start to wonder, like I already was, why they spent the time and money to visit. And why all of my favorite activities involve discounted food.

Home Visits Read More »

On “Home is Burning”: An Interview with Dan Marshall

Leave a Comment /

“I think I was writing the blog to make my friends laugh—the content was definitely frattier, more about the easy jokes—but I tried to make the book more widely accessible. The book-writing process was more about picking the most important moments, wrapping them around a theme, and framing the journey—not to sound like some pretentious little art dickhead. But, it was about giving the story shape. It took a few drafts to get there, but I finally started to realize, ‘Okay, this is really a story about somebody and his siblings going through an intense situation and being forced through it to grow up and take on a little more responsibility.'”

On “Home is Burning”: An Interview with Dan Marshall Read More »

The Novella Is Not The Novel’s Daughter: An Argument in Notes

Leave a Comment /

The novella is slender but gaping. It embraces pause and pattern and gesture. It declares, “I can say more with less” and then it does. It is not an unwieldy short story but cohesive, taut, succinct. It is the novel’s architectural foundation, the stripped and fleshless core that argues the frame of a story might be enough.

The Novella Is Not The Novel’s Daughter: An Argument in Notes Read More »

Girl on a Bridge

Leave a Comment /

In blending Cassie’s childlike fantasy with altruism and justice, Ringgold highlights not only one child’s ability to use play to prepare for the stresses of the adult world, but also the power fantasy maintains even for adults when it comes to seeking justice and defining freedom. Flight may be a typical childhood dream, but it’s also a deep motif of resistance in African-American folklore. (In 1985, author Virginia Hamilton packaged that motif expressly for young readers in her gorgeous collection The People Could Fly.) While Cassie’s dress changes color above the George Washington Bridge, the page is bordered with pieces of Ringgold’s story quilt–in which Cassie’s story originally appeared–a testament to the idea that the dream/memory is not only Cassie’s, but that of an entire community.

Girl on a Bridge Read More »

Gimme Shelter: A Few Indulgently Bleak Thoughts on “Property Brothers” and Process

Leave a Comment /

As writers we have all toured dream homes we’re too poor to afford. Maybe Katherine Anne Porter’s “Noon Wine,” for me, or Tobias Wolff’s “Desert Breakdown, 1968,” or Danielle Evans’s “Virgins.” Yes, I tour these stories and compile my greedy wish-list: a mysterious stranger, I like that; a road trip gone wrong, of course; a heartbreaking decision both right and wrong at the same time, I wouldn’t want my story to go without one of those. I put down the book and open the computer. There’s my draft, all at once in various states of disrepair. I read back over it and wonder with distaste when and how, like floral wallpaper, these sentences had ever seemed a good idea to anyone. I hold my own story against my dream stories, I hold my vision for my story against its ruinous half-state. I moan: I just can’t see it.

Gimme Shelter: A Few Indulgently Bleak Thoughts on “Property Brothers” and Process Read More »

Unsolved Histories: A Camper Lost, A Counselor Found, and the Legend That Wouldn’t Die

Leave a Comment /

Once upon a time a boy named Bobby Watson drowned at my summer camp. This was in 1968. Thirteen-year-old Bobby had been playing an all-camp game of hide-n-seek when he spotted an old Kenmore refrigerator stationed on the far side of the docks. Indeed, it was a peculiar place for a fridge, but Bobby never questioned it; after all, where others saw a fridge he saw a perfect place to hide. He pulled the door wide (caree-eeek), and then pulled it closed behind him (click).

Unsolved Histories: A Camper Lost, A Counselor Found, and the Legend That Wouldn’t Die Read More »

The 38-Year Old Frat Boy Is Just Not Funny

Leave a Comment /

Perhaps I am lacking in imagination, but I simply can’t think of a clearer signal of white male privilege than an instance in which an adult white male receives a highly competitive fellowship and uses his time on that fellowship to join a frat and gets so inebriated he ends up in the hospital, but instead of reprimand from the law or university, he gets to turn the ridiculous tale into a cover story for the country’s second largest circulating paper.

The 38-Year Old Frat Boy Is Just Not Funny Read More »

Inside the Iowa Writers’ Workshop: Part 1

Leave a Comment /

The Iowa Writers’ Workshop was founded in 1936 and is the oldest-known program of its kind. Things change here at Vatican City pace. Hard copy posters and flyers are preferred to listservs; telephone and personal contact occur more often than e-mails. If it wasn’t too expensive to maintain retro equipment, the Workshop would probably still use typewriters and mimeograph machines. The Workshop librarian takes pictures of all the students and compiles them in a facebook—no, I’m not talking about the one online; this is a physical booklet that has very limited stalking capabilities.

Inside the Iowa Writers’ Workshop: Part 1 Read More »

On “New Life”: An Interview with Dan O’Brien

Leave a Comment /

“My aim has been to look as squarely as I can, with clear eyes, at the truth of what human beings are capable of doing to each other. This is Paul’s aim too. Denial is a killer, and if we all felt the horror that so many are forced to experience I know there would be less violence in the world. This is a conviction I’ve had about life and about my writing long before I met Paul, though in the past I probably spent most of my time concentrating on stories of emotional violence, often of child abuse. It’s all the same. The weak are exploited and abused by the powerful, and silence, obfuscation, denial is a complicity that must be confronted.”

On “New Life”: An Interview with Dan O’Brien Read More »

Covers of A Social History of Iranian Cinema

Resources for Iranian Cinema

Leave a Comment /

Iran has produced one of the world’s greatest national cinemas, stretching back to before the Islamic revolution. The films have won numerous international awards, including the Oscar and the Golden Globe, as well as the Cannes Film Festival’s Golden Palm and Jury Prize, the Venice Film Festival’s Golden and Silver Lion, and the Berlinale’s Golden and Silver Bear. Yet, despite the accolades, Iranian movies are more discussed than seen in the United States.

Resources for Iranian Cinema Read More »