Recently in History Category

Last weekend I flew to Boston, via Providence and Chicago, and I met Sarah in Rhode Island. Then we took the train across the bay and met my friend Andrew Jackson at the South Station. Drew attends the Boston Conservatory; he's a classical composer. From there it was a mad dash to a community theatre, where Erica Spyres, Drew's girlfriend, was debuting in her first East Coast show. The play was called The Mystery of Edwin Drood, loosely based on the unfinished Charles Dickens novel of the same name. Sarah and I had a wonderful time, we all left together, and we ate Malaysian food at a restaurant near Erica and Drew's apartment.

Boston is an old city. Every building, including the apartment building, seems as if it was built between 1636 and 1942. Cathedrals and graveyards with crumbling headstones are sprinkled among the fast food chains, mega-bookstores, and office buildings. On Saturday we walked. We saw the graves of John Hancock, Ben Franklin's parents, Paul Revere, and Rev. John Winthrop (the true author of The City on the Hill speech). We ate sushi for lunch and walked down to the harbor where the fog was rolling in.

Saturday night we took the green and red trains to Harvard Square. I bought a sweatshirt with the Harvard name and colors. Sarah got a shirt, too. When the rain started in we ducked into a rare bookstore. The basement was stacked with books, and a Russian poster in the window promised potential. Drew spoted a rare autographed photo of a famous Canadian composer ($8,500). The owner of the store was Russian and he said, "It's very rare," when Drew gasped a little. I bought a first edition of The Short Stories of Anton Chekov ($19.95) published by the Modern Library and another book by Chekov's student, the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for literature ($1.95). The second book was called The Gentleman From San Francisco & Other Stories. I couldn't resist! After that we had a wonderful seafood dinner and a beer.

Erica arrived home late from her second performance of Edwin Drood and Drew cooked her a heap of bacon. We were all exhausted from the walking during the day. Sarah and I had to get up early, find a ride to Providence, and fly out at 10:00 am or so. Drew called some of his friends, who pleasantly agreed to drive us up. We were very, very grateful, because it was that or an hour-long cab ride. So the friend, whose name was Matt, drove us into Rhode Island and we flew out. I can't wait to visit again next spring, when Drew and I will present our opera based on the final hours of life Rasputin spent (with his murderers). Maybe we'll run the Boston marathon, too... Maybe.

Writers will feature stories of writers that you may or may not have heard of. Short, to-the-point articles and biographical information. Sometimes the articles will feature interviews and links to an author's books or official sites.

In 1971, Jim Whitehead released his first and last novel: Joiner. The New York Times praised the novel and Mr. Whitehead himself as one of the Top 10 Southern Novels after Faulkner. Mr. Whitehead was a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop and his editor was Bob Gottlieb. He founded the MFA workshop program at the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville).


Although he was a fantastic writer and poet, Jim Whitehead's drafting process was laborious, and he often completed poems much easier than prose. He seems to be both a poet and a novelist, although his novels remain in unfinished draft form in Missouri State's Special Collections (in Meyer Library). The notepads are in pencil; Mr. Whitehead never used a typewriter if he could help it. Eric Sentell, who studied draft after draft of Mr. Whitehead's Coldstream (Joiner's sequel) with Kevin Luebbering, and who transcribed a draft of the first chapter of the book for The Moon City Review, has speculated that the intense drafting process is what kept Mr. Whitehead from ever publishing a second novel. In addition, Mr. Whitehead seems to have been bent on committing his novels to memory, as he often stressed young writers to do with famous works of literature.

Mr. Whitehead confessed in an interview that he would re-write 2,000 words just to fix a single paragraph.

Jim Whitehead was also a fairly heavy drinker, which is common in Southern culture, and some other scholars who helped to sort through his papers have suggested the heavy drinking also played a part in Mr. Whitehead never finishing any of Joiner's sequels. Mr. Whitehead did publish many books of poetry throughout his life.

Mr. Whitehead was a conscientious (and beloved) professor of Creative Writing. He took great care with his students and often helped to turn out award-winning writers from the University of Arkansas. He took great time to prepare for classes, to comment on student work, and to appear professional and helpful to those who came to him for help with their writing. This care may also have cut deeply into his time as a writer. He also raised a large family with his wife, and was very busy with all the responsibilities that implies.

Whatever the reason, this lovable professor, scholar, and poet never did publish another novel. He died in 2003. The papers he left behind fill 13 acid-free cardboard boxes. Most of the writing is on lined paper, white and yellow, covered with concentric coffee-stain circles and some of it illegible.

Those who wish to learn more about Jim Whitehead may do so here.

In the beginning, there was writing, and in his book On Teaching and Writing Fiction, Wallace Stegner, legendary writing professor (for whom the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University is named) gives a concise account of how writing got fractured. "Creative writing" was an innocent term adopted between the world wars, he says, to denote that type of writing course which is not freshman composition and is not journalism. The name rose out of a need to categorize college schedule books. Nothing sinister.

He also thoughtfully explores the implications of putting creative writing in an English Department: Literature professors tend to mistrust creative writing professors, seeing them as wordslingers, not scholars, and creative writers are likewise suspicious of English Departments. Many writers see literature and composition professors as failed writers, those who can't do, but who can teach. Both sides are a bit unfair; both sides also have valid points, according to Stegner.

This weekend, tired of posting on a blog not integrated with my website, I spoke with my close friend Shan Pesaru at Sharp Hue, Inc. about my options. Today, Shan e-mailed me back and said that, despite a somewhat tricky installation, he had set up such a blog for me, powered by Movable Type, the same program that powered my blog on Typepad. As it happens, Shan has just finished re-launching his own site, which is available from the link above. And it is amazing. If you want to be wowed by a web design genius (or need help with your personal website), then Sharp Hue is the company to call.

The new blog format allows for more interactive discussion, including forums and a community blog which my students may be able to use in the future as a tool to discuss composition.

In the meantime, I have been working feverishly on stories. I received another rejection letter, this time from The Paris Review, but I put it in my binder with the others and tried not to let it slow me down. I have an appointment to meet with the Ph.D. program coordinator at the University of Missouri, Kansas City on February 22nd. I am traveling to Las Vegas in March, and then hopefully to Boston in April, if I can scrounge up the money.

My fiancé and I will fly to Boston, both of us to work. For my part, I'll be working with Andrew Paul Jackson, a contributor to The Red Ink Journal and student at the Boston Conservatory, on a  performance piece dealing with the assassination of Grigorii Rasputin, the spiritual adviser to the final generation of the Romanov family, autocrats of Russia. Rasputin was known for his lechery, his alluring personality, his political influence, and his miracle cures concerning the hemophilia of Tsarevich Alexii Romanov. Some of these have never been explained by science.

The main concern of this story is portraying all the people involved not as caricatures, but as flawed human beings. Easier said than done, when so much history has passed and the legends of early-century Russia obscure most facts.

So Andrew and I face a serious problem: How do we make Grigorii Rasputin human again, when he is now so closely associated with the Devil Incarnate?

For that matter, how do we tease out the subtleties of Russian politics? The plot carried out by Felix Yusupov and Dmitri Pavolvich, the self-righteous assassins, best friends, and (perhaps) homosexual lovers who ultimately confessed their part in the murder? The hysterical Tsarina Alexandra, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who's reliance on mysticism, hysterical codependency, and dominance over her husband (not to mention her disdain for popular opinion) ultimately led to her family's grisly end?

That's to say nothing of England's MI-5 and MI-6, the secret service, who may have helped to end Rasputin's life, or at least to hasten it. What of the disfigured ex-whore, Khiona Gusyeva, who tried to kill Rasputin first? Disfigured by syphilis, Khiona stabbed Grigorii - and almost succeeded in killing him - long before the monk met his final death. What of Fyodor Kyzmin, the patrolman who found Rasputin's boot washed up against the icy latticework of an iron bridge - long before Grigorii's body was recovered.

And what of the miracle? When the Tsarevich suffered a blow that should have killed him, lying near death, blood clotting in his groin and hours from expiring, Grigorii Rasputin prayed feverishly from 1,000 miles away, prayed so hard that he 'turned gray' and nearly passed out himself. The Tsarevich's internal bleeding, which is the main concern of  hemophilia, stopped abruptly, as Rasputin predicted. Science never explained the episode. It is either a miracle or a coincidence. Rasputin is said to have 'truly loved' small children and animals, despite being a known criminal. Clearly this was a complex man.

All right, okay, enough is enough. I still have work to do today; let's fire this up and see if it works.