The Smell of not being in America

I forgot that there is this smell that I only smell when I'm not in America. It was in the rice paddies in Japan and it was in a small town in Belgium and it was in Paris in the morning when it seemed like the whole world might be asleep except for me and overnight baguette bakers. The smell is part Chanel number 5, part molasses and part freshly cut grass. It's a weird smell. I never smell it when I am in America. I smelled it yesterday but not today, or at least not yet.

If you type in "Weird Smell" in google this is what you get.

I went to the royal botanic gardens yesterday, and yes, you can friend them on facebook. I sat under some varietal of oak and ate the best sandwich. Hard-boiled egg, grilled zucchini, tomato, snowpea shoots and french mustard on multigrain bread. Ridiculous.

Cross-posted from HTMLgiant: A Child's Mind, Travel and Failure

This morning as I was catching up on MobyLives I came across a video of David Foster Wallace discussing the productive failure of traveling. It was filmed in 2006 while he was in Italy and if you watch it you will hear DFW say, "Everything that is a failure is also a victory," and you will see Jonathan Franzen chuckling to himself and leaning back in his chair, which, as we all know, is Jonathan Franzen's favorite pastime. In any case, 2006 was the first (as only?) time that DFW had been to a country where English was not the predominate language and his failure to be able communicate caused him to feel like a child, or more accurately an infant. He had to pay closer attention to others faces and gestures. He had to slow down.

I am leaving the country on Wednesday and I won't be back until winter has left this hemisphere. I'm doing this for a number of reasons but the most interesting of which is to write. I suppose what I'm writing doesn't matter much because any plans I have now are sure to change. The point, I think, is to put myself in an environment where I am clueless, where I have to pay closer attention to the banal, where I am forced to adapt, to learn and to fail.

The first time I spent a significant chunk of time around non-English speakers was in 2003 when I was alone in Japan for a summer. I felt a little like a famous dog then-- everyone petting my hair and stopping me in the street to take a picture-- but I think my mind fundamentally changed then and I started writing not just for fun but as if my life depended on it. This is what travel and/or solitude have done for me since then-- made me feel like a failure and forced me to find a way to not feel like one.

Eat When You Feel Sad

Zachery German's novel Eat When You Feel Sad is going to come out from Melville House in February. He asked me to make him a promotional video so I did.

Eat When You Feel Sad-- a book trailer from Catherine Lacey on Vimeo.

Novel-Nausea

[Cross-Posted from HtmlGiant.com]
Zadie Smith has a long essay in The Guardian that is half about David Shields's forthcoming, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, and half about her own frustration with novel writing. Go read it. It's longish, but it is completely worth the time. I am not going to include an excerpt here. Once you've read all of it, read the rest of this entry.

Ok..... done? Pretty good, right? I invited David to speak on a panel discussion last year and he gave me the galley to give Zadie, so I feel personally very happy that she read it because now that essay exists, which deepens my understanding of Reality Hunger. However, I disagreed very slightly with her perspective on the book and when David emailed me to say that her essay was on the Guardian this morning I replied to him with this:

...She assumes that enthusiasm about the book equals an act of "literary hara-kiri" and that enjoying Reality Hunger is a form of "grave-dancing." Not at all! I read Reality Hunger as an encouragement to write a more risky, honest book, be it memoir or novel or something in between.

Also, she seems to get a little bent out of shape when thinking about your and Coetzee's praise of "novels that don't look like novels." She assumes that this taste is meant to be "in some way unusual, the mark of a refined literary palate," but I don't think that's what you meant at all. I think you're just encouraging writers to bend the boundaries of the novel or story or memoir as we understand it now. She seems to believe that too, and says so in the next sentence: "But even the most conventional account of our literary "canon" reveals the history of the novel to be simultaneously a history of nonconformity." Yes. Nonconformity. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that Reality Hunger was encouraging more nonconformity, particularly in the realm of incorporating "nonfictional" or "true" elements or questions into the novel form. Also, when she says that "underneath some of these high-minded objections, and complementary to them, there is another, deeper, psychological motivation, about which it is more difficult to be honest," does she think that is so contrary to what Reality Hunger advises? Because it seems to me that is exactly what your book is encouraging us toward.

In any case, I really enjoyed reading about what she thought while reading your book even if it seems she agrees with it more than she thinks. The idea of "novel-nausea" seemed to be an astute diagnosis...

We were high school sweethearts.

It's true. We're back together. Forever. Me & Harold Pinter.

Almost Over

I took this picture earlier this spring at the big end of the year MFA party. That's someone's dad I guess. He just couldn't take it anymore.

... So I am almost done with my manuscript. Turning it in December 1st. Then it's really, really over. Over over.

Serious Reflection on Education