Big Time Famous Writer

J'ai renvoyé à nouveau

2007-11-24T07:15:00.000-08:00

I spent the holiday alone. But before my readers begin to pity me, I should say that this was planned as my daughters will both be in Chicago next weekend when we are to have a grand feast. We hope to outdo our meal of two years prior, a surprise visit that I wrote about at length. Ella has finished culinary school and has opened a restaurant in New Orleans, intent on being part of the redevelopment of one of the more neglected (and dangerous) areas of that city. We still have lengthy conversations about food as the soul of culture, but in truth she is now the master and I am the student. I visited her bistro over the summer and she served me a simple jambalaya and fresh corn bread that was so perfect that I wept for twenty minutes upon cleaning my bowl. When I recovered I ordered a second helping. Billie, my other daughter, is interviewing for a job in Chicago with a nonprofit. It's her backup plan depending on how she fares on the Foreign Service Exam, which she is taking for the third time. It's bad karma to controvert her dreams, but I still hope she winds up in Chicago so that we can be close. It terrifies me to think of her serving in Baghdad in the center of the mess created by Our Leader and the nincompoopery who support (and continue to apologize) for his criminal and incompetent leadership. Not that Billie wouldn't do much to make the best of a horrid situation, but I'm a grumpy old man who needs his daughter close and out of harm's way.

I should make some mention of where I've been for the past year or more. Devoted readers will recall my series of relationships with my students and ex-wives, and it all, I'm afraid, turned out badly. I had some issues, my garden variety depression spiraling temporarily out of control, heightened by my heart surgery and subsequent battery of medications. I'm in therapy now, and though I lost my job in the MFA program of a uninspiring yet pretentious middlewestern institution of higher learning, I'm on the rebound with a good job teaching at a Chicago area community college, which a former student secured for me upon hearing of my predicament.

Things are going well, and while New York exhibits indifference to my new novels and memoir despite my triumphs of old, LA has taken interest in my facility with screenwriting. At the behest of a friend I wrote a spec script while hospitalized after a storytelling drought of more than a year. Her logic was that I should begin working in a new format and she was dead on. I discovered I have latent ability in screenwriting. Several producer friends reviewed the script, immediately spying brilliance. The fact that I am honoring the strike is perhaps the only reason it is not currently in development at a major studio. I'm now working on a script about my life that is sure to have independent filmmakers queuing up once I finish, so I devoted my solo Thanksgiving time to fleshing out another pair of scenes.

Oh, I did eat well. I had some good crab and shrimp left in the freezer from a past Cajun orgy and some old baguettes that had hardened so I made a bayou stuffing and filled mixed red and green peppers for holiday flare. I made fresh hush puppies and some Cuban beans and rice. A crisp Pinot Blanc from Alpine Italy harmonized with the meal. Seafood on Thanksgiving helped me not to dwell on the fact of my solitude.

In any event, I've returned yet again. I hope to return to these online memoirs in earnest, adding my occasional recipes and advice for aspiring writerlings. I'll also add some tips on screenwriting as I'm now beginning to master that craft as well. I feel good. I get the sense that there are good things in store for the Brown Trout. Welcome back readers. J'ai renvoyé à nouveau.

On strike

2007-11-17T05:11:00.001-08:00

In solidarity, brothers and sisters.

Writerly advice

2007-10-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

I've decided to add a collection of my aphorisms delivered to MFA students on my latest speaking tour. These are insightful responses to sound questions, so please take them all to heart:

"A writer should write from the guts. That's why I never write in the morning until after a good bowel movement. Only after a serious shit can you write things that are true."

"If the words aren't coming right is when I chew on bulbs of raw garlic. If that doesn't work, try venison, cooked bloody and eaten under a full moon at midnight. Otherwise, you're probably just destined for failure."

"True writers never doubt themselves. Period."

Tolerance for Genius: An open letter from the Brown Trout to the fine students at FSU on methods of coping in the shadow of Literary Greatness

2007-08-04T08:52:00.000-07:00

Dearest students:

Put your coffee down.

My fine writerlings, genius is messy. Brilliance can burn you if you stand too close. When the shit hits the literary fan, I know it can sometimes cause disillusionment. When one of us devolves to the Neolithic, it is no less disturbing for being so expected.

But I urge you, given recent events, not to lose faith in our noble pursuit or it’s fine practitioners. We Literary Lions are all in truth little boys trembling in the night. We are children lost in the woods. Despite our laurels, our involved and intricate narratives, our sparkling and unassailable prose, we are all flawed and broken creatures. I’ve failed thrice at marriage, and each time it was my own (damn) fault, though it took years for me to admit that to the world or even myself. You all know the Buffett song. What's more, I have a faulty ticker, an underzealous metabolism, an empty savings account, troubles with the sauce and a strong lecherous streak yet none of this has led me to prudence or the tempering of my appetites. I haven’t published a brilliant novel since the mid-seventies. My memoirs were recently rejected by several major houses despite its excellence, and I know this is largely due to my personality issues, though I am truly gregarious and likable in person. Still, I am a selfish man and a mediocre teacher sucking on the teat of academia, resting on the laurels of novels long since forgotten. Thank God for the MFA! Unlike my dear friend Bob, I never took the Big Prize. I've failed to remain a productive writer. I would never put myself in his league. I’ve been crushed by critics. I’ve pissed off agents, offended editors, destroyed friendships and quashed budding literary careers. Most of this has been accidental. At heart I am a good person. An old-fashioned liberal Democrat who loves and admires his students (some more than others) and who truly cares about our nation, its people and its letters. But enough about me. On behalf of my good friend Bob, I ask not for your understanding, your compassion or your sympathy in his recent meltdown. I ask only for your tolerance.

To that effect, let me offer some advice for those standing in the shadow of literary greatness. I've often considered adding these points to every syllabus at the beginning of the semester, but then perhaps that would ruin some of the fun for my eager young proteges.

Recommendation the First: Read your Master's work. All of it, even the dreck. You need not charge into his office breathlessly citing passages, though there is nothing inherently wrong with this. But it's best to simply drop hints in conversation over lunch or dinner: "Oh, I see what you're saying...you mean to draw characters sharply and succinctly as you did in the second chapter of The Wind in the Petunias..."

Recommendation the First Part 1.b: There is no reason for you not to pick up the tab for above mentioned lunch or dinner. Your master is likely a struggling artist, and unlike you he has no access to low interest loans. He will not find it offensive in the least.

Recommendation the Second: Always return the Master's books. When he loans you an edition from his own shelf, keep it for a short time and then promptly return it. There is no reason for you to actually read it, though it wouldn't hurt. He mainly enjoys the process of loaning the book and also telling you a brief anecdote about his relationship with its author. As it is typically an autographed first edition, and because it is probably an out-of-print volume written by an obscure writer you've never heard of but who is now teaching at another MFA program, it is imperative to keep it in excellent condition.

Recommendation the Third: Return your Master's affections. If he were to make advances on you after the latest department wine and cheese mixer, it is usually a clumsy expression of his respect for your abilities as a writer. It may seem that the more provocatively you dress, the greater his admiration, but that is merely coincidental. I have found, anecdotally, that women in their mid to late twenties experience a burst of inspired creativity. It may be biological, I'm not sure, but if it seems that attention is directed from the Master in this direction this may be a partial cause.

Recommendation the Fourth: Ignore the Master's contradictions. A great writer is not so much an individual but a process. His thought and keen insight are constantly evolving as our world changes. If he should proclaim one day that New York is a (shallow) cess pool that has produced nothing but hackneyed upper-middle-class suburban parlor drama but then praises ____________ the following class, please do not point this out. New novels are being published every day, and perhaps he had just subconsciously absorbed more information requiring an addendum to his initial comment. A Master is anyway granted license in making sweeping statements. Many of these are true, such as, "There have never been any decent Republican writers." But others are subject to changing circumstance and the Great Mind's evolution.

Recommendation the Fifth: If the Master dismisses a writer of whom you are particularly fond. For example, if he says, "Jonathan Franzen is a clever but cynical turd writing fake prose who won't survive his own generation and may well drop from the radar faster than David Foster Wallace," don't take it to heart if you admire these particular writers. It's probably just that your literary sensibilities aren't sufficiently developed for you to read their work the way that he does.

Recommendation the Sixth: If your Master asks you to drive him to the airport, or if he asks you to help him pick up fifteen bags of humus and haul them around back to his herb garden, do not think that he is using his elevated stature to secure free labor. He is probably just seeking an excuse to be near your budding talent.

Recommendation the Seventh: Any passages appearing in his published work that seem strikingly familiar to an assignment you turned in last semester should be considered an homage, not plagiarism. This may be as close as you ever get...in fact, consider it the same as being published yourself, though tell no one. It will be your very own lifelong secret.

Recommendation the Eighth: Be gentle to your dear Master. His is a heavy burden and he needs your support. So is ever genius.

I could, of course, continue, but I have set aside the balance of this evening for Writing and will be hard at work on a new novel for which there is much expectation among the literary establishment despite my reputation as a former literary bad boy. As ever, I wish you writerlings well. All of you have a home in my heart, and your respect and admiration are ever appreciated.

Yours,

BT

Dog balls not suitable for children

2007-02-19T07:00:00.001-08:00

While it's hard to improve upon the low-key skewering of American conservative priggishness apparent in this Independent article, I'll have to also throw in my own two cents. It seems that this year's Newberry Prize-winning novel for kids(The Higher Power of Lucky) has stirred the community of conservative librarians and teachers (most certainly only a handful of loudmouths) because of the inclusion of the word "scrotum" on its front page.

The controversial genitalia belong to a dog, and said dog has been bitten there by a rattlesnake. Sounds like comedy to you and me, but to the conservative guardians of our children it is no laughing matter. Everyone knows that such graphic language can send an impressionable young mind on a rocketsled to bestiality.

Mention of dog balls may be coarse, lewd and even inappropriate for most dinner conversation, but they still can be pretty funny. Children have an eye-level view of these anatomical features, and I remember my nephew giggling and pointing at a particularly pronounced pair of offending objects on a Labrador retriever not so long ago. I also once talked my sister, by phone, through the removal of a tick from the corresponding region of that same nephew. We will all laugh about that someday as well.

I suggest that conservatives hold a contest to search for a more appropriate term and then present that word to the publisher. "Goobers" might be one option.

BTFW for real

2007-01-26T06:32:00.000-08:00

Jim Harrison showed up in the NY Times yesterday. Of special interest, his recipe for mesquite roasted doves. He notes that it's important not to overcook or they'll turn out like "bowling balls."

Beverages

2006-12-15T13:51:00.000-08:00

This is the only useful book on writing that I've ever encountered. Finally, a fiction "how-to" guide that doesn't flog the usual inane questions: when's the best time of day to write; do you use an outline; who's your greatest influence; when did you first know you wanted to be a writer; &c, &c. I'm frankly tired of hearing that Nabokov composed his novels on notecards or that Hemingway stood at his typewriter. This book cuts to what's most important in literature: the authors' favorite cocktails.

I hope Hemingway and Bailey collaborate again in the near future. Winter's approaching, rendering me an indoor creature for much of the bad weather, and that's when I do most of my cooking. I'd cherish a collection of recipes. My dear friend Jim Harrison could fill an entire chapter. I'm getting hungry already, hankering for Joel Rubichon's glorious, hearty Burgundian sauce that he slathers over everything from eggs to fish when the weather begins to bite. Add to that some shaved gruyere and a delicate Mersault and I'd be well stocked for a night at the Remington Rand.

Gorino

2006-06-23T06:20:00.000-07:00

I took the train to Rome to have lunch with my good friend Gore Vidal. "Gorino," as the Italians call him, was in town for a literary festival. He's as spirited and instightful as ever. Our party was large, but he was gracious, being sure to work his way to each of the writers seated at the table. I knew that he wanted to give each of us a chance to say what we're working on within earshot of the hovering journalists. A man who knows how to hold court.

When he leveled his beneficent gaze at me, he leaned back in his wheelchair and smiled.

"So, BT, how've you been occupying your time?"

"I'm in Florence at the moment. With a class."

"Ah, you've a reputation of taking great care with your students." (Chuckles around the table) "Finish that novel you told me about? It's due out, isn't it?"

I froze. From the shadows behind Gorino, an attractive arts columnist from Il Manifesto leaned forward, her pen poised over her notebook.

"Should be out soon," I lied. "Just slapping on another coat of polish, Gore. I've been a little busy lately."

"Fishing, no doubt," he said. "So what's it called...this novel?"

I smiled. Scratched my beard. I hate lying. "Hurricane Lili," I said. In truth this is the working title of one of my new manuscripts. But when you no longer have an agent or publisher, it's bad luck to toss around titles.

It was hard to enjoy the meal. Classic Roman cuisine, but I much preferred dinning with Gore and Howard at La Rondinaia before he moved back to the States. Howard was a true gourmand. His cooking put mine to shame. "Boy, you sure no how to put on a feed, Howard," I once said. They enjoyed when I played at being a rube with one of my midwesternisms. I miss Howard...how long has he been gone now? I remember sitting on their balcony so many years ago, staring at the sea, sipping a glass of Nero d'Avola. Slowly the great mother rolls on her side and we all slip into the darkness. Time does us no favors.

On the train back to Florence I wept. It wasn't that I was bothered by my half-truths: I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that I'm in the twilight of my writing career. What bothered me was leaving a mentor behind. When you part with an older friend it is always sad, but especially so with one as vibrant as Gore. You always wonder if this meeting will be your last.

Anniversary

2006-05-12T06:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday would have been the thirtieth anniversary of my marriage to my first wife, Lila. She was (and I trust still is) an Irish Catholic lass with freckles and a taste for mischief in her lovemaking.

We fought often. In fact we fought constantly when we weren’t in bed. She’s an artist, a perhaps that was the problem. Creative types are certainly self-absorbed, and as marriage is all about sacrifice, a writer who marries an artist is asking for trouble. Someone has to do a bulk of the giving, and neither of us were willing to compromise. Though we never grew to be close friends in the way that Ruth (my second ex) and I did, there was a definite fire--a mixture of lust and devotion--that I’ve never been able to recreate. She gave me two gorgeous daughters, my finest achievement in life being those two brief acts of pollination.

I celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the marriage to my first wife by almost calling her. I sat next to the phone in my bathrobe, hand hovering over the receiver for the better part of an hour. Finally I gave up and fired up the grill. I had two venison round steaks marinating in a ziplock of olive oil, black pepper, garlic, sea salt and Pinot Noir. I tossed them on low heat next to a foil-wrapped, organically grown baking potato. I then sautéed a couple pounds of shitakes and some greenhouse zucchini. Since this was an entirely local meal, I paired it with a friend’s homemade Chambourcin. It’s a delightful dry red wine with green pepper and grassy qualities that make it a nice fit for wild game. It’s grown in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states, as well as in New York and parts of Australia, where they make a lovely sparkling wine from this varietal. Chambourcin is one of those much-maligned French-American cultivars that is either derided or ignored by the likes of those insipid writers for Wine Spectator or that nincompoop of the first order, Robert B. Parker. It’s a tricky wine for food pairing, and it’s admittedly hard to find well-made (though aren’t all wines?). My friend’s bottle was delightful, aged two years and made without oak. I’ve come to regard the use of oak (especially by California winemakers) with the same level of contempt as someone who puts ketchup on a fine porterhouse or those who pour hazelnut flavored syrup into a cup of good coffee.

In any case, after this solitary orgy that took up most of the day and evening, I retired to my back patio with a glass of tawny port so I could work on a story by lamplight. It was a balmy evening, and I smelled the thickness of coming rain. My story is about the last black cowboy in Montana, a fellow hired by a Republican rancher to illegally eliminate the endangered grizzly bear that killed his prized bird dogs. Based on a true story. I’m slipping it to a friend who is slipping it to a friend at The New Yorker. If it’s published there I’ll let my readers know…it’s almost time I revealed my identity anyway. In any case, it’s the first short story I’ve written in ages, and I think it’s pretty fucking good, if I don’t say so myself.

Around midnight I was dozing in my lawn chair and a fine mist had begun falling, dampening the draft of the story and curling the pages. I heard a soft knock at the front door, so I stumbled through the apartment and undid the chain. It was a surprise as this complex becomes something of a ghost town after the students leave.

I found Yu standing there. She was wet and crying, her cheeks purple in the streetlight. Her hair was unbraided…the first time I’d seen her this way, and it hung about her shoulders like a main of kelp. She was gorgeous. “My husband kick me out,” she said. “He find me with another man.”

“Heavens, my dear! Come in.” She rushed into my arms.

I fixed her a roasted red pepper/tomato soup with fresh produce I had on hand. I have to admit that since I was in a hurry to serve I had to use a can of tomato paste, though ordinarily I’d allow time to thicken the stock properly. I cut parsley and fresh mint from my dooryard herb garden to garnish. Dab of fresh sour cream from a local dairy.

She ate gratefully and over a bottle of Vouvray I learned that her lover was none other than Billy Clayhouse, a student who had impregnated another of my writerlings last semester. I was angry at Billy and made a note to confront him. As a marine sniper who’d done a tour in Iraq (Falluja), Clayhouse had seen hell, though that doesn’t excuse his behavior. He was also a fatherless Kiowa whelp from Oklahoma with the (tragically) common Native American mother plagued by alcoholism. He was raised by grandparents who managed to give him some respect for the old ways. Over lunch he once told me he’d been poisoned as a fetus by his mother’s drinking and he now blamed all women for his fetal alcohol syndrome, which left him with a short attention span and made writing a horrible chore. This was, he said, why he treated women so miserably. I told him that writing was a horrible chore anyway, and that I also treated women miserably, but never on purpose. I also told him to stop his fucking whining: if he couldn’t tell that women as a gender were the only hope for this world then he had no soul and might as well quit writing and go for his MBA. He left in a huff and I haven’t spoken with him since. And to think that I once considered fixing him up with my youngest daughter, Billie Trout. The miserable fuck.

The upshot of all this was that Yu had finally learned that she loved her husband. “He a computer nerd, but also he is gentle and kind. He didn’t get mad at me but just cried and blamed his self for not paying enough attention to me. I don’t know what to do, Professor Trout. He said that maybe it be best if we divorce!”

She wept.

I held her on the couch, smelling her hair and feeling her little frame like some kind of strange and delicate bird in my arms. I was a perfect gentleman, though I’d be a miserable liar if I didn’t admit that the ermine stirred in his warren somewhere down below. I managed, however, to keep the troublesome creature at bay.

We concocted a plan. What they needed was a period of separation after which they could re-evaluate their relationship. I asked her to join the summer writing session in Tuscany. She protested saying they didn’t have much money: he was only an assistant professor and not yet tenured, and her parents in China, although wealthy, had disowned her. I offered to loan her some money from my wine fund, though in truth I don’t have much to spare. Oh well, these things generally take care of themselves.

She fell asleep in the crook of my arm. I fell asleep too, and I dreamed I was a black bear and she a fawn curled up in my claws. My bear-self watched the Yu-fawn, mouth watering.

Finally, I dreamed of my lost Lila, my first lovely bride. We were married thirty years ago, when I was as young and confused as delicate little Yu. I’m still confused, but I’m now old and have recognized that this is just how life works. All we can ask for is the company of a kind stranger who might fix us a bowl of soup and listen to our troubles, resisting his urge to ravage the young fawn curled helplessly in his ragged old claws. I am in love with Yu, and Lila. I’m in love with life. And I know that this too shall pass.

Who we were and what we've come to

2006-05-04T06:14:00.000-07:00

Agent: Mr. B. Trout?

BT: The same.

Agent: Lana Landreaux…from the Williams, Carlos & Williams Agency. New York…

BT: Of course. Pleasure.

Agent: It’s my pleasure Mr. Trout. Listen, I just finished your partial and I wanted to talk to you…

BT: [ ears perk, tail wags, thinks to self: delightful young lady, and smart, too ] That’s wonderful.

Agent: Is now a good time?

BT: No, of course. By all means.

Agent: It was very good. You’re an amazing writer. I don’t receive many pieces that are so polished. Well crafted language.

BT: Thank you.

Agent: Have you published before?

BT: [ hesitates ] Why yes.

Agent: I expected as much…by the quality of your work. I wasn’t sure, though, because I didn’t recognize the name.

Allow me to interject here: I’ve never claimed celebrity, though I have dined with Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Jesse Jackson, Jimmy Carter (at the Little White House in Key West). I claim a number of fine writers among my close friends. I’ve been to all of the cocktail parties. I’ve overturned tables in all the right restaurants. My exploits, more affectation, I admit, than actual expressions of my personality, have brought notoriety in literary circles, if not actual respect or fame. But when Ms. Landreaux claimed to not know my name…this young woman who makes her living in the world of editors, writers and publishers…I was taken aback. After all, at my age, who we used to be makes up a large part of what we have left. I’m beginning to learn that who I used to be has all but dried up. A ghost in the vacuum. A stack of unread books in a storage locker outside D.C.

BT: [ smiles to self ] It was some time ago…when I last published.

Agent: I see. Well, your experience shows in your work. It’s very good.

BT: Thank you.

Agent: And that’s why I wanted to call instead of send a form letter. To offer you some words of encouragement.

BT: [sits down on kitchen table]

Agent: Because you’re destined to find a publisher. Maybe not for this manuscript, but sooner or later. It’s inevitable. It’s that good.

BT: May I ask?

Agent: Of course…this novel is just not for me. I mean…I’ve got a tight list. I can only afford to take on something that I’m passionate about. Very passionate. I mean…let’s say they got me in one of those East European torture centers, and a CIA thug offers me a choice between burning the only copy of my client’s manuscript or hacking off my own arm with a Ginsu--I would actually consider hacking off my arm. That’s how strongly I have to love a client’s book.

BT: Heavens…that’s pretty passionate.

Agent: Yes. I mean…I liked the first two threads in your novel, the old woman from Veracruz and the single mother from…where was it?...Mississippi. A mixture of composure and desperation. Mirror images in many ways. And the small town lawyer character with big ambitions…intriguing guy. But the other character…Michael Tuck…didn’t groove with him. Didn’t see where that whole thread was leading. He was a little weak.

BT: Wishy-washy is probably a better adjective…sure. His story braids with the others later…you’d have to read another hundred pages or so.

Agent: Well the writing was good. I see, peripherally, how he fits in. It’s just…I only loved 2/3rds of the book, so…

BT: You wouldn’t hack off your arm. I understand.

Agent: But I liked it enough to want to tell you to keep writing. I think it’s important. The issues you take on…illegal immigration, globalization…I mean they’re big issues. Heavy stuff. Unfortunately it’s sometimes hard to find readers for that real heavy stuff.

BT [ feeling the desperation of the telemarketer loosing his mark, the all-expenses-paid bonus trip to Waikiki slipping away ] But the demonstrations…the immigrant rising, millions in the street, people talking about these issues…seems like my material might be timely...

Agent: That’s news…we’re talking fiction here. It’ll be two years before this novel comes out…something else will be in the news. Hopefully the impeachment hearings of Our Great Leader.

BT: I’m with you there. But I’ve another manuscript that I’m finishing. And then there’s my memoir…

Agent: Send me partials. I’d be happy to take a look. But I just wanted to call. I usually don’t do this after rejecting a partial--but I thought the writing was that good.

BT: Appreciated.

Agent: Good luck Mr. Trout.

BT: Same to you, my dear.

Agent: Bye.

BT: Bye.

At this point BT hangs up the phone. Sighs. He’s been through it all before, but there was a time when it came easy to him.

He’s got one lonely bottle of San Giminiano Vernacca in the cupboard. He chills it in the fridge. Fires up the charcoal grill. It’s only nine in the morning but he defrosts a farm-raised hen in a sink full of cool water. He rubs it inside and out with sea salt. Fresh ground pepper. In the dooryard he gathers two dozen sage leaves. Chops them. Makes a paste with olive oil, more pepper, some parsley leaves. Splits the chicken along the breast bone and opens it like a book. Flattens it. Smears paste. Grills fifteen minutes per side. Pollo Diavolo, they call it in Toscana. He devours the bird like a barbarian, no side dishes, just meat, bone, bottle of Vernacca, gristle, skin, sage. His beard is greasy. Thumbprints on his glasses. Wine buzz, full belly, sitting on the back porch in a splash of sunlight. He’s got a notebook open. Uncapped pen lying across the page. He thinks about writing but hesitates, just soaking in the sun, the heat still damp from an overnight rain shower.

Et tu, Yu?

2006-05-03T06:09:00.000-07:00

I am unable to write for several reasons, the first being financial stress. I’ve always lived hand-to-mouth, but the bills from my angioplasty and my surgery came due. Any conservative will say that state employees are coddled by their lavish benefits, but show me a corporate middle manager who pays higher deductible that us State U proles. Many of my older MFA students, returning to academia to pursue their youthful dreams, have earned more over their lifetimes than I have. One fellow who fashions himself the next Chandler (God, do we really need another?) worked his whole career as a telephone lineman, getting out just in time before cell phones and the obscene corporate practices of our new Gilded Age began the new war on the middle class. He was the union rep of his shop, a relic of a happier time when a blue collar fellow could send his kids to college, buy a house, a speedboat for the weekends, a trip to Hawaii or maybe Las Vegas. In any case, he shared with me his salary upon retirement over drinks one afternoon, and I was not so shocked to learn that it was more than I’d ever earned in a one-year period, even when my books were selling. He saved his pennies while I spent mine on wine and gourmet groceries, and now he was pursuing his writing ambitions in retirement, living on his pension. Good plan. I always stress to my students that they’ll need to find a means of sustaining themselves and their obsessions with the writerly calling. I usually suggest they study oenology or viticulture, but that’s just projecting my own interests. In my case, I married capable and well-heeled women as my means of sustenance. Thrice.

Ruth, the second of my happy ex-brides, has been much on my mind lately. This has been another cause of my literary impotence. It’s hard to write when your past has you by the horns. We’ve spent hours talking on the phone since our reunion tryst in D.C. I’ve been dreaming about her. I feel like a teenager in love, though as we can never return to our youth since we all know we can never swim in the same river twice. My age and life experience has left a bitter and sick coating on my emotional equipment. My mind tells me that it won’t work. You can’t return to your past. My heart is afraid.

Finally, a third contributor to my period of unwritingness, beyond the fact that it’s finals week and I’ve stacks of projects to grade, is this phenomenon of our immigrant rising. This is a good reason. It has me exhilarated. Finally I feel like an American again. I feel that swell of pride, a whisper from those hot summer afternoons back in Wisconsin when I stood on the Main Street sidewalk for the Fourth of July parade watching the WWI vets march past, holding aloft the flag, the swagger gone from their step but replaced by a specific dignity that resonates with a young boy. I also remember standing on a street corner in my mother’s lovely Berlin in ‘89, talking to an old gentleman in a brown suit too big for his wizened, shrinking frame. He was flushed with awe and respect for my American-ness. He was reverent from the recent crumbling of the Berlin Wall and still earnestly grateful for the Berlin Airlift. Good God, how far we’ve fallen in the eyes of the world! I always wonder if my daughters will ever know such a conversation with a foreign national as I had that afternoon. I returned to my hotel room and wept with joy. I even forgave Ronald Reagan his transgressions, but only briefly. All’s it took to ruin our stature was one more stupid war, and a group of oil execs creating for our nation’s presidency a fake, illiterate cowboy to bully the leaders of the world on their behalf. Not even a real cowboy, mind you! Just some well-heeled bumpkin from New England old money who spent a year or two of high school perfecting his fake western accent before returning to Yale.

But excuse my tirade. Back to the marching…I talked to my daughter Ella, who was in Chicago on Monday for a cooking clinic. She participated in the rally in Union Park. Though she has no interest in the Foreign Service, like her sister she’s good with languages. A hobby. At the demonstration she was able to use her Greek, some Russian, German and of course Spanish. Those who see this current immigrant rising as primarily a Latino movement are missing the point entirely, and to their peril. It’s a social movement. It is more American than a billion of those “Support the Troops (by keeping them in Iraq)” bumper-sticker displaying, flag-wrapped, Dixie Chick-bashing nincompoops could possibly understand. These immigrants represent the soul of our troubled nation trying desperately to right our ship of state. When they wave the flag, it is done with a combination of defiance and love. This is not as stupid as singing “God Bless America” at a baseball game. This is true patriotism. They are the rising tide that has the potential of lifting us all, if we allow it.

I marched, too. My mother was born and raised in Germany, only gaining her citizenship in my teen years. As a half-Jew, she had no qualms giving up her German citizenship for obvious reasons, thought she still loves specifics from her native country. My father was half African American…that 25% of myself that defines me upon first glance. Anyone pointing me out nowadays wouldn’t say: “that tall German guy,” or “that portly Jew.” They’d say, “that black guy with the beard.” In any case, we’ve all got immigrants in our heritage, whether we crossed the Bering Straight forty thousand years ago, or whether we came illegally, unwillingly, or by patiently following the archaic, inadequate and confounding legal process. Our march here in Campustown USA was pathetic but heartfelt. I cancelled Monday’s grad seminar, but the only members of my class joining me at the rally were the delightfully round and pregnant Miss Puppycute, and then Yu, my best student. The other students seemed disappointed that I called off the session. We marched with a scraggly band of peaceniks, a number of the campus international students, the Turkish family that owns the World Deli, a dozen tattooed field hands and day laborers looking squinty-eyed and amused, and the entire extended family that runs the town’s best Mexican restaurant, all twenty-five of them. Each of us carried an American flag passed out by the local Progressive Democrats group.

After the march, several of us went for beers. The party dwindled to just Yu and me, and I was surprised by her ability to hold alcohol. She did get teary in the end. She confessed that she was “basically illegal,” which was why today’s march meant so much to her. She’d married her computer science professor simply to get residency in our fine country. She’d grown estranged from her family back home because she switched from engineering studies to fine arts and they felt betrayed and enraged. Being married to a professor allows her to stay in country while also receiving a discount on tuition, necessary now that her parents in China have cut off her funding. “He not so interested in me,” she said of her young husband-professor, “He just play board game with friends on weekends and write computer program all night. I keep him happy with sex, but I neverless feel like a whore.”

I studied her face with interest. Tears hung in her honey-brown eyes, though she restrained them with her will. She smiled sadly, raising freckles on her rounded cheeks. She is beautifully complex, I realized. She is conniving, sacrificing her happiness and using this poor fellow simply to be able to pursue her writing. I instantly saw a kindred spirit. We talked for a long time amid the smell of stale beer and the “bleep bleep” of the electronic dart board. She sat with her hand on my knee. “Thank you for this day, for marching with me,” she said as we left. I wanted to kiss her.

Now I’m wondering again if a fourth marriage is such a good idea. Nothing happened between Yu and me that shouldn’t happen between a professor and his student, but still I feel like I’ve betrayed Ruth already. I’ve always had issues with fidelity, often a primary cause of the collapse of my various marriages. If the notion strikes me, I might pursue a girl like Yu as desperately as I pursued Shirleen Tomasetti.

Still, despite everything, there’s gladness in my heart. The people are marching again. On Mayday, of all days. They are standing up for all of us. I finally heard that controversial Spanish version of our anthem. It’s lovely.

Humping Warren Beatty

2006-04-25T06:05:00.000-07:00

I should be grading final projects, but instead I’m drinking espresso and reading Paul Theroux’s Hotel Honolulu. I stopped writing and picked up Paul’s book because I was broadsided with depression over the weekend after waking in the midst of a dream in which Ruth, my second wife, was marrying me again. We were back at the same Las Vegas chapel where we’d sealed the deal the first time.

Warren Beatty was the best man--at the real wedding, not in the dream--and a waitress, Lil, from the lounge of the Plaza Hotel served as maid of honor. I’d just met Warren as he sat across the aisle from me in first class on the flight out from La Guardia. He had my latest novel in his lap, and I couldn’t resist asking him what he thought. “My second time through,” he said. I asked to see it and when he handed it to me I began scribbling. He was annoyed until he read the inscription and realized I was the author, and then we had a lovely conversation during which he asked me astute questions that clearly showed he knew the book even better than I did. I rarely did more than one draft in those days. He thought the sloppiness was an intentional affectation of the narrator’s voice, and I must admit that it did fit the tone of the novel. Ruth, sitting next to me, was all moony because of Warren’s proximity and she whispered in my ear with her martini-and-peanut-breath to ask me if I’d be offended if she fantasized about him during our lovemaking on our wedding night, and I told her that it was fine by me. I’m humble enough to admit that my pear-shaped physique, natty hair and Walt Whitman beard offer no advantages over the suave actor. Ruth married me because she was a fan of my writing (bad idea) and because we laughed hysterically whenever we were together.

We met Warren for drinks the next day at the Flamingo, and that’s when he offered to attend the wedding. Lil was a buxom cocktail waitress at our hotel with whom I flirted, and Ruth asked her to attend so that I would have a fantasy object of my own in the chapel to balance out Mr. Beatty. Later that night, our hips entangled in the reverse missionary position, I cried out “Oh Lil, Lil, Lil,” while Ruth screamed, “Hump me Warren, you filthy bastard!” Later, after orgasms, we lay sweating on the sheets and laughed so hard that Ruth broke wind, which only redoubled our hysterics.

I’ve not seen Warren in years, but there he was in my dream, smelling of expensive soap, standing next to me at the Happy Hearts Chapel (now bulldozed to make room for a water slide and go-kart complex). Warren was clean, but also worn and haggard, and he was impatiently checking his pocket watch, a giant pewter monstrosity the size of a dinner plate. He reminded me of the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. The Elvis impersonator performing the service instructed me to kiss the bride, but when I turned Ruth was gone. Standing in her place was Shirleen Tomasetti, and she was holding hands with my lesbian daughter, Ella. I ran from the chapel to find myself in the middle of the desert, a coyote staring at me from his perch on a rock, his shoulders hunched like an irreverent teenager with bad posture. He was panting from the heat, flies fighting for the moisture in the corner of his eyes. He blinked in annoyance and sauntered off. I sat, puzzled, the shadow of a turkey vulture passing over me.

That’s when I awoke. I was in a lousy mood and couldn’t find words or bear to grade papers even though Yu, my current best student, had turned in a lovely piece set in her rural Gansu Province home country. To keep myself distracted, I grabbed Paul’s Hotel Honolulu, which is timely as it tells the absurdly realistic story of a burned out writer who runs off to manage a hotel on the Big Island. Paul’s brilliant…I haven’t seen him since he moved to that godforsaken volcanic rock in the Pacific, but reading his books always make you want to travel because he has a way of cutting through the travel-mystique bullshit to show you the real grit and heart of a place. I’m almost through with the book, but I’ve just stumbled across a passage that is particularly apt that I will share with my students tomorrow. The writer-turned-hotel-manager character is in the hotel bar with a patron. The patron, who knows the manager used to write, speaks first:

“I want to write a book, what’s it like?”

“Awful when you’re doing it. Worse when you’re not.”

Absolutely on the mark. Paul, being a contemporary, has always impressed me by his prolificacy balanced with real talent. The sort of writer I could have been had I a little bit more of both. In any case, I’ve called Ruth and left a message on her machine, suggesting we meet in Vegas for a few days. Perhaps there’s a fourth marriage in the cards for old BT after all.

Fourth admonishment: 'show don't tell' is horse shit

2006-04-19T06:02:00.000-07:00

"Show, don't tell" is certainly the most dangerous and misinterpreted advice given to young writers. It's well meaning, but nevertheless harmful. It is the enemy of "voice," and it altogether strips the role of the author from the finished prose. In essence, it turns Pommard 1er Cru into two-buck Chuck.

There are much better, albeit more complex, ways to encourage writers to focus on story movement, on pressing the narrative along, on cautioning them not to linger unnecessarily or stray off track. But ours is a culture programmed to love taglines, and "show, don't tell" has become a brand unto itself. It represents all of the bland, voiceless fiction that plugs the arteries of our literary world. I've never done a serious study, but it strikes me that the phrase has arisen out of the paranoia in the 50's and 60's that television and film would compete with reading and thus shrink the audience for fiction. The thinking is that readers are busy people, and they don't want anything to pop the "bubble of reality," this fantasy land created by the plot of a novel, lest they grow distracted and turn to the Great American Lobotomy Tube or to other, more spare writing that doesn't slow down their busy lives. If an author dares to bog readers down with subtle description, or to "tell" them the story in the inflated language of a narrator's voice rather than simply "show" them the bare bones of the action, then the readers will turn away.

This is bullshit. Readers read because they enjoy being "told" a story. Those who want to skip right to the movie will probably not purchase the novel in the first place. Some authors resonate with readers, and some don't, but stripping the prose down to action alone is rarely the right answer. People read specific writers over a long period of time because they've become attuned to the author's "voice," or in other words, the way the author "tells" the story.

Stories are told. Movies are shown. "Show, don't tell," I realize, is a rule. And it is a requirement of any serious writer to break every rule as soon as it's codified. But I still hear people I respect flogging this phrase, and I'm sure they don't realize the damage they're doing by encouraging incipient writers to turn away from their voices in favor of "showing" the naked skeleton of the plot. I understand that some tastes prefer such twiggy, undernourished storytelling, and that's fine. (Note, I don't put Carver or Hemingway in this category...what they were doing was lush and altogether different from "show don't tell") Taste in storytelling is subjective much in the same way that some men prefer women who look like that emaciated corpse Ann Coulter, while others...Trout included...require a little more. Some people...most in fact...prefer to be "told" a story. There is a reason my girls, when small, put away their video tapes and much preferred to hear Daddy Trout "tell" them a story, complete with my embellishments, exaggerations, asides, tangents, gestures and affectations. When you ask a young writer to "show and don't tell" you are asking her to strip out all of these things that make live storytelling so dynamic. Some say that's a good thing. I say not.

My good friend John Schultz has oft lamented the loss of the author's voice, and he's studied the issue more than I. Once, while antelope hunting in Outer Mongolia in the mid-70s, John and I weathered a three-day storm in our yurt, railing about the issue while the tent walls flapped in the wind. Incidentally, John founded one of the better writing programs in the country with a central platform being the flabbiness of the "show, don't tell" mantra. While I still find the notion of the MFA program dubious (namely because one such program has hired me), John's outfit is as good as it gets.

This diatribe is the result of an office visit this morning by Yu, a promising student. She's shown hints of a magnificent voice through spare, hesitant prose. I at first thought it was the fact of English being her second language that was restraining her, but in truth it was that she was struggling to adhere to all of the "show, don't tell" advice she's heard over the years from teachers, writers and those write-by-numbers rulebooks that one often finds in the do-it-yourself section of the bookstore. Still, the exuberance of her voice was unwilling to heed such restraint, busting through the seams of her skeletal plots. When I explained the nonsensical nature of that advice much in the same language used above, awareness crept into her big, honey-brown eyes. She smiled, covering her mouth with her hand. When I finished she leapt out of her chair and wrapped her arms around my neck, kissing me wetly on my cheek. I was surprised because her impulsive gesture of affection didn't fit my (probably racist) stereotype of demure Asian women, but that's another subject entirely.

In any case, I'm thrilled at her breakthrough and eagerly await Yu's next manuscript in which she promises to "tell" me a story. For the rest of you, I urge you to abandon that hollow-eyed, Ann Coulterish, meth-hound, bare-bones writing. I urge you to push your prose to the purple, stray from your skeletal plot on the most tangential and voluptuous of diversions just to see what the hell else is out there, feel free to flash back and then flash backwarder, interject your omniscient, God-like voices with impunity, pop that supposed "bubble of reality" and grab your reader by his ears, planting a big, wet storyteller's kiss on his forehead.

There and back again

2006-04-17T05:58:00.000-07:00

Since we seem to be on the subject of marriage(s):

Making love to your second ex-wife after thirteen years of bitter separation is akin to reliving the happiest day from your childhood, fishing in your favorite trout hole with your favorite aunt, a worm and a bobber on the end of a cane pole, fresh strawberries from Knutesmeyer's farm along with a thermos of cream. The aunt is youngish--Mother's baby sister--and she dotes on you, her favorite nephew. You notice her long, wet legs (she's had to wade out to unsnag your hook) without really realizing why there's a warm feeling down below your belly. You carry home a creel of brookies wrapped in the big leaves of an old dogwood. Mother fries the fish in butter and your aunt tells stories of life at the far-away women’s college where she's studying art history with designs on being a sculptor but more likely teaching in art in an elementary school. She thrills you with a first-hand description of Michaelangelo's pieta, which she saw during a semester spent studying in Rome. You fall asleep on with your head on your youngish aunt's thighs while the family is gathered around a campfire in the back yard, your father picking out a claw-hammer tune on the banjo from deep within the blood from the sharecropper side of his family, his rich voice at the same time haunting and soothing, creeping into your dreams. "Her skirt smells like cedar smoke," is your last thought before you drift off for good.

I met Ruth Apfelstein, my ex, at a dinner arranged by my youngest daughter, Billie Holiday Trout, this past weekend in our nation's fine capitol. It was a combination Seder/Passover/Easter meal hosted in the back room of my favorite Tuscan restaurant outside of Castilina-in-Chianti. Francesco was out of town, but we were well cared for by Levon, his second. Levon, like many of the great chefs, has studied under the best and has had all of his education solely in the kitchen. He showed up on Francesco's doorstep one afternoon looking for work, his only credentials being that he "liked to cook." Francesco was skeptical, so he pointed to the walk-in cooler and said, "Show me something." Levon whipped up an imitation of his auntie's sweet potato pie and was hired on the spot. Six years later and he's nearing the top of his game. He recently spent six months in the kitchen of French genius Joel Rubichon.

How Levon managed a menu of kosher-Tuscan is beyond me. It was too elaborate to get into the details, but the twelve in our party were stunned and sated. He'd even located several bottles of kosher Sangiovese from a Jewish vintner with an estate near Montalpulciano. Ruth is not a strict observer of her faith, but she did go through a spiritual stage when our marriage began to deteriorate. The kosher menu was more seized upon as a challenge by Levon rather than designed to accommodate believers.

Ruth and I were intently conversing by the end of the meal, oblivious to the others. We raced as we talked, breathless, each eager to recount our exhaustive strings of unlucky relationships. I told of the end of my affair with Shirleen, and the final, unspoken marriage proposal. Ruth's latest lover had been a realtor from West Palm Beach who was much too proud of his deep sea fishing boat. "He didn't read and I found myself yawning whenever I was alone with him for more than two hours at a time. 'Why do you do that?' he kept asking, but I couldn't answer. Finally my jaw got stuck in mid-yawn one afternoon...you know my TMJ...and he took me to the hospital. I had my face in a towel to catch the drool. He dropped me off in emergency and left. He sent a cab to pick me up after they injected muscle-relaxants and unhooked my jawbone, but I never heard from him again."

She twirled her hair in one finger the way she used to do when we dated. When she finished the story I laughed so hard that I had to excuse myself to pee. When I came back she was still laughing. "Fuck BT, we're getting old, aren't we?" Then she left to pee.

When she returned we decided right then to see what else in our aging, decrepit, repetitively divorced bodies was--and was not--still working. We returned to her hotel in Columbia Heights to learn that, while some of our flexibility had atrophied, most other things were still in fine working order. In the morning sunlight I asked her to stand naked in front of the window. "I'm an old woman, BT," she said, but complied and I sat on the edge of the bed fighting tears. She was still as gorgeous as when we'd been married.

"What happened?" we both asked simultaneously. We left it open-ended, laughing some more at a corner café over a croissant and an espresso that made my heart skip.

Marriages (and the subsequent divorces) can rip your guts to bits more than any other experience outside the passing of a child, which is something I hope to never experience. When I stopped by Billie's to say goodbye and congratulate her on taking the Foreign Service Exam, she asked me how my night went. Ruth had been a good stepmother to the girls, and I know Billie thinks I'm no good alone, which is true. She had arranged this whole weekend to try and spark something lasting between Ruth and this old Professor. I told her that it was wonderful but that I had no idea what the future held. I’ve been writing well lately, so I don’t want to make any sudden changes. She frowned when I said that you can't swim in the same river twice, or so has said a wise old poet. I was a little disconcerted to see that Levon had spent the night at Billie's, and when she noticed my raised eyebrows when the big chef ambled into the kitchen in his PJs, she said, "Daddy, I'm twenty-four."

Now I'm back home and through with airplanes for the forseeable future. I'll try to finish out the semester by focusing on my students. The whole episode left me both healed and wounded anew. But such is life and such is marriage.

Disposable theses

2006-04-13T05:56:00.000-07:00

It has always amazed me for how long some of my former students flog their Master Theses along. I keep in touch with many of them through email, and I'm stunned when they're still massaging the same material they submitted during their tenure in MFA programs from whence they've long since graduated.

I gave a reading a few weeks back in San Antonio, and a student I taught in a workshop back in 1995 cornered me afterward: "I'm excited about MY NOVEL...it's finished almost ready to send out," she said. I smiled and didn't have the heart to tell her that HER NOVEL wouldn't be greeted with the same level of enthusiasm by the world at large. A novel isn't a unique thing, and the world is a cold, indifferent place. YOUR NOVEL is not a child, and you've no obligation to see it through to its fruition. It's something we make, like a piece of furniture, and nothing more. What's more, it belongs to a specific time and place even before it's finished. In most cases, it doesn't age gracefully. Try writing a new novel instead of embarking on draft seventeen.

I now tell all my advisees up front that they should plan on disposing of their thesis as soon as they finish the program. It's merely the price of the diploma. There are exceptions, but such publishable (if barely) work among the endless stacks of MFA theses are as rare as they are brilliant. Throw your 'script away and start something new even before your diploma arrives in the mail. You aren't the same person you were when you started that novel ten years ago...every cell in our bodies is replaced every seven years. The world has changed. You're entire belief system has likely shifted. It's time to move on.

Yu, me and writer block

2006-04-11T05:53:00.000-07:00

Yu is perhaps my most promising student this semester. I haven't been paying much attention to student work, wrapped up as I've been in my personal soap opera. I admit that I'm a lousy and careless teacher. Yu is Chinese, from the Gansu province, which I understand is as wild as it gets. She's married to a young computer science professor. Her prose is cautious and spare, obviously due to English being her second language, but this seems to complement her work. She's written a series of vignettes on the Cultural Revolution. There's no story in her work yet, but good fiction always starts with images. The procession is like this: Image > Story > Character > Prose > Plot, with Story ultimately being most important. For more commercial work, it seems to go Plot > Character > Prose, leaving off Image and Story altogether in many cases. I've no problem with commercial or genre work, though I can't teach it and know absolutely nothing about it. It's as alien to me as screenplays and writing for television.

In any case, yesterday during our "nature exercise" as I watched Yu wading through a clear stretch of Ballard Creek, I was enchanted. Redbud petals were drifting down around her in shafts of sunlight while she chewed on the eraser of her pencil and an expression of recognition bloomed on her face. She pulled out her notepad and began scribbling, nodding her head excitedly, the long braid of her dark hair bouncing. Evidently my silly impulse to relocate our class to the woods for the afternoon was having some sort of effect. I dreamt of this scene endlessly last night, and not only because Yu's an attractive young woman.

After our exercise we all walked back to campus. Yu came to me timidly and asked how I felt about "writer block." I told her that it doesn't exist. I said that what exists is an unwillingness to compromise. People don't get blocked, they just choose not to write garbage. You can always write garbage. Writing garbage takes discipline, though. If you write enough of it eventually you crawl out of the hole you're in. Sometimes the garbage gets published, and I know from experience that your career can suffer. Filing the garbage away and moving on also takes discipline.

She nodded, still chewing on her eraser. "Writer block is a choice, hmmm, I never think of it like this before," she said. Her speech is more hesitant that her prose, but grammar typically does sort itself out in the writing. I'll have to keep an eye on Yu this semester. Now that I haven't heard from Mr. Clayhouse, and lovely Shirleen has moved on, and Nawaz is getting married, I need to find a new reason to keep my head in this job or I'll be fired for sure.

Recipes for recovery

2006-04-10T05:49:00.000-07:00

I suffered through the blackest of asses upon my return from La Paz. Your garden variety depression: what have I accomplished, who loves me, why do I exist? The intensity of the self-pity, however, reached un-troutlike level so I self-medicated. I fixed a humble peasant dish of cabbage, tripe and onions that I’d learned from an old woman in Brittany from whom I rented a seaside cottage while writing my third novel. I’d been drinking heavily at the time, and her overwhelming cuisine saved my liver. It was there that I was introduced to Alsatian and German wines that so perfectly complement peasant food and thus slowly weened myself from the dangers of calvados and brandy.

Stage two of my recovery included three young, farm-raised hens served with a three-olive sauce. The olives cost me fifty-seven dollars at the import shop, and when I fished around in my pockets and several bolivianos spilled onto the counter, I broke down and began weeping. The Turkish boy at the register stepped back, eyeing me warily.

A bottle of a light Spanish Monastrell with the meal gave me pleasant dreams for the first time in a month.

What really set me on the mend, however, was a conversation with my youngest daughter, Billie. She took the Foreign Service Exam this past Saturday. A bit of background is needed: when she was thirteen we spent six months in Marseille where I was a guest lecturer as part of a cultural exchange. Our closet friends were career diplomats at the consulate who thrilled Billie with tales of life at their African posts in the post-colonial era. It’s been her ambition ever since to work for USAID or the State Department, where she hopes to be a force for positive change. She took the exam in 2003, only a few days after the start of Mr. Bush’s subtle brilliance of the Shock and Awe(!) campaign. She was among the 6% of the applicants invited to take the orals, but she declined saying she wanted to attend graduate school, but in truth she was depressed over the neo-con foreign policy nincompoopery. But two years out she still has the desire so she’s starting the process all over again. My point is that her entire life’s ambitions are tied up with the results of a silly standardized test. She passed it once, but what if she failed this time? But rather than acting stressed or fatalistic, she was chipper with a c’est la vie indifference to her future when I talked to her on the phone. “I’ve got backup plans, Daddy, no big deal.” All this made me fell silly in my self-pity.

So she invited me to D.C. for a back-room feast with our friends at Etrusco to celebrate three months of waiting for the results of the test. “Most-Favorite Mommy Number Two will still be in town,” she said, referring to my second ex-wife, of whom she is quite fond. I sense an ulterior motive. I demurred but will likely go.

And so I am on the mend. I probably won’t be able to write for some weeks, but I’m now distracted by my MFA classes, which I’ve been neglecting. It’s a lovely day today, and I have a four-hour grad seminar on prose style this afternoon. I think we’ll have class outside in the state park where there is a babbling brook under a ceiling of glorious redbuds and dogwoods in full bloom. I’ll make up some exercise, perhaps the translation of visceral and tactile sensations into prose. We’ll go wading and I’ll ask them to immediately transcribe the sensation into their journals. It’s all nonsense, but MFA students love this sort of thing. In fact, this touchy-feely pseudo naturalism is a trait of bourgeois writers everywhere: that’s why so many conferences take place in idyllic settings that somehow recall England’s Lake District. I've been there and it's lovely, but it's no more wild than a golf course. As sophisticated as our urban writers are, they're often clueless when it comes to the natural world. A brilliant sociologist friend from Manhattan once visited me in the Midwest and remarked that it was the first time he'd "seen cows in the wild." That being said, there is something primal about rivers and streams, and it will do my students some good. My exercise today, of course, will mainly be an excuse for me to be outside, and also to sit on the bank and study the women in my class wearing shorts, watching them emerge from the brook with pink dogwood petals stuck to their glistening thighs. Perhaps I’ll fall in love again. Several times, if I’m lucky.

Next up will be my favorite French recovery dish, which despite the damage it does in cholesteral is the ideal restorative for a wounded heart. A Syrah or Shiraz with big fruit should pair nicely. And so the Trout mends.

Prof. Trout contemplates fourth marriage in La Paz cafe

2006-04-01T05:47:00.000-08:00

I sat in the back of the restaurant, waiting for her. Dirty tablecloth. Plastic flower in a collins glass with marbles in the bottom and greasy fingerprints around the edge.

I wore jeans and my tweed jacket and white shirt. I had a real flower pinned to my lapel, purchased from the woman in a bright wool sweater and bowler hat who stands outside my hotel silently proffering her sad blossoms. I buy a flower from her every morning and she never smiles. I'm never surprised, though nevertheless disappointed, when I find myself in a place where people are less friendly than the Midwest. Which is most everywhere. Exceptions include Italy when you're traveling with a baby, or the North African neighborhoods in Paris. Also Istanbul where shopkeepers invite you to tea ceremoniously before applying their low-pressure sales pitch. Midwesterners truly are affable, even when they are politicians stripping money from family planning clinics or killing school lunch programs. But then our states are no more red or less blue than the dream coasts when you consider the incredibly small percentage points on either side of the division, which is largely fictional to begin with. New York and California have Republican governors, don't they? I'm sorry for the digression. My thoughts are a mash.

But back to Bolivia, which is something else altogether. I haven't really been able to consider where I am. The implications of the Morales presidency, the left-swing of the Southern Cone, the newfound impotence of US influence in the region under Our Great Chimpanzee's administration, etc. None of this is evident on the street of another great and poor South American city. I'd love to learn what it's really all about, but then that's not why I'm here and I fly home tomorrow.

And so I sat in the restaurant, nervous, recently patched-up ticker all atwitter, recalling my first date in the Princess Cafe where I waited for Jeanne Blunkhorst before the homecoming dance, similar tweed coat borrowed from my musician father and similar sad flower pinned to the lapel. My hands, then and now, sweating profusely.

I sipped my Nescafe noisily.

There's a certain moment when you are surprising someone when you see, etched on their face, the effect of your ruse. You know immediately whether or not they appreciate the surprise from that subtle expression. And they always work to smother this expression immediately, so you have to be vigilant. I craned my neck waiting for Shirleen to arrive, desperate to see her before she spotted me so that I could read how she truly felt about my arrival.

It's a funny thing. I've found that by nonsensically stalking a woman half my age round the world, ironically, that I'm something of a realist. How did I expect it to end? Well, there was the cheep copper ring I'd bought at the mercado. Fifteen bolivianos. "Marry me," I imagined saying, "If your finger turns green it's a sign destiny." Do I really need a fourth marriage? Have I the audacity? I propositioned my third wife after knowing her only a few days, though she did take more than a week to answer. And that had been my longest marriage. I thought of my second wife and her request for a detente in D.C.

And then I saw her. She was wearing one of those fuzzy sweaters with horizontal stripes in primary colors that have become all the rage here, though it's mostly NGO people, aid workers and tourists. The colors mimic the traditional dress of the Quechua and Amayra. She craned her neck and looked through the crowd at the door, studying the tables. She looked down at a note in her hand. I'd left a message with her roommate saying that an old friend was in town to surprise her.

"Professor Trout!" she said when she saw me. I could read her lips across the room. I beamed and leaned back in my chair, spreading my arms in a gesture of welcome. Her expression was plain joy. Wide-eyed, genuine surprise. She was the child at Christmas receiving the unexpected gift who--despite not getting what she had wanted--is nevertheless pleased with the acquisition.

My unreliable ticker pulsed in perfect meter now as she threaded the tables. Her hair was longer than before, un-fluffed, flat and windblown. Her cheeks were likewise red and windburned and she had the healthy burnish of a backpacker on her post college tour. She looked ten years younger and five years wiser all at once.

We both ordered the lomo montado and lingered over a bottle of Chilean Malbec. Breaking convention, we finished with a couple of bottles of paceña, a beer that is surprisingly good. The steak lacked the hearty character of an Argentine cut or the flair of Brazilian grill, but it was nevertheless good and served as the ideal foundation to our commiseration.

"I'm delighted that you came," she said, earnestly. But the delight was clearly tempered by her absorption in her new life. I didn't admit that I'd come solely to see her. I lied and said that I'd been invited to speak at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés. This wasn't far-fetched as I'd written two novels set in South America and Shirleen had read them both. I fingered the copper ring in my coat pocket. I enjoyed our conversation, not the least for her gushing over my advice.

"You were right, of course," she said. "I needed experience. I needed distance. I'm not sure I still want...or even need...to be a writer. I'm doing an article on spec for Mother Jones, though. I've written a short story, but I won't show it to anyone. But for the first time since the divorce I feel like I'm on track again."

After she said this she leaned over and kissed me full on the lips, lingering so that I could feel the breath from her nose on my cheek. It was at this point that I almost proposed. But I hesitated. I leaned back and offered a parental smile. Something felt wrong. I realized then that while I was enamored of Ms. Tomasetti, I also didn't feel it would be fair to weigh her down.

We finished the lunch. I didn't linger. I handed her the ring almost as an afterthought. "Here," I said, "I picked this up yesterday in the mercado. A souvenir."

We embraced at the door. "Thanks again," she said, beaming. She didn't inquire about my fake lecture or offer to meet again. We were friends, no longer lovers. Another of my delusions punctured, collapsing like that little balloon they dragged through my arteries.

The angle of sunlight is strange on this side of the equator. I stood in a splash of it on a busy sidewalk for the longest time. I figured this would be the last I'd see of Shirleen, though my regret was leavened a bit by the notion that, despite the strange circumstances, I'd served her successfully in my capacity as a teacher.

Tomorrow I return home.

Llego en Bolivia

2006-03-27T05:44:00.000-08:00

My hotel has an internet cafe. Well, not a cafe, more of a desk with a vintage computer that nevertheless fills the need. The desk clerk, a sleepy-eyed and indifferent fellow, said that it would cost me three bolivianos. I handed him one US dollar and he pocketed it with a shrug, gesturing toward the machine.

I'm waiting a day before I call Shirleen. I rang her three days ago to be sure she was still here. I hung up as soon as I heard her puzzled voice. I want to adjust to the altitude. Somewhere around fifteen thousand feet, can that be right? The weather is cool and rainy. Needless to say, I've a headache and the brief stroll along the terrace to the lobby has winded me. My heart is otherwise fine.

The flight was wonderful. I wasn't able to crack the cover of the Harrison book, nor accomplish any editing on a partial manuscript I intend to send to a curious agent upon my return. I didn't even pop the corks on the splits of Shiraz. During the longest leg, from Miami to La Paz, I sat next to a young woman with 6-month-old twins. She was a smallish woman with Andean features and a brownish complexion not dissimilar to my own. I had the window, she the middle, and a pale man with norteño features wearing a suit and tie inhabited the aisle seat. She struggled and I offered to take one child while the suited man preteneded to ignore us and cracked open a thriller with military jargon in the title. I figured him for Republican.

The woman's Spanish was no better than my own, but it was enough for us to communicate the essentials. I didn't ask her ethnicity. Aymara perhaps? Most among the other passengers were criollo and upper-class in appearance.

When we reached altitude the babes began wailing. It's a delicious sound. My own daughters are twins. We have a long-standing joke: I will often refer to either Billie or Ella as my older daughter depending on which has most recently used a scolding or mothering tone with me. Due to a mix-up at the hospital we don't know which of our girls was first out of the gates. They are identical twins but as different as spring and autumn. Some might think me perverse for enjoying the crying infants on the plane, but few sounds are so pure and earnest. No question what they wanted.

The woman began to feed them at her breast clearly making the Republican uncomfortable. I quite enjoyed the man's squirming. Due to the cramped space I held one babe while she fed the other, but as I was no replacement for the mother we finally arranged to place a child at each breast. I held one infant on my lap with one of my paws under the soft, velvet skull, the back of my hand resting on the woman's warm belly, my thumb pressed into the soft underside of a breast. This way she was able with her free hand to smooth the milk in her glands down toward the nipple and the babies' puckered lips. It was intimate, but in a decent, neighborly way despite the fact that I found the young woman undeniably attractive. Anyone who doubts we are all of the same human family is in need of such an experience as this. I felt grandfatherly for the first time in my life. I wished that I was a young, inexperienced father again. Ah, the miracle of it all. Perhaps with Shirleen? Now you're dreaming, Trout. I recall my dear student, Miss Lowell, and the tribulation surrounding her pollination.

The babes finished, burped, slept, crapped, and then the whole process started again. The Republican located a different seat around mid-flight, though none of us took note of his departure. I spent most of the time staring into the tiny faces, happier than I've been in ages. At one point a tear rolled off of my great, smushed nose and plopped on a chid's slumbering forhead. She wrinkled her nose as if to sneeze but remained asleep. I was reminded of a baptism, though I felt wholly unworthy.

When we landed, the woman smiled sweetly and thanked me as I helped her off with the children. But in truth she had been greater comfort to me than I to her. When I thought of the torment the four of us likely inflicted on those seated around us I was strangely pleased.

Thus I arrived in Bolivia.

Portent

2006-03-23T05:40:00.000-08:00

A reader reminded me of the altitude in La Paz, so I decided to test out the refurbished ticker before Sunday's flight. I hiked the state park this evening, and I handled the first hill okay, but the second incline hit me hard. I was chugging like a raspy steam engine by the time I crested the bluff. When I reached a favorite overlook I scared seven turkey vultures off of a dead elm. Jesus and Mohammed, they're massive birds when you come right up on them. Big, black shadows lifting into the gloaming, eyeing me sideways from their bald, prehistoric heads. I staggered backward and turned my ankle. My heart about leapt from my chest, and the scars from my quad bypass literally burned on my flesh. I thought of Hester Prynn.

I wound up on my ass in the mud, stunned, and for no reason in particular I began weeping. A trail runner happened by and she paused, staring down at me, bouncing from one foot to the other. Embarrassed, I made up some nonsense about my pet Pomeranian dying. I gathered myself and picked my way back down the trail.

When I returned home I found a message on my machine from my second ex-wife. She was livid that I hadn't told her about the surgery, and after a string of expletives she burst into tears and then insisted we meet in neutral territory (DC) sometime next week. We'd visit with Billie, share a meal or two at Etrusco, maybe take in a movie. She said that we needed to rethink our non-relationship. She said that I had been the best friend she ever had until I ruined her life, still the thought of my near death had crushed her. In short, she missed me. New tears formed behind the bridge of my nose. This reunion sounded lovely, but I'm leaving for Bolivia on Sunday so what can I do? I sat with my hand on the phone for the better part of an hour, feeling ridiculous for chasing my ex-girlfriend, a former student no less, halfway round the world on a whim. Call your wife, dammit, I chided myself, but to no avail.

I've already decided to cancel tomorrow's class. I'm two-thirds of the way through a bottle of my favorite Primitivo, and I already know the dream I'll have: the vultures will return and wait patiently while I lie in the mud. Every woman I've ever loved, including the first, will come by to collect interest on the happiness I've stolen from them, to be paid in vials of heart blood. The buzzards will then enjoy my desiccated remains.

The spring breaketh

2006-03-22T05:35:00.000-08:00

I'm set for La Paz. I'm toting one carryon bag, the sum total of my luggage. One change of clothes, seven pairs of underdrawers. I've also just packed three splits of a delicious though pricey Australian Shiraz (Shotfire Ridge) for the flight, plus a small bottle of olive oil (xx). I'll pick up a loaf of French bread on the way to the airport. I don't know what to do about the corkscrew, what with the nonsensical airline security regulations. I've lost at least a dozen waiter corkscrews over the years to security agents as I'm never without one in my pocket. Perhaps I can borrow one onboard, though the flight attendants frown when you bring your own booze. Any suggestions?

Inflight I'll be reading my dear friend Jim Harrison's latest collection of novellas. I'm quite excited. I'm also packing some Graham Greene.

Thanks, too, to Miss Snark for her thoughtful advice on my agent predicament. I plan to implement her suggestions upon my return. I find the internet literary community refreshing after years of those stuffy university cocktail mixers and coffeehouse cliques. I recommend Miss Snark to all of my writing students. She's clever and funny, but most important "that chick knows her shit," as my daughter Billie might say. Her blog is more useful than five years in an MFA program, but don't tell the establishment as I'd be out of a job.

Spring break in Bolivia

2006-03-21T05:31:00.000-08:00

I know that I've been less than diligent in my postings but trust me that it is only because I've been writing furiously. Billie gave me one of her old laptop computers, a clunky device without a modem, and it has released me from the Internet, thus magnifying my productivity. I'm reminded of my old Remington, which is what I used to produce my last worthy novel. The battery on this machine lasts two hours, and I've been hiking into the local state forest with my collapsible canvas chair to write. I spent the anniversary of the Bush War in frigid 40-degree sleet underneath a budding willow, typing until my fingers were stiff. The day was cold enough to silence the spring peepers down in the swamp, but I nevertheless managed two thousand words. At this rate I shall be finished by the end of the semester. Which would be ideal as I expect to be fired...but more on that later.

It's been difficult finding an agent for my two other new novels. They think I'm washed up, never mind that I used to be a sure thing to reach a third printing, if not more. This newest novel, though, should prove easier to sell: it is the best thing I've done since the 70s. Perhaps if I query under a different name. I'm afraid the New York literary establishment does not hold me in high regard due to some embarrassingly colorful behavior over the last twenty-five years.

I received my spring break tickets to La Paz. I expect that Shirleen will be shocked to see me as she has no idea. I assume that her decision to flee to Bolivia was not on my account. Billie thinks I'm crazy, but Ella recalls the nude photos and has endorsed my scheme. She takes it as a sign that my ticker is healing.

Elizabeth Lowell stopped by yesterday. She is quite pregnant, and accordingly attractive. Quite apart from the garden variety fetishism, I find pregnant women at the height of their radiance as a gender. I suppose I can empathize with the Republicans who so desperately want to keep them in this condition. She lifted her shirt to allow me to touch her belly, and I can still feel the imprint of her taught skin against my calloused paw. She is estranged from her Baptist family now, but I told her she could move in with me. I then fixed a simple Spanish soup.

Use frozen stock (porterhouse trimmings, livers, calves head). First sautee 8 cloves of peeled, degermed garlic in olive oil. Remove the garlic and pour in the stock. Simmer. Add cumin, ginger and parsley snips. Simmer. Crush the garlic with the back of a wooden spoon, return to soup, simmer. Next smear Italian bread slices with olive oil and toast on one side. Pour soup in bowls, crack one egg into each dish, lay on a slice of bread and stick in a 450 degree oven until the egg is boiled and solid in the bottom. Serve with a real Caesar salad (from scratch) and more bread.

Elizabeth sipped a nip of my discount Borsoa (5 bucks, World Market), and the meal was complete.

I leave for La Paz on Sunday. More upon my return.

Farewell

2006-02-27T05:28:00.000-08:00

The dryad who often haunts me appeared to me this morning as I stared into a wretched cup of homeopathic tea that my daughter Billie, who is taking her turn tending me in my recuperation, forced upon me. I saw the face of the girl from my youth shimmer in the ripple as I tapped a few granules of illicit sugar into the brew when Billie wasn't watching. Her lips moved, though I couldn't make out the words. I quickly stirred with a spoon and she vanished. I've been avoiding her since my surgery. I regard her as a bad omen, much in the same way the Kiowa of Oklahoma regard the hoot of a barred owl as a portent of immanent death.

And I was right. I learned today of the passing of both Octavia and Fred. I will miss you both. I've been, at turns, a humbled admirer, an inspired student, and a proud colleague. You will both be mourned but never missed as you have left us with so much of yourselves. I hope to see you soon at the place where the river flows back into itself again.

Adieu.

Crying

2006-02-09T05:27:00.000-08:00

I've always been easily moved to tears. Even before the surgery I cried over the Iraq War at least three times per week.

Literature and food make me cry. I've bawled over my Jane Austin. Tears are conjured by Lorca's poesy and Whitman's exuberance. Last week my daughter Ella (the chef) fixed me a risotto con fungi al porcini, and I wept expansively when she set it on the table. I slobbered like my childhood basset hound, and then redoubled my crying when I remembered that animal with fondness.

Over the years, folks have equated crying in men with, at turns, cowardice, girlishness and insanity. But I'll let all those macho red meat males sucking back their tears know that crying has gotten me laid on at least four separate occasions. Remember, too, that I weighed in at 255 lbs before my surgery, very little of that muscle.

But a reader reminds me that depression, what I call the black ass, is especially acute after quad bypass surgery. I'm not sure if this is the reason for my recent upsurge in crying, but tonight I finished a chapter of my new novel and was so moved (we writers do love ourselves on occasion, don't we?) that I went out onto the patio of my flat in my underwear and wept until my skin was stippled with gooseflesh. It is winter after all. Two coeds walking by on the dark sidewalk asked, "Are you okay, sir?" with genuine concern. The old farts who say our younger generation is soulless are bitter and stupid.

In any event, I'm a bit worried by the sheer volume of tears I'm able to produce. Visiting a friend, a young assistant professor in the Philosophy Dept., I sat on his couch with his three-year-old daughter on my lap watching her favorite film, "A Bug's Life." I cried like a baby when the animated ants vanquished the brutish grasshoppers. The child reached up and touched my beard, saying, "That's okay, Mister Trout, it's only a movie." I kissed both her cheeks and forehead, chuckling new tears of joy.

A measure of pig fat

2006-02-07T05:26:00.000-08:00

Kiss my big black ass, Doctor Crosby.

"You'll never improve unless you change your habits, Professor Trout," he scolded during my last visit. To compound my shame and anger, my daughter Ella stormed out of the apartment after fixing me a ridiculous concoction known as a "fruit smoothie" for my lunch.

"Christ Ella, you're supposed to be a goddamned chef!"

"I'm trying to save your life, you miserable old fuck!"

I was sure she'd return before long. We all know I can be a bastard. Maybe that explains my three divorces.

While Ella was out, I waddled across the street to the Snappy Mart and bought three packages of wretched bacon and a sack of mealy potatoes. Fortunately pommes de vendangeurs is a forgiving recipe that can be saved by imported Gruyere cheese, which I had on hand. I trimmed the fat from the bacon best I could and then clarified some butter. I buttered a round casserole and laid the bacon strips in spiral fashion, ends hanging out of the dish. I layered potato slices (gratin-thin) and then the finely grated cheese, repeated thrice and then folded the bacon over the top. I baked for forty minutes at 410 and then cooled on a rack. I ate most of it, saving one small wedge for Ella. When she returned she screamed at the amount of cholesterol I had ingested, though she devoured her slice and we then fixed a leafy spinach salad with chopped pecans and a dressing of sherry vinegar, ground pepper and XXV olive oil. Then came my one-glass ration of red wine, a Tuscan primitivo known as A Mano, which is brilliant at eight bucks a bottle. Fuck the Mondavi brothers.

Oddly, after this meal I feel better than I have at any point since the quad bypass. Perhaps I'm on the mend. I've written another ten pages on the new novel, and also revised the ending of one of my completed drafts. I'm heartened. Dare I think comeback? After all, I was once in print in thirteen different languages, though that was before some of my current students were born. Ach...I dread the thought of my return to teaching. Perhaps if I were to publish...

Je suis retourné

2006-02-07T05:23:00.000-08:00

Loyal readers (yes, both of you!), I must apologize for my absence. Open heart surgery is "a pisser," as my daughter Billie would say. I'm on the mend, though I still feel as if I've just made love to the captain of the East German women's swim team. Shirleen sent me nude polaroids of herself from Bolivia, and it nearly finished me. My patchwork heart throbbed and I felt the staples in my chest ripping. I asked Ella, who has been taking turns attending me with her little sister, to hide them in one of the books in my food library to surprise me.

"But that might kill you, Pop."

"What better way to go?"

Ella asked if she could keep one of the photos to share with her girlfriend. I told her that while I'm perfectly comfortable with the fact that she is a lesbian, I am no more inclined to hear about the kinky side of her relationships than if she were hetero. She apologized but kept the photo.

I've earned a sabbatical from the university through pity rather than merit. I've arranged for a former student to teach my classes this semester. He's just finished editing his latest novel, and he had some free time while awaiting the galleys.

I don't expect to post much in the coming weeks, though I do have much to report. I've started yet another novel and have been making great progress...the exhaustion brought about through writing being mental rather than physical in nature. I haven't worked this well since the late 70s. I've also simplified my cooking because my stamina won't allow me to stay on my feet for very long, and I consequently have some delightful new, easy recipes to share.

I'm winded and will go lie down now. Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Bush, as I know you are reading this, will you kindly spellcheck for me?

Peace,

BT

New year, my ass

2006-01-05T05:19:00.000-08:00

My New Year's Day fishing ritual notwithstanding, I've got none of the optimism that these resolution-making nitwits exude to the point of perversion. You could say that I'm a grouch or curmudgeon, and you'd be correct. My heart weighs heavy, both physically and spiritually. I've tried my best to cheer myself: I just drove four hours round-trip to the nearest Trader Joe's to stock up on wine. I even discovered a delightful garnacha/tempranillo blend from Spain. It's a big, fruity red, perfect for pork tenderloin and only six bucks a bottle. I uncorked a bottle in the store (always carry your corkscrew, friends) and sipped, then hooted in delight. The clerk helped me load up the boxes and said that next time I was welcome to taste the wines in the back room where it was more appropriate.

My car laden with cheap food imported from countries that understand the notion of cooking, I reached a momentary plateau before plunging again. My troubles are legion. Instead of a list of bubbly resolutions, why don't I jot down a few reason why this year already "sucks ass," as my daughter Billie would say.

1. After the briefest of flings, Shirleen Tomasetti has left me. "God, Prof. Trout," she said as she pecked my cheek on the front stoop, "You've opened my eyes." She's not coming back to finish her MFA writing degree. Ordinarily I'd say "good for her" if I wasn't so fond of sleeping with her. She's filled out the paperwork for the Peace Corps, and while she waits on that she's going to Bolivia to visit a friend that works for USAID. Said she wants to gather some life experience, "before I try my hand at this writer-thing again." I told her to give my regards to Evo Morales, and then I wept inconsolably as I watched her drive away.

2. My agent, Doloros, has fired me. Fired by an agent! Twenty years we've been together. "I just don't think I'll be able to move these books, hon," she said over the phone in reference to my latest two manuscripts. "I don't know what it is, but you don't take your work seriously anymore. It's a new year, and I truly need to start fresh. I'm picking up two young writers, and they're amazing. And prolific. They will keep me very busy. Also, I'm tired of apologizing for your behavior." This last bit was in reference to a writers conference last summer where I became a little too friendly with the program director's spouse. She was gorgeous at sixty-eight. She was also smart, frisky and lewd, an irresistible combination. If only he hadn't found us out.

3. My ticker continues to labour. I'm surely a bypass candidate. My department director, though, with her typical lack of compassion, has insisted I take a full schedule of classes this semester.

4. All three ex-wives are still ex-wives. And too they grow lovelier by the year.

5. Billie wants to continue her post-graduate studies in London. She'll be farther away. She'll probably marry a slimy Brit with no sense of cuisine.

6. And perhaps most dreadful of all, Ms. Puppycute, my dear Lizzie Lowell, is preggers. What's worse, Billy Clayhouse seems to be her pollinator. I can only blame myself, as I encouraged her to find him and spend time with him. I, of course, feel bad for the girl, but I also worry about Billy. A thing like this could very well ruin a writer. I spoke at length with Elizabeth, as she can't talk about this sort of thing with her father, his being a Baptist minister. I'll record a transcript of our conversation soon. Needless to say, this is a soap opera which I do not need at the moment.

Black ass on the river

2006-01-01T05:17:00.000-08:00

(With apologies for the double-pun in the title.) I spent the first day of the new calendar year as I always have for the past thirty years: waist deep in trout water. At least I didn't have to contend with sleet and frostbitten pinkies this year, though the day was gloomy, windy, drizzly, gray. Though I'm suffering in the throes of a serious black ass for various reasons I will elucidate shortly, my mood was leavened slightly when I landed four scrappy little rainbows on pheasant tails. I dislike fishing nymphs, but dry flies don't cut it in January. I then spotted an adult bald eagle surfing the gusts above the blufftops. She shadowed me for the rest of the afternoon, warming me from the soul outward.

My angioplasty hasn't worked. If anything, I'm more winded than before the procedure. I had to wade two miles upstream in a rush to get back to the car before dark, and I was so exhausted I sat on the bumper for a full thirty minutes, gasping. I fear I may need the bypass.

And then, when I returned to the apartment, I met a young woman whom we all know at my doorstep:

Young Woman: (weak smile) Greetings Prof. Trout.

Prof. Trout: Imagine finding you here. (hug) Happy New Year!

Young Woman: Happy New Year.

Prof. Trout: What brings you here at this hour?

Young Woman: (looks around, then bursts out) I'm pregnant.

Prof. Trout: Goodness! Are you sure?

Young Woman: Yes.

Prof. Trout: Heavens! And do you know who the father is?

Young Woman: Yes, it can only be one person.

Prof. Trout: Heavens!

A double agent and a perfect nursemaid

2005-12-15T05:14:00.000-08:00

Intrepid readers will recall that prior to the troubles with my faulty ticker, I sent a student, Ms. Elizabeth Lowell, on an assignment to ascertain the whereabouts of the missing Mr. Clayhouse. My idea was innocent enough, to have an attractive student befriend the stoic veteran recently returned from a war zone and ascertain if he is in need of special attention. She was then to report back to me and we'd plan an appropriate course of action.

Perhaps I was reading too much into the fact that he was skipping my classes. After all, if I were a student I'd skip my classes, nevermind the war. But in any case, Ms. Lowell is the pedantic sort to follow through with even such a strange assignment with all due seriousness.

And did she follow through.

Today could have been classified as a late, late Indian summer, or perhaps a hint of early spring. It was fifty degrees, warm enough to leave the flat in only sweater (and pants, of course). I was out for my morning walk. The doctor had advised me that I should be noticeably less winded after mild exercise than I was before last week's angioplasty, but I'm afraid I feel worse. I rested by the pond in the park and enjoyed the sight of a juvenile bald eagle feasting on a goose that had died and frozen in the ice of the lake. Feathers were scattered like tickertape, the rough hackles and pinions of the eagle making him appear brash and full of the youthful vigor that has so completely abandoned this old fish. I literally wept and was even tempted to rush home and phone a confession to both my daughters, from whom I've withheld any mention of my condition. They've enough to worry about.

After thirty minutes on the bench I was chilled, so I walked across the quadrangle and along sorority row in the stately district where the wealthy academics live. It was there that I was shocked to find Ms. Lowell strolling my way alongside the lanky Billy Clayhouse, their hands interlaced, engaged in energetic conversation. In their free hands they were both holding black, leatherbound copies of the Holy Bible (KJV!). I noticed that while Billy's copy was brand new, Ms. Lowell's was worn and bookmarked, and it had a yellow "Support Our Troops" sticker on the back. They were so engrossed in one another that they were startled when I came upon them.

Prof. Trout: (through clenched teeth) Ms. Lowell

Ms. Puppycute: Professor Trout!

P. Trout: Mr. Clayhouse.

Billy: (nodding) Mr. Trout.

P. Trout: (brusque, eyeing Bible) Ms. Lowell...I'd like to have a word with you about the assignment we discussed last week. Could you meet me in the office on Monday?

Ms. Puppycute: Of course! I think it's going well! (winks) We just finished Bible study at the Baptist student center.

P. Trout: (grimace) Heavens!

I left with a thumping heart, gasping for breath, my bowels quivering with rage and despair. Had the fundamentalist lass managed to convert him in less than a week? I cursed my stupidity. I should have known better than to trust her. Had she preyed (prayed) upon a young fellow in a delicate state of mind, converting him to her perverted form of what, until Constantine, had been a perfectly sound spiritual practice? I'm all for spirituality. I married a Catholic, a Jew and a Wiccan/Lutheran, and I found consolation in all of their respective religions. I own autographed copies of most of Elaine Pagels' works and I consider both Jim Wallis and Rev. Jesse Jackson true friends and spiritual advisors. But I was now astounded. Nothing can ruin a writer faster or more completely than "praise" music. I quickly ticked off the various disasters that engulfed many of the Vietnam Vets I've known upon their return: suicide, homelessness, heroine or meth dependence, financial ruin, divorce, alcoholism. Clearly fundamentalism is the worst possible scenario.

I waddled home and frantically downed two glasses of medicinal Pinot Noir (as a kind reader astutely suggested) and lay on the couch for an hour or more, unable to close my eyes.

Fortunately, Shirleen, my delicate flower and diligent nursemaid, came over. Reading my state, she instantly began to cook. She simmered the carcass of last night's grilled chicken for ninety minutes to make soup, throwing in a bit of everything in the fridge, most notably shallots, two full bulbs of garlic, carrots, shitakes, potatoes, celery, plus the neck and livers, which we saved. She fussed over me on the couch, taking my temperature and bringing a cold cloth for my forehead. I was reminded of the youngish nurse who tended to me in my youth as I recovered from an appendectomy. We used ether in those days, and I was sore, sick and vomiting, each bout of wretching causing my belly to burn. As miserable as I felt, I still was stirred as the short-skirted nurse busied herself about my room. And when she slipped her warm hands under the sheets to check the bandages on my belly, I coughed and blushed as my little soldier rose to greet her. "Oh my," she exclaimed and then winked.

Shirleen's ministrations had the same effect on me this evening, though I won't say more as I am a gentleman.

In any event, I'm quite worried about Mr. Clayhouse. Last month I thought that I was finally helping to create a writer for the first time in my teaching career. Now I fear that I've lost his soul to the dark side. Damnitalltohell!

Third admonishment: avoid the Great American Lobotomy Machine

2005-12-13T05:13:00.000-08:00

Apologies to my late environmentalist friend, Ed Abbey, for the title of this little granule of literary advice.

The icepick lobotomy was a poignant harbinger of America's free-market free-for-all medical system. Dr. Freeman (sic), the procedure's founder, was a showman with entrepreneurial spirit. He made a great splash scrambling thousands of brains. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't...oh well, he profited from the practice. Kind of reminds you of the approach taken by the big drug firms these days, don't it? "Everbody's got to die sometimes," or so goes a line in my compadre Steve Earle's song about privatized medicine.

But there exists a more effective scrambler of brains than the famous icepick of old. It is known as the tee vee. I've read that the average American adult drools for twenty-five hours each week in front of the flickering tube. Even my literary friends are drawn to it more and more lately. But don't buy into this myth of "haute television," those programmes one finds on the non-network channels including "Sopranos" and that series about the funeral parlor. I've seen none of these, but you won't get me to believe for a moment that just because they're "racy," display the occasional boob or bared buttock, and incorporate taboo phrases (pee pee, doo doo, crimeny, crapola, darn, &c, &c) into their dialog that they've strayed far from the fifteen-or-so plot formulae recycled since the dawn of the serial drama.

And so my advice to anyone serious about the art of fiction is to chuck the flickering square beast out the window. As a writer, words are your commissary, and none exist in TV land. Fiction is about following image to story, not formula. Reading requires that you bring your brain to the table, while tee vee is spoon feeding.

I did the math. At twenty-five hours per week, writing at the pitch I attained when producing my three most successful novels, one could pen a long novel every two years. What's more, there still would be enough time left over to pick up a new language every five years (mine include German, into which I was born, plus conversational Spanish, Italian; workable French, Quechua and Tzeltal), learn a half-dozen classical studies on the guitar annually, and read a difficult novel every two months. This on top of your subscription to The Economist or the Guardian Weekly, and the essential daily Lorca, Whitman, Kooser, etc.

Of course the above schedule would require a healthy amount of self-discipline, of which I have little. I'm slovenly and slothful and given to month-long fishing tangents and culinary projects that can consume days, if not weeks. If I'd turned on the tee vee for anything other than the occasional football match on a Sunday afternoon (the closest I come to practicing a traditional religion), I'd have much less to show for my life than my few, meager literary achievements.

You can salvage absolutely nothing from an hour wasted in front of the boobie tubie. The occasional rented film is fine relaxation, at times verging on thoughtful art, but every additional hour you spend on the couch is an hour stolen from your literary life. Food, fishing, walking, reading, sex, and travel, on the other hand, are all pursuits that have relevance and tend to inform your craft. Given my faulty ticker, wasted time is much on my mind of late. Avoid the lobotomy machine, aspiring writers, and the odds that you will finish a novel or two during the course of your tenure on Mamma Earth will greatly improve.

Brown bears, walruses and my jealous angina

2005-12-11T05:09:00.000-08:00

Angina sounds like the name of a muse. Perhaps she is. And maybe she's jealous of my lovely Shirleen.

I won't go into the details of our copulation out of respect for my new girliefriend. I've tweaked enough of the details of her appearance and situation, I hope, to render her unidentifiable.

We made love on the couch after dinner. I think that the athletic Shirleen was surprised by the quality of my performance, and the vigor with which I engaged the situation. "Not bad for an old fatty, eh?" I asked as we lay there sweating. She was on top of me, her head on my chest, one hand twirling the end of my beard. "Not bad," she said, with a smirk and a wink. She said that lying on top of me was what it must feel like to recline on the belly of a slumbering grizzly. That made me think that "Brown Bear" might have been a better pseudonym.

We were almost asleep when she groaned, wearily, "Professor Trout, what are we going to do?" I felt that this could lead us into an uncomfortable discussion of the pragmatics of our situation, being teacher and student, so I said, "Let's go for a walk."

There is a state park at the edge of town, and a trailhead within walking distance from my flat. We strolled under a thick mat of fast-moving clouds, occasionally a hole opening to reveal a patch of starlight. We hiked several miles until we were both breathing heavy. I led her up a crest where there's a grove of towering maples. We sat with our backs to the trunk of one of these massive creatures, staring at the lights of campus and the various church steeples visible in the distance. Our breath formed ghostly clouds in the crisp air as we spoke. We talked about a great many things, though every time she tried to circle back to the subject of our future I successfully changed topics.

By the time we returned to my apartment I was quite winded and cursing my age under my breath. But Shirleen exhibited her youth. "Why don't you warm up the shower?" she said with the wink that summoned my second wind and caused the ermine to stir once more in his warren. I warned her that fitting into that tight space with me would be like cramming into a phone booth with a walrus. She laughed and said it sounded like fun.

I changed into my lucky silk robe and had the water running at full heat, steam filling the bathroom. She entered the bathroom, startling me. She was undressed and I stared at her, tears forming behind the bridge of my nose. Had the words not caught in my throat I would have proposed to her on the spot. I've learned nothing from my three marriages. Then Shirleen reached under my robe with her bare hands. My pulse pounded. Her hands were still freezing from our winter night walk, and the sensation of chilled fingers on my warm belly caused my throat to tighten. Suddenly I was breathing heavy and my lungs felt as if they were being squeezed by a giant fist. I sat down on the toilet, struggling for breath. The pain in my chest increased, and it felt as if my heart were inflated, raw and bleeding.

Half an hour later, we were in the emergency room. We were unfortunate in that we ran into my department chair. She'd broken her ankle tripping over her cat in the night on the way to the bathroom. She looked me up and down as I stood clutching my chest in my bathrobe, and then studied Shirleen. I was sure I'd lost my job, but Shirleen later lied and said that I'd randomly selected her from my student phone list after experiencing the chest pains because I was too proud and cheap for an ambulance, and Ms. Chair swallowed the story. Perhaps Shirleen will make a fine storyteller after all.

I was quickly diagnosed with the jealous angina I mentioned before. I was fortunate that I didn't suffer a heart attack, the doctor said. "What were you doing?" he asked. "Brisk walk," I replied. They prepared a room and scheduled me for angioplasty first thing in the morning.

The upshot is I have a confusing array of new pills and a dietary regimen that completely obliterates everything that is pleasurable in food. I'm sure there are plenty of tasty low cholesterol meals, but the very idea that I'm to avoid tripe and foie de gras sucks the life out of lesser foods. Fuckitall. The doctor saw something that caused concern...he's hoping I won't need a bypass. He said I should be noticeably less winded on my "walks" very soon, but if I don't show signs of improvement we may need to consider surgery. I'm taking a week off, though I'm having some of the better students stop by the flat for some coaching and advice before the semester ends. Nawaz has offered to cook my new lowfat menu. Even so, I've got a heavy dose of the black ass.

Poulet Demi-Deuil

2005-12-08T05:08:00.000-08:00

Translated into English, it is roughly "chicken in partial mourning." A truly poetic dish. I don't have much strength at the moment for reasons I'll explain at length soon, but the least I could do was share this recipe, which had its desired effect. I am officially smitten with Ms. Tomasetti. I've also done an overnight stint in the county hospital. It's a long story. But for now:

-1 oz black truffles
-1 farm-raised (free range) hen...3.5.lbs
-salt/pepper as desired
-peeled carrots
-large leeks (include most of the green)
-1 red onion (substituted for yellow, which I despise)
-1 bulb garlic
-celery
-fresh, flat-leaf parsley sprigs
-fresh thyme sprigs
-unsalted butter
-heavy cream
-1 peeled turnip

Clean/rinse the truffles. Dry on paper towel. Slice.

Rinse chicken and insert your fingers between the skin and meat of the breast, careful not to tear. Slip truffle slices underneath skin in an attractive pattern. Rub chicken inside and out with salt and pepper.

Place hen in a pot with the vegetables. Cover with water and boil, then simmer 1.25 hours.

Remove chicken. Strain vegetables. Place vegetables in blender with butter/cream. Puree until smooth. Taste/adjust as needed. Serve chicken on bed of puree.
I served with fresh sauteed shitakes and a simple spinach risotto. Two bottles of Vouvray and a Merseault for good measure. I am in love, and my heart is literally broken. I'm going back to bed. Shirleen is bringing Thai this evening, and we're going to watch a rented movie. I have to return to the doctor's in the morning.

A recipe for the seduction of Ms. Tomasetti

2005-12-06T05:02:00.000-08:00

I must ask, dear readers, for your assistance. I've drawn a blank. Although I've never suffered from "writer's block" and consider it to be a myth concocted by people who really aren't writers but like pretending that they are, I have, on occasion, suffered from "culinary impotence." You see, I'm having a young woman over for dinner and I am in need of a meal plan. I've been through dozens of volumes from my food library and nothing calls to me. Imagine...the Brown Trout at a loss for recipes. The horror!

She showed up at my office door yesterday. A trace of perfume festooned the air of the little room as she entered. I smelled, at turns, hairspray, fingernail polish, the tang of nervous sweat (pheremones!), shampoo, and crisp autumn air rolling off the black leather of her jacket. When she spoke I thought I could detect the sticky-sweet scent of a cocktail on her breath. This old trout's sniffer still functions well; I spend too much time in training in the woods with my eyes closed, inhaling wild smells, for it not to. In short, she appeared ready for a night out.

She sat down in my beanbag chair. She seemed nervous. She fiddled with her fingers and looked down at her lap. Finally she steered the conversation from small talk to what she had on her mind.

Lovely Shirleen Tomasetti: So, you've made your nomination, I assume?

Frumpy Prof. Trout: Yes. I have.

Shirleen: And...(looks away)...I guess you made your choice based solely on merit.

Prof. Trout: I did.

Shirleen: In that case, you probably didn't select me.

Trout: Why would you say that?

Shirleen: Because I know I'm not a good writer.

Trout: That's bullshit, Shirleen.

Shirleen: (surprised) You did pick me?

Trout: In truth...

Allow me to interject here. Intrepid readers will recall my recent quandry, where I had three students from whom to choose for only two slots for a full scholarship and stipend. Shirl was clearly number three, if she was that high. But she also offers obvious advantages should a lecherous old writer be intrested in lavishing favors upon a young divorcee. In truth, I did suffer an ethical lapse in choosing the two writers to nominate. Billy Clayhouse, the best writer in my classes, didn't submit an application. I also couldn't reach him. So I performed a no-no and forged his application. I submitted it along with that of the bubbly Ms. Elizabeth Puppycute. I ran Shirleen's application through the shredder, weeping as I did.

Trout (cont'd.): In truth...no. I'm only allowed two nominations, and I had applications from two better writers.

Shirleen: (eyes glistening) I see.

Trout: But if you try to say that it's because you're a bad writer, that's a fallacy.

Shirleen: (a sigh)

Trout: You've got all the tools. You're good with language. You just need to find what it is you're going to write about.

Shirleen: You've said that before, but I don't know what else I can do. You talk all the time about the "middlebrow domestic Iowa Workshop nonsense," and I know you're referring to me.

Trout: Not to you...

Shirleen: (a single tear leaking down a singular cheek) Yes...because that's what I write. I'm a "suburban" writer and you know it.

Trout: (meltyhearted) Some writers need to search to find what they want to write about...

She was openly weeping now, and my blubbering didn't help. But being a big, soft teadybear, I began crying as well. I rose from my chair and knealt by the beanbag. I took her hand and proceeded to recall, line for line, a passage from one of her stories. It's not that I'd memorized it, only that I'd been reading the piece when she knocked at the door so it was fresh in my mind. In truth, it wasn't bad. It was almost poignant, though it was a clear violation of my topic rules. Though it wasn't about the death of a grandparent, it did feature a girl standing by the edge of her aunt's hospital bed. In all, though, it was a decent scene.

She stopped weeping and watched me as I retold the scene. I'm a good reader. I'm no Garrison Keillor, who could engage an audience merely by reading the label of a soup can, but I can manage to add weight and power to a story whether it's there or not. I did my best.

I follwed by telling her again that she had the tools, which is completely true, but that she just needed to "spend some time in the trenches." She needed to travel. Cook. Wander in the woods. My native American friends understand this as well as anyone, as do, oddly, most Mormons.

Shirl: I guess you're right. I just don't know where to begin.

Trout: There's so many options. But, unfortunately, an MFA program may not be the best place to start looking.

Shirl: Maybe...maybe you could give me some ideas. Over dinner sometime (OVER DINNER SOMETIME!).

Trout: (speechless)

Shirl: (blush/smile) I mean...if that would be apporpriate...

Trout: (recovering) No, no...that's perfectly fine. Very appropriate! In fact...I'll have you over some evening. We'll discuss this matter seriously. I'll cook. It's an important conversation to have, and I haven't found a restaurant in this town yet that's reliable enough to trust for such a situation. How about...

Shirl: Tuesday?

Trout: Perfect!

And there you have it, readers. I've been racking my thoughts for the past two days. I've started a shopping list, but at the moment it contains 1) olive oil (xx) and 2) eggs and nothing else. Cookbooks are strewn about my apartment. I've spent hours on my favorite websites. I called Lucy, Most Favorite Ex-Wife Number Two, who was a glorious gourmet cook. I called my daughter Ella, a chef-in-training. I still have no idea what to prepare. I'm sick. Lovestruck over lovely Ms. Tomasetti. Please share your thoughts as to what I should prepare. My heart is twittering like a teenager's. O, the agony!

Prof. Trout's secret mission

2005-12-02T04:55:00.000-08:00

Ms. Elizabeth Puppycute showed up at my office yesterday. This always causes Nawaz to sit at attention despite his gorgeous fiancée. He's got a crush on the girl, and for good reason. My first impression of this fundamentalistic lass was that of a schoolmarmish director of the youth choir. She is the spawn of a Baptist minister, so it fits. But she's changed during the course of the semester, or perhaps I have. I once sat on a cypress stump in a sulphurous, tick-infested Missouri swamp for so long that a mating pair of blue damselflies landed on my nose. After five hours it became the most beautiful place on earth despite the mosquitoes. Time and proximity can make you appreciate a place, and the same applies to people. Elizabeth's writing has also improved immensely during the course of the semester...she's started to stretch out thematically in a way that complements her dexterity with language. Creative talent, as mentioned in my previous post, is also an aphrodisiac.

So Ms. Lowell showed up and took off her overcoat. She's freckelfaced and curly-headed. She's no bombshell, but she's got a compact cutishness that she showed off by wearing a frumpy-yet-tight outfit entirely unsuited for the weather. She sat down in my guest beanbag chair. She sniffed and crossed her legs.

Puppycute: (expectant) You wanted to see me?

Prof. Trout: Ms. Lowell, I've got a mission for you.

Cute: You do?

Trout: Yes. It concerns another student. Billy Clayhouse...you know him?

Cute: (deflated) Oh. Yes. Not well...just from class.
Allow me to interject that Lowell is a self-conscious writer, though the term is an oxymoron. She needs reinforcement and support to continue working well. She's perhaps one of those rare creatures that can actually flourish in an MFA program, though I still think writing degrees are largely pointless. As she chewed her lip I realized that, in order to work with me to help someone else, I needed to grease the wheels a bit.
Trout: This is important. I'm asking you because I don't think anyone else in the class writes well enough to relate to Mr. Clayhouse. You're both similar in that you strike me as diamonds in the rough.

Cute: (brightening) You think so?

Trout: Sure! In any case. I'm worried about Billy. Haven't seen him in some time. Did you know he was in Iraq?

Cute: I heard that.

Trout: I've chatted with some of his friends in the ROTC. Seems he's kind of a loner. In any event, he hasn't shown for the past few classes. I've called him at home...no answer.

Cute: (leans forward) So you want me to track him down?

Trout: (pretending not to examine cleavage) Yes.

Cute: Then what?

Trout: Ask him out to coffee.

Cute: Ask him out?

Trout: Not on a date. Just coffee. Or anything innocent and social. The library. A guest lecture. You know..."I'm a writer, you're a writer, let's talk about it..."

Cute: (cautious) Okay.

Trout: I just would like to know if he has any...concerns. And if there's anything I can do to help. Let me tell you a story: My cousin Hartmut served in Vietnam. He was a plumber and a fine duck hunting partner. He was quiet, carved his own decoys, enjoyed waxing his truck. A stoic woodsman, the kind of guy to build his own house without asking for help. When he got out of the service, he married, had three kids. He's making a good living. He’s a deacon in his church. One day he takes off into the marshes to build a duck blind. They find him three weeks later, smelling like road kill and strung up in a red cedar. He hung himself with his belt and left a note. It was three words: "It doesn't stop."

Cute: So you think Billy is the type to wig out like that?

Trout: Probably not, but I don't know. With his disposition, it's hard to say if anyone does. War sucks. It's hard on people, especially those who bottle it up. None of us who haven’t been there have any idea.

Cute: That's why we need to support the troops.

Trout: (swallowing a snort at the notion that platitudes and bumper stickers will keep someone from biting down on the business end of a shotgun) In so many words...

Cute: Okay...I'll do it. I'll find him.
She left the office resolute. She's the pedantic type to follow through on an assignment. After she left, Nawaz looked at me and asked me what I would do if Billy truly needs help. I told him that I have no fucking idea.

Creative lust and the unhealthy mind

2005-11-30T04:52:00.000-08:00

This from today's Independent:

Creativity is sexually alluring, according to a study which shows that artists and poets have more sexual partners than ordinary mortals...

And also:

It is possible that the same genetic factors responsible for predisposing someone to creativity could also, under slightly different environmental conditions, lead to schizophrenia, Dr Nettle said. "If these genetic factors have been chosen by successive generations as attractive features in a potential mate, this could explain why schizophrenia is so common today..."

None of this is news, but when you find yourself tricked by your lust into behaving as you shouldn't, or when you're in the mood to slice off a piece of your ear, it's nice to know that you're not alone: biology and evolution have, over millennia, conspired against you.

On a side note, Ms. Lowell said she would come to my office tomorrow to discuss the missing Billy Clayhouse.

Sexfoodwords

2005-11-29T04:51:00.000-08:00

Ella called this afternoon and commented on the bleak pronouncements on prospects for fiction writers in my previous post. For some reason she and Billie have been reading my blog closely, as if looking for clues to my mental health and wellbeing. I'm glad that they're reading it, but also annoyed.

In any case, she's my brash daughter and also the consummate pragmatist, while Billie is the idealistic dreamer. Ella's attractive. Her beauty is raw and abundant, with huge, black eyes and a wicked laugh always hovering at the edge of her lips. She's a lesbian, and it's interesting that we share similar tastes in women, physically speaking. Spiritually, emotionally and intellectually I find that most or even all women tend to be my betters.

E.Trout: So anyway, Daddy, what's the point of it all?

B.Trout: Kind of a broad question, isn't it?

Ella: I mean writing...why would anyone do it if they, as you suggest, "should give up the notion of success?"

BT: Why not?

Ella: But if there's no hope of succeeding?

BT: It's not about success.

Ella: Then what's it about?

BT: It's a very basic and essential form of communication. It's kind of like cooking.

Ella: How's that?

BT: Cooking is probably the most direct form of human communication outside of sex. Sex, of course, being the most urgent and engaging of all of the senses, is the ultimate form of interaction, but then it's only appropriate in very specific circumstances. Cooking is a close second and more ubiquitous. If you don't eat, you die. In preparing a meal...whether for family, a lover, or a stranger who shows up at your door, you're building a conversation that contains the sum total of your culture and your life's experience. From the table setting to the spices. From the way you operate the flame on the burner to how you wield the wooden spoon. From everything you've learned from your grandmother to everything you've invented on your own, or out of necessity by way of poverty, abundance, season, climate, etc. You lay out this elaborate composition on the table. It's a delicate ritual. It is direct communication. It is something that you do with passion and care even if there's no hope of financial remuneration. You don't require "success" to cook. You do it because it's a part of the human condition.

Ella: But I'm studying to be a chef, so there's a financial aspect as well...

BT: True...you will eventually get paid to cook. But if there was no hope of ever making a living through food you'd still cook anyway, wouldn't you? You'd still be passionate about the table, right?

Ella: Of course.

BT: Same thing with writing. Storytelling, behind sex and food, is the third most direct way of communicating with fellow hominids. Music, dance, visual arts all follow after. When you read something that's written well, or when you hear a story told, you are living inside the author's brain. You are swimming with their soul. You are experiencing what it is to be human and alive. And let me say that I'm not talking about Tom Clancy here, or anything that is written with any consideration for a market. So, in order to write well, you have to take the potential of success out of the equation. If there's no feasibility of financial "success" and you'd be willing to spend five hours a day writing anyway...just like you'd still cook or make love without remuneration, then you'll be a fine writer. But if the possibilities of financial reward were removed and this would cause you to quite writing...then you're not cut out for it. If there's no book release party in a Manhattan apartment near Central Park, and no book tour, and no guest writer engagements in your future, and no options on the screenplay, and no royalty checks, and you go to your grave with a stack of pages read only by those with the patience to love you, or perhaps they'll never be read at all, and if this promise of obscurity lessens your interest in prose even slightly, then give up now. Go take the LSATs. But if you're still eager, despite all of that, to plunge ahead...then write. If the process of writing is as essential to you as eating and breathing, as inherent as the procreative impulse, then by all means continue.

Ella: I see. So...have you told your students any of this? Or do you just growl at them and basically tell them to quit?

BT: Well...

Ella: Daddy...you can kind of be a bastard at times.

BT: So true, Ella Trout, so true.

Ella: I think you need to lighten up. And maybe, just to be fair, the next time you give a reading and that guy asks for advice for novice writers, maybe then you should tell him what you've just told me. It might come off better. He might actually buy some of your book after you're done speaking. That might even bring you a little more satisfaction than your usual scowling and brooding. And then everybody wins.

BT: My dear, as always, you offer sound advice.

Ella: Just thinking, Daddy. Gotta run.

BT: Peace and love, Baby Trout.

Baby Trout: Peace and love, Daddy.

Leading the children astray

2005-11-28T04:47:00.000-08:00

Nawaz announced his intention to change majors from engineering to creative writing. I suppose I should be thrilled or at least flattered: after all, it was my suggestion.

But I also must admit to being a little troubled. The idea of being a fiction writer is infinitely more appealing than the life in practice. When I'm visiting colleges, someone eventually asks the inane question: do you have any advice for aspiring writers? After I smirk, roll my eyes or groan I usually respond by saying that they should give up the notion of success, steady income or ever having any of the stabilizing pleasures that most other middle class Americans take for granted. I tell them that they will probably spend most of their lives working at some job that they despise in order to buy time to write, either that or they will be living in the basement of their parents' home in suburban Cleveland until they are in their mid-forties, in which case masturbation will take up a bulk of their time. I'll also suggest that they try to marry rich, though unfortunately this is more difficult than it sounds.

But Nawaz was so giddy when he announced his intentions to me today that I decided I would hold back and let him bask in the glow of his expectation before breaking the truth to him. He isn't a bad writer. He's written some clever poems since he started working for me. One, about the recent earthquake in his home country, was so poignant that I pulled out my bank book on the spot and wrote him a check for fifty bucks (he's been collecting funds through the Muslim Student Assn.), my hand trembling as I signed my name. Only my dear friend Jesse Jackson, the master fundraiser, is able to shame me into parting with my wine allowance so easily.

Nawaz assures me that his father will disown him. He is holding out hopes that his fiancee will keep him, though. I will pray for this grinning beanpole who inhabits the stool in the corner of my office.

Salvation

2005-11-27T04:44:00.000-08:00

Salvation arrived on Thursday morning when my daughters appeared at the door. Despite my preparations for a grand solo feast, I was not gracefully handling the notion of Thanksgiving alone. I was in the process of pulling on my boots for a trip to the convenience store to buy a pint of whiskey...very bad for this old fish...when the doorbell rang. I wailed like an infant, kissing and slobbering over the girls until my heart quivered from palpitations and I had to sit on the sofa. Evidently they'd been planning this surprise for three months.

Ella flew in from Denver with a home-cured ham in her carry-on bag...it was a culinary school project that she'd been working on for weeks. Billie drove through the night from D.C., and before she even kicked off her shoes she proffered a bag of dried morels that she'd harvested herself in the Virginia woods last April, and as soon as I saw this I started weeping anew. We hydrated the morels and they provided the foundation for a glorious stuffing, though we logged nearly seventy miles in search of an open grocery store with decent shallots to complete the recipe. Ella had checked a cooler on the plane with a farm-raised turkey, duck and game hen and these were roasted, one stuffed within another. She also brought white asparagus, inexplicably fresh despite being out of season. She refused to name her source, which I respected. I smoked my other turkeys on a Webber grill. The girls ate more than I did, and I have no idea how they stay so thin.

The girls brought the wine as well. We had a decent Chilean Chardonnay, plus a grand California Red Zin and two bottles of Pommard. All of these were less than fifteen bucks, which is an unwritten family rule. "Some people drink wine, and some drink labels," Hemingway once wrote. Following this guideline is a snap in Europe, but somewhat more difficult in the U.S. where wealthy people and their consumption spiral have conspired to price the middle class out decent wine, and good taste in general. This bourgeois phenomenon merely confirms (as does the very existence of George W. Bush) my long-standing belief that you can be fabulously wealthy and still qualify as white trash.

As we cooked we shared the usual family stories. Billie, the sensitive girl, made me call her mother, as well as my other two ex-wives, to send Thanksgiving greetings. It went off well. I rang up Billy Clayhouse thinking that he might enjoy Billie's company, but he wasn't home. Ella's a lesbian, and tough as nails, but Billie has gotten kicked around by her two most recent boyfriends. She's curious and trusting, a dangerous combination. I'm not sure why I felt Clayhouse might make a good match.

On Friday we fished local spring creeks until our fingers froze. Ella landed a three-pound rainbow on my 2-weight midge rod. I grew tired while wading and spent half the afternoon sitting on a stump, watching the girls work the river. This worried them more than it did me. Aging is a bitch. We caught five trout altogether, keeping three...they were hatchery fish but nevertheless delicious.

They left yesterday morning, and though my heart was sad to see them go, I was left renewed and feeling frisky. I called Shirleen, my hottest student, and we went out for drinks. Today I edited three chapters on my political novel and watched football, munching on cold duck, turkey and ham and thinking how the momentary acts of pollination that I performed during the procreation of my daughters were the most worthy deeds during my tenure on this great green and blue rock.

An ethical lapse

2005-11-23T04:42:00.000-08:00

Alone this Thanksgiving. Despite her recent promise, my daughter Billie had to cancel. But at least she's not going to her mother's...I know it's crude, but if I can't have her, nobody should. My other daughter, Ella, has volunteered to cook at a homeless shelter in Colorado. She's in culinary school, so the less fortunate of Denver are in for a treat. Even Nawaz has abandoned me for the home of an American classmate.

I'm blue, and it's been compounded by my ethical lapse this morning. I've had to choose two of my students for a scholarship nomination, and I'm afraid I've bent the rules of better behavior. I won't mention which two of the three aforementioned candidates I've chosen, but suffice it to say that my selection procedure probably violates some campus rule. I wonder how many other "professors" factor the possibility of seducing a student into their decision-making process.

In any event, I'm going to prepare a proper fall table. I've been thawing the two wild turkeys...royalty among table birds...that I shot last April. One is to be smoked, the other roasted while filled with a miraculous chorizo stuffing that I concocted with assistance from my Mexican writer friend, Paco Taibo, during a happier Thanksgiving when I was still married to Wife 3 and the girls were home. I've got several good bottles of Ontario Vidal that I'll use to wash down the birds. I then intend to waltz through my apartment, naked, to the usual Strauss. A starlight hike in the state park should help to sober me up and then sleep dreamlessly.

Mystery of Mr. Clayhouse

2005-11-21T04:38:00.000-08:00

No black ass today for the first Monday in quite some time. It was a bright morning, if brisk, and I took a stroll around the quadrangle to take in the trees in their bare winter glory. Started puffing after only a couple miles, and felt a bit dizzy. Aging "sucks ass," as my daughter Billie might say.

Still no word from Mr. Clayhouse since he stormed out of my class. When passing the ROTC office on campus, I entered on a hunch. I struck up a conversation with the pimply kid peddling brochures:

B. Trout: How's business?

Officer Zit: Slow.

B. Trout: Imagine!

O. Zit: That Cheney's a smart guy, but he's got to learn to keep his fuckin' yap shut.

B. Trout: You're half-right. Anyhow, have you seen Billy Clayhouse around?

O. Zit: Billy? No...it's been a few months. We had a little ceremony for all the vets at the beginning of the semester...

And that's how I confirmed my suspicion that Billy served. And did he ever serve...two seven-month tours in Iraq as a Marine sniper. Purple heart and all. I would never retract my classroom tirade on the war, as self-censorship in the service of pleasing others is the greatest of writerly crimes. But if Billy ever does return I must somehow take him aside and acknowledge his service. While I've opposed this war from its incipience as a pre-9-11 neo-con wet dream to its current disastrous state, and I've got the usual peacenik misgivings about militarism in general, I do respect the uniform. I've had too many students and friends over the years who served. Whenever I see kids in uniform in a bar, I'll always buy a round. In any case, I've decided to make Mr. Clayhouse my special project during my tenure at this program. He's got too much raw talent and compelling experience not to write.

The fiancee

2005-11-19T04:37:00.000-08:00

Nawaz's fiancee is exquisite. I must apologize for creating another "pee pee post," which is the term my daughter Billie uses for any of my journal entries where I drool over a much younger woman. But today, as we sat staring out my office window at the passing foot traffic on the campus quadrangle, Nawaz explained his pre-marital status. Every passing girl to whom I called attention elicited a mere shrug from my lanky brown assistant. When I called him on this he showed me his fiancee's photo.

I'm not going to pretend to understand Pakistani culture. What I know about the country is limited to a handful of recipes, and these are as much oddly seasoned Indian, Afghan and Persian dishes as they are purely Pakistani, but then that corner of the world has always been a crossroads of the spice trade. Pakistanis work miracles with lamb, and a plate of Balti Gosht or Kunna, paired with Riesling or a Rhone, is quite an experience.

So Nawaz is promised to a girl. She's five years older than my friend, which explains how a gawky, squeaky-voiced loon like him can land what can only be described by the archaic term, "fox." Evidently, she's considered an old maid in her culture. The fact that Nawaz's father is a minister in the government also helped to raise Nawaz's stock.

The fiancee is a dusky jewel, with rich black eyes and a glistening smile. Her name is Aamira. In the snapshot, her black-brown hair tumbled down her shoulders, and her generous breasts strained the buttons on her white blouse. I was smitten instantly and said so. Nawaz, who has only met the girl twice, is also impressed, though he says they have little in common. Aamira works for a consulting agency in London, and Nawaz plans to get an engineering job in the States. They will share a house in Miami, though both expect to be on the road pursuing their respective careers. I suggested that he quit school, marry her quickly, and take up the role of doting house-man. He could shop for the wine and cook. Keep the house somewhat in order. When his south Asian treasure returns home at the end of her day, he can rub her feet, pour her a glass of Pouilly Fuisse and read her a poem. In fact, I told him that a writer of fiction would be the perfect complementary career, and I was surprised when he agreed. He's been reading voraciously, lately finishing Dr. Zhivago and Nabokov's King, Queen, Knave, both books borrowed from my collection.

In any case, this experience has caused me to revisit the practice of arranged marriage. I've always been a proponent of that silly American institution known as the "love marriage." I should know better as it has thrice failed me. Perhaps I should put myself on the Pakistani old maid market. Nawaz plans to meet his bride-to-be in Chicago during the Christmas break where she will be attending a business summit. He's asked me to attend as a chaperone (sic!), and I so look forward to meeting lovely Aamira.

Quandry

2005-11-18T04:33:00.000-08:00

Shirleen Tomasetti is perhaps my most attractive student. She's mid-thirtyish, athletic, divorced. In a pre-midlife crisis she left her copywriting career to pursue an MFA in writing fiction. While her writing rarely suffers the flaws that typically set me to frothing, neither do I expect she will ever make a serious writer. Her language is flat, and she limits herself to revisiting her droll suburban upbringing. The last thing the world needs is more coming-of-age fiction set in Schaumburg, Illinois or the outskirts of Cincinnati. I've tried to coax her out of this literary ghetto on several occasions over drinks. She really is quite pleasant to talk with, and the last time we were nestled into the corner booth at O'Shannon's she laughed heartily at my jokes, patted my beard and rubbed my shoulders while we conversed. She even touched my knee under the table as I admitted my recent dark moods. The imprint of this sensation still simmers against my leg, an ethereal love-scar. It seems ages since I've had conjugal relations with someone her age. I really am like a big teddy bear, so that might explain my inexplicable ability to connect with attractive women.

So today she stops by my office and drops off an application for our department's scholarship. She was wearing a tight white sweater which caused me to suck breath for obvious reasons. Her shortish-blondish hair was nicely done, and the vanilla-tang hint of perfume followed her into the room. I generally prefer the raw scent of pheromone sweat to that bourgeois, bottled decadence, but still it was a nice touch. As she placed her form on my desk I noticed that her nails were lacquered red and her wedding ring, which she still normally wears to deflect idiots, was missing.

Applicants for the scholarship need the endorsement of a faculty member. Each faculty member can only endorse one application per gradudate-level class taught. This gives me two. The award covers tuition for an entire year, plus a small stipend. I know that Shirleen hasn't been working and needs the money. I'm certain that she'd be incredibly grateful for my endorsement.

The problem is that Ms. Elizabeth Lowell, the cocker-spaniel-cute fundamentalist, is a much better prose stylist. She's already submitted her application. Likewise, Billy Clayhouse is more deserving and also desperately needs the money, though he hasn't even applied. (And given his stoicism, he probably won't without encouragement.)

But neither of these more qualified individuals is capable, for various reasons, of offering the sort of gratitude that I expect I might receive from Shirleen.

So, Brown Trout...what to do, what to do?

Tears for dead kids

2005-11-16T04:20:00.000-08:00

Today I had one of my more significant failures as a teacher. I don't pretend to have talent in this profession...it's just something I do because I can. I sold a few books in the late 70's, and I've been milking it like a bastard ever since. Some of the more serious instructors take offense, but mostly my colleagues give me latitude on the basis of three strong reviews in the New York Times literary supplement twenty-five years ago.

One might think me callus or opportunistic for taking this job, which is basically stealing money. And it's true I've at least attempted to get laid at every single writers conference at which I've appeared, and I meet with success more times than not. Not bad for a fat, obnoxious pontificator. The fact that I can both cook and dance, combined with my status as "published writer," makes me somehow irresistible to the mid-fortyish wife looking to recapture her literary aspirations. Their stories often suck, but I never share this little secret with them. Occasionally I'm surprised by the quality of their work, which makes the sex that much better. Some men fantasize about waifish models when they're in bed with a woman. I've never done this, though I've slept with several dumb beauties I pretended were intelligent.

This being said, my failure as a teacher today still stings and causes me great regret. It started when I awoke this morning at eleven. I fixed the usual triple espresso, downed three aspirin, then logged onto the computer. My first stop is the Economist. I know where I stand with these newswriters, and even these free market Nazis see Lesser Bush for the dangerously clownish nincompoop that he is. Their world coverage is grand. My next stop, more often than not, is the Post's Faces of the Fallen. It's a spiritual exercise for me, though I really can't explain why I do it. Three weeks ago I saw the face of a ninteen-year-old woman who was the spitting image of the vixen who stole my virginity. She was blown to bits by a rocket-propelled grenade. I wept inconsolably. This morning I lingered over the face of a scrawny, geekish Latino kid, and the tears flowed again. I see the war as a personal as well as national failure. I suppose the difference between myself and the average right-winger is that I feel responsible while they pretend to bear no complicity. "Freedom ain't free," they say, as if this makes it all okay. I saw a woman counter-protesting a memorial for the 2000th U.S. death, and her sign said, "Our soldiers are doing just fine!" Well gee, in that case we'll just let them stay a little longer. It's as if the bitch things it's all a big summer camp. Supporting the troops indeed. The average conservative might get misty when they see the flag rippling in the wind, when bomber jets streak overhead in formation, or maybe when they hear Taps played. But those of us clinging to the tattered shreds of our soul cry when we look into the eyes of dead children. Yep, at my age, even Sgt. John Doe (40, 3rd Infantry, makeshift bomb) is a child. The jolly visage of Specialist Bob Smith (22, 504th Parachute, small arms fire) in his jaunty red beret struck me as so adolescent that I dropped to the floor and wretched.

In any case, my MFA students are used to my prefacing each class with one tirade or another, and today's eager writers were greeted with a rant similar to that which I just shared above. The whole point was to encourage them to join the Peace Corps, go to med school, seek law degrees or some useful skill such as plant science. Unless, that is, they are truly willing to write something that matters. I told them that, in most cases, it was pointless to write fiction in light of the fact that three kids die every day in Iraq. And those are just the ones that speak English. Writing is a revolutionary act, and the domestic nonsense that seems to preoccupy the garden variety novel being offered by today's corporatized publishing houses, or the middle-class pap flowing out of the Iowa Writers Workshop and its ilk, already flood the market with garbage, so unless these students were willing to play for real stakes they should pack up their shit and go take the LSATs. It was a variation on my George Orwell-Zora Neal Hurston lecture, and I thought that it was a rather inspired. Then to prove my point, I started to read the story by Billy Clayhouse, about the mill worker who goes to the hospital to visit his daughter, who suffered a disfiguring wound in Iraq. This is clearly the best student work I've read in my tenure at this program. I spend most of our classes reading student work aloud, which is the only worthwhile literary exercise, so Billy shouldn't have been surprised that I'd read his story in front of everyone. I never give names of who has written what piece, though they tend to learn each other's voices by the end of the semester. That ridiculous "workshop" format where a story is read and then students offer "criticism" while the author cowers over his bond paper is one of the greatest snake-oil schemes ever concocted. When I read student work, I'll take the first page, flip it over to hide the name, and then pass it around the room. The students learn more by hearing their own work read and reading that of others aloud than they do cooking up nonsensical "feedback." The "workshop" format merely produces what Hemingway would call "the camp-following eunuchs of literature."

In any case, I started to read Billy's story, which is terse and dramatic without being silly. Since I always get emotional about the whole Iraq disaster, the tears were flowing before I finished the first page. It was then that I looked up to see Mr. Clayhouse striding out of the class on his long cowboy legs. His face bore no expression, but it was clear that I had ruined his story with my ostentatious preamble. I'd gone too far, and I'd sapped all the power from his work.

We ended up reading the entire story. I don't think any other students recognized it as Billy's work because it was so different from the cryptic animal fables he's produced in the past. When we finished reading the piece, a hush fell over the room. The silence was more telling than a dozen lectures by blubbering academics ever could be, and Billy missed this valuable lesson because he was chased off by my longwinded tirade.

In any case, I hope that he returns to class so that I can take him aside and apologize. I have no problem admitting when I fuck up...another trait that separates me from Republicans...and it happens all too often. I can even try to pull some strings and get the story in The Atlantic, though it needs a bit of polish first. On the way home I bought a loaf of French bread from the only good baker in town, then fixed a (frozen) lobster bisque, albeit with fresh organic cream and an astounding Pouilly Fuisse I rediscovered in the bottom of my wine fridge. I steamed some carrots on the side. This is a meal designed specifically for the riddance of guilt, and it was a resounding success. I am nonetheless going to try to make amends for Mr. Clayhouse.

A separation

2005-11-14T05:55:00.000-08:00

And so my publishers officially released me. They claim this public journal to be a violation of my contract. This is ironic in that they've been refusing to undertake my memoir project for years. It's strange to think that we can never truly own our histories. I suppose the story of my life now belongs only to you, dear readers.

This is essentially the outcome for which I'd hoped, though now that I find myself without a publisher for the first time in thirty years I'm a bit disoriented. I'm like a brook trout plucked from her silver world, wide-eyed, gills aching for oxygen. What's more, my agent is beginning to lose patience. I've two novel manuscripts in my desk drawer that she hasn't been able to place. "The time is not right," was one of her comments. "Too political and not in your voice," was another. Oddly, I think they're among my best works. Perhaps the world is no longer interested in literary thrillers by an aging, leftist, overweight, overbearing sensualist. Better, I suppose, to allow Richard Clarke, Barbara Boxer and Scooter Libby to write novels. Why does the world need novelists when there are celebrities and politicians?

I've sworn off lamenting the state of literature--Jonathan Franzen and Michael Cunningham both do such a fine job of exemplifying the decline of American Letters. There's no need for me to stand by the side of the road holding a sign announcing the obvious. But still, how I mourn for that long lost Paris of the '20s and her scrappy American ex-pats. Now lovely Paris is burning, and I am filled with black ass.

On another note, Miss Puppycute stopped by the office today with bran muffins. I was touched. She said that last week she noticed how I have been gasping for breath when arriving to class, and that I've been averaging ten minutes late rather than my usual five. Her father (an SBC minister!) suffered a recent heart attack, and the experience attuned her to such things. She suggested I change my eating habits. I protested, making a case for red wine, garlic, foie gras, brisk walks and acrobatic sex. She blushed, but we had a nice chat. When she left my office, Nawaz said that he thought her a "lovely girl."

Woe

2005-11-14T05:51:00.000-08:00

Talked last night with my first wife, Lila. She was terrifically clever and funny, as always, but also warmer than in the past. I wept as I hung up the phone. She married a Republican--a successful fellow by conservative measure, that being purely financial. Lila sounds happy on the surface.

But to purge the usual regret, I started cooking and called Nawaz, who is the closest thing I have to a friend in this place. He brought a whole chicken, which we opened like a book and doused in olive oil, lemon and sage then grilled. I made gnocchi, but it was too slimy. My chopped olive sauce tasted fine, though it was the consistency of toothpaste. Overall it would have been a failure save for a decent grigio I found at, of all places, Aldi. Nawaz left with a copy of Leaves of Grass and book of poems by my friend Ted Kooser, who is finally getting attention after years as the most underrated American poet. I was still blue, so I ran several student papers from my 101 class through the shredder, though oddly this didn't cheer me.

Second admonishment: seven sins of topic selection

2005-11-10T05:50:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, as part of the contract securing my employment, I am forced to teach one section of "Rhetoric and Composition 101," the prerequisite writing course for all majors. Fortunately, the interest level of these students is even lower than my own, so my workload is rather lax. Still, I feel it necessary to offer some advice should any student in such a course wish to avoid having her instructor crumple and then urinate upon her assignment, as I did last night while grading essays after a few glasses of tawny port.

The simple avoidance of the following themes or vehicles in an essay or work of fiction can greatly increase your odds of success:

1) Grandma dies - Don't they all?

2) And then I wake up to find that it was only a dream - Bad enough in a freshman with third-grade vocabulary, but middle-age graduate students? How did you get in the program? Whom do you read? What fucking planet are you from?

3) The [accidental death/suicide] of my [friend/cousin/sibling] makes me aware, for the first time in my young life, of my own mortality - Less stimulating than the account of your first bowel movement on a big-person potty.

4) The church mission trip to Guatemala - Hmm, let me see, how will it end? Do you, perhaps, return to suburban Dallas after having faced this direst of poverty with a renewed appreciation of how blessed you are to be a citizen of the USA? And did the Mayan family--for whom you slapped together a few bricks and handed a sack of corn, a case of bottled water, plus a trunkload of Jerry Falwell pamphlets--mention that they used to subsist growing their own maize until NAFTA and other "free" trade policies disrupted six-thousand years of corn culture, driving them off their ancestral land and slamming them up against our newly militarized border, forcing them to take factory jobs for three bucks a day (jobs, that, incidentally, used to belong to the likes of Uncle Johnny [now alcoholic] in Des Moines)? Of course, they weren't able to tell you because you never bothered to learn any Tzeltal, let alone Spanish. But I'm sure they appreciated the literature, as anything bearing the bloated visage of Rev. Falwell makes wonderful toilet paper.

5) Grandpa dies.

6) First hunting trip with Dear Old Dad - Courtesy of my good friend, Mike Curtis, fiction editor of The Atlantic.

7) Spring Break in [Daytona/Puerto Vallarta/NameYourBeachHere] - A sand-crusted, drunken orgy is neither original nor particularly appealing, and what really astounds the Trout is not the two girls from Ohio who sneak you past their chaperone into their motel room where they simultaneously fiddle with your privates, rather the complete lack of imagination American Youth show in selecting travel destinations. It causes one to wonder which is the greater of our cultural afflictions: fast food or MTV? Both seem manifestations of the corporate institutionalization of boredom...now there's a topic for an essay.

Black ass

2005-11-09T05:47:00.000-08:00

"Black ass" is what Hemingway called his dark moods. Black ass is what likely killed him. My therapist tells me that my own depression is hardly lethal; apparently my ego provides counterbalance. Still, he says that it's something to watch.

Whatever the case, my visions seem to have brought the black ass upon me with a vengeance. I cancelled class, locked myself away, sneaking out only to buy a capon and truffles. I roasted it in, as the French say, funerary style with the truffles stuffed under the skin. Fresh sage and olive oil (xx), plus black pepper. New potatoes. Accompanied by my lovely '99 San Gimignano riserva, though my stock is dwindling.

Still this did not alleviate my condition. Ms. Puppycute came to my door. She plays by the book and probably couldn't stand for the cancelled class. I stood in my bathrobe, staring at her through the spyhole, and then I hid behind my sofa until she stopped knocking.

Finally, I called my oldest daughter, even though I don't like to worry the girls with my nonsensical brooding. They tend to fuss over me like mother hens. Ella is in culinary school and Billie is studying at the Foreign Service School at Georgetown. She hopes to join the Peace Corps and then serve in USAID. I tell her to say 'hi' to John Bolton, but she says, "Some of us need to fight from the inside." She's right, of course.

Billie Trout: Hello?

Daddy Trout: (attempting good cheer) Meine Engeleinchen!

Billie Trout: Oh no, what's wrong Daddy? You sound awful.

Daddy Trout: Nothing's wrong, just checking in...

Billie: You're lying.

Daddy: Drat! Just a black ass. No big deal. How's life, Daughter?

Billie: Daddy, tell me, are you okay?

Daddy: I'm fine. Just a little blue. This one isn't so bad. Lonely, I guess.

Billie: I'm sorry...we all worry, even Mom. Why don't you call her? That might help. She says how she misses you often.

Daddy: I'm glad she and I are friends again, but I couldn't handle that right now. Can I come to DC for a few days? We'll hit Etrusco and check out Francesco's latest menu. We'll drink too much wine, talk loud, act like rubes, snort at anyone who looks Republican.

Billie: Sorry, I'd love it, but I'm giving a paper at a conference in Miami this weekend.

Daddy: Rats. Next weekend?

Billie: I've got an exam...Thanksgiving's coming up, maybe we'll get together then.

Daddy: Isn't there a Harry Chapin song that goes something like that? (starts to sing)

Billie: Don't, Daddy...you'll make me cry. I promise I'll call you every day.

Daddy: Bless you.

She ended up recommending a brisk walk while there's still a few leaves and before the winter slop sets in. How I miss the pristine whiteness of my home country, even with the forty-below days and the cabin fever. I drove to a nearby state park and did a seven mile loop, laboring over some of the ravines. I sat on a cliff watching a redtail hawk coasting on the thermals. The walk served me well. At home I rolled some lobster ravioli, albeit the lobster was frozen. A cold tomato-cucumber sauce and the last of my San Gim. riserva. Tomorrow should be better.

Wrong

2005-11-09T05:46:00.000-08:00

I refuse to read, or allow to be read in my classroom, a work of prose containing any of the following as a fictional character: a vampire, an ex-Navy SEAL, a talking unicorn, a dwarflike creature with hairy feet, a television celebrity, a private investigator, Spock, the President of the United States.

Memory as fiction

2005-11-08T05:43:00.000-08:00

I saw her in the shower. (And, no, the Trout has not stooped to stalking coeds in their dorms.) Instead it was the apparition, that delicate afterimage of the young woman I loved in the last weeks of my childhood. I was wiping the steam from my shower door this morning when I saw her distorted visage through the melted glass. She haunts me relentlessly. She's appeared with regularity after each of my divorces, and also when the marriages in question were going badly, though I don't know what it means that she's returning to me now. My doctor fussed over my blood pressure during my last visit, so perhaps I'm nearing the end of the voyage.

In any event, this has all made me realize that when I write about events from more than half a lifetime ago, I know I'm not doing so as a journalist. Memory distorts, filters and shapes the past the same way melty shower door glass does ghosts. In essence, memory--paired with time--becomes true fiction. All good memoir is fiction. All bad memoir is a laundry list punctuated by self-congratulation.

I'm reminded of a student from one of my first workshops years ago around the time my novels stopped selling. This fellow was a rock 'n roller, with frizzy hair and decked in beads and baubles. He wore a flannel work shirt with the sleeves cut off. There was a wolf tattoo on one arm, and a skull and crossed bones on the other. I told the students to think back to their childhoods and fish out an image. Then see that image again on paper, telling it as if they're imagining it for the first time. They were given twenty minutes to write, and then asked to read. After each reading, there was a brief discussion (bad idea). I still vaguely remember this young man's opening: "I stand on the edge of the bay. The lights on the boats are like stars and there is no horizon..." When he finished, a brash girl...the sort to garner perfect grades through the force of her will and dominate classroom discussions...raised her hand.

Girl: I don't like it. It's weak.

Trout: How's so?

Girl: It doesn't really follow the assignment. It doesn't sound like a memory, it sounds like a made-up story.

Trout: Ahhh.

Of course, that girl's own scene started something like this: "It was the night of the big slumber party..." Need I say more? I suppose that some people will never understand fiction (or memory). And it's unfortunate, for me anyway, that so many of these people find their way into creative writing classes.

Incidentally, the young fellow from the workshop cut his hair, published three novels, and now lives in Shiprock where he works with a Native American youth violence program. I still receive his letters and enjoy them immensely.

Mr. Clayhouse evolves

2005-11-08T05:41:00.000-08:00

Billy's latest story is an astonishing improvement. A mill worker from South Carolina drives seven hours to visit his recovering daughter, a nineteen-year-old helicopter mechanic recently returned from Iraq where an IED ripped off half of her face. He sits outside her hospital room, face buried in his hands, unable to go in. Significantly, none of this is sensationalist or even melodramatic. It's difficult material, but Clayhouse pulls it off with his clipped prose. To keep himself from trembling, the father character recounts recipes from his long-dead grandmother, a half-black, half-Seminole woman who concocted miracles out of butchers' offal and whatever she could grow in the red clay garden of her sharecropper's shack. Incidentally, I copied several of the recipes (pork jowls, lard-fried greens) for my own collection as they are so similar to my mother's German delicacies. Any would be grand with a Riesling or, better yet, a Gewürztraminer. I'm debating whether to send the story to an editor friend at a large East Coast magazine, but then he always warns me that I can be swayed through witnessing a student's improvements. It's best to put it in a drawer for a time and give it a fresh look. At the very least, it would be solid foundation for the student literary journal, a project with which I'm afflicted next semester.

A Short History of a Salmonid: Answers to Some Questions

2005-11-07T05:38:00.000-08:00

While my opinions on inane questions from novice writers seem to have left some leery of posting their thoughts (yes, there is such a thing as a dumb question), a few intrepid readers have emailed some worthy inquiries. I will answer them here.

Recommended reading? Anything and everything. I preferred the Great Russians as a youth. No other country has had such a literary run, and while the socioeconomic and cultural reasons behind this are fascinating and warrant volumes, I will only say: Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Pasternak, Gogol, Pushkin. One should even included Nabokov, especially his early German and Russian works. Next, read all of the Moderns. The world has never seen such a gathering as Paris in the '20s. Where you go from there is your choice. I preferred Hemingway because I grew up not three hundred miles from his boyhood home and because all youths essentially grasp Nick Adams. There's a literary line that, uniquely American in style, can be traced from Hemingway to Carver until the Iowa Workshop finally killed it off. And I'm not just saying this because I was fired from that program after teaching there for only three weeks.

Fraud? Yes, incidentally, people have accused me of imitating both Jim Harrison and Garrison Keillor. Also Rick Bass. In truth, all three are better writers than I, though Mr. Bass's first book, "The Watch," came out long after my last good novel was published. As for the other two, we are all largeish northerners with rural roots. There are obvious differences. I consider Mr. Harrison a dear friend and a better fisherman. I know Mr. Keillor only through radio, and I thank him for his work. If I've stolen anything, my only defense is lack of imagination and what Mr. Costello concedes: "Any good artist is both a thief and a magpie."

Origins of the species? My mother was born and raised in Berlin. Being Catholic and Jewish, her family fled before the war for obvious reasons. My father was likewise part German, and part rural Mississippi, hailing from Chicago. They met at a dance where he was the drummer in a polka band. They settled down on a dairy farm, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Music? Billie Holiday first stirred me. I initially thought there was an angel trapped inside the little transistor radio I clutched up in the hayloft as a little boy; it was the only place on the farm where I could receive the jazz station from Milwaukee. I was obsessed with her for some time. When I hit puberty, the sound of her voice alone could cause the ermine to stir in his warren...still the only woman who has been able to accomplish this feat through singing (discounting those saucy female hip hop artists). Ella Fitzgerald is glorious. Louis Armstrong. The flute concertos of Frederick the Great. The usual Germans and Austrians, including the Strausses, Beethoven, Mozart, even Wagner. More recently: Townes Van Zandt, Johnny Cash's later albums, John Prine, Bonnie Rait, Steve Earle. All the blues musicians, especially Buddy and Phil Guy, Koko Taylor, Son Seals and Big Daddy Kinzie.

If I could be any other writer, who would it be? An inane question, but still somewhat intriguing, so I'll answer it as my mood allows. It would be Arundhati Roy, who has created a new genre of music with her prose. I would give all my remaining hours on the stream to write like her for three minutes. I don't know if I'd actually want to "be her" as that would rob me of the pleasure of falling in love with her, which I've done on three separate occasions. The last time was when we were co-panelists at an anti-war roundtable, and I was so smitten that I walked for three hours through Central Park in driving sleet, contracting viral pneumonia. I eagerly await her second novel, which is long overdue.

Fishing? I actually prefer brookies to brown trout. I love fishing the clear streams of my home country where the fish are so skittish that a misplaced #22 midge on 2-weight line can clear a quarter-mile stretch. I don't mind those one-fish days at all. The roiling waters of the west are fine, but I'll as soon fish for bass, walleye or northern pike with a crank bait. In my newest "home waters" they tell me that a tan fabrication known as a "woolly bugger" is the best fly, but I've had no luck. I'd sooner use my midge rod for panfish. All trout, however, are gorgeous creatures, the fly being the best way to take them. But I'm no snob: I'll fish with a worm and bobber from a dock if it suits me.

Are any writing programs worthwhile? Sure. My good friend Ed Doctorow runs one of the best at NYU. Also, Columbia College (Chicago), which another friend, the longtime fiction editor of The Atlantic Monthly, has called "the true home of the American story." Both are urban institutions, and the non-homogeneous nature of the studentry surely amplifies the rare ability of the instructors.

Food for fiction? Ah, the most intrepid question of all. My favorite meal is always my most recent excellent dining experience. It depends, too, on season. Braised lamb. Steamed asparagus. Sauteed oyster mushrooms (no more than 1 day from harvest). Pair this with a quality Coates du Rhone of your choice, or even a grassy Sauvegnon Blanc. I've also had luck with this fall table: crostini with tomatoes and olive oil (extra, extra), risotto con fungi al porcini, roasted chingili (Italian wild pig). This would be paired with a good Brolio or Montalpulciano (or even Montalcino). For dessert, apple slices with fresh lime-raspberry glaze and a glass of espirito santo.

A dryad

2005-11-05T05:35:00.000-08:00

Last night I awoke in a sweat, my head filled with a pale vision from my youth.

As a youngster I'd strip and swim upsidedown, underwater and upstream with my eyes open gazing at the willows and surrounding hills. The water in Black Earth Creek was so cold, clear and lazy that staring through it sharpened rather than distorted the landscape. When I tired of fighting the current, I'd surface and float on my back, the current carrying me to my point of ingress.

One September afternoon, as I worked upstream and studied the helicopter pattern of falling leaves from streamside trees, a pale shadow suddenly eclipsed the view. I felt like an ancient Phoenician staring down at a mer-creature, only in reverse. (Maybe this was the beginning to my affinity with the trout, this experience being so similar to their encounter with an osprey or heron looming from the bank.)

Startled, I bumped my head on a rock and surfaced, sputtering. Standing on the shore was a girl. She was whiter than new snow and wore her long yellow hair like a shawl. She had blue eyes, and she covered a giggle with thin fingers. I realized that I now stood mid-thigh in the stream, and my equipment was shriveled from the frigid water like discolored prunes. I sidestepped into a chestdeep trouthole, and tried to recover some dignity. She said that I was the strangest fish she'd ever seen, and I blushed purple and stammered, so captivated by her cool, white radiance.

The rest is a story for another time, but Gerda Tannhauser and I grew fast friends. She soon became something of an obsession, and though we often swam naked together in Black Earth Creek without so much as a twitch from the old ermine, I lusted after her, lying awake at night with my desire clenched in my fist like a hatchet handle. We kissed, petted, but no more than that because later that year she died in a car accident along with her whole family. Their father had taken them to the theatre in Madison, a drive of nearly three hours. On the return trip, a log fallen from a skidder parked alongside the road forced him to swerve into a stand of white pine. They were seven miles from home.

It was Gerda who stared at me this morning in the half-light between sleep and wakefulness, looming over me like the pale apparition I'd seen from the river all those years ago. I recalled her giggle, and I suddenly realized that were I to swim naked in Black Earth Creek now I'd be likely mistaken for a manatee. The mirth faded, replaced with a longing for all the women I've loved and lost, including Gerda and my three ex-wives; all of them had been perfect companions. It's hard to live life with so many severed limbs. I couldn't sleep, so I went to the kitchen and downed four glasses of Chinese plumb wine, music from a student house party pulsing at the edge of my hearing. I finally fell asleep with my head on the table, awaking a few hours later with a pinch in my neck, staring at a puddle of drool. I'm resigned to being haunted for the balance of the week, if not longer.

First admonishment

2005-11-03T05:36:00.000-08:00

Nothing so gives away the overeager novice, and annoys seasoned writers more, than talking about your fictional characters as if they're real people. This is particularly bad anywhere outside the confines of the classroom. I took a pair of students to a roadhouse after Tuesday's class, and one girl said, upon entering, "Callie and Hoss would love this kind of place...they met in a bar, you know, though I haven't written that scene yet..."

She's a decent writer, but that moronic comment has just cost her a whole letter grade.

Brown Trout as "Black Walt Whitman"

2005-11-02T05:34:00.000-08:00

A fellow writing instructor recently said over drinks, in reference to my beard and complexion, "You look like a Black Walt Whitman."

So browbeaten has he been by political correctness that he immediately blushed and stammered trying to retract his statement, but I came to his rescue by laughing and then reciting the "grass, the uncombed hair of graves" passage from Leaves of Grass in a Brer Rabbit accent. Nothing so diffuses embarrassment over an accidental racial faux pas like blatant racism. In hindsight, though, I should have made him squirm.

I don't think of myself as African American, owing only 25% of my lineage to that demographic, but still I suppose most people see me and consider me at least as "black" as Colin Powell. In truth I can grow a mean afro. It's just that growing up in the Great White North, where I was a novelty being the only swarthy kid outside the natives (who kept to their reservation), gave me an appreciation of my unique condition partnered with a complete lack of cultural contact with the greater African American community. There are times, obviously, when I take great pride in my "dark quarter." I love being the only "black" trout fisherman on the stream. I love to say, for example: "My people are responsible for the only good and unique cultural qualities to come out of this nation: Creole cooking, jazz, rock 'n roll, blues, country (banjo), gospel, hip hop, Southern fried everything, Southern accents, &c, &c, &c." This sort of statement always comes off as patronizing and even loony when coming from a "white" person. I rarely mention that I'm three-quarters German Oom-Pah and only one-fourth Delta Blues, but who cares? I've got the color, and I use it as I am able.

Am I a black Walt Whitman? Dunno. I have published a few volumes of verse. But two of my wives were lily-white, and my daughters have been known to sunbathe to "get more color;" they look more Italian than anything. I suppose I'm light-brown with a touch of caramel.

My man Friday

2005-11-02T04:32:00.000-08:00

Three signs that the Armageddon is upon us: our nation is lead by an aristocratic chimpanzee; the snows of Kilimanjaro have melted; I now have a new teaching assistant.

Of course, he is not the savory coed for whom I had hoped.

I at first thought that Nawaz was on the wrong floor when he showed up at my office door. After all, the elevator is rickety and unreliable. I saw his swarthy complexion, the shining part in his hair, the greasy smudge of his mustache; I knew right off he wasn't a writing student. Being brown myself, I'm acutely aware of how much darker I am that the rest of the writing program faculty and students; the complexion of your typical state university MFA student springs from somewhere between St. Paul, Minnesota and Fargo, North Dakota.

My director had capitulated after my incessant grumbling and a few heated exchanges even though none of the other writing faculty has a teaching assistant. Our department is poorly funded as it's a relatively new program. What's more, no fiction writing alums go on to make a living wage, let alone enough to give charitably to their alma mater. But to her credit, the director turned the paperwork over to the student employment office. I did my best to skew the job description toward the feminine, as my main motivation for the position is to fill my office with what my blue collar friends refer to as "sweater meat." I specifically requested a strong writer with influences ranging from Jane Austen to Jane Hamilton, excellent penmanship, theatre or drama experience and a soprano singing voice. I also added a maximum weight of 120 lbs, though I left the reason for this requirement blank as I couldn't think of any way to justify it.

What I got was Nawaz.

I was, of course, livid.

This Pakistani architectural student does have excellent penmanship. And despite his six-foot frame, the gawky fellow probably meets my weight requirement. His English is passable once you get past the accent, but when I asked him who his favorite writers were he rattled off a list of engineering academics.

Prof. B. Trout: Tell me Nawaz, do you read fiction?

Nawaz: Feek-shone?

B.Trout: Heavens!

I tried to frogmarch him out of the office, but he clung to my desk and verged on tears as he begged me to keep the job. It turns out he was short on funds and was unwilling to write to his father in Islamabad, despite the man's wealth, because the extra money always came with unreasonable conditions and browbeating.

Nawaz: (visibly sweating) I can't go to my father...I would be shamed! Pleeeeze! Professor Trout, I need this work!

BT: How can you grade fiction when you don't even know what it is?

Nawaz, because of the terms of his student visa, cannot work outside the university. It being so late in the semester means that, if sent back, he will not find work until after the winter break. I took pity on his emaciation and finally resigned myself to not having a proper teaching assistant with which to decorate my office this semester.

BT: Okay, you've got the job. The rules: show up only on payday and I'll sign your time sheet.

Nawaz: But that would not be honorable. I will stay the required hours.

BT: Christ!

And so he sat on a stool by my window, grinning, reminding me of one of those dark and lanky Etruscan sculptures I saw in Volterra at last summer's workshop. I sat fuming, smoking my pipe despite the building's uncivilized ban on fumer. Finally, just for kicks, I tossed Nawaz a stack of papers and a red pen.

Nawaz: What shall I do?

BT: Grade these. Pick a letter...A, B or C. Write it at top. Circle a few words at random and place either an exclamation point or a question mark in the margin near each one. Scratch a few notes on the last page.

Nawaz: What sort of notes?

BT: Use your imagination. It's a fiction class.

Nawaz: Is this honorable?

B. Trout: It's an exercise (lie). I'm trying to teach them (another lie) to look at their work from a different, random perspective.

Despite my crushed hopes and my frustration at not having a female assistant, the mischievous devil on my shoulder looks forward to the outcome of Nawaz's grading efforts. After all, my students have been demanding more feedback. For my part, I've begun to put together a meal plan that will properly fill out this Pakistani skeleton. Nawaz is Muslim, albeit upper-class and secular, but I'm still careful to avoid pork. The South Asian section of my food library is robust, and I'm excited because I haven't put it to use in some time.

Pork loin for Mr. Clayhouse

2005-11-01T05:26:00.000-08:00

Had an experience today to make this entire writing school concept seem less inane.

A student, a laconic, tallish, thirtyish, square-jawed fellow, asked this lucid question after class: what should a writer eat? Like anyone who has toured the MFA reading circuit in order to whore up a few bucks for poorly bound reprints of novels long past their relevance, I hate the standard post-reading, eager-young-writer questions: when is the best time to write? is it better to write longhand or on a keyboard? do you recommend using an outline (Lord please deliver me)? do you have any advice for aspiring writers, &c, &c, &c.

Ah, but what a writer should eat...this is a question of literary merit.

Billy Clayhouse, the student in question, is an Okie with Kiowa roots. Unlike that playacting aristocrat that is Our Leader, Clayhouse has the bearing of a true cowboy. His western jeans, his crewcut and his pearl button shirts are not affectations. He hasn't said two words in class until now, except to read from his work, and then his voice is steady and clipped, like his prose. In his own way, he often tops Miss Puppycute when it comes to pure style, his only drawback being the fact that none of his work, up to this point, has featured any human beings. I'm all for dogs and cats as characters in narrative, but it's people that make fiction pulse. Clayhouse has featured an owl, a coyote, prairie chickens, a covey of quail, etc. But then, to the traditional Kiowa, animals are people and vice versa.

In any case, we spoke at length about the usual reduction sauces and the importance of restraint in a marinade. I recommended "Dad's Own Cookbook," which Harrison, the pre-eminent foodie, touts as essential for anyone starting from scratch. I've no doubt Clayhouse could do justice to a rabbit spitted over a campfire, but his skills are otherwise fairly raw. He mentioned macaroni and cheese as a staple, which caused me to shudder. I realized, then, that this was no pampered trustfunder or the recipient of suburban largess...this was a fellow working his ass off (golf course grounds crew) in order to eke his way through, of all things, an MFA program.

In any event, I shared a very simple grill recipe featuring pork loin ribs marinated in olive oil (extra, extra), fresh lime, orange peel and black pepper, then rolled in dried rosemary and seared before a gentle, slow grilling. Serve with steamed carrots (lime butter sauce) and some Ojibway rice. We strolled to my apartment where I bestowed on him a bottle of San Giminagno white, which I gave him permission to refrigerate, this being appropriate only for a novice.

For the first time in my playacting at professor, I feel as if I've made strides with a student.

Samhain and the Son of Indictment Day

2005-10-31T05:21:00.000-08:00

God, they never stop. Drooly toddlers in fluffy rat costumes have ceased, but they've been replaced by coeds reacquainting themselves with the child they were last week. Ah, youth, or so said Conrad in that wonderful story. A hungover bastard would turn off the lights and refuse to answer the door. I'm hungover, but no bastard. Still, I never purchase putrid supermarket candy...the stuff is proof that a good marketing plan can sell anything. A cartoon character and a fancy wrapper, combined with enough air time on the tee vee, and the kiddies could be munching on turds cooked up by Sammy, my six-toed cat.

Thankfully this is a holiday of dim lighting. I took whiskey last night at a student bar. It wasn't pretty. And then the tricky treaters arrived. I gave one puzzled kid a new jar of pink mustard purchased in Dijon in my dear Bourgogne. I wept when I realized he would likely toss it in a trash bin, but what is one to do? They come asking for gifts...and such is all I have to give. Another child in a pathetic plastic costume, mask affixed by a green rubber band, received my pity and a five-dollar package of beef jerky purchased from a gas station in a moment of weakness. I gave away a brand-new Waterford pen from a visiting writer appearance (what they were doing giving a capitalist instrument to an artist at a public institution confounds me still), a new package ofAAA batteries, a sketchbook and six drafting pencils, wine charms that can double as earrings, a can of Vienna sausages (another weak moment), a wax-sealed wedge of Gruyere cheese and a new bottle of Thai peanut sauce. The last visitors were a pair of coeds in togas dressed as, I assume, my favorites among those daughters of Zeus: Melpomene and Polyhymnia. They both had straightish, longish, blondish hair, but made up for it by exposing a healthy expanse of stippled, goosefleshed legs, it being a chilly, rainy evening as one expects on this holiday. As a reward, I droped them each a 375 ml bottle of Nobile Montalpulciano that I'd purchased for a recent flight home from Pisa. The only reason I still had them was because I ended up sleeping the whole flight. Each seat on the plane had one of those horrendous television screens on the back of the headrest, and it was all I could do to squeeze my eyes shut against that horror. Why must that great American plauge of the culture-sucking labotomy machine infest even the seatbacks of trans-Atlantic flights? No matter, the girls appreciated the wine, though I doubted either owned a corkscrew (linger, dears, Professor Trout will oblige, but alas...).

In any event, I'm thankful today that I don't teach class on Mondays because I enjoy this holiday and I've a hangover to nurse.

So back to the story of my proseful and theme-challenged student, Miss Elizabeth Lowell, that cuddly little cocker spaniel--who can't seem to reach beyond that mortared cell of fundamentalist thought in which her kin imprisonder her--for a topic for her fiction. I will continue our dialog where we left off:

Spanielpuppy: It's just that I'm a little concerned. I mean, it's hard, being in college, for someone who believes the way that I do.

Trout: Of course it is.

Lowell: I just hope that it doesn't affect my grade.

Trout: Why should it?

Lowell: You said some pretty harsh things about Republicans.

Trout: True. Though if it makes you feel any better, Democrats are little better...they're simply worthless while Republicans possess a mendacious incompetence.

Lowell: But...it's just that I'm not afraid to admit I believe in...a Culture. Of. Life. (sic), and I don't want you to hold that against me. I want my work to stand on its own.

Trout: (covers mouth to suppress a gag) Ms. Lowell...you're a veryfine writer.

Lowell: I am (cheeks pinkening)?

Trout: Of course you are. You're one of the best pure wordsmiths I've got.

Cutiepup: (smiles)

Trout: It's just that...I think you're forcing things a little.

Alittlelesscute: (frowns) Forcing?

Trout: Yes...in particular, the theme in your work...

Lowell: See! I knew it would come down to this.

Prof. Trout: It's coming down to nothing...

Lowell: Yes...you have a problem with my theme.

Trout: Well, yes I do. But not on ideological grounds (lie). It's just that the theme is forced. You're starting out every assignment with...abortion, or rather anti-abortion, or the "culture of life" or whatever...in mind. I'd prefer that you put the story first. Discard all of the white noise in the background.

Lowell: Story?

Trout: Yes...that's the important thing. You have lovely instincts. For example...the career woman character of yours, on the park bench...tough as nails, a mannish cut to her skirtsuit, but fire-red fingernails. She's had a passion for Modigliani since she was a girleen, but recognized her lack of artistic talent early and sought a degree in pharma, then law school. She remembers childhood summers on the Iowa farm fondly but couldn't imagine living anywhere but Manhattan. She's a lovely creation.

Lowell: (cautious) Thank you.

Trout: But then what happens...as she sits on the park bench, she spots the other woman...

Lowell: With the children...

Trout: Right...West Indian, shiny black braids bursting out of her floral bandana--nice touch, by the way--and towing two mulatto bambinis. Fire-red Nails looks at West Indian Nanny with the kiddies, and what does she feel?

Lowell: Regret.

Trout: Right. Regret for her abortion. Regret for her career and her childlessness. Regret that she gave up the baby because becoming pregnant during her toughest semester at Fordham was just bad timing...

Lowell: I was just trying to show...

Trout: I know what you were trying to show. But you were trying to force a trite Mormon Film Festival plot onto some vivid, veryfinewriting. You gave up on the story.

Lowell: But...

Trout: But, nothing. The story was in the fire-red nails. It was in the flower-print babushka. It was the Iowa farm girl and the West Indian nanny. That's the story. It's the characters you draw. It's the details. Its the language you use. The story is not about some abortion that happened off-stage fifteen years ago.

Lowell: It is.

Trout: (grows angry) No, no, no. Your rushing. You're forcing. You're not following the story. Writing begets story. Theme does not beget story. Story should come first. You're starting off writing fiction, and your ending up writing brochures for Jerry Falwell.

Lowell: (bites lip, folds arms [squeezing her puppycutebreasts], and closes herself off) So what do I have to do to get an 'A' in this class?

Trout: (sigh, scratch of the beard) Drop the theme. Not that theme simply because it is right-wing lunacy and I still happen to believe in those silly little enlightenment notions from the likes of Jefferson and Old Fritz. Your subject is your own. But it has to follow the story. The story that you are writing, and not the youth pastor at your childhood church. You are a fabulous prose writer, Ms. Lowell...

-----

But I lost her. She stopped listening to me. This was the first thing that I've said in the classroom, incidentally, that I actually believe, and she heard none of it. I figure I've got half a semster to win her over, but that would require dismantling twenty-four years of spiritual torment. I really don't care if she is pro-life...that's lovely...but if she can't see her own stories, how does she ever expect to be a writer? How do any of them? No matter. She demanded to know her grade and I scratched my chin and stared at the ceiling for a moment, pretending that I actually keep a record of such things, and then blurted out: "You're getting a low A, borderline B. You're doing fine. One of the best in class." This statement was unfounded. I grade arbitrarily. Since I've published a dozen books over the years, my colleagues rarely question me. If someone actually cares enough to argue a grade, I usually give it to them after asking them to perform some obscure task. I once asked a student to cook a Tuscan braised lamb dish that takes several hours...ostensibly to teach her the rewards of slowing down her process, but actually because I was hungry. I was hands-off and professional, though I still fantasize about her wearing my chef's apron and not much else.

In any case, I fear Ms. Lowell will tighten up even further. If she's fretting about a grade and actually caring what I think, then she'll lose that music she's discovered in her prose. This is the crux of the reason that all writing classes are pretty much destined to fail. You can't please a teacher, an institution or a process.

Fuckallofit. In any case, so hath passed another Halloween.

Indictment Day

2005-10-27T05:19:00.000-07:00

And so in celebration of what shall henceforth be known as Indictment Day, I sent my students home early. The grad students, no longer accustomed to snow days, left reluctantly, grumbling some inanity concerning the cost of tuition. I sympathize, but then the privatization of our public universities is not my responsibility. Our particular state institution is 80 percent privately funded, and the students pay a ridiculous amount to attend this middle-class Harvard.

Enough digression.

To celebrate the good work of mister Fitzgerald, I sent the kiddies home with a modest assignment reading seventy pages from my second book. I initially hadn't planned on using my own work in the curriculum, but the department director insisted.

Director: The students may not be acquainted with your work, and reading it might energize your class.

Trout: But it will make me feel like an asshole. "Okay kiddies, today we will be reading...me! Whee!"

Director: I think you're being a little modest (grimace, aboutface, walkaway).

Trout: (muttering) Dearest director, just because you've assigned your petite assessment of Hawthorn's lesser (sic) works to your students, don't expect the Trout to follow suit.

But then I've had my fifteen seconds. In any case, after the dismissal, one pert little writerette lingered near my lectern. Buttonnosed. Tightcurled. Frecklefaced. You might call her cute if her creator had just eased up on the spaniel puppy features. But still, for a moment, I thought that I'd finally found my new teaching assistant.

Then she spoke:

Puppygirl: Uhm...Mr. Trout

Trout: Yes, m'dear?

Cutiepup: May I ask...

Trout: But of course, Love.

Puppypup: Indictment day...

Trout: No worries, Love, we'll have a makeup (makeout?) session at some point. I just feel a lump (hollow echo) on the Warmonkey's skull is an event worth celebrating...

Cutiecutiecutie: You're a liberal?

Troutietrout: Why, yes!

Puppygirl: But my stories...

Trout: Yes?

Puppygirlie: Umm...I'm Lowell...Elizabeth Lowell...

Trout: Ah yes... (suddenly remembering)

Allow me to intrude here. A few background notes are needed to fuel the drama. Miss Lowell is a very fine writer. She's close to the best in the class, though that's not saying much. Still, she has a handle on this whole prose thing. She's a little cute (imagine) with her phrasing, but somehow it works. For example...she'll engage in Fun With Capitals on occasion. Also Fun. With. Punctuation. And then there's the runtogetherwords that someyoungauthors are sofondofoverusing when they're tryingtobetricky. But for some reason, in the case of miss Lowellypuppy, it works. She hits her sentences in stride, and the tricks always pay a bigger role in her stories. She's "inventing her own language," as a critic might say. And her invented language reinforces her theme.

But that's the problem.

The theme in all of Miss Lowell's assignments to date has been that of strident antiabortion polemic. Strident. Antiabortion. Polemic. Stridentantiabortionpolemic. Thus her concern. She had finally realized, as a result of Indictment Day, that her fat, sensualist, bearded, drunken, lefty, socialist, communist, anticapitalist collegeprofessorvisitingwriter was...m'gosh...a liberal. Liberal! And so, she now worried that her fundamentalist mindlessness might endanger her grade.

To be continued...

Bullworkshit

2005-10-27T05:09:00.000-07:00

Bimonthly posts are less than I had hoped, but then this semester has taken me by surprise. No matter as I don't imagine there to be much of an audience. In any case, I plan to write more even though I'm not used to this steady employ, and the amount of work required to wade through the muck produced by a handful of literary pretenders is astounding. What's more, I still have not secured a teaching assistant.

What would he do? my department director asks.

She would grade prose, clip her nails, type memos, fetch espresso, &c, &c, &c.

How would a grad student judge prose from other grads with similar or even greater experience?

Easy, she would judge it while sitting on a stool by my office window, twirling her straight blond hair in her finger while wearing tight jeans and one of those second-skin tops cut short to expose dainty love handles in the manner that is fashionable among the youngsters these days.

A nonresponse from the director.

A shitty grin from the trout.

And so on.

But fuckitall. Until I secure an assistant I will refuse to drown in this sea of coming-of-age-sagas, childhood angst, pale apings of Nelson Algren, the venerable Faulkner, giggly softcore porn, &c. &c. Okay, maybe the giggly softcore porn is tolerable for a sensual, aging fatty like me. But the rest is intolerable. Overwork has never benefited the trout.

My first marriage ended after I invested far too much time in two novels; it was for naught as they were both roundly rejected by the critics. But I was young and ambitious, and Lila was younger and lonely...and that's a story for another post.

Incidentally, I spotted Lila at the Irish Catholic funeral of a mutual friend last year. Though I should have been mourning our lost O'Higgens, I couldn't help but notice how the black dress hugged her hips, which had filled out with age to a not-so-unpleasant circumference. I stared at her robust fanny through the weepy testimonials and by the time the priest gave the benediction I had a full-on erection. I remained in the pew until the church emptied, feigning penitence.

The funeral was, thankfully, not catered but potluck. There are plenty of gourmands among our crowd, so the dishes were even lovelier than Lila's ass, but of course, being an Irish funeral, it was beer and no wine. I keep an emergency kit in my truck, so I fetched a bottle of Vouvray and two of those screwtogether camping wineglasses. I shared the vino with my ex, though it wasn't enough to coax her back to my motel room. The tart had remarried, and I, the cuckold, returned to the church to weep and stare at the bloody Catholic Christ.

The upshot is that I've re-earned a spot on her Christmas card list. And Lila is still remarried. And I now weep inconsolably over the loss of my first (and best) wife more often now than before the funeral. And O'Higgins is still dead.

The rules

2005-08-23T05:01:00.000-07:00

1. I am at your service, gentle reader.

2. All events transpiring here comprise a real and true accounting of my time as a writer in residence in a well regarded MFA program beginning in the Autumn Semester in the fifth year of the reign of George the Younger. Said events will be transcribed for you directly by myself or tickled onto the keyboard by the lovely fingers of my yet to be assigned teaching assistant.

3. Names of most persons described in this journal will be changed for the reason of extending my current employment. Physical details will be largely accurate. Dialog will be ruthlessly and faithfully transcribed. This applies to my colleagues at the university, my friends, lovers, and all three of my ex-wives. The rare exceptions to this rule will include the first names of my daughters, which will be real. My girls are both engaged in my little project and expect it to be great fun. I will also partake in the occasional name-dropping out of weakness of character. We all love to drool the names of the celebrities we've known.

4. Locations will be described with great accuracy; only minor details such as flora, species of birds, weather patterns and other minutiae will be distorted to throw off the more intrepid readers. For legal purposes, I must remain temporarily anonymous. Though I would never claim to be known by sight, I have been widely read. Three of my nine books remain in print although it has been years since my last publication. Incidentally, therein lies the impetus for this little endeavor. My contract has me in bed with my publisher for one last volume of nonfiction. For various reasons, I do not wish to fulfill this contract. My next book, frankly, is too good and belongs elsewhere. So when I landed this residency, achieving a semblance of financial stability, my agent suggested the blog as a way of generating enough pages to close my current contract. I thought, why the hell not? After all, I've been gaining interest in the form. Thus, you are witnessing literary history: the Trout is wriggling out of his contractual obligations by writing his next book online. Now that I'm suckling at the teat of academia I can make my own rules. I expect the usual lawsuit, but so be it. My agent was a very fine lawyer in her previous life. Dolores knows her stuff. What's more she looks terrific in a crushed velvet skirt and red lipstick, and I extend my pity to the corporate lackeys they send to face her. In any event, upon completion of my residency two years hence I will print these pages, deliver them unedited to my publisher, and then take my next book--currently languishing in manuscript form--off to delight some independent press. New York, I no longer need thee! I have found employ! Noble Trout, bite thy tongue for all the nasty things thou spake concering the MFA. MFA, the Trout begs thy pardon.

5. The name of my current employer, the town in which that fine institution resides, the names of streets, neighboring cities and of our great state will all be fabricated.

6. The size and working of my reproductive equipment can and will be embellished as the situation requires, though said situations will be portrayed as accurately and as explicitly as possible. I am a portly, sensuous old man so please indulge me.

7. The opinions expressed on the chimpanzee now inhabiting the White House, plus Republicanism in general, will be the actual, verifyable opinions of the Brown Trout.

8. Any student wishing to confirm their suspicions as to Brown Trout's identity shall approach me with mincing steps and whisper in my ear the established code word: Latvia. Said student will retire to my office where (s)he will receive her (his) prize. The first winner will receive my beloved, duct-taped, paperback copy of Keats from my days at Humboldt. Further prizes will be determined at random and without considerable forethought. All winners will be sworn to secrecy and subject to requests to run errands or other menial labour. This offer is extended to all students in my current program, or those at any of the institutions I visit in official capacity for lectures or readings during my two years of residency.

9. I will never lie about food, wine or fishing.

10. Onward.