Lights up for the Love Junkie’s final guest blog at BookFox. What better way to bow out than by choreographing an improvisational duet with two Cali short story masters?
Lisa Teasley’s stunning debut book GLOW IN THE DARK won the 2002 Gold Pen Award for Best Short Story Collection. She also won the 2002 Pacificus Literary Foundation Best Short Story Writer award for fiction. Tod Goldberg’s knockout book SIMPLIFY was a 2006 finalist for the SCBA Award for Fiction and winner of the Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize. Both are California natives — Lisa was born and raised in Baldwin Hills and Tod in Walnut Creek and Palm Springs. Both have also written novels (see bios below the conversation), are wildly prolific, spectacularly talented, energetic and spirited both in person and on the page — and seem to have tapped into a constant creative flow. Today we’ll focus mostly on the short story.
BF: What are you doing now? Are you guys being creative again?
TG: Well, right this very instant I am writing my second BURN NOTICE novel, a short story for a new Akashic Noir anthology, making a trade in my fantasy baseball league and pondering whether or not I actually know most of the people I am Facebook friends with…and if any of them would drive me to the airport.
LT: I’m definitely working on one too many things: a historical novel on the West Indians in Panama, based on my grandmother’s story; a novel on a 13 year old Mescalero Apache cowboy in New Mexico; and finishing up a screenplay I’m co-writing with the director, who is working on the documentary of the same subject. Also, since the painter Carol Es has been working on self-portraits where she’s climbing black holes, I’m painting a portrait of her and her dog Buddy sitting in a white hole inside a black hole.
BF: What’s the secret to your vast output and enviable artistic flow? Is it the water?
TG: The mortgage, for one. Also, though, I have more ideas than time; though I’m a fairly slow writer until I find that elusive flow where time stops and everything just feel automatic. Stories can take me anywhere from a day to a year to write, so I don’t always feel so prolific.
LT: It could be because I come from a family of overachievers. But who could possibly compare in output to Joyce Carol Oates?
BF: Why do you write?
TG: It’s all I ever wanted to do, apart from playing professional sports, but when your last name is Goldberg and you have a body made primarily of kugel, professional sports teams don’t come looking for you all that often. But apart from that, I have stories to tell, things I want to investigate in the human condition, things I want to learn about myself. Writing is essential to me in figuring out the why of it all — why are we here, why do we matter, why do we fall in love and why do we mourn so deeply. I’m not a religious person, but I believe in the nature of humans and find myself endlessly fascinated by our species.
LT: Like Tod, I’m endlessly fascinated by human nature, the beauty and the hideousness and all of it in between. I never imagined doing anything else (other than painting) and so ever since I could hold a pen to paper, I’ve done just that.
BF: Do you have special rituals while you write? Particular clothes you wear — or don’t — candles, incense, prayers, secret neck exercises?
TG: I’m sort of a stickler for recreating experiences when I write. So, for instance, if I had a particular song or album or artist playing while I wrote something, I might for the next week play that same thing over and over again in the background. A good example of this: There’s an excellent singer-songwriter named Jay Ray whose wife, Joy, was a student of mine several times (and who is a fine musician and an excellent writer in her own right) and one night I was listening to his song “Palm Springs” (which happens to be where I live, or near to where I live, and where I spent a good part of my youth) and this entire story sort of formed in my head while I was listening to it. And so I wrote a story called “Palm Springs” that was inspired deeply by the mood he put me in. But now whenever I play that song just for enjoyment, my wife screams “You played that song for a month straight! Aren’t you sick of it yet!”
I also need to have certain toys around. I have a snow globe of the Hotel Del in San Diego that a friend gave me that I depend on way too much. I like having one of my two dogs asleep behind me, which reminds me I’m not actually the dreadful people I often write about. I need a window to stare out of. Annoying neighbors to watch as they do annoying things on the street. And coffee. I need to know that if I want it, it’s there, even if I don’t ever drink it.
LT: I need a ritual. Maybe that would give me better focus. I used to chew tobacco at the computer for years, but I quit after my dentist put the scare to me. There have been a few stories and one novel which had soundtracks, but for the last 8 years I’ve worked best with my backyard view of the canyon.
BF: Someone said the short story form was better suited to modern life. Is this true?
TG: In theory, sure. People want their media in iPodable bites these days, so it would reason that they’d love stories. But the truth is that I think those people who do read, want that intensive experience literature provides.
LT: Blogging and memoir seem better suited to modern life. Readers I know consume more novels than stories, and I meet more people who have read my novels than my stories, so I think literature lovers take the time for their preferred form, no matter when and how.
BF: What’s your favorite short story?
TG: I have hundreds of favorites, but I’d say “Rock Springs” by Richard Ford, “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, “Aftermath” by Mary Yukari Waters, “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” by Amy Hempel, “Passion” by Alice Munro, “The Prophet from Jupiter” by Tony Earley and “First, Body” by Melanie Rae Thon are some the I return to more frequently than others.
LT: Even if Tod hadn’t mentioned it I’d definitely have thought of Amy Hempel’s “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried”– I’m into Yukio Mishima’s stories, as well, I get into Hempel’s precision and Mishima’s coldness, but there are so many stories, so many writers I adore for so many particulars, I go back to a master like Chekhov for his humor, but I go to all of them, all of my favorites for their empathy.
BF: Did you ever read a short story that had a big impact?
TG: The first short story that really hit me as a reader and as a person who, at the time, only wanted to be a writer, was “Rock Springs”. I read that as a sophomore in college and it was like someone hit me in the face. I knew I wanted to write, but at the time I think most everything I put on paper was some kind of Stephen King homage. Ford, in that one story, taught me more than I’d ever learned in school about character, about dialog, about how setting transforms people, about how man cannot walk away from the consequences of his action. For me it was the first story that truly hit me emotionally. A similar thing had happened years before while reading Of Mice and Men, but that was about understanding the power of literature as a form. “Rock Springs” was what made me understand it as a writer.
LT: I love reading stories when waiting in the car for my daughter and partner who are lollygagging in a store– the longer they take the better– and I can go to the deepest of impact to the highest of epiphany when sitting in that kind of confined space forced to travel through words. I always have a collection of stories in my car or his truck, an anthology or journal like Steve Erickson’s Black Clock, and it’s not so much about who wrote the story, or what the story is about, so much as it is about my connecting with the moment of the writer’s passion and understanding of truth in the narrative. This happens often, which is why I’ve been a bookworm since I was 5.
BF: What does it take to write a short story?
TG: It takes a willingness to find that scary place. To examine what you’ve avoided. To write something so powerful that it carries the weight in 3 or 4 or 5K words what an entire novel does in 100K words. I think the best stories do that — the best example for me in this case would be Amy Hempel. Her stories are these tiny things, but each is pared down to it’s core, it’s emotional raw point, so that every word means something. That’s what great short fiction does: it’s spares no space while it breaks your heart.
LT: I couldn’t say this any better than Tod has here or Hempel does anywhere. It’s all about taking the risk. If the writer has not gone to a place of extreme discomfort at the very least, then what is the journey for and why would I want to take it with him or her? I know I tend to be more attracted to extremes since I’ll write from the point of view of anyone from a pedophile to a murderer, but that is by no means necessary. It’s about finding the ultimate place of authorial non-judgment, no matter the story’s subject matter or characters, and that can only come with catharsis, fast or slow.
BF: How do you write a collection?
TG: I have no idea. In my case with SIMPLIFY, I can see that I was working through certain topics over the course of several years (the collection spans about a decade of my writing life, from about 1996 to 2005) and that there are stories that later became the basis for things I did in my novels, too. But there wasn’t a specific plan in place. But it seems like I am obsessed with ideas of identity, and about the failure of families, and about loss. And those are things I think plenty of people write about. In my new collection, which I’m putting the finishing touches on now, I recognize again some of my obsessions with place and identity and about the way we are defined by both has crept into my work. But I approach each story singularly.
LT: As Tod mentioned place and identity, GLOW IN THE DARK was arranged by setting by the hardcover publisher, Scott Davis at Cune Press. It goes from New York to L.A. to N. California to Mexico to Paris. The paperback is published by Bloomsbury, my current publisher, I should mention. But I hadn’t noticed before Scott that my stories were as concerned with the terrain’s psyche as the human’s, so I welcomed that categorization — if one could ever welcome categorization. I haven’t yet put together a second collection, but I suppose I would need to think along these lines of theme, which I never do. All I know is that I have folders full of stories that may or may not be related.
BF: Do people buy short story collections?
TG: I don’t think they are everyone’s first choice. They are the first choice of writing students frequently, and of writing programs, but it’s rare that you sit down next to someone on a plane and they’re reading, you know, Yes, Yes Cherries by Mary Otis, but they probably should be.
LT: I agree with Tod, it’s the first choice of writing students and writing programs, but again the fiction readers I know and meet have shelves, desks and nightstands stacked with novels, and I’m grateful for all of the above.
BF: How important is writing to you?
TG: Apart from my wife Wendy and my health, I’d say it’s the most important thing there is to me.
LT: I am compelled to write, it is the way I communicate best, other than loving, but for that matter, writing is really a way of loving too.
BF: You guys are both pretty intense in your stories. Yet Tod, you’re always laughing, joking, causing a ruckus — and Lisa you’re always smiling and glowing and glam-stylish and you’re known as Zen – what’s up with the dark-hearted stories?
TG: Who I am and what I write about are pretty much diametrically opposed. The simple truth is that I find it hard to write funny stories, that I am drawn to the darker, more emotional side of things in my writing. Perhaps it’s also an issue of how write: I don’t believe in the old “write what you know” adage. I believe in writing what I don’t know, what troubles me, what makes me afraid, what I want to discover.
LT: The dark-hearted interests me most. And in order to avoid creating that kind of drama in my own life and to those closest to me, I live it out in the stories, leaving me free to smile and bubble it up. I have more fun that way!
BF: Why is there so much death in both your stories?
TG: People die and I am, for better or worse, attracted to the fallout of that. I think I’d write that sort of thing if I lived in Kansas, too. The other aspect is that I am greatly influenced by crime fiction — I was weaned on it as a kid and find that a lot of my fiction, novels or stories, contains elements of noir, whether intentional or not. So I think I will always bridge that violent side of life.
LT: Eternal being aside, how can there be life without death?
BF: Tod, your prose in short stories has been called a vanilla milkshake spiked with grain alcohol. Does that about sum it up? Lisa, how would you describe your short story prose?
TG: Yeah, I’ve always liked that blurb!
LT: How do you describe yourself? I could never come up with a good personal ad.
BF: Do you teach the short story?
TG: I do, specifically because in the workshop experience it’s the best way to look at several different forms in a short space, but also because it’s a vibrant medium to teach students how to write, how to take chances, how to fuck up and not feel like they’ve lost a year of their life. A novel is a beast. A story is, too, but it’s a best that you can tame or kick out the door in pretty short order if need be.
LT: I taught the short story at Cal Arts last spring semester and will be there this fall.
BF: What’s the best opening line for a short story?
TG: “All of this that I’m about to tell happened when I was only fifteen years old, in 1959, the year my parents were divorced, the year when my father killed a man and went to prison for it, the year I left home and school, told a lie about my age to fool the Army, and then did not come back.” Richard Ford.
LT: I can tell you the one I got in trouble with my dad for: “A sincere fuck.”
BF: What’s your favorite snack?
TG: Brown Sugar Pop Tarts. It’s the perfect meal.
LT: Chips or chocolate.
BF: Are short stories like literary snacks?
TG: No, they are more like hot fudge sundaes — you could probably read them every day, but they might not fill you up sufficiently.
LT: I think the best can deliver a full meal.
BF: Who is your ideal reader?
TG: People who find Parade Magazine just slightly too intellectual.
LT: Why you and Tod, of course. I’m honored and thrilled to be here with you.
BF: What tips would you give other writers?
TG: The only tip I know to give is the easiest: Read everything.
LT: To thine own self be true.
Tod Goldberg is the author of the novels Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Fake Liar Cheat &, this August, Burn Notice: The Fix, the first in a new series based on the USA series Burn Notice. His short story collection Simplify was a 2006 finalist for the Southern California Independent Bookseller’s Association Prize in Literature and winner of the Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize. His short fiction and nonfiction have been widely anthologized, including recent appearances in Las Vegas Noir and Off The Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings, And Everything In Between, and has twice received Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize. A three time winner of the NPA Prize in journalism, Tod’s criticism frequently appears in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Las Vegas CityLife and E!, as well as numerous other publications. Tod Goldberg lives in La Quinta, CA , with his wife the writer Wendy Duren, and is currently a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing in he MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at UC-Riverside’s Palm Desert campus.
Lisa Teasley is the author of acclaimed novels HEAT SIGNATURE and DIVE, and the award-winning story collection, GLOW IN THE DARK. Teasley’s awards include: Gold Pen, Pacificus Foundation, May Merrill Miller, and National Society of Arts & Letters. Lisa Teasley is writer and presenter of the BBC Television documentary “High School Prom.”. Teasley’s work has been much anthologized, appearing in publications such as the Christian Science Monitor, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times magazine, and National Public Radio. Her homepage is: www.lisateasley.com
Meanwhile, I want to thank John Fox for having me as guest blogger, and all of you for reading and supporting my stint here. If you want to keep in touch, please contact me at rachel@rachelresnick.com about book events or Writers On Fire teaching and coaching. I am currently revamping www.rachelresnick.com to feature the forthcoming book, LOVE JUNKIE: A MEMOIR. In the near future, I plan to launch a blog called Dear Love Junkie, inspired by my time here. I will also launch a joint blog this fall called Loose Girls and Love Junkies with fellow writer Kerry Cohen, author of the current smash book, LOOSE GIRL: A MEMOIR OF PROMISCUITY. This joint blog will feature a forum where we will invite authors and experts in love, sex, relationship and fantasy addiction to come and discuss the topic. We will welcome frank open talk about a subject that has long been kept under wraps. LOVE JUNKIE: A MEMOIR will be released Novemeber 11th. I hope you will all support its birth in the world. I also have a blog at Amazon.com, so if you click on the LOVE JUNKIE page you’ll find it. Check www.writersonfire.com for upcoming workshops, retreats, coaching and classes. The next offering is a one-day writing workshop bootcamp in Malibu on July 27th. Thank you again for welcoming me as a guest BookFox. I hope you’ve enjoyed the posts, and I hope to stay in touch. Happy writing!
Signing off as your grateful temporary BookFox,
Rachel Resnick
P.S. Without question, if I were to recommend one short story to read — and especially to someone who’s never read one before — it would be Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” That story has gotten non-readers hooked on reading, and blown open the doors of perception for many a person I’ve come across. Maybe we all need some screaming peacocks in our front yards.
