Joyce Carol Oates speaks of the narrative craft with the sort of reverence and awe that people customarily associate with the spirit world.
But writers understand. We know that inspiration, vision, mystery, morality and what Oates calls “the unique power of the unconscious,” are all invoked in the process of writing. We writers know that the creative effort, which transforms inchoate thoughts and ideas into art, is a mysterious undertaking that transcends our intellectual powers. In this sense, we writers share the same creed, the same prayer, the same incantation.
Oates maintains that the alchemy occurs when nonfiction writers employ the “aesthetic strategies of fiction” in their prose to enable our readers to see, hear, witness, as if at first hand, what the writer has witnessed. Literary nonfiction, she says, demands a heightened attention to detail and a cinematic eye to make reality come alive on the page.
The pieces selected for our literary journal, Ten Spurs, were chosen because, the judges felt, they meet the highest standards of literary nonfiction. Take George Newtown’s innovative narrative, “Voir Dire.”The authorbares his soul to the reader—through the anxiety of jury duty, the misery of prostate cancer, his adolescent fascination with young men and alligator hunts.
But you’re not gonna kill him. Th’ arrow’s already hurt ‘m too bad, son. One time`t went right through the backbone on a big gator. That’n drowned ’fore we c’d get’m up on the bank.” Mr. Haney holds his hand in both hands and asks “Miss P’cilla” if he may shoot the gator now, so that most of the twitching will be over by the time they get home. Even so, the skinning will take much of the night because the hide binds so tightly to the flesh. David struggles while Elizabeth pulls him into the house. Haney retrieves a slender-barreled gun from the cab and fires a single shot at close range. The gator’s eyes look no more disconnected in death than in life.
I realize I haven’t thought of myself for over an hour.
Newtown’s narrative shows us how to playwith “the unique power of the unconscious.”
In “After the Ceasefire,” Dorie Bargmann asks the reader, “How do you witness a war?” You’ll find out. Bargman paid attention to sensory detail—the sound of an engine, physical dust—to make her story more tactile, and thus more real to readers so they can “see, hear, witness, as if at first hand, what the writer has witnessed,” as Oates puts it.
I recall no sound except for its straining engine. I was close to the engine, not forty yards away; physical dust no longer kept it from my view, but violence hung thick in the air, and I could not distinguish tank from bulldozer. I could not. In the next minute, there would be insurrection and slaughter, or else not.
Still, selecting the ten best of the best submissions for publication in Ten Spurs was excruciating. Jurists spent almost ten hours winnowing the best pieces from piles of articles and essays covering the gamut from Hurricane Katrina disaster stories to autobiographical explorations of the iGeneration.
When the sun set on Judgment Day, our weary jurists gathered their belongings and begged me not to invite them back next year. But early the next morning, one of the jurists wrote to say how good he felt about the selections. “They’re as good or better than any ‘Best of the Best’ anthology I’ve picked up at my local bookstore,” he said.
As good as the selections were, though, I felt that with some editing and revision they could be even better. So my co-editors, Rob Kaiser, the writing coach at the San Antonio Express-News, Paul Knight, a narrative writer at the Mobile Press-Register, and I climbed inside the pieces looking for any structural flaws, clunky sentences, grammatical imperfections and other blemishes that might mar the beauty of the prose. In a few cases, we asked for major structural revisions.
It was an agonizing process, not without friction. But out of this creative effort came art. Our award-winning writers, some grumbling over the additional work, returned to their writing hermitages to call upon their muses once again. And their muses responded.
“I now feel like this difficult essay reads the way I mean it,” Erin Burdette emailed, after emerging with a rewrite of “The Obituary.” Her revised piecereveals the precious and precarious nature of the father-daughter relationship like no other essay I’ve read on the subject.
Enhancing the quality of nonfiction writing, encouraging innovation, creating a community of writers—that’s what the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Writers Conference of the Southwest is all about. Our mission, in short, is to transform craftsmen into artists. It’s our belief that if we share the same creed, believe in the same cause and maintain an unflinching faith in the narrative craft, we can create a culture of storytelling in the Southwest that will endure and flourish.
Take heart. Oates, one of America’s greatest literary figures and a speaker at the 2007 Mayborn Conference, backs the mission.
If we persevere in our art, and are not discouraged in our craft, we may find solace in the mysterious counter-world of literature that transcends artificial borders of time, place, language, national identity. Out of the solitariness of the individual this culture somehow emerges, variegated, ever-alluring, ever-evolving.
Acknowledgements
It’s important, I think, that every reader who picks up Ten Spurs knows something about its literary heritage. Ten Spurs owes its existence to the vision of Dr. Mitch Land, director of the Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism. Dr. Land had an idea: to bring together nonfiction writers and editors from the Southwest for a weekend conference focusing on the age-old art of storytelling. Wouldn’t it be nice, he thought, to hold the conference in Archer City, the actual and literary birthplace of world-renowned storyteller, Larry McMurtry. He asked me to help him realize his ambition.
For logistical reasons—Archer City is a two-hour drive from the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport—we realized that holding a conference there wasn’t practical. But, Dr. Land thought, Why not create a writers’ colony in Archer City as a component of the conference? “What better place to do that than in McMurtry’s backyard,” he told me.
Thus, in July 2005, a few weeks before the start of the inaugural Mayborn Conference, a group of students assembled at the historic Spur Hotel in Archer City. They walked across the same land and talked to the same characters that inspired Horsemen, Pass By, The Last Picture Show, Lonesome Dove and McMurtry’s other literary achievements. They filled their notebooks with scribblings about this strange place and its people, and began to see stories in a new light.
Larry’s sister, Sue, and brother, Charlie, dropped into our colony for a few lessons in literary nonfiction at the Spur. Several authors and journalists also joined our colony after hearing about our ways and customs of writing, revision and late-night workshopping.
Out of this experience grew the Mayborn Institute’s first literary nonfiction journal, Spurs of Inspiration, a collection of narratives about Archer County and its famous writer. McMurtry sent me a letter. He called Spurs of Inspiration “a very attractive production, indeed.”
Ten Spurs, therefore, traces its roots to McMurtryland. It and Spurs of Inspiration, the Mayborn Conference, the narrative nonfiction classes I teach at the Mayborn Institute and each summer in Archer City are all important parts of our literary heritage, a heritage that I treasure.
I also treasure the people who contributed their time and talent without charge to create Ten Spurs:
Judith Kulp, my production and design coordinator, demonstrated true grit by working tirelessly on Ten Spurs while her mother, Laura Baer, lay on her deathbed. Judith told me she wanted to honor her mother’s life of perseverance by continuing work on the production. Judith, you have created a lasting memorial to your mother and all of us with Ten Spurs, a dazzling journal of literary art.
Martha Stroud, my graphic artist, didn’t know how to say no, thank God. She patiently created by hand drawing after drawing, image after image, until Judith and I felt she had it “just right.” If there’s a more talented graphic artist in America, I haven’t met him or her. Martha, in you, Hearst Newspapers has a precious gift.
Paul Knight, my assistant editor, was simply indispensable. After putting in a full day writing narratives for his newspaper in Mobile, Alabama. Paul combed through every sentence of Ten Spurs to make sure the pieces were cleansed of any grammatical or stylistic flaws. Paul was my co-editor in Spurs of Inspiration. His work on both literary journals solidified his reputation in my book as one of America’s finest young narrative writers and editors.
Rob Kaiser, my associate editor, showed me why he’s the writing coach at the San Antonio Express-News. He quickly spotted gaffes in the “best of the best” narratives, and quickly figured out how to fix them. Rob also poured himself into writing the Introduction to Ten Spurs. It’s a stirring tribute to the power of our narrative craft, a message that I hope will inspire storytellers everywhere to keep up the good fight. In Rob, as in Martha, Hearst Newspapers loaned us one of its top talents. Hearst’s support, both moral and financial, was invaluable.
Joyce Carol Oates deserves mention for her monumental book, The Faith of a Writer. It contains so much wisdom, insight and inspiration that I suspect it will sustain our narrative craft for at least another century or so.
Ten Spurs, Volume 100. Now that’s a lovely thought.
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