1. You mentioned you are on the verge of converting to being a Cubs fan. What will it take to push you over the edge? Just kidding! J Here is my actual question: Jenn, you are nothing if not a lover of books. What do you see as the qualities necessary for a truly great book and what book is, in your view, the greatest you have ever read?
A. To push me into being a Cubs fan? A day game at Wrigley Field. If you have an “in” on tickets I would love to hear about it because I have exhausted my (frankly
limited) resources.
B. You would think that seven years of studying literature and hundreds of books would give me an answer to your question. I've read so many really great books that it is difficult to choose just one as the greatest.
In my opinion, truly great books have an extraordinary narrative voice. A voice that holds a reader enthralled, and pushes him/her to keep reading, even if the subject matter is difficult, the phrasing dense, the emotional impact more then a person can normally bear. A truly great book stays with a person for days, weeks, months, even years after finishing it and it only needs to be read once.
The greatest book I ever read to date was Gabriel García Márquez's novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold. For the skill of the author to depict multiple and conflicting voices and versions of an event through a single narrator, for its ability to hold my attention long enough to finish it in one sitting and for the fact that I still remember the plot twelve years after reading it.
2. Turning to your actual life, if I had never met you before and knew nothing about you, what one story from your life would you tell me to give me an idea of the kind of person you are and the life you have lived?
I am going to cheat a little bit and retell a story that no one read the first time around. However, I will not link back to the original post.
My sophomore year of college I had to file an assault complaint against one of my professors, a teacher who was absolutely brilliant in the classroom and a social retard outside of it.
Winter semester I was broke and buying books for my elective classes on a “as need” basis. When I discovered that the bookstore had sent back the final book, I walked over to Professor's X's office to tell him, as I knew no one in the class had the book.
When I told Professor X the book had been sent back, he began raising his voice. I backed up to put some space between the two of us and found myself against a wall, with his hands grabbing the sides of my unzipped jacket, his face looming into mine. I was petrified.
He let go of me when a colleague stepped out of a nearby office to see what was happening. I collected my wits and left the building as soon as I was able and returned to my apartment, where I recounted the incident for my roommates and asked them what they thought I should do about it.
My roommates proceeded to tell me that I should just let it go, it was not a big deal. Everyone knew that professor was a little bit eccentric.
Frustrated, I left the apartment again to take a walk around the campus. I was visibly upset when I ran into a friend who was an RA on campus. He noticed how agitated I was and convinced me to to report the incident.
The next week was a nightmare as I was sent up the chain of command. First to the RD, who was sympathetic and reassuring. Next came the Director of Housing, a sleazy, mean man who implied that I was lying to get attention and tried to twist my words. Third was the Dean of Students who asked if I had been sexually harassed and refused to let it go. Finally the Academic Dean, who was also under the impression that I had been sexually harassed.
I found this to be the most baffling part of the entire ordeal, the school administration's attempt to label the incident as sexual harassment. There was nothing sexual about what happened in the hallway. It was stupid and inappropriate, but not all sexual. Professor X would have acted the same way if it had been a male student. Because he was socially retarded.
What the administration found baffling was my refusal to drop his class. When offered the option of taking my current grade and not returning to his classroom, I refused under the grounds I had not done anything wrong. I had to finish out the class. I had to show him that I was not afraid. I had to hold him responsible for his actions.
In the end I got what I wanted, which was the opportunity to finish the class and a written apology. I also got an A. In case you think that my grade was inflated, think again. This incident took place three weeks before the end of the semester, when I still had one paper and one exam left. At my request, Professor X was not informed of my complaint until after the final grades were turned into the registrar's office.
3. Your musical favorites, as listed in your “about me” page of your blog, are quite interesting. Please give a brief narrative of your life in terms of which artist and/or song represents each phase.
The first thing you need to understand is that my musical tastes are about 10 years of out of sync with the rest of the universe. Because that is what happens when you grow up in a very small town removed from anything resembling a decent radio station.
The second thing you need to know that the biggest influence on my musical taste is my dad. Because of him I am drawn to the folk/rock/country fusion that defines most of the artists in my list.
Childhood: is full of Willie Nelson, with a sampling of show tunes thrown in for a little variety. My father was (and is) a big fan of both. One of my clearest memories of my childhood is listening to Topol sing while my dad whistled and cooked his favorite southwestern foods – chili and tacos. Willie Nelson was the music of long car rides and lazy afternoons. He was my first introduction to folk music and my first exposure to the idea that a musician could be an activist for change. It also left me with an excellent recall of show tuns, to J's annoyance when we went to a community theater performance of the King and I and I knew the words to most of the songs and sang along.
Adolescence: is a combination of Bob Dylan and Chris Whitley. As I have alluded to before, my middle and high school years were incredibly difficult. Both musicians reflected the extreme isolation and angst I felt during that period of time. Listening to Dylan and Whitley (“Poison Girl” got a lot of play during this time) made me feel like I was rebelling against something. That something being my classmates.
College / Graduate School: I bypass grunge and listen to Blue Rodeo and the Indigo Girls instead. One of the really great things about the college I attended was its proximity to the Canadian border and access to music other than the big hair heavy metal. The Indigo Girls are the first concert I attend by myself.
Loss of first love before starting graduate school and lots of Sarah McLachlan and the Indigo Girls “Mystery” to ease the pain of the breakup and dating again. Joan Osborne makes into the CD player and one boyfriend from a mercifully brief relationship takes the lyrics to “Right Hand Man” a little too personally. More Sarah McLachlan with the loss of a second love, especially “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy” (for the irony) and “I Will Remember You”.
Post Graduate into Marriage: We dance to McLachlan's cover of “Song for a Winter's Night” at our wedding. Years pass, I don't really listen to anything new, I stay with my favorite singers and songs. Edwin McCain sneaks in. I fall in lust with his “Ghosts of Jackson Square”.
Then I become sick. Debilitating headaches, job in jeopardy, have to be tested for cancer. During this time the Bee Gees, Abba and Counting Crows make into into heavy rotation. Mostly happy music, listening to it keeps me sane when the whole world feels like it is falling apart around me.
These days I listen to a lot of Cardigans, Talking Heads, the Pogues and Kristy MacColl. I'm not sure yet what these musicians say about this stage of my life. Ask me again in ten years.
4. About writing: have you made any progress on the novel that involves a sport about which you do not (did not) know much? Tell me about your writing process—how does it work? Do you have to be in the mood to write? In what setting do you write most prolifically? When are you most pleased by your writing?
To answer your first question, no. I put the novel aside when my father became ill and never picked it back up.
My writing process begins with reading, sometimes something relevant to what I want to write about, sometimes just something fun. Reading is actually my preferred form of procrastination, a device I used from high school through college and graduate school to avoid reading and writing about the assigned material. As I was an English major, my roommates and some classmates always found it puzzling that I could have several books going at once and only half of them were about the assigned material. I think I was a better student for using that method, as I was always stumbling across ideas or concepts that I could apply to what I was learning in my classes.
The next step in my process is thinking. A lot of what ends up on paper has been worked over in my head as I go about my daily life, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for several days. If you ever wondered why I seemed a little out of touch with current events the answer is... I'm not. I am (usually) as up-to-date as the next person, but if it is something I want to write about I need time to process the information. The upside is that when I do sit down to write, I usually have a fair amount of the work done already. The downside is that I sometimes forget to write down key sentences or thoughts and can find myself staring into space for inspiration.
Sometimes I do have to be in the mood to write, but I think the more important thing is to identify the tools that put one in the mood and use them to push thoughts onto paper. I am most prolific and in the mood when I feel comfortable. For me this means easy access to tea and snacks, a comfortable chair and something to offer a distraction when I need to stop for a moment. My current favorite places to write are my study, Crazy Mocha (my favorite Pittsburgh coffee shop) and the main branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
I am most pleased by my writing when I am able to walk away for several days, come back to it and be able to say to myself “This is still good”.
5. I just saw this story on your blog:
My Christmas Memory
Christmas of 1996 I was a poor graduate student with a full time job, living in Greensboro NC. I was also very alone, as my family was in PA and most of my friends were heading back to their own families for the holiday.
It was my first Christmas away from home. I could not afford a plane ticket and did not have the time, because of my work schedule, to drive.
Until my ex-boyfriend, who I followed to North Carolina, called to ask if I wanted a ride as far as Latrobe. And one of my co-workers offered to switch vacation days so I could take the ride.
So Christmas Eve found me wrapped in a blanket, sitting in the passenger seat of the ex's Miata with the top down, driving through the mountains of West Virginia. The sky was clear, the stars bright and the radio was playing Elvis' Blue Christmas. It was a perfect moment.
My brother picked me up in Latrobe and drove me home, where I surprised my parents by walking through their bedroom door at 2 am.
Four years later, on a clear, cold, starry, January evening, I married the ex-boyfriend.
Could you please bridge the gap and let us know what exactly transpired between hitching a Christmas ride with the ex-boyfriend and marrying the ex-boyfriend?
The short answer: I fell in love with someone else, it did not work out and I still loved the ex-boyfriend (now husband). But the short answer makes J sound like a consolation prize, which he is not.
J and I were good friends from the moment we met, at a post Thanksgiving party almost 13 years ago. J was the roommate of a childhood friend. Shortly before the arrival of “the girls” (including myself) my twin brother offered me up as bait to keep J from approaching one of the other women my brother had expressed an interest in. My brother, ever loyal, reassured J that I was cute, a comment J echoed back to my brother when we met for the first time. Shortly after meeting him I fell in love for the first time.
Forward six months as we graduate and prepare to move to North Carolina, J to Charlotte for work, myself to Greensboro for graduate school. I come down for a week to search for an apartment and (maybe) see J for a little while and return home with an apartment and part-time job and without a boyfriend. J, concerned that our relationship is moving too fast, breaks up with me.
In most relationships, this would be the end. But while the breakup was painful, it was not ugly or mean. (OK, not completely mean. I did yell a few choice words. You will have to trust that he deserved them.) A few months after the breakup I call him with a computer problem. He helps me and we talk briefly.
First there are brief, infrequent phone calls. After a while we become the friends we always were and begin talking more often and spending time together. After he takes me home at Christmas we take other trips together – to the Outer Banks, to the mountains, to visit his friends in Tennessee. All that time both of us are dating other people.
Then I fall in love again, with someone else. We spend less time together, but still talk on a regular basis. During one phone call J comments on how happy I sound. He tells me that he is happy for me. He tells me that he is a little bit jealous.
The relationship does not work out. The ending is sad because the timing is wrong, the guy does not love me, or love me enough or know that I love him. None of the reasons matter, as it would not have changed the ending. I spend some time alone and I think.
J and I continue hanging out. One day he says he loves me, but he is still not sure. And I still love him, but I want a commitment. Not necessarily marriage, just the knowledge that he is in it for the long term. One night I go out with my brother and the childhood friend, get drunk and spill my thoughts. That I love him but I can't be in it halfway anymore. He has to commit or I am letting him go and moving on with my life. I even have a deadline. I don't tell J any of this because I don't want to pressure him. I want him to decide on his own.
However, one or both of them tells J about the conversation. Since I am not a witness to that part of the story, I cannot tell you if it was a “quit jerking her around” a “dude, she is totally trying to manipulate you” or a “you know, she really does love you, but she will not wait for ever” type of conversation.
J decides to commit. My gift that Christmas are two rings to wear on the ring finger of my left hand. He says he is not quite ready for marriage, but he does want to marry me. The rings are too large, so I wear them on the middle finger of my right hand and tell him that when he is ready, I'll have them resized and move them to the left.
He proposes almost a year later on Thanksgiving day, with a different ring. One that we designed together, with a purple sapphire – my favorite stone in his favorite color.
It is not completely happily ever after, but we are working on it :-).
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