1. The referee is part of the field.
2. The ball is live. Unless it’s dead.
3. The pocket collapses.
4. The goal line extends around the earth, the uprights to the heavens.
5. When something goes wrong, old men throw handkerchiefs into the air.
6. Punt returners are protected by an invisible halo.
7. Devin Hester makes plays in space.
8. One knee equals two feet.
*by Brian Oliu, Jim Hannah, Luke Wortley, and me
New bio/story I wrote for Winesburg, Indiana, the collection I co-edited with Michael Martone.
Bryan Furuness was born in East Chicago, Indiana, a town whose identity crisis is apparent in its name. Is it Chicago or is it Indiana? He grew up on Chicago time watching the Chicago Bears play on Chicago television stations. At the same time, the town is clearly located in Indiana, a state which Bryan knew a great deal about thanks largely to his mother, who taught state history to her fourth graders and took Bryan along on all her trips to state parks and historical sites. So the answer is: Yes and yes. But also: No and no. No one from Chicago has ever counted East Chicago as Actual Chicago. And the rest of Indiana openly despises and disavows this strip of industrialized Indiana along the lake—referred to as “da region"—because of the unions, and left-leaning politics, and general lack of corn. (Another possible answer, given by a coast-dweller, would be: Who cares? You’re all Midwesterners.) Later, Bryan would set his novel, The Lost Episodes of Revie Bryson, in this no-man’s land.Eventually, Bryan would drift downstate to Indianapolis, though he set his novel, The Lost Episodes of Revie Bryson, in the no-man’s land of the region. Now, he teaches at Butler University, where he also serves as the advisor for Manuscripts, the undergraduate literary magazine. Next to his desk is a bookshelf containing a copy of every issue of Manuscripts dating back to 1934, including a few issues filled with stories from a young Michael Martone. Now he thinks the answer is yes and no and yes and no—the region like a steel ball held in perfect tension between two magnets with like poles.
Yesterday I went to a Starbucks that I don’t normally go to. When it was my turn to order, I suddenly remembered that I had a reward (for a free drink or whatever) but I couldn’t remember what it was called, so when the barista asked for my order, I said, “I have a prize.”
The instant I heard myself say this, of course, I started giggling. Hard enough and long enough that I panicked a little bit and excused myself to go to the back of the line. Once I started walking, I saw how so inexcusably weird this all must look to the barista (and everyone else), which made me giggle even harder. The situation was irredeemable. I kept walking, shaking with laughter. By the time I got to the door, the rest of the place was dead quiet.
So that’s one more spot on my Places I Can Never Go Again.
You know you’re in Indy when …
There’s only one thing I don’t get about cannibalism.
Some people prefer painful shocks to being alone with their thoughts
Here’s the summary: put people in an empty room, and they prefer to give themselves electric shocks instead of being alone with their thoughts for six minutes.
I told my younger son about this, and he said, “I can do it.” Even as I type this, he’s sitting in the bathroom, staring at the walls while the kitchen timer ticks down (and no, I did not give him any D batteries). It was only after I put him in there that I realized I had essentially given him a time-out.
For years I’ve been against using writing as a consequence (see: Bart at the chalkboard at the beginning of The Simpsons), or using exercise as punishment (Drop and give me twenty!) because it teaches kids to associate these activities with shame and trouble. Now I’m wondering if the time-out has effectively poisoned thinking, quietness, and stillness.
If so: Oh shit.
For the record, the kitchen timer just went off. I opened the bathroom door to find my son lying on the floor. “That felt like an hour,” he said. Now he’s dorking around the kitchen, loudly making up for lost time, and I am no longer alone with my thoughts, and can’t think of a way to end this post. Maybe it’s time for a twelve minute challenge.
I thought I would like cotton candy, but it tastes like flavored hair.
I like the morning light. I like the quiet house, the first coffee. I like this deep chair, this lapdesk, this little footstool. I like the hummingbird that sometimes ducks into my garage studio, sounding like a small machine. I like the way this pen drags across the scratchy paper. When I don’t want to write, I tell myself that’s all right. Just go do the things you like.
My wife and I both think that FARGO is a pretty great series. Line for
line, it might have the best writing on TV today, along with some
stunning imagery. But when it comes to Molly, the main detective, we
disagree.
My wife thinks that Molly is a great character who is Good For
Women. She transcends the typical pre-fab roles for females—temptress, victim, ballbuster, manic pixie dream girl,
etc.—and she’s not skinny or dolled-up. She looks and acts pretty
much like a woman in the real world.
I recognize all of this. And if she was in the real world, I’d like to
be friends with Molly. But she’s not a great character. She’s a two-dimensional ideal of A Good Person. Where are her flaws, her quirks, her idiosyncrasies? She’s kind and smart and that’s it. Flat as cardboard.
I have to wonder if the writers of FARGO intentionally set out to write a character that was Good For Women. If so, this attempt is patronizing. It’s like they’re saying I know you folks can’t handle complexity or ambivalence. It’s the fictional equivalent of letting your kid beat you at chess. It’s a soft bigotry. And it’s bullshit.
Maybe I shouldn’t get so worked up about Molly. Maybe she represents
progress for TV writing. Maybe we’re in some awkward middle stage that’s necessary to make a big breakthrough. But FARGO could make that breakthrough itself, so why not just freaking do it, FX?
Let Molly be human, flaws and all. Trust the audience to handle a
female character as complex and dynamic and conflicted as the males on the show. That will be the real breakthrough: if you can
write her that way, and if we can handle it.