{"id":224,"date":"2015-11-16T07:10:58","date_gmt":"2015-11-16T13:10:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thespectaclstg.wpengine.com\/?p=224"},"modified":"2021-05-18T15:05:28","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T20:05:28","slug":"look-in-thy-heart-and-write-a-conversation-with-mark-slouka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/?p=224","title":{"rendered":"\u201cLook in Thy Heart and Write\u201d: A Conversation with Mark Slouka"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Slouka, Visiting Hurst Professor in Nonfiction Writing at Washington University in St. Louis this semester, speaks with MFA candidate and Spectacle <\/em>editor Katharine Monger on genre and the role of the essay, the rise of the MFA, the 2016 American presidential election season, and on what it means to write the essential.<\/p>\n

Slouka is the author of works of both fiction and nonfiction, including Brewster, Lost Lake, The Visible World<\/em> (which was a finalist for the British Book Award), and Essays from the Nick of Time<\/em> (winner of the PEN\/Diamonstein-Speilvogel Award). His work has appeared in Harper\u2019s<\/em>, Ploughshares, The Paris Review, Granta, NewYorker.com<\/em>, as well as the anthologies Best American Short Stories <\/em>and Best American Essays.<\/em> A Guggenheim and NEA fellowship recipient, he has taught literature and writing at Harvard, Columbia, and The University of Chicago. His memoir, Nobody\u2019s<\/em> Son<\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>is forthcoming this October, and his blog, \u201cNotes from the Shack: On Nature, Culture, Politics and Technology,\u201d can be found at markslouka.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Katharine Monger: What is \u201cessay\u201d to you?<\/p>\n

Mark Slouka: I think an essay\u2014as the word suggests\u2014is an attempt to understand something that you the writer haven\u2019t understood before. For me it\u2019s often a combination of things\u2014events in your life, the outside world, your past, what have you\u2014that seem connected somehow. Your job as an essayist is to try to figure out what that connection is between that dream you had yesterday, that thing your father said to you when you were six, and that piece you read in the paper about the guy being pushed under the subway in New York. Somewhere, there\u2019s a connection to you, personally. I think the best kinds of essays are the ones in which you, the reader, feel that you\u2019re watching the writer figure it out, following her obsession to some kind of\u2014temporary, maybe\u2014answer.<\/p>\n

Someone asked Robert Frost once what a poem was, and he said it was a \u201ctemporary stay against confusion.\u201d The man knew what he was talking about. What\u2019s true for a poem is true for an essay, is true for a story, is true for a novel to some extent. It\u2019s a temporary stay against confusion. It\u2019s not meant to be a final resting place. It\u2019s a pivot point.<\/p>\n

KM: I was thinking about what we were talking about yesterday, where, if you know too well where you\u2019re going in an essay, it can turn out badly.<\/p>\n

MS: Yeah, I mean, if you already know the answer, why are you writing it? Often the worst essays, or for that matter the worst fiction, feel sort of pre-cooked. Like one of those TV dinners or something. You just stick it in the microwave. I think for literature to work, it has to be precarious, it has to be dangerous, it has to surprise you, and it has to disturb you on some level. It doesn\u2019t have to be a negative disturbance; just disturb the atmosphere. And the only way that\u2019s possible is if the writer himself hasn\u2019t figured out what this wilderness is that he\u2019s walking into when he\u2019s walking into it. He just senses that he has to walk in there. Which brings up another subject: an essay, a story, a book\u2014has to feel necessary. Like, this needed<\/em> to be written. I think the shelves are full of books that really didn\u2019t need <\/em>to be written, and they\u2019re the ones I\u2019m least interested in.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give you an example, actually\u2014this is fun, but you\u2019ve got to tell me to shut up if you have another question because I\u2019ve had a lot of coffee.<\/p>\n

KM: No, no, go ahead, please.<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0Actually, I think I wrote about it in an essay, I\u2019m not sure which one. Oh, okay, I think I do know. I think it was the one about Seifert and Dostoevsky.<\/p>\n

KM: Oh, \u201cArrow and Wound?\u201d<\/p>\n

MS:\u00a0\u201cArrow and Wound,\u201d thank you. I should know the name\u2026 I wrote it.<\/p>\n

KM: It\u2019s one of your favorites, right?<\/p>\n

MS: Yeah [laughs], except I don\u2019t remember what it\u2019s called.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s an anecdote there that I heard when I was in Czechoslovakia. It was before the Revolution. One of the prisons that the Third Reich had in Czechoslovakia at that time was an interrogation center as well as a prison. This was an end-of-the-line kind of place. But when they liberated it they discovered that often, inside, behind the niches of the bricks, prisoners had stuffed little balls of toilet paper on which they\u2019d written poems.<\/p>\n

Now you\u2019re talking about individuals who had been or were going to be tortured and eventually executed. And yet in those days or weeks or months that they had left, they took pieces of toilet paper and wrote poems on them. Talk about essential, you know? This was something that they had<\/em> to express even though life was over. What an extraordinary thing that is.<\/p>\n

KM: Speaking of essential: there was something you wrote in the introduction to Essays from the Nick of Time<\/em>\u2014well, it seemed like you were very hesitant to write that introduction to begin with.<\/p>\n

MS: There\u2019s a story there.<\/p>\n

KM: Do you want to tell that story?<\/p>\n

MS: Sure, but don\u2019t forget your question [laughs].<\/p>\n

The story is that I had an earlier publisher who wanted the essays, but wanted me to write an intro. And I felt like, \u201cThe essays are their own intro. Read the damn essays. You either like them or you don\u2019t, they either say something or they don\u2019t, and whatever I say in the intro isn\u2019t going to make a difference.\u201d But she really pushed on it, she really wanted an intro, so I thought about it. And I figured out that the only way I could write an intro was to write about the impossibility of writing an intro.<\/p>\n

KM: Yeah, there was a line in there. And it made me think about what you see as the essayist\u2019s role, which we\u2019ve sort of skirted around already. You wrote that, \u201cTimidity belongs in other lines of work, not ours.\u201d And I wondered, since writing that, do you still feel that way? Do you see yourself as resisting timidity?<\/p>\n

MS: I believe it more now than I ever did, and I think it\u2019s essential more now than it ever was, because I think there are all sorts of market forces working to homogenize us, to declaw and defang us. And that kind of intellectual, ideological neutering is a really subtle process, because the market makes you do it to yourself. There\u2019s no one saying, \u201cYou can\u2019t publish this,\u201d but you bend your own voice to fit what you feel the market wants. Because you need to make a living. Because you want to be loved. Because you want to have that line at your book reading snaking around the block. It\u2019s a very insidious thing. If you\u2019ve even had a modicum of success, it\u2019s human nature to figure out what you did there and do that some more. The problem with that is that it\u2019s a slippery slope. Pretty soon you\u2019re painting by number. The market tells you what number it is and you just apply the paint. It\u2019s like asking a painter to paint a painting that will go with a blue couch. It\u2019s wrong. Make the couch fit the painting if you have to fit in anything, but not the other way around.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s important for writers to not be timid with the world, but more importantly, to not be timid with themselves. I think that\u2019s where the gray area is; you have to be willing to go to some unpleasant places, to scrutinize yourself as well as where you came from, the people in your life, the stories you were told, the lies you were told. Ideally what you\u2019re striving for, I think, is for there to be almost nothing off limits. But even then there\u2019s always a danger that you\u2019ll slide into some sort of exhibitionism. Some self-indulgent, \u201cOh, look at me, I\u2019m so daring\u201d pose. I\u2019m talking about going to the places that are necessary for some bigger reason, not just to prove to people that you can shock the shoes off of them. Timidity should not be for us. If you can\u2019t do this, do something else. There are a lot of things people can do in the world, God knows. But if you\u2019re going to do this, and your ambition is to be more than just an entertainer, then a certain kind of honesty is a requirement. There are all kinds of ways of hiding on the page. And sometimes the better writer you are, the better you are at hiding behind all manner of cleverness and wordplay, persona, voice, all the different masks. But I think a good reader can see through that, can sense a certain authenticity, or lack of it.<\/p>\n

An example: A hugely talented writer, who I sometimes found quite frustrating, was David Foster Wallace. Big talent, but I found myself\u2014I never knew him personally\u2014I found myself wishing I could sit down with him at some point and say, \u201cI feel like so much of what you do is operating behind these layers of hugely inventive cleverness\u2014it\u2019s the five page footnote, it\u2019s the humor, it\u2019s the \u2018post-y\u2019 thing which you do, which you do so well. But just once I want to see you really risk yourself. I want you to strip all that away, and I want to see you walk out on that branch, as far as you can.\u201d Because I\u2019d have loved to see what he could have done. And I find that a lot in Junot D\u00edaz as well. Junot D\u00edaz is a really good writer. But I get tired of that hip, modern thing, that dance. It\u2019s not that it\u2019s not good. It\u2019s good\u2014it\u2019s really good. Maybe it\u2019s just because I\u2019m getting older and I\u2019m getting tired of the games that people play.<\/p>\n

And so the writers, the ones I\u2019m coming to admire, are the ones that seem to cut down to it, just get to it. It\u2019s not a popularity contest; it\u2019s about telling the truth as best you know how. If you do that, it\u2019s a beautiful thing.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019m arguing against is what I think of as a kind of hipster style of writing. And I\u2019m being a little bit unfair, but there it is.<\/p>\n

KM: Don\u2019t be timid [laughs].<\/p>\n

MS: OK, what I\u2019m talking about is writing that\u2019s about a certain kind of pose. It\u2019s hip, it\u2019s contemporary, it\u2019s very knowing, it\u2019s often very witty, and it\u2019s constantly referring to the world we live in now. But sometimes, reading it, I feel like I\u2019m standing on a corner in Brooklyn and everyone\u2019s wearing the right shirt, the right hat, the right glasses, the right scruff, right suit. It\u2019s like when I used to walk into Dodge Hall at Columbia and the film students would be standing out front. And they were all wearing black. They were all looking disaffected, smoking their cigarettes. And that\u2019s how you knew they were film students. Would you not be an auteur if you were wearing something else? If you had an uncool haircut? So sometimes what I get with these authors is a little bit of that. You\u2019re popular, all your friends are popular, hand washes hand. But the ones I\u2019m drawn to are the ones who risk it, the ones who seem to be oddballs. Writers who seem uninterested in impressing anyone, except maybe themselves. To me that\u2019s hopeful.<\/p>\n

KM: This feels like a good segue into my next, admittedly bold question. It\u2019s been ten years since you wrote that letter in the Columbia Spectator<\/em> about MFA programs (I\u2019m simplifying it here). I wondered if your thoughts have changed since\u2014and not so much limiting the conversation to the context at that particular school. Has the world of writing changed in a way that you find troubling?<\/p>\n

MS: That\u2019s a big question with a lot of parts to it. I spent a lot of years teaching writing, so I have a lot of thoughts. But let\u2019s start here: In a way it\u2019s incredibly encouraging that there are so many people, even in a culture that seems less and less interested in reading, who want to write. It\u2019s an extraordinary leap of faith. What could be less practical than that? Which is the reason I love it. So let me start with that. You\u2019ve got tens of thousands of people who want to be writers. Well, the problem is that the market has answered. There\u2019s demand, so we need supply, and so we\u2019ve supplied programs. A lot of programs.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where it begins very quickly to get into ethically troubled waters, because not every program is the same. I don\u2019t regret that Columbia letter one bit, though the program I was associated with has changed since then. I haven\u2019t been there in ten years, but I know that the faculty has changed considerably, and that many of the people they have there now are incredibly good. But at the time, we were trafficking shamelessly in our name. Which was hard. I had to be one of the people to call people up to accept them, and you get somebody\u2019s mother on the line. And you say, \u201cI\u2019m Mark Slouka, I\u2019m calling from Columbia University,\u201d and they go, \u201cOh oh, one second!\u201d And you hear them off the phone whispering, \u201cIt\u2019s Columbia University! It\u2019s Columbia University!\u201d So this person gets on, their voice shaking, and you get to deliver the good news, \u201cCongratulations.\u201d And at some point in the conversation they say, \u201cI probably shouldn\u2019t but, can I ask, is there any money? Is there any, like, help?\u201d And then I get to be the guy who says, \u201cWell, I\u2019m happy to say we\u2019re offering you $3000! Your first year is $35,000, but we\u2019re offering you $3000!\u201d \u201cWell, how about the second year?\u201d \u201cWell the second year, there are some opportunities. You might be asked to teach freshman composition, which would mean that your tuition would be substantially reduced. But you might not. And actually it\u2019s a real dogfight to get those positions.\u201d And I don\u2019t know what the ratio was, but I\u2019m guessing only about one out of five people got those positions. So the answer to that question actually was, \u201cNope, you\u2019re in for two years, that\u2019ll be $70,000 please.\u201d<\/p>\n

It gets worse from there. Little does Jill from Iowa, or Jack from California, know that they\u2019re entering a program in which fiction will be bringing in 42 people, or 44. Nonfiction will be bringing in 35 plus. Poetry will be another 25, 30. In other words, you have this huge program that basically doesn\u2019t offer financial aid, and on top of that isn\u2019t willing to tell a student early on, \u201cYou should reconsider.\u201d First of all, you shouldn\u2019t admit them. But then, having admitted them, you should have the courage to say, \u201cWe\u2019re not telling you not to continue, we\u2019re just sending up a warning signal here. Before you go $70,000 into debt, think hard about whether this is for you.\u201d That takes a lot of courage, because you\u2019re dashing somebody\u2019s hopes, potentially. But on the other hand, it\u2019s the right thing to do.<\/p>\n

So if you put all these things together: the fact that there\u2019s this demand, that all these programs are proliferating, that often they don\u2019t provide the kind of financial aid they should, that often they don\u2019t provide the kind of instruction they should, you have a situation. At Columbia back then, it was almost literally impossible to fail out. You could do whatever you wanted. No one failed a single time during the six years I was there. As far as I know, I was the only one to fail somebody and my decisions were overturned. You put all these things together and it\u2019s hard to escape the sense that you\u2019re dealing with something that\u2019s a bit dishonest. I\u2019m sorry if that comes off as harsh to some people, but there it is.<\/p>\n

That said, I think there are programs all over the country that are legitimate to various degrees, that can truly help writers who want the community thing for a while to help them figure out the complexities of what they\u2019ve chosen to do\u2014basically they can save you a lot of time. That\u2019s how I\u2019ve always seen an MFA. It\u2019s not that you wouldn\u2019t figure it out yourself eventually, but it might take you 8 or 10 years instead of 2. To see that, \u201cOh, that\u2019s what I was doing,\u201d regarding voice, say. A good program will show you the menu of options that\u2019s available to you sooner so that you can move ahead. When it\u2019s done well, it\u2019s a great thing. But it\u2019s probably not done as well as it should be as often as it should be. And now with this huge proliferation of programs, it\u2019s up to the students to really find out, \u201cWhat am I getting into here?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s going to win me a lot of friends. [Laughs]<\/p>\n

But hey, we\u2019re writers, for Christ\u2019s sake. We\u2019re kind of paid to piss people off a little bit, right? I mean, not deliberately. It\u2019s not like we\u2019re writing, \u201cFuck you,\u201d on the garage wall to piss off daddy when he gets home. It\u2019s about telling the truth as you see it. I thought that\u2019s what writers were supposed to do, but that may be changing. A year or two ago, I read about these publishers who took to polling readers about what kinds of books they like. A certain plot and so on. This was amazing to me. The idea, I guess, was to first create a database; you have a hero and a heroine\u2014should they look like this, like that, this background, that background, this crisis, that crisis. And then they\u2019d assign it to a writer, guaranteeing that they already have the readership in place. To my mind, that\u2019s the death of literature right there, which I said in a letter to the New York Times<\/em>. At that point, we can all go do something else. That\u2019s the end of it.<\/p>\n

KM: I think we\u2019re working toward a question I brought up yesterday. In our workshop class, we read a few essays from Essays from the Nick of Time<\/em>, one of which was \u201cCoda: A Quibble,\u201d which came out in 2009, right after Obama\u2019s inauguration. I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve revisited that essay recently. Do you feel a sort of fulfillment of what you were alluding to in that essay, in the way that the election is going this year? You write about the danger of the American way of celebrating ignorance, of trusting our guts over concrete knowledge, warning that such mindless subjective instinct could easily be preyed upon by the \u201cwrong individual\u201d who would bring about a \u201ctyranny of the majority.\u201d<\/p>\n

MS: Well, we\u2019re there, aren\u2019t we? At least we\u2019re flirting with it. I think in the same essay I wrote that we\u2019re as gullible as a boxful of puppies. Show us the plastic bone, we\u2019ll follow you right off the cliff. Partly we\u2019re talking about Trump, but we\u2019re really talking about what the Republican Party has built over the last, I\u2019d say, 30 years, probably since Reagan, and maybe before. It\u2019s gotten worse with Fox News and a certain kind of propaganda machine. It\u2019s about yelling, not debate.<\/p>\n

I mentioned in another essay this time I was in a Motel 6 somewhere in Nebraska, I think. I was talking to some guy in the pool. Nice guy. And somehow we got on the subject of immigrants\u2014this was probably about 6 or 7 years ago. He was troubled by the immigrant situation in America, and was talking about English and second languages and things like that. And at some point he says, \u201cWell, if English was good enough for Jesus, it\u2019s good enough for me.\u201d Where do you even begin with that?<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s all around us. My neighbor wants to torture a terrorist. And I asked him, \u201cReally? Who? When?\u201d and he said, \u201cThis waterboarding BS the liberals are all whining about, I had the boys at the pool [he\u2019s a part-time lifeguard, among other things], tie me to the sit-up bench and pour water down my nose, and it\u2019s just water up your nose, you know?\u201d So I said, \u201cWell, yeah, but they were doing this stuff during the Spanish Inquisition, so, you know, I don\u2019t think you got it quite right.\u201d And he says, \u201cWhat\u2019s the Spanish Inquisition?\u201d And the joke here is that he teaches high school. He\u2019s a teacher. So you begin to think, well, okay, we have an issue here.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that educated people can\u2019t be despicable like everyone else. It\u2019s just that when your education deficit is so huge, you can be talked into anything at all. Anything at all. Give me a little while, I\u2019ll get you to believe it. And I think that that\u2019s partly what the Republican Party has been doing\u2014conning the ignorant. They\u2019re not completely alone in that, because there\u2019s been a general dumbing down of all political discourse. But the Republicans have been particularly bad, and it\u2019s coming back to bite them in the ass. Here\u2019s the monster. They made him. And now the monster is out wrecking the village, and they\u2019re thinking, how do we reel him in again? And the answer is, you can\u2019t reel him in again. I think he\u2019s going to wreck the party this year. It\u2019s going to be a mess. But maybe it\u2019ll be a wake-up call for all of us.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just ignorance we\u2019re talking about. It\u2019s a kind of willed irrationality, as in, \u201cI don\u2019t care what you tell me, I just believe it, and the more you talk at me, the less I\u2019ll want to hear it, because I don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a big subject. But if we don\u2019t get this right, then I think politically we\u2019re going to be on increasingly dangerous ground. We\u2019re just waiting for the right demagogue. I don\u2019t think Trump\u2019s the one. He\u2019s a buffoon; he\u2019s not going to fly. But eventually we\u2019re going to get one who\u2019s handsome. Who\u2019s got that popular touch. Who\u2019s kind of appealing, and a nice guy, and you really kind of want to sit down and have a beer with him. Then we\u2019re in trouble.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the most stunning thing about this political season: You have demagogues piled on disasters. You have Trump, who the Republican Party is committed to keeping out, because he\u2019s a potentially dangerous person. But the joke is that right behind him, second in line, is Cruz, someone who\u2019s just as bad or worse. He just doesn\u2019t have the same luster. But if you really look at the policies, it\u2019s like, \u201cOh, that\u2019s a great idea! Let\u2019s go carpet bomb the Middle East.\u201d Half the time, I don\u2019t know what he\u2019s talking about. His first day in office, he\u2019s going to get rid of Obamacare? No, he\u2019s not. The system doesn\u2019t work that way\u2014that\u2019s a lie. And he knows it\u2019s a lie. He\u2019s a smart guy; he went to Harvard Law. So the Republicans are really in a fix. They can\u2019t bring in a white knight from the outside because people, with some justification, will be up in arms, because they\u2019ll have completely disregarded the electorate. So they\u2019re in a real bind. Part of me says, \u201cWell, there\u2019s some poetic justice here. You\u2019ve been flirting with this for a long time. And here it is, knocking on your door. Now what are you going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

KM: We\u2019ve covered a lot this afternoon\u2014I\u2019m grateful for your candor. I think we\u2019ve touched on a lot of subjects that will really resonate with readers, with writers. Before we wrap up, is there anything else you wanted to add?<\/p>\n

MS: There\u2019s a framed quote I keep on my desk that my daughter gave me a couple of seasons back as a birthday present. It\u2019s from Sir Philip Sidney, I believe. The line goes, \u201c\u2018Fool,\u2019 said my Muse to me, \u2018look in thy heart, and write.\u2019\u201d Writers worry about so much: how will this be received? Am I going to get into trouble? What was I meant to say? My answer would be: \u201cJust look in thy heart and write.\u201d Sometimes it\u2019s just that simple. Figure out what you believe, or think you believe, and go from there. I think there\u2019s a lot of noise in the air these days. A lot of distraction. So to the extent that you can block that out, you\u2019re good.<\/p>\n

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