Who counts as an Iowa writer?

(Printed in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, June 26, 2009)

As a poet, essayist, scholar and anthologist, Zachary Michael Jack has been prolific. The multi-generation Iowan has written or edited at least 14 books in the 16 years since he graduated from City High. But Jack's identity as a teacher is what animates his newest anthology, "Iowa: The Definitive Collection."

The book contains more than 90 selections of "Classic and Contemporary Readings by Iowans, about Iowa." The list of writers stretches from Chief Black Hawk in 1831 to recent musings of Mary Swander and Ted Kooser.

Although the collection includes only prose, Jack brings a poetic sensibility to the project.

"There's that old Mark Twain quote that history doesn't repeat itself, but history rhymes," Jack told me Tuesday. "Within my own family history, I could hear the rhymes. For generations, my family has been farmers, teachers and writers. I ended up being all three."

Brain rhymes with drain

Jack's collection also attempts to counteract one of most repeatedly rhymed challenges of the past 177 years: Iowa's brain drain. The New Deal writers who published "The WPA Guide to Iowa," for example, observed in 1938, "An Iowan is as likely to be found in any other of the forty-eight states as in his native one, if the term be taken simply to mean a person who was born in Iowa." The writers then quickly changed their focus to describe the "Iowan who remains."

Jack offers a similar dynamic: He celebrates the Iowans who stay while he simultaneously tries to woo back the Iowans who have moved away. But Jack also wants his anthology to serve as an "introductory letter" to people who move into the state.

"Yes, we do export a lot of our people," he said, "but we also import many of them to do specialized work. Many of these people come to Iowa with the idea that it's a tabula rasa. That's part of its charm and allure."

Unfortunately, in trying to reach audiences both inside and outside Iowa, Jack keeps reminding those new Iowans that they have been grafted on to the grand Iowan tradition. That although they are the people his collection is for, they are not the people his collection is "by" or "about."

For example, Jack doesn't consider Writers' Workshop professor Marilynne Robinson to be Iowan. Despite her decades living in the state, despite her novels set in Iowa, Jack excludes Robinson because of her out-of-state birth.

"These are phenomenally gifted writers ... but they are not Iowans in the strictest sense," Jack writes in the introduction. "They know our values, perhaps understand them better and more objectively than we ever will, but they are not of our values."

Iowa's personality

By drawing so stark a line between "Iowan" and "not-Iowan," Jack risks coming across as jingoistic to the very people he's trying to win over. But that, too, is part of the Iowa tradition.

"We're probably the most welcoming state," Jack said, "but sometimes we forget that Iowa doesn't have its own identity until it begins importing people."

Jack is merely putting into practice the regionalist lessons offered by Grant Wood in "Revolt from the City" (1935):

"Let me try to state the basic idea of the regional movement," Wood wrote "Each section has a personality of its own, in physiography, industry, psychology. Thinking painters and writers who have passed their formative years in these regions will, by caretaking analysis, work out and interpret in their productions these varying personalities. When the different regions develop characteristics of their own, they will come into competition with each other; and out of this competition a rich American culture will grow."

The exclusiveness of that Iowa personality, however, sometimes comes across more comically than Wood suggests.

Although Jack doesn't anthologize anything by Mason City-born Meredith Willson, the process described by Wood and put into practice by Jack is summarized nicely and parodied lovingly in Willson's song, "Iowa Stubborn":

"But what the heck, you're welcome, / Join us at the picnic. / You can eat your fill / Of all the food you bring yourself. / You really ought to give Iowa a try."

Anyone interested in Iowa history -- especially as complied by a thoroughly authentic Iowan -- really ought to give "Iowa: The Definitive Collection" a try.

Opinion editor Jeff Charis-Carlson -- who has lived in Iowa for 13 of his nearly 39 years -- can be contacted at 319-887-5435 or opinion@press-citizen.com.

'Novembering' a Summer Writing Festival success

(Printed in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, June 23, 2009)

When Press-Citizen Writers' Group member Robert Wachal retired as a linguistics professor back in 1997, it took him a while to learn that he didn't really have to keep writing about linguistics if he didn't want to. After publishing a few more academic works, Wachal eventually decided he was more interested in producing -- rather than in analyzing -- the linguistic tricks and contortions that transform otherwise ordinary prose into poetic utterance.

"They involve totally different brain functions," Wachal said. "When you're writing a poem, it's usually best when you're not being too conscious. ... I might compose four or five lines right when wake up. ... But when you're analyzing, then you have to pull on that cognitive part of the brain."

Back in 2002, Wachal started signing up for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival -- one of those annual world-class writing opportunities that led UNESCO to designate Iowa City as an international City of Literature. Every year since, he's been striving to strip down his poetry as much as possible, to condense language and experience into quick, easily digestible bits that still offer something unexpected for the attentive reader to gnaw on.

Press-Citizen readers already have had a taste of Wachal's poetry. In addition to the monthly columns that he has been writing for nearly three years, Wachal submitted two "Poetic License" poems during the lead-up to the 2008 Iowa caucuses -- "A Billary Precedent," which compared Hillary and Bill Clinton to the 17th century joint sovereignty of William III and Mary II, and the more self-explanatory, "Kucinich Eats His Spinach."

Wachal offers more serious fare in his new collection, "Novembering: Poems from Late in Life," which was released recently by the North Liberty-based Ice Cube Press. But all of Wachal's poems celebrate a finely tuned appreciation for clever turns of phrase even as they document what it's like for a poet to turn toward the final phase of life.

Wachal yet again is the middle of an Iowa Summer Writing Festival poetry class. But this year, the man who never thought he would publish a book of poetry will be able to impress his teacher, his fellow students and his neighbors when he reads from "Novembering" at 7 p.m. tonight at Prairie Lights Books.

Opinion editor Jeff Charis-Carlson can be contacted at jcharisc@press-citizen.com or 319-887-5435.

Novel reminds us how Iran once was a secular nation

(Printed in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, June 12, 2009)

First time novelist, Iranian native and former Iowa City resident Mahbod Seraji is coming back to town Friday to read from his tale of pre-revolutionary Iran, "Rooftops of Tehran." Set in 1973 and 1974, the novel presents an otherwise straightforward teenage love triangle made complicated by the political oppression imposed by Iran's then American-backed secular leader, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

But Seraji's novelistic debut is also of interest to "Iowa City of Literature" readers because Seraji didn't take Writers' Workshop classes while he studied for his B.S., M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Iowa from 1978 to 1989. Trained in film and instructional design, Seraji didn't begin transforming his life into fiction until long after he completed his studies and moved away from Iowa City.

Q: When you were studying film and instructional design at the University of Iowa, did you have any novelistic aspirations?

A: When I was in Iowa — back in 1979 and 1980 when I was working those many, many hours and there were all those crises going on in Iran — I thought about writing a novel. It was going to be about all the people who had a profound impact on my life. And I was going to write it as a series of short vignettes.

I did nothing with the idea until years later, until long after I entered the corporate world. I lost my job during one of our many mini-recessions, so I took three months off and wrote most of the book. In the process of writing, I decided that it wasn't a series of short vignettes ... it was "Rooftops of Tehran."

Q: Your doctorate is in educational instructional design and technology, but your dissertation is titled, "Cinematic Style and Perception." What's the connection there?

A: It had to do with looking at perceptions of moving images using cognitive psychology. Most of the film studies being done at Iowa at the time were using psychoanalytical theory. So I spoke to the head of the education department and asked what would happen if I looked into the ramifications of the perceptions of moving visual images. If you were watching, say, a film in the French realist style or the Russian formalist style or the Hollywood classic style, what were the different ways in which you might construct meaning out of the film? I was looking both in terms of the way your eyes physically perceive the images and in terms of cognitive perception.

Q: Your film studies background comes through in the novel as the characters begin to analyze how Persian films in the 1970s seem to only tell stories that reinforce the nation's class structure.

A: That was the undertone of most Persian movies of the time. The shah was very afraid of any sort of Marxist or Communist movement. The media — and especially the movies — were full of those types of stories.

Q: In interviews, you've said it's "important" to remember that "Rooftops" is not autobiography. Yet you share many autobiographical elements with your narrator, Pasha Shahed.

A: I was really torn between doing autobiography or fiction. In the course of writing, I found that fiction would unleash my imagination and creativity in a way that autobiography wouldn't. Besides, my life, by itself, may not be that interesting to most readers.

But most of the characters in "Rooftops" are based on real people. And I think that if those people were to read the book, they would recognize who they are.

Many people who know me say that they can hear me speaking when Pasha speaks. ... That's partly why I was at first reluctant to give the character a name. I didn't want to admit the connection. Finally my editor said, 'It's time to separate the two of you. You either need to call him Mahbod and we'll live with it, or give him a different name.'"

So, I chose Pasha, which would have been my name if Mahbod wasn't chosen. And Shahed is my father's pseudonym and my mother's maiden name. So we're still connected.

Q: Given the time period you're writing about, your book is necessarily political. Was it difficult to balance being accurate to the political environment you describe and telling a story about two teenagers falling in love for the first time?

A: If you'd put two Iranians in a room and you'd come back half hour later, you most likely would see them fighting over one of two issues. Either they were playing backgammon and one started accusing the other of cheating, or they were arguing about politics.

If you had videotaped that half-hour discussion, you would find either that nobody had actually cheated in backgammon or that they were actually arguing the same side of the same issue but they weren't willing to agree that they agreed.

Iranians talk about politics. It's interwoven into the fabrics of our lives. Every Iranian I know discusses politics more than nearly all other things. I wanted to have that be part of the personal story I was trying to tell.

Besides, the story grows out of the social and political situation in Iran at the time. It was the pre-revolutionary years, and the revolution was looming — it seemed just around in the corner. If you lived in Iran at the time, you could feel the tension. You could feel something was coming.

These kids, living at that time, would have been part of it. A sort of creative evolution.

Q: Are you offering "Rooftops of Tehran" as window into Iranian life for American readers, or is the book more of an Iranian-American's meditation on an Iran that no longer exists?

A: This period is a forgotten part of Iranian history. Many people don't remember that Iran used to be a secular nation. Under the shah we had political oppression, but we didn't have social oppression. When these guys came in, they said they would remove the political oppression. Well, they not only increased the political oppression, but they added social repression as well. I wanted to make sure that we didn't forget this period.

The revolution happened for a good cause; the shah wasn't good. But then the revolution went down the wrong track quickly, and we have been worse off.

Many people ask me, "Weren't things better under the shah?" I say, "no," because the word "better" implies that it was "good" in some way. Instead, I say, "The shah was less worse."

Many Iranians who read this book say they get nostalgic for that period – that I wrote their life story. They remember the days when boys and girls could get together freely with nothing to stop them. Iran is very different now.

Q: What role has your time in Iowa City played in your development as a writer?

A: A huge role. If it wasn't for Iowa City, I probably would not be where I am right now. After the revolution, there was no money coming from home. I basically was on the verge of going homelessness until I spoke with the university's international office. They were extremely kind to me and helped me to stay at school even though I couldn't pay for tuition.

That's how Iowa City helped me on the socio-economic side. But on the other side were my professors. I learned how to tell a story in their classes. It's true that those classes were on the film studies side rather than the literary side, but everything I know about narrative structure, writing dialogue and creating scenes I learned from watching and discussing movies with those guys.

And I will forever be a Hawkeye fan. I watch all the games I can.

Opinion editor Jeff Charis-Carlson can be contacted at jcharisc@press-citizen.com or 319-887-5435.

Dubus argues with himself about 9/11 novel

(Printed in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, June 9, 2009)

It's pretty easy to interview Andre Dubus III. The 49-year-old author of "House of Sand and Fog" (1999) -- who lived in Iowa City as a child when his father attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop -- tends to disagree with his own answers on a fairly regular basis.

For example, when I asked him about the research he did for his latest novel, "The Garden of Last Days," Dubus stated pretty clearly that his months spent reading the Koran, studying Islam and interviewing Middle Eastern natives resulted in a work of "straight fiction" -- on the order of John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" ("Although I'm not comparing myself with Steinbeck," he said) -- rather than anything that might be shelved under "creative non-fiction."

But Dubus then went on to describe what he called "a moral imperative" to be as true-to-life as possible when pulling from the historical record to tell his fictionalized story of one cell of 9/11 hijackers in the days leading up to the attack. He was particularly struck with how some of the future hijackers attended strip clubs before the attack, and he tried to understand how they could rationalize participating in what they would consider such unclean acts right before they willingly martyred themselves.

"None of the autobiographical details are from the headlines," Dubus said. "But I try to be very accurate in recounting the movements of these guys once they got to the U.S."

Dubus then cited a distinction he learned from filmmaker Mike Nichols in describing how the question reporters ask ("What's happening?") is very different from the question storytellers ask ("What's it really like?"). When he tried to answer the storyteller's question, Dubus started thinking about the money the would-be hijackers would have paid to the strippers. He then imagined how that wad of cash might spawn its own story. And before he knew it, his planned short story turned into a lengthy novel that he had to pare down to 500-plus pages.

But then, suddenly, Dubus interrupted himself to say his previous answer was full of crap.

"It was the first time I've ever written any fiction where I knew where one character would end up," he said. "I was locked into this terrible historical root. ... The parameters were set, but the way they went about doing it wasn't decided on. ... If anything, I felt freer to delve into the character."

The result is the tale of Saudi-born Bassam al-Jizani, the soon-to-be hijacker who tries to get Spring, a stripper at a Florida club, to reveal her real name (April) and explain why she does what she does. The novel goes further to tell the story of how April had brought her preschool daughter to club that same night after her babysitter was hospitalized unexpectedly -- a poor decision that leads to a series of poor decisions from other characters.

Since Dubus had no more questions to ask himself, I then got to ask if readers would benefit from reading, say, the 9/11 commission report alongside the novel.

"I'm writing for anyone along the continuum," Dubus said. "From someone who was on the 9/11 commission to people whose only knowledge about this comes from what they've seen on TV."

I was going to offer a follow-up question, but then -- you guessed it -- Dubus interrupted himself to say his previous answer was "disingenuous."

"I didn't want to write about 9/11," he said. "I don't think this book is about 9/11. It's a big historical event that is part of the narrative in the story. But it's just one of the eight or nine narratives. ... I was just trying to create some sort of container that would hold all sorts of psyches and points of view comfortably."

Dubus said he was worried less about what the critics would say about the novel than what the families of 9/11 victims might experience when reading his attempts to, in Ernest Hemingway's words, "understand" rather than "judge" his characters.

"I kept thinking about the victims' families," he said. "The real human beings who lost real loved ones in the real events that I was re-imagining. ... When writing, I don't ever try to wing it. I try to capture the experience as truly as I can. ... After all, if you can't get the little facts right, then how can you capture the deeper human experience?"

I can't evaluate how well Dubus captures the "deeper human experience" of his interweaving narratives and characters. But I can attest to his ability to keep multiple stories and voices operating simultaneously -- whether in his own head or on the page.

I also can say that, despite its length, "The Garden of Last Days" manages to live up to the blurb from Stephen King prominently printed on the cover: "So good, so damn compulsively readable, that I can hardly believe it."

Opinion editor Jeff Charis-Carlson can be contacted at jcharisc@press-citizen.com or 319-887-5435.

Sensible, urban chickens?

(Printed in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, June 4, 2009)

The Iowa City Council should beware.

After Michael Perry reads tonight from his new book, "Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting," a few more dozen local residents might start thinking about what it would be like to have a coop in their own backyards. Jane Hamilton, Perry's fellow Wisconsinite author, said the book made her want to "get chickens immediately."

It's not surprising that "Coop" provides the same philosophically poetic perspective on rural life that Perry showed in "Population: 485" and "Truck: A Love Story." But this time, Perry mixes in all the lessons to be learned by rearing the three "p's" in the title on a Wisconsin farm. The result honors the rural ideal without over-romanticizing it.

When considering the effect that moving to the country would have on his daughter, for example, Perry writes, "But I hope we don't burden Amy with the idea that living outside the city limits is an inherently pious act. That 'rural' equals 'righteous.' As a country kid, I took a while to round the bend on that one, but thanks to a blend of peak oil posts, Kwame Anthony Appiah's 'Cosmopolitanism,' and a week spent buying groceries at a bodega in Bushwick, I am well on my way to reconstructing all residual prejudice. Let's hear it for sensible urbanism."

The council still needs to decide whether that "sensible urbanism" should include urban chickens.

Opinion editor Jeff Charis-Carlson can be contacted at jcharisc@press-citizen.com or 319-887-5435.

Birthplace or boyhood home?

(published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 13, 2009)

After watching J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek," I had to call Steve Miller, the former city councilor who originally proposed Riverside declare itself the fictional future birthplace of the U.S.S. Enterprise's most famous captain, James T. Kirk.

I've read many quotes from an exuberant Miller in much of the local coverage of the new movie and its special screening for Riverside residents. But he and other Eastern Iowans seem to be avoiding the fact that the new film -- which tells the story of when the Enterprise's iconic crew first came together -- has Kirk born in a shuttlecraft in the farthest reaches of space rather than at the spot where an engraved marker stands in Riverside.

"You have to remember that the new film has a time travel plot," Miller said, citing the clever way Abrams chose to honor the Star Trek mythos without being compelled to treat it like holy writ. "It's an alternative universe to the one we know."

"But," I said while explaining to Miller that I didn't want to get too geeky on him, "the point at which the timelines separate is supposed to happen after Kirk's mother goes into labor. That means, even in the section supposedly in sync with the established Star Trek universe, Kirk is born far, far away from Riverside."

"Hey, this is 'Star Trek,' we're talking about," Miller reassured me. "You can't get too geeky. ... I guess I'll just have to go back to the book I read in which Gene Roddenberry, the series' creator, said that Kirk was born in a small town in Iowa."

It was after reading that quote back in the 1980s that Miller first proposed Riverside declare itself the "Future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk." Roddenberry, who had never specified which town in Iowa he was referring to, gave Riverside his consent.

"I didn't see the name of the shuttlecraft," Miller joked, "maybe its name is 'The State of Iowa.'"

"Or maybe this is more like the difference between Dixon and Tampico in Illinois," I said. "One is 'The Birthplace of President Ronald Reagan' and the other is 'The Boyhood Home of President Ronald Reagan.' Maybe you'll have to change the Riverside's motto to 'The Future Boyhood Home of Captain James T. Kirk.'"

"Yeah, and I hear those two cities don't really get along," Miller said.

"But you won't have to worry about that," I said. "Your only competition will be a point in space millions of miles away."

"I'm just glad Riverside got mentioned at all in the film," Miller said.

And Miller's not the only one pleased with how the film mentions the "Riverside Shipyard" as it explains how a young, angry, rebellious, thoroughly Iowan Kirk eventually joins Starfleet and takes command of the Enterprise. Although the Iowa sections of the film were not filmed here, the Iowa Film Office is also very happy about how the state's cameo in the No. 1 blockbuster is helping to put the words "Iowa" and "feature film" together in countless news releases and reviews.

"I was surprised to see that the Grand Canyon somehow gets moved to Iowa," said Miller, referring to an early scene in which a pre-teen Kirk narrowly escapes from a car heading over a huge cliff.

"Maybe that's supposed to be the new Iowa River valley," I said.

"I guess erosion will do that after a few centuries," Miller replied.

Opinion editor Jeff Charis-Carlson can be contacted at jcharisc@press-citizen.com or 319-887-5435.

Pitting amateurs against professional writers

(printed in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, April 23, 2009)

When Jane Hamilton came on the national literary scene with "The Book of Ruth" (1988) and "A Map of the World" (1994), her readers were rewarded with emotionally rich, well-written and utterly depressing stories of struggling families.

Because it was a good kind of depressing -- like student loans are supposed to be "good" kind of debt -- both novels became must-reads for the Oprah Book Club, before the club decided to stop featuring living authors.

In her subsequent novels, Hamilton has learned to inject more humor -- of both the uncanny and the "laugh out loud" variety -- into her plots and characters. And in the recently published "Laura Rider's Masterpiece" -- a novel about romance writing and middle-brow literary conventions -- Hamilton manages to be just as funny as she used to be depressing. (She even includes a funny critique of a TV Book Club that, like Oprah's, started featuring only long dead authors.)

"Laura Rider's Masterpiece" deals with many of the same issues as Hamilton's earlier novels -- struggling marriages, identity crisis and sexual versus emotional intimacy -- but without all the personal scarring inflicted on her earlier characters. Safely cocooned in a meta-fictional satire set in small-town Wisconsin, the new novel's married couple (Laura and Charlie Rider) are free to explore new aspects of their cooled 12-year-old passion as they collectively and electronically woo a middle-aged, famous public radio host named Jenna Faroli (a character that seems a fictional stand-in for interviewer extraordinaire and "Fresh Air" host Terry Gross).

The summary on the book jacket all but gives the plot away for this 21st-century cross between "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice." But the reading experience isn't at all diminished for knowing the plot ahead of time. In fact, like the romance tradition it critiques, Hamilton's new novel depends on meeting and surpassing readers' expectations.

Iowa City readers -- as denizens of a City of Literature -- might also find the novel ideal for sparking discussions of what it means to be a writer today.

In one corner is Laura Rider, the intuitive storyteller who dreams of being a romance writer (even though she doesn't really read anything). In the other corner is Jenna Faroli, middle-brow intellectual who chastises Rider for imagining she can reinvent the romance genre while knowing nothing about "queer theory, womanism, postcolonial theory, eco-feminism, (or) the riot-grrrl movement."

Hamilton, as a well-established novelist, uses Faroli to voice an elitist critique of the current "culture of the amateur, a culture where everyone thinks he is an artist. You blog and you're a poet. Didn't George Bernard Shaw say that hell is filled with amateur musicians?" But Hamilton also chooses to elevate "Mrs. Rider," as amateur writer, to produce the masterpiece in the novel's title.

Come to Prairie Lights tonight at 7 p.m. and ask Hamilton herself which type of writer she most identifies with.

Opinion editor Jeff Charis-Carlson can be contacted at 319-887-5435 or jcharisc@press-citizen.com.