When good comes out of bad… That makes a notable in Best American Short Stories, a notable in Best American Essays, and inclusion in the Journey Prize, Best Canadian Stories and Best Canadian Poetry. Joyce Carol Oates has chosen BAE 2016 as her recommended winter book. I’m with her. The Best American series is my go-to for new essays, poems and stories no matter what year it is. And if I’m seeking Canadian work, Best Canadian.
sketch: Jane Eaton Hamilton uncertain date: 2011?
Here, from The Atlantic, is George Saunders talking about how to write a good story. I love George Saunders’ heart. Sometimes, the Semplica-Girl Diaries, a story of his that IV-dripped into me, swirls in my brain.
After listening to this video, now I will hear this:
“…what you try and do with the person you love. You come back to them again and again and try to intuit their real expansiveness and you try to keep them close to you and give them the benefit of the doubt.” I have never heard this expressed quite this way before and I hope George Saunders wouldn’t mind if I say that this is why women stay with battering spouses.
This, indeed, is why I stayed with her. I continued to try to intuit her real expansiveness. It was this expansiveness under her crabbed expression of rage that bound, fascinated, compelled and tugged me closer.
It’s discontent and generosity that builds story. May I always remember this.
Here’s another interview from Triquarterly:
An Interview with George Saunders
“We just got our submissions for our grad program [at Syracuse] and we got 600 this year for 6 spots. And I read 165 of those. And it’s so interesting. Everybody has a beautiful life. And everybody has an intense childhood. And everybody has, I think, some ability to be moved by literature. But then you see 165 people stepping forward to try to make that magic on their own, and it’s not a given. You can be a really smart, really well read, really well intentioned person, but somehow the thing you’re writing doesn’t come alive. Every year we do this, I’m kind of stunned by how many people are writing and also how well, and also how few of those people really get into the zone of speaking to me or speaking to another human being at the heart level. It’s kind of a mysterious thing. It’s kind of terrifying.”
Jane Eaton Hamilton sketch 2014
Of all the topics I’ve had at my fingertips, perhaps none has been as difficult for me to write personally about as being battered over 18 years. I remain highly embarrassed that I went through this; I ought to hand in my feminist credentials and have them retroactively scrubbed. I ought to hand in my lezzie activisit credentials while I’m at it.
Yes, I’m a feminist. Yes, I’m an activist. Yes, I was battered. Yes, I stayed.
Yes, I accepted a certain base-line of violence into my marriage and would have gone on staying the rest of my life. That’s the dumb truth of it. I adored her; I would have stayed with her forever.
Never Say I Didn’t Bring You Flowers
sketch by Jane Eaton Hamilton 2014
There’s a group on FB called Binders. If I hadn’t joined Binders, I wouldn’t have had my essay Things That Didn’t Happen come out on Manifest Station. If it hadn’t come out there, I wouldn’t have seen that Karrie Higgins’ brilliant essay Strange Flowers had come out there, too. You should read it. You shouldn’t go another day in your life without reading it or knowing that Karrie Higgins is writing some of the best prose seen today.
Eaton Hamilton 