Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Best of the Web Invades Me: Guest Post by Terese Svoboda

Today kicks off a webfreakout of press and hype for the newly released Best of the Web 2009 from Dzanc, in which I have a two pieces an interview (from Memorious and Action Yes). The collection as a whole is quite something and a wonderful snapshot of the online year.

In honor of this, please welcome this guest post from the incredible Terese Svoboda, author of “How Catholic," which appears in the anthology, among many other fantastic books. Consider picking yourself one up.



Svoboda:


"For maybe twenty years I have been trying to write a short story about the effect of finding two moons of green eye shadow on a towel in my youth. I have also written three poems twisting the memory around, alluding to its larger context. But what was that larger context? Was it only a “family story,” an anecdote worth repeating only once to another relative just to make sure I didn’t imagine it?

I feared nonfiction telling: that would be me. I went into poetry originally to throw the velvet cloak around that persona, or to flaunt the “I” voice in peekaboo. Publishing my memoir last year–Black Glasses Like Clark Kent–where I could skulk around as a detective and refer to myself in relation to my relatives—wasn’t too bad. But only under the duress of my uncle’s suicide and the horrific revelations of his tapes would I have attempted its writing. Yet something about the form felt familiar. Cannibal, my first novel, was called a roman a clef by Vogue. According to Wikipedia, that’s the opportunity to portray personal, autobiographical experiences without having to expose the author as the subject. Think “thinly disguised.” The entry suggests that any material based on personal experience is a roman a clef, and used Heart of Darkness as an example. Huh?

What I do know is that all material needs the fuzziness of time until what’s important remains. Time completed How Catholic, enough to gain perspective on what those two green moons meant, and to find a voice to say what I understood about them in a larger context. To find a formal solution for this narrative in creative nonfiction worked. I’m happy.

Maybe I’ve always been happy."

2 comments:

Ani Smith said...

'I feared nonfiction telling: that would be me. I went into poetry originally to throw the velvet cloak around that persona, or to flaunt the “I” voice in peekaboo.'

I love this line. I AM this line, at the fear stage. I hope she's right about the happy. Nice one, Blake, thanks.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

hi ani! therese is no joke :)