I shall work in detail on this. But I know that my obsessions were entirely pop culture-based until I got to college. As a poor kid growing up on a reservation, my cultural life was based on our very limited TV reception (ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS) and the very small libraries on the reservation that contained far more magazines (People, Life, Reader’s Digest, Time) than books, It’s in this way that poor American kids are acculturated to becoming extremely American. I was an Indian boy who became an All-American archetype without having ever seen any representation of myself in the mainstream culture. So, yeah, it was all Brady Bunch and Bruce Lee for me.
I was a TV kid too - Green Acres, Love American Style (!), Brady Bunch - and feel the structure of these (and the speed) in my esthetic - that sense that the Serious might be there in the Goofy.
I remember our New Yorker gig fondly. We read in a bright college classroom and not some dramatically lit club or theatre. Though I don’t recall which college in NYC, though. And, yes, that’s a great point about the Serious and Goofy mixed together. I don’t often publicly comment about actor deaths but I did Instagram post about Ed Asner’s death and lauded his legendary portrayals of the same character, Lou Grant, in a sit-com and in a drama. Perhaps there is a Lou Grant School of Literary Fiction?
I seem to remember we were in the basement/auditorium of the Conde Nast building (?) - and a very funny joke you made as we were waiting to be picked up at the hotel.
Hey, a lesson for creating drama in fiction—two different memories of the same event. And if I were a fictional character who hated to be wrong, I’d argue with you about the venue. But you are right—it was in the basement of Condé Nast building. I don’t remember the joke! It’s probably not reprintable!
I can really relate to this. I grew up in a very rural area of a rural state rather than on a reservation, but we were poor and had to make do with those same channels. The school and county libraries were. . . Not great, though I was lucky enough to have teachers who would bring books I could read. My “people” and “experiences” columns will definitely be full of small-town religion as well.
Speaking of growing up poor in rural America— I never would have imagined I’d be able to interact with such great minds eventually. Thanks, George, for bringing this group together (and to Sherman for sharing, too).
I did not grow up rural, but rather bluecollar in Metro Detroit, although my father was an Engineer, for one of The Big Three, of course. Seems to me now he and my mother felt more comfortable among the factory workers, as they both grew up quite poor in coal mining towns in WVa. So I have that connection, sense of history, though not entirely a direct experience. We certainly weren't what would qualify as poor, we had what we needed, but with 5 kids, money was managed frugally, for sure.
Agree. It has a way of conjoining/connecting people. Seems to me a variety of "kinds of poor", ie my parents grew up poor in rural WVA coalmine towns which is similar but different I imagine from growing up poor in, say, a suburburban trailer park
In the Indian world, there are a lot of marriages between Indians and poor white people. And we tend to fall in love with those people who share those most with us.
It has always been my instinct that economic status is an often disregarded or not-seen realm of predjudice, for lack of a better term, but it certainly acts as a common ground upon which strong alliances/understandings/bonds are formed.
Pop culture served as my early influnces as well. TV, cartoon, Sunday comics, comic books, Mad Magazines. Also skateboarding and BMX. We were one of the last families to get cable even. So, it was often older movies, unless I could sneak away to the theater, which I did to see Jaws and Star Wars later, riding miles alone, when I was not supposed to in order to find out what all the hubbub was about.
As a kid for me it was mainly Mad Magazine and Cracked and Crazy, if those count as comic books. But also The Archies and Richy Rich and Casper The Friendly Ghost. I was not much into the Super Hero comicbooks, although I did dip from time to time. Iron Man was my favorite. As was Plastic Man when I discovered him later on.
I introduced my daughter to it when she was about 12. She loved it to, for a time. I had a friend actually get published in MAD, which was quite the coup. Still is, as far as I am concerned.
Daredevil! Yes! Thanks for reminding me. I had a box under my bed when I was 8. And much later of course: Sandman, Palestine, Persepolis, The Watchmen... Maus...
Thank you for the kind words and for teaching my work. It’s always cool to hear that my work has resonated with students. It reminds me of being a student and getting wrapped up with the books that resonated with me. It’s why I’m here on this Substack—to be a student.
I, too, include one of your poems, "How to Write the Great American Novel," in one of my college composition courses at a community college with many first-in-the-family students among my students. In that course, when we get into short fiction, I included Saunders' "Ghoul" among the readings.
Lovely to have you in this cohort, Sherman. Have enjoyed your work for a long while now. Used to be in film myself (screenwriting) but back to solitary word work, where it feels essential. Cheers, Mike
Thank you, Michael. Hollywood! I’ve spent 25 years building up a decent Writers Guild pension writing screenplays for many projects that never got made!
I hear ya, buddy. Pitched to Kevin Costner’s prodco in fall of 1993 and, yeah, well no dice. I still worked on my spec for 10 years. Good skills and great people I met along the way. I got to teach screenwriting for a while after that, so kept me going. Good to see you here. Call me Mike. 😊
Tommy Orange was a student of mine at IAIA and I’m extremely happy for him. I was just one of his mentors at IAIA. There were others, Indian and non-Indian, who did more work with him. When I first read his two or three pages about all the meanings and mores of the Indians coming to the Oakland urban powwow, I knew he had major talent.
I grew up in a house without books, where reading and storytelling were far from valued. I didn't discover literature until after I'd graduated from college, having earned a BS (pun intended) in business. One job took me to London, where I lived for a few months in a beautifully furnished flat lined with Penguin classics, shelves and shelves of shimmering black and orange spines. Having no friends there and little money, I turned to these books for company and instantly fell in love, first with George's pantheon, the Russians. Nearly forty years later, I'm still reading and scribbling in the margins, making up for lost time and my book-deprived childhood. Thank you, George, for keeping me on the student's path with your humor, grace, and wisdom.
My mother burned a book -- literally threw it in the fireplace, when she found me reading. She had never read a book in her life, from cover to cover. My God, what an array of people we have here. And more than that, what we have all survived. George's club has indeed been a gift.
My dad told me the gypsies left me here but before they did they dropped me on my head but he was very proud of how many books I read a week and would brag I learned to read at 4. I lived in fear that he would find my journals!!
YIkes! My parents would sometimes looke at me cross-eyed for reading certain books, such as The Cather in The Rye at age 14, but did not take them away. I'm sure it was a sort of concern rather than objection. My father had a college degree and my mother was quite self-edcuated, I suppose one would say. Certain books were forbidden, such as, The Godfather, but we had a copy on the small bookshelf in our hallway, and of course I swiped it and read in the closet with a flashlight.
Wouldn't it be interesting to make a list of all the books we felt we needed to hide? The book my mother burned was "A Patch of Blue," by Elizabeth Kata. My mother was quite a devout and very blatant racist, and it incensed her that I not only wasn't like her, but that I was totally captivated by the book. I remember running my fingers through the ashes once they had cooled, and immediately went to the library to read it again there. In my own privacy.
I read Judy Blume's "Forever," expressly forbidden by my Harlequin Romance-reading mother, three pages at a time in the local bookstore while she shopped for groceries next door. It took me four months to finish, but my deceit made the story even more delicious.
I grew up in a house full of books and bookshelves so full that my dad would shelve a completely new row of books in front of the books that were already on the shelves. I had to sneak a copy of Judy Blume's Forever just like you! I actually had a copy and hid it in my backpack so I could read it any place I would not get busted for reading it. My mom taught in the district where I went to school so there were eyes and ears everywhere. I read it on the school bus, in class nestled in between pages of a text book I *should* have been reading, or I would rush through my classwork so I could read it. If I were to find a copy and read the book now, I wonder if it would be as exhilarating to read it. Yep! I would remember how much I enjoyed reading a "banned book" and thinking I was such a rebel.
It was going around our school and I had it in my backpack the same week the school sent home a letter about it, Mom found it in my pack (which she never searched before that) and I got grounded for 2 weeks.
A Clockwork Orange and The Exorcist I came to later in life. I had a prof in undergrad who claimed to have been a college classmate of William Peter Blatty
And what with all the buzz about censoring books again, such as "Beloved," this is a worthy conversation, to be more aware of what ideas authors put forth that seem so threatening to certain people. I get the flashlight, Chris! These experiences, if nothing else, serve to bring out the creativity in us!
Yeah. Reading The Godfather, among other "forbidden" texts in the closet with a flashlight remains a vivid and precious memory for me. And formative.
As my daughter (also a writer) has come to view it: there should be a place for socalled "problematic" story lines without it necessaryily being attributed as approved of by the writer or the readers who admire the craft of such stories.
I also grew up in a house without many books and we weren't read to. As a result, I loved the grocery store books for kids that came out each month (Golden Books?)--at least it was something. The only two books I ever remember in our home was a description of the effects of the bombing on Hiroshima with photos of both the dead and survivors and a 1950s book on sex in marriage. They fascinated me, but I knew the marriage manual was just plain wrong. The Hiroshima book confirmed my sense that adults were, well, addled and not to be fully counted on for being pathfinders of good.
That makes me think of Mr. Rogers telling kids (and adults) to look for the helpers after 911. Many of us are addled, but still trying to forge a path for good that others may follow. ❤️🙏🏽
I loved the Golden Books, too. They were some of the only books I remember owning as a child, I think because they were inexpensive (I still have some with their .89 cent stickers on the cover--this would have been in the 80's). Some of the titles are books my father remembers from his childhood as well (The Poky Little Puppy, Scuffy the Tugboat, Tootle the Train) and now I'm reading them to my little one.
Whoa! That's strange, Stacya. I was in 6th grade and have a very curious mind about almost everything. I found it both disturbing and enlightening about what we can do to others. The book, as I remember it, was a slim and smallish, but not real small.
My mother wanted me to read it. Yeah, it was slim, some first person accounts, disturbing...devastating. After reading the impact of the bombs "duck and cover" or get under your desk seemed a little absurd.
Hi, Stacya. Nice to see you here. Thanks for reminding me about the "duck and cover" drills. I think I had pushed those out of my mind, but they -- and the air-raid drills during the Cuban Missile Crisis -- were certainly part of my childhood. (I just now had a vivid visual of hiding behind our big red armchair with my mom when the sirens sounded). I'll put them in my grid -- which I'm finding to be a very helpful exercise.
I grew up in a house with plenty of books, but only two records: "The Grand Canyon Suite" and a Nancy Sinatra album. Out of desperation I played the heck out of both. Surprisingly enough, I came to love music later in life, and even learned to sing. Maybe I was making up for what I had craved in childhood after I grew up and I had the ability to dive into music.
Oh, George, George. I came of age as the Monkees were coming to fame. When I heard about Nesmith's death, I started sobbing, but also felt strangely ashamed, as the group seemed to always occupy a kind of cheesy reputation. But they were a part of me. (I had such a crush on Mickey Dolenz.) You know, this past year, I have been so horribly depressed by the state of the nation, political hostility and craziness -- I guess I just wanted you to know that this club, this little club, is the best therapy I've ever had. I want to stay alive to keep being a part of it. I haven't felt this alive or excited about anything in a long, long, time. Thank you, George. And I wish you a peace-filled wintry season, full of love, light, and energy.
I'm going to do the whole project, but I think the most honest/embarassing revelation will be the fact that the books that made me a "reader" were the Fear Street books by R.L.Stine. I read so many of them and no one I knew liked them (they were all about The Babysitter's Club, which I still don't understand.)
What this tells me about myself is that for me, the stakes have to be high. Social conflict is not enough. The BIGGER and more WORLD ENDING the better. Or at least, the implications of the conflict have to cut deep.
My first favorite non-children’s book was a 1984 choose your own adventure novella from Ballantine- “Indiana Jones and the Curse of Horror Island”. In a state of nostalgia I found a copy on eBay a few years ago and was shocked to see it was written by R.L.Stine. Dare I say I got goosebumps? (Sorry)
Stine had SO many of these awesome choose-your-own-adventure books. I used to borrow them en masse from my school library. Way too gruesome and legitimately scary (lots of bodily horror) for 11-year-olds, but my God were they effective. Some had pictures. Thanks for the memory!
I was all about Fear Street too, Kara! And YES! I'm right there with you about an early love of high stakes. I was also very into Animorphs - just remembered after reading your comment!
Based on what I've seen online, you are not alone in your love of Animorphs. Reddit's r/books seems to have a top post 2-3 times a year where people realize how dark it was but gush all the same. I was a bit old for them, but I might see if I get my kids reading them when it's time.
I read both - RL Stine and The Babysitters Club. I liked how fast I could read them, the sense of accomplishment of getting through them, the relief after devouring them. My sisters and I also loved Unsolved Mysteries and would sit, cross legged on the tiled floor staring up at the tv, waiting for that distinctive font to come across the screen. I grew up in the Caribbean in the 1980's and 90's. So a strange brew of American Culture, the pulsing nature of the Caribbean and the British influence never far away. A Jesuit school with rigorous academics and weekly mass. A deep love of 90's dance hall culture. Serious readings of Bob Marley lyrics and Shakespeare a like. Our teachers ranged from Jamaican nuns in their 70's to rebellious Irish teachers in their 20's on a Caribbean adventure for a few years.
I was a writer and story editor on Darkwing Duck back in the day… it’s no surprise that my influences were Superman and Batman comics, The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Disney’s Robin Hood and Zorro TV shows, and old black and white movies like Hercules, Sinbad the Sailor… as well as Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rodgers… etc.
This looks like fun! I think though, at my age (63), I may have to switch to decades rather than 5's for the later years--maybe post 30s. Not sure I can differentiate 45-50 from 50-55, for instance, though I could give it a go.
Also, I would never have thought of Jaws as an influence, except a few years ago I started connecting it to my interest in Moby Dick (I know that's been said before) but I had a particular view of the book, connecting to the movie, and to (bear with me) present day examples of fatuous arrogance (including DJT and environmental degradation). Anyhoo, wrote an essay about it once that is one of my favorite publications ever, so yeah, you never know what things from the past will stick their fins out of the water in front of you!
Looking forward to filling this out and learning about past-me's a little.
I've got a few years on you, Leslie (at 66) and was thinking the same thing -- I may do this exercise in decades -- the years blur together so quickly, right? And I was nearly obsessed with Moby Dick as well. Queequeg somehow took up residence in my subconscious so he must be a big influencer!
And Katharine Haake uses the word "burrowing" to pull sentence from sentence when blocked--similarly. I like this thought of memory to memory. Extracting from like.
I'm finding this as I start filling in the chart...remembering one thing I loved at age 9 leads me to remember another, then another, which leads me to remember what I got into after that...it's an interesting process.
I'm 65 and the five year breaks are actually slower going but more revealing because I really have to think. And don't you see a shift in momentum, a kind of flood of incoming in those tween-adolescent years. There is a huge leap that takes place from 10-15 for me.
I am working on five year shifts for the first few decades, then ten year shifts after. Cuz yeah, a lot of difference between 10-15 and 15-20, as opposed to 40-45 and 45-50, for sure!
Interesting, Elizabeth. I'm 64 and finding that years 1987-1997 are a bit of a blur. They were years I was busiest working full-time and raising a family. I love this exercise because it brings me back there to cut through the fog and reacquaint myself with that long ago "me." Thanks for doing this for us, George.
What a liberating exercise! I never really thought that I self censored so much but (alas) I do. So, my name's Ulka and I frickin' LOVED Quantum Leap. :)
Oh man, Ulka, you reminded me that I used to watch Sliders (also, Monk) religiously. And that I really loved the one season of Jack and Bobby that ever existed. I'll definitely need those in my list.
I found out that only experiences and objects were memorable until about 6, then at the same exact moment it seems, people and stories became equally as important to me. I find that interesting!
Some surprise influences I unearthed: SNL reruns from the 80's on Comedy Central, all my childhood pets (several cats, a parakeet, and several mice, some fish too), listening to doo-wop with my dad on car rides to the San Fernando Valley every weekend, my eccentric elementary school teachers (My 2nd grade teacher had a full-on beehive even though it was 1992).
My "serious" influences: Kid A, Ravel, "The Confessions", Bob Dylan, Georgia O'Keefe, Marina Abramović, Aldous Huxley, Director's Label series, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, Brian Eno, David Burn, David Lynch, David Cronenberg (Holy Trinity of Davids), Robert Rauschenberg, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Banana Yoshimoto, Mos Def, Eckhart Tolle, Tao Te Ching, Sylvie Guillem, Miles Davis, Edith Piaf, and on and on ad infinitum.
Anyone else feeling full and warm after this exercise? You've invented quite a powerful time machine, George :)
I'm going to work on this grid but first wanted to express gratitude to George for how he teaches writing as an act of self-discovery and growth.
I know how his own journey evolved from Hemingway cosplay to his stew of humor and optimism and gravitas, but really appreciate the repeated nudges to honor brought us all to this point and what has resonated with us. Getting all these pieces to coexist and even sing together is the crux of a writer's voice, I think.
"And what will be needed, if the story is going to be good, is: everything, all that you are, even those parts you don’t like or usually exclude."
This brought up some tears for me - sorrow at recognizing how much has been excluded, but also gratitude in the possibility of welcoming it back in. There's a sense of release and enlargening here: I have much more to draw upon than I'd allowed myself. Thank you for this!
And thanks everyone for sharing your influences. It's interesting to consider the "guilty pleasures." Where do we get the idea that one thing is worthy of enjoyment and another thing isn't?
I remember as a child how this worthiness was influenced by the judgement of my peers (it was okay to enjoy the Spice Girls for a few months; then, suddenly, it wasn't), and a fear of judgement by respected figures like my parents and teachers. By adolescence, I'd happily tell a teacher that I'd read Jane Austen; I'd leave out the Archie comics - I began to believe I never really liked them. Surely, there was something I liked about them, but I was afraid to admit it, even to myself. What would it say about me if I liked something so "un-literary"?
So much to consider here! What have we disliked and discarded? What led us to do that? What might it be like to reclaim those things as part of ourselves? I'm excited to explore this further!
Thank you for articulating this observation Hannah...I was reading through the comments, deciding how best to summarize my own chart, and your comment here pointed to how my own decisions for how I summarize - how I "present" here are prone to be curated and biased ...and it makes me wonder how much I might be doing this subconsciously as I go about my days (constantly?). Anyway, your post points to the necessity of welcoming in those aspects that fall outside what we've labelled as literary, cultural or, dare I say it, higher/better/upper class. And for me, maybe something I should start practicing noticing.
At first I thought this might be just about nostalgia and remembering what great taste I have ;) but it's made me think about a lot of different things which is good. Thank you for allowing me to think and reflect.
I'm thinking a lot about my brother and what led us to become such polar opposites. My influences were all cerebral while his were all visceral. I think it had to be this way. He couldn't have turned into a left-leaning, always reading, artsy fartsy emotional person and I couldn't have become an adrenaline-seeking, right-leaning, hunting, stoic type. We each found the influences we instictively knew we needed to find. Kurt Vonnegut was never an "option" for him just as Ted Nugent couldn't be an "option" for me.
Some of my main influences ended up being Sesame Street, Calvin & Hobbes, The Simpsons, Vonnegut, The Beatles, Pearl Jam, Lucinda Williams, Buddhism, Jeff Bridges, "Mink River" by Brian Doyle, and my wife.
Those are some of the positive ones. I've also been thinking about the things that influence us to NOT become a certain way. The things we see and go, "Oh. Let's not be like that". My dad taking me hunting as a young teenager and killing a deer. That was a major turning point in my life. Seeing the animal's suffering didn't turn me into a vegetarian that day, but it was the event that triggered it, no pun intended. Also anti-influential was just the way my dad behaved with his hunting friend, getting wasted on cheap whiskey, telling disgusting, racist jokes. I took that all in silently thinking "This is uncomfortable. This is not me". Not to mention that he almost killed us both later that night by speeding through a train track so we wouldn't have to wait for the train coming. We missed it by feet. This is a story I've been trying to put on paper but haven't cracked the code yet on how to tell it properly.
One last thing I noticed...from age 10-15: Basically nothing in the story/novel boxes. I started playing guitar at ten and it pretty much consumed my entire life there for quite a few years.
Thanks, Brad, for bringing up the negative influences that helped us decide who we really want to be. I had several music teachers like that—abusive, damaged people that were examples to me of who I vowed I wouldn't become. And like you I have stretches in my chart with no reading listed. I know I was reading, but nothing stood out as making real impact. Time to exercise more self-compassion. These days I always look for the next book I feel is just right for what I need now (Bibliotherapy).
Dec 20, 2021·edited Dec 20, 2021Liked by George Saunders
As a member of the 84 boxes to fill club, as well as Story Club, this will take a while. But right out of the gate, I remember listening to Steve Martin's stand up comedy albums, Let's Get Small, and Comedy is not Pretty. I memorized a lot of the bits. I can still sing the verses of Grandmother's Song: Be pompous, obese, and eat cactus.....
I really enjoyed this exercise! Weird/fun things came up (like my pre-teen obsession with Absolut vodka and Got Milk magazine ads, with which I plastered by bedroom walls), but also beautiful/fun things like the incredible names and vivid memories of the people in my preschool (Nike Ife, whose dad was British and drank beer out of green bottles; Joshua Raisin, who slept in a family bed). The exercise as a whole inspired me to reach out to a few people who've been constants through my life to let them know how grateful I am to them. It also made me think about my kids, who are 5 and 7, and how they are in the process of building their own authentic influence maps and how cool that is (!!!).
Would it be OK for me to offer a version of this to my high school students? They are neurodivergent learners, and I think it would be cool and inspiring for them to reflect on all the (non-academic) influences that have made them who they are.
This is surprisingly fun but also shocking! I can't believe how much I've forgotten...probably I blocked it out, like the fact that as a teenage girl in Dallas (land of big hair and football) in the 80s, I was secretly obsessed with Neil Simon. I don't know how many times I checked out his plays from the library. The Odd Couple was my favorite, and I remember convincing my partner in Drama class to do a scene with me. The other thing was a book by Patrick Dennis (Tanner), who wrote Auntie Mame, called Genius. My mom and I used to read it out loud to each other, and my first creative act was to try and adapt it to a screenplay. (I failed.) When I got into Serious Literature, I set it aside. (And in all honesty, I can't bring myself to pick it up now because there's a whole section down in Mexico that just....isn't funny through today's eyes.) In an earlier post, George talked about trying to be a serious writer, like Hemingway, but how things just didn't come out naturally. I am always and forever thinking of Alice Munro when I think about writing, but that kind of writing, when I do it, just plods along on the page. Only recently have I started to let myself be funny on the page. It's terrifying (what if I am only funny to me?) but so much more dynamic. Sorry for the ramble, but this was such a DUH! moment!
I have deconstructed and mapped out so many Munro stories because I find what she does with time fascinating, how she moves forward and backward in time so seamlessly. There's some strange magic at work there. She's on my chart of influences, too :)
Yes, me too! My Copy of Hateship, Friendship...is almost unreadable for my notes, although I haven't done it again since reading a Swim in the Pond. I think I need a new copy! Have you read Joan Silber's The Art of Time? She talks about what Munro does as "switchback" time. Definitely worth a look (as is Silber's fiction, if you haven't read it). :)
Priscilla! YES! I love Joan Silber (am always amazed at how much LIFE she can cover within the space of a short story), but have not read (didn't know about) The Art of Time. Thank you for the rec and am adding it to my list.
I also want to confess--I've always been superstitious about writing in books. I'm afraid of a past observation coloring a future self's reading :).
Ha ha! I only started writing in books in the past few years. I guess it does color things, but it's also so informative. I can see an evolution there in my thinking. Although I recently loaned out a book (Olive Kitteridge) with my marks in it, and I cringe a little to think someone will read them.
I just discovered Silber this year, and I am ashamed it took me so long! That Art of Time is from a series put out by Graywolf Press. the latest one is Peter Ho Davies On Revision, which I am definitely planning to read.
Same, I loved Neil Simon -- I remember wanting to read funny books and couldn't find that much at age 10 (suburban Denver in the mid-70s). My mom got me an anthology of Neil Simon plays at the mall and I read and reread it until it almost fell apart. A lot of it must have gone over my head but I loved them.
Pretty sure my way into Neil Simon was The Goodbye Girl, seeing it in the theater in the 70s with my mom. I was about Lucy's (the little girl's) age and in a similar situation. And then also reruns of The Odd Couple after school, which I never missed. You are right, those plays were like Looney Tunes, working at so many levels.
I shall work in detail on this. But I know that my obsessions were entirely pop culture-based until I got to college. As a poor kid growing up on a reservation, my cultural life was based on our very limited TV reception (ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS) and the very small libraries on the reservation that contained far more magazines (People, Life, Reader’s Digest, Time) than books, It’s in this way that poor American kids are acculturated to becoming extremely American. I was an Indian boy who became an All-American archetype without having ever seen any representation of myself in the mainstream culture. So, yeah, it was all Brady Bunch and Bruce Lee for me.
And you wound up a complete genius. Wonderful to see you on here, Sherman. Remember that time we did New Yorker Fest?
I was a TV kid too - Green Acres, Love American Style (!), Brady Bunch - and feel the structure of these (and the speed) in my esthetic - that sense that the Serious might be there in the Goofy.
I remember our New Yorker gig fondly. We read in a bright college classroom and not some dramatically lit club or theatre. Though I don’t recall which college in NYC, though. And, yes, that’s a great point about the Serious and Goofy mixed together. I don’t often publicly comment about actor deaths but I did Instagram post about Ed Asner’s death and lauded his legendary portrayals of the same character, Lou Grant, in a sit-com and in a drama. Perhaps there is a Lou Grant School of Literary Fiction?
I seem to remember we were in the basement/auditorium of the Conde Nast building (?) - and a very funny joke you made as we were waiting to be picked up at the hotel.
Asner was awesome.
Hey, a lesson for creating drama in fiction—two different memories of the same event. And if I were a fictional character who hated to be wrong, I’d argue with you about the venue. But you are right—it was in the basement of Condé Nast building. I don’t remember the joke! It’s probably not reprintable!
Well.... :)
I can really relate to this. I grew up in a very rural area of a rural state rather than on a reservation, but we were poor and had to make do with those same channels. The school and county libraries were. . . Not great, though I was lucky enough to have teachers who would bring books I could read. My “people” and “experiences” columns will definitely be full of small-town religion as well.
Speaking of growing up poor in rural America— I never would have imagined I’d be able to interact with such great minds eventually. Thanks, George, for bringing this group together (and to Sherman for sharing, too).
Yes, those of us who were rural poor form a tribe of its own.
I did not grow up rural, but rather bluecollar in Metro Detroit, although my father was an Engineer, for one of The Big Three, of course. Seems to me now he and my mother felt more comfortable among the factory workers, as they both grew up quite poor in coal mining towns in WVa. So I have that connection, sense of history, though not entirely a direct experience. We certainly weren't what would qualify as poor, we had what we needed, but with 5 kids, money was managed frugally, for sure.
I think being poor in the USA does create a common culture among otherwise distinctly different people.
Agree. It has a way of conjoining/connecting people. Seems to me a variety of "kinds of poor", ie my parents grew up poor in rural WVA coalmine towns which is similar but different I imagine from growing up poor in, say, a suburburban trailer park
In the Indian world, there are a lot of marriages between Indians and poor white people. And we tend to fall in love with those people who share those most with us.
It has always been my instinct that economic status is an often disregarded or not-seen realm of predjudice, for lack of a better term, but it certainly acts as a common ground upon which strong alliances/understandings/bonds are formed.
Pop culture served as my early influnces as well. TV, cartoon, Sunday comics, comic books, Mad Magazines. Also skateboarding and BMX. We were one of the last families to get cable even. So, it was often older movies, unless I could sneak away to the theater, which I did to see Jaws and Star Wars later, riding miles alone, when I was not supposed to in order to find out what all the hubbub was about.
Yes, comic books were huge for me. My favorite then and now is Daredevil.
As a kid for me it was mainly Mad Magazine and Cracked and Crazy, if those count as comic books. But also The Archies and Richy Rich and Casper The Friendly Ghost. I was not much into the Super Hero comicbooks, although I did dip from time to time. Iron Man was my favorite. As was Plastic Man when I discovered him later on.
I secretly loved Archie and the gang! Riverdale was not a community where Indian warriors were supposed to visit!
I didn’t discover Mad until I was around 30 - loved it!
I introduced my daughter to it when she was about 12. She loved it to, for a time. I had a friend actually get published in MAD, which was quite the coup. Still is, as far as I am concerned.
Daredevil! Yes! Thanks for reminding me. I had a box under my bed when I was 8. And much later of course: Sandman, Palestine, Persepolis, The Watchmen... Maus...
Bruce Lee was mine! Haha I thought I was alone in that love. Had large posters of him in my room- and David Carradine in Kung Fu...
Readers Digest— a very big deal
Thank you for the kind words and for teaching my work. It’s always cool to hear that my work has resonated with students. It reminds me of being a student and getting wrapped up with the books that resonated with me. It’s why I’m here on this Substack—to be a student.
I loved "Smoke Signals". It's an honor to have you with us here.
Thank you!
I, too, include one of your poems, "How to Write the Great American Novel," in one of my college composition courses at a community college with many first-in-the-family students among my students. In that course, when we get into short fiction, I included Saunders' "Ghoul" among the readings.
I didn’t know that poem and found it because of your comment. Thank you!
Hey, thanks, for teaching that poem! In my experience, readers sometimes miss the humor in the poem.
Lovely to have you in this cohort, Sherman. Have enjoyed your work for a long while now. Used to be in film myself (screenwriting) but back to solitary word work, where it feels essential. Cheers, Mike
Thank you, Michael. Hollywood! I’ve spent 25 years building up a decent Writers Guild pension writing screenplays for many projects that never got made!
I hear ya, buddy. Pitched to Kevin Costner’s prodco in fall of 1993 and, yeah, well no dice. I still worked on my spec for 10 years. Good skills and great people I met along the way. I got to teach screenwriting for a while after that, so kept me going. Good to see you here. Call me Mike. 😊
Tommy Orange was a student of mine at IAIA and I’m extremely happy for him. I was just one of his mentors at IAIA. There were others, Indian and non-Indian, who did more work with him. When I first read his two or three pages about all the meanings and mores of the Indians coming to the Oakland urban powwow, I knew he had major talent.
I grew up in a house without books, where reading and storytelling were far from valued. I didn't discover literature until after I'd graduated from college, having earned a BS (pun intended) in business. One job took me to London, where I lived for a few months in a beautifully furnished flat lined with Penguin classics, shelves and shelves of shimmering black and orange spines. Having no friends there and little money, I turned to these books for company and instantly fell in love, first with George's pantheon, the Russians. Nearly forty years later, I'm still reading and scribbling in the margins, making up for lost time and my book-deprived childhood. Thank you, George, for keeping me on the student's path with your humor, grace, and wisdom.
My mother burned a book -- literally threw it in the fireplace, when she found me reading. She had never read a book in her life, from cover to cover. My God, what an array of people we have here. And more than that, what we have all survived. George's club has indeed been a gift.
And this club has been a gift to me, truly.
And you didn't let this stop you! Hooray!
As a matter of fact, it fueled me. I tend to be somewhat stubborn (smile).
Book-burning mothers will do that! Mine burned my journals; I didn't think they were that good.
My dad told me the gypsies left me here but before they did they dropped me on my head but he was very proud of how many books I read a week and would brag I learned to read at 4. I lived in fear that he would find my journals!!
Oh my, do I sense the germ of a great piece of fiction with that recollection of your mom. What a superb opening scene that could be.
YIkes! My parents would sometimes looke at me cross-eyed for reading certain books, such as The Cather in The Rye at age 14, but did not take them away. I'm sure it was a sort of concern rather than objection. My father had a college degree and my mother was quite self-edcuated, I suppose one would say. Certain books were forbidden, such as, The Godfather, but we had a copy on the small bookshelf in our hallway, and of course I swiped it and read in the closet with a flashlight.
I had to hide: The Godfather, Clockwork Orange and the Exorcist.
Wouldn't it be interesting to make a list of all the books we felt we needed to hide? The book my mother burned was "A Patch of Blue," by Elizabeth Kata. My mother was quite a devout and very blatant racist, and it incensed her that I not only wasn't like her, but that I was totally captivated by the book. I remember running my fingers through the ashes once they had cooled, and immediately went to the library to read it again there. In my own privacy.
I read Judy Blume's "Forever," expressly forbidden by my Harlequin Romance-reading mother, three pages at a time in the local bookstore while she shopped for groceries next door. It took me four months to finish, but my deceit made the story even more delicious.
Judy Blume's "Forever" and "Wifey" got passed around at my school
I grew up in a house full of books and bookshelves so full that my dad would shelve a completely new row of books in front of the books that were already on the shelves. I had to sneak a copy of Judy Blume's Forever just like you! I actually had a copy and hid it in my backpack so I could read it any place I would not get busted for reading it. My mom taught in the district where I went to school so there were eyes and ears everywhere. I read it on the school bus, in class nestled in between pages of a text book I *should* have been reading, or I would rush through my classwork so I could read it. If I were to find a copy and read the book now, I wonder if it would be as exhilarating to read it. Yep! I would remember how much I enjoyed reading a "banned book" and thinking I was such a rebel.
It was going around our school and I had it in my backpack the same week the school sent home a letter about it, Mom found it in my pack (which she never searched before that) and I got grounded for 2 weeks.
This so resonates with me, Julie. It's almost as though the forbidden nature of the act makes it somehow more significant, more meaningful.
A Clockwork Orange and The Exorcist I came to later in life. I had a prof in undergrad who claimed to have been a college classmate of William Peter Blatty
And what with all the buzz about censoring books again, such as "Beloved," this is a worthy conversation, to be more aware of what ideas authors put forth that seem so threatening to certain people. I get the flashlight, Chris! These experiences, if nothing else, serve to bring out the creativity in us!
Yeah. Reading The Godfather, among other "forbidden" texts in the closet with a flashlight remains a vivid and precious memory for me. And formative.
As my daughter (also a writer) has come to view it: there should be a place for socalled "problematic" story lines without it necessaryily being attributed as approved of by the writer or the readers who admire the craft of such stories.
What a beautiful journey you are on, Kelly.
I also grew up in a house without many books and we weren't read to. As a result, I loved the grocery store books for kids that came out each month (Golden Books?)--at least it was something. The only two books I ever remember in our home was a description of the effects of the bombing on Hiroshima with photos of both the dead and survivors and a 1950s book on sex in marriage. They fascinated me, but I knew the marriage manual was just plain wrong. The Hiroshima book confirmed my sense that adults were, well, addled and not to be fully counted on for being pathfinders of good.
I love your expression, Blaze—pathfinders of good. That's our work. To find them and become them. George is a great guide in this regard.
That makes me think of Mr. Rogers telling kids (and adults) to look for the helpers after 911. Many of us are addled, but still trying to forge a path for good that others may follow. ❤️🙏🏽
I loved the Golden Books, too. They were some of the only books I remember owning as a child, I think because they were inexpensive (I still have some with their .89 cent stickers on the cover--this would have been in the 80's). Some of the titles are books my father remembers from his childhood as well (The Poky Little Puppy, Scuffy the Tugboat, Tootle the Train) and now I'm reading them to my little one.
The Pokey Little Puppy is one of the very first books I remember. I begged my mother to read it to me and she always obliged. Lucky girl.
That is totally cool, Manami. Being a Navy kid, I almost nothing from my childhood. I'm happy to refreshing my memory banks, though.
Thankful you reminded me about that Hiroshima book. I also read that. Maybe in 7th grade. It's going on my grid.
Whoa! That's strange, Stacya. I was in 6th grade and have a very curious mind about almost everything. I found it both disturbing and enlightening about what we can do to others. The book, as I remember it, was a slim and smallish, but not real small.
My mother wanted me to read it. Yeah, it was slim, some first person accounts, disturbing...devastating. After reading the impact of the bombs "duck and cover" or get under your desk seemed a little absurd.
Hi, Stacya. Nice to see you here. Thanks for reminding me about the "duck and cover" drills. I think I had pushed those out of my mind, but they -- and the air-raid drills during the Cuban Missile Crisis -- were certainly part of my childhood. (I just now had a vivid visual of hiding behind our big red armchair with my mom when the sirens sounded). I'll put them in my grid -- which I'm finding to be a very helpful exercise.
Erfert! So good to see you here. David says hello! I agree the grid is quite helpful.
I grew up in a house with plenty of books, but only two records: "The Grand Canyon Suite" and a Nancy Sinatra album. Out of desperation I played the heck out of both. Surprisingly enough, I came to love music later in life, and even learned to sing. Maybe I was making up for what I had craved in childhood after I grew up and I had the ability to dive into music.
I love seeing you in this class!
Oh, George, George. I came of age as the Monkees were coming to fame. When I heard about Nesmith's death, I started sobbing, but also felt strangely ashamed, as the group seemed to always occupy a kind of cheesy reputation. But they were a part of me. (I had such a crush on Mickey Dolenz.) You know, this past year, I have been so horribly depressed by the state of the nation, political hostility and craziness -- I guess I just wanted you to know that this club, this little club, is the best therapy I've ever had. I want to stay alive to keep being a part of it. I haven't felt this alive or excited about anything in a long, long, time. Thank you, George. And I wish you a peace-filled wintry season, full of love, light, and energy.
Thank you, Nancy - so glad you're here.
I just love the It's a Wonderful Life intro to your comment, Nancy.
I love them so much. I thought pleasant valley sunday was earth shatteringly subversive!!
Be still, my heart!
Oooh- love this exercise! I thank you so much for this- and for what it’s worth, I adore silly exercises.
This one makes me feel there is a reason I watched Splash and put on a trash bag in the bathtub so I looked like I had a fin. Diving in….
I'm going to do the whole project, but I think the most honest/embarassing revelation will be the fact that the books that made me a "reader" were the Fear Street books by R.L.Stine. I read so many of them and no one I knew liked them (they were all about The Babysitter's Club, which I still don't understand.)
What this tells me about myself is that for me, the stakes have to be high. Social conflict is not enough. The BIGGER and more WORLD ENDING the better. Or at least, the implications of the conflict have to cut deep.
Drama queen from day 1.
My first favorite non-children’s book was a 1984 choose your own adventure novella from Ballantine- “Indiana Jones and the Curse of Horror Island”. In a state of nostalgia I found a copy on eBay a few years ago and was shocked to see it was written by R.L.Stine. Dare I say I got goosebumps? (Sorry)
Stine had SO many of these awesome choose-your-own-adventure books. I used to borrow them en masse from my school library. Way too gruesome and legitimately scary (lots of bodily horror) for 11-year-olds, but my God were they effective. Some had pictures. Thanks for the memory!
There are now choose your own adventure shows on Netflix for kids. 🤯
but will they have the same magic!?
These showed up on my list as well, even though I hadn't thought about them in 30+ years. "Mystery of Chimney Rock" used to give me nightmares.
Bravo! 👏
Kara, I devoured Fear Street as well. The first books I couldn't read fast enough.
I was all about Fear Street too, Kara! And YES! I'm right there with you about an early love of high stakes. I was also very into Animorphs - just remembered after reading your comment!
Based on what I've seen online, you are not alone in your love of Animorphs. Reddit's r/books seems to have a top post 2-3 times a year where people realize how dark it was but gush all the same. I was a bit old for them, but I might see if I get my kids reading them when it's time.
I read both - RL Stine and The Babysitters Club. I liked how fast I could read them, the sense of accomplishment of getting through them, the relief after devouring them. My sisters and I also loved Unsolved Mysteries and would sit, cross legged on the tiled floor staring up at the tv, waiting for that distinctive font to come across the screen. I grew up in the Caribbean in the 1980's and 90's. So a strange brew of American Culture, the pulsing nature of the Caribbean and the British influence never far away. A Jesuit school with rigorous academics and weekly mass. A deep love of 90's dance hall culture. Serious readings of Bob Marley lyrics and Shakespeare a like. Our teachers ranged from Jamaican nuns in their 70's to rebellious Irish teachers in their 20's on a Caribbean adventure for a few years.
Great- now I have a list with Anna Karenin AND New Kids on The Block.
I've got one with Infinite Jest and Darkwing Duck, if it makes you feel any better :)
The collective embarrassment is a sort of salve, yes.
I was a writer and story editor on Darkwing Duck back in the day… it’s no surprise that my influences were Superman and Batman comics, The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Disney’s Robin Hood and Zorro TV shows, and old black and white movies like Hercules, Sinbad the Sailor… as well as Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rodgers… etc.
Woah! It is so cool that you are someone who had a positive effect on my childhood. Radical magic, this George Saunders class.
That's awesome!
Oh jeez. I have New Kids on the Block and Darkwing Duck both, and absolutely, this makes me feel better :-D
Now you have to read Anna K. It's a remix on my TBR pile.
You are not alone!
This looks like fun! I think though, at my age (63), I may have to switch to decades rather than 5's for the later years--maybe post 30s. Not sure I can differentiate 45-50 from 50-55, for instance, though I could give it a go.
Also, I would never have thought of Jaws as an influence, except a few years ago I started connecting it to my interest in Moby Dick (I know that's been said before) but I had a particular view of the book, connecting to the movie, and to (bear with me) present day examples of fatuous arrogance (including DJT and environmental degradation). Anyhoo, wrote an essay about it once that is one of my favorite publications ever, so yeah, you never know what things from the past will stick their fins out of the water in front of you!
Looking forward to filling this out and learning about past-me's a little.
Good point - I, too, am in the It Would Take Too Big a Chart club. 😉
"You're Gonna Need a Bigger Chart..."
I struggled, but it was hard to stop after the first two decades. It’s now my treasure.
I've got a few years on you, Leslie (at 66) and was thinking the same thing -- I may do this exercise in decades -- the years blur together so quickly, right? And I was nearly obsessed with Moby Dick as well. Queequeg somehow took up residence in my subconscious so he must be a big influencer!
I agree, no way i can do five year clips. Plus my memory is not so good. I'll try decades first.
It's always interesting to see how--like priming a pump--one memory will pull out another... if you start and begin the act of writing them.
Yes - Mary Karr has a great exercise/visualization for this.
And Katharine Haake uses the word "burrowing" to pull sentence from sentence when blocked--similarly. I like this thought of memory to memory. Extracting from like.
Love Karr's work and her thoughts on memoir. Yes.
I'm finding this as I start filling in the chart...remembering one thing I loved at age 9 leads me to remember another, then another, which leads me to remember what I got into after that...it's an interesting process.
I'm 65 and the five year breaks are actually slower going but more revealing because I really have to think. And don't you see a shift in momentum, a kind of flood of incoming in those tween-adolescent years. There is a huge leap that takes place from 10-15 for me.
I am working on five year shifts for the first few decades, then ten year shifts after. Cuz yeah, a lot of difference between 10-15 and 15-20, as opposed to 40-45 and 45-50, for sure!
Interesting, Elizabeth. I'm 64 and finding that years 1987-1997 are a bit of a blur. They were years I was busiest working full-time and raising a family. I love this exercise because it brings me back there to cut through the fog and reacquaint myself with that long ago "me." Thanks for doing this for us, George.
Yeah, I've mashed the years together, too! IWTTBC fully paid up member!
What a liberating exercise! I never really thought that I self censored so much but (alas) I do. So, my name's Ulka and I frickin' LOVED Quantum Leap. :)
Oh man, Ulka, you reminded me that I used to watch Sliders (also, Monk) religiously. And that I really loved the one season of Jack and Bobby that ever existed. I'll definitely need those in my list.
Monk !
Me too. RIP beautiful Dean Stockwell.
Yes, indeed. I coveted his silver jacket in the series.
I found out that only experiences and objects were memorable until about 6, then at the same exact moment it seems, people and stories became equally as important to me. I find that interesting!
Some surprise influences I unearthed: SNL reruns from the 80's on Comedy Central, all my childhood pets (several cats, a parakeet, and several mice, some fish too), listening to doo-wop with my dad on car rides to the San Fernando Valley every weekend, my eccentric elementary school teachers (My 2nd grade teacher had a full-on beehive even though it was 1992).
My "serious" influences: Kid A, Ravel, "The Confessions", Bob Dylan, Georgia O'Keefe, Marina Abramović, Aldous Huxley, Director's Label series, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, Brian Eno, David Burn, David Lynch, David Cronenberg (Holy Trinity of Davids), Robert Rauschenberg, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Banana Yoshimoto, Mos Def, Eckhart Tolle, Tao Te Ching, Sylvie Guillem, Miles Davis, Edith Piaf, and on and on ad infinitum.
Anyone else feeling full and warm after this exercise? You've invented quite a powerful time machine, George :)
Second that Holy Trinity of Davids!
“And on and on ad infinitum.” I hear you.
I'm going to work on this grid but first wanted to express gratitude to George for how he teaches writing as an act of self-discovery and growth.
I know how his own journey evolved from Hemingway cosplay to his stew of humor and optimism and gravitas, but really appreciate the repeated nudges to honor brought us all to this point and what has resonated with us. Getting all these pieces to coexist and even sing together is the crux of a writer's voice, I think.
"And what will be needed, if the story is going to be good, is: everything, all that you are, even those parts you don’t like or usually exclude."
This brought up some tears for me - sorrow at recognizing how much has been excluded, but also gratitude in the possibility of welcoming it back in. There's a sense of release and enlargening here: I have much more to draw upon than I'd allowed myself. Thank you for this!
And thanks everyone for sharing your influences. It's interesting to consider the "guilty pleasures." Where do we get the idea that one thing is worthy of enjoyment and another thing isn't?
I remember as a child how this worthiness was influenced by the judgement of my peers (it was okay to enjoy the Spice Girls for a few months; then, suddenly, it wasn't), and a fear of judgement by respected figures like my parents and teachers. By adolescence, I'd happily tell a teacher that I'd read Jane Austen; I'd leave out the Archie comics - I began to believe I never really liked them. Surely, there was something I liked about them, but I was afraid to admit it, even to myself. What would it say about me if I liked something so "un-literary"?
So much to consider here! What have we disliked and discarded? What led us to do that? What might it be like to reclaim those things as part of ourselves? I'm excited to explore this further!
Love this, Hannah - thanks for it.
Thank you for articulating this observation Hannah...I was reading through the comments, deciding how best to summarize my own chart, and your comment here pointed to how my own decisions for how I summarize - how I "present" here are prone to be curated and biased ...and it makes me wonder how much I might be doing this subconsciously as I go about my days (constantly?). Anyway, your post points to the necessity of welcoming in those aspects that fall outside what we've labelled as literary, cultural or, dare I say it, higher/better/upper class. And for me, maybe something I should start practicing noticing.
At first I thought this might be just about nostalgia and remembering what great taste I have ;) but it's made me think about a lot of different things which is good. Thank you for allowing me to think and reflect.
I'm thinking a lot about my brother and what led us to become such polar opposites. My influences were all cerebral while his were all visceral. I think it had to be this way. He couldn't have turned into a left-leaning, always reading, artsy fartsy emotional person and I couldn't have become an adrenaline-seeking, right-leaning, hunting, stoic type. We each found the influences we instictively knew we needed to find. Kurt Vonnegut was never an "option" for him just as Ted Nugent couldn't be an "option" for me.
Some of my main influences ended up being Sesame Street, Calvin & Hobbes, The Simpsons, Vonnegut, The Beatles, Pearl Jam, Lucinda Williams, Buddhism, Jeff Bridges, "Mink River" by Brian Doyle, and my wife.
Those are some of the positive ones. I've also been thinking about the things that influence us to NOT become a certain way. The things we see and go, "Oh. Let's not be like that". My dad taking me hunting as a young teenager and killing a deer. That was a major turning point in my life. Seeing the animal's suffering didn't turn me into a vegetarian that day, but it was the event that triggered it, no pun intended. Also anti-influential was just the way my dad behaved with his hunting friend, getting wasted on cheap whiskey, telling disgusting, racist jokes. I took that all in silently thinking "This is uncomfortable. This is not me". Not to mention that he almost killed us both later that night by speeding through a train track so we wouldn't have to wait for the train coming. We missed it by feet. This is a story I've been trying to put on paper but haven't cracked the code yet on how to tell it properly.
One last thing I noticed...from age 10-15: Basically nothing in the story/novel boxes. I started playing guitar at ten and it pretty much consumed my entire life there for quite a few years.
Thanks, Brad, for bringing up the negative influences that helped us decide who we really want to be. I had several music teachers like that—abusive, damaged people that were examples to me of who I vowed I wouldn't become. And like you I have stretches in my chart with no reading listed. I know I was reading, but nothing stood out as making real impact. Time to exercise more self-compassion. These days I always look for the next book I feel is just right for what I need now (Bibliotherapy).
As a member of the 84 boxes to fill club, as well as Story Club, this will take a while. But right out of the gate, I remember listening to Steve Martin's stand up comedy albums, Let's Get Small, and Comedy is not Pretty. I memorized a lot of the bits. I can still sing the verses of Grandmother's Song: Be pompous, obese, and eat cactus.....
oh - you've just reminded me - Derek & Clive - any Brits here?
Can't wait to do this!!!
This makes me think of F. Scott Fitzgerald's version of this exercise: note his recollection for when he was four years old, September 1900:
"He had a party to celebrate his birthday. He wore a sailor suit about this time + told enormous lies to older people about being really the owner of a real yacht." https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/fitz/id/42
I really enjoyed this exercise! Weird/fun things came up (like my pre-teen obsession with Absolut vodka and Got Milk magazine ads, with which I plastered by bedroom walls), but also beautiful/fun things like the incredible names and vivid memories of the people in my preschool (Nike Ife, whose dad was British and drank beer out of green bottles; Joshua Raisin, who slept in a family bed). The exercise as a whole inspired me to reach out to a few people who've been constants through my life to let them know how grateful I am to them. It also made me think about my kids, who are 5 and 7, and how they are in the process of building their own authentic influence maps and how cool that is (!!!).
Would it be OK for me to offer a version of this to my high school students? They are neurodivergent learners, and I think it would be cool and inspiring for them to reflect on all the (non-academic) influences that have made them who they are.
Great idea, I’d say.
No one has replied, but I was a teacher once. High school. It’s a great idea. I would recommend it!
This is surprisingly fun but also shocking! I can't believe how much I've forgotten...probably I blocked it out, like the fact that as a teenage girl in Dallas (land of big hair and football) in the 80s, I was secretly obsessed with Neil Simon. I don't know how many times I checked out his plays from the library. The Odd Couple was my favorite, and I remember convincing my partner in Drama class to do a scene with me. The other thing was a book by Patrick Dennis (Tanner), who wrote Auntie Mame, called Genius. My mom and I used to read it out loud to each other, and my first creative act was to try and adapt it to a screenplay. (I failed.) When I got into Serious Literature, I set it aside. (And in all honesty, I can't bring myself to pick it up now because there's a whole section down in Mexico that just....isn't funny through today's eyes.) In an earlier post, George talked about trying to be a serious writer, like Hemingway, but how things just didn't come out naturally. I am always and forever thinking of Alice Munro when I think about writing, but that kind of writing, when I do it, just plods along on the page. Only recently have I started to let myself be funny on the page. It's terrifying (what if I am only funny to me?) but so much more dynamic. Sorry for the ramble, but this was such a DUH! moment!
I have deconstructed and mapped out so many Munro stories because I find what she does with time fascinating, how she moves forward and backward in time so seamlessly. There's some strange magic at work there. She's on my chart of influences, too :)
Yes, me too! My Copy of Hateship, Friendship...is almost unreadable for my notes, although I haven't done it again since reading a Swim in the Pond. I think I need a new copy! Have you read Joan Silber's The Art of Time? She talks about what Munro does as "switchback" time. Definitely worth a look (as is Silber's fiction, if you haven't read it). :)
Priscilla! YES! I love Joan Silber (am always amazed at how much LIFE she can cover within the space of a short story), but have not read (didn't know about) The Art of Time. Thank you for the rec and am adding it to my list.
I also want to confess--I've always been superstitious about writing in books. I'm afraid of a past observation coloring a future self's reading :).
Ha ha! I only started writing in books in the past few years. I guess it does color things, but it's also so informative. I can see an evolution there in my thinking. Although I recently loaned out a book (Olive Kitteridge) with my marks in it, and I cringe a little to think someone will read them.
I just discovered Silber this year, and I am ashamed it took me so long! That Art of Time is from a series put out by Graywolf Press. the latest one is Peter Ho Davies On Revision, which I am definitely planning to read.
Same, I loved Neil Simon -- I remember wanting to read funny books and couldn't find that much at age 10 (suburban Denver in the mid-70s). My mom got me an anthology of Neil Simon plays at the mall and I read and reread it until it almost fell apart. A lot of it must have gone over my head but I loved them.
Pretty sure my way into Neil Simon was The Goodbye Girl, seeing it in the theater in the 70s with my mom. I was about Lucy's (the little girl's) age and in a similar situation. And then also reruns of The Odd Couple after school, which I never missed. You are right, those plays were like Looney Tunes, working at so many levels.