Why the long face, Mr. Fiction Writer?

Over at The Missouri Review's blog, I contemplate why in fiction I'm drawn to what's beautiful and sad.

In which I humbly acknowledge the smarts of a Towson U. English major

The Greatest Show is launched. Reveled at the mega-conference for writers, AWP (more on that to come), and tonight I'm home after a reading on the campus where I teach. Many friends in the room, and students, and former students. One of the best things about the night? An English major in our secondary education track introduced me and the book. I had no idea what she'd say, but she nailed it. The book is exactly what she says. We make 'em pretty good at Towson U.

Here's her intro: 

Michael Downs is an English Professor here at Towson University. His first book, House of Good Hope, won the 2007 River Teeth prize for literary nonfiction, and today he’s going to be reading for us from his new collection of short stories; The Greatest Show, which was inspired by the famous 1944 Hartford circus fire. I personally had never heard of the fire before reading the book, and wasn’t sure what to expect from it.

The first story, Ania, immediately caught my attention and pulled at my heart. I found myself immersed in the life of a hard working Polish woman, who was new to America, and desperate to give her 3 year old son a happy life. So desperate, in fact, that she stole tickets to the circus from her employer. Little did she know that the decision to steal those tickets would change her life, and the life of her son, Teddy, forever.

Although the fire inspired the stories, once submerged in the book I found that the fire wasn’t the main focus. It was about people; Ania, Teddy, Nick, Franco, Lena, and so many other characters were left with scars from the circus that day. But without the fire, Nick and Lena may have never married and Franco would have never been born. Without the fire, Suzanne would have never gone to the strange woman with the scar, Mrs. Liszak, when she was in need. 

In the stories, Michael Downs takes us from the circus fire in 1944, to September 11^th 2001, and after. He shows us the connections that exist between events, and between people, and that we all live each day without realizing that we have our own role in the greatest show.

Thanks, Toni Townsend.

Debut!

The Greatest Show makes its debut this coming week at a conference in Chicago. AWP will draw at least 9,300 writers, teachers of writing, and students of writing to hear writers speak on panels, to hear them read, and to buy their books at the book fair. It's astonishing to think that

1) There are that many writers and aspiring writers in these United States

2) That in reality there are way more than 9,300, because plenty aren't coming

3) That 9,300 of us are willing to travel to Chicago to hang out with fellow scribes. In winter. We kinda like each other, I guess.

Anyhoo, if you are among the multitudes, I'll sign copies of The Greatest Show at 3 p.m. on Friday, March 2, at LSU Press's table. Also on the LSU's docket: the amazing Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Claudia Emerson signs her newest volume, Secure the Shadow, and poet Alice Friman will sign her book, Vinculum.

Geaux LSU!

The Cover that Drifted Away

Flying Alinga Flaming Ring, 2009,
smoke on paper, 60x40 inches

Two summers ago, I met an artist who paints circus scenes with smoke. Beautiful, haunting, dream-like. Rob Tarbell and I were both in residence at The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, a farm in the mountains near Lynchburg where folks provided us and two dozen other artists with three squares a day, a comfortable dorm room, and a studio in a barn. “Knock yourselves out,” they told us. “Make art.”

Rob made his while protected by a hazmat suit. Like some bio-terrorism researcher, he’d step inside a tent-like contraption of shiny plastic and ductwork, and he’d affix a canvas overhead. In his hand was a stick, and clipped to the end of the stick was a photo negative or a credit card or some other material full of toxic chemicals. When he touched flame to the fuel, acrid, potent, deadly smoke rose to stain the canvas. A whiff was all it took. Any more and the canvas would start to look like the inside of a chimney.

When I first saw Rob’s art, The Greatest Show didn’t yet have a publisher. But already I envisioned his work on the cover. I asked, he said yes.

He calls the series of circus paintings, “Smoke Rings.” I love how he compares what he does with smoke to what animal trainers do with animals. Both take advantage of the natural tendencies of their subjects to have them do something unnatural. A horse will rear up on its back legs; but only a trainer can teach it to stay up there, balance, and then walk. Rob lets the smoke rise and stain, but he directs it to make pictures, something it wouldn’t ever do without him.

So, yeah. I was smitten. I still am.

But a cover isn’t art alone. It’s also marketing. Months after I met Rob, I read a New York Times piece about book-cover designs that publishers had rejected. Among the reasons, the Times informed me, were that some covers were too light. “White covers,” the story read, “don’t look good on Amazon.”

And I recalled those white backgrounds behind the smoky zebras.

Nevertheless, when my editor at LSU asked whether I had ideas for a cover I forwarded Rob’s work. “They are pretty cool illustrations,” I heard back, “and rather timeless and dreamy-looking—but not very colorful.”

So instead, LSU’s design editor created the beautiful, striking, haunting cover, which is art and also visible on Amazon, and more wondrous than I could have dreamed.

Still, I want people to see Rob’s smoke paintings and their ambiguous, otherworldly tension between childhood fantasies and danger, images that sear my Greatest Show self.

Alinga Trio with Anna Karma Fala, 2009, smoke on paper, 30x44 inches

"Later his dog met her cat, and it was a day before the cat would come out from under the house."

Ha ha. I like this story.