There and Back Again

Not since 1992 have I lived in Hartford or Connecticut. That’s twenty years elsewhere from the city where I was born, where my grandparents and great grandparents are buried, where my Mom and Dad met while she waitressed at a Friendly’s and he took lunch breaks from his job pumping gas, where I scribbled notes as high school athletes dunked or wrestled or leapt.

But every day, I’ve written my way back home.

It’s peculiar, making literature about a place while far from it. With mailing addresses in Arkansas, Montana, or Baltimore, I’ve nevertheless lived in Hartford every day.

 • At Hartford Public High School and in the city’s North End and at my grandparents’ kitchen table via House of Good Hope…

• At the Civic Center and Elizabeth Park and Weaver H.S. via The Greatest Show…

Now I’m almost done with a novel set in 1840s Hartford, dreaming familiar place names–Asylum Avenue, Dutch Point–into a long-ago reality.

That’s not the same as my body being in Hartford, of course, except that sometimes it is. Now and then, the Hartford I imagine becomes so real, and I see so precisely its detail, that a glance to the window reveals a Montana or a Baltimore that looks no more true than a landscape on a movie screen.

William Kennedy, a favorite author and inspiration, writes exclusively about Albany, New York. He also lives there. Sees it every day. Still, I can picture him looking away from his desk and feeling a moment of disorientation that he’s not in his imagined city. He notes in an essay that the Albany portrayed in his books isn’t the same as the Albany where people live. “It’s my Albany,” he says, and that distinction makes sense to me.

Bank Square Books in Mystic

My Hartford isn’t Hartford. But maybe it’s close enough to fool people that it’s their Hartford the same way it sometimes fools me.

It’s also true that writing my way home doesn’t only happen in my head. This Saturday, for example, May 5 from 1-3 p.m., I’ll be signing copies at a fantastic indie bookstore, Bank Square Books in Mystic. Later in the summer, on July 6, the anniversary of the circus fire, I’ll read at the Mark Twain House in Hartford.

Thanks to Annie Philbrick at Bank Square Books and Steve Courtney at the Mark Twain House for the homecomings.

Where M. Twain lived, Hartford

Bóg dał, Bóg wziął

Bóg dał, Bóg wziął. That’s a Polish proverb, included on the dedication page for House of Good Hope, just beneath my grandparents’ names. It means “God gives, God takes.” Walt and Helen Petry both were dead by the time the book was published in 2007. Thus.

The phrase came to mind the day before Christmas when House of Good Hope’s publisher returned publication rights to me. This means the book is out of print and the publisher will make it no more. Theirs was a business decision I understood. It took four years to sell the first print run–a slow unraveling. The press offered to keep the book available in a single e-edition (via Barnes and Noble). I asked them to commit to full publication or give me back the rights, per our contract. The publisher’s terse reply arrived amidst a few holiday cards. “This letter will serve as official notice...” etc. I was disappointed that it had not begun, “Dear Michael.”

So now, HOGH has gone out of print just as The Greatest Show is poised to come into the world. Sad irony, that.

After I read the letter, I poured a nip of Scotch and toasted the book. Then I wandered room to room, as if the mail had brought news of the death of an old friend I once knew well but hadn’t talked with in a few years.

House of Good Hope was a necessary book for me to write. It wasn’t cut out to be a big seller, that I knew, but without it, I’d never have gotten my current job as a professor teaching creative writing. More importantly, I’d never have had friendships with the men who are the book’s primary characters. I made the book with the hope that it would honor the memory of my grandparents and give my family an historical record. Likewise, I wanted to create something Hiram, Eric, Derrick, Joshua, and Harvey could give their children to say, “This was your father once.” I wanted to write something that praised Hartford as a place worth our attention. I wanted to better understand why we leave places we love and what price is paid when we do.

All of that sounds like a eulogy, but it isn’t, because HOGH isn’t dead. The book has come home, its rights mine again to do with as I please. My literary agent encouraged this path. He mentioned the ease of creating a Kindle edition, how simple it is to create a print-on-demand copy. His agency could help. Why let the book languish?

So now, House of Good Hope is out of print and poised to return if I so choose. I can revise it if I want, or not, or update it, or not. Or maybe years from now another publisher will ask for it. Maybe it will just sit for a while, not languishing, but waiting, because how God gives and takes, and in what order, and how often, is always a mystery, and who knows what comes next?

Dateline: Maple Avenue

For the first time since 1993, I’ve got a byline in the Hartford Courant. You can read my op-ed here. It’s prompted by what I saw in the video below, which shows Hartford police investigating a shooting on a Maple Avenue sidewalk in the city's South End, a few doors down from where my grandparents used to live. Not much happens, but watching the video put me in mind of themes I wrote about in House of Good Hope, ideas about how neighborhoods are perceived. So I typed, sent a few sentences to the Courant, and there you go …

My thanks to Peter Pach, who was a columnist during my few years at the paper and is now an editor for the editorial section. It was a treat to work with him.

Should I read Water for Elephants? Or not?

Circus literature in the news:

1. Water for Elephants, the mega-historical-hit novel, is about to be released as a mega-historical-hit movie.

2. Death-Defying Acts, a poetry collection of testimonies from circus performers, is a finalist for a national award given to books from independent publishers.

Which am I more likely to read? The novel? Or the poetry?

The poetry.

I’d very much like to read the poetry. The publisher, Wordfarm, is a fine young press that first made an impression in my home when my wife brought home a book called Bright Shoots of Everlastingness. It had a stunning cover and essays that included one that had appeared in Best American Religious Writing. Since then, Wordfarm has also published Alan Michael Parker’s funny, tender novel Whale Man.

Why I’m less likely to read Water for Elephants I can’t exactly say. Something about my reluctance feels like insecurity. The book is a big hit. It’s fiction about a circus. I’ve written fiction about a circus. Why compare? When I was working on House of Good Hope, I one day saw another book that put a cold lump in my gut. The Pact was, like HOGH, about city kids making a promise to return to the broken city they love. Their city was Newark; I wrote Hartford. In The Pact, the young men all return home and become medical professionals. It’s a true story, but it seems to me less true to life than the more complicated ending of HOGH. But The Pact has sold better. Much better. It may well be a better book than HOGH, but I haven’t read it.

I tell myself I need to read The Pact. I tell myself to read Water for Elephants. A friend once gave me a novel called The Aerialist. It’s about a circus. My friend recommended it. I should read that one, too. After all, the guy who designs Chevy’s mini-vans must look at Ford’s.

But then I tell myself: chill. Competition in the writing world might follow a different model. Sprinters on a track and field team don’t watch each other. The other runners are a distraction. Instead, runners focus on their own form. They rely on their strengths and try to mitigate their weaknesses. They study and practice and study and practice and when the gun goes off go like hell.

And I do study. All the time I read stories that inspire awe, stories about a serial killer called The Misfit, or a shell-shocked soldier in Italy, or an Irish woman who wants to write about Chekhov and oysters. Those gold-medal stories make me want to clear my desk, open the laptop and aspire.

Still, I wonder. What do other writers do? Read the contemporary books that are like theirs? Or not?

An Apple for Mr. Hall!

If you read House of Good Hope, you remember Joshua Hall, the young man (pictured right, from his senior high school yearbook) who grew up to live out his promise to live in Hartford and help the city by any means necessary. Joshua, a smart, passionate young man, became Mr. Hall, a smart, passionate social studies teacher at Weaver High School. He's been doing great work at the school, and his efforts are being rewarded by the good women of Iota Phi Lamba sorority, who will honor Joshua at their annual "Apple for the Teacher" award luncheon on November 15 at the Chowder Pot restaurant on Hartford's Brainard Road. Joshua will be among eight teachers recognized for contributions that have been significant to "educating children and making schools better."

You can read more about Joshua since his appearance in House of Good Hope here.

I've seen Joshua at work in the classroom. He is disciplined in his mission to teach students important lessons about America and life. He's a role model in the best sense, and I'm delighted that he is being recognized for his good work.

A P.T. Barnum moment

Self-promotion here, folks. Dan D'Ambrosio of the Hartford Advocate published a story this week about HOUSE OF GOOD HOPE. Read it here.

Full disclosure: Dan was a graduate student in journalism while I taught at the University of Montana's School of Journalism, and I worked as a reader on his thesis committee. I'm pleased with the job he's done as a journalist, and I'm especially thrilled that at least one person I helped educate regarding journalism (and Dan didn't need a lot of help) ended up reporting from my hometown, doing the good work necessary so Connecticut residents better understand their capital city, its successes and failures, its people and their lives.

If you happen to be at the Corn Palace ...

South Dakota Public Television will broadcast a June reading I gave from "House of Good Hope" at the American Indian Journalism Institute where I've been fortunate to teach the last three summers. AIJI is a terrific program that helps college students -- and particularly Native students -- to find careers in journalism. At last summer's institute I gave a reading from "House of Good Hope" and then answered questions. You can catch it on SDPB on Sunday, Sept. 16, 3 p.m. CST.

Q&A on HOGH

Brianne Burrowes, a talented former student of mine, interviewed me for articles she planned to write about House of Good Hope. You can read the transcribed interview (okay, full disclosure: I edited it) at the University of Nebraska's blog:

Read the interview