13.5 miles for literature

One of my colleagues at Towson will be running a half marathon soon to raise money for Towson University's English Department reading series. Carol Quinn directs the reading series, and greater love hath no director for her project than to pound Baltimore pavement on its behalf. Why am I not running, too? If you know me, you know I only run when there's a basketball to chase. But I am supporting Carol's efforts with cash, and you can, too. Call 443-691-9530 to help.

And here's a Web site so you can schedule your life around the upcoming readings. I have the pleasure of reading Oct. 3, along with poet Clarinda Harriss. Her latest mini-collection, Dirty Blue Voice, just came out from Half Moon Editions in Atlanta.

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.

Montana Festival of the Book

I served as a volunteer for the inaugural Montana Festival of the Book back in 1999, and I'm delighted now to be invited to participate as a panelist and reader. The festival runs Sept. 13-15 in downtown Missoula, and it kicks off with Mayor John Engen leading a vocabulary game of some sort. If Hizzoner is involved, it'll be a good show. Look for me as a reader at 11 a.m. on Friday where I'll join Danell Jones
and Michael Fitzgerald. Then, on Saturday at 11 a.m., I serve on a panel called "The Reporter's Eye, the Writer's Ear" alongside Larry Watson,
Jeff Hull, Kirby Larson, and Deirdre McNamer. Sherry Devlin, my once-colleague and now editor of the Missoulian, will moderate.

Other panels I won't miss include Jeff Hull's reading (1 p.m. Saturday) and the gala reading where Dee McNamer will read from her new novel Red Rover, which earned a starred review from Publisher's Weekly.

Here's the full sked: Montana Bookfest 2007

Running with Scissors on Towson's campus

I'm starting a new job at Towson University, teaching creative writing, including creative non-fiction, and this semester the university has invited a special guest in the world of memoir: Augusten Burroughs, author of "Running with Scissors." Consequently, I read his book. Praised for its humor and candor, the book tells of Burrough's throroughly insane childhood: the fracturing of his family; his years living with the perverted, stupid and cruel family of his mother's shrink; and incidences of sexual abuse that masquerade as loving sex with an older man.

Overall, I found the book dull: its humor was overly dependent on cultural references; the writing was verbose. Scenes in the book did trouble me, not for their brutal emotional and physical realities, but because I didn't believe them. The book's claims seemed to me so ridiculous I began to think that "Running with Scissors" was itself a clever satire of our recent spate of "woe-is-me" childhood memoirs. Time and time again, I found myself thinking, "well, this is made up." Turns out I'm late to that debate. Read here for Buzz Bissinger's excellent account in Vanity Fair about the shrink's family and the lawsuit they filed against Burroughs and his publisher for defamation. The Boston Globe has also reported on the troubling question of how memoirists treat their subjects. You'll note that Burroughs claims his book is accurate, and that the parties involved settled their lawsuit out of court.

As a former journalist, I'm all for memoirs that are accurate. I appreciate that emotional truth -- or literary truth -- can be different from fact. But emotional truths can be realized through literary techniques that do not trample on reality or on the lives of others (see the work of hundreds of other memoirists). Every effort must be given to treat the subjects of the memoir fairly. Burroughs goes so far as to have his mother-character accuse the psychiatrist-character of rape. Maybe his real mother did that, and yes the psychiatrist is dead, but why traffic in rumor and hearsay regarding such a serious crime? Read Bissinger, a Pulitzer-Prize winner and the author of "Friday Night Lights," and you might well see Burroughs as cruel rather than fair. I don't know who is more aggrieved: the boy who grew up with insanity or the family he depicted years later. But I do know that I'm weary of reading the woe-is-me memoir and wish someone would write a satire that might give us all some perspective on -- and perhaps relief from -- this genre.

Augusten Burroughs speaks at Towson University on Oct. 18.

so Missoula

Near midnight the other day, I startled two teenage girls as they vandalized my neighbor's car, covering it in crushed eggs and two other goopy substances I didn't recognize. The girls fled into the dark night and later, as I spray-cleaned my neighbor's car with a garden hose, I discovered empty bottles tucked near his tires. "Beer bottles," I thought, but no, not in Missoula. These were the empties that had once held the goopy stuff I was now cleaning off the car windows. What could it be? Motor oil? Ink?

No.

Only in Missoula would teenage girls commit vandalism with ORGANIC molasses and RAW, UNFILTERED honey.

The eggs probably came from steroid-free chickens.

What a place.