News – Snopes

A Conversation with Nick Ripatrazone

Tyler Van Riper

Nick Ripatrazone, a contributor for the current issue of Shenandoah, has immersed himself in many aspects of the literary world, writing fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, serving as a founding editor of The Susquehanna Review, and teaching English courses at both secondary and undergraduate levels. His flash fiction piece, “The Cribbing Collar,” received honorable mention in this year’s Bevel Summers Contest. Recently, we asked Nick to share some information regarding his newly published novella, This Darksome Burn. Named a “great new read” by High Country News, here is what the author had to say about his latest published work.

Tell us a little about This Darksome Burn.

The novella is set in the shadow of Oregon’s Siskiyou Mountains, and is focused on the splintered McGovern family. Aurea is raped by her ex-boyfriend, and though her overbearing father, Luke, gains revenge, the act does little to soothe her pain. Luke soon can’t control his vengeance, causing grief to those he is supposed to love and protect.

What made you decide to write this story in the form of a novella?

I love novellas–in fact, I recently wrote an appreciation of the form for The Millions, and although this book went through a few different forms (experimental play, novel manuscript, shooting script, and, finally a novella), its final form felt the most true. I think readers who like novellas appreciate that they are short enough to digest in a day or afternoon, but long enough to be revisited and make new discoveries.

Can you give us some insight into your writing process?

I have 5 ½ month identical twin daughters, so I write in short but focused bursts, and often late at night (and on through to midnight and the early morning hours during the weekend). The forms of the novella and short fiction are perfect for me, since I can keep them churning in the back of my mind during the day (I teach public-school English, then go for an afternoon run) but they can be refined and finished in a manageable amount of time. And I’m the type of writer who relishes revision. I’m old enough to know that drafts deserve to be torn apart, and this book is the product of cross-outs, margin notes, and the guidance of my editor/publisher, Erin Knowles McKnight.

How is this novella different from your previously published work?

My first two books of creative work were poetry (Oblations was prose poetry, This Is Not About Birds was more traditional, lineated poetry–both from Gold Wake Press), so it’s been nice to see early reviewers and readers appreciate this novella’s language. I’ve published a lot of fiction (and have another novella, as well as a short story collection, coming out next year), but poetry has taught me to write word-to-word rather than paragraph-to-paragraph. I credit the brevity of that form for helping me revise this book.

What unique aspects of your writing can readers expect to find in This Darksome Burn?

As a fan of slow-burn horror films (everything from The Shining to the more recent The House of the Devil), I definitely take a filmic approach to fiction. The book’s short chapters are meant to be snapshots rather than exhaustive narratives. It’s a book that shifts between literary and horror genres, but I lean more toward the psychological horror of “The Pedersen Kid” by William Gass than gore. This is a book about people losing their hearts and minds against the backdrop of near-constant snow.

Check out Nick Ripatrazone’s new novella This Darksome Burn, which is available from Queen’s Ferry Press.

More Audible with Audacity

R.T. Smith

Audacity is a free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds. When the Shenandoah staff has selected the works we would like to offer audibly, we invite the writers whose work (already selected for publication) we want audio files of to load Audacity onto their computers and follow these instructions for making, saving and sending a voice recording. It’s simple, and the results are usually clear and steady. We encourage others who wish to make recordings of their work to try this software, which can be accessed through the following address:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

R. T. Smith has edited Shenandoah since 1995 and serves as Writer-in-Residence at Washington & Lee. His forthcoming books are Doves in Flight: 13 Fictions and Summoning Shades: New Poems, both due in 2017.

Print or iPad?

blackeyd12

With graduation on the horizon, a number of questions are burning and a subsequent number of decisions will soon need to be made. One such decision I have already begun to probe is in what form will an English major graduate like myself continue her reading.

As I have maneuvered through my college courses , I have made myself very familiar with the pros and cons to reading both printed texts and texts on an iPad. Now, considering my future financial insecurity, I realize the days are numbered where I have the luxury of utilizing both forms of text.

In line with nearly every print advocate, I find the physical tangibility of a text enjoyable and comforting. Additionally, through my studies it has been essential to be equipped with a physical copy of a text to highlight, underline, and annotate. Yet, next year, I do not see myself writing many notes in the columns to bring up during class discussion or see the need to mark important quotes that I will not be later incorporating into a paper. Plus, printed texts are just more expensive.

For me, all signs point to the iPad. Not only is it just one, small device equipped with an endless library of texts, it can do things a printed text simply cannot; it can read to me , it can look up a word I am not familiar with, and if I do want to mark a page that I find particularly interesting, it allows me to do that as well. It seems that while nostalgia may tempt me to hold on to the printed text, the iPad is the answer for now.

Adrienne Rich 1929-2012

R.T. Smith

Adrienne Rich’s work so often demonstrates that poetry and politics are as close in nature as currents in a river. She began as a poet of strict measures and understatement (though already unwilling to be “mastered by” the ordeals inflicted upon women) and moved to an expansive vision of language as a “common dream” necessary but not sufficient in the quest to eradicate sexism and other bigotries. Her ingenuity, gravity and integrity has been the gold standard for more than one generation of poets. The following is a poignant statement about Rich from Washington and Lee poet and professor Deborah Miranda:

Adrienne Rich is one of those Ancestors who found me by accident, when I didn’t know I needed to be found. Another way to put this: she was one of those guides I was looking for (desperately) when I didn’t know I was looking. Either way, she caught me unawares and off-guard when I came upon her poetry in my mid-thirties, just as my life as a wife was ending and my official journey as a scholar and poet began. Rich was more than a role model for me (an intellectual who wrote poetry! a poet who was a mother! a feminist who was a lesbian!) – she was a rock on which I could set my feet and push outward, a validation of my dreams, a comfort, a holy terror to live up to. Indeed, she was a rock for many women in many ways. How were we so lucky to have her for so long? “No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone,” she wrote in Love Poem XVII, “The accidents happen, we’re not heroines, / they happen in our lives like car crashes/ books that change us, neighborhoods / we move into and come to love.” Yes, accidents happen – like the gift of coming to full womanhood with Adrienne Rich in the world. I believe in accidents.

Late Ghazal

Footsole to scalp alive facing the window’s black mirror.
First rains of the winter morning’s smallest hour.

Go back to the ghazal then what will you do there?
Life always pulsed harder than the lines.

Do you remember the strands that ran from eye to eye?
The tongue that reached everywhere, speaking all the parts?

Everything there was cast in an image of desire.
The imagination’s cry is a sexual cry.

I took my body anyplace with me.
In the thickets of abstraction my skin ran with blood.

Life was always stronger . . . the critics couldn’t get it.
Memory says the music always ran ahead of the words.

Reprinted from Dark Fields of the Republic (1995). Permission granted by the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Unintended Consequences of the Steve Jobs Biography

Timothy McAleenan

When we look at the grand scope of the influence of novels on American life throughout its history, I’m guessing that most English professors would lament that well-written novels have not managed to change the discourse in America as much as they wish it would have. Certainly, there have been some books with particularly strong consequences—Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was a possibly contributing factor to the American Civil War, and Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” sharply affected the American dialogue on life for factory workers—but most literary works fail to achieve their mark on mainstream discourse.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Bio as Bible: Managers Imitate Steve Jobs” points to the unintended consequences of Walter Isaacson’s biography on the Apple co-founder. Managers across the country are reportedly missing the point of what made Steve Jobs a success, namely: his natural feel for aesthetics, ability to manage people effectively, ability to implement designs, the gumption to raise input costs to achieve perfection, and a general inclination to take risks in the pursuit of lofty visions. But unfortunately, as the Wall Street Journal article points out, managers are focusing on the eccentricities and gimmicks of his persona rather than his natural talents—such as his regular use of handicap parking, his tendency to drive in triple digits on the highway, a complete lack of consideration for others (i.e. impromptu firings), a reality distortion field that completely obfuscates what is really going on, and a general inclination to lie and manipulate others for sport. Essentially, these managers are focusing on the “black turtleneck” aspect of Steve Jobs rather than the stay-up-for-fifty-hours-straight-to-perfect-the-Macintosh aspect of Steve Jobs, and this is a lazy way to interpret the biography.

It’s important to remember that Steve Jobs managed to succeed in spite of these things, not because of them. A similar phenomenon occurred when the Warren Buffett biographies started rolling out—instead of focusing on the fact that Buffett spend countless hours locked away reading annual reports, they often focused on his early disregard for authority. “Look, I disobey my teachers too, I’m kind of like that Buffett fellow!”

Earlier, Professor Smith made the joke that this black turtleneck syndrome with Steve Jobs is the equivalent of a military general attributing his on-field success to putting his hand in his coatpocket—see, just like Napoleon! By focusing on the side effects of Jobs’ success, these middle managers are missing the point. Jobs didn’t get a cult of personality because he parked in handicap parking spaces, he achieved success by creating an aesthetically pleasing personal computer that could slowly take away market share from the global behemoth Microsoft. This goes to show just how many unintended consequences have affected the interpretation of this book, and it seems to me that the focus on the wild aspects of the Steve Jobs persona overlook the true ingredients of his success: a relentless drive, brilliant marketing instincts, and good old fashioned hard work.

Political Agendas & Poetry

Timothy McAleenan

In class, Professor Smith briefly commented on the passing of the poet Adrienne Rich, noting how she was particularly adept at blending poetic discourse with political dialogue. Rich seems to be a straightforward example of how a poet incorporating politics into her poetry. But it seems that there is another trend that is often at play that affects whether or not a poet or poem becomes mainstream—the politics that the readership impute into the poem.

For instance, for a good portion of the 1800s and 1900s, Alexander Pope was the gold standard of poetry who occupied a central role in the discourse of any budding English scholar. An analysis of “The Rape of the Lock” was a basic “Introduction to English Poetry 101” element of any university curriculum for a large portion of the past three hundred years. However, that has slowly started to change over the past five to six decades, as many English scholars began to accuse Pope’s works of promoting sexism, as well as the inferior intelligence of women in comparison to men. Since most feminist interpretations of Pope’s work endorse the viewpoint of his sexism, Pope has gradually begun to recede from English curricula across the country due to his perceived sexism.

Of course, this plays out in the other direction as well. When William Wordsworth put out Lyrical Ballads, he chose to place Samuel Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” first in the original edition. Because most readers at the time were looking for straightforward language that depicted “emotion recollected in tranquility”, they were generally turned off by Wordsworth’s decision to include the clunky, archaic and oftentimes bizarre Mariner poem at the beginning. The contemporary politics at the turn of the century largely rejected Coleridge’s poem as an “injury to the volume”, but when we press the fast-forward button to 2012, we can see that Coleridge’s poem is the most enduring part of Lyrical Ballads, save for Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey.

Personally, I think it’s a shame that Alexander Pope will most likely have less notoriety in the year 2030 than he has today. My general approach to the politicization of authors (in identity politics) would be this—include the historically significant poems, and then have a conversation on their virtues and their failings. Instead of slowly removing The Rape of the Lock from the debate, I think we should continue to include it, and the detractors can use that opportunity to explain their objections to his work. If they are truly right, they ought to be able to make their arguments convincingly enough to persuade others.

Movies and Literature

skitskoc12

We have recently been talking quite a bit about Young Adult Fiction, both in our blogs and in class. In her earlier blog “When Young Adult is too Adult” Lauren Starnes questioned whether the Hunger Games was an appropriate book for the age group which it targets. I have both read the Hunger Games and seen the movie. The movie appears to be geared towards a similar age group, with a rating of PG13 and yet all ages have been clamoring to see it. It was interesting to see how the film makers managed to make the movie both appropriate for the younger ages and appealing to the older ones. The violence was definitely more subdued on screen than it was on the page. Peeta’s leg that has to be amputated in the book is miraculously healed. The muscular Katniss does not look at all to be on the brink of starvation when Peeta throws her the burned bread. We do not hear the agonized screams of Cato as he is being savagely ripped apart for a seemingly never ending amount of time. The children watching the movie are somewhat protected from all of the unpleasantness that the Games suggest.

Usually, these omissions would make an older audience shy away. They want the gritty stuff. But in this case it doesn’t. Critics adore the movie; people are raving about it. One of the main things the movie had made is to make the characters more mature. Katniss Everdeen is no longer the young stripling she is in the book. In the movie she is played by Jennifer Lawrence, whose 22 years makes her much more of an adult that 16 year old Katniss. All of the actors are older than their counterparts in the novels. This makes their emotions and their actions suddenly more believable (especially Katniss’s). In trying to make the movie more attractive to all ages, the film company has actually done the books a favor. They have brought the series and entirely different audience who will now want to read the rest of the series, for with an established cast of mature characters in mind, adults will not think of it as reading a children’s book- the Hunger Games becomes more appropriate for their age group as well.

What other movies have you seen that you thought made the book better?

Social Media as a Language

skitskoc12

Social media has the world in its grasp. Facebook, Twitter and even Google’s new Google+ have all stamped their names upon the word’s computer screens, smart phones, ipads, and tablets. For the majority of the population these websites provide an easy way to reach out and keep in touch with their friends and family. Because we allocate so much time to these websites, we have begun casually implementing the abridged lingo in general conversation. It all began with texting- abbreviations such as lol (laugh out loud) or brb (be right back) began infiltrating everyday conversation. Facebook seems to be reinforcing these abbreviations and grammatical errors.

Everyday use has made use of this slang appropriate in casual conversation, but I still do not feel they are appropriate in more formal situations. For example, I cannot think of any student who would think it was appropriate to write 2night or btw (by the way) in a formal paper or even in a classroom. So what makes it appropriate for social media? It would make sense if texting was still a bit of a process like it was ten years ago, but today it is simple. It would not even take me an extra second to write got to go instead of gtg. Neither is it because Facebook is a time to relax with friends; Facebook is littered with businesses – bosses are friends. People we would never address in slang terms suddenly fall to the level of buddies. So why do we let our language devolve the second we see that iconic blue and white logo? Personally I hope that particular vernacular remains inappropriate for formal and scholarly settings. I have no desire to even look at a book that reads like a list of status updates.

Poetry Daily

Zoe Yarborough

Poetry Daily (poems.com) is an online anthology of poetry published by The Daily Poetry Association. A new poem is featured each day chosen from books or journals currently or imminently available in print or online. Today’s poem, for example, is “All the Sciences” by Laura Eve Engel from Black Warrior Review. The site also has a well-organized and accessible system of archives, an iPad/iPhone application, and a Twitter account. Go explore Poetry Daily today!

Bravo

skitskoc12

Shenandoah’s very own editor, R. T. Smith, is a poet. But you probably already knew that. What you might not have heard is that his poem “Shades” is the poem of the week at reduxlitjournal.blogspot.com, and his poem “Within Shouting Distance of the Coosa” will be the poem of the day on Poetry Daily, www.poems.com, this Wednesday. Be sure to check them out!