Black Rock & Sage had the opportunity to chat with writer David Wanczyk, author of Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind. Wanczyk will be visting ISU Wednesday, November 7th. For a schedule of events (all free and open to the public), please see the press release. In the meantime, checkout our Q&A!

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1. From your publishing background, it’s obvious that you’re a fan of sports. So, what made you decide to take that love for the game(s) and write about it?

DW (David Wanczyk): By the time I started pushing 30, my main childhood obsession—sports—had started to wane in importance for me. But I missed the preoccupation. At the same time, I couldn’t help feeling that the do-or-die chatter that surrounded baseball, in particular, was missing something—adult perspective. When I became a parent, it was a little bit hard to be exercised about an error or a late-season trade. In Beep baseball—baseball for the blind and visually impaired—the perspective, the clear feeling of what matters, is on display at every moment. It’s still about winning, but the deeper story is there, too. So the game seemed like a way for me to get back into sports but also to think about the adversities that we face and how they impact the things we love to do. Being obsessed with beep ball was like being obsessed with life.

2. How do you pitch Beep, your first book, to potential readers?

DW: Beep is full of colorful characters doing something improbable. They’ll shatter your expectations.

3. When did you first learn about the world of blind baseball?

DW: In 2012, I saw a very small item in Harper’s Magazine that listed the rules. But it didn’t include any of the history or anything about the star players. In a way, it defined the sport as nothing more than a curiosity, but I was pretty sure it would all be more complicated than that. I ended up on a road trip with ISU professor, Matt VanWinkle—a great baseball fan in his own right—and we took in the Beep Baseball World Series in Iowa. The clash between the Austin Blackhawks and Taiwan Homerun was one of the most memorable sporting events I’d ever seen, and it spurred me to keep following them.

4. It can be difficult to write about disability (especially in sports) and avoid inspiration-porn territory. Was this a challenge you encountered?

DW: Right, yes. And I’m not sure I did it right, but I always had that canned “inspiration” story in mind as something—not quite to avoid, but to write against. Because the game is inspiring, but labeling something that way can be an easy escape from thinking about it with any sort of depth. It’s 5:00 News thinking, and it misses the fact that these inspiring guys might be jerks, or might have zany senses of humor, or might actually have sadnesses that they’re not yet triumphantly overcoming. My first article after that road trip I took was called “Don’t Just Be Inspired By Beep Baseball.” I wanted people to see it as an exciting game with multifaceted participants.

5. Outside of the book world, what are some of your hobbies?

DW: I like playing guitar; I like watching Muppet movies; and I like being silly with my kids—rhyming challenges, puns, improvised characters such as “Daddy Porpoise.” I also like fading into the oblivion of an evening by reading the same news coverage I’ve already read three times. And by “like,” I mean, “don’t like but do instead of those other things quite a bit of the time.”

6. What would people be surprised to learn about you?

DW: Assuming someone knows who I am—a big assumption—and they know I’ve written a book—maybe an even bigger one—I think people might be surprised to know that I don’t feel comfortable calling myself a writer. I’ve built up that term my whole life: a writer is someone who is absolutely dedicated and magically wise. But sometimes my dedication fades, and my moments of magical wisdom don’t come as quickly as they should. But maybe a writer is someone who works even when not feeling total dedication and simply tries to create the circumstances for magical wisdom. Who’s always (or often) thinking about the stories we’re dominated by. Maybe in that sense I’ve sometimes been a writer. But I’m still trying to earn the title.

7. If you could have dinner or drinks with anyone in the world—dead or alive—who would it be and why?

DW: I enjoy my wife’s company, especially when she thinks my jokes are funny. Also, John Ritter.

8. Do you have any advice for aspiring editors and/or writers?

DW: I’m not sure if this will work for everyone, but I’ve been most successful producing work when I make myself write for 30 minutes a day. I can find myself in ruts where I don’t write if I don’t follow that method. And usually the 30 minutes expands because you get over that initial fear and into the fun-and-honing part.

In terms of putting writing out into the world . . . everyone gets rejected. Please remember that tired human beings with various tastes and pressures and budget concerns and voices over their shoulders might be making those decisions, and so I invite you to come up with some (possibly profane) affirmation that allows you to consider those rejections a certain kind of step forward.

On editing, my job isn’t to be a better writer than someone I’m working with, but to ask the questions a reader might. Seems silly to declare or demand something of a creative person, but equally silly not to try to work on a story or poem if you see a possible improvement.

Beyond that, when it comes to smaller publications, we have a great opportunity to make an impact on the writers we’re working with, and we can promote our journals’ work in ways we couldn’t have ten years ago—a couple lines on twitter or facebook can reach people. We should take advantage of that and build up the writing and writers we like.

One person reading a good poem, and one poet hearing positive feedback on what they’re doing. . .that seems to me like a social good that’s worth the work. Then we multiply that a few dozen times.

Also, run a spell-check.

9. Besides New Ohio Review, of course, what are some literary journals that we should be reading?

DW: I really like Gulf Coast, which comes out of Houston. They have incredible energy and consistently try new things—whether it’s video, audio, supporting readings, running interesting contests. And their taste is good!

Ohio journals Brevity, Mid-American Review, Cincinnati Review, and Quarter After Eight are worth a second and third look.

10. Finally, can you tell us about any projects we can look forward to seeing from you in the future?

DW: I have a pipe-dreamish idea for another labor-intensive nonfiction book that would require me to learn about an entire subculture and even develop new skills in my own life. I think it would require reading at least twenty books, taking lots of trips, engaging in fruitless practice sessions on the above mentioned skills, and spending evenings interviewing the subjects instead of putting my kids to bed. Right now, this seems daunting, so I think it’s more likely that I will first write the 45-page YA classic, Puberty Stinks: A Winston Stercus Mystery

But that other nonfiction thing? Look for that in 2023.

 

Released by Idaho State University                                                                October 25, 2018

Contact: The Department of English and Philosophy 282-2478, isu.edu/English

POCATELLO —On Wednesday, November 7^th, Idaho State University’s Department of English and Philosophy will host Visiting Writer David Wanczyk, author of Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind.

During his visit, Wanczyk will hold a public reading and give a talk at ISU’s Diversity Center. Additionally, Wanczyk—who is editor of the prestigious literary journal, New Ohio Review—will attend a Q&A session with Black Rock & Sage, ISU’s journal of the creative arts, and others interested in literary publishing and editorialship. All events are free and the public is welcome to attend.

Schedule/location of events:

Diversity Resource Center (Rendezvous 129):          12 pm, Conversation on Beep

Liberal Arts 256:                                                         3 pm, Literary Editing Conversation/Q&A

Bengal Café (Pond Student Union)                            6 pm, Public Reading

A 2018 Junior Library Guild selection, Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind explores the history and the present state of an adaptive sport with an increasingly global reach, and tracks in detail the fortunes of teams and individual players competing intensely in the pursuit of a complex range of athletic, psychological and social ambitions. In the L.A Review of Books, Joshua Jackson describes Beep as “a work of sports reportage. . .but also some fine travel writing, a history of the relatively new game, an exploration of an underrepresented culture, and even a memoir. [Wanczyk] gives beep its due respect as a sport, and he reveals its heroes and goats not only as athletes, but as humans.”

David Wanczyk holds a PhD in creative nonfiction from Ohio University. He has written extensively on novel sports for publications such as Salon and Slate. He has also contributed essays, poems, and criticism to venues as diverse as Woolf Studies Annual and the food journal Alimentum. He is the editor of New Ohio Review and director of special programs for the English department at Ohio University, where he presently teaches.

Wanczyk’s visit is made possible by support from the Idaho Humanities Council, ISU’s Department of English and Philosophy, ISU’s Disability Services, ISU’s Diversity Resource Center, and Black Rock & Sage. For more information, contact ISU’s Department of English and Philosophy at (208) 241-2478 or schubeth@isu.edu.

The Idaho Humanities Council is a State-based Program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

This week we chat with writer Mari Christmas, who will be doing a reading at Portneuf Valley Brewery, Thursday, October 18, at 5:00pm. We hope you can join us!

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1. How did you get your start in writing?

MC (Mari Christmas): Through a lot of false starts. The first was in high school, after reading Kurt Vonnegut – even now I think it’s impossible to read him without thinking he’s having a lot of fun. I had struggled with writing for so much of my early education (I failed every state-mandated writing test to the point where I had to sit in a special classroom writing five-paragraph essays on my favorite day of the week, and other horrible mind-numbing, deviant-building stuff). I wrote my first short story soon after that, using what I learned from reading Vonnegut. Then, my mother, even without reading my story or telling me, sent the piece off to the National Young Arts Foundation (they were having a short story contest for high school students – and my mother wanted desperately for me to go to college but didn’t think anyone would take me). It was a draft, and it received honorable mention! I think we were both equally surprised, especially when they sent me money. After that, I quit, totally, until I was halfway through undergrad. By that point I had built up all this internal pressure inside myself, and it was too overwhelming. It took me another five years to get over that.

2. What influences your writing? Specific writers? Environment? Current events?

MC: Everything. I’m always listening for and seeking material. It’s a good way to be in the world, always listening, mining for another vein. Sometimes I listen to story podcasts or to lots of older novels using Librivox. I get into moods. I do a lot of walking around. I surround myself with books that I want a particular story to sound like – just to get that voice in my head. I’m drawn to writers who talk frankly, who write clean, strange sentences (Grace Paley, Etgar Keret, Nick Flynn, Jerzy Kosinski, J. D. Salinger, etc.). Not to mention, a lot of my personal anxieties play out while I write. Tom Waits talks about following the sound of the sound, but I wonder if I am, instead, chasing a feeling down, trying to get my hands on it so I can turn it over and really look at it.

3. Do you find that there are recurring themes or questions that your work explores?

MC: I’m interested in the end of things (death, marriages, relationships) – like really, what happens afterwards? How do we go on? We always seem to. Overall, I work in two modes, one more serious than the other. It’s been a good balance, and I need both – the light and the dark. At the moment I feel I am in some sort of transition-period in my writing. I don’t know what it means yet.

4. Is it difficult to wear both the editor and writer hats?

MC: Editing (whether for an issue or through teaching) other writers has served me well – and as a result I’m particularly brutal with my own edits and appreciative of receiving criticism from other editors. It’s about shaping material rather than saying that a sentence was “bad” or “good” or fixing grammar. If a section or sentence is not serving the rest of the narrative, it can and should go. End stop. Everything should be in service of the voice, the story – and usually I am at the point where I am desperate for feedback because I’m at the end of my own rope. So yes, editing has helped me get to that place where I’m absolutely looking for fresh horses, and by the time I ask a friend or colleague for comments, I’m totally on-board and grateful and willing to try whatever might get a story back on the trail. I also really trust a good reader and editor. They honestly have better things to do, so if they reach out, I really listen.

5. What is some of the best writing advice you have been given?

MC: It’s more an exercise – one that I was taught early in my MFA by the amazing Valerie Sayers at the University of Notre Dame. I didn’t think it had such a profound effect on me until I noticed I wrote much better after having done this for a full semester. I use this in all my classes. It’s so simple and easy: basically, every time you read a book/story/whatever, you must write down the sentences that you love or find technically helpful. I’ve done this for years now, and when I can’t think, I go back and use them as templates.

6. What are some of your favorite literary journals?

MC: I’m a huge fan of Joyland, Fence, The Literary Review (TLR), n+1, Cosmonauts Avenue, and, of course, the Paris Review. While I read a lot of established journals, newer journals take more risks so I love reading what they have to offer. I also love to look at the winning entries for contests judged specifically by writers I admire. Most journals hand those stories out for free online.

7. Outside of writing, what are some of your hobbies?

MC: I draw. I love making and touching things with my hands, and I really want to get into woodworking. Last winter I started cross-country skiing. I need solitude to hear myself think. I like the winter, it feels like a hobby – liking winter – especially if you were raised in the south.

8. What would people be surprised to learn about you?

MC: I don’t play board games.

9. If you could have dinner or drinks with anyone in the world—dead or alive—who would it be and why?

MC: Hands down, I would love to meet a dead Grace Paley. I bet she would offer a good perspective of the after life.

10. Finally, can you tell us about any projects we can expect to see from you in the future?

MC: I’m currently rewriting a book draft. Let’s hope it’s that.

Ari Aster’s Hereditary is family drama with a splash of King Paimon. Hereditary does utilize those familiar horror tropes (everything aside from cheap jump scares), but given this family drama first, horror film second, Aster manages a creepy film revolving around the mysterious past of Annie’s recently deceased mother and grandmother to both Charlie and Peter.

By mentioning King Paimon I fear I’ve let the demon out of the closet and spoiled the surprise, but what makes Hereditary a successful horror film is Aster’s ability to first focus entirely on the family and their relationship with one another then slowly erode that bond due to character flaws and apparent superficial coincidences. The obvious cultish undertones does not result in predictability.

The story takes place somewhere in rural Utah and within a single household. By cinematic design, the film’s mise en scène simulates the types of Annie’s interior/exterior miniature model building, suggesting that they themselves are influenced/molded by a higher power, which is evident by the deceased grandmother’s lingering presence. The film shifts perspectives from Annie, the mother, to Charlie, the reserved daughter, and finally to Peter, an anxious and disillusioned teen. By changing focus, unearthing the differences in these character’s relationship between one another, and slowly heightening the demonic/cultish forces at play, the film creates an unpredictable storyline with unpredictable characters.

The dysfunctional family drama can easily be overplayed within Hereditary, but as an audience member the horror is heightened once you realize you are rooting for and against characters that are and are not entirely to blame as they become second victims of past and present demonic rituals. While watching Hereditary you are unaware of the pillory you are caught in and unaware of the film’s slow burn towards an unforgettable climax that will make you question: who in the hell is King Paimon?

Review by Richard Thornell

Gaspar Noé’s film Enter the Void is not for the faint of moviegoers. The story revolves around an estranged relationship of brother-sister, Oscar and Linda. At a young age they were separated due to a tragic accident resulting in the deaths of both parents, which forced the two children into separate lives of foster care. Flash-forward several years, these siblings finally reconnect in neon-lit Tokyo, Japan, where Oscar has established a livelihood of drug dealing. This is largely backstory that is interwoven throughout the film, leaving the rest of the story to develop from the fly-on-the-wall perspective of Oscar. This part of the story is ambiguous in that it’s unclear whether Oscar is experiencing an intense DMT trip or is in fact stuck within a metaphysical state brought on by his recent death or both.

Enter the Void explores a number of things all at once: the complicated and oddly sexual relationship between brother and sister, escapism (drugs and sex), complicated forms of affection, reincarnation (The Tibetan Book of the Dead). This combination results in a (I’m not kidding) visual hallucinogenic cocktail that leaves audiences pinching themselves out of reassurance that they themselves are not high.

This being a visual medium, one would ask themselves how can Gaspar Noé create a film without it appearing as an impenetrable Magic Eye image with an even more impenetrable storyline?

I can’t help but remember Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey with Dr. Dave Bowman’s still image wrapped in spectrum, reacting to the void of unknown, frightening the experience.  Enter the Void is that experience. A film that doesn’t allow you the pleasure to stop mid-scene for a moment of explanation for the story will evanesce the moment you fight it. How does one get out of it? How does Oscar escape? How does Linda live? How does one watch such a film?

Review by Richard Thornell