Saturday, December 14, 2013

Outside Event #2

Literati Reading: Bonnie Jo Campbell

On a cold blustery night, the snow cascaded down for hours while Bonnie Jo Campbell lead a reading and discussion on her short story, poetry, and fiction writing. Bonnie is a writer I am personally familiar with and I waited to finish my outside event requirement until she was in town.

Her writing is considered working-class or blue collar. She explained at the reading that her mother was a horse trader living in Michigan and that she grew up in a farm setting. Her writing, while not entirely pastoral, has notes of reminiscence long forgot and and a tingling nostalgia for Midwestern simplicity.

Her reading began with poetry which was exciting because I was only familiar with her short stories. While not at all expiremental, her poetry embraced a richness of imagery that often is left unwritten. She showed a desire to stick to a topic and ride it out and until every metaphor she needs is completed. Her poems also regress away from proselytizing and she mentioned the difference between herself and a writer like Flannery O'Connor is that O'Connor has a faith in God that her stories' characters can believe--Bonnie's character's only have Bonnie.

Her humor was an excellent segue into the harsher realities of her short story "The Solution to Brian's Problem" which details a particularly difficult subject which is, none the less, the transverse image of what is expected for a story like that.

The stories format is quite interesting. It is a running list of solutions being poised by a second person narration about how to deal with an abusive wife who is addicted to crystal meth. The character Brian, who funcitons as the "you" of the story articulates the grusome reality of dealing with someone who is so addicted to drugs that that person will pawn other peoples belongings.

Brian's solutions range from talking to counselors, cutting her meth with Drano, or just beating her senseless until she dies. It is a shockingly honest appraisal of addiciton and offers a unique example of the usual drug addict narrative.

I truly enjoyed Bonnie's reading and she was very informative as to how her writing processes worked when I asked her about writing poetry, short stories and novels. She offered me the advice that writing, no matter what form or genre, must be written through an urge. Otherwise, the story or image or concept will fall flat of the goal of making someone feel something.

She openly admitted to fully appreciating mellow-drama as a form and I thought that her explanations for her love of donkeys really showed what a genuine person she is.

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