Am always so appreciative of your forthrightness!! Take care and don't worry, we are here supporting you, and each other, in this most difficult time. I hope you are writing fiction, Mary!❤️
I just finished Don't Cry at the same moment the airplane landed. I was reading it to distract myself from the stress of flying, but of course Janice from the title story found herself on a shaky plane with drunk pilots! There are so many planes in your stories that I'm starting to doubt my flight book choices... Although on my last flight I read Because They Wanted To, and The Girl on the Plane was the best of all there.
On a serious note, I think I've read almost everything at this point, so I hope you emerge victorious from your struggles and keep this SStack alive ♥
I feel the same way. I have roughly 56 subscribers (or exactly that many) and 9 of them pay… I’m new in every sense of the word, and I often wonder why anyone would pay me to read what I’m offering them for free… and then I happen upon a post like yours and suddenly the shoe is on the other foot, and I’m like, I’d gladly pay to read what you have to say regardless of the frequency with which you post.
So. I was going to reply with something like "You have been giving me joy for almost my entire adult life, going back almost forty years and you have more than earned the right to do whatever you need to do." While I was thinking about saying this, completely for other reasons, I was thinking about myself as an aspiring writer at 18 or 19 (answer: self-absorbed, ignorant, and annoyingly confident, "all hat no cattle" as the expression goes), because I often look at my own writing students and it calls up these memories of myself at their age. My thought is usually something along the lines of "thank God somebody was patient enough with me to find something to encourage in the navel-gazing dreck I was writing then because I don't know if I would have been as patient with me as that one teacher was." So, that one teacher was Gayl Jones, and I more or less lucked into studying with her when I was an undergrad at the University of Michigan, starting in 1981. She told me about the Hopwood Room and the award, and I spent a lot of time in that room (in a building across from my dorm. . .Angel Hall?) for a couple of years. A great quiet room to read or write in, but I would also read those bound volumes of manuscripts of the Hopwood winners, literally xeroxed copies of manuscript pages, all bound and fancy. I read the recent previous winners to see what was up, then every new winner, cursing my existence because it wasn't me. Because of the internet and procrastination, it occurred to me today I could look up to see who those writers were who won when I didn't. It wasn't you, because you appear to have left just as I arrived. But if you won in 1981 you would have been literally the first one I read.
So anyway it's been *more* than four decades. And unless you were already fancy when you won the Hopwood, I get to flatter myself that I got to be one of your first readers, even though I didn't know it until a couple of hours ago. This story would be better if I remembered the story and I could say it inspired me to x y and z. I remember nothing.
John this is more of a coincidence than you know. Gayl Jones was also an important figure for me because while she wasn't the first person I took a writing class with at U-M, she was the first *actual writer* that I took a class with, which meant she was in an elevated category. Her writing was so tough but she was so soft in her manner, very shy, very sparing with comments, certainly with praise--and so when she invited me into her office to discuss a story I'd written I was thrilled, and even more so when she said, in her quiet understated voice "This is the best story I have ever seen from an undergraduate." I didn't get to know her because I saw her as existing on a different plane (really, she did), but I always remembered her. As for the Hopwood, yes that was a lucky break. But you probably don't remember my winning entry because it was simple juvenalia and even a bit pandering, I think I wrote it with an eye to what I thought the judges might want. So I'm glad you don't remember it!
I have been looking in my garage for the box that has my Michigan stuff in it, mainly the stories I wrote with her notes on them. So far no luck, and I'm afraid the box is somehow gone. It's been maybe twenty years since I remember seeing it.
I never had a creative writing class at Michigan other than my "independent study" with Gayl Jones, which amounted to me showing up at her tiny office and getting back whatever I had turned in the last time I was there. I somehow skipped the whole classroom workshop thing, if that was even a thing then, I don't know. I seem to recall having to submit something in order for her to approve me for the one-on-one thing, and I must have had another prof recommend me -- anyway, I remember being pretty pleased with myself getting to do that. I had no idea who she was other than she was the one doing the independent study course. But after starting with her I went to Borders (i.e. the real Borders) and bought everything they had, and was floored by what was in those books (it was White Rat and Eva's Man, and an independently published Song for Anninho, and then later I got Corregidora), and because I was an idiot I was amazed that those stories came out of probably the shyest person I had ever met. She was uniformly positive and encouraging re my stories, and these were stories that were incredibly naive and pretentious and raw. And never revised after the first fit of typing them, just terrible and unserious, really. Honestly, I think she was amused by me more than impressed. But her encouragement stuck. I remember going to a wine and cheese thing (maybe in the Hopwood Room?) she put on for all of her students, none of whom I had met. I went to the thing and I have never felt more twelve-years-old in all my life. Everybody else, the other writing students, all seemed so wise and serious and grown-up -- and they were all writing powerful and relevant things. I was just (in my writing) trying to be funny and weird. They all acted like I didn't belong. But Gayl never did. I decided she liked that I bugged the other students -- who were mostly pretty self-important -- but maybe that's just me making myself the center of that story. It could also have been a "Flowers for Algernon" situation and I was the entertainment. Either way, I felt like she had my back.
Summer of '83, (actually spring because of the weird way UofM summers worked, summer starting in April. . .) I signed up for another round of one-on-one Gayl. I showed up at her office at the appointed time and the door was locked. I waited. She was a no show. I went to the English Department office and asked. The woman said and I quote "Her husband killed someone in a poker game and they fled the country."
I know now that this is *not* what happened. Fifteen years later, when the internet finally arrived, I looked it all up. Not a poker game. A protest at the diag. Didn't kill anyone. Threatened someone with a gun. Etc. But the fleeing part was true.
Anyway, that's how I found out that class was canceled. And as I didn't know anyone else to study with at UofM -- at the time I know I thought there *wasn't* anyone else -- I transferred to UCLA and went to film school.
Forgive the long comment. This is the first time I've talked to someone who knew her. Maybe "knew her" is the wrong way to put it. But you were in the little office.
Your trajectory with/response to her sounds very similar to mine though I have no idea what the other students in class thought of me--probably nothing as I didn't talk much. I also think she must've been feeling more comfortable by the time you took a class with her; I can't imagine the Gayl that I knew throwing a wine and cheese thing in the Hopwood room!
And do/did colleges even give wine to students? I was 19! That might be just how my mind categorized "event given by grown-ups where I feel like a child." Probably it was a thing to celebrate the Hopwood winners and I just thought of it as Gayl's thing because in the room she was the only adult and only teacher I knew.
Hope you’re doing ok more importantly
Am always so appreciative of your forthrightness!! Take care and don't worry, we are here supporting you, and each other, in this most difficult time. I hope you are writing fiction, Mary!❤️
Good to hear from you Mary
I just finished Don't Cry at the same moment the airplane landed. I was reading it to distract myself from the stress of flying, but of course Janice from the title story found herself on a shaky plane with drunk pilots! There are so many planes in your stories that I'm starting to doubt my flight book choices... Although on my last flight I read Because They Wanted To, and The Girl on the Plane was the best of all there.
On a serious note, I think I've read almost everything at this point, so I hope you emerge victorious from your struggles and keep this SStack alive ♥
"hope you emerge victorious from your struggles and keep this SStack alive"
I do too!
You’re one of the best writers doing it. Loved the story about friendship in The New Yorker. You write about life in its true depth.
Wishing you well. Sending love, healing and good wishes your way 💐
I feel the same way. I have roughly 56 subscribers (or exactly that many) and 9 of them pay… I’m new in every sense of the word, and I often wonder why anyone would pay me to read what I’m offering them for free… and then I happen upon a post like yours and suddenly the shoe is on the other foot, and I’m like, I’d gladly pay to read what you have to say regardless of the frequency with which you post.
Gawd I appreciate this.
No worries from this fan. Take good care. We are here for you.
Happy to pay just to say be well.
Aww, thanks. Really.
So. I was going to reply with something like "You have been giving me joy for almost my entire adult life, going back almost forty years and you have more than earned the right to do whatever you need to do." While I was thinking about saying this, completely for other reasons, I was thinking about myself as an aspiring writer at 18 or 19 (answer: self-absorbed, ignorant, and annoyingly confident, "all hat no cattle" as the expression goes), because I often look at my own writing students and it calls up these memories of myself at their age. My thought is usually something along the lines of "thank God somebody was patient enough with me to find something to encourage in the navel-gazing dreck I was writing then because I don't know if I would have been as patient with me as that one teacher was." So, that one teacher was Gayl Jones, and I more or less lucked into studying with her when I was an undergrad at the University of Michigan, starting in 1981. She told me about the Hopwood Room and the award, and I spent a lot of time in that room (in a building across from my dorm. . .Angel Hall?) for a couple of years. A great quiet room to read or write in, but I would also read those bound volumes of manuscripts of the Hopwood winners, literally xeroxed copies of manuscript pages, all bound and fancy. I read the recent previous winners to see what was up, then every new winner, cursing my existence because it wasn't me. Because of the internet and procrastination, it occurred to me today I could look up to see who those writers were who won when I didn't. It wasn't you, because you appear to have left just as I arrived. But if you won in 1981 you would have been literally the first one I read.
So anyway it's been *more* than four decades. And unless you were already fancy when you won the Hopwood, I get to flatter myself that I got to be one of your first readers, even though I didn't know it until a couple of hours ago. This story would be better if I remembered the story and I could say it inspired me to x y and z. I remember nothing.
John this is more of a coincidence than you know. Gayl Jones was also an important figure for me because while she wasn't the first person I took a writing class with at U-M, she was the first *actual writer* that I took a class with, which meant she was in an elevated category. Her writing was so tough but she was so soft in her manner, very shy, very sparing with comments, certainly with praise--and so when she invited me into her office to discuss a story I'd written I was thrilled, and even more so when she said, in her quiet understated voice "This is the best story I have ever seen from an undergraduate." I didn't get to know her because I saw her as existing on a different plane (really, she did), but I always remembered her. As for the Hopwood, yes that was a lucky break. But you probably don't remember my winning entry because it was simple juvenalia and even a bit pandering, I think I wrote it with an eye to what I thought the judges might want. So I'm glad you don't remember it!
I have been looking in my garage for the box that has my Michigan stuff in it, mainly the stories I wrote with her notes on them. So far no luck, and I'm afraid the box is somehow gone. It's been maybe twenty years since I remember seeing it.
I never had a creative writing class at Michigan other than my "independent study" with Gayl Jones, which amounted to me showing up at her tiny office and getting back whatever I had turned in the last time I was there. I somehow skipped the whole classroom workshop thing, if that was even a thing then, I don't know. I seem to recall having to submit something in order for her to approve me for the one-on-one thing, and I must have had another prof recommend me -- anyway, I remember being pretty pleased with myself getting to do that. I had no idea who she was other than she was the one doing the independent study course. But after starting with her I went to Borders (i.e. the real Borders) and bought everything they had, and was floored by what was in those books (it was White Rat and Eva's Man, and an independently published Song for Anninho, and then later I got Corregidora), and because I was an idiot I was amazed that those stories came out of probably the shyest person I had ever met. She was uniformly positive and encouraging re my stories, and these were stories that were incredibly naive and pretentious and raw. And never revised after the first fit of typing them, just terrible and unserious, really. Honestly, I think she was amused by me more than impressed. But her encouragement stuck. I remember going to a wine and cheese thing (maybe in the Hopwood Room?) she put on for all of her students, none of whom I had met. I went to the thing and I have never felt more twelve-years-old in all my life. Everybody else, the other writing students, all seemed so wise and serious and grown-up -- and they were all writing powerful and relevant things. I was just (in my writing) trying to be funny and weird. They all acted like I didn't belong. But Gayl never did. I decided she liked that I bugged the other students -- who were mostly pretty self-important -- but maybe that's just me making myself the center of that story. It could also have been a "Flowers for Algernon" situation and I was the entertainment. Either way, I felt like she had my back.
Summer of '83, (actually spring because of the weird way UofM summers worked, summer starting in April. . .) I signed up for another round of one-on-one Gayl. I showed up at her office at the appointed time and the door was locked. I waited. She was a no show. I went to the English Department office and asked. The woman said and I quote "Her husband killed someone in a poker game and they fled the country."
I know now that this is *not* what happened. Fifteen years later, when the internet finally arrived, I looked it all up. Not a poker game. A protest at the diag. Didn't kill anyone. Threatened someone with a gun. Etc. But the fleeing part was true.
Anyway, that's how I found out that class was canceled. And as I didn't know anyone else to study with at UofM -- at the time I know I thought there *wasn't* anyone else -- I transferred to UCLA and went to film school.
Forgive the long comment. This is the first time I've talked to someone who knew her. Maybe "knew her" is the wrong way to put it. But you were in the little office.
Your trajectory with/response to her sounds very similar to mine though I have no idea what the other students in class thought of me--probably nothing as I didn't talk much. I also think she must've been feeling more comfortable by the time you took a class with her; I can't imagine the Gayl that I knew throwing a wine and cheese thing in the Hopwood room!
And do/did colleges even give wine to students? I was 19! That might be just how my mind categorized "event given by grown-ups where I feel like a child." Probably it was a thing to celebrate the Hopwood winners and I just thought of it as Gayl's thing because in the room she was the only adult and only teacher I knew.
How's your hair today ...
This is such an important question!!! And the answer today is so-so. But that's okay. Today.