What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Paul Raymond

One of the joys of my job is I get paid to read and do what I've been doing on this blog all along--review. As I said earlier, though, I get put in a tough situation when the book is not one I would normally recommend. No one would be happy with me if I lambasted a local writer's work, especially since I'm not a well-known and respected reviewer (yet). So I have to get creative.

How to put a positive spin on things without being dishonest? The last time I was faced with this issue, I ended up writing an article about what went into the book, neglecting to review the content at all. This time, I decided to do a Q&A, since the book, Paul Raymond's The Other Side: Finding the Greener Grass, was essentially a memoir with a fictional spin. The author is the main character, and the realizations he has are real, but the events are contrived to make his point blatant (I don't think that worked out well for him, but oh well, I wasn't his editor).

I thought a Q&A would go well, but then I discovered the author is a politician. I knew that before, of course, since he's on the city council, but I hadn't figured on having to machete my way through non-answers in an effort to get him to answer the question I'd asked. He kept wanting to reiterate the same points: This book is fiction, and don't judge people. That was it. I was looking for something more philosophical, since it was a reflection of sorts on his life and on judgment/stereotypes/assumptions. In essence, he wanted to talk about the book and I wanted to talk about the ideas in the book. It reminded me of an episode in Psych, where someone tells Shawn Spencer to give the answer to the question he wished people had asked instead of the one they actually posed. Annoying. It made me feel sorry for our legislative reporter. Thankfully, when I gave him a chance to look over his answers, he did a bit of good machete-work himself.

Before I let you read the Q&A, I'll say that no, I don't necessarily recommend this book unless you want to the message "Don't judge based on stereotypes" bashed into your head over and over. It is written clearly, though without much style, and will get that memo across well.

And now for portions of the Q&A, beginning with part of the introduction I gave it in the article, which can be found in full here:

The protagonist and narrator of Paul Raymond’s “The Other Side: Finding the Greener Grass,” published this summer by Nampa-based Point Rider Publishing, has an unflattering view of farmers and others he sees as not being “professional.” But when he gets laid off and takes a U-Haul truck on the road to a new town and a new start, he meets people along the way who change his attitude.

Editor’s note: The questions and answers below have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: Why didn’t you write “The Other Side” as a memoir?

A: When I started writing, my emotions came out. It was kind of caustic initially. I had to go back and ramp it back so I could let somebody read it. It was therapeutic for me. After that, I sat on it for years and never did do anything with it until a publisher contacted me and made me think, “Well, maybe I should do something with it.” I thought it was just personal for me, even though, as I said, most of it is fiction. Like Hank, at the store — the store was real and farmers came to the store, but that whole conversation, all that was fiction. I utilized fiction to better express my point.

Q: Why did you choose to use yourself as the main character?

A: Well, I didn’t necessarily mean for me to be the main character, but that’s the only way I could express it. I have not written a book before, so this is new and it came over a long process. It went from venting to becoming a book.

Q: What went into the decision to make it a road trip story?

A: I literally moved from one town to another, and I did get laid o•. Many of my thoughts (reminiscing) along the way are real, but most of the experiences on the journey were not. My thoughts are there, my feelings are there, but it was largely ÿction. I just used that trip as kind of a base line.

Q: Has anyone subject to stereotype in this book read it?

A: Yes, Dan, in the last chapter. I have just met him within the last 10 years, and I let him read it. He’s since passed away. But I wasn’t done with it at the time. I hadn’t added that chapter he was involved with. He thought it was really good. I have at least one farmer who is going to read it, but I haven’t had anybody — well, no, that’s not true. When I first wrote it I gave it to some people. It was offensive to them because I was so caustic. I was just letting loose.

Q: I hope you haven’t lost any friends over it?

A: Not that I know of.

Q: Were your parents any different from the other farmers you grew up around?

A: Well, I perceived my dad to be pretty sharp. A lot of people came to have him help with things. My mom and dad were both educated. I didn’t ever put them in that stereotyped position. I kind of separated them out somehow.

Q: In your opinion, what is the connection between self-confidence and a judgmental attitude?

A: I’m in my late 20s on that trip, and I kind of put myself back in that time. I was more realistically self-conscious than I am now. My self-confidence wasn’t quite as strong, and I think living on a farm kind of added to that. I pictured the people in the city to be really sophisticated, more affluent, and, comparatively, farmers didn’t seem to know what was going on. I didn’t want to be branded with them, but I was.

Q: Do you think you carried that “branding” with you through your life?

A: Absolutely. But I eventually got over it and realized that I was OK and they were OK. I kind of lived that book and wrote it; it’s actually kind of the process I went through in real life. Only, most of those events didn’t occur. It took a long time. I think those feelings about farmers and others went away when I got done writing the first hundred pages or so. I didn’t have the intensity that I started writing with because I was relaxed. I was able to talk to and associate with anybody, any culture; I haven’t had a problem with it since. It was a life-changing experience.

“The Other Side” is available online.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Randy King

This week, I reviewed a cookbook. Yeah, it was a first.

Randy King lives in my area, and he put together a cookbook called "Chef in the Wild." I already wrote a review for the Idaho Press-Tribune, which you can find here, so I'm not going to re-review it. Suffice it to say he goes through how to hunt, butcher, and cook a variety of animals.

Now for a couple thoughts.

First off: I don't think the quality of writing in a cookbook matters. I mean, the point is not to create great prose, to engage both your intellect and your imagination. The point is to tell you how to cook something. The end. Does this book do that well? I'd say it does, though I haven't cooked anything from it. I don't have wild meat on hand.

But I was never confused, and hunting tips and butchering instructions were given in prose format, before the recipe. There are pictures throughout the book, not for instructional purposes so much as to break up the mass of words. Perhaps they could have included pictures meant to illustrate butchering instructions. That would be my only request to better this book.

My other thought is that food blogging may have changed the format of a cookbook. In older cookbooks, you have the recipes and that is it. But if you go online, recipes are usually introduced with a personal anecdote and/or a walk-through of the recipe, giving detailed instructions and tips for how to do what the recipe requires.

The comments section below allows other cooks to weigh in on the recipe, giving alternative instructions to improve it, so the recipe-searcher can look through those and the original recipe to decide how to make the dish best. It has given light to the subjectivity of cooking. I once saw someone who said a brownie recipe was terrible because it was too soft and cake-like. They wanted brownies that were hard and chewy. I happen to think this person's mother didn't know how to make good brownies, but hey, it told me something valuable about the recipe: It made soft brownies.

While I have yet to see a published cookbook with a comments section, where other chefs weigh in on the recipe, "Chef in the Wild" did imitate a food blog in the story-before-recipe way. It wasn't just recipe after recipe. I consider this an improvement; I do so much better, personally, with recipes that have additional instructions in prose. They are the next-best thing to having the cook in the kitchen with me.

Basically, I highly approve of this evolution in cookbook-dom. I also highly recommend this cookbook to any hunters out there.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Bea Dubois

I was put in a tough position this week. A woman who lives in my area had written and published a book, Briarwood Cottage, and she wanted me to read and write about it in the paper. I cheerily said to send it on over.

The problem: The book isn't any good. The story is mildly interesting but has no arc, climax, or progression, and there are passages of lecture - straight lecture from teachers in the book - that does nothing for the plot or story at all. She must have done the research and wanted to use it somehow.

The characters did not make up for the deplorable story. As I said, they did not progress, and while she gave them small conflicts, each was easily resolved or forgotten. They were likeable enough, but incomplete. They weren't annoyingly 2D, if that's anything. Not deep, but there was some roundness.

As for the writing, not good. I mean, the message got across, but I got no pleasure from reading it. Simple, like if a high schooler had written the story. And this woman is no high schooler. She was writing it as a mother with young kids.

This, people, is what happens if you write a story without learning how. Not everyone can write a good story; it takes conscientious reading and writing. Please work hard so you can write something you can be proud of.

The tough position came when I needed to write something for the paper. I couldn't recommend the book. So I called the author to see if I could possibly recommend it for its one redeeming factor: It sparked intellectual interest in the Church of the Nazarene. The characters were part of that church and since one is a revival preacher, it factored in greatly. While reading, I was surprised by what these people believe and I wanted to know more. Why believe those things? How much of this was accurate, or was I misunderstanding? So I found myself doing light research into the church.

I had pinpointed the one redeeming aspect to be that it could bring interest to the church, assuming that was the author's ultimate goal.

It wasn't.

Turns out she doesn't even belong to that church, though she is Christian. Her real goal, to write a story of God helping people recover, was hinted at in the story but did not go anywhere. It was more about the characters than God.

Fail. I can't possibly recommend this book. What to write?

I ended up writing this, which was about the writing of the book and about the book, not at all a review. Safe ground. I didn't want to insult her in the newspaper - I am trying to make people want to talk to me, not push them away by being mean. The article ran in our A&E (Arts and Entertainment) section. And then I moved on to reading a cookbook someone in my area wrote. More on the cookbook later! Never reviewed one of those, have I?

Stolen first line: Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer"

Tom--

Well, he never gets it. When I asked if he wanted to play catch last week, he thought we were going to throw a rock around instead of a baseball. I asked him once to fill up my water bottle, and he filled it, sure, but with anything he found interesting and it took forever long, then I had to dump out all the dirt and rocks and thorns and I had dirty water for the rest of the day. For a while, I thought it was because of he can't talk right, but then Gretel told me he can hear fine. Just can't talk right. Sheesh.

He's the reason for all this trouble, is what I'm trying to get at, sir. I had nothing to do with it, 'cept for  it was me who broke the window.

Oh. The window by the back porch, sir. Not the front door, no way, that was all Tom.

See, he thought it'd be a laugh to, I don't know, to, ummm, to hide all your shoes around the house, sir.

Yes, sir.

I already said I don't know why! Ask him, not me!

Er, heh, that was me too, sir. See, I'd dropped my daddy's ring, his class ring, his class of 1915 class ring, sir, the one with the ruby in it to match the school's colors, sir. The other color was purple, he told me, but only sissy men--

No, sir. I think I dropped it down the heating vent or something when we were looking for places to hide your shoes. Have you seen it? Did it fly out at your face and that's why ... never mind. If you see it, you should tell me right away because my daddy said I could have it for the week as long as I didn't lend it to Tom so I've got until then to find it but you won't let me look for it in your house, which is where it is, so that means you've got to look for me or else daddy won't let me outside ever again.

Please, sir? I can't fix your window and your heater and your doorknob and all the other stuff if I am grounded, and Tom can't do anything right because he can't talk right so his parents never taught him nothin'.

No, he goes to school, sir. We sit next to each other.

Okay, sir, but you don't know what you're gettin' yourself into by asking us to work together to fix everything. Tom hasn't ever fixed a thing except a sandwich. He'll probably bring peanut butter and bread or else his lucky butter knife, which he has because his daddy won't let him have a real knife, instead of bringing a hammer or nails or a screwdriver or something.

Could you maybe look for the ring while I am gone, sir? I have to go find Tom. He could be clear to the Denny's by now.

Thank you, sir. You're a great neighbor, sir.

No, I don't know where your slippers ended up. Maybe check the bathtub.

The Racial Identity Movement

If you've been following the news at all, this face -- there's just one -- will look familiar. For those unfamiliar with this woman, her name is Rachel Dolezal, and she is white but, as she puts it, "identifies" as black.

She's gotten a lot of flack over that, the most serious being her life falling apart. She's lost her NAACP position and her job, and her old university is questioning whether she misled them back in the day about her race.

This may seem odd to say, but I think she looks better as a black woman. It suits her. But then the question comes up, "Can you just become a different race?"

I'm sure that's what part of this is about. Someone lying about her race would only merit one or two headlines, but public outcry can merit so many more. It's the public's anger and incredulity that has made this a bigger story. So I can only assume the underlying anger is black people thinking she doesn't deserve to be black, she didn't earn it, and white people thinking she's a big fat liar who put on a new face because she thought it'd be cool and she'd go further.

I know these are just assumptions, but they lead to my point, which is this: If we live in a society that allows one to choose their style of dress, lifestyle, religion and even gender, why can someone not also choose their race?

I see this as possibly the next stage of the human rights movement. After the gay marriage and gay rights movement dies down a bit, we'll turn to allowing people to choose their own race, which is indeed part of their identity. After all, how silly is the phrase, "I identify as black," after Bruce Jenner told the world, "I identify as a woman," and the world cheered him on (at least, the loudest people seem to)? It is not that big of a logical leap. It's little more than a baby step.

I don't know whether I see a problem with deciding one's own race or not. It could be looked at as embracing your true self or as turning your back on your ancestors and choosing someone else's.

Perhaps someone will pull the racist card and say we're all racist for making fun of a woman who wants to be a different race (blacks are racist because she's white and not one of them, whites are racist because she's decided to be black).

Perhaps someone will say we're pigeon-holing her, taking away her right to be who and what she wants to be.

I'm putting this on a reading and writing blog for a number of reasons. 1) It's my blog, I can do what I want with it. 2) It's my blog, I don't have another to use. 3) If you want to write science fiction, or contemporary fiction, you have to pay attention to stuff like this.

Science fiction is about looking at the world as it is and applying a slippery slope. The essential question is "What if?" My husband pointed out that the Rachel Dolezal thing could lead to a science fiction novel where everyone can change their skin color just like we do with hair now. Race and identity become a giant gray area and ...

The technology is there if we cared enough to make it happen, after all.

Critically think about the news and you will find story ideas. Critically think about the news, and you may discover you're a psychic. I think we'll have a race movement in a decade or so. Prediction made.

Bracing Myself to Enter a Poetry Contest

Confession: I have entered fewer than five -- much fewer than five -- writing contests in my life. But I am planning on entering another soon. A poetry one, to be specific.

I don't enter them because I don't want someone to tell me what I sometimes fear: I am not all that good. Who wants to get their hopes up only to hear that they had no chance of winning? On top of that, this is my writing we are talking about. That stuff is important to me. I worked hard on them and they carry a lot of me in them.

But if a writer is going to move forward, someone else needs to be reading their work. I have submitted a couple things to literary journals without success (though one person did write me a full-length letter in response, which means it was good and they realized it), and I suppose I did get to present a couple stories at National Undergraduate Literature Conferences. Which is pretty cool. I also won regional awards for my editorials in college. My boss thinks I should submit my column next year for a journalism award, too.

Basically, I'm not a lost cause. Just a timid cause.

I don't think I've mentioned my column yet. It's called the Front Porch, and in it I relay small bits of happy news in a chatty way. If someone becomes an Eagle Scout, gets a scholarship, makes the dean's list, wins a snowmobile, needs volunteers, you get the idea, it goes into my column.

So I suppose this is a dual-purpose blog post (I didn't realize I forgot to write a post last week! Whoops). First, to tell you I am preparing myself to enter another contest, and second, to tell you I'm a columnist of sorts these days.

To read my Front Porch column, visit www.idahopress.com/heyipt/ and look for headlines saying Front Porch. I've gotten some negative feedback, but mostly the community seems to enjoy it.

As for which poem I am submitting, I'm not sure yet. I have reached out to a writer friend for some help, because the contest hasn't been around for more than a year. Without knowledge of what sort of poems they prefer, I'm at a loss. I'm thinking of entering my poem about Nisha, the Teddy Bear Buttons paragraph fiction (pretending it's prose poetry, which maybe it is), or this poem, which is called Relics.


There is a red, wooden swing
hanging from the lone chestnut tree
that shadows my front yard.
Rachel, the girl with naturally curly hair
who loves mustard yellow,
made it with a friend
before she left for Russia.
Moscow, where she learned to adore
matching scarves and hats,
old window frames,
and long train rides,
but not so much the food —
except for borscht (beet soup),
blini (pancakes),
and smetana (sour cream).

The red swing stayed with me;
I brought it in during the winter
to protect the wood from snow,
and in the summer,
my landlord’s two daughters played on it.
She also left me with a painting
of a rainstorm over a bridge that traverses a river,
beside which two people walk,
one in red and one in light blue.
Neither one is holding an umbrella,
but they don’t seem to be in a hurry
to escape the rain pelting the walkway.

Borscht

I'll let you know how it goes, no matter which one I end up going with. Cross your fingers for me.

The Quiet of Me

At the time of dreams,
I empty my mind,
Sweep it clean of the debris of the day,
Allow the stress to stream from my fingertips
And sink through the mattress --
Away,
Away
From my hunched shoulders
And embryonic crows feet.

I let the debris, the stress, the to-do lists
Fill my dustpan and pour out
Into the night, creating
stars outside the window
of my soul,
Separate,
Separate
From my whited canvas
And ujjayi breath.

I sit in an empty mind
Brilliant as the clouds
And spinning as a comet through space
The space filled with stars that were
Mine,
Mine
As a secret place in the forest
And an heirloom skeleton key.

Perhaps
Perhaps
This is the space where space
Meets soul and dreams
Trip lightly

Behind --
But away, separate.
Mine, perhaps.