Tuesday, July 26, 2016

JOHN JERMIAH SULLIVAN

Students MUST post reactions ( minimum 250 words) to the interview and ONE of the assigned reading linked below. Students are encouraged (but not required) to additionally respond to other student reactions.

JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN is a long form journalist often compared to David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Tom Wolfe, and Hunter S. Thompson (who famously included himself as a character in his quasi journalistic pieces like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas).

Here's what Sullivan says about including himself as a character in his pieces: "I never really feel like I’ve given myself away, in a piece; the “first person” isn’t you; you’re zero. The first person already involves the assertion of a mask. As for the balance, I feel about it precisely as one would at a meal or on a boat with strangers, wanting to talk about myself enough not to seem closed off, but never so much as to bore them, and always watching, in a probably paranoid way, for that moment, that line, when I’ve talked a sentence too long, and added a detail after they’d lost interest in the subject. The eyes people get at that moment, they glaze over and go dead, in an uncontrollable primate way—we can’t help it. I hate and fear those eyes. This isn’t exactly a heroic vision of the writer, but it’s natural. I am trying to charm the reader because I want him and her to come with me deeper into the piece. If you can bring them with you there, things get more interesting."

"You Blow My Mind, Hey Mickey!" by John Jermiah Sullivan: "One night my wife, M. J., said I should prepare to Disney. It wasn’t presented as a question or even as something to waste time thinking about, just to brace for, because it was happening. We have some old friends, Trevor and Shell (short for Michelle), and they have a girl, Flora, 5, who is only a year older than our daughter, Mimi. The girls grew up thinking of each other as cousins and get along beautifully. Shell and Trevor also have a younger son, Lil’ Dog. He possesses a real, dignified-sounding name, but his grandparents are the only people I’ve ever heard call him that. All his life he has been Lil’ Dog. The nickname didn’t come about in any special way. There’s no story attached. It was as if, at the moment of birth, the boy himself spoke and chose this moniker. When you look at him, something in him makes you want to say, “Lil’ Dog.” He’s a tiny, sandy-haired, muscular guy, with a goofy, lolling grin, who’s always about twice as heavy when you pick him up as you thought he was going to be." Click heading to read the essay.
OR
"Upon This Rock" by John Jeremiah Sullivan: "I was assigned to cover the CrossOver Festival in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, three days of the top Christian bands and their backers at an isolated midwestern fairground or something. I'd stand at the edge of the crowd and take notes on the scene, chat up the occasional audience member ("What's harder—homeschooling or regular schooling"), then flash my pass to get backstage, where I'd rap with the artists themselves "This Christian music—it's a phenomenon. What do you tell your fans when they ask you why God let Creed break up" The singer could feed me his bit about how all music glorifies Him, when it's performed with a loving spirit, and I'd jot down every tenth word, inwardly smiling. Later that night, I might sneak some hooch in my rental car and invite myself to lie with a prayer group by their fire, for the fellowship of it. Fly home, stir in statistics. Paycheck." Click heading to read the essay.
An Interview w. John Jeremiah Sullivan: "It’s Ezra Pound who talks about the rose in the steel dust. They liked to do these experiments back in the Man Ray days, where they’d have a surface covered with millions of tiny iron shavings, then take a magnet in the shape of something—a rose in this case—and lower it down over the table, and the dust would gather itself into that shape. Beautiful to see. We do that with our material, when we’re writing well and not forcing it, not pushing the piece to arbitrary places. The thing itself—the rose—is the piece, and the form. It knows you’ve got ten thousand pages of material, but regrettably it only wants to be twenty or thirty pages long, so it starts demanding you make decisions. Now you’re in dialogue with it. The magnet and the dust are approaching each other." Click heading to read the interview.

12 comments:

  1. I read the story about Creation festival, and I loved how well nuanced his attitude towards the faith was throughout the piece. I was able to get on board with the story, because of the distance he maintained from the festivalgoers at first. He was cautious, and didn't expect that his peril would cause him to meet the guys who'd becomes his weekend bruhs. When he does though, he invites us into the many dimensions of his relationship to Christianity. He calls it towards the end, the "Jesus phase," which, though I did not experience it in the same way Sullivan did, I can totally relate to having a period where I was closer to Christianity. I think, actually, Christianity is one of those things in this world which everyone has some kind of feeling one way or another towards it. Sullivan's back and forth narration teeters allegiance throughout the piece, expressing the full spectrum of these feelings for the reader. What is nice though is that, in the end, his tone captures a messages of collaboration, community, and mutual effort, faith or no faith. That said, I found the note in the prompt about his fear of seeing the eyes of the listener glaze over apt, however, because that story just went on for far too long. I can appreciate the pieces immersion, but at a certain point, I was like "OK I get it,"
    I found in the interview great respect for the amount of research the man engages in for a piece, especially inundating his office as well as his home life with Michael Jackson memorabilia for that piece. I need to get into the habit of researching more deeply before I write in order to attain that kind of immersion in my stories.

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  2. I smiled as soon as I saw the reference to the Toni Basil one hit wonder. I had not been aware of using the name “Disney” as a verb, but I suppose the phenomenon has now been introduced to me. The names of the familial friends the author introduced intrigued me, especially considering that I had thought of using the name Shell in a story for some time now. I always prefer naming people with nouns, rather than virtues. My immediate reaction to the drive from their Carolina to Florida was pity. Driving for that long and that far is painful, especially with prepubescent children with less patience and comparatively poor bladder control. The relationship advice about gentle subversion and circumvention seemed a bit…excessive, but the point about not attempting to change your partner was certainly made. Making the celebrated parent drive states away to Florida seems to be in poor taste, in my opinion. The authors sounds as if they infinitely would have preferred takeout breakfast at the home and some afternoon magazine articles. The point about smoking the joints was interesting to me, because it reminded me of something I had heard once in an interview of a reformed stoner (he had quit at this point): although adjusting to living and behaving while high was difficult at first, smoking constantly simply meant that, eventually, being high became the new norm. Functioning on drugs became possible by simply immersing oneself in them. Marijuana still concerns me, if only because of its connection with the development of mental diseases, but it was an interesting connection.

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  3. This line from the interview of John Jeremiah Sullivan.
    “That said, how do you get to be a better reader? I asked Guy Davenport this question one time, because talking to him could really make a person despair; he just knew so much, he’d read so much in many languages, but not in a pedantic or scholastic way, in a really passionate way. He gave me what I thought was very solid advice, which was: first of all, start reading and don’t stop. The other thing is to follow your interest. He said there ought to be a phrase, “falling into interest,” to go with falling in love.
    Follow your interest; follow the writers who energize you, not the ones who exert a sense of obligation on you. The books that do the one or the other will change, as time gone on. The landscape shifts. Don’t adhere to systems unless that feels good.”
    This line from the Disney article.
    “All his life he has been Lil’ Dog. The nickname didn’t come about in any special way. There’s no story attached. It was as if, at the moment of birth, the boy himself spoke and chose this moniker. When you look at him, something in him makes you want to say, “Lil’ Dog.” He’s a tiny, sandy-haired, muscular guy, with a goofy, lolling grin, who’s always about twice as heavy when you pick him up as you thought he was going to be."
    Both of these lines I feel connect with one another to make an inspirational theme for the reader. In order to be something, you can’t let anyone else stop you. You follow your own interests and keep going.

    Posted by Mena

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  4. I read the story about Disney and what I loved so much about it was how real it was. I really like the kind of writer that John Jeremiah Sullivan is because he does not hold back on what he wants to say and again he also digresses from subject to subject but ultimately finds a way to tie it back to his main point or an overall concept. Similarly, as a writer I feel that my style of writing portrays, or at least I hope to portray this style within my writing. Similarly, John’s style as a writer even reminded me of Junot Diaz’s style of writing, which is very free, organic and raw in my opinion. Through out this piece there were several specific instances that stood out to me and this was one of them:

    There’s something I should mention about Trevor, though I wouldn’t if it weren’t relevant too much of what came later, but he smokes a stupendous amount of weed. Think of a person who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, that’s 20 cigarettes. Trevor smokes about that many joints, on a heavy day, the first one while he’s making coffee. And yet is highly functional in all social and professional senses, or almost all.

    I think that John describing Trevor’s love for weed and his urge to always be smoking it made this story something that readers would feel not necessarily connected by because not everyone smokes weed or has a friend that loves smoking weed, but because details of this nature are more of something that a friend would share to another friend. For that reason I feel that John beautifully conveys a sense of friendship within his readers where he is sharing information about his own personal life in order for his readers to create that sense of engagement and connection.

    I looked at Mimi. Was she having fun? I thought so — she was smiling. But I knew there were times in my own childhood when I must have seemed to my parents like I was having a blast, while being inwardly tormented by some irrational worry. Ah, youth! How many of my genes had she inherited, and could I teach her how to play them better? You want joy for your children, but you yourself have brought them into this world of suffering.


    This also stood out to me in this piece because I feel that this was the point where the tone of the piece really changed. John spent a good amount of time creating the people in his life in his piece, creating them for the reader in that sense and allowing the reader to almost connect with the people in his life. However, at this point John introduced internal emotions and feelings that he himself perhaps kept bottled up through out his life and truly expressed his own inner emotions about the world through this one line.

    Furthermore, I also read the interview with John Jeremiah Sullivan and how when he wrote a story about Michael Jackson he focused on Michael Jackson, listened to all of his music all day, to the point where his daughter danced to Michael Jackson all day, he said “I wove myself into a little Michael cocoon and hoped something would happen there. I hoped to learn something about him, that could then be reported. This is always the hope, that I will learn something and be able to express it in a way that’s pleasing.’. This stood out to me because similarly to what Professor A. Dawg tells us to own our writing and make it our own but to also do research on what we are writing about and really know the topic, this is essentially what John did with his piece about Michael Jackson.

    - Julissa Peralta

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  5. The main thing that I took from the interview is that Sullivan immerses himself in his research and his subjects (living and dead) to a very high degree. It must sometimes get to the point where you feel like you are looking at an object from 3 inches away and so you can't see the whole thing and you have to...woah, take a breath, and back up for a minute.

    Luckily, there's a system for that. It's John McPhee's hyper-arranged "logs." I remember reading about these some time ago. He had some special software made for him so that he could sort out what he had gathered so far. Or maybe it was a software for writing piece. Or maybe both, I'm not sure. Either way, you understand that [New Jersey's own!] McPhee, like Sullivan, collects huge amounts of research and organizes it. You might think it would end up being chaotic or rambling but...

    a form (shape) naturally arises from all the "stuff" (research). Or, the rose forms from the steel dust. TLDR; if you have enough material and you organize it, a form will arise naturally.

    What I took from it on a personal level is that the writer writes because he cares about his subject matter more than anybody else. This is a motivation but it is also how the writer makes his subject matter interesting to others. I think that often, a reader may read a piece on a subject that he is not interested in, just because the relationship between the writer and the material is interesting. Lastly, Sullivan spoke about figuring out what he was interested in doing as a writer. I feel that this is about where I'm at right now.

    In "Upon this Rock," we see an example of the type of "gonzo" journalism popularized by Hunter S. Thompson ("Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas") in the 1970s. Imagine that it's the 1930s or the 1950s in America and everything is all about Science and Objectivity. Now, there was a 'revolution' in the 60s, but I think that you'll find that the abstract, "objective" form of writing was still dominant. Now imagine Hunter S. writing about his subject and doing it in the first person, making himself a character whose thoughts and feelings are available to readers. How unobjective! How strange! But how interesting! And here is where J.J. comes in.

    He immerses himself in his subjects, and includes himself as a character. I thought about McPhee and the way that although he is physically close to his subjects, he is still absent from the piece; he is a clear lens, as objective as a camera's eye. Contrast with Sullivan, who shares with us a little of his upbringing in Ohio and his religious history. He also gives us his thoughts and feelings throughout. McPhee tends to go after people who are experts in some way, and he maintains more emotional distance from them, preferring simply to observe. In this piece, Sullivan hangs out with everyday people and writes about them and about the bond that they form over that weekend. I think that that is the core of this story; it's the way that he reveals the festival to us. He could have written about the Christianrock industry or described people there and gotten quotes about why they came, or any other number of more "objective" ways, but he seems to have decided that this subjective way is somehow more truthful (and also, may I note, more interesting).

    To add a few more things: he spends the first quarter of the piece talking about what happened before he even got to the festival: mishaps, expectations, chat room interactions...why does he do this? I think because the story starts there, in his chat room interactions, but also because the narrator is so involved in the piece, we must start with his expectations so we can see how they are not met, and how his perspective changes.

    Also I want to note that he ended with a poem, so, it's good to know that I can do that in a work of creative non-fiction if I want to. JF

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  6. I've read this story about Disney, and it really put me in mind of our family vacations and how the grownups would smoke weed after the kids were so tired from being in the heat and sun all day and trying to fight sleep but would eventually fall off. Those long long rides down I95 were brutal, especially with more than two children. This was actually funny to me. So many familiar things in this story. When he talks of facting the funk to act like you were having fun was so dead on, cause it was almost like we were forced to go on these vacations after we were grown with our own families, and we better act like we enjoyed being with each other. So true. This to me was such an eye opening story in so many ways now that I look back and since all of my family are now deceased I wish I could get those dreaded trips back.

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  7. I had never heard of John Jeremiah Sullivan so I decided to read his interview with Hot Metal Bridge before reading Upon This Rock. He seems like a very experienced by the answers he gives in his interview. He also mentions the ups and downs of what people expect out of his writing. It must be hard when you have your own intentions for your writing and then people such as an editor or publisher tell you it has to be done a different way. It does make you find yourself as a writer because you can sculpt yourself into what you want, but at the same time you also have to sculpt your writing so that it appeals to your audience.
    His story “Upon This Rock” was a testament to John Sullivan’s writing ability. I personally thought that it was pretty funny. Especially the part where he mentions GQ and “that there’s always some overachieving assistant, sometimes called Greg, whom the world hasn’t beaten down yet…” (Sullivan). That whole part was funny. He also has the line where he is describing the RV where he says “The interior smelled of spoiled vacations and amateur porn shoots wrapped in motel shower curtains and left in the sun” (Sullivan). The imagery in this single sentence alone was so descriptive that I felt like I could even smell it. Not that I know what that smells like. I’m not sure how religious John Sullivan is but by reading this I would guess that he is really religious or just did a lot of research on the Christian rock culture.

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  8. I ready Sullivan’s You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey! Just in general I appreciate the pun there with the title. As an overview, I found it interesting how the author was able to essentially tell a story with just a collection of events and thoughts. He packs an immense amount of material into the article by just reflecting on the actions of his everyday life. The reason I think this works is because he then spends time in the middle of the article divulging into the history of Disney. It's not all sunshine and rainbows as one might think. In fact, it was quite surprising how nefarious some of the actions of “Walter Disney” actually were. It’s opens up the reader's eyes to the two sides of every story.
    Personally, I feel the duality that exists in the world around us was an underlying theme in the article. The obvious one being the contrasting sides of Disney and its creation but also within the characters themselves. The way Trevor struggled with being a father on top of his weed addiction furthers the narrative of hidden, internal conflicts.
    In the interview when he was talking about research and preparing for a piece I found it fascinating when he spoke about the method he stole from John McPhee. I love the idea of research containing a story and then it being the author's job to make sense of their research and extract it. It reminds me of how Michelangelo approached sculpting. He would say that great sculptures already existed inside of the block of marble, it was just his job to bring out its beauty.

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  9. In the interview with John Jerimiah Sullivan he states the frustration of being a writer, but also a former editor. He makes a very valid point saying that editors are developed to be nit-picky and microscopic while reading, and that can harm a writer’s work. Writing in an editors mindset can truly harm a writer’s work, since they are focusing on grammatical features and sentence structures rather than word flow or poetic-ness most of the time.

    I really enjoyed the “Rough Guide to Disney,” as someone who enjoys Disney but isn’t a “Disney Person” I can relate to what Sullivan was saying. When he mentioned the second day at the park and the quote “We’re going back?” Why? We were there yesterday!” I am a person that hates monotony and can’t stand doing the same thing for days on end, so the idea of heading to the same amusement park year after year to go on the same rides baffles me. Seriously, I cannot understand how people shell out hundreds of dollars to go to DISNEY every year.

    I did like his piece though, but parts of the story vaguely reminded me of a story I would have been forced to read in Expos. Parts of the story like when he talks about people living in Epcot for the long term, and would have to vote or pay taxes made me lost and confused and seemingly made no valid addition to the plot. I was very interested in Sullivan’s narrative of his time at Disney. Although because of the precursor on the blog page about inserting oneself into a story as a character confused me. This story seems biographical, but reading that part made me wonder if this was real, or just another story. If it was just another story I do have to congratulate Sullivan on the amount of research and effort he put into his story, as it stated in the interview it seems like he consumes himself in research when he writes, something I truly enjoy.

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  10. Upon this Rock-I enjoyed this article. I found it funny. I have taken youth groups on these kind of conferences and crusades. Chasing tail at Christian conferences is very real. I had to laugh at that line.
    Sullivan seems to make light of Christians and their rituals. This made me suspicious in the beginning of the article. When I got to the memory of his conversion I realized he was a Christian still searching and questioning like most of us, he just may not know it.
    Why he thought advertising for hitchhikers to ride with him to the festival would not get him on the creepy man list I don't know.
    The whole camper fiasco was just hilarious, but it allowed him to develop relationships with men he may not have met, and if they did meet it would have been in passing. His willingness to try the new food, share in their music and conversation, I think created a bond with his new friends.
    The picture he painted of his loved ones gathered in a mahogany paneled room was so vivid and comical.
    I liked other phrases he used too; Debbie was a lot to love rather than fat; tatooed, squat, graymulleted the description of one of the men; his 29 footer was like driving a windmill with tires were wonderful lines. His description of the interior of the camper and what he assumed went on in there was great. He actually gave that camper human qualities; "gigantic psychopath had worked her vile design". He was honest about the men, their accent, language and life style. Yes they were Christians, but they were also a product of where they were from.
    I do not know why he was shocked that there was no violence at the concert. At these events everyone comes with one mind, one agenda I find. There are very few areas for conflict.
    He said he loves Jesus the idea of his persona, this to me shows his spiritual conflict.
    The article was long and if it were not for the unusual words, or funny story he periodically threw in I would not have finished the reading.
    I found the interview allowed him to discuss his writing process. He talked about finding his style. Research, getting tips from other writers, and editing your work keeps the writer learning.

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  11. My eldest sister has two kids. They’re three and two years of age and I have had occasion to buy them stuff for their birthdays or Christmas or because I just felt like it. For Christmas especially, I get them some toy. Wrap up in some bright sparkly sort of wrapping paper and get to see them open it. They’d tear through the paper of course, then I’d have to help them get it out of the box at which point I’d be baffled to see them start playing with the box. Somehow this crappy piece of cardboard was more entertaining to them then what I had spent my hard earned money on. Go figure huh? So when I got to the end of the hey Mickey piece I could totally relate with how the kids saying what their favorite part of the trip was, probably made the adults feel. Then there’s all the historical info that Sullivan put in to give the story even more background. I found all of that interesting, probably because I follow modern day politics currently the news cycles for which are dominated by someone ridiculous enough to be a cartoon character. I wasn’t sure as to why the tunnels, or how Disneyland’s inception was relevant to the story, but enjoyed the telling of those facts nonetheless. Though, and even though I’m not a smoker of any kind, I don’t get why they had to hide their little habit other than the quest to find a spot to do so was amusing.

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  12. My eldest sister has two kids. They’re three and two years of age and I have had occasion to buy them stuff for their birthdays or Christmas or because I just felt like it. For Christmas especially, I get them some toy. Wrap up in some bright sparkly sort of wrapping paper and get to see them open it. They’d tear through the paper of course, then I’d have to help them get it out of the box at which point I’d be baffled to see them start playing with the box. Somehow this crappy piece of cardboard was more entertaining to them then what I had spent my hard earned money on. Go figure huh? So when I got to the end of the hey Mickey piece I could totally relate with how the kids saying what their favorite part of the trip was, probably made the adults feel. Then there’s all the historical info that Sullivan put in to give the story even more background. I found all of that interesting, probably because I follow modern day politics currently the news cycles for which are dominated by someone ridiculous enough to be a cartoon character. I wasn’t sure as to why the tunnels, or how Disneyland’s inception was relevant to the story, but enjoyed the telling of those facts nonetheless. Though, and even though I’m not a smoker of any kind, I don’t get why they had to hide their little habit other than the quest to find a spot to do so was amusing.

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