Professor Interviews

Indra Kenyon | Fall 2005

The Tough Questions

The following is an interview by Indra Kenyon, a BFA major, with Susan Carol Hauser and Mark Christensen, professors of the Creative Nonfiction Writing workshops. After reading Hauser's and Christensen's responses, Indra answered her own questions. The interview is printed here with permission of the interviewer and subjects.

Indra Kenyon: Do you think that writing a memoir is in direct conflict with the Zen goal of being in the now?

Susan Hauser:
No - not at all. The contemplation of the past takes place in the now, and can illuminate the present.

Mark Christensen:
Writing is always in the now when done with commitment. Composing a memoir or a poem or a lesson plan, done best, is done exclusively. That sounds like Zen to me. Part of the pleasure of writing is the sense of presence we feel while doing it. I write, therefore I am. Now. Heidegger's Dasein. This is almost as much pleasure as a classroom of people who are also present, as opposed to classrooms of people who are not. I write for immediate pleasure. I teach the same way.

Indra Kenyon:
The time is always now. However, time is always associated with events, certain states of material objects, and our emotional responses to these things, and therefore we have a sense of time because of changes in these aspects. If time is a measurement of change, then I assume that the real Zen goal in being in the now is that we exist in every moment that is without giving ourselves time to lament change; this is supposed to make us more capable of adjusting to the changes.

If one has not fully adjusted to the changes that took place in one's past, perhaps the present is unattainable. It seems to me that a commitment to the present requires an inventory of past presents. I will explore this further in the second question.

Indra Kenyon: What advice would you give writers who are blocking during the writing of memories they don't want to relive?

Susan Hauser:
I have encountered this difficulty numerous times in my life, and have an article published on it, in Personal Journaling Magazine. I am attaching the article - let me know if it doesn't come through. Write the Stories that Are Hard to Tell.

Mark Christensen:
The question excites my sadness sense. Some things for some people at some times should be put away. A third degree burn needs to be debrided for the sake of the sufferer's recovery. A puncture wound or cut may be better off left to scab over and heal from within. As a writing teacher I rarely can diagnose whether the wound is a cut or a burn, covered or raw. I can't reliably prescribe debriding; I can only recognize the hurt. In my own work I tend toward ruthlessness, but I am much less gentle with myself than I am with others. You ask for advice. Here it is: ask yourself if you are strong enough today to face yourself yesterday. Will confronting your former self relieve your current self? If so, write. If not, move on.

Indra Kenyon:
I only have my personal experience to offer here. I slow down until I can integrate the confronted experience. I write a paragraph and abandon the computer, listen to music that commiserates, and go back and write a little more. I ask some oracle how to look at the experience from a different perspective, ask why I went through what I went through and what I need to integrate into my personality that would help me assimilate the experience. Sometimes I'll write what happened repeatedly until I am done shocking myself.

The details of the experiences can be devastating, but I write them because I feel that I won't have to return to them if I get them all out of my system. If you write it thoroughly, you only have to relive it once. (Maybe.) Also, forgive yourself at every stage you can. Forgive your emotional reactions, forgive yourself for being in each situation. If you can lose some baggage on this trip, the "now" gets lighter and lighter.

Indra Kenyon: What advice would you give writers who fear that their writing will negatively affect their relationships with the people about whom they are writing?

Susan Hauser:
If you are writing a Truth of some kind, there will be more than one way to tell it, so it is not always necessary to write using "real" people. In fact, telling the story without the actual people in it can be very challenging, and can lead to new insights, new writing. Sometimes it is not enough to only tell the truth, or even to write what seems like positive things to you - others may still (and often do) take offence. I apply an old cliche when I write about someone: I don't say anything I wouldn't say to their face. That forces me to find new ways to write about the situation - I have to further investigate what it means to me, or what the meaning of the whole situation, even without that other person. Sometimes it means going from an incident to a time period - things like that.

Mark Christensen:
Fuck 'em. Writers have to write. If we write truthfully as best we know how, we confront and construct reality. This is the beauty of art. This is necessary. Artists offer themselves in their own confrontations with living. Once the offering is made, others choose how to receive those offerings. We have no power to impose that reality on others; we only have the power to offer it. We struggle with the construction of the offering. We suffer when those we care about reject that offering, but once the art is made, the artist no longer is relevant. The piece is the piece. Even we writers can end up offended by our own production. We can join in the revulsion. The piece done truthfully is still the piece, however fierce its truth may be. Relationships may suffer. Perhaps relationships so conflicted as to make a truth an article of division need to face more truths.

Indra Kenyon:
I think that when you write for validation of your own memories and not for someone else's approval, it might be handy to just keep your pages to yourself or to share them with someone you trust. If 1. someone you love is going to get hurt, 2. you still need to validate what you remember, and 3. you aren't convinced that you have a best seller on your hands, then write it and keep it to yourself.

If you need to confront someone you love with some truth, then the above paragraph obviously does not apply. I think these people need a separate letter to get them to understand your point of view. I wrote letters to everyone I've ever known before I began my memoir. I didn't send the letters; I wrote them so I could get a clear picture of my feelings toward them. By first validating my emotions, I summoned the courage to write about them.

Sometimes others adjust, and sometimes we relent. Who knows; feel it out. But try to remember to have compassion while you write, if you can.

Indra Kenyon: If it comes down to a conflict between the following two decisions, is art or being true to what happened more valuable when writing a memoir?

Susan Hauser:
Tobias Wolff said (something like) every memory has its own story to tell. I think the point of a memoir is the story. It should be told as the story demands. And I don't think there is a difference between art and being true to a story. Art allows one truth of a story/memory to emerge.

Mark Christensen:
Art. Always. Writers get messed up with this issue, especially early in their careers, but the truth emerges while the memoirist composes. In memoir we must not knowingly, overtly, misstate fact or falsely malign others, but we must use arrangement and selection to create emerging truth. Memoir is always written by a present self looking at a reconstructed self. The reconstruction is necessarily different from the self of the past; it is colored by the writer of the moment. This is inescapable. The memoirist does not photograph the present; the memoirist paints the past.

Indra Kenyon:
Being true to what happened to me is more valuable to me than art when writing a memoir. Art happens-through my voice and my perspective. It is not something I feel I have to strive to attain. I can't expect to get anywhere writing if I try to chase an image of what I think art is. The story is most times much more accessible.

Indra Kenyon: You've said that "Art is incidental to the artist." Explain what you meant by this statement.

Susan Hauser:
I think I mean that a story doesn't care who writes it. It is the job of the artist to create the art that is there to be created. It is not mere self-expression, even though it is expressed through the self.

Mark Christensen:
Susan Hauser is far too various, complex, and spontaneous for me to know what she meant. I'll tell you what I would mean were I to say that sentence, which I very well may have done. I mean it doesn't matter a good goddamn who wrote the thing. The art is the art. We worry and draft and lose sleep and ask for readings and pace the floor and do all the other fretful behaviors of artists creating, but once the creation is done and gone, it is done and gone and we don't matter any more. All the pride, arrogance, ownership artists feel and exhibit is so much bunk. Once done, it isn't ours any more, other than a marker of the living we once did while it was growing with us. We can say "Look at me, I wrote that, aren't I wonderful?" and some will agree that we are, but the work is the matter of moment.

I honor artists for the processes they undertake; I honor art for its presence, not the artist's.

Indra Kenyon:
Susan and I have since discussed this statement and decided that she meant to say, "The artist is incidental to the art." I do agree that the story hasn't a care in the world. We are the ones with the cares and concerns and the impetus to tell the story. The statement, "It is the job of the artist to create the art that is there to be created," doesn't make sense to me. The art isn't there until it is created. Susan told me that she has read that Eskimos believe that the art is latent in the raw material, and it is the artist's job to bring that art out of the material. It's a very creative view of the world, and I've always been interested in reading about artists who create using this mindset, but it's not mine. I'm more likely to point to my will as the creator of art rather than refer to art's magical attributes and how it requires me to intuit its will. Is this a chicken/egg debate? Is it free will versus determinism?

I am unsure of the statement, "It is not mere self-expression, even though it is expressed through the self." The choice of what story to tell is also self-expression. I don't like the coupling of "mere" and "self-expression," even though I suspect that statement is meant to stress that stories have larger purposes than merely allowing us the expression of our perspectives. I don't think that writers need to think any larger than self-expression, though. If my story has a universal appeal because I experience things that others experience, then that lends to its circulation potential (a consideration when you are selling your piece with query letters), but people also want to hear perspectives with which they aren't familiar, so I don't think writers need to be reminded of the rest of the world while they are writing.

If I may take the statement literally (and out of context), I would like to examine how "incidental" is being used.

in·ci·den·tal adj. Occurring or likely to occur as an unpredictable or minor accompaniment: the snags incidental to a changeover in upper management. See Synonyms at accidental. Of a minor, casual, or subordinate nature: incidental expenses.

The artist is a minor accompaniment to the art-that is one ungrateful piece of art. Doesn't it know it wouldn't be what it is without the artist? The artist is subordinate to the art-I disagree. The artist is subordinate to her idea of what she wants to create. To me, it's a subordination to one's own will rather than the latent art's will.

But then again, the latent art might be fooling me into thinking I am the prime mover. Or perhaps I'm just such a good channel that I can't tell the difference between my will and the will of the art. (Ha!) Either way, who cares! Look ma, I'm writing!

Indra Kenyon: If your were writing your autobiography and you knew it would not be released until after your death, would you write it differently?

Susan Hauser:
I hope not, because of what I said earlier. The characters, the details in a story are incidental (!) to the real meaning/message/value of the story. If I cannot tell that larger truth without using people from my life, I do not understand the truth very well. That is harsh, and I am not always up to my own judgment, but it is what I strive for.

Mark Christensen:
I hope not. The only exception I can think of is that of writing true things about others that could lead to lawsuits in this life. They can't follow me to the next. What a wicked thought.

Indra Kenyon:
I liked what Mark wrote about this: "I hope not. The only exception I can think of is that of writing true things about others that could lead to lawsuits in this life. They can't follow me to the next." That question is really meant to get at the restrictions on writers. If they want to tell the truth (the truth of what they experienced), they have to worry about getting sued. He said "What a wicked thought" about what he wrote, but I believe that what is wicked is a system which requires that you get a lawyer and an insurance policy before you tell your story.

I will probably have my autobiography destroyed. Or I'll keep it as a family heirloom. I don't intend to write it any differently from how I experienced it, other than maybe shifting the tone from a child's to an adult's perspective. I don't feel it's honest to change the names to "protect the innocent." And to pretend that others weren't there and that mine was a life full of me with no catalyst for my actions is not fair to me.

I write my autobiography as a meditation. It is not necessary that others know everything I've lived. I don't want to put myself in the position of possibly getting sued and hurting loved ones, and that covers the time before and after death.

Indra Kenyon: Lastly, is the 8:00 A.M. class a message to writers that they will most likely have to hold down day jobs?

(Note: The creative nonfiction workshops are usually scheduled at 8:00 AM as Mark and Susan are both "morning persons." SCH)

Susan Hauser:
Not at all. The subtext is that (1) I'm a morning person; (2) if you really want to study CNF or study with me, you have to get up early. Regarding the latter: I appreciate the 8:00 AM hour because it discourages the insincere. But that is incidental to my preference for working in the morning.

Closing comment by Susan:
I enjoyed the whole interview. Probing and important questions. Thank you for asking them.

Closing comment by Mark:
Indra, you present questions challenging enough to be thesis statements. People write books about these matters. I hope you or your class will provide some commentary on my responses, as my thinking about these matters is unfinished.