by Fred Amram
When J. C. Hallman takes the stage at the Loft December 4 to read from his works, he will bring his vast experience as a fiction and nonfiction writer and as a polished public reader. His unique, sometimes counterintuitive insights are delivered without excess language and often with a sharp wit. Despite his careful and artistic use of language, Hallman enjoys friendly and informal encounters. He prefers to be called Chris.
On Public Readings
Has Hallman chosen what to read? “I may not choose until the day of the event. Overplanned readings can backfire, as it’s a dynamic experience. It will probably depend on what I’m thinking about, based on the conversations we’ve been having at the Loft.”
In school we were all taught to practice, practice, practice. Apparently Hallman hasn’t started rehearsals yet—or has he? “Writing, for me, is actually a form of rehearsal. I read my work out loud to myself. A lot.” He models what he teaches. Hallman consistently encourages his students to read aloud, listening for ideas and sentence structure, and for the music of their prose.
How does Hallman build his program? “This varies. Sometimes it might be determined by a challenge I’d like to present to a particular audience; other times I might choose something that I suspect will go over well. I’m not a fan of reading excerpts. A reading ought to set out to offer a whole experience—a whole story, a whole essay, or, if possible, an excerpt that can become a kind of whole unto itself in some way.”
Hallman likes to read in public. “It’s kind of a disembodying experience because by the time I’m reading my work in public I know it so well I can’t possibly experience it as the audience does. I’m curious about how certain lines will go over, but I’m always surprised by that—and I hope that my paying attention never shows. I largely think of reading in public as an opportunity to get out of the way of the work and bear witness to a rawness of reaction I can only imagine otherwise.”
On Writing
Beginning writers often struggle with the question, “What should I write about?” Midcareer writers learn to trust their instincts. Professionals such as Hallman go with the flow. How does he decide on his next theme? “I don’t ‘decide’ it, I think. I find myself fascinated by something, and trust my curiosity. Most often, when I realize I want to write about something, I discover a number of odd threads or connections in my thinking that go back quite a way. It’s not entirely a conscious process.”
And yet, Hallman, like most writers, combines intuition with discipline. When asked to describe his creative process, he tersely answered, “Methodical, varying in efficacy.” Does that reflect a nose-to-the-grindstone kind of guy? “When I’m writing, I write every day—no breaks until I reach the end of a story or essay or chapter. In working on books, there may be small breaks between sections, but that’s always dangerous. Momentum in writing can’t be overvalued, and ought not to be squandered. I don’t make writing plans.”
Beginning writers often ask what motivates someone to write. How does one stay motivated? Hallman provides an eloquent insight: “Writing to me seems like the only reasonable response to an absurd and mysterious world. I remain motivated because I know that if I don’t come up with some kind of response I’ll slowly go insane.”
Hallman began his career as a fiction writer. “I started out writing about my childhood, as many people do. I more or less set out to mythologize that childhood, to turn it into a past full of stories. All writers do this, to some extent, I think.”
Then came The Chess Artist and The Devil Is a Gentleman, and soon In Utopia will hit the bookstores. What turned Hallman toward nonfiction? “Before I started writing nonfiction, I don’t know if I would have believed that you could be as artistically ambitious in nonfiction as you can be in fiction. But of course you can. I was provincial at first, and I think growing up a bit opened up intellectual possibilities for me. As well, I’d had some experiences that needed to be recorded, and I wasn’t going to be content detailing them in fiction. That it was real suddenly made a difference.”
As we learn to raise our prose to a level of art, some of us struggle to distinguish between the two crafts, fiction and nonfiction. Hallman observes, “For me, they [fiction and nonfiction] are similar in the tools one uses to execute them, different in their purposes. Nonfiction needs to be true as to matter; it needs to have a direct correspondence to the world we actually live in. Fiction transcends that. Fiction still has a correspondence to the real world, but it can be indirect and abstract.”
Most of the stories in Hospital for Bad Poets ring true, and those who know the author guess that there is an autobiographical element in many of the stories. Should they be classified as fiction or nonfiction? Where is the boundary? Hallman dismisses the question quite simply. “Stories are stories—they’re fiction. There really isn’t a good boundary between fiction and nonfiction—and there probably shouldn’t be.” At least that’s true for Hallman’s stories.
We wonder, then, does a prolific writer such as Hallman find different satisfactions in writing short stories in contrast to long books? “Yes, there are different satisfactions. My fiction, as you point out, is more directly about me, which maybe means it’s satisfyingly narcissistic. In nonfiction—at least the kind I practice—I’m generally sharing the ‘stage’ with something else, some subject. That provides the satisfaction of learning widely, and of escaping ego.”
On Mentoring
Hallman is one of six mentors, all established authors, giving intensive guidance to emerging writers in the Loft Mentor Series in Poetry and Creative Prose. I’m one of the fortunate few selected to be part of the program. Hallman is currently my mentor, guiding me through a thicket of writing challenges. His reading assignments are frequent and often difficult. He provides a closer reading of my work than I’ve ever had in graduate school. Clearly, Chris works at his mentoring assignment at least as hard as do his protégés.
Why put in all this work as a mentor when he could be at home writing more books, essays, and stories? “There’s an obligation, I think, in the writing life, to pass along artistic and practical wisdom—at least what one has of it. I can never pay back, in kind, those people who mentored me (teachers like Chuck Kinder and Frank Conroy, and friends like Tom Grimes and Charlie D’Ambrosio), but I can act as the next link in the chain. It’s something I do even when I’m not employed as a teacher, and I think it’s essential to the literary community.”
I asked Chris if he has had mentors whom he never met in real life. “I would argue that to read, as a writer, is to actively seek out literary influence, to search for those you can usefully emulate. That, certainly, is a form of mentoring.” The lesson is clear—a writer must read.
And Chris underlined this lesson when I asked, “Writing aside, what in life is most important to you?” His response: “Reading.”
On Poverty
J. C. Hallman was a 2009 winner of the prestigious McKnight Artist Fellowship for Writers. I asked him, “Does winning the McKnight launch you into the BIG TIME?”
“It launched me into THE BLACK. For once.”
The Loft’s 2009-2010 Loft Mentor Series in Poetry and Creative Prose begins its series of readings on Friday, December 4, at 7 pm with nonfiction mentor J.C. Hallman reading from his work (photo © Migliorino). Also reading will be program participants Michael J. Opperman (poetry) and Kim Teeple (fiction).
Fred Amram is a 2009 – 2010 Lopft Mentor series winner in nonfiction. He is a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Germany who has recently been writing about the Holocaust experience and about his coming to America. He is a retired Professor of Creativity and Communication from the University of Minnesota. His scholarly essays and articles have appeared in numerous journals. He left academia to work at creative nonfiction and to leave footnotes behind.
