I get really excited about the Oscars. I don’t know why. Most often, my favorite movies of any given year usually aren’t even nominated for Best Picture, much less win the big prize. I realize the whole production is mostly a political/commercial fight behind the scenes, as opposed to a noble evaluation of cinematic merits. Nonetheless, every year, I attempt to see as many nominees as possible. This can get difficult for categories that don’t enjoy a wide release or even a limited release to our local independent theaters.

But (cue trumpet fanfare), here comes the internet to save the day. Increasingly, producers are making the nominated short films available online to reach new audiences and generate buzz for their work.

This year, one of those films is The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, a 15-minute film about a man who loves books and dedicates his life to them. It’s a delightful narrative that calls back to the silent films of Buster Keaton and celebrates the power of a good story.

For your consideration….

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

Tanner Curl is the deputy director of development at the Loft, and he enjoys a good story no matter how its told.

The Loft hosted Suzzy Roche on January 20, 2012 for a reading from her debut novel, Wayward Saints. She also performed several songs.

Suzzy Roche is a singer/songwriter/performer and founding member of the singing group The Roches. Her first novel, Wayward Saints (Hyperion/Voice), is a selection of the Spring 2012 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. Her children’s book, Want To Be In A Band, will be published by Random House in January 2013. As a musician, Suzzy has recorded over 15 albums, written music for film and television, and toured extensively for thirty years across the United States and Europe.

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John Hildebrand will be reading at the Loft this Friday (February 3, 7:30 p.m.) as part of the Loft Mentor Series. Participants Lynne Maker Kuechle and Ann McKinley will also read and a reception will follow.

You have written quite a bit about your wife’s family farm. In doing so, you said “It was a benefit to be an outsider. It was a benefit not to know too much.” Could you talk about distance from material when writing nonfiction?

Initially, I thought it might be bad form to write about my wife’s family farm; after all, it was her family, her farm, and I was the outsider. What did I know? Since then, I’ve realized that being the outsider isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The reader is an outsider too, so you’re more likely to notice things that the reader would have noticed (if he or she had been in your place) and that the insider would take for granted. In part, my orientation as an “outsider” began with my first book, recounting a journey down the Yukon River, in which I was always a stranger stepping out of my canoe and into other people’s lives if only for a short time. I feel my position hasn’t changed much even when I’ve tried writing memoir and become the outsider visiting my own past. The point I want to leave with students is that you don’t need to “write about what you know.” You just have to be willing to learn.

In talking about writing fiction and nonfiction, you said “The first thing a fiction writer realizes is, you don’t have to make everything up. The first thing a nonfiction writer realizes is, you don’t have to tell everything.” Can you talk about how not telling everything benefits a nonfiction piece?

I think more we all afford more prestige to novelists than journalists because the former “invent” people and situations and dialogue out of thin air while the nonfiction writer just “records.” Of course, that’s not exactly the case. Novelists do research; the material doesn’t just spring fully formed out of their heads. And journalists, at least the literary variety, shape the material they record, and the most important means by which they do that is by leaving some things out. Theme applies to nonfiction as much as fiction; it’s the rudder steering the boat. The material suggests an idea and the details you include generally reinforce that idea. But good nonfiction writers will also include the incongruity, the detail that doesn’t fit neatly in place, because life is more complicated than any theme. For example, sometimes to explain a character in a nonfiction piece, I’ll mention the titles of some books on his or her bookshelf. Robert Thompson, an Inupiat guide in Kaktovik who appears in “A Northern Front”  surprised me with the books on his shelf: Black’s Law Dictionary, Argumentation and Debate, Alaskan Natives and American Laws. Heavy reading. But he was also a bit of a joker who once asked me if I wanted to eat a botfly larvae from the underside of a caribou hide then admitted he’s never eaten one either.

What excites you currently about nonfiction?

I tend not to be very current in my reading but I’ll bump into pieces by accident that are exciting. I recently read an essay by Jonathan Franzen about a trip to Selkirk Island (the island of Robinson Crusoe) then morphed into a meditation on the death of his friend David Foster Wallace. It did what a good essay always does—connect disparate things.

Through the Loft Mentor Series, you’ve spent several months working with 12 emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. What has surprised you about working with this group? Have you learned anything about your own writing from the experience?

The people I’ve gotten to know best as part of the Mentor Series are the four women in the nonfiction group, and what seems true about them is probably true about the others. First, I’m impressed with the terrific variety of subject matter and how sure-footed they’ve been in choosing how to tell their stories. I envy them their projects because they’ll end up with the sort of books I’d like to read. What they need—what we all need at this point—is the confidence and drive to finish our work and see it into print.

NPR launches a monthly segment on All Things Considered called Newspoet in which a poet will write about the news in verse. Which poet took to the air first? A hint, she’ll be in town for the Loft Mentor Series and upcoming poetry conference (May 18-20).

I’m not sure if the article title (“Amazon’s Hit Man”) does justice to the content. This is more an inside look at the degree to which publishing is changing, and the fight for where the spoils will go as it changes even more.

And, of course, if you missed it, congratulations to the Minnesota Book Award finalists.

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one…just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

From occupy wall street to politicians, the 1% and the 99% are being talked about more than ever. One of the many roles literature plays is to transport us into a world to which we ordinarily don’t have access. Writers can be our interpreters, and the most talented illuminate nuanced and complex human interactions. As an arts fundraiser, I can tell you that I’d love to have lunch with more of the 1% but those I’ve met often support the community with great generosity and exemplify the best of noblesse oblige.  

I turned to my smart, literary-minded Facebook friends to get recommendations of the best novels and biographies to help better understand the role money plays in our idealistically democratic society.

The following is a list of their recommendations.

The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton

The King of Oil – The Secret Lives of Marc Rich, Daniel Ammann

Anything by Louis Auchincloss of whom Gore Vidal said, “Of all our novelists, Auchincloss is the only one who tells us how our rulers behave in their banks and their boardrooms, their law offices and their clubs…. Not since Dreiser has an American writer had so much to tell us about the role of money in our lives.”

One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell

A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell

Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann

American Psycho by Ret Easton Ellis

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan Burrough

Shelter Half by Carol Bly

My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather

And of course, The Great Gatsby. I’ll leave you with this quote of F.Scott Fitzgerald.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Thanks to my Facebook friends, Faith Adams, Rodrigo Montaivo, Eric Hanson, Kelly Groehler, Brian Landon, Kate St. Vincent Vogl, Bonnie Harris, Helen Williams, Susan Paul Johnson, Patricia Kirkpatrick, and Jackie Nelson for their recommendations.

Stay tuned for literature focusing on the 99%.

Jocelyn Hale is the Loft’s executive director.