The
Associated Writers & Writing
Programs (AWP) Annual Conference for 2012 was the biggest ever, so big it felt
as if I were experiencing only the tiniest sliver of the event, even though I
tried to schedule the four days carefully, plotting out all my panels,
readings, parties, and receptions, and meetings over coffee, drinks, lunch, and
dinner in advance.
I had a
great time at the conference in Chicago last week, but am glad it was Spring Break
at Florida State, where I teach, when I returned home this week, as I needed
the time to recover.
For me,
last week’s convention included the annual Pinch/Normal
School party, meetings with editors, several great panels and readings, and
dinners with old friends from FSU, Purdue and Iowa, and a book signing for my
new book, Essayists on the Essay:Montaigne to Our Time (U of Iowa P), but the highlights were the two panels
I was on.
Friday
at noon, I participated in Why We
Need a WPA for the 21st Century along with Miles Harvey, Kimberly Dixon and
our capable convener and moderator Sandi Wisenberg. We talked about the history
of the Works Progress (later Project) Administration, related New Deal programs
such as the Federal Writers Project and Civilian Conservation Corps, Richard
Wright, current challenges for arts administrators, and the many strikes,
demonstrations, and marches to which Roosevelt and his Brain Trust were
responding—working-class activity involving tens of thousands of workers and
the rightwing backlash that cost dozens of them their lives. The Q & A was
lively and productive, and Sandi has set up a blog where people can continue
the conversation.
My research for the panel revealed to me that the WPA and
New Deal have been constant, important, even essential parts of my own life. My
high school was a New Deal project, so is my daughter’s. My hometown post
office featured WPA murals, and the cover art for my book, The American Essay in the American Century (U of Missouri Press,
2011), is a painting titled “Subway 1934” by WPA artist Lily Furedi.
My second panel, The
Lyric Essay: A Collapse of Forms or a Form of Collapse?, was scheduled for
the final time slot, 4:30 on Saturday, and my fellow panelists and I had
worried that we wouldn’t have much of an audience. We needn’t have. The
Continental A ballroom of the Hilton was packed to overflowing, thanks in large
part by the current kerfuffle about truth in creative non-fiction sparked by
the release of Lifespan of a Fact,
the new book by John D’Agata and John Fingal, which had been featured the
previous weekend in both the New YorkTimes Book Review and Magazine.
I thought my fellow panelists – Jocelyn Bartkevicius, Steven
Church, Colin Rafferty – and I were taking a measured and humorous, if finally
critical, stand on D’Agata’s willingness to fudge the facts in the name of Art,
but some in the audience thought otherwise. The Q & A was the most
contentious I’ve ever seen at a conference. But, our estimable convener Wendy
Rawlings did a tremendous job of moderating the discussion, which in the end
forced us all to think more deeply about the issues of accuracy, truth,
subjectivity, and the relationship between memory and imagination that have
troubled essayists since Montaigne.
Audience members were tweeting from the ballroom during the
tension-filled Q & A. In the last few days, many of them have posted about
the panel on their blogs, including at the Brevity
Blog, where Dinty Moore kindly posted my presentation in its entirety – a
“Dear John” letter to John D’Agata.
This debate won’t be going away soon; in fact, I suspect
there will be plenty of panels on the essay at next year’s AWP conference in
Boston.
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