Gretchen Kalwinski

Now that I’ve settled into a new, full-time copywriting job, I thought it was high time to get more involved with my graduate program; (I’m in the Masters in Creative Writing program at Northwestern University). To that end, I recently started contributing to the blog associated with their literary magazine, Triquarterly Online. I’ll focus my posts around print and online literary magazines and they’ll be housed here.

I will be posting one blog entry each week, and it’ll go up on Mondays. I’ve done four posts so far–about NanoWrimo, the Baffler’s resurgence, online writing tools, and the Occupy, Writers movement. So far, what I like about this gig is that it’s forcing me to keep up with the stuff I’m interested in; i.e., literary and publishing news, and the fiction, poetry, and criticism being published in literary mags. And, having a weekly deadline helps keep me focused on reading the news I’m actually interested in, rather than, say, refreshing Gawker.com twenty times a day or searching incessantly for the perfect winter boot that is simultaneously stylish, warm, and has excellent, ice-grabbing traction. But if anyone’s got a lead on that, do let me know.

I just penned a book review for Make Literary Magazine on Bruce Boone’s poetic/New Narrative memoir “Century of Clouds.” It was lovely to swim around in the wonderfully obtuse, digressive book for a few hours this winter and I know so much more now than I did before about the New Narrative group. Century of Clouds is a reissue and an important staple of the New Narrative writers.

I wrote a new piece on Jean Shepherd, radio raconteur and famed for “A Christmas Story,” for the Chicagoan, a “new nonprofit media organization whose mission is to document the arts and culture history of Chicago and the greater Midwest with an emphasis on long-form storytelling.” Please note the beautiful illustration by Chicago artist Rob Funderburk. I’m so excited about this promising new project, and what a great excuse for me to wax poetic about my love/hate relationship with Shepherd, who was also born and raised in Hammond, IN.

While at Ragdale last fall, I wrote a (very) short, off-the-cuff story titled “The Hunter” for Featherproof Books. The idea with these stories, available via Itunes app, is that they’re three screens, with exactly 111 words per screen — a fun experiment in brevity.

Just published: a new book review for Stop Smiling, of Nelson Algren’s Entrapment. The mag does a thing called “Two Takes,” where they have two writers review the same book; then they publish the two reviews alongside each other. Beth Capper wrote the “alternate take.”

I co-founded and edit this literary website. My posts can be found here.

A TOC blog post about a lunchtime program hosted by Stuart Dybek at the Chicago Cultural Center.

Time Out Chicago / Issue 107: March 15–21, 2007

Chicks and balances

A debut author upends chick lit with an unflinching look at poverty.

By Gretchen Kalwinski

If there existed a polar opposite to chick lit, Corrina Wycoff’s O Street (OV Books, $17.95) would exemplify the genre. The debut author isn’t interested in romanticizing love, motherhood, hardship—or anything at all, come to think of it.

O Street collects ten short stories about Beth Dinard, who spends her Newark childhood caring for her mentally ill, homeless, junkie single mother. “Visiting Mrs. Ferullo” shows Beth following a neighbor home, longing for the home-cooking aromas that waft from the woman’s apartment. In “The Wrong Place in the World,” adult Beth is in Chicago trying to stabilize her life even while her brutal memories affect her relationships and attitudes about class and work. When she gets a phone call informing her of her mother’s death, it triggers a relapse into old, destructive patterns. It’s tempting to read the tightly linked stories as a novel, but Wycoff stresses the importance of the form.

“In a linked-story format, I can present other points of view as short pieces of contrast,” she says. “I wanted to structure the book so that it begins and ends with a death, because I wanted it to read as a cycle. Linearity, to me, seems more of a construct than cycles.”

A single mother herself, Wycoff says the stories should not be confused with autobiography.

“They are based on a political truth: Single mothers fall through the cracks in this country, and the cracks grow in proportion to these women’s economic challenges, making inaccessible the so-called American Dream,” she says. “When my son was born, I’d not yet gone to college, and money was extremely tight. I drew on that experience…but by the time I wrote about it, [I] had changed enough that it didn’t resemble my ‘real’ life at all.”

In one scene, a depressed Beth wishes that she could “grow into someone new—someone who could easily have had two parents, good breeding, hearty suppers and piano lessons.” Passages like these strike unexpected chords. Though many contemporary narratives deal with women’s physical and spiritual transformations, few do so at the poverty level. This is, of course, no grand coincidence: Poor women face even more barriers than their male counterparts in getting their stories told.

“The second of these I wrote when my son was two years old,” says Wycoff. “I wrote it, in part, in reaction to all of the sentimental, dreamy writing about motherhood. ”

In Chicago, Wycoff met UIC’s Cris Mazza, an award-winning author who has waged a one-woman war against the chick-lit genre. Since then, Mazza has become both her creative muse and mentor.

“Twelve years ago, I read How to Leave a Country, and decided I needed to read everything she’d ever written,” Wycoff says. “She was the reason I chose to go to college and, later, graduate school at UIC, and she helped me see that the disparate single-mother stories I’d written could be linked.”

Because of the book’s gravitas (the title story is especially harrowing), getting O Street published wasn’t easy.

“I got about seven rejections over the course of four years, all from small presses,” she says, “many of whom called the collection ‘too dark.’”

Indeed, Wycoff portrays the gritty, sorrowful elements of her characters’ lives head-on and offers no easy solutions—no one’s riding up on a white horse, but neither are the stories bleak. Instead, drama and tension are delivered in such a subtle but detail-infused way that the reader becomes invested in Beth’s plight early on in the collection. The collection will likely elicit Dorothy Allison comparisons for its depictions of poor women and lesbian relationships, .

Wycoff is working on a novel now, and is planning another about teaching at a community college.

With chick lit down, it looks like the vaunted “university novel” may next.

Wycoff reads this week.

The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs
Written by: Irvine Welsh
Review by: Gretchen Kalwinski

In Bedroom Secrets, Danny Skinner is a rakishly handsome, carousing restaurant inspector living in Edinburgh, plugging away just fine until Brian Kibby arrives as his co-worker. Kibby is seemingly unthreatening–quiet with “cowlike” eyes and a bit of a mama’s boy, but generally inoffensive. However, Skinner immediately hates Kibby with an intensity that even he doesn’t understand. Via his contempt and competitiveness, some of his long-languishing problems, long-clouded by booze begin to rise to the surface and throw his whole life into upheaval and disarray. He begins to pester his formerly punk-rock mother about his father’s identity, (which she’ll only jokingly give as Joe Strummer of The Clash), and throws away whatever was left of his relationship with Kay, a beautiful dancer who’s been finding his drinking bouts increasingly tiresome.

Skinner eventually puts a curse on Kibby that results in the Star Trek and model train-obsessed boy beginning to suffer the damage of Skinner’s abusive lifestyle. This sets in motion Kibby’s declining health and Skinner’s gleeful indulgences in even more booze, drugs, fighting, and sexcapades. Simultaneously, Skinner’s search for his father’s identity takes him to San Francisco and back via information he learns in a book penned by an obnoxious TV chef. Once he returns home, Kibby starts approaching death and begins to learn the ins-and-outs of the curse and how he might be able to reverse it.

This is Welsh’s eighth novel centering around gritty, urban environments and one common critique of his work is that he’s never departed from stock characters and themes from Trainspotting. It’s true that the ho-hum-by-now grit is Welsh’s schtick, but he’s also got substance in spades. For all of his stock use of transgressive
content — booze, drugs, orgies, sickness (and gratingly flagrant use of the c-word, by the way) — Welsh knows how to tell a story in the old-fashioned sense of the word, a narrative that subtly builds tension in increasingly complex characters, delivers unexpected plot twists and resolutions, and conjures a reader’s genuine investment in outcomes. Few writers handle the-beauty-of-ugliness themes as well as Welsh and the warm humanity of his deft language coupled with his insights into ego and the dark side of human nature makes Bedroom Secrets a compelling read.

–Gretchen Kalwinski

Twilight, by William Gay

A word of warning: William Gay’s third novel Twilight isn’t for the faint-hearted, so don’t bother with it if you can’t stomach necrophilia, grave-robbery, and some gruesome beatings and murders. Billed as a southern-gothic fairy tale, the story is set in 1950′s Tennessee and opens with sister and brother Corrie and Kenneth Tyler’s discovery that something is amiss with their recently-buried father’s grave and that the foul, creepy undertaker Fenton Breece likely has something to do with it. Their father was a legendary bootlegger and abusive drunk but the Tylers are respectful of his memory, so they begin a graveyard-investigation to find out what Breece is up to.

Their detective work leads them to reveal evil on a more massive scale than they’ve ever encountered. The duo contacts authorities with evidence against Breece but are shunned because of their low-class standing, so they decide to blackmail the undertaker and escape the town forever. Naturally, Breece strikes back by sending the sinister town-thug—a known murderer named Granville Sutter—after them, forcing Kenneth to flee to the mysterious Harrikin woods, with the goal of reaching a safer town on the other side.

The chase through the Harrikin is where Gay’s storytelling and descriptive skills are most evident. Here, Kenneth encounters various backwoods folks (a fierce old coot, a witch) and these passages showcase his lyricism and dynamic, true dialogue. This is also where the good-versus-evil themes hit their stride; in one chilling scene, the witch suggests that in Kenneth’s stirring up of the world’s wickedness, he “got it on you, ain’t ye?”

The hunt eventually comes to a climax and Sutter catches up with Kenneth, which is where Gay makes an egregious decision in terms of plot believability. The Harrikin portion preceding was so well-rendered that you’re looking for a cleverly hellfire-and-brimstone scene but instead you’re in the realm of Scooby-Doo. It’s a huge disappointment and knocks this otherwise original and gorgeously, (if gruesomely) executed book down a few fatal notches.

“Jervis’s take is that the idea of a simplistic generational divide serves no one and that we should keep discussing the main point-gender justice-while retaining myriad voices that move us in the same direction: forward. [for full article, click here.]” October 28, 2006.

We Don’t Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists
Edited By: Melody Berger
Publisher: Seal Press

Editor and founder of The F-word zine Melody Berger compiled this collection of essays to critique the ways that contemporary feminism is discussed in the media. “We don’t need another wave,” she writes in her introduction. “We need a movement.”

The foreword is by Bitch Magazine editor and founder Lisa Jervis, who says that the “wave” terminology has outlived its usefulness and is often used by the mainstream press to position 2nd and 3rd wavers as “anti” one another, (i.e., 2nd Wavers reject humor and sex; 3rd Wavers aren’t politically active). Jervis’ take is that the idea of a simplistic generational divide serves no one, and that we should keep discussing the main point—gender justice—while retaining myriad voices and opposing perspectives that move in the same direction: forward.

Topically, the essays run an impressive gamut—covering everything from Latina reproductive rights activists, a critique of the GLBT wedding industry, the organization of sex worker rights, one woman’s reclamation of sexuality after abuse, and the inherent issues of being one-half of an interracial lesbian couple. One of the contributors is Jessica Valenti, who runs a blog called feministing.com, and writes with intelligent passion about the image problem of the word “feminist” and why women shouldn’t shrink from it, in her piece, “You’re a Feminist. Deal.”

Another stirring essay is by Kat Marie Yoas, who grew up in a trailer park, and later ended up in academia. Yoas grapples eloquently with the complexities of living simultaneously in two disparate worlds, including identity-confusion, class-anger, and insulting assumptions made and spoken by her colleagues. In “Steam Room Revelations,” writer, teacher, and filmmaker Courtney Martin tells of coming to term with body issues and self-consciousness via a raucous group of older women who frequent the steam room at her local YMCA.

What’s thrilling about the collection is how firmly grounded in activism the contributors are. The diverse bylines are made up of educators, artists, poets, filmmakers, founders of non-profits, students, performers, all who live and breathe the issues they’re writing about. I’d nitpick that several of the confessional poems embedded in the collection don’t serve it well, but mostly this is a gaggle of brash, fun, enlightening, fearless, and on-point essays by people working in the trenches of contemporary feminist issues, and for that it’s well worth your lunch money. —Gretchen Kalwinski

Book review published in:

Time Out Chicago / Issue 85: Oct 12–Oct 18, 2006

The Children’s Hospital
By Chris Adrian. McSweeney’s, $24.

Forget everything you know about doomsday lit. In his debut novel, Chris Adrian turns the concept on its head with his disaster tale of a flood covering the earth with a seven-mile-deep layer of water, leaving the inhabitants of a magically engineered and angel-commissioned children’s hospital as the only survivors.

The hospital staff members continue to dutifully perform their jobs attending to sick children, sure that they’ll soon hit land. The protagonist is Jemma Chaflin—medical student and all-around tragic figure—whose entire family has previously perished by either gruesome accidents or suicide, leaving Jemma to believe that anyone she loves is cursed. As months pass, they float uneasily, fighting madness, suspicion and fear, eventually shedding their Old World ways and breaking from the social order they instituted. Jemma stands out when she starts exhibiting mystical healing powers and is whispered to be everything from a Jesus figure to a demon.

The 600-page tome is flabby in parts and heavier editing could’ve excised the slow midsection. But Adrian has a way with weirdly arresting images, and the religion found here is of the palpable, God-fearing, apocalyptic kind, all sprung from his singular imagination.

—Gretchen Kalwinski

Book review published in:
Time Out Chicago / Issue 82: Sept 21–Sept 27, 2006

Alligator
Lisa Moore. Black Cat, $12.
By: Gretchen Kalwinski

Alligators are only incidental to Lisa Moore’s novel, but the symbolism of a deceptively slow-moving monster is apt in this tale. Alligator’s plot creeps along more quickly and desperately than apparent, and there are a lot of murky happenings taking place beneath the surface.

The vividly drawn characters include eccentric, aging filmmaker Madeleine, recently widowed Beverly, teenage ecovandalist Colleen, Russian thug Valentin and disastrously unlucky lonely guy Frank. They’re all oddballs: Colleen ritually watches beheadings on the Internet so that the victim is not alone; Madeline is crazed with finishing a film about “everything” before she dies; and Frank is a desperately hardworking hot-dog vendor. Though the plot is nonlinear, with constantly shifting perspectives, Moore inhabits the disparate worlds of her characters elegantly. The challenging structure adeptly builds tension as simultaneous events move the plot along, and there is the building sense that all are heading toward strangely connected climactic events. Moore’s prose is tight, tough and stunningly original; when an ex-lover booty-calls, he craves a “languid tussle.” Midway through, we were invested enough in the characters to enter the throes of page-turning headiness, even though we still weren’t sure how they were connected.

A prizewinning short-story writer, Moore makes her first turn as a novelist with this book and she succeeds magnificently for the most part. Our only beef came at the end: We were engaged and waiting for the kind of emotional wrap-up that someone like Eugenides delivers, but the last five pages fell flat. We just wish she hadn’t taken us nearly to the finish line only to stop short and meander off the track. —GK

Time Out Chicago / Issue 66: June 1–June 8, 2006

Afterlife
By Donald Antrim.
Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, $20.

Review by: Gretchen Kalwinski

This is not your typical memoir: Each of Antrim’s stylistically unconventional essays, originally published in The New Yorker, revolves around an image or object that spurs memories of his dysfunctional family: a landscape painting, an expensive bed on which Antrim is unable to sleep because he’s convinced it’s “alive with my mother…pulling me down into the bed to die with her.”

His alcoholic mother, Louanne, was both anchor and burden to her family, forever drawing them to her and pushing them away, even to the extent of twice marrying and divorcing Antrim’s father. The book is lush with the details of how alcoholism and other dysfunctions (e.g., depression, affairs) leave their imprint on families. “Grandiose hopes and dreams” were, Antrim writes, “the story of my alcoholic family.”

As Antrim self-deprecatingly examines how the past affects his present, the scenes with Louanne’s blackouts, guilt trips and assertions of her artistic merit (as an avant-garde seamstress) emerge as the most engaging, even while the spine chills at her misguided “image of herself as a heroine on a journey.” Antrim’s storytelling skills are undeniable: He ripples outward from themes into darkly humorous insights on kin, work and addiction, always returning to his premise with heavier baggage.

The patchwork chronology provides no distinct time line as a guide, and the order of events is perplexing; readers are obliged to piece together the puzzle of Antrim’s life themselves. Yet what the chapters lack in narrative momentum, they make up in thoughtful, cynical, deeply felt revelations. —GK

Centerstage Chicago

Bookslut (Interview)
Monday May 22, 2006
By: Gretchen Kalwinski

Jessa Crispin is a literary lass extraordinaire, and her Bookslut readings are icing on the cake.

Basic stats: Features three or four fiction or non-fiction authors, in conjunction with the smart, irreverent tone of Bookslut.com
Incorporated: 2003
Website: http://www.bookslut.com
When: Once a month (exact dates and locations vary)
Fringe benefits: Free!
Up next: May 24, 2006 at Hopleaf: Michelle Tea, Elizabeth Merrick, Gary Amdahl.

Jessa Crispin is a literary lass extraordinaire. She is the editor and founder of Bookslut.com, a “monthly webzine dedicated to those who love to read” that’s known for offering sharp, thoughtful and acerbic reviews of fiction and non-fiction, author interviews, commentary on publishing trends and literary news. It also contains the Bookslut blog, and Crispin’s authoritative tone and occasionally-biting commentary have made for her reputation as a successful and devoted literary blogger (the Bookslut site boasts 7,000-8,000 daily readers).

Crispin began the Bookslut website while living in Austin, Texas, where Bookslut.com began to gain momentum. Crispin also runs the monthly Bookslut Reading Series, which has featured such authors as Marisha Pessl, Luis Alberto Urrea and Kirby Gann, and usually features readers who have already been reviewed by Bookslut.com. Last year, Crispin made Wired’s list of the “10 Sexiest Geeks,” and in 2003, Bookslut.com was awarded as one of Time Magazine’s “50 Best Websites.” Centerstage chatted with Crispin about the origins of Bookslut.com and how the Bookslut Reading Series ties in with the website.

What’s the most memorable Bookslut reading thus far?
Our first reading was with Shalom Auslander, who wrote Beware of God, and since it was the first one I had no expectations, but she completely rocked it; she’s just a very good performer. I didn’t know how that night was going to work out actually; because we had Beth Lisick, a feminist writer named Paula Kamen who wrote All in My Head and a scholar named Peter Manseau who wrote Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son. Lisick was the first reader and she opened with a story about um, fisting. Peter was hilarious about it when it was his turn though. He got up there and was like, “how do I insert fisting into this?” I was worried, but it turned out fine.

What did you set out to do with the Bookslut website?
I just kinda started it to kill some time at my day job; I never would have imagined that it would have become what it has.

How does the site inform your choices for the reading series?
The readers kind of depend on who the publishers will send. It’s gotten a little better now, but when we were starting and trying to get writers it was like pulling teeth.

Does this mean that by you use more authors at big publishing houses rather than smaller ones, because the bigger ones can cover traveling expenses?
Not really, with some of the writers we’ve taken up collections and helped pay travel costs that way. We actually get a lot of small press writers and it seems that bigger publishers are LESS likely to cover travel expenses. Also, we’ve had a longtime relationship working with small houses, as opposed to bigger ones who are like “who the hell are you, again?”

What book are you reading now?
Pearl by Mary Gordon, who we are trying to get for July. It’s a novel about an American girl who chains herself to a flagpole in Dublin on a hunger strike but no one can figure out what she’s protesting.

I heard that your parents are kind of reserved and don’t say the name of the site out loud.
Right, they just call it “the site”. After we made Time Magazine’s list of best websites, my father was at their church and they have this part of the service where you pray for people, and offer “concerns and congratulations.” My dad started to say, “Oh, my daughter got this award” and then he was like, “Oh wait,” and tried to work around the name of the site, but by then people were already starting to ask him all kinds of questions.

Who are some upcoming readers that you’re excited about?
May’s reading with Michelle Tea and Elizabeth Merrick will be great, and the June reading will be a good nepotism month because the readers have all written for Bookslut.

Published in Venus Zine, Spring 2006

Memoirs of a Muse by: Lara Vapnyar

This first novel by Lara Vapnyar tells of a modern muse living in New York and obsessed with the great Russian writers, Dostoevsky in particular. The main character Tanya emigrates from Russia to the States, after deciding in adolescence that she is not gifted in her own right and asking, “could I fight death by living my life to the utmost degree?”

Tanya’s ideas about muses went far back into childhood, when her grandmother warned her about the trials and tribulations of the role. Still, Tanya is so impressed (and turned on by; she masturbates while thinking of Dostoevsky) the great writers that she decides to achieve immortality by inspiring another person’s work. Vapnyar’s lyrical style is notable for its fine detail, economy of words, and tight, crackling dialogue, best evidenced in the gender-interplay between Tanya and Mark Schneider, the writer that (in the absence of Dostoevsky), she takes up with. Mark is confident, with well-honed tastes in everything from coffee to clothing to architecture, and he enjoys schooling Tanya on the tenets of his sophisticated world, paying for her clothes and food, and letting her live with him. In turn, she listens to his childhood memories, discusses his work, brings him coffee while he writes, sleeps with him, and undresses the way he requests, until the affair turns up its eventual pitfalls.

However, the reasons why a modern-day woman would choose this role instead of pursuing her own path, are left unanswered. After all, which of us in adolescence had a declared passion, other than the prodigies or geniuses? Why did Tanya lack the curiosity to find and develop a talent of her own, rather than glomming onto some dude? We never discover why Tanya decides on such a lazy route at such a young age. To be sure, muse-dom is a complicated notion to tackle, especially since muses are usually female and have roles similar to that of “kept” wives and mistresses. In the latter half of the book, Tanya begins to understand what her role entails, and Vapnyar handles the contradictions of a muse’s role with intelligence and dry humor and earthy, womanly insight.

– Gretchen Kalwinski

Published in the Northwest Indiana Times, on Monday, February 20, 2006

An Outside Appreciation
The book ‘LaPorte, Indiana’ offers a glimpse into the history of small-town Midwest

BY: Gretchen Kalwinski
Times Correspondent

Only expecting a quick meal and cup of coffee when he first visited a LaPorte, Indiana diner in the summer of 2003, magazine editor Jason Bitner instead found himself with a new book project. B & J’s American Café is a classic slice of Americana with its authentic soda fountain, jukebox, wooden phone booth, vintage Coca Cola memorabilia, and standard diner fare like hamburgers, salads, peach cobbler, and rhubarb pie.

After ordering one of the famed cinnamon rolls, Bitner took a look around the diner and happened upon a stash of thousands of photos tucked in the back room with a sign inviting patrons to peruse or purchase the images (available for 50 cents apiece). The photos were the remnants of the Muralcraft photography studio located on the 2nd floor of the same building and run by Frank and Gladys Pease from the late 40s to the early 70s. B & J’s owners John and Billie Pappas took the photos out of storage in the early 90s, planning to “clean out storage” but kept them around when they saw how much people enjoyed sifting through them, looking for long-forgotten photos of themselves, friends, or family members. Bitner was entranced by the discovery, and describes the images as, “an enormous visual survey of the Midwest a generation back.”

To be sure, Bitner already had a propensity for this kind of project. As the co-creator of Found Magazine, (www.foundmagazine.com)–a “show and tell” magazine that publishes found photos, discarded school-kid notes, doodles on scraps of paper, and other found miscellany sent it by readers worldwide—he revels in such discoveries, which he calls, “the accidental archive of an entire town.” For Bitner, a fire had been lit, and he couldn’t get the photos out of his mind. Though he’d only planned to pass through LaPorte for the County Fair and demolition derby, he ended up spending two weeks in B & J’s looking through images in amazement at the magnitude of the archive, and the almost-painterly beauty of the photographs. The end result of Bitner’s enthusiasm is a book of selected portraits titled LaPorte, Indiana, which is being released by Princeton Architectural Press in April 2006.

Bitner found the book idea to be an easy sell. “People love photos of other people,” he explains. “I was in New York, and stopped at a publisher who I knew was into photo books, and said ‘Hey, I’ve got something that you might like.’ I dumped out the envelope of images on the table, and at first, there were two people standing there, then three, four, five. Right away people got really excited and started trading them around the table saying ‘That looks like my grandfather! That looks like your boyfriend!’ That is also what it’s like at the diner, once you start looking, you just want to see more and more. It’s amazing—I’ve never gone to an archive where I saw photos all by one person.”

Photographer Frank Pease was by all accounts a nice guy who enjoyed his job. He was also an excellent craftsman and as Bitner puts it, “an accidental historian.” One of Pease’s former clients remembers him as “really nice, down to earth, very patient.” His wife Gladys helped him in the studio by greeting customers in the lobby, and helping to prep them with grooming and makeup before they went before the camera. The photos themselves are interesting not only for their comment on the time and place (mostly 40s and 50s, in small-town Midwest) but because of their old-fashioned formality and idealism. The poses varied only slightly, with 8 or so poses for men and 8 for women, with a few variations for children and couples. Pease obviously had great technical skills, but it is clear that at some point, he zoned in on a certain “look,” and, Bitner notes, “didn’t waver from it in 2 ½ decades.” The poses and lighting are not natural ones but are instead traditionally classical—the men are wearing ties, the women often hold a flower, or tilt their heads in imitation of movie-star glamour.

Bitner has spoken with several of the subjects of Pease’s photos, including Hugh and Kathy Tonagel, whose somber engagement photograph is at the forefront of the book. “Hugh told me that Pease was trying to impress upon them that this was a really weighty moment. Like, ‘You guys are getting married, and this is the photo that is going to represent that forever. This is a really important moment and I want you to be here and present and understand what it is you’re sitting for.’ [Pease] also had a process in place for setting up the studio, getting the lighting right, people getting their hair done just-so—there was a gravity to the process.”

Part of the delight of the archive is that it is not limited to only the shots that ended up being used, but also the myriad, back-to-back proofs from the sittings. The mistakes and glitches are all there—a couple bursting out in open-mouthed laughter at the camera, an accidental wild-eyed grin from a teenage boy, and a young boy raising his finger in a politician’s pose. After Pease’s death in the early 1970s, much of his equipment was donated to the local high school or given away and Muralcraft Studios was eventually renovated to become a large apartment. Another striking facet of the archive is how idealized the images are, and that they seem to tell a story about the ideal way that each of the subjects wish to see themselves. “Nowadays, it’s different,” Bitner says. “There are so many cameras around and people are so comfortable in front of a camera. Back then, there was definitely a feeling that film was a little more precious, and I think that when people took a portrait, they were more interested in creating an image for public history; their public face. Nowadays there are a lot of cameras around and people are so comfortable in front of a camera, and that sense of a public face doesn’t seem as important as it was then. But these photos were definitely not intended to be private or intimate shots; these were shots that were intended for an audience.”

LaPorte, Indiana contains about 150 images of LaPorte residents in the 50s and 60s in various stages of life. Some were taken for specific events like graduations, engagements, first communions, and anniversaries. Other people posed with objects that conveyed their individuality; a nurse or military uniform, a musical instrument, a radio microphone, or prayer book. Still others simply seem inexplicable, like the one of two elderly men in suits preening for the camera while one affectionately straightens the other’s tie. The end result of the book is a crossbreeding of several genres; because of the beautifully displayed images, it easily functions as a coffee table photography book. It is also of interest to history buffs and found-art aficionados alike. It contains approximately 150 photographs and a forward by both Bitner and writer Alex Kotlowitz who calls the images, “Distinctly middle American. Open. Unassuming. Sturdy.” Kotlowitz goes on to intuit that although the images were taken in a time when the country was perched on intense conflict, the people in these portraits “seemed impervious to the upheaval around them.” Famous Hoosier John Mellencamp weighs in on the book’s back cover, musing that “the grace and dignity one sees in their faces should be a source of hope for us all.”

With about 22,000 residents, LaPorte is a small town. Incorporated in 1835, LaPorte’s business development began in the late 1850s, after the railroad came to town. The town has six surrounding lakes and some notable architecture, including the Romanesque LaPorte County Courthouse and the Door Prairie Barn, a “round barn” which was recently placed on the National Registry of Historic Places. While agriculture and manufacturing have been the primary industries, the current economy is increasingly relying on tourists who visit to enjoy the lakes and the famed LaPorte County Fair each July. According to Fern Eddy Schultz of the LaPorte Historical Society, LaPorte is going through a time of re-evaluation, “trying to make plans for what is best for it in the future and how to implement them.”

But aside from water-recreation offerings, and an abundance of maple trees that have earned it the title of “The Maple City,” Schultz notes that LaPorte is otherwise “very much like most towns its age and size in the Midwest.” Indeed, residents and historians alike seem to agree that there is nothing terribly out of the ordinary about this peaceful Midwestern town. These extraordinary photos of mid-century Midwest, then, seem to be extraordinary for their very ordinary-ness. These are people carrying out their lives in the midst of a rapidly changing world. There is a father surrounded by wife and kids gazing worriedly into the camera, a toddler playing with his ears, a girl graduating from high school. These are optimistic portraits of real people with quirks and flaws who gain love and lose it, experience birth, death, and all the rituals of life.

LaPorte, then, is all of us. We’d value this discovery from any town. But the people of LaPorte happened to have a better archive than most of us, along with the impeccable foresight to preserve it. It is of note that the images were made public via the enthusiasm of a non-native, a testament to the idea that we oftentimes overlook what is right under our noses. With his outsider’s perspective, it seems that Bitner was in a unique position to be able to see facets of the archive that were regarded as everyday by those familiar with them. He notes that, “I think that a lot of times it takes an outsider to make people appreciate what they have. If these were from my town, I know that I’d be looking for photos of family or friends, and I wouldn’t be so interested in the guy at the end of the block. When you’re so close to something you may not understand the greater significance.”

Several hundred photos were purchased for the book, but most photos remain in boxes in the back room of B & J’s. The count has only dwindled down to about 17,000 from the original 20,000 and the archive is basically intact. “The vast majority are still there,” Bitner notes, “And they want them there; it’s a document of their community.”

Book review published in:
Time Out Chicago / Issue 50: Feb 9–Feb 16, 2006.

BOOK REVIEW: The Ruins of California
By Martha Sherrill.
Penguin, $24.95.

The Ruins of California begins with the divorce of seven-year-old Inez Ruin’s parents in 1969 and chronicles 1970s California life through her eyes. Her home split in half, she travels between her father Paul’s elegantly bohemian existence in San Francisco and her primary home in suburban Los Angeles with her mother Connie, a dancer described as “one of the great flamencas of her generation.”

Sherrill’s depiction of 1970s California is vivid, and the Ruins epitomize the decade’s multicultural ideals. Her Peruvian-Mexian mother gave up dancing for the creature comforts of suburban life, while her hippie half-brother Whitman grew up on a commune to become a surfer.

And in stark contrast stands the blue-blooded grandmother Marguerite Ruin, who coaches Inez on niceties like music lessons, horseback riding and afternoon tea. Her father Paul’s string of beautiful girlfriends soon begins introducing new ideas to Inez—Buddhism, tarot cards, love beads, motorcycles—that form crucial coming-of-age impressions. As time passes, their bond becomes increasingly intense. And though Paul prefers being a friend rather than a father figure to Inez—offering pot, speaking frankly about sex and inflicting few rules—it becomes clear that if she is to break out of her role as a passively observant deer-in the-headlights it will be via her distant but loving father.

Everywhere, the accoutrements of the 70s are present, particularly the sensibility that nothing is a “big deal.” Throughout, Inez becomes much like California itself: a receptive guinea pig, a litmus test for the new. Surfing and beaches are omnipresent, and Sherrill brilliantly uses the movement of water as a tool for her unfettered prose, which is as languid as the era. Despite constant action—births, deaths, affairs ending and beginning—the language and pace make events simply wash over and leave faint impressions. This style lends complexity to the story and catapults the reader into a new set of realizations. It’s akin to riding a wave and landing on a calm Californian beach where everything is suddenly different, but you’re not exactly sure what has changed.

—Gretchen Kalwinski

Published in Time Out Chicago Magazine / Issue 44: Dec 29, 2005

My Sister’s Continent
By: Gina Frangello.
Chiasmus Press, $12.
Review By: Gretchen Kalwinski

After her twin sister’s mysterious disappearance, narrator Kirby Braun responds to a therapist’s mistaken diagnoses of her family—laden with sexual secrets and feminine angst—by carefully piecing together details from Kendra’s life. While sifting through memories, Kirby muses, “How do I tell the story of a life…that is outside my own experience, wrapped in shatterproof glass and secrets that have everything to do with me?”

While Kirby is complacent and domestic, Kendra was passionate and bohemian. Devastated after an injury ended her promising career at the New York City Ballet, Kendra returned to family in Chicago only to become increasingly withdrawn before disappearing entirely. Though Kirby was considered the “good” twin, she is inwardly troubled: no career, a banal sex life and health problems that become a serious threat to her wedding plans. It is difficult to deal with female sexuality without exploring issues of body, consumption and purging (of food, thoughts, memories), and the novel’s strength is how intricately these themes are linked. Between Kirby’s digestive troubles and Kendra’s depression, both girls lose weight rapidly, mirroring one another’s bodies even while their personalities conflict.

Kendra’s sadomasochistic relationship with an older man functions as a “therapy of humiliation,” and it is in these scenes that Frangello’s lush and poetic style is at its most lyric. The cat-and-mouse style of their coital dialogue is an annoying but necessary device in conveying their sex games, and during one particularly sophisticated conversation, Kendra muses, “I prefer my sex less civilized and urbane than this cigarette-lighting Noël Coward routine you call being direct.”

Frangello’s debut novel is akin to a woman’s archeological dig into another life, as well as a modern retelling of Freud’s famed “Dora” story. As such, it cannot help but be rather bleak, evoking a similar anomie as The Ice Storm and The Virgin Suicides. It is also an intriguing and darkly psychological look at and investigation of identity, the façades that cloak us and the complicated habitat of private, inner lives. —GK

Book review published in Venus Zine, Winter 2005

I’m with the Band
By: Pamela Des Barres

Pamela Des Barres embraced her “ultimate groupie” moniker with the 1987 publication of I’m with the Band— a merry recounting of her friendships and trysts with some of rock’s elite, including Captain Beefheart, Jim Morrison, and Frank Zappa. This new reprint includes an epilogue by Des Barres and an affectionate forward by Dave Navarro, who calls her “one of the most unique and important rock historians of our time.”

After graduating in 1966 from high school in Reseda, California, Des Barres hung out with bands nightly in Hollywood. Bestowing oral sex to rock musicians testified to her belief that these musicians were on earth to do great things and that she was here to cater to them. Although written when Des Barres was 39, the book maintains an adolescent tone replete with cringe-worthy puns and lifted song lyrics. For example, several chapters after she recounts fainting while seeing Jim Morrison perform, she muses about Michael Des Barres, the rocker she will eventually marry; “I kept him all to myself and tried to set the night on fire. Girl, we couldn’t get much higher.” Seriously. Or: “I soon found out that the answer to any and all questions was blowing in the wind.”

Her visceral, high school obsession with the Beatles, Paul Anka, Rolling Stones, and the Byrds became lust and lifestyle by her late teens. Her perspective might be easier to comprehend if she were a sex-positive, 1960s free-love explorer and adventuress, but she wasn’t — she states repeatedly that all she really wanted was to be the wife of a rock star. Des Barres was trying to be part of music in the best way she knew how — offering her body to it, and this makes her story a sad one. In one poignant scenario, Des Barres trespasses and is forcibly removed from Beatles property, and while being driven away in a police car she notes a contemptuous, sorrowful look on John Lennon’s face.

Des Barres’ deference to “her” musicians is, for lack of a better word, icky. Although claiming lack of any regret, the updated epilogue of the new edition reads, “I have spent so much time wistfully flitting about, caring for creative souls and — wonder of wonders — I have finally come to recognize the potency of my very own creative soul.”

–Gretchen Kalwinski

“Her perspective might be easier to comprehend if she were a sex-positive, 1960s [for full article, click here.]“

–published in Booksense magazine and website, Winter 2001.

Young Wives Tales: New Adventures in Love and Partnership

Editors: Jill Corral and Lisa Miya-Jervis Published: 6.01.2001

“In this book of essays feminists relate their struggle to create modern partnerships with their loved one(s). There are essays on lesbian marriage, mixed ethnicity partnerships, cohabitation, the decision to have a childless marriage, how housework is shared, and what to do about last names – all narrating how a couple has negotiated their relationship to make it work. This is a look at modern partnerships that takes the old-fashioned trappings and myths and gently dismantles them with honesty and intelligence.”

–Review by: Gretchen Kalwinski
The Booksmith
San Francisco, California