"I read your book." | Sung J. Woo

W. Earl Snyder, courtesy of John Updike (circa 1960)

The New Yorker has been putting up reactions by various writers about Updike’s passing, and this one by George Saunders caught my eye:

Back in 1992, I had my first story accepted by The New Yorker. It was going to run in Tina Brown’s first issue. I soon learned that, in honor of the occasion, the magazine was going to run two short stories, and that the idea was to contrast the new (me) with the established.

I remember this very well, because I was a sophomore in college and was writing for the Cornell Daily Sun.  In order to become a Sunnie, you had to go through what they called a “compet program,” meaning you had to write some news stories to get your feet wet.  I had no intention of writing news stories, but you gotta do what you gotta do.  So I wrote a couple of pieces, one of which involved attending a lecture about black holes.  At the end of the interview, I walked up to the scientist to get some quotes, but I was thwarted when Carl Sagan threw a couple of sharp elbows into my ribs and pushed me out of the way.

But I’m losing my focus here.  I’m not here to talk poorly of the dead (sorry, Carl), but rather about one of the first pieces I wrote for the Arts & Entertainment section of the Daily Sun.  For that column, I reviewed this very first Tina Brown issue of The New Yorker, and I still vividly recall this story by Saunders because it was bona fide science fiction, and not only that, it had a killer ending.

As for the Updike story in the issue, I’m afraid I don’t remember it, which probably means it was as sparkling as all of his stuff has ever been.  I do remember the very last short story he had in the magazine, “The Full Glass” quite clearly: like most of his stuff written in the later years, he displays a masterful retrospective voice.  It didn’t occur to me for a second that this might be his final non-posthumous (humous?) work in The New Yorker, but that’s the way it goes, isn’t it?  Here today, gone tomorrow.

Four years ago, my girlfriend and I were living in The Hills, in one among the thousands of identical townhouses in Bedminster, N.J. To give you an idea of how cookie-cutter this development is, the recent remake of The Stepford Wives was shot there.

We told people that we were moving half an hour northwest to rural Washington for practical reasons — it’s a seller’s market, I can telecommute, cheaper housing — but in actuality, it was because we wanted to nudge our relationship to the next level. Back then, I was living with Dawn in her house, which was fine with me and OK with her — until it wasn’t OK with her. One of her biggest pet peeves was that she didn’t know how to introduce me to new people. “Boyfriend” sounded like we were a pair of teenagers going steady, and “partner” was no better option, as if we were a same-sex couple or about to embark on a business venture. So who was I, exactly, if not a husband?

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An article I wrote for the December 2008 issue of KoreAm Journal.

Listen to the great Richard Yates reading his short story, “The Best of Everything.” The quality is excellent.

It must be obvious to anyone who has been following this series that I have an unabashed affection for the old guard of book publishing—and an endless appetite for their insights, their war stories, and their wisdom. But after a year in which “change” of one kind or another was never far from anybody’s thoughts, it occurred to me that the series could use a shake-up. Why not give the graybeards a breather and talk with some younger agents and editors? And while I was at it, wouldn’t it be more valuable to writers if I could get a few drinks in them first?

That’s my agent on the far right, Renee Zuckerbrot!  The illuminating article is from Poets & Writers Magazine, the January/Februrary 2009 issue.

BJ Ward, 41, is the author of “Gravedigger’s Birthday,” “17 Love Poems With No Despair” and “Landing in New Jersey With Soft Hands,” from North Atlantic Books. He grew up in Warren County and lives there in Changewater, which straddles the Musconetcong River. His poems don’t tell us about where we live so much as they create places that are even more compelling.

“For me it’s a question of does the place help define your poetry, or can your poems help redefine the place you live in? Would Rutherford be the same if William Carlos Williams hadn’t lived there?” he said during an interview at the Dodge Poetry Festival.

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As luck would have it, a poet who teaches in my home town of Washington (Warren County, NJ)  is also featured in the same issue of the Times.  Must be kismet!