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A conversationabout government

surveillancewith William T.

Vollmann

Courtenay

Hameister onleaving the spotlight

A defense of

navel-gazing

Essays on solitude

and feathers,narcissism and

language, parentsand children

MeSpring 2014

$8

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Kathleen Holt

Jen Wick

Ben Waterhouse

Eloise Holland

Allison Dubinsky

/

Sierra Bray

Reid Stubblefield

Brian Doyle

Debra Gwartney

Julia Heydon

Guy Maynard

Win McCormack

Greg Netzer

Camela Raymond

Kate Sage

Rich Wandschneider

Dave Weich

Oregon Humanities (ISSN

2333-5513) is published trian-

nually by Oregon Humanities,

813 SW Alder St., Suite 702,

Portland, Oregon 97205.

We welcome letters fromreaders. If you would like to

submit a letter for consider-

ation, please send it to the

editor at k.holt@oregonhu-

manities.orgor to the address

listed above. Letters may be

edited for space or clarity.

Oregon Humanitiesis

provided free to Oregonians.

To join our mailing list, email

o.hm@oregonhumanities.

org, visit oregonhumanities.

org/magazine, or call our

office at (503) 241-0543 or

(800) 735-0543.

Oregon Humanities2

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3/48

Selfies by Oregon Humanitiesstaff and contributors. Far left

top: Annie Kaffen, far left bottom:

Jay Ponteri, center: Carolyn

Richardson, below: Jennifer Allen

Self Portrait No. 9 by Portland

artist Delaney Allen is part of his

series Painting A Portrait, which

was exhibited at Nationale Gallery

in Portland in Apr il 2012.

http://www.delaneyallen.com/

Delaney Allen, courtesy of

Nationale (Portland, OR)

Departments

4

Editors Note

6

Field Work

Think & Drin k goes statewideLetters to strangers A

Medford lecture series on

medicine and the humanitiesMemoirs of the Middle East

book club OH News 2014

Public Program Grants

10

Profile

Paulann Petersen reflects on

her four years as Oregon PoetLaureate.

11

From the Director

Adam Davis on conversations

taking us places we didnt think

wed go

Features: Me

12

Whos Minding Your Business?

A conversation with .

At the Februar y 2014 Thin k &

Drink in Portland, the National

Book Awardwinning writer

and subject of FBI surveillance

discusses Unamericans and the

benefits of understanding how

others see you.

16

Mark My Words

by

When it comes to narcissism, is it

really all about me?

20

In Defense of Navel-Gazingby

To understand the world, one

must first understand oneself.

24

Trapped in the Spotlight

by

When giving up your job means

giving up on yourself

30The Thing with Feathers

by

Opening up ones hands in the

hope that God will fall in

36

You Remind Me of Me

by

Parent and child, strange and

baffling creatures that are part,

yet no part, of each other

40

Posts

Readers write about Me

44

Read. Talk. Think.

The Kinfolk Table by Nathan

Williams Bridging a Great

Divideby Kathie Durbin

The Great Floodgates of the

Wonderworld by Justin Hocking

The Evangelicals You Dont Know

by Tom Krattenmaker Outside

by Barry Lopez The Freeby

Willy Vlautin Torment Saintby

William Todd Schultz

46

Croppings

Fractured Memories, Assembled

Traumas: The Work of Miguel

Aragnat Rogue Gallery and

Ar t Center

3 Spring 2014

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Oregon Humanities4

We are excited to feature the work of

Oregon writers and artists in the pages of

Oregon Humanities. The cover of this issue

is a photograph by Portlander Delaney Allen,

Self Portrait No. 9, from his series Painting

a Portrait. You can see more of his work at

delaneyallen.com.

If youre an Oregon artist and have work

that we might consider for the Summer

2014 issue, on the theme Start, wed love

to know about it. Please familiarize yourself

with our publication (back issues viewable

online at oregonhumanities.org), then send

us the following by June 13, 2014:

a high-resolution digital image (300 dpi

at 8 x 10; scans or photographs, JPEG

or TIFF)

your name, the title of the work, the type

of media, as well as contact information

(email and phone number)

Please consider the constraints of a

magazine cover (e.g., vertical orientation,

nameplate, and cover lines). We are most

interested in works by Oregon-based artists.

Submissions can be sent to

art@oregonhumanities.orgor by post

to Oregon Humanitiesmagazine,

813 SW Alder St. Suite 702, Portland,

OR 97205.

Whats Mine Is Yours

M y f o u r - y e a r - o l d , l i k e a l l f o u r - y e a r - o l d s , i sa creature from the Land of Me. See that last banana sit-ting in the fruit bowl on the counter? Thats his. Never mind thathes already eaten two breakfasts this morning and one of them

was the second-to-the-last bana na. Never mind t hat he didnt

even want that banana until I expressed interest in it. Never

mind that Ipaidfor the bananawhats money to a four-year-

old? Never mind that hell peel the banana out of its skin, clutch it

tightly in his grubby paw, take one sloppy wet bite, and then leave

the rest on the dining room table to brown. That banana is his.

I know the point of being a parent is to shepherd a child from

the inward-focused, self-centered world of infancy and toddler-

hood to the world beyond, to give my son a sense of his social

responsibilities and obligations even as he makes a place for him-

self. The challenge is that the world beyond looks a lot like the

Land of Me, just populated by taller people with smart phones

who sha re their every word, action, a nd drea m with audiences

intimate and unknown. More of these tales of Me line up, glossy

and pert, on newsstands. They sit perfect-bound on bookstore

shelves and move in high-definition on TV screens during prime-

time. Im part of this world; I indulge. Im sometimes charmed by,

sometimes irritated with, and sometimes embarrassed for the

sharers and the tellers. Ive told some tales myself, but the doing

is still tentative and hard-considered for me, not a natural quick

click of a post button.

Unlike my children, who will grow up natives of this cultureof public narrative-building and shape-shifting, Ive had to adapt

to it. From my vantage point, the positioning of a private self in

a public world seems particular to this time and these technolo-

gies but is exacerbated by the inherited American sense of self-determination, trail-blazing, and reinvention. Weve always

been the heroes of our quests; now we are the storytellers and

publicists, too.

The discussions about narcissism, authenticity, and propriety

that happen when private lives are lived publicly feel perennial,

even though the players and the circumstances have changed.

These are ideas that are still intriguing, still worth arguing over,

but they are timeless. What feels newer and pressing are con-

cerns about complacency in light of technologys vast reach and

appeal, particularly regarding surveillance and citizens rights

to privacy.

Another concer n that feel s new and underd isc ussed is

whether my children and their peers, as they embark on the quest

of becoming who they want to be, will understand the value of

internal dialogue, of daydreaming, of turning an idea over and

over in their mindstesting it and absorbing it and making it

something integral to who they are. I hope they learn to shut out

the noise, resist the urge to perform, ignore the impulse to gather

external feedback. I hope they develop a capacity for solitude and

a habit of self-reflectionwhere the real me work is doneeven

as they push forward into this bright new world.

, Editor

k.holt@oregonhumanities.org

Editors Note

Cover Art Ideas for Start

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5 Spring 2014 Me

The power toolfor curious

minds.

opb.org

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Oregon Humanities6

Always Happy Hour SomewhereOregon Humanities Think & Drink discussionprogram hits the road.

O n a T h u r s d a y e v e n i n g i n l a t eFebruary, on the heels of the 2014 WinterOlympics in Sochi, Russia, more than thirty

Salem residents joined Oregon Humanities in a

casual, public conversation with Jules Boykoff,

a former Olympic athlete and professor of poli-

tics and government at Pacific University, and

David Gutterman, a professor of politics at Wil-

lamette University and an Oregon Humanitiesboard member, at Grand Vines, a downtown

wine bar.

Field Work

The topic of discussion? Sochi, of course.With its record-brea king budget, unf ini shed

hotels, awe-inspiring sporting feats, and horse-

whip -wield ing Cossacks, the two-week spec-

tacle offered a curious collision of glamour and

squalor, nationalism and internationalism, and

athletics and activism. Both the events and the

political and social dramas surrounding them

provided plenty of fuel for conversations.

This evening in Salem was the first Think &

Drink program Oregon Humanities has held

outside of Portland. It will not be the last.

Think & Drink is a happy-hour series thatsparks provocative conversations about big

ideas through public discussions in informal

The 2014 Think & Drink Portland

series kicked off in February with

writer William T. Vollmann.

TIML

ABARGE

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7 Spring 2014 Me

Want to keepup with thehumanities inOregon?

Visit oregonhumanities.org

to sign up for our monthly

enewsletter. Like us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

settings. Oregon Humanities has presented

Think & Drink events in Portland since 2009,

with guest s including Congressman Ea rl Blu-

menauer, General Merrill McPeak, and writers

Ursula K. Le Guin and William T. Vollmann.

Now Oregon Humanities is moving the

Think & Drink model beyond Portland with a

series of pilot events around the state. Another

Think & Drink will take place this fall in Joseph,

featuring immigrant and civil rights advocate

Pramila Jayapal and Steve Williamson, com-

munity affairs director for the United Food

and Commercial Workers of Washington, who

will discuss the changing nature of labor in the

Pacific Northwest.

Think & Drink is an excellent format for

grappling with big ideas in a comfortable set-

ting, says Oregon Humanities executive

director, Adam Davis. The programs are lessformal than a lecture, and allow for more in-

depth discussion than a debate. They get people

together, in a room, to talk respectfully about

important issues, which enables participants

to become both better informed and more

connected with one another. And thats

what we at Oregon Humanities want to do:

Get Oregonians together to talk.

Guests in the 2014 Portland series include

Heidi Boghosian, director of the National Law-

yers Guild, on May 8; and Stephanie Coontz, a

professor at Evergreen State College who stud-ies the history of American family life and mar-

riage, on July 10.

Oregon Humanities also hope s to offer

Think & Drink events in Deschutes, Umatilla,

and Jackson Counties in 2014. If you would

like to see a Think & Drink in your community,

or if you know of a great venue or speaker for a

Think & Drink event, please email Adam Davis

at a.davis@oregonhumanities.org.

The Best MedicineA Medford series uses the humanities to examine

the practice of medicine.

As the national debate about ourhealth care system rages, medical profes-sionals are searching for a nswers on the front

lines.

Weve kind of lost our way in medicine,says Alexander Krach, director of the Humane

Medicine Medical Humanities Program at the

Asa nte Health System in Medfor d. Hi stor i-

cally, medicine has always been both an art and

a science, but now its all diagnostic.

A seasoned emergency room and trau ma

nurse who recently applied to medical school,

Krach feels driven to change things. I found

what is the core of my work in trying to recon-

nect people to their relationships with one

another, he says.

He believes the humanities are the way to dothis. Last year, Krach helped bring two Oregon

Humanities Conversation Project programs

Once youve read Me, writeabout you.

This spring, Oregon Humanities is connecting

Oregonians to strangers from all over the state

through a letter-exchange program were calling

Dear Stranger.

Heres how it works: Write a letter. Address

it Dear Stranger. Fill a page, or maybe two.

Write about yourselfsome aspect of what

makes you you. Who you are, where you live,

what you do; where you come from, what you

have seen, and where you are going; your hopes

and fears and desires; a favorite story, or a ran-

dom memory; what me means to you.

Sign your letter, if you like, or leave it anony-

mous. Include your address in the letter if youd

like a reply from your stranger.

Then mail your letter and a stamped, self-

addressed envelope by May 5, 2014, to Dear

Stranger, Oregon Humanities, 813 SW Alder St.,

Suite 702, Portland, OR 97205.

When we receive your letter, well exchange

it with a letter from another writer. He or she will

get your letter; you will get his or hers. Read the

letter; what happens next is up to you. We hope

you will write back.

If your letter strikes a chord with us, we may

post it to oregonhumanities.org. If youd prefer

we do not, please enclose a note saying so.

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Oregon Humanities8

to Asante a s part of the health systems series

Humane Medicine: Exploring the Experience

of Patients and Providers through the Humani-

ties. The first program was Prakash Chenjeris

Beyond Human: Science, Technology, and the

Future of Human Nature, and the second

wa s Cou rt ney Campb ell s Gr ave Mat ter s:

Reflections on Life and Death across Cultures

and Traditions. The series was also funded

this February by an Oregon Humanities

Public Program Grant.

This is how were going to fix the sys-

tem, Krach says. Slow it down. Be present.

Listen to peoples stories. The series con-

tinues through June 2014 with topics that

include the aging process and illness in older

adults, the importance of the humanities in the

education of health care practitioners, and

reducing violence in our communities.

The Middle East, through MemoirA book club explores diversity through firsthandaccounts.

S i n c e S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 3 , s e v e r a lPortlanders have gathered monthly at ameeting room in Multnomah Countys Cen-

tral Library to discuss memoirs by writers

from Middle Eastern countries. The intent,

says Elisheva Cohen, outreach coordinator

for Portland State Universitys Middle East

Studies Center, is to expose readers to the

diversity of Middle Eastern cultures throughprimary sources.

The book club, which goes by the name A

Oregon Humanities is pleased to

announce the appointment of two

new board members: Erious Johnson

Jr., an assistant attorney general at

the Oregon Department of Justice, and

Emily Karr, a Portland-based lawyer

and board member of both the Library

Foundation and Northwest Academy.

We se ek nomine es for ou r bo a rd of

directors who are interested in con-

necting Oregonians to ideas that

c ha ng e l i v e s a nd t r a ns f or m c om -

munities. Find more information ato r e g o n h u m a n i t i e s . o r g / a b o u t - u s /

nomination-process .

S i n c e 2 0 0 9 , O r e g o n H u m a n i t i e s

has provided opportunities for nonprofits

around the state to host free, humanities-

based public discussions through the Con-

versation Proje ct. Oregon nonprofits can

apply until May 31, 2014, to host Conversa-

tion Project programs in the summer and

fallvisit oregonhumanities.org to start

getting people talking.

2014

O r e g o n t e a c h e r s f r o m s i x t e e n

d i f f e r e n t

secondary schools around the state have

been chosen to design curriculum and

lead discussions for Idea Lab, a three-

day residential program where high-school juniors explore the pursuit of

happiness. The program will take place

July 2527 at the University of Portland.

To see full list of Idea Lab Fellows, please

visit oregonhumanities.org

I f y o u r e h a v i n g O r e g o n H u m a n i -

ties withdrawal after fin ishing this issue,

take a look at our blog, at oregonhuman-

ities.org/blog. Read interviews, news, and

fun tidbits, such as our O. Hm. Mixtape, inwhich Oregon Humanities staff and friends

Oregon Humanities News

Conversation Project leader Prakash

Chenjeris program Beyond

Human was featured in Asante

Health Systems series Humane

Medicine: Exploring the Experience

of Patients and Providers through

the Humanities.

Syrian writer Siham Tergemans

memoir was part of Multnomah

County Librarys A Day in the Life

book club.

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9 Spring 2014 Me

$10 per monthThats all it takes to cover the annual cost of Oregon

Humanitiesmagazine for five peoplethe local librarian,a state representative, a favorite neighbor, your sister,

and you.

Now everyone has a copy. Cue conversation.

Set up your monthly gift today at oregonhumanities.org.

2014 Public Program Grants

This February, the Oregon

Humanities board of directors

awarded $59,850 in grants to

eighteen nonprofit organizations

from around the state. These

grants will support public pro-

grams on topics such as cultural

identity, humane medical prac-

tices, and the empowerment

of women. To learn more about

the organizations listed below

(sorted alphabetically by city)

and their grant-funded projects,

visit oregonhumanities.org.

Day in the Life: Memoirs of the Middle East,

is presented by Multnomah County Library

and PSUs Portland Center for the Public

Humanities, Department of English, and

Middle East Studies Center, with funding from

Oregon Humanities. The discussions are free

and open to the public, and books are offered

free of charge.

I think participants have left with a much

more diverse understanding of the region,

Cohen says. Very early on we had a pretty in-

depth discussion of the veil and concepts of

womens oppression. Weve also been able

to contextualize Islam as a religion and give

understanding of what it means to be part of

that faith.

Andrea Rugh, a translator who spent manyyears in Egypt and Syria, echoed Cohen in her

discussion ofDaughter of Damascus, a little-

known autobiographical novel by Syrian writer

Siham Tergeman: We tend to think that theres

a universal worldview, but really thats not

true. Individualism is not an easy concept

for many people in the Arab world to under-

stand, and its just as hard for many Americans

to grasp an outlook that revolves around

obligations to family and friends.

A Day in the Life concludes T uesday, May

6, with a discussion of Orhan PamuksIstan-

bul: Memories and the City, led by PSU profes-

sor Pelin Basci. For more information, visit

middleeastpdx.org/memoir.

Chautauqua Poets and Writers/Friends of the

Ashland Public Library (Ashland); $3,500

Fishtrap (Enterprise); $2,500

Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde (Grand

Ronde); $5,000

Josephine Community Libraries (Grants Pass);

$5,000

Rogue Community College Foundation/Rogue

Valley Oregon Action (Grants Pass); $4,500

Gorge Owned (Hood River); $2,350

Asante Health System (Medford); $5,000

Arts Council of Pendleton (Pendleton); $4,000

Umatilla County Historical Society

(Pendleton); $3,000

August Wilson Red Door Project/Oregon

Tradeswomen (Portland); $3,000

Healthy Democracy (Portland); $3,500

Miracle Theatre Group (Portland); $3,000

Northwest China Council (Portland); $1,000

PassinArt Theatre Company (Portland); $1,000

Triangle Productions (Portland); $1,000

YWCA of Greater Portland (Portland); $5,000

Oregon Black Pioneers (Salem); $3,000

Springeld Museum (Springeld); $4,500

KIMN

GUYEN

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Oregon Humanities10

B Y H E R O W N R E C KO NING, P AU L A NNPetersen has traveled more than twenty-four thousand miles in the name of poetry in

her past four years as Oregons poet laureate.

Petersen has been required to make a minimum

of ten and up to twenty public appearances in

each of her two-year terms.

My husband says I took care of that in the

first month, she says.

A Portland native who lived in Klamath Fallsfor thirty-one years before returning to the

city, Petersen had done her share of traveling in

Oregon prior to being named poet laureate

in 2010. Id been to Paisley. Id been to Adel.

Id been to Plush, she says. But I have, i n these

four years, been to so many places I had not

been before.

The travel can be grueling. One trip, in

October 2013, took her from Klamath Falls to

Lakeview, Burns, Ontario, and Echo. People

say to me, You go to all these places, youre on

the move so much, Petersen says. It takes

energy, and Im seventy-one. But I say to those

people, if you saw the requests, if you saw the

invitations, how could you refuse?

Petersen has given readings at Portlands

Trinity Cathedral, to the Humanists of Greater

Portland, at the Lents International Farmers

Market, in the middle of the Morrison Bridge,

before open sessions of the legislature in Salem,

and on the radio variety showLive Wire.

She has written occasional poems for the

dedications of Cottonwood Canyon State Park,

Bates State Park, and Beaver Creek Natural

Area; for a new library in Lakeview and a peace

mosaic on the wall of the Salem Family YWCA;

and for Sustainable Northwest and the Audu-

bon Society of Portland events.

She has led writing workshops at Cape Look-

out State Park, the Boosters Hall in Christ-

mas Valley, the 168-student Ione Community

School, and the Caledonian Games in Athena;

wit h par ents and chi ldren at A. C. Gilb ert s

Discovery Village in Salem; with former Peace

Corps volunteers at a reunion in Portland; and

wit h inm ates of the Hil lcrest Youth Correc-tional Facility.

I had been in a lockdown facility before, but

that experience in Hillcrest, where every door

you walk through, someone unlocks it, you go

through, and someone locks it behind youits

such a different atmosphere from what [Im]

used to, Petersen says. All but one of the guys

read what they wrote in the workshop, and what

they had written was personal, in the sense

that it was very close to them emotionally. The

things they read were beautiful, were some-

times funny, were very moving.

Petersen has had some disappointments

in her term a s poet laureate. Her early plans

to lead writing workshops with teachers

were stym ied by cut s to in-ser vice days and

professional development budgets of Oregon

schools. Instead, Petersen partnered with a

nonprofit Portland publisher, Tavern Books,

in a campaign to place hand-selected poetry

collections into small rural and tribal librar-

ies in Oregon, free of charge.

The program, called Poetry State, hasbeen successful at placing collections in fif-

teen Oregon libraries. I sent out the word,

and people all over the state donated books

of poetry, to the point where [Tavern Books

cofounder Carl Adamshicks] doorstep would

be overflowing with books when the mail

arrived , Petersen says.

A s Pe t er se n com es t o t he en d of her

second and final termher successor will be

announced this springshe says she has no

regrets. Theres not a thing that I would want

to undo, nothing that I am not grateful for, shesays. It is a privilege, an honor to be an ambas-

sador for poetry in this wonderful state.

The Roads TakenPaulann Petersen reflects on her four years asOregons ambassador for poetry.

Oregon Poet Laureate

Paulann Petersen

ANDYBATT

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11 Spring 2014 Me

O NE E VE NING TH IS W INTE R I W E NTto a talk and then a discussion broke out.The talk was Oregon Humanities Think &

Drink program with writer William T. Voll-

mann, who for years has been the subject of

government surveillance. The discussion was

about race and privilege and what we most

ought to be talking about.

During the question and answer part of theevening, and again during a small-group discus-

sion that followed, Erious Johnson Jr., an Afri-

can American attorney who had recently moved

from New York to Oregon (and who has since

joined the Oregon Humanitie s boa rd), said

with passion that he didnt get it: he couldnt see

why everyone i n the room was worried about

the FBI tapping phones or the federal govern-

ment collecting information through comput-

ers. Erious said that in his world, in his peoples

world, the pressing issue is walking four blocks

home from the train without getting thrown to

the ground and arrested. He wondered aloud

whether the rest of us, with our furrowed brows

and our heavy concerns, werent simply look-

ing awayintentionally or accidentallyfrom

the other ways t hat the government exercises

its power in some of our lives. Erious also won-

dered why the more he tries to connect with

people at events like this, the more tenuous that

connection feels.

At that point in the post-talk discussion, the

focus shifted. Instead of continuing to directquestions at Vollmann, people tried and mostly

failed to respond to Eriouss concerns. People

were still try ing and mostly failing when it was

time to leave. Just before the discussion broke

up, Vollmann said three things to Erious. He

said he did not have the answer to Eriouss ques-

tions. He said, somewhat enigmatically, that

he thought it possible that twenty years from

now Erious might see his own concerns and

Vollma ns c oncerns as more connected. And

he said, with his open hand out, that he would

very much like for Erious to become his friend.When I left for home, Vollma nn and Erious,

along with a handf ul of other people, headed off

No Perfect AnswersThe unusual potential of a challenging discussion

to continue talking.

Neither Eriouss open and genuine offer of

disagreement nor Vollmanns open and genu-

ine offer of friendship solved the deep systemic

injustice we were talking about. Nothing was

solved by the discussion or by the talk that pre-

ceded it. No perfectly satisfying answers were

delivered, no utterly transformative changes

were proposed. Yet it was, from my perspective,

a rare and successful evening. We went places

we did not know we would go. We left with morequestions than answers and with a stinging

sense that each of us, and our community as a

whole, could do better. And some of usperhaps

even all of usfelt more connected to those we

did not know and may not have agreed with.

Challenging, open discussion holds unusual

potential. It can call us to presence as few other

things do, and it can lead in unpredictable ways

to relationships and actions that would not oth-

erwise seem possible. The content of the discus-

sion that night was challenging, unresolved,

and uncomfortable. Yet the feel of that discus-sion was hopeful. Hope alone is no solution, but

there arent any without it.

We left with more questions than answers

and with a stinging sense that each of us, and

our community as a whole, could do better.

KIMN

GUYEN

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Oregon Humanities12

I N T H E S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3 I S S U E O F H A R P E R Smagazine, William T. Vollmann w rote about his di scovery,through a Freedom of Information Act request, that he had been

a suspect in both the Unabomber and 2001 anthrax letter domes-

tic terrorism investigations by the FBI. A prolific writer whose

work includes war reporting, nonfiction books on poverty, train-

hopping, and Japanese theater, and the National Book Award

winning novelEurope Central, Vollmann was the first guest in

Oregon Humanities 2014 Think & Drink Portland series on the

theme Private. The following is an excerpt of his conversationwith Executive Director Adam Davis on February 5 at the Mis-

sion Theater in Portland.

Early in the conversation, Vollmann said he was never

arrested and he doesnt consider himself a victim. He also noted

that some of the reasons the FBI suspected him of being the

Unabomber were sort of plausible. I could see that they might

want to i nvestigate me if they had no better person to i nvesti-

gate. But, he said, officials were ham-handed and incompetent

about other parts of the investigation and, even though the Una-

bomber was caught, Vollmann believes his telephone and postal

correspondence still remain under surveillance. He received 294

redacted pages of a 785-page FBI file; at this writing, his requestsfor CIA files on him were rejected and an NSA request was still

pending.

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13 Spring 2014 Me

AD AM DAVI S: The Harpersessay started with talk of Steinbeck

[America and Americans] and then a category of people you refer

to as the Unamericans. Let me just stop there and ask: W hat does

Unamerican mean as a way of moving toward what American

means? Who are these Unamericans that you talk about?

WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN: Well, what does American mean

to you? To me, America has very good and very bad connota-

tions, as does any place, any country, any society. But when I

think about the good things about being an American, I think

about the freedom that we supposedly have to develop our ownindividuality and mind our own business and have other people

mind their business.

Recently I published a book that had a bunch of portraits of

myself in a dress. For several years, I was fooling around cross-

dressing and having a great time. And I cant say I was ashamed

of it. I had a lot of fun. At the same time, I wouldnt have liked it

if people were looking in and taking pictures through the win-

dow and posting those on the Internet. Now of course they can

do that. Now that the book [The Book of Dolores] is out they can

do whatever they want.

But I had this feeling that I could figure out who I was. I could

be what I wanted, and in a way thats not too different from anineteenth-century settler coming into the Wi llamette Valley

and saying, I want to start growing pears, I want to have a farm,

PHOTOS BY TIM LABARGE

A Think & Drink conversation

with writer William T. Vollmann

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and Im going to make anything that I can. Im going to do it my

way, and I can succeed or fail, but I have the right to do this. To

me, thats what being an American is. Taking chances, having

homes that are safe from others where we can succeed or fail.

And not having to do what were told. Not having to be spied

on and told that we have to do this or we have to do that. So the

Unamericans are the people who are trying to defeat this sort of

America, which ha s never completely existed and was built on

the back of Indian genocide andAfrican American slavery and all

kinds of other things. But that doesnt mean that our Constitu-

tion and the ideas that we pay lip service to shouldnt somehow

guide us and inspire us to become better and enlarge our own

freedom and the freedom of others.

A D: I want to push on that a little bit with a s entenc e of yours

from an earlier book in mind. The sentence is: I believe in the

Ame rican myth that it is both admirable and even possible to

devote ones life to a private dream. That seems to me to be a

complicated sentence. And its a little complicated to make sense

of what you just said, in part because youre both pointing back

to a time and acknowledging that that time didnt hold what you

said it held. So I want to ask whether theres been what feels like

a significant change to you, in terms of the way were monitored,or whether it feels like this has been there all along.

WTV: I think that if my name were Mohammed, I would be feel-

ing a lot more scared tha n I do now. And if I had been black in my

fathers time or my grandfathers time, I would have felt a lot of

fear and anger. Thats what I mean when I say that these ideals

never have been fully realized and maybe never will be. And then

Id also say that as we get older, we tend to think of the world as

becoming worse and worse. And so I bristle at the Internet and

I think, how awful, and Im just this old reactionary. It doesnt

really matter what I think. Its irrelevant what I think about the

Internet. And its a great tool, et cetera, et cetera. That having

been said, the government and these corporations, if they caneven be separated, know far more about you than strangers have

ever known about you in history. That is certain.

A D:Im going to ask a naive question: Thats a bad thing?

WTV: It wouldnt be a bad thing if you could have absolute con-

fidence in the motives of the people who were doing the watch-

ing and using this information and knew how it was going to be

used. But in fact, were being told by the president, Oh, yeah,

theres some misunderstanding. Trust me, its all gonna work

out. We dont know whats going to work out, or how its going

to work out. And were being asked to resign our liberties. Again,

there may be no problem for five years or fifty years. But all it

takes is an unscrupulous presidentand of course weve never

had any of thoseor some CEO who cares more about the bottom

line than about whats good for his customersweve certainly

never had any of those either. So this information is bound to

be misused, and its probably being misused now. And we know

that other people are minding our business. And I think that

we should tr y to find out how they re minding our business

and raise our voices if we dont like that theyre doing it. Try to

limit the ways that they can mind our business, if thats even

possible. And if it isnt possible, then we should think about

limiting our ex posure. We dont have to eschew the Internet, but

Im sure all of you can think of more creative ways to pollute the

data pool than I can. I urge you always to obfuscate and confuse

the issue. Fill in the wrong blank s. Its only going to help.

A D: Why are you sharing this [experience] with us? Why are you

putting it out thereto say it again provocativelyin our business?

Why put it out there?

WTV: I guess I feel that were all limited, and I know Im cer-

tainly very limited. I like to learn as much about the outside world

as I can, the world outside my head. Thats one of the reasons I

like riding the freight trains. Theres nothing like being on a rail

car and looking up at the stars overnight as youre going through

the mountains. You really feel the immensity of the world, and

all the things that you might do someday. Which, of course, is

something that you generally lose the next day. But its a brieflyinspiring feeling. And as I have tried to look at people unlike me

Al Qaeda t ypes, street prostitutes, drug pushers, whateverto

Im sure all of you can think of more

creative ways to pollute the datapool than I can. I urge you always toobfuscate and confuse the issue. Fill inthe wrong blanks. Its only going to help.

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enlarge my mind, I then decided I should come back to myself

to see how Im different and how I would approach myself as

a third sort of person, to learn about myself. In the process of

DoloresI actually found some of the photographs rather pathetic

and cruelwhen I was trying to look like a pretty woman, and I

couldnt do it. I look at the pictures in there, and I meanlook at

this persons face. This is my face. And I dont have to like what I

see. But I just have to look at it and say, This is my reality. And

if I do this with the rest of the world, I have to do it with myself,

too, to be fair.

A D: I feel like in a strange way youve just made an argument that

theres something useful about having someone else look at us in

this more external way.

WTV: Thats what readers are for. Everybody, from children

onward, likes to be seen. And thats one of the ways in which we

learn what were capable of and what were not. I would love to

be able to drive a nail in straight, but because I dont have depth

perception, I cant see in 3-D, I cant tell when a nail is perpen-

dicular to the wall. So as a result of having tried for many, many

years, and watching other people drive in nails really, really

easily when I cant do it, Ive learned something about reality.

A D:But thats what I mean: how great then to have huge govern-

ment entities with files on you.

WTV: Thats rightif the files have useful things to say, and if

the files are for your benefit.

A D: But I thought you were just making a case for the benefit of

seeing yourself from outside yourself, from another perspective?

So is the problemIm just trying to push on thiswhat they might

do with it?

WTV: Thats the main thing. But youre certainly right. It was

gratifying and flattering in a certain way to see that they had so

many pages about me. And, of course, I was curious about thecontent of hundreds of pages Ill never see. And it was a kind of

lesson in how I might appear to others.

Next time you fly, think about your TSA experience. And the

other TSA experiences that youve had. You might well get some

very courteous, helpful person who gets you through as quick ly

as possible. Or, from time to time, youll probably get a bully; my

late father always used to say, Give someone a little bit of power

and they turn into a Nazi. And then you might get people who

just dont really know very much and are taking the job because

thats the only job they can get. And theyre all human beings.

Im not knocking any of them in particular. But the fact that

some of them have power over us means that they might use the

power in a sort of ignorant and, therefore, detrimental way. And

imagine if those people then are writing information about you,

or misinformation, whatever, and making use of that informa-

tion. Putting you on a watch list, for instance, because they

misspelled your name and they decided maybe youre a terrorist,

or for some other reason.

A D: So, five minutes ago you said you feel hopef ul. W hat makes

you hopeful?

WTV: Well, for one thing, [Chelsea] Manning and [Edward]

Snowden are heroesto me, any way. So that NSA spook [James]

Clapper got caught in one of his lies: Oh no, we dont do this,

we dont do that. And maybe the paradigm will shift a little bit.And if all of us become more conscious about what were going to

accept and how we see the future, maybe lip service will be paid

to what we wish for, and maybe someday it will be more than lip

serviceif we really care. But its going to take a generation or

more to undo whats been done. And so, I think its possible, but

only if enough people really care.

Think & Drink is a happy-hour series that sparks provocative

conversations about big ideas. Visit oregonhumanities.org

to learn more about this program, to listen to audio from

the conversation with William T. Vollmann, or to read the

complete transcript.

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Mark MyWordsWhen it comes to narcissism, is it

really all about me?

I N A LONG ESSAY TITLED THE ME DECADE AND THEThird Great Awakening published inNew York magazinein 1976, writer Tom Wolfe mocked the baby boomers (those

born between 1946 and 1964) and what he saw as their pen-

chant for self-righteous self-improvement. More recently, a

Timemagazine cover story titled The Me Me Me Generation

by Joel Stein singled out the millennials (those born between

1980 and 2000) as lazy, entitled narcissists and suggested

higher rates of narcissism and materialism in members of this

generation. Wolfe linked the boomers obsessions to the postwar

affluence that allowed everyone time to focus on themselves; Stein

attributed millennials narcissism to excessive self-esteem

instilled by hovering parents and computer technology that

allowed people to become their own brands. So which is the real me

generation, the boomers or the millennials? Perhaps its neitherand simply the ca se that every generation enjoys complaining

about the one that follows. Or perhaps, as both Wolfe and Stein

hint, self-involvement has always been a feature of affluence.

It is just more widespread as our collective standard of living

rises, our leisure time increases, and technology and culture

offer new avenues for individuals to focus on themselves.

The terminology of grammar seems to mirror self-obses-

sion. We call the forms me,my,andIfirst-person pronouns,

as opposed to the second person (you,yours), and the third per-

son, which is everyone else.Me,my,andIare also singular first-

person pronouns, distinguished from the first-person plurals

us,we,and ours. When we talk about the me generation, whethermillennials or boomers, the grammar metaphor (I hesitate to

call it a meme) invokes a singular focus on the self.JENWICKSTUD

IO

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MYarrogance, and narcissism?

Statistics about pronoun use suggest that the situation is dif-

ferentand more complicatedthan you might think. For about

two decades, social psychologist James W. Pennebaker of the

University of Texas at Austin has been doing large-scale com-

puter analysis of pronouns. Along with a legion of collaborators,

he has looked at a wide variety of texts and transcriptsfrom

blogs and love letters to poetr y, plays, and presidential speeches.

Pennebaker is interested in the grammar of power, emotion,

leadership, and community, and he believes that the small details

of pronouns and other small function words like adverbs, auxil-

iaries, and articles can tell us quite a lot.

For example, pronouns reveal the way individuals cope with

tragedy. His analysis of the first and last speeches ofKing Lear

show that in the beginning of the play, the arrogant Lear whodemands that his daughters profess their love for him speaks in

the plural: Know we have divided in three our kingdom; and it is

our fast intent to shake all cares and business from our age, con-

ferring them on younger strengths while we unburdened crawl

toward death In act 5, scene 3, when the dying Lear confronts

the corpse of his daughter Cordelia, he speaks in the singular:

Had I your tong ue and eyes, Id use them so that heavens vault

should crack. Shes gone forever! I know when one is dead and

when one lives. Lears percentage ofI,me,andmygoes from 2

percent of the total in act 1 to 7.4 percent in act 5, while the per-

centage of we,us,andourgoes from 12 percent to 0. Pronouns

reveal the way that Lear responds to tragedy.Moving beyond fictional characters to real people, Pen-

nebaker and his colleagues looked at thousands of diary entries

As re ad er s, we als o are conf li ct ed ab ou t fir st-p er son

pronouns. We have all probably received or sent cover letters

with too much first person in them:

Dear Ms. Holt,

Im applying for the position of staff writer at Ore-

gon Humanities. Im a great fit for the job because Ive

excelled at writing for other magazines, such asPort-

land Monthly, and I enjoy a loyal readership. I also love

writing about the humanities and I have never missed

a deadline.

I have several ideas for stories for your magazine

and I bring a valuable out-of-the box style. I have

enclosed a rsum with my job history and salaryrequirements, and I will call next week to set up a time

for an interview.

Sincerely,

Narcissa McSelfie

You get the idea. The fictitious writer seems to have only

her interests, accomplishments, and needs at heart, with no

consideration given to what she would bring to the position or

organization. And there are a lot ofI pronouns:Im applying,Im

a great fit,Ive excelled,I enjoy, and so on. Such letters are often

quickly dismissed, filed away with a rueful smile and a shakeof the head. But does the heavy use of the first-person singular

pronouns me,myself, andIreally signa l excessive self-esteem,

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written by people dealing with trauma. The use ofI, me,andmy

dropped as writers thought about their situations less person-

ally and as their psychological well-being improved. The change

in the way people used first-person pronouns turned out to be a

good indicator of improved mental health. Another study foundthe use of plural pronouns we,us,andourrevealing. Research-

ers looked at more than a thousand blog posts written in the

two months prior to and after the September 11 attacks. As you

might expect, the blog entries revealed psychological changes in

response to the attacks, with bloggers becoming more socially

engaged and distant from personal issues. Their use ofI,me,

andmyplummeted, while we,us,andourspiked.The need to be

part of a group during times of shared disaster is reflected in the

simplest of words. How we express ourselves in difficult circum-

stances, both individual and communal, is evident not just in

what we say, but how we say it. Style and content come together.

Computer analysis points to pronouns as an indicator of

our mental state in times of trouble, but what about in ordinary

times? What can pronouns tell us about our leaders? Like the

fictitious job applicant mentioned earlier, our political leaders

are sometimes accused of narcissismor worsewhen they

use first-person pronouns. Linguists and psychologists have

crunched the numbers on presidential press conferences since

the end of World War II and have found some surprising results.

Which modern president do you think used the first person the

most, and which used it the lowest? In order, from most frequent

use of first person to least frequent, the chief executives are:

Harry Truman, George H. W. Bush, Dwight Eisenhower, Ger-ald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, George

W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, R ichard Nixon, John F. Kennedy, and

Barack Obama. Pennebaker suspects that writers who complain

about politicians excessive use ofI and meare engaging in a

bit of confirmation bias: if a pundit believes a politician is self-

obsessed, he or she pays attention to the politicians every use of

I,me,andmy. The lesson is that we should not trust our biases.

We should do the counting.

Anot her place to be cautiou s about readi ng too much into

first-person pronouns is in thinking about apologies. A serious

and sincere apology ought to address the person injured, identify

a harm, express regret, and show some moral awareness of onesbad behavior. This necessarily involves the first person, and good

apologies are oftenI-full, using the first person to both apologize

WE

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for and name the harm. So, I might say,I apologize that I have not

gotten back to you,using the first person in both clauses. But if I

am trying to dodge responsibility, I might say,I apologize that the

exams are not graded yet, implying that I am somehow a sympa-

thetic bystander to the undone grading. Here are seven real-lifeapologies. Which seem most sincere to you?

I sincerely regret the unfortunate choice of lan-

guage which I used in my letter.

PRESIDENT HARRY TRUMAN

(two first-person pronouns)

I want to sincerely apologize for the remarks I

made on Sunday in Council Bluffs

SENATOR BOB KERREY

(two first-person pronouns)

What I said at the end of our election-night

coverage was both impolite and unfair. And Im

sorry. I regret it.

NEWS ANCHOR DAVID BRIN KLEY

(three first-person pronouns)

I sincerely apologize to those readers who have

been disappointed by my actions.

WRITER JAMES FREY(two first-person pronouns)

I regret deeply any injuries that may have been

done in the course of the events that led to this

decision.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON(one first-person pronoun)

I didnt mean anything by it, and Im sorry if I

offended anybody.

GOLFER FUZZY ZOELLER

(three first-person pronouns)

I would like to offer an apology, a very heartfelt

apology, to the people of Alaska for the damage

caused by the grounding of a ship that I was in com-

mand of.

EXXON VALDEZ CAPTAIN JOSEPH HAZELWOOD

(two first-person pronouns)

Good apologies dont necessarily use more first-person pro-

nouns, but they do use them differently. The better apologies

(those by Truman, Kerrey, and Brinkley) use the first person

and the active voice to associate the speaker with the offense:

language which I used; remarks I made; what I said. The poorer

apologies (by Frey, Nixon, Zoeller, and Hazelwood) shift the

focus with conditionals (I apologize to readers who have been dis-

appointed by my actions;Im sorr y if I offended anybody) or use

complex abstractions that remove the speaker from the offense

(the grounding of a ship that I was in command of; injuries that may

have been done). Apologies must beI-full in a certai n ways, and

context matters.There is more to say about meandI, but you get the idea. A

closer look at the language reminds us that pronouns can tell us

a lot, but also that we should exercise some caution (and do some

counting and diagramming) when we make inferences from

pronouns to people. When the numbers are in and the sentences

diagrammed, it may indeed turn out that every generation is a

me generation.

Edwin Battistella teaches at Southern Oregon Universityin Ashland and is treasurer of Oregon Humanities board

of directors. His most recent book is Sorry About That: The

Language of Public Apology(Oxford University Press, 2014).

MEOURS

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In Defense ofNavel-Gazing

To understand the world, we must first

understand ourselves.

I W R I T E L Y R I C E S S A Y A N D M E M O I R , S O T H Ecommunication of complex, sometimes contradictoryemotions from one human to another lies at the heart of my

prose. I have found that many American readers are uncomfort-

able with writers who make earnest attempts to closely reveal,

then consider the self on the page in the world. Readers call

us navel-gazers, selfish, self-indulgent, and masturbatory. Our

family and friends are pitied, and we are advised to stop writing

and immediately seek therapy.This sends the false message thatany contemplation or storytelling about the self is superfluous

and narcissistic.

For me, to contemplate the self is also to contemplate other

humans, to whom we are thickly connected in mysterious and

concrete ways yet from whom we, at the same time, are deeply,

privately separate. AsWilliam Butler Yeats wrote, It must go

further still; that soul must become its own betrayer, its own

deliverer, the one activity, the mirror turn lamp. A close look

at self illuminates other. The soul betrays itself by shedding

itself. Self becomes other.By retreating inside himself, the

artist reaches far outside himself.

For instance, in the memoir The Year of Magical Thinking,Joan Didions narrator remembers the moment she saw her adult

daughter in the ICU, post-surgery, at UCLA hospital: Half of her

skull had been shaved for the surgery. I could see the long cut and

the metal staples that held it closed. She was again breathing only

through an endotracheal tube.Im here. Everythings fine.

The shaved skull, the long cut, and the metal staples that

held it closed convey the narrators sense of helplessness, of

horror. The metal staples evoke coarseness, inhuman invasion.

The third and fourth sentences reveal her maternal love, her

desire to project safety. Shes scared but shes aware that her role

in this moment is to protect her daughter even when she cant.This instance Didion recalls is deeply private. The narrator

describes her daughter at a vulnerable moment, when the body

cannot betray itself as anything other than a body in trauma.

Its also vulnerable for the narrator, the mother who cannot

prevent or fix her daughters illness. The contradictions revea led

in Didions prose allow readers to experience the instance

authentically through memory and imagination. As a reader, I

dont question whether Didion is indulging herself or exploiting

her experience or the experience of her daughter, because Im

too busy feeling the contradictions in Didions heart. The prose

transfers them from hers to mine.

InEnough About You: Adventures in Autobiography, DavidShields argues that the nonfiction writer uses the self as a

theme carrier. The writer expresses his or her own memoriesSHANNONMAY

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and thoughts as a way of getting to the other, to reveal the humid

human condition. Shieldss various, adept arguments in this

book call attention to the prose of David Foster Wallace and

Geoff Dyer, the films of Ross McElwee, and the text-image works

of Sophie Calleworks that deeply mine the self while exploring

human experience.

Here is what the very cheeky William H. Gass says in his essayAutobiography:

Certainly if tribes are more interesting than nations, sects

more important than a common faith, and minorities major,

then what could be more majorly minor than me: me, me,

more me, as Joyce writes, me and mine and all that I have

done. Yet self-regard has never been enough. We want the

regard of others; they are to be looking as we look; we want

them to be absorbed by the same self that absorbs us: see me

see myself as you should see me; remember me when Im a

ghost; watch me turn myself into a book.

I enjoy Gasss compact phrasing, the exhilarating speed of his

thoughts, the repetition and the music his prose creates. The full-

rhyming, runni ng imperatives, see me see myself as you should

see me is a gleeful command for writers (and readers) of autobi-

ography to try to see the self that the self cannotsee.

With his seminal work Confessions, St. Augustine defined

the confessional mode as writing that not only reveals hidden

layers of self, but also releases the self into the open hands and

ears of the other, and, if only momentarily, from that which

burdens the heart. What burdens the heart? Love and death

burden the heart. Love and death stake outin our bodies, inour mindssecret chambers in which to dwell. Joy, reverence,

devotion. Adultery, breakups, loneliness, shame. Illness, bodily

impairment, death, grief. We shy away from speaking about

these experiences in our ordinar y lives. We feel ashamed of our

vulnerabil ity to physical and emotional wea kness and to deep

irresolvable uncertainty, to loss of bodily control. We go under-

ground with our experience. We secret away what we believe to

be hurtful, but what is most hurtful is our secrecy, which goes

against our nature as social animals who reach for attachment,

who need to feel known by others.

An act of secrecy is an act of separation. My own secrets

have hurt me and others around me because they have been away to stand apart f rom ot her human beings, and writ ing has

become, for me, one way to stand with other human beings. And

paramount to the confessional mode are the implied open hands

and ears of readers and listeners, of the other. As Gass says, We

want the regard of others, even if that other is imagined.

The writer makes use of form not to cloak but to reveal. Yetso many American memoirists miss the mark when they dont

make vigorous attempts to understand what, how, why, and to

whom they confess. This is narrative without essay, writing that

negates the contemplative impulse, memoir in which the writer

mistakenly employs the tools of the novelist and not the tools

of the essayist, the memoirist, the poet: meditation, image and

metaphor, sound, associative thinking.

When readers complain that a nonfiction work is self-indul-

gent or dismiss the work as navel-gazing, it is perhaps true that

the writer didnt reveal the self as divided and complex. Per-

haps the prose lacks specificity. Perhaps the emotions lack pre-

cision and nuance. Perhaps the soul fails to betray itself. Thereader does not feel that a complex human experience is being

portrayed on the page, but instead a simplistic, clumsy attempt.

An act of secrecy is an

act of separation. My

own secrets have hurt

me and others around

me because they have

been a way to standapart from other human

beings, and writing has

become, for me, one

way to stand with other

human beings.

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23 Spring 2014 Me

This is a valid criticism. Every writer, confessional or not,

grapples with specificity and contradiction. Whether Im reading

fantasy fiction or confessional verse, I want to feel the expressed

experience on the page as idiosyncratic and complex, as lived.

I would suggest readers be more precise or direct about their

criticism. Do not call the writer selfishor self-indulgent. Call

the writing mishandled.In cases where the prose does fully describe varied human

experience and the contradictory inner life, perhaps readers

are projecting onto confessional first-person work their own

discomfort about sharing private experiences with others.

Fiction writers often elude such complaints even though they

fill their work with private experience, even though it is their

own divided selves forming on the page. The sincere writer of

any genre who aspires to make beautifully complex prose or

verse describes the divided self not to exploit or push away but to

reveal the self in the other, to connect human to human. Readers

can then get in touch with their own contradictions.

My favorite definition of the memoir form comes from John

DAgatas essay Mer-Mer: An Essay about How I Wish We Wrote

Our Nonfictions:

However, more deeply rooted in the term memoir is some-

thing much less confident. For embedded in Latins memoria

is the ancient Greek mrmeros, an offshoot of the Avestic Per-

sian mermara, itself a branch of the Indo-European root for

all that we think about but cannot grasp: mer-mer, to vividly

worry, to be a nxious about , to exhaustively ponder. In

the genuinely dusky light of real human memory there is an

activity far less sure of itself than the effortlessly recountedstories of todays sculpted memoirs. According to its roots,

in other words, memoir is an assaying of ideas, images, and

feelings. It is, in the best sense, an impulsive exploration. It is

not storytelling, it is not moralizing, it is not knowing, learn-

ing, or owning. Rather, etymologically speaking, at the core of

every memoir is anxiety and wonder and doubt.

Notice the emphasis on interiority: to exhaustively ponder

or an assaying of ideas, images, and feelings.Assaymeans to

examine or analyze. David Lazar argues in an essay from the

same book that memory is always in constant friction with pres-

ent desire, and yet what one finds in most American memoir ismemory-based prose organized by storytellingas opposed to

prose organized by the minds motion, by the bodys resident

desires and fears.

And what is it, dear, that you desire? And what is it that scares

you? Tell me, please. If you could do anything you wanted with-

out reprise or fear of reprise, what would you do? Do you know

why? How so? Tell me, help me feel less alone in the world. Tell

me who you are, Dorothea Lasky:

I am a wild band

That is going fast at you

Catch me catch me

Catch me Lord

I am a hot little thing that likes to kiss you

Kiss me kiss me

I cheer for writing that ends up treating the self as a singular,

mysterious, varied entity into which we tap through vocal idio-

syncrasy, hyper-detailing, and lucid, generous meditation. The

self is what we all have in common. To reach the self one must

leap into the divine, which is to say, one must simultaneously

be in touch with oneself and with the mysterious other, like the

fourteenth-century Eastern Orthodox monks who retreated to

a closet to pray. By cea sing to perceive t he outside world, they

could retreat with vigor inside the self with the hopes of achiev-

ing a more ex periential knowledge of God. For me, to contem-

plate the self is also to contemplate others.

Consider the navel: a scar on the abdomen caused by remov-

ing the umbilica l cord from a newborn. The baby, later a boy and

now a man, remains aware of the seam marking where he ends

and the world begins, and he looks again and again at it, studies

it closely, its particular shape, its contradictory qualities (a swell-ing housed inside a deep recess, a squishy stability, a wrinkled

mound-let), until he conjures the tw isted ghost tunnel that once

connected him to the other.

Jay Ponteris book Wedlocked(Hawthorne Books, 2013)

received an Oregon Book Award in 2014. Future Tense

Books will publish his chapbook, Darkmouth Strikes Again,

this spring. Ponteri teaches in the English department

at Marylhurst University and is the executive director of

Show:Tell, The Workshop for Teen Writers & Artists.

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25 Spring 2014 Me

Trapped inthe Spotlight

IMA GINE Y O U R E A N A C C O U NTA NT. ( O R , IF Y O U R E

an accountant, imagine youre you.)Now imagine that numbers terrify you. Your pulse quickens

and your throat closes up as youre buttoning your shirt for work

in the morning. Brushing your teeth, you feel disconnected from

reality as your mind races, imagining the thousands of numbers

that await you on your computer screen. When you finally reach

your desk and see all the spreadsheets laid out in front of you, it

feels like someone has attached electrodes to your upper body

and is slowly turning the knob up. Your chest tightens and buzzes

with energy, making it impossible to get a full breath.

If this happened to you every morning, continuing your

accounting career wouldnt be an option.

Now imagine youre a performer.Welcome to another day at work.

This was what show days felt like for me when I was hosting

Live Wire, a radio variety show that records in front of a live audi-

ence in Portland, Oregon, and airs on about forty public radio sta-tions nationally. I hosted the weekly show until March 16, 2013,

when a crippling two-day a nxiety attacknine years to the day

from our first showfinally made me realize that this might not

be the job for me.

Before then, the anxiety was more of a dull pain than a stab-

bing one. At the Monday writers meeting for each show, my chest

would start growing what I called my Dread Ball. It would star t

out the size of a pea, and by Wednesday it was a watermelon. By

show day on Saturday, my Dread Ball had turned into a giant,

human-size hamster ball Id walk around in, the rest of the world

dulled by the view through the plastic.

I did lots of things on the showread essays, performed insketchesbut those things didnt bother me. It was interviewing

people in front of an audience that filled me with dread (balls).JENWICKSTUD

IO

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Its strange and awkward to meet someone for

the first time no matter what the situation

imagine doing it in front of four hundred peo-

ple. Now imagine that you are also strange and

awkward. Not a good combination. Addition-

ally, virtually every person I interviewed was

a leader in his or her field: Pulitzer Prizewin-

ning authors, Oscar-winning filmmakers, the

creator of the wiki. It felt like putting a magni-

fying glass on the giant holes in my education

once a week. I was always worried I would seemlike an idiot by comparison.

I stuck it out, though, for many reasons

that were smart: I worked with insanely tal-

ented people who made me look smarter, I met

extraordinary artists a nd got to ask them how

they made their work, and the show offered me

hard writing deadlines that resulted in public

humiliation in front of live audiences when not

met. I created more new work than most of the

writers I knew.

There were lots of great reasons to stay, but

there remained a dark one: the nagging, terrif y-ing idea that this job was the most interesting

thing about me.

I already knew I had trouble talking to strangers at par-

ties, and my eHarmony profile had caused exactly three men in

dad jeans to beat a path to my digital door, so I didnt feel like

I had a ton of personality traits to recommend me. This job

gave me great angst, but it also gave me great anecdotes. When

someone asked me, What do you do? my reply was shared

by only about five other people in the country. That felt like a

selling point for me. Of course I realize Im not a product, but

when youre a single woman in your forties, it s difficult not to

think of yourself as a brand. And if I was a brand, my flagship

product was the show. Once Id made the mistake of allowing myjob to define me i n that way, I could no longer consider quitting

my job without feeling like I was quitting myself.

But two days before our anniversary show last year, none of

the identity stuff mattered, because I was having a panic attack.

Not a hit-and-run panic attack, but the kind that sits down and

orders a double. The kind that wakes up with you and asks how

you slept. The kind that laughs when you tell it that you have a

show in two days so could it go bother Garrison Keillor, because

he seems like he could stand to gain from a little nervous energy?

And suddenly its the night before the show, and the panic attack

is still hanging around.

After a long, sobbing, terrified conversation with my brother,I finally called our producer and told her I couldnt do the show.

I called her with a problem and its solutionone of the guests we

Courtenay Hameister (right) quit as host ofLive Wire

Radio; she remained as head writer. Luke Burbank

(left) became the new host in September 2013.

JENNIEBAKER

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27 Spring 2014 Me

were planning to have on the show, Luke Burbank, could host it.

Luke is an incredibly quick-witted, charming, natural showman

who hosts his own popular podcast ca lled Too Beautiful to Live.

Wed actually booked him to see if hed be a good replacement for

me if I ever got sick, so it made perfect sense to tr y him out now.

The next night, the worst and the best thing happened:

the show was utterly, completely fine without me. Luke glided

through the show as if hed been there all along, and I could

suddenly breathe. Not through layers of fear, but into an open,

grateful chest that was happy to finally have air.

Af ter a couple week s of conversations in which my fr iends,

family, and colleagues watched me struggle to make the deci-sion theyd seen coming for years, I stepped down as host and

remained head wr iter and coproducer. I felt my body change the

moment I made the decision. My shoulders dropped, my chest

opened up, and my stomach was knot- and butterfly-free. It was

definitely, unequivocally, the right decision.

That said, I lost something big and beautiful the day I stepped

down, and it made me wonder: Why couldnt I push through the

anx iety and just enjoy the job? And if it was so wrong for me, why

did it take me nine years to leave it?

I asked those questions of William Todd Schultz, a profes-

sor of psychology at Pacific University and the author of Torment

Saint: The Life of Elliott Smith. Elliott Smith was a quiet, shy

singer whose career began in hard rock bands in Portland in the

early 90s. He became famous when director Gus Van Sant used

his understated, poignant solo music as the soundtrack to the

film Good Will Hunting. Schultzs book paints Smith as increas-

ingly uncomfortable with the limelight, culminating in his ner-

vous performance of the song Miss Misery at the 1998 Oscars.

My situation was obviously quite different from an inter-

nationally famous musicians, but Schultz said that even so,

there were things Smith did that couldve helped me. One of his

best tools in connecting to his audience was something I never

wouldve dreamed of doing: he showed them how scared he was.Elliott would just be visibly, openly anxious, he began. If he

felt like he couldnt finish, he would just stop a songbe openly,

flamboyantly v ulnerableto the point where the audience would

call out to him that he could do it. They became a part of the show,

and they loved that.

Schultz went on to say that one of the biggest impediments to

getting over performance anxiety is pretending you dont have

it. In addition to the anxiety youre already feeling, you dread the

humiliation youll feel when people find out youre anxious. In

Elliott Smiths case, he knew people loved to recognize their own

vulnerability in someone onstage, so he just told the truth about

it. When he did, he robbed t hose fears of their power.As a person whos been sharing humili ating stor ies wit h

audiences for ten years, this was a lesson I shouldve had down.

Plus, when it comes to human interaction, Ive

always believed that revealing vulnerability

appears weak on the surfacein, say, the Dar-winian sense of now you can see my jugular

and do what you will with it. But, in reality,

whats braver and more bada ss tha n offering

up your emotional jugular to someone and

begging them to take a whack? Sure, it changes

when youre ask ing four hundr ed people to

unsheathe their swords, but whos counting?

An other th ing I had in com mon wi th

Smithand another reason I ran into

problems, according to Schultzwas my

personality t ype.

A po pu la r mo del th at ps yc hologi st suse when discussing personality types is

what they call the Five Factor Theory or

This job gave me great

angst, but it also gave

me great anecdotes.When someone asked

me, What do you do?

my reply was shared by

only about five other

people in the country.

That felt like a selling

point for me. Of course I

realize Im not a product,

but when youre a single

woman in your forties,

its difficult not to thinkof yourself as a brand.

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The Big Five. It rates people in five broad

dimensions that describe human personal-

ity: Extroversion, Neuroticism, Agreeable-

ness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to

Experience/Intellect.

If youre like Elliott Smith, which I think

you are, he said, youre low in extrover-

sionmaybe in the 28th percentileand highin neuroticism. Thats the recipe for someone

whos going to st ruggle when it comes to stuff

like this.

Extroverts get energized and thrive on

external stimulation (like hundreds of clap-

ping people), while introverts get their energy

from time alone and are far more sensitive to

stimulus. Some level of extroversion is obvi-

ously important for a performer. And, accord-

ing to Schultz, being high in neuroticism is

particularly problematic for entertainers as it

leads to more pronounced anticipatory dread,which is a factor for all performers.

Schultz had me go to the Big Five website

and take a test to see where I la nded. I cant say he was dead-

on, but thats only because he missed my extroversion percen-

tile by three points.

THREE POINTS.

Hed said I might be in the 28th percentile. I was in the 31st.

You tend to shy away from social situations, the test results told

me. Well, that seems disastrous for a variety-show host, doesnt

it? What the hell was I thinking? Id always imagined myself to

be one of those strange introvert/extrovert hybrids. I love time to

myself, but when I dont have time with friends, I can get a little

grumpy/clinically depressed. So it shocked me that I was so low

on the extroversion scale.

My neuroticism percentile wasnt so shockingI was in the87th percentile there. (Single men: YES, I am still available! Call

me!) You are a generally anxious person and tend to worry about

things, said the test.

Oh, really? I replied. Well, youre not helping things.

I dont want to go over all my other scores because it was

pretty depressing overall, but its important to say that Schultz

felt I would score high in the openness to experience area,

which helped me succeed at the job for as long as I did. He was

rightI was in the 95th percentile.

You enjoy having novel experiences and seeing things in new

ways, the test said.

Thank you for finally saying something nice, jerk, I replied.

So perhaps the reason I stuck around as long as I did was that

the two most prominent aspects of my personality, according to

the testmy neuroticism and my curiositywere in a constant

battle to the death, with each one jockeying for position but never

quite winning. I do remember feeling almost schizophrenic dur-

ing some showsI would be so excited to finally be able to ask

Lynda Barry how she created such rich, sweet, hilarious charac-

ters, but devastated that I had to do it in front of a crowd. In the

end, it seems my neuroticism won, perhaps with an assist from

my introversion. And one big panic attack.

Schultz offered up one more reason why people with the lowextroversion/high neuroticism combination keep performing:

they, like everyone, crave connection.

So many people are temperamentally ill-equipped to be

onstage, he said. But they believe strongly in their work. They

need it to be heard, a nd they crave the response. The audience is

at the same time a source of anxiety and an attachment object

that provides comfort.

This I could relate to. This group of people, just by clicking

Buy Ticket, had no idea that by doing so, they were becoming

both my worst fear and my warmest security blanket. Perform-

ers dont generally tell stories about experiences were proud of

or that went wellwe tell stories about the moments that makeus feel the most awkward or alone because we desperately want

to know theyre shared. This is what stand-up comics do.

So many people are

temperamentally ill-

equipped to be onstage,he said. But they believe

strongly in their work.

They need it to be heard,

and they crave the

response. The audienceis, at the same time, a

source of anxiety and an

attachment object that

provides comfort.

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29 Spring 2014 Me

So why was that desire for connection so strong that I went

through hell to get it?

I asked the question of two extremely talented comedians

Luke Burbank, the current host ofLive Wire(as well as a Wait

Wait Dont Tell Mepanelist) and Ophira Eisenberg, the host of

NPRsAsk Me Anotherand a longtime stand-up comic.

Its been said to me by people Im married to that Im much

better at relating to large groups of people, Burbank quips. And

theres a reason for that. Your good interactions with a single per-

sonimagine sort of mainlining the best, uncut freaking adreno-

chrome of that. Its euphoric.

Eisenberg agrees. When Im not onstage for a while, I get a

little grumpy, she says. I can feel a sense of myself is affected bythe audiences reaction to me. And that s a little fucked up, but if

its your job to be propelled forward by positive reactions, doesnt

it naturally become part of who you are? So theres a portion of

my love for myself thats decided by a bunch of drunk people in a

basement, and I just have to live with that.

While this aspect works for Eisenberg and Burbank (Burbank

claims his audience high will usually last him until he encoun-

ters his next one), I think it was another part of my downfall. I

saw a picture of myself walking offstage after reading an essay

recently, and I was shocked. The smile on my face looked like

pure, unadulterated joy, but thats never the part I remember

when think ing of a show. The part I remember most is the week

of anticipatory dread I felt for the very reason Eisenberg men-

tions: that my success or failure was going to be decided by four

hundred people I didnt know. Sure, that can be a very successful

three hours, but successful enough to make up for the seventy-

eight hours you spent worrying? Its like Thanksgivi ng dinner: if

we were to actually see the work-to-enjoyment ratio of that meal,

we would never do it again. But almost none of us look at it that

way; its a matter of perspective.

Eisenbergs perspective is unquestionably positive. When

she told her first stand-up joke ever, she got one laugh. One. She

describes it as the biggest rush of her life. Why was she so thrilledwhen most people would have seen that as a failure?

It was from someone I didnt know, so I saw that as success,

she said. Some people have laugh ears, where they hear laughs

that arent there. Other people dont hear laughs that arethere

and come off the stage destroyed. If you really listen, you start to

make different choices and it gets better. It takes a long time to

have the guts to hea r your audience.

Burbank, it appears, is also beyond optimistic. In stand-up,

you only remember the people who laughed, he says. I would

record a set I thought was killing, and replay it to hear three

people laughing. Its a survival technique the spirit employs. You

dont do the math, otherwise you realize youre having a .05 per-cent success rate.

As for me, I cou ld nev er not do the math. I am what

psychologist Nancy Cantor referred to as a

defensive pessimist: a person who doesnt

expect the worst to happen, but prepares for it

just in case it does. And while this is an impor-

tant differentiation between me and, say,

Eeyore, defensive pessimism isnt enough to get

you through weekly three-hour performances.

Yes, you need to be able to realistically read

whats happening in your audience to be able

to respond appropriately, but to push through

the fear, and the nerves, and the YouTube com-

ments, over and over and over, you need what

Burbank and Eisenberg have in spades: a pow-erful, overarching, down-to-your-bones belief

that in the end, everything is going to be OK.

Ironically, now that Im out of the weekly

dread-terror-relief cycle, I finally believe that. I

still perform, but now I know very clearly which

experiences will bring me just the joy (reading

essays) and which to avoid (situations in which

I am paired with a genius and must ask them

questions that may expose me as a nongenius).

Ive defined for myself which relationships I

should spend time thinking about (the kind

with the people I love), and which I shouldnt

(the kind with four hundred strangers). And

Ive discovered that I should seek work in a field

in which neuroticism is a plus (I would make a

great Chihuahua, for instance).

Beyond those lessons, perhaps the biggest

solace I should take in all of this is how lucky

I am that my body and mind decided to rebel

against me that day last March, forcing me out

of my complacency. Some people, including the

extraordinarily talented and troubled Elliott

Smith, who lost his battle with depression inLos Angeles in October of 2003, arent so lucky.

In the end, Ive clearly figured out what Im

not, but have only narrowed down the field of

what I could be by one. It s scar y, I know. But

this scary, I can live with.

Courtenay Hameister is a playwright, a freelance writer, and

the head writer and coproducer for Live Wire, a nationally

syndicated radio variety show. You can find her on Twitter

@wisenheimer.

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IWA S I N L A GR A N DE FOR T H E A FT E R-noon , to hear a man speak about EmilyDickinson at a small inn. The room was full of

sun, and I sat on a white wicker love seat next to

a woman who wore too much perfume. I could

taste it. The white w icker love seat was the best

seat in the room, though, so I decided to put up

with the perfume, which was made easier by the

fact that I had what I thought was a bad cold,

and kept three or four cough drops in my mouth

constantly to keep from coughing. It turned out

to be pneumonia.

The man had written a biography of Dickin-

son calledMy Wars Are Laid Away in Books. He

was a sma ll, friendly man, and he spoke to us

as if he were telling stories of a beloved distantcousin with whom we had all lost touch. Not

that I would know about that. I have more than

thirty cousins, and most of them I have never

met. My parents chose to distance themselves

from their families upon the event of their scan-

dalous Catholic/Presbyterian marriage.

Emily Dickinson has long been on my list of

good ideas for how to spend my meager vaca-

tion, working through the poems as they hap-

pened in her life, reading text and footnotes.

Its something Ive always wanted to do. Id have

to read a couple hundred poems a day, though.This biographer just told us stories. It was easy

and pleasant.

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31 Spring 2014 Me

It was not pleasant thinking of the trip home. I tried not to

think about icy roads and snow between La Grande and Portland.

My father was a speeder, and a drinker, and I spent a fair amount of

my childhood in the backseats of various station wagons with my

eyes closed tight. I didnt get a drivers license until I was thirt y.

BEFORE LA GRA NDE, I H AD BEEN IN WALLOWA COUNTY, IN

Eastern Oregon, where my friend Suzy was the Fishtrap Writer-in-

Residence. Shed been teaching writing classes in some of the Wal-

lowa County public schools, in Enterprise, in Imnaha, in Joseph.

I was her guest author, and we were going to visit a one-room

schoolhouse in the tiny town of Troy.

Suzy piloted her minivan along a back road from the cabin on

Wallowa Lake. This route to Troy was out of the way and made

the trip even longer, which was