#8: Teaching Swamp Thing To Private Capital
— “Diary of a Funeral Director,” M.M. Kaufman, HAD.
In addition to writing and running Word West, David Byron Queen occasionally runs classes focused on particular subjects. I wanted to talk to him about that. (This is a continuation of the conversation we had at the end of July.)
Evan Fleischer: What does it mean to teach Joy Williams, David Lynch, or The Coen Brothers? Is there a specific ‘text’ here amongst the three that really shines in a classroom setting?
David Byron Queen: A lot of this is me following my own personal interests, really. And that excitement — I’m a huge Joy Williams fan — led me down the thought process of — well, when I was a student, I loved it when a Joy Williams story would come into class, so why couldn’t I have a class where we spoke about Joy Williams every week? And the same kind of thing is true for Lynch and The Coen Brothers — I love their movies, and wanted to get deeper into them, so why not do a class? And their sensibility in particular — where there’s this mix of humor and almost horror — it creates this thru-line — a thru-line for all three, really — that takes the story right up to the edge of surreality.
And it’s something you can see in the tone, too. A David Lynch scene can be super funny and horrifying at the same time. Williams can have a moment that’s really, really dark, sort of apocalyptic, and yet contain details that are really funny.
EF: If someone is reading The Quick and The Dead — if someone is watching the opening scene to Blue Velvet — they will see sometimes very small and dexterous elements that ‘seem’ to threaten the overall, overarching aesthetic of the piece. And it’s always interesting to know that that’s there. And it’s always interesting to know how to use that. But I don’t always know what it means — you know what I mean? Is there something in zooming in close to these works that lights up the figurative ‘I’m a car mechanic looking at the underside of a car’ portion of your brain?
“Except this one time, the fish just stayed there right by the boat, breathing through its gills and moving its tail even though it was just bones.” Ginger paused. “And it looked at him.”
“Looked?” Carter said.
“Yes, just stayed there and looked.”
“What kind of fish was it?”
“A redfish, I think he said.”
“Did it say anything?” (The Quick & the Dead by Joy Williams, pg. 41)
DBQ: Well — I’m always just thinking in very basic storytelling terms, you know? Like even on the most hard to decipher David Lynch movie, I love trying to think of what he’s doing there just in terms of ‘story.’
One thing that unites all these classes is that these are all people who tend to break conventional rules of storytelling. You know, we watched Fargo last night, and we’re introduced to Frances McDormand’s character — but we’re only introduced to her about thirty minutes into the movie. We run a little chat that is happening at the same time as the movie, and everyone in the chat was like, ‘Oh, this feels like where the movie should start.’
I love studying people who are clearly aware of the rules, but they’re trying to do something different. For me, that’s what gets me into the writing chair eery day. As much as I love and appreciate stories that are told in a conventional sense, I love even more looking at how those rules can be broken and what new stories can be told from there.
(Editor’s note: I’d argue that one thing that’s interesting about the class reaction to Fargo is that while someone could say that the film appears to be following an ‘Inverted Detective Story,’ it doesn’t feel like one — and it isn’t quite one either. Our investment in the movie doesn’t come from how McDormand’s character goes about solving the crime; our investment in the movie is based on letting the characters be the characters. That’s it. Imagine if we crossed Columbo with Altman’s The Long Goodbye — that wouldn’t be too far removed from Fargo, would it?)
Swamp Thing Can’t Help But Be Suspicious of the Government’s Motives
by Jack B. Bedell.
I’ve seen it too many times before. Some sucker invents a water engine or growth formula thinking it’ll solve the world’s need for cheap, renewable resources, and the government just jakes the prototype to hide it next to the spacecraft they’re keeping out of sight to “protect us from mass panic.” I just can’t help myself watching these government barges pump river silt into the ghost of this barrier island, wondering what their end game is, building habitat for shore birds and pelicans. Are they finally thinking they’ll need this coast for something eventually? A place to park their warships when all the fights they kindle everywhere else finally wash up here? Or have we finally arrived at that moment when the results of our bloodwork scare us into eating right and exercise?
Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in HAD, Pidgeonholes, The Shore, Okay Donkey, EcoTheo, The Hopper, Whale Road Review, Moist Poetry and other journals. His latest collection is Color All Maps New (Mercer University Press, 2021). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.
The IPCC issued their climate report one week ago today. In short, their message was this: if we do nothing about the climate crisis, the world will end.
It’s also worth pointing out that it’s not like the planet doesn’t have the money to fix this, as Nick Robins reminded us in a talk put together in July of this year by the Oxford Climate Society. We have the money. There are $370 trillion moving around the world. One trillion of those dollars are already dedicated to Green Bonds. The larger question at play is how we can move that money.
Or, to put this another way: what will it take to put negative interest rate bonds to use in tackling the climate crisis that is here? What will it take to ensure that emerging markets like Lagos, Mumbai, and Jakarta consistently pursue climate conscious policies? How can central authorities provide consistent access to capital to meet the demand for a greener world, a demand which exists? How can this process be sped up over the next 3-to-5 years? How can we pressure international oil conglomerates to follow the path of Ørsted? And how can this be done in a way that — once the money is moving — we don’t end up with more inequality?
It's August, and it smells like grass and cranberry fruit snacks. I pick my brother up from the post office where he works. When he gets in, he says, "Let me take off these shoes." (“The Peaches Are Cheap,” Mike Young, Hobart.)
ON BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO THIS WEEK: Anna Burke’s ‘Stillwater’ (an excerpt) / Bury The Children, Bury The Gods / and More /
ZINES OF THE WEEK:
“Colonization and Decolonization: A Manual for Indigenous Liberation in the 21st Century” / “BRAINSCAN 33 DIY WITCHERY” / “PLANTS of New Mexico”
OF NOTE/UPCOMING (Edinburgh International Book Festival Edition):
8/18: “Iman Mersal: The Limits and Pleasures of Egyptian Womanhood.”
8/19: “Reading Scotland: Helen McClory, The New Edinburgh Gothic.”
8/19: “Raven Leilani & Patricia Lockwood: Sharp, Fragmentary Fiction.”
8/20: “Scholastique Mukasonga: Reclaiming Rwanda’s Stories.”
OF NOTE/UPCOMING (Hobart edition): submissions for the next issue of Words and Sports is open!!!
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PUT THE GAS UP IN MADAGASCAR: