Marie Mutsuki Mockett

Somehow in the excitement of the evening, we managed not to take any other photos of Graywolf's 35th Anniversary Reading. But here in this picture, from left to right: Jeffrey Yang, whose wonderful first book of poems, Aquarium, won the PEN/Osterweil Award for Poetry: an increasingly pregnant and rotund yours truly who really should not be photographed at an angle (thanks Gordon): Jeffrey Renard Allen, who wrote the very sharp "Holding Pattern": Tiphanie Yanique, whose short story collection How to Escape from a Leper Colony is due out this spring: and the very gifted and unusual J. Robert Lennon, whose most recent book is the very eerie Castle.

Not pictured, is Robert Boswell, who read from his much admired collection of short stories, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards. Not pictured also are the many lovely guests and readers I met--it's fun to meet people who have actually read your book!

At any rate, it was a lovely evening--all the writers have such unusual and strong voices, it made for a great deal of fun to hear us all reading one after another. I'll be traveling up to Boston next, for another Graywolf party, and look forward to meeting more authors and poets.

The L Magazine says that I "will have none of your teachable moments." Well, you know, I suppose I'm sort of stubborn.

What would you characterize as an ideal interaction with a reader?

The ideal interaction is between the reader and the book—and does not involve the writer. It worries me that books are becoming calling cards for the writer as celebrity. If celebrity as an end is so important, then why should any of us bother writing books at all? It takes a long time to write a thoughtful novel—a lot of solitary, inward thinking time. This has nothing to do with the artist up on a stage at a later date "standing for something," and using his work or life as a "teachable life moment." We are too hungry for gurus.

Dear friend, fellow writer, Bread Loafer and Graywolf author Salvatore Scibona has just been awarded a 2009 Whiting Award! I'm so, so, so thrilled for him.

And if you have not already, please do pick up and read his book, The End, which was nominated for a National Book Award, and also given the prestigious Young Lion's Award.

And, I suppose this is a good time for me to be self-absorbed and to point out that Salvatore and I will be reading together in Boston and also at River Run Books in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

In preparation for the LA reading at Vermin on the Mount, Jim Ruland posted my answer to the following question:

"What's the most unusual experience you've ever had at a reading?"

An excerpt:

"I think the Elliot Bay bookstore in Seattle, Washington, is located nearby a homeless shelter. Or at least, homeless men and women like to come to readings there. A few weeks ago, while sharing a section of Picking Bones from Ash out loud, I noticed a man with long silver hair and a very fat and tattered backpack in the audience seated next to a rocking woman with a cup of coffee in her hand. You do not see many homeless people like this in New York; the East Coast homeless are a different breed. But the rocking woman and the backpack man I recognized. One of my summer jobs as a teenager was on Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey, California, where a substantial population of Viet Nam veterans lived peacefully just under the wharf. Most were men, but there was the occasional woman. The glamorous Sicilian proprietor of the delicatessen where I worked had a nice arrangement with them; she received their mail, cashed their checks and gave them coffee. They made sure we never had any problems."

Hop over to VOTM to read the rest.

I'm thinking: "AS Byatt. Lorrie Moore. Margaret Atwood. Anita Shreve. James Ellroy. Dave Eggars. Gunther Grass . . . One of these things is not like the other . . ."

Some time last year, my friend Allison and I discovered that we had a mutual love of fairy tales. I suspect that a lot of readers and writers are like this; our earliest encounters with reading, after all, have to do with fairy tales. And, as others have noted, fairy tales imprint themselves on us, informing us of what we expect to happen in a story. We expect evil to be vanquished, and for lovers to unite.

Japanese fairy tales, however, are a little bit different. Stories don't unfold the way that you might expect. Lovers are rarely united. And women in particular seem to escape from men, leaving them baffled and saddened.

When Allison asked me to come to her class at Adelphi University to talk about my book, I proposed another idea. What if, I said, I taught a little lecture on the difference between Japanese and western fairy tales? I'd read a bit about the subject, and had formed my own ideas. From a fiction writing perspective, Japanese fairy tales are wonderful because they can open up a writer to new narrative possibilities--the kind of unusual story-telling one already sees in the fiction of Haruki Murakami or the films of Miyazaki. Plus, I figured college kids would dig this. Some of them have no doubt played video games or read manga and know all about how paintings come to life, demons can pop out of earthquakes, and evil witches turn out just to be grandmothers.



I gave the lecture today to a wonderfully attentive class made up of horror film students, ESL kids, fairy tale students, video gamers, teachers and, of course, immigrants. I talked about the 8 million gods and demons of Shinto, Japan's original religion and how they are all overseen by the sun goddess, Amaterasu. I talked about how interesting it is that girls have so much power in Japanese fairy tales--even though today we still assume that Japanese women are subservient. I showed slides of "animated poop" and "Hello Kitty dressed as the sacred deer of Nara." (These things are all related! I promise!) I also threw in some Jungian psychology. It was so much fun.



And, in case you don't believe me, here is a video clip of animated poop. This is what happens in a culture when anything and everything has the possibility of being alive . . .

I take the show on the road next to Centenary College, in New Jersey, and later to the Hillside Club in Berkley, California. You can check my events page for details. And who knows? The show might continue on the road for a little while longer.

I put up a few photos of my reading to benefit the Harrison Memorial Library, but didn't have access to these pictures of the lovely flower arrangements which my friend, Kazuko Kurasaki, put together for me. As you can see, she used not only bamboo, but gorgeous Autumn themed flowers, to put readers in the mood for the story.



My friend Kurt read my novel in part because he wanted to find out what kinds of flowers and colors would complement the book; here is a lovely maple and a lily.



I absolutely loved this vase. It is made from bamboo, and in the opening chapter of the novel, Satomi, the heroine, makes reference to how the thickest bamboo can be used as a vase. Then there is the story of the bamboo princess, born inside a stalk of bamboo--when bamboo is this thick, such a thing seems more possible!



Yours truly, sitting behind another beautiful arrangement.



Peter Mollman, the president of the Harrison Memorial Library foundation, introduces me, while my slide show waits in the background, ready to go into action. The audience that night was kind enough to look at some pictures that make up the background to the novel; it was fun to take them to Japan with me.



Here are the folks from River House Books, who graciously sold copies of my novel.



And once again, here I am, reading.

An extremely thoughtful and positive review for Picking Bones from Ash from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The print review runs on Sunday, but you can read the article now.

Mockett combines the best elements of a mystery story, ghost story, magical realism and the complex difficulties in deciding what is "best" for our elders and offspring.

Thank you!