The Bookworm: The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 1

The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 1, edited by Lee Gutkind. 329 pages. W.W. Norton. 2007.

Scientists have observed that when a shiny, roomy new shell is placed on the beach, a crowd of hermit crabs will converge upon it. But instead of mayhem, a ritual of great civility follows. The crabs arrange themselves in order of size. The largest crab exits his shell and climbs into the shiny new one. The crab just below him in size takes his old shell, and so on down the line, until every crab, down to the teensiest, has a comfortable new home (p. 273).

Sometime in October I was asked, “What was the last book you read?” Besides my most recent Fear Street re-reads, I could not remember. (It was The Odyssey in August.) Such is the sorry state of my reading habit, which cannot even be called a habit anymore; it has become more of an off-and-on personal responsibility to finish the unread books I have accumulated in my queue (which I have not added to all year). Sad. Still, pride was not enough encouragement to finish The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 1 sooner than today.

Having read Volume 2 last year, I secured Volume 1 from The Haunted Bookshop. It represents the first of what, in 2007, was hyped as an annual series by editor Lee Gutkind in his introduction. “Look for the striking pastel-striped cover,” he wrote. (Volume 2, however, was not striped. Instead, it featured pastel-colored circles.) If it has become an annual series, I am woefully behind.

Much like the second volume, the first features both nonfiction printed in traditional journals and blog posts. The blog posts have been typeset with a san-serif font to differentiate them from the printed pieces, almost marginalizing them in a way; they apparently do not deserve the same font as the pieces professionally vetted by editors and officially anointed with ink and physical page space. Though the blog posts “excerpted here are rough and raw, but also piercing and provocative,” the disdain for self-published material is palpable and I got the impression they were only included so as to not seem outdated. Blogging, it seems, has fallen out of fashion since 2007, so I am curious to see how the Best Creative Nonfiction team has embraced the explosion of writing on social media. Do they now include exceptional notes, posts, and rants from Facebook and Twitter? Perhaps I will seek another “striking pastel-striped cover” at Prairie Lights to find out.

Nonetheless, TBCN1 featured stellar writing. The gems of this collection were “The Cipher in Room 214: Who was Mary Anderson and Why Did She Die?” by Carol Smith, “Badlands: Portrait of a Competitive Eater” by John O’Connor, “The Woot Files” by Monica Hsiung Wojcik, “66 Signs that the Former Student Who Invited You to Dinner Is Trying to Seduce You” by Lori Soderlind, and “Wild Flavor” by Karl Taro Greenfield. (None of the blog posts are among my favorites. Frankly, Bobblehead and I have written much better posts than anything included in TBCN1.) Interestingly, most of the pieces I just listed could be considered literary or Gonzo journalism. Those were the most engaging and well-written of the bunch. I gravitate toward vignettes like that. Unfortunately, those were counterbalanced by a couple agonizing pieces. “North Pole, South Pole, the Sea of Carcinoma” by Dev Hathaway was painfully awkward and clunky from the get-go (and was the second longest piece included). “Tell Me Again Who Are You?” by Heather Sellers was interesting but also agonizing. I always try to finish what I start reading, but I had second thoughts about those two pieces. There are much better things to do in life than force myself to stumble word-by-word to finish something I do not enjoy reading. Alas, I love to torture myself. It is like a second or third job.

Will I torture myself with another edition of TBCN? Perhaps. Both volumes have proven inspirational, or at least guilt-inducing. I read these pieces and thought, “Man! I should be writing stuff like this.” But I have not. I have not written a goddamn thing in years. I burned myself out and am not in the mood to force myself to write — night after night, eight to ten o’clock — like I did for years. But I want to write. I just do not want to be so soul-suckingly regimented. However, I have a couple more books to read before I need more guilt-inducing inspiration.

Words I did not know/am still unfamiliar with: All definitions are courtesy of my MacBook dictionary. Pantagruelian: “enormous.” Abstemious: “not self-indulgent, esp. when eating and drinking.” Agate: “an ornamental stone consisting of a hard variety of chalcedony, typically banded in appearance.” Chagall: “Chagall, Marc (1887–1985), French painter and graphic artist; born in Russia. His work was characterized by the use of rich emotive color and dream imagery and had a significant influence on surrealism.” Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?: Per Wikipedia it is Latin for “Who will guard the guards themselves?” Klieg: “a powerful electric lamp used in filming.” Equanimity: “mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, esp. in a difficult situation.” Brio: “vigor or vivacity of style or performance.” Adenovirus: “any of a group of DNA viruses first discovered in adenoid tissue, most of which cause respiratory diseases.” Neologism: “a newly coined word or expression.” Mezuzah: “a parchment inscribed with religious texts and attached in a case to the doorpost of a Jewish house as a sign of faith.” Pinnate: “(of a compound leaf) having leaflets arranged on either side of the stem, typically in pairs opposite each other.” Sibilant: “(of a speech sound) sounded with a hissing effect, for example s, sh.” Diverticulitis: “inflammation of a diverticulum, esp. in the colon, causing pain and disturbance of bowel function.” Grackles: “a songbird of the American blackbird family, the male of which has shiny black plumage with a blue-green sheen.” Reagent: “a substance or mixture for use in chemical analysis or other reactions.” Verbiage: “speech or writing that uses too many words or excessively technical expressions.” Vertiginous: “causing vertigo, esp. by being extremely high or steep.” Lycra: “an elastic polyurethane fiber or fabric used esp. for close-fitting sports clothing.” Insensate: used in this context to mean, “lacking sympathy or compassion; unfeeling.” Hypoxia: “deficiency in the amount of oxygen reaching the tissues.” Carapace: “the hard upper shell of a turtle or crustacean.” Encephalography: “any of various techniques for recording the structure or electrical activity of the brain.”