DISPATCHES FROM M. ALLEN CUNNINGHAM

VIDEO: Cunningham Reads from His New Novel Q&A

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 06:04:00 +0000

Recently, from the comfort of my writing studio, I had the opportunity to read from my new book Q&A for a community of my peers during the alumni reunion of the Pan European MFA Program. One advantage of the virtual format for such a reading is the ease of incorporating visuals (including video!). It was a pleasure to trot this new novel out and to feel it getting a bit of wind in its mane after long days in the barn. Here's video evidence of the fact that I, for one, enjoyed the experience:

You can order your own copy of Q&A in hardcover or paperback from Regal House Publishing.

If you’d like further info about Q&A and my other work, please visit my website, follow my publishing company Atelier26 Books on Facebook, and consider signing up for Atelier26’s newsletter.

Finally, if you’re a Goodreads user, please consider adding Q&A to your profile and perhaps writing a short review there or on a site of your choosing.

New Essay: "You, Me, and the Screen Between: An Elegy"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 21:10:00 +0000

On Medium you can now read my new essay, "You, Me, and the Screen Between: An Elegy," about how today’s civic breakdowns are rooted in a pandemic of screen-addiction that reaches back to a misunderstood chapter of American history 65 years ago. This is why my new novel Q&A is set in that time.

From the essay:

Enthralled by the screen, we came to question the necessity of privacy. We learned to let go of old values, and to require speed, convenience, portability, connectivity. We learned to desire our stats and the stats of others. We learned to accept the special way the screen reduced to equivalencies all things seen within its frame: NASCAR, cop shows, TV journalism, late night comedians, cat GIFS, and the office of the presidency. Gone was the idea of everything in its proper place.
More screen, less “meatspace” and IRL. More optimization, less serendipity. More jump-cuts, less syntax. More data, data, data. More info, info, info.
We embraced the self-promoting capacities and tools the screen promised us. We learned to expect an audience. We honed the skill of performing our lives in lieu of merely living them.
The screen created the “sharing economy,” the “attention economy,” the “gig economy,” and a special iteration of the “creative class” — a brave new world in which it seemed that everybody’s individual passion had, at long last, converged with their livelihood, while in fact hardly anybody was making a living anymore.
The screen provided us 2,000 songs in the palm of the hand but dealt a fatal blow to the solvency of musicians. The screen provided the texts of 3,500 books at a weight of 9.5 ounces but contributed to the dissolution of publishers and booksellers and weakened the infrastructure that supported and sustained authors. The screen empowered and accelerated the mobilization of righteous movements: the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street and the Million Women March and Black Lives Matter, but it exposed us as never before to the rapacity of advertisers, to the invasive scrutiny of our own government agencies under the PATRIOT Act, to a massive blurring of private and professional life, to the political meddling of extra-national bots, to the daily specter of harassment by anonymous trolls, and to amplified terrorist threats both international and domestic.
Our fixation on the screen forged new neural networks and sharpened into biochemical habit our reluctance toward the printed page, our acceptance of incoherent audio-visual stimuli, and our need to fictionalize our lives not only for others but publicly for ourselves.
The screen led us away from the book toward the illumined mirage, away from ideas toward memes.
The screen gave us new meanings: desktop, window, home, field, friend.
It redefined everything.

Now, here in the madding wake of the 45th American presidency, let us remember that once upon a time we impeached the screen. TV itself was made to stand trial before the U.S. Congress. The memories are hazy, the details obscured as if behind a veil of snowy static, but this happened.
America, a land of electronic images, big pharma, high-tech distraction, and endless advertising, seemed to be teetering on the cusp of an awful new reality. False impressions were the stock in trade, big onscreen metrics mattered most, and in the midst of this a white man played a version of himself on primetime. He was a celebrity and a winner, and he ruled the ratings.
The object of this man’s game was to claim knowledge he didn’t possess, and to provide an image viewers would anxiously fixate upon and maybe even idolize.
He was a man more closely watched than any person of any time before him. He became TV and TV became him.
The year was 1956. ...

READ THE FULL ESSAY HERE

Until March 2nd: Enter for the Chance at a Free Copy of Cunningham's Q&A

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 23:44:00 +0000

Enter the giveaway HERE.

Also, were you aware that you can secure a special hardback edition of Q&A? Order one from the publisher HERE.

Watch the Virtual Launch Event for Cunningham's Q&A

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 01:53:00 +0000

M. Allen Cunningham's new book Q&A is out now from Regal House Publishing. A virtual event with Cunningham, fellow author Steven Mayfield (Treasure of the Blue Whale), and Regal House editor Pam Van Dyk helped to mark the book's launch.

Matters discussed included: building fiction inspired by real events; novels as pleasure; televisual media and its long-term impact on culture; truth versus entertainment; where characters come from; the novel as yarn or tall-tale; outlines and endings; crafting voice in fiction; typewriters (!).

View the event HERE.

Cunningham's Novel Q&A Arrives Today!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 16:24:00 +0000

You can order Q&A directly from the publisher, or at any of the following links:

Bookshop.org

Portland’s Broadway Books

Powells.com

Barnes & Noble

Amazon

To get the flavor of the book, you can view three video excerpts on YouTube, starting with this one:

If you’d like further info about Q&A and my other work, please visit my website, follow my publishing company Atelier26 Books on Facebook, and consider signing up for Atelier26’s newsletter.

Finally, if you’re a Goodreads user, please consider adding Q&A to your profile and perhaps writing a short review there or on a site of your choosing.

Attend the Launch of Cunningham's Q&A: Wed. 1/27/21 4pm PST / 7pm EST

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 20:49:00 +0000

Join us on January 27, 7 pm EST for:

Virtual Launch Celebration of Q & A: M. Allen Cunningham in Conversation with Steven Mayfield, author of Treasure of the Blue Whale.

Register now. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Q&A

Preorder your copy.

Kenyon Saint Claire is the son of a distinguished literary family, a keeper and teacher of the written word, but his America is a land of electronic images, big pharma, high-tech distraction, and endless advertising. False impressions are the stock in trade, and big metrics matter, especially onscreeen. That’s where Kenyon finds himself, isolated behind glass, portraying a televised version of himself on a scripted game show, avoiding the devouring eye of the camera that feeds his image to fifteen million viewers. The year is 1956.

Inspired by true events, groundbreaking in its evocation of an agitated, media-soaked half century, M. Allen Cunningham’s Q&A urgently reimagines the misunderstood 1950s quiz show scandals in light of our own time, as a moment of cultural reckoning whose reverberations we feel all around us today: in reality television, TV politics, the triumph of incoherence, and the pandemic problem of how to be real in a world of screen-induced self-deception.

Praise for M. Allen Cunningham

“A fully formed, timeless American writer.”

—Square Books, Oxford MS

“One of the bravest and most talented novelists writing today.”

—Eowyn Ivey, author of The Snow Child, Pulitzer Prize Finalist

“A master storyteller.”

—Gina Ochsner, author of The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight

“Cunningham’s prose is perfect—he writes dialogue and sentences that beg to be read aloud.”

—Gayle Shanks, Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe AZ

Treasure of the Blue Whale

Purchase your copy.

In this whimsical, often funny, Depression-era tale, young Connor O’Halloran decides to share a treasure he’s discovered on an isolated stretch of Northern California beach. Almost overnight, his sleepy seaside village is comically transformed into a bastion of consumerism, home to a commode with a jeweled seat cover, a pair of genuinely fake rare documents, a mail-order bride, and an organ-grinder’s monkey named Mr. Sprinkles. But when it turns out that the treasure is not real, Connor must conspire with Miss Lizzie Fryberg and a handful of town leaders he’s dubbed The Ambergrisians to save their friends and neighbors from financial ruin. Along the way, he discovers other treasures in the sometimes languid, sometimes exciting days of that long-ago season. He is rich and then he isn’t. He learns to sail a boat and about sex. He meets a real actor. He sneaks into villainous Cyrus Dinkle’s house and steals his letter opener. He almost goes to jail. He loves Fiona Littleleaf. He finds a father. And best of all, he and little brother, Alex, reclaim their mother from the darkness of mental illness.

Praise for Treasure of the Blue Whale

Steven Mayfield crafts this well-conceived plot into a coming-of-age fable that is full of mystery, heroism, familial love, and humanity. It’s a genuine, imaginative, and endearing meditation on how a few good people working together can accomplish so much in a weary world.

– Dylan Ward, The U.S. Review of Books [read the entire review]

“Readers looking for a slightly stylized yarn of small-town drama will find much to enjoy in this charming book. A whale of a tale concerning a boy who tries to lift everyone’s spirits”

–Kirkus Reviews [read the entire review]

“In the masterful novel Treasure of the Blue Whale, snowballing secrecy and lies are counterbalanced by genuine community warmth.”

-Karen Rigby, Foreword Reviews [read the entire review]

IN LIVING ROOMS ACROSS AMERICA -- from Cunningham's Q&A

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 20:10:00 +0000

The Largest Possible Audience

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 22:45:00 +0000

Revisit some prophetic words from the great Edward R Murrow, which are featured in M. Allen Cunningham's Q&A, arriving in paperback and ebook in January 2021.

(For best viewing results, enlarge the video to full-screen.)

Cunningham Presents PERPETUA'S KIN at Powell's Books - FULL AUDIO

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 07:00:00 +0000

Listen to "M. Allen Cunningham Presents PERPETUA'S KIN at Powell's Books" on Spreaker.

During this event at the fabled Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon, Cunningham discusses his fourth novel PERPETUA'S KIN. A sweeping story of five generations in one American family, PERPETUA'S KIN spans much of North America, from the 1820s in Iowa to the American south during the Civil War to World War II San Francisco. In a structured presentation, Cunningham describes the story's origins, his research, the themes and characters, the influence of Shakespeare's Hamlet, and why this novel was 11 years in the making. He also reads short selections from the book. The event includes an audience Q&A. It was recorded on a rainy night in November 2018.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m-allen-cunningham-presents-perpetuas-kin-at-powells-books/id1479000289?i=1000488106800

What Would Leonard Cohen Do?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 07:00:00 +0000

WHAT WOULD LEONARD COHEN DO? If you’re a hardworking creative soul striving to continue doing the work of the expressive imagination, striving to honor an authentic vision that resists the forces of market optimization, you could do a lot worse than immerse yourself in Leonard Cohen’s corpus and give that question your consideration.

Mentioned in this episode: Leonard Cohen; Cohen's "Hallelujah"; Songs of Leonard Cohen; Cohen's 1963 debut novel The Favorite Game; CBC Television; Cohen's novel Beautiful Losers; Cohen's performance style; Bob Dylan; Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat"; Zen; Mount Baldy; Leonard Cohen world tour; skipping at age 78; Cohen's album You Want It Darker; Cohen's album Thanks for the Dance; Feist; Beck; Damien Rice.

https://anchor.fm/in-the-atelier/episodes/What-Would-Leonard-Cohen-Do-ei8gdg/a-a2vdsfe

Cunningham Talks Thoreau in the Room Where Thoreau Was Born

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 07:00:00 +0000

VIDEO: The Poet & the Sculptor / Rilke & Rodin

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 07:00:00 +0000

In this video excerpt from a talk I recently gave to a class of brilliant young writers, I describe the interdisciplinary relationship between Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin (a relationship depicted in Lost Son, my novel about Rilke).

What can creative writers learn from what Rilke learned from Rodin?

The talk includes my own translation of Rilke's great poem "The Panther" (also found below).

The Panther

Rainer Maria Rilke

(transl. M. Allen Cunningham)

His gaze, from the passing bars,

has grown so weary that it can hold nothing more.

To him there are a thousand bars

and beyond the thousand bars no world at all.

The soft drop of his dread sleek steps,

conscribed to a tight circle,

is like a dance of stamina around a center

in which a greater will stands stunned.

Yet sometimes the curtain of the pupil stirs,

opens itself soundlessly -- then an image gets inside,

passes through the silent tension of the limbs

and -- snared in the heart, ceases to be.

NEW AUDIO: Cunningham's essay "Variations on a Beginning"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 09 Aug 2020 17:32:00 +0000

Listen to "Variations on a Beginning" on Spreaker.

Cunningham's autobiographical essay, with musical accompaniment and slightly abridged.

"Variations on a Beginning" was originally published in complete form in The Timberline Review, Issue No. 3 (summer/fall 2016). You can read the full essay HERE.

Secure Your Copy of Cunningham's New Book

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 19:30:00 +0000

My new book Q&A will appear in print (and ebook) from Regal House Publishing in January 2021, and you can pre-order it now.

What's it about? Among other things: reality television, TV politics, the triumph of incoherence, and deception via screens. Sound familiar?

(My favorite designer Nathan Shields created that kick-ass cover, by the way. It's a custom linocut.)

Prime Passages: Thoreau by Henry Seidel Canby (1939)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 01:02:00 +0000

For Henry David Thoreau's 203rd birthday, 12 July 2020: some choice excerpts from Canby's brilliant 1939 biography -- reminders about the growth and plight of genius.

"Overflowing with thoughts, he yet looked around for more, because he was living so intensely that his own thoughts choked his utterance. This description will do for any young writer. Thoreau's advantage lay in his resolve to find out what he was living before he made a book about it--to be, as he said to Emerson, first the idea itself.
[...]
"When a deep excitement of the mind finds a favorable environment, as it did in this Concord which was, indeed, a power plant of idealistic energy stepping up the spiritual voltage of the nineteenth century, an authentic moment in the history of civilization often follows.
[...]
"The two conditioning factors for writing anywhere, any time, are the quality of the imagination and the nature of the market. Later comes the fork of the road -- one way toward the competent and salable, the other toward the excellent and possibly unsalable. The completely successful [person] of letters is not [they] who writes for nothing, but rather the writer who learns how to do what [they] want -- and how to make readers pay for it. The predestined commercial writer is seldom a frustrated [person] of letters. [Their] success in cash returns is due to a different set of qualities. Every author writes for money, for money represents an audience, and no creative mind writes for itself alone. The question is, how high a price will [they] pay for the money [they] get. That became Thoreau's problem; but at first his concern was with what he had to say, and to whom and how he could say it. When this was solved, the question of how he was to get paid enough to allow him to go on writing followed, and in solving that in his own original fashion he broke out of obscurity into fame.
[...]
"The great world had no need of him, and he in his turn found that, for him, the greater world was Concord. And so, having been an author without pay, and having learned how to place an occasional manuscript with insufficient pay, he came home [from a brief residence away at Staten Island] to take up from a new angle his problem of how to live and how to stay alive while living. He had learned that in order to do what he wanted in writing he would have to publish himself. And this inevitably led him to Walden Pond.
[...]
"The failure of [Thoreau's first book] 'The Week' when it was first published, must be charged to the failure of the audience to whom he finally addressed it, much as, I think far more than, to its own defects in composition.
[...]
"These ecstasies in prose, those hours of observation, this hard labor with the pen and hard study of science and travel, now, rather than Latin, Greek, and the Hindu classics, this daily filling up of reservoirs, and nightly refining of waters, all this was Thoreau's real business of living while he was by trade the surveyor of Concord. Surveyor indeed, but not only of lot lines and corners!
[...]
"Thoreau lectures in Boston [1852] on his life at Walden, but to a handful only of people; the clerks at the other end of the reading-room would not put down their newspapers to listen, even when urged by [Bronson] Alcott."

From Thoreau by Henry Seidel Canby, 1939.
p.105
p.106
p.130
p.149
p.273
p.321
p.358

Thoreau's Leaves: The Thoreau Podcast

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 31 May 2020 02:22:00 +0000

Have you heard my new podcast, Thoreau's Leaves? I started Thoreau's Leaves partly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, out of a wish to share with listeners, in a uniquely atmospheric and meditative form, the consolations and inspirations I find in my regular explorations of Thoreau's journal. Thoreau knew how to stay at home, and he was so adept at finding the universe in his own backyard. This is an exemplary practice that we all, staying at home as we are and ought to be, can benefit from right now, but it has an enduring relevance beyond these times as well. As a portrait of consciousness, of a mind awake and alert to the natural world, Thoreau's journal is unparalleled.

Don your earphones, close your eyes, and see if you can muse again.

For Mrs. Dalloway Day

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 May 2020 20:52:00 +0000

Virginia Woolf's magnificent Mrs. Dalloway was self-published 95 years ago today (May 14th) by Woolf's own Hogarth Press. Almost a century after its appearance this novel remains a profoundly strange and inspiring literary work -- still in many ways much bolder and more innovative than so many of our contemporary novels.

In honor of the anniversary, I'm sharing my lecture on Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway given recently to my creative writing students at Portland State University. If you're a writer working against the grain of the times, you might find something here.

Listen to "M. Allen Cunningham Lectures on Mrs. Dalloway for Creative Writers" on Spreaker.

Introducing In the Atelier, the New Podcast Hosted by M. Allen Cunningham

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 21:29:00 +0000

Episode 1: In the Absence of Yes

Thoughts on a subject all too familiar to every writer: rejection. Believing in the worth of what you've produced is no easy thing. And deserving work is all too often passed over in sluice tides of manila envelopes. All that matters is what you're committed to.
----
In the Atelier, a new weekly podcast premiering January 2020, is a place for occasional thoughts on literature, writing, and the life of the imagination. Each artfully crafted episode brings you reflections and real talk about subjects like the nature of creativity, the highs and lows of making art, inspiring works of literature and cinema, and the value and valor of staying true to your own creative vision. Produced by the award-winning literary press Atelier26 Books and hosted by author, publisher, and teacher M. Allen Cunningham.

Eager to hear more? Get exclusive early access to seven episodes with a tax-deductible donation to the Atelier26 Books 2020 Campaign.

Mentioned in this episode: Wallace Stegner; New York Times; Henry James; Andre Dubus; Gustave Flaubert

Music in this episode: "Door Knob" by Egon Stone; "Petrolchimica2" by Bottega Baltazar; "Rising Up" by OFRIN; "Seventh March" by C3NC (All music used by courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist)

Prime Passage, Audio Version: The Artist of Kouroo by Henry David Thoreau

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 03 Nov 2019 03:05:00 +0000

From Walden, Thoreau's original fable about the reaches and depths of time in art.

Listen to "The Artist of Kouroo" on Spreaker.

Prime Passage, Audio Version: The Waves by Virginia Woolf

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 15:50:00 +0000

A reading from Woolf's inimitable work. "I need not speak, but I listen. I am marvelously on the alert." Includes musical accompaniment from Bach's Cello Suite No. 6.

Listen to "M. Allen Cunningham" on Spreaker.

Prime Passage, Audio Version: Three Paragraphs from Annie Dillard's An American Childhood

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 21:37:00 +0000

Listen to "Three Paragraphs by Annie Dillard" on Spreaker.

New Audio: Right Click

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 29 Sep 2019 18:41:00 +0000

Please prove you are not a robot - Say "OK, Google" - Everyone's watching - Your identity is not confirmed - Click here to agree to our terms and conditions - Right click.
Listen to "Right Click" on Spreaker.

Prime Passage: "I am marvelously on the alert," from The Waves by Virginia Woolf

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 19:25:00 +0000

"They want a plot, do they? They want a reason? It is not enough for them, this ordinary scene. It is not enough to wait for the thing to be said as if it were written; to see the sentence lay its dab of clay precisely on the right place, making character; to perceive, suddenly, some group in outline against the sky. Yet if they want violence, I have seen death and murder and suicide all in one room. One comes in, one goes out. There are sobs on the staircase. I have heard threads broken and knots tied and the quiet stitching of white cambric going on and on on the knees of a woman. Why ask, like Louis, for a reason, or fly like Rhoda to some far grove and part the leaves of the laurels and look for statues? They say that one must beat one's wings against the storm in the belief that beyond this welter the sun shines; the sun falls sheer into pools that are fledged with willows. (Here it is November; the poor hold out matchboxes in wind-bitten fingers.) They say truth is to be found there entire, and virtue, that shuffles along here, down blind alleys, is to be had there perfect. Rhoda flies with her neck outstretched and blind fanatic eyes, past us. Louis, now so opulent, goes to his attic window among the blistered roofs and gazes where she has vanished, but must sit down in his office among the typewriters and the telephone and work it all out for our instruction, for our regeneration, and the reform of an unborn world.

"But now in this room, which I enter without knocking, things are said as if they had been written. I go to the bookcase. If I choose, I read half a page of anything. I need not speak. But I listen. I am marvelously on the alert. Certainly, one cannot read this poem without effort. The page is often corrupt and mud-stained, and torn and stuck together with faded leaves, with scraps of verbena or geranium. To read this poem one must have myriad eyes, like one of those lamps that turn on slabs of racing water at midnight in the Atlantic, when perhaps only a spray of seaweed pricks the surface, or suddenly the waves gape and up shoulders a monster. One must put aside antipathies and jealousies and not interrupt. One must have patience and infinite care and let the light sound, whether of spiders' delicate feet on a leaf or the chuckle of water in some irrelevant drainpipe, unfold too. Nothing is to be rejected in fear or horror. The poet who has written this page (what I read with people talking) has withdrawn. There are no commas or semicolons. The lines do not run in convenient lengths. Much is sheer nonsense. One must be skeptical, but throw caution to the winds and when the door opens accept absolutely. Also sometimes weep; also cut away ruthlessly with a slice of the blade soot, bark, hard accretions of all sorts. And so (while they talk) let down one's net deeper and deeper and gently draw in and bring to the surface what he said and she said and make poetry." -p.131-2
Virginia Woolf self-published The Waves through The Hogarth Press, 1931

M. Allen Cunningham's New Book Q&A: First Teaser

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 21:27:00 +0000

Q&A will appear from Regal House Publishing, fall 2020.

New Interview in Poets & Writers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 18:48:00 +0000

The current issue of Poets & Writers (Sept/Oct 2019) features my extensive interview with Ben George, Senior Editor at Little, Brown and Company.

Our wide-ranging conversation touches on the day-to-day experiences of a New York editor, the role of luck in publishing, the value of mentors, what it's like to spend an hour discussing a single paragraph, the plight of "midlist" writers, and lots more.

"In any editing experience you have to make the art the most important consideration, even as you keep the artist’s personal feelings in mind while you’re doing that. This is why I feel so privileged. As the editor, I’m being invited into the workshop, where there’s sawdust on the floor and half-finished things. It’s a delicate space for the writer. You’re being trusted, and you need to acquit yourself well." -Ben George

Read the complete uncut version of the interview online HERE.