A Little More Tom

A Couple Items to Listen To

A Link to More Things Tom Spanbauer

Yeah, Tom’s a little ribald, but he does say some profound things about third-person v. first-person, and about burning the language. The following link contains an interview from 2014 and an award acceptance speech. This is Tom all over. Suzy Vitello and Lydia Yuknavitch are both highlighted.

Listen here.

Writing is nothing if not pattern recognition. Tom talked about his teacher, Gordon Lish, exactly like he talked about his own father: with a huge unresolved rage and love. Tom could rail all evening about how cruel or manipulative Lish had been. Then, recite everything Lish had ever taught him, articulate it perfectly to us.

For In the City of Shy Hunters, Tom’s editor had been Gary Fisketjon, and when Gary pushed Tom to cut major sections of the manuscript Tom retaliated. He told higher-ups that Gary had rejected Fight Club when it was first written, and Tom tried to get Gary fired. It was a steaming mess. Gary had never seen my manuscript, but now Tom was hating Gary as intensely as he did his own father, and Gordon Lish. But Tom also love Gary F and learned from him.

Tom and I battled each other over so many aspects of writing. He seemed to hold that writing had to feel like a multi-year journey into a miserable coal mine. And I held that writing should be a wild party. Life seemed suck enough, I didn’t want to spend my free time in a coal mine. Finally an accident forced us to a showdown. A university hosted us both at a writing conference, and booked us to share a cabin. Fight Club had blown up as a phenom, and Tom hated it. We drank and yelled and drank and vented and drank and went out with students to splash into the ocean late that night. And nothing was settled, but everything was expressed. And that was good enough.

Book tour begins tomorrow. See you then. See you there.