Isak

Debt, Need, and Desire: The Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry

I'm working very intentionally to get out of debt, a provoking mission that I see as essential to my happiness and stability, as a single self-employed freelance writer, and to my social justice beliefs. I want to disentangle myself from predatory industries. I do not want to give them my money and work.

I believe I have an out-sized sense of debt and obligation, of what I owe, that probably is rooted in an old-time sense of not having enough. That, too, I want to unravel.

Enough! I live pretty simply, but I've had debt since I signed for my first student loan at age 18. That's nearly half my lifetime ago. It threatens my ability to do what I love -- telling stories -- and live a life with real choices. So, for several years, I have been working a get-out-of-debt plan that my father suggested to me. My parents, my sister, my brother: we're all doing this and cheering each other on as one thing after another gets paid off. I've made some adaptations for my personal situation, and I have a lot of philosophical disagreements with the guy behind the plan, but it is working -- slowly, but truly.

It brings with it an inhale-exhale, the relaxation that comes with a data-driven way of navigating the thorny territory of debt, need, and desire.

Being who I am, I'm also reading a lot about the history of debt, and its conflation with morality, even on a vocabulary level (what we owe, what we're worth, forgive us our debts). I eagerly took up Helaine Olen's Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry, which traces the roots of media advising us about money—a subject many find distasteful to discuss in polite company, but nonetheless spawns a billion-dollar industry of products. (The guy whose plan I'm following comes up for critique).

I interviewed Olen about her book for The American Prospect: "Is Suze Orman's Advice Dangerous?"

Olen, a journalist who writes the “Where Life Meets Money” blog at Forbes, questions the “guru” model of personal-finance media, which focuses on changing the money habits of individuals with nearly no analyses of the social and economic reasons for why the gap between rich and poor is expanding beyond belief. She argues that personal-finance journalism can be revolutionary, but is often undercut by conflict-of-interest product sponsorships and simplistic solutions that are less empowering than they are appeasing.

In our interview, Olen spoke about the myths perpetuated by personal-finance gurus like Suze Orman and Jim Cramer, why women are particularly targeted by the industry, and how our personal money problems connect to crushing economic inequities.

Illinois, My Apologies

I interviewed the poet Justin Hamm awhile back about his sharp-cornered chapbook called Illinois, My Apologies, a book that I love. There is "a classical wash infusing this collection of poems, buoyed by melancholy, humor, and haunting landscape," as I described it at the time. Hamm's poems pivot between moment and myth. They are little fires.

RockSaw Press has sold out its run of Illinois, My Apologies. But! If you weren't one of the bright-eyed readers to get your hands on a copy yet, it's good news that Hamm is offering the book for free download. The poems will find more homes this way, while Crisis Chronicles Press gets to work in publishing Hamm's second chapbook, The Everyday Parade/Elegy for Sounds Forgotten. We're all winners here.

Also, don't forget to check out the interview with Hamm in Midwestern Gothic, in which there is this throwdown: "Say what you will about Greenwich Village, but it was Minnesota that made Bob Dylan a surrealist."

The idea of the 'Midwesterner's imagination as a survival weapon' comes afire in Hamm's own poem, below, which was published in Cedars.

Where Towns Van Zandt Is
By Justin Hamm

Today, in no mind
to contend with these
doom shadows,
in no condition to breathe
the blues in or out,
our man finds strength
to cross the Mississippi
anyway.
For Townes Van Zandt Live
at the Old Quarter
anyway.

Bible on the seat beside
him once again,
he’s thinking on long afternoons
spent lying about shapes
he saw blooming in the clouds,
thinking she’d keep
looking forever,
happier in fact
to search forever
than if she ever found them.

Missouri, Illinois,
Indiana, Ohio.
Two tanks of gas
in the Bronco.
A lot of dead factories
and death-cheating farmers.
And those old thoughts
creeping again,
the secret desire to be
swallowed by the whale,
to drive off
this prairie highway
straight into the mouth
of the monster.

Isak Interview #16: Nora Mandray

This interview series features original conversations with folks around the world who are in the thick of literary culture -- the passionate writers, editors, critics, readers, translators, publishers, bloggers, designers, booksellers, poets, performers, journalists, and instructors who are bringing vibrancy and joy to the world of words. More than a rehash of things you have heard familiar names natter on about before, this series will turn its attention beyond the bounds of the usual suspects and the usual issues. This series is committed to a dynamic exploration of ideas, craft, language, literature, and culture with the people who are committing their lives to it. See more interviews here.

Nora Mandray is a French journalist and filmmaker who found her way to Detroit, a historically French city that sings to artists. Her latest project is "Detroit je t'aime," an interactive documentary with Hélène Bienvenu on the city's DIY culture. It will be broadcast online, where the viewer moves through screens of unique videos. Each screen has a "DIY toolbox" in the corner, which adapts to the stories told in the film. In true spirit, Bienvenu and Mandray, are DIY-ing film: it's on Kickstarter right now, and is absolutely worth your push toward its $25,000 goal.

If you're looking to be persuaded, consider where Mandray is coming from. She speaks French, English, Polish, and German. She has an MFA from the University of California-Los Angeles film school, which she attended as a Fulbright scholar, and she also has a master's degree from the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris. Nora was invited to participate in the Berlinale Talent Campus 2012 and to attend the Documentary Voices Festival in Dubai in 2010. This is her third year in the United States. These days, she's working out of the Green Garage.

 

 

I met Nora about a year ago in Avalon International Breads to talk about Detroit, writ-large. I was charmed by her and Bienvenu, but I'll be honest: I chalked them up to just another pair of young artists coming to Detroit on a whim. But I'm chastened. They've made a real commitment in moving here, and have been active presences all over the city. Nora in particular seems to know everybody.

As the director of "Detroit je t'aime," Nora is a collector of stories. She's already curating some of them on the project's website, but much more are to come. In this interview, Nora and I discuss how her initial plans for making a Detroit film went haywire, the "urban utopia" controversy, what France has to learn from Detroit, and why communication is a human right.

 

Bloggingheads: What We Think About Politics, Media, and the People In Between

 

 

Sarah Posner is a smart writer and thinker. She is the senior editor at Religion Dispatches and the author of God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters. She also hosts regular conversations on Bloggingheads.tv (collected as "The Posner Show"). I was happy to get the chance to join her this week to hash out political media -- the uncertain (and very different) states of GOOD and The American Prospect magazines; how campaign coverage is like day-after television episode recaps; the ways of "othering" the religions of both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama; and the persistant gender gap in both news media bylines and news media sources. (We explicitly mention Erika Fry's great coverage over at the Columbia Journalism Review.)

I felt like I was on unsteady ground for Bloggingheads: it's a new format for me, though one I've enjoyed watching, and we recorded this yesterday, when I was in the midst of traveling -- actually just hours away from boarding a train from New York City to Detroit. But altogether, this is an honest conversation between two people who feel invested in sorting out how political media resonates in our real lives. It is not a back-and-forth affirmation of our respective talking points. I said things I didn't know I was going to say, or that I even thought.

UPDATE: The Columbia Journalism Review put a spotlight on this conversation.

Sports Talk, and Then Some

Funny how things work: This week I got the chance to write for Grantland about appreciation for Randy Moss and the strange journey of Tate Forcier. Then I did an interview with Ryan Hadfield of the Sports of Boston podcast, where we talked about Moss and his resistance to easy categorization,as well as Thanksgiving day football and the Detroit Lions. But the sports talk opened up to also talk about the Grantland project of longform sports journalism, what journalists need to do to do their job well, Kenya, the Prison Creative Arts Project, and what I thought about living in Boston.

If that sounds like a whole of eclectic fun -- it was.

Isak Interview #15: David Lester

This interview series features original conversations with folks around the world who are in the thick of literary culture -- the passionate writers, editors, critics, readers, translators, publishers, bloggers, designers, booksellers, poets, performers, journalists, and instructors who are bringing vibrancy and joy to the world of words. More than a rehash of things you have heard familiar names natter on about before, this series will turn its attention beyond the bounds of the usual suspects and the usual issues. This series is committed to a dynamic exploration of ideas, craft, language, literature, and culture with the people who are committing their lives to it. See more interviews here.

David Lester is most well-known as the guitar player in Mecca Normal, the Vancouver-based indie rock duo that's been performing since 1984 and has released no less than 13 albums. But he's turned his artistry to many different mediums, as you can see for yourself in his "bio in 25 images." Most recently, Lester has published the graphic novel. The Listener merges truth and fiction, art and narrative, to tell a story that Abeiter Ring Publishing calls " one of the world’s most tragic acts of spin doctoring."

1933: In a small German state, the last democratic election is about to take place before a failed artist named Hitler seizes power. The election is Hitler’s chance to manipulate events that will lead to the death of millions.

2010: After a man dies during a political act inspired by a work of art, the artist flees to Europe to escape her guilt. Through a chance meeting she discovers the truth of the 1933 election. The past becomes pivotal as she decides her future.

It's a big story. The 312-page book also includes a lengthy bibliography on art and Nazism: Hitler's own artistic ambitions, the aesthetics of the Germany he envisioned, the wildly popular 'degenerate art' exhibitions. The story of politicized art in Hitler's Germany has been much-examined over the generations, but Lester's double-narrative pointedly juxtaposes it with the questions of contemporary working artists. He refuses to let us believe that we can shut the door on the misguided use of art "back then." We, too, are seekers. We, too, are tempted. We, too, aren't always sure what to do with our powers of creation and destruction.

A reviewer for Baltimore City Paper says that The Listener is "[s]prawling, yes, but also powerful. The drawings, black-and-white sketches given contour by broad washes of ink, are beautiful and oddly playful." School Library Journal just named it one of the best books of the year so far, and Publishers Weekly calls it a "dense and fiercely intelligent work that asks important questions about art, history, and the responsibility of the individual, all in a lyrical and stirring tone."

Not bad for a debut graphic novel from an indie press.  

Lester has moonlighted as a publisher, founding Get to the Point Press in 1993, which specialized in design and poetry chapbooks. His own debut as an author came with The Gruesome Acts of Capitalism, which artfully aligns statistics to present an unnerving narrative about poverty and class. The book is part of Arbeiter Ring's Semaphore Series, which features concise titles on urgent matters. All the royalties from Lester's book go to the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture.

In our interview for Isak, David and I discuss spin-doctoring, the intersection of art and politics, how graphic novels are evolving, technology, how to re-interpret a book into live performance, and the body of an artistic life.

Here is David:

Isak Interview #14: Bryan Ibeas

This interview series features original conversations with folks around the world who are in the thick of literary culture -- the passionate writers, editors, critics, readers, translators, publishers, bloggers, designers, booksellers, poets, performers, journalists, and instructors who are bringing vibrancy and joy to the world of words. More than a rehash of things you have heard familiar names natter on about before, this series will turn its attention beyond the bounds of the usual suspects and the usual issues. This series is committed to a dynamic exploration of ideas, craft, language, literature, and culture with the people who are committing their lives to it. See more interviews here.

Found Press Media: Jacqueline Olynyk, Co-Publisher; Maggie Rust, Marketing & Community Manager; Bryan Ibeas, Co-Publisher

Discovering the glittering work of Found Press brought me the delight of discovering an Easter Egg. Here is a young publishing venture that specializes in the short story -- not collections or anthologies, but stories themselves, spotlighted and standing alone. So Found Press has developed an innovative way of bringing stories to you. I'll let them describe how it works:

Imagine an online literary journal that makes each work within it available for individual purchase. In the same way that music lovers can sample and download singles from an album through websites and Internet music stores, readers will now have the freedom to preview and enjoy our stories and authors at their leisure, accessing them via a variety of online bookstores. Found Press publications will be versatile, and readers will have the option of reading on their computer, e-reader, or even listening to the stories in a podcast.

It's a short list of writers -- four per issue -- that are published in each edition of Found Press Quarterly: each are promoted individually, including with original (beautiful) artwork, excerpts, and unique blurbs and reviews. It publishes both literary fiction and nonfiction, though "we will not discriminate based on genre or story length." The current issue features stories by Jack Bootle, Meghan Rose Allen, Don McLellan, and Julie Dupuis. (The image on the right is from McClellen's story, "Angels Passing.")

The Canadian triptych of talent -- yeah, I said it -- behind Found Press includes  Bryan Ibeas, the co-publisher based in Toronto who doubles as the marketing coordinator for Cormorant Books, an independent literary publisher. Bryan is a graduate of Humber College's Creative Book Publishing program and York University. And his intelligence, insight, and passion for stories is palpable.

In our interview, Bryan and I discuss searching for stories, how the length of what we read messes with our perception of its worth, "the album effect," building personal libraries, imagining a world where there are no "filler" stories, adventurous readers, and how to create an identity outside of niche and genre marketing.

Here is Bryan:

Isak Interview #13: Weslie Onsando

This interview series features original conversations with folks around the world who are in the thick of literary culture -- the passionate writers, editors, critics, readers, translators, publishers, bloggers, designers, booksellers, poets, performers, journalists, and instructors who are bringing vibrancy and joy to the world of words. More than a rehash of things you have heard familiar names natter on about before, this series will turn its attention beyond the bounds of the usual suspects and the usual issues. This series is committed to a dynamic exploration of ideas, craft, language, literature, and culture with the people who are committing their lives to it. See more interviews here.

 

One of the questions that I wanted to explore here in Kenya was how a literary culture, and a literature, emerges in a young nation. It's a large, twisted, amorphous, fascinating, and altogether complicated question that I hardly has a simple answer. Kwani, where I work, is doing a great deal to cultivate a literary culture of international significance here in Nairobi by publishing East African writers, printing a highly-regarded literary journal, and organizing a whole host of hip literary events. But Kwani is working in a context where the momentum points in a different direction: a scan of any Kenyan bookshop will make it plain that reading in Kenya is associated with school and self-improvement; not joy. It felt like a revelation to me when I learned that in Swahili, the verb for "read" ('-soma') is the same as the word for "learn" and "study."

At one of the writing workshops that I facilitated at iHub in Nairobi, I met Weslie Onsando, a poet and reading enthusiast who works with Storymoja -- another organization and publisher that is agitating for Kenyan literary life. Weslie is a recent graduate of Daystar University, where she studied print and electronic media. She is a bright and engaged young woman who is eager to share her passion for reading; I, in turn, was eager to learn more about her and her work.

In our conversation, which took place over about a week, Weslie and I discuss how she sees herself as part of literary culture, why Kenya has not developed a culture of reading for pleasure, how she's working to cultivate bookish love in Nairobi, why writers have a bigger responsibility than they realize, what's happening with the huge (huge!) live-action read-aloud event she's organizing, and, of course, what she likes to read.

Here is Weslie:

 

Isak Interview #10: Grace Dane (Gretchen) Mazur

This interview series features original conversations with folks around the world who are in the thick of literary culture -- the passionate writers, editors, critics, readers, translators, publishers, bloggers, designers, booksellers, poets, performers, journalists, and instructors who are bringing vibrancy and joy to the world of words. More than a rehash of things you have heard familiar names natter on about before, this series will turn its attention beyond the bounds of the usual suspects and the usual issues. This series is committed to a dynamic exploration of ideas, craft, language, literature, and culture with the people who are committing their lives to it. See more interviews here.

 

Call her Gretchen. But that is surely the only simple signifier for Grace Dane Mazur, a writer of vast and passionate interests to which the label "interdisciplinary" rings hollow; this is a woman, after all, who has a section of her website dedicated to "astonishments." Consider Mazur's new book: Hinges: Meditations on the Portals of the Imagination. It is partly an exploration of the creative process, partly a work of art history, partly an anthropological study, and partly an exploration of the brooding underworld (both metaphorical and literal). Try as I might, I simply can't sum up this slim book; it speaks for itself.

Mazur herself has an eclectic background and a powerful presence. (As Amy Minton put it in her book review for The Collagist: "If you find yourself in a dark wood, like Dante did, you might choose Virgil, the light, to guide, or you might choose Mazur—the wise woman, the mothering protector, and the childlike explorer.") Before turning to writing, Mazur studied painting and ceramics at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. After that, she studied biology at Harvard University, where she ultimately became a post-doctoral research biologist at the university's Biological Laboratories, where she studied the morphogenesis and micro-architecture of silkworms.Turning her wide mind to literature, she earned her MFA at from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She has since become the author of Silk, a collection of stories that was a New York Times notable book of the year, and the novel Trespass. Mazur was the fiction editor of the Harvard Review for a decade, and now serves as the fiction editor for Tupelo Press. She teaches creative writing at various colleges, leaving a long string of inspired students behind her; in fact, she was my instructor for my essay semester in the MFA program at Warren Wilson. Mazur lives just outside Boston, where she and her husband, the mathematician Barry Mazur, have been known to host a most gracious late morning breakfast.

In our conversation, Mazur and I discuss nothing less than the hinges of hell -- as well as Albrecht Dürer woodcuts, the Aeneid, how visual art and literature compare in their renditions of the underworld, Herman Melville, how nonfiction explorations influence the author's fiction, and, of course, Black Fire.

Here, then, is Gretchen: