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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 13, 2015)
FRIDAYEXTRA ! The Daily Astorian Friday, November 13, 2015 Weekend Edition Submitted Photos/Illustration A teacher would record writing advice on a cassette tape. HIGH FIDELITY Writer recalls lessons learned from ‘that one teacher’ sufferable for Winn to read, much less critique. It ZDVWRKLVFUHGLWDQGP\HYHUODVWLQJEHQH¿WWKDWKH could say into the tape recorder: “You have a little of this attitude that ‘nobody is smart but me’ and that kind of attitude is not fun to be around. I don’t get a good response that a reader gets into that kind of atti- tude.” That might have been the best piece of writing advice I’ve ever received. I think about it every time I write a new book. I just published my 14th and it all began 35 years ago with Doug Winn in a high school creative writing class. I might also add that Winn was my first pub- lisher in that he started a literary review at Oregon City High School. I get the feeling he paid for it himself. I will never forget the thrill of seeing my stories and poems printed in a bound literary review for the first time. It began a journey that I am still traveling today and is also the reason I produce literary reviews with my students. That public outcome is crucial to the development of a young writer. Seeing your work exclusively on- line is hardly the same. It’s the ink that hooks you. By MATT LOVE Special to The Daily Astorian W ere you lucky enough to have that one teacher who changed your life? I was. I owe him every- thing and try to my inspire students the same way he inspired me — by directing their creative talents to the right places. In 1980, my junior year at Oregon City High School, I landed in a creative writing course taught by Doug Winn. It was his rook- ie year as a teacher. He required us to keep journals and often made observations in the margins. He also dictated a commentary on cassette tape about our writing. On one of the tapes Winn told me something about my writing’s voice reminded him of Kurt Vonnegut and that I should check this author out. Hearing this, I rushed to the school library and found the novel “Breakfast of Champions.” I picked it up, thumbed the pages, and noticed some peculiar drawings, including one of the American ÀDJWKDWZDVQ¶WQHFHVVDULO\UHYHUHQW I devoured “Breakfast of Champions” and the rest of Vonnegut’s novels. I’d never read anything like them: the voice, satire, time-bending, moral outrage, revisionist history, and the bursts of rib- ald sexuality. I discovered Vonnegut at the precise moment I was about to enter a period of rebellion that easily could have led to trouble. His words UHSUHVHQWHGDNLQGRIDI¿UPDWLRQIRUP\GLVDI fection and, I think, a direction. Experimenting with voice E N H O U R S • 2 4 • • O P Next Winn recommended Norman Mailer. I’d never heard of him. I took the bus to Port- ODQGWRYLVLWIRUWKH¿UVWWLPH3RZHOO¶V%RRN store, a place Winn insisted I explore. There, I bought “The Executioner’s Song,” “The Armies of t he Night” and “The Fight.” Sexus, Plexus and Nexus As graduation loomed, Winn found me at school and handed over a present: used copies of Henry Mill- A page from Matt Love’s high school yearbook. HU¶VWULORJ\³7KH5RV\&UXFL¿[LRQ6H[XV3OH[XVDQG Nexus .” Without any sort of preface to Miller except I opened with “The Armies of the Night,” Mailer’s to say, “I think you’ll like this guy, now go out and third-person account of his chaotic participation in a 1967 become a writer.” That summer I read the trilogy protest march against the Vietnam War. In this book, I read and have never forgot my initial experience with sentences such as: “He had in fact learned to live in the sar- Miller. His candor addicted me like a drug and cophagus of his image — at night, in his sleep, he might dart I’m still hooked. I never bought into all of Mill- er’s pronouncements about human sexuality, but out, and paint improvements on the sarcophagus.” Immediately, I began emulating Mailer’s third-person point the intensity of his passion has never left me. I also never forgot the charge Winn put to me of view when writing about myself. As I read those bombas- tic pieces today, I imagine the power shuddering through me my senior year. It took time and maturity, but DV\HDUROGÀHGJOLQJZULWHUH[SHULPHQWLQJZLWKYRLFHDQG through the books he introduced me to and his how the narrator might integrate himself in a piece of jour- recognition of my passion for writing, I believe I nalism. You could plunge into a story, observe, enact a small, HYHQWXDOO\IRXQGWKHSDWKWRIXO¿OOZKDWHYHUOLWHU but vital role inside it, serve as its reporter, and catalyze its ary promise he held out for me. elements. That’s pretty much how I would describe the main Matt Love lives in Astoria and teaches at Asto- editorial thrust of everything I’ve published since and how I ria High School. He is the author/editor of 14 books teach creative writing to my own students. about Oregon, including “A Nice Piece of Astoria: ‘Nobody is smart but me’ A Narrative Guide,” and “The Great Birthright: An At times, my Maileresque prose must have bordered on in- Oregon Novel.” E K W E • 7 D A Y S A Locally Owned & Operated by Travis Weichal, since 1996 R O Y A L C AB L.L.C. HOLIDA Y SPECIAL CLATSOP COUNTY 503-325-5818 PACIFIC COUNTY 360-665-3500 L.L.C. 50 00 GIFT CARD A 50% BONUS! Good for $ 7 5 00 BUY A $ IN CAB FARES ww w . royalcab . net O ffer good from 11/ 15/ 15 - 12/ 23/ 15
