Comments on: An Appreciation of John Hawkes

By: Steve Barney

Steve Barney — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:05:48 +0000

In 1979 I lived in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, having moved there from Connecticut the previous year. There was a cramped little bookstore on St. Marks Place then which I visited often. It was filled with books I’d never heard of written by people I’d never heard of. Books in English, books in German, and French and Italian and Russian. I’d never been in such exotic company before.

Every time I went in there I pulled “The Lime Twig” off the shelf and try to read it. I couldn’t make any sense of it, and it actually frightened me in some way I couldn’t put my finger on. I was 23 and had nothing more than a high school education. But for some reason I wanted to read that damn book. I wanted to suffer that dream that Flannery O’Connor talked about on the back cover.

I’m 54 now. In the last few months, thanks to a Wikipedia article on Don Delillo, I’ve discovered Peter Handke, Max Frisch, Bruno Schulz, Thomas Mann, W. G. Sebald, Robert Musil, Flann O’Brien, Jakov Lind, Stig Saeterbakken, Ornela Vorpsi, Louis Paul Boon, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Goncalo M. Tavares–a whole world of literature that is nothing like anything I’ve read before.

And I think I’m finally ready for “The Lime Twig”, which should arrive in the mail in a few days.

By: Evelyn Walsh

Evelyn Walsh — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:28:45 +0000

Thank you for posting this lovely essay. I had only one workshop with Jack but remember that “is he putting me on” feeling so well. Also favorite Jack words: splendid; comic, with or without terror and/or horror; concrete. The way he talked about Sophie. How he moved around the room during workshop. His love of voice in literature: he taught us that finding one’s voice was the most essential and precious part of our writing. Like most great teachers, Jack never talked down to us kids. Recently I found a report about his Voice Project, a program he ran at Stanford in the 60s: http://www.eric.ed.gov:80/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED018442&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED018442

Thanks again. I have been laughing about “this amazing game you’ve invented” all week. Hilarious, touching, a great tribute to a great man.

By: Melissa Price

Melissa Price — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:34:06 +0000

Words to live by?
“But What I Really Love About This Is This Amazing Game That You’ve Invented”

Enjoyed this, thank you!

Haven’t had much interaction with writing professors, but would like to imagine that there are at least a few out there as playful and inventive as Hawkes. He doesn’t appear to have been much affected by fear that what he said would be misinterpreted(?) — taken out of context, for example, or, possibly even worse, taken in context. Text was the con on the lam, right? And constant reinvention seemed to be the name of the game(?)

You were lucky.

By: Meakin Armstrong

Meakin Armstrong — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 17:52:23 +0000

Jim, you’ve not only learned from Hawkes, but also successfully manage to transfer his teachings to others. One of the greatest messages I got from you is to “value the weird.” Thank you.

By: Dixon May

Dixon May — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:51:32 +0000

I am about to start reading Second Skin. I have read almost none of Hawkes. I think this has to do with The Blood Oranges being forced upon me by my high school English teacher, a miniature schmendrick who would constantly remind us that he went to Berkeley in the early 70s and that at one time, he was very good friends with Steven Weed. We had no idea who Steven Weed was and we never asked. I didn’t like The Blood Oranges because the charcaters reminded me of the people who would attend the Pyramid Parties my dad would have have in our living room.

By: Justin Taylor

Justin Taylor — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:52:45 +0000

Jim, thank you for this. I’d no idea you worked with Hawkes. Some of his books are key texts for me- _Death, Sleep & the Traveller_, and especially _Travesty_. I think the relationship you describe gets at the heart of what great writing instruction is about. There’s the grammar and techie stuff on the surface, but above and beyond that–or deeper, perhaps, rather than above–it’s a personal relationship, ongoing and in constant negotiation, like any relationship is, and its results, though easy enough to observe when evidenced in retrospect or in some particular text-product, are ultimately unquantifiable. They can be experienced and attested to, but not cataloged. Which is of course an equally fitting description of what great writing has to offer. So maybe that’s the theory of teaching writing- the instructor/student connection in some significant way(s) will mimic or actually produce the experience of a dedicated reader with a beloved book- one you’re always glad to re-visit and somehow never cease to learn from and delight in, no matter how familiar it’s gotten over the years. Thanks again for this.

By: David Hollander

David Hollander — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:15:25 +0000

I didn’t know Hawkes, but as a student of Rick (Moody)’s (see above), I heard him referenced often, and eventually dove headlong into his work. Second Skin and The Lime Twig, especially, left bright afterimages on my aesthetic radar. I feel like my life would be a lot different (and much diminished) had I not encountered Hawkes’ fiction.

Now I teach writing, mostly in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, where I find myself swimming in the kind of work that might have drawn sigh after sigh from Hawkes. Try as I might, I’ve found it difficult (and depressing) to articulate WHY I think certain things are great, while other things seem to me to be… good, or fine, or (sigh). This article made me feel that thing that becomes harder to feel every year, as I get older and more isolated and more frustrated with my own lack of success. In a word, that thing is “accompanied.”

By: James Robison

James Robison — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:36:30 +0000

Jack’s workshops, class of 1979, met at my apartment, at night, with wine, cigarette smoke (he used his inhaler but never complained), and an overall sense of festive doom. We sensed he wasn’t happy about our work and he may have seen us all as picks and favorites of his colleague, Verlin Cassill’s. (There were turf wars at Brown, as everywhwere.) Anyway. He said, at the first meeting, “You’re all writing short stories? I’ve never READ a short story…except ‘A Little Cloud.’” Meaning, Do not look to me for nuts n’ bolts critiques, this isn’t trade school. Meaning too, I think, I’ll give you something more.
Before the year was out, I sold a story to the New Yorker, and Jack praised it, perversely, hilariously, because, according to his ornery interpretation, it was about a pair of married child molseters who adopt a little girl. (It was not remotely about that,and ran in the Christmas issue of the magazine.) The piece above by Mr. Shepard catches exactly the credibilty smack such koo- koo-Jack utterances caused. Half the class believed him, and were rattled, half snorted, as if in on a joke. I knew I deserved such a comment and much worse for workshopping a sold story. I’m not sure about all the shape shifting Gass/Katherine Porter stuff. I don’t think Jack was wildly complicated as a human. He taught us by being an artist, every minute, right before our eyes: cantankerous, transgressive, impossible, charming and at all and every cost, unpredictable. Those qualities began to appear in the prose of everyone in the class.

By: Rick Moody

Rick Moody — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:59:38 +0000

Shep, I tried to write one of these too, you know. For the ENCYCLOPEDIA project. But yours is way better. Funnier, more insightful. I guess because you were more of an adult than I was when I studied with him. And maybe you weren’t taking Quaaludes every day. Anyway, it’s a lovely piece and summons the man for me in ways that inform and extend what I remember of him too. We were both very lucky to know him.

Thanks.

By: Shya Scanlon

Shya Scanlon — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:14:58 +0000

If you’re reading this, Jim, you’ll be pleased to know that although Hawkes no longer walks the halls at Brown, those remaining MFA faculty and staff who knew him still speak of him in hushed, reverential tones. Having just left there myself, I can attest to the fact that even ten years after his death, his spirit, influence and presence in the program goes undiminished.