Author: Michael Martone

Michael Martone is currently a Professor at the University of Alabama where he has been teaching since 1996. He has been a faculty member of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College since 1988. He has taught at Iowa State University, Harvard University, and Syracuse University.

CP 17

Jesus

Syracuse
1995

There would be one last big snowstorm that spring, on April Fool’s Day. It wouldn’t close the university, of course. This was Central New York, in Lake Effect’s shadow, in the unbuckled Snowbelt. It was also the Burned-Over District where the revivals of The Second Great Awakening began. I hadn’t gone to the party after Denis Johnson’s reading. At the reading, the stories from Jesus’ Son thrummed, even gaining power as they were read and reread now a few years after they were published. My son, Nick, had just been born, so I walked home after the reading, down Euclid, propelled by the words, to tell Theresa about the reading and the way he read, cool, almost shyly. I wasn’t much of a partier then, even less a partier now. The next day, walking up Euclid, I knew what was about to happen. I had gotten a call that morning, waking me. A graduate student would file a grievance. Something had happened at the party. I didn’t know what then. It had nothing to do with Denis, but he had been there. And she would have a story to tell.

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CP 18

Seltzer

Montpelier
2008

While Lillian-Yvonne Bertram took my picture, we tried to remember all the flavors of Polar Seltzer, including the limited editions. Raspberry Lime, Orange Vanilla, Strawberry Watermelon, Blueberry Lemonade, Georgia Peach, Mandarin, Triple Berry, Black Cherry, Pomegranate, Cranberry Lime. Polar wasn’t distributed then in Alabama where I lived. Since then, for several year, Lillian-Yvonne would send me postcards naming the new flavors as they came out. Toasted Coconut, Ruby Red Grapefruit, Cranberry Clementine. In the pictures they took (I used them as author photos for a few years), my hair is still long, escaping out from under my old Tuscan vintner’s hat. I am wearing old sunglasses, and it looks like I am looking into the sun.

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CP 19

Evidence

Port Townsend
1993

Before reading from her book of poems, Flash Paper, Theresa lit a piece of flash paper on fire. It sparked, burst into flame, and disappeared. In Baltimore flash paper was illegal. Bookies there used the treated paper to record their bets and burn the evidence, if need be, leaving nothing, not even ashes, she said. Her father had been a bookie in Baltimore. She read in the theater on the old army base where the Centrum Writing Conference was held. William Stafford was in the audience. He would die later that year. He famously wrote every day. In his workshops, he always said one should neither praise or blame, and when writers came to him saying they were blocked he said they should lower their standards. More curious than critical always, and, that night at his reading, he began by reminding us how long he’d lived but how there was always something new. And then he mentioned Theresa’s flash paper demonstration and her reading. Theresa, back in the barrack with Sam, missed his reading. I told her about the reading and how she had impressed William Stafford at hers.

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CP 20

Boston or Baltimore

Fort Wayne
1978

Back then, in 1978, there were only a handful of MFA grad schools. Boston University and Johns Hopkins weren’t even MFA programs. They gave out MAs in creative writing. I applied to 9 or 10 programs. I got into Hopkins, and George Starbuck called me from Boston with an offer. I was a bit overwhelmed. I’d never been out of Indiana, really, and I told him that. “You don’t want to go to Hopkins,” he said. “Baltimore is the world’s largest small town.” I thought about that. And I thought a big small town sounded right for me. Sixteen years later, I was now a professor, and I was moving to teach at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. A week before I arrived, George Starbuck, who had retired there, died in that small small town, I was now moving to.

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CP 24

Godzilla

Columbus
1985

On the second try, I made it to Ohio to do a reading at the Thurber House in Columbus. A snowstorm grounded my first attempt. I got stuck at the TWA hub in St. Louis. I called Michael Rosen, the literary directory then at the Thurber House who asked, “Where are you?” When I finally made it there, we had some extra time after the event. So, Michael took me to see the new Godzilla movie, Return of Godzilla. We are about the same age. He grew up in Ohio, and I grew up, not far away, in Indiana. We found we had a lot in common. We both had been looking forward to the return of Godzilla, and we especially liked the part where Godzilla, the Godzilla that is a Godzilla suit worn by an actor, destroys the toy infrastructure of Tokyo, ripping through the sparking power lines, elbowing the tall buildings, and stomping on the elevated railway tracks. We both agreed, later, that that was the best part of a Godzilla movie always.

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CP 25

Pregnant Midge

Tuscaloosa
2000

I had cleared out a couple of shelves in my office for Cris Mazza to use. She was the Coal Royalty Writer-in-Residence that fall. Besides books, I kept a collection of toys in the bookcases. Fantastic Four action figures. Crash Test Dummies. Models of the real red tractors I drove on farms in Iowa. I kept Syracuse China dishes and coffee cups, seconds, I got when I taught there. And I had a Pregnant Midge, Barbie’s Friend, mint in the box. Walmart no longer sold them after customers complained. “Alabama,” I said to Cris. She gave me a trucker’s baseball cap, advertising Cooper Tires. I told her that most people think the endowment for her position was given by the Coal family. That wasn’t the case. The truth was that the university owned land that produced natural gas, methane, and she was being paid out of the royalties that generated. I offered to show her the fields if she wanted. That was the year a colleague who got HBO taped The Sopranos, and the VHS cassette was shared, passed around the department so no one would get behind on the story.

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CP 26

Keeping

Syracuse
1993

Hayden Carruth had retired the year before I arrived in Syracuse after teaching at the university for a dozen years. He lived out in the country, in Munnsville, but would come into the city on weekends for dinner parties and readings. Once, we all watched a video of the new movie, Brother’s Keeper, about the four Ward Brothers and the death of one of them and the murder trial of another. Hayden knew them. They were his neighbors. He was able to provide commentary as the bleak documentary played. We all watched the dark, deeply shadowed pictures of the illiterate and inarticulate brothers punctuated by Hayden’s understated poetic footnotes. In the end, nothing was resolved. Was it murder or was it death by natural causes? There was not enough evidence either way, and as with all stories there were many points-of-view and several different ways to narrate what transpired or remember what exactly had happened.

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CP 28

Prozac

Indianapolis
1996

I was a student at Butler in the 70’s and hated every minute. The carillon there played a clunky rendition of “Back Home Again in Indiana.” Walking across the gloomy campus, clouds pressing down overhear, I’d whisper with the tolling: Back home again in Indiana where the sun refuses to shine. Indianapolis was Naptown then. Its downtown nothing but rust-stained war monuments and mausoleums, insurance companies and empty parking lots. Its beltway always always filled with trucks and cars going nowhere slowly. Years later, Susan Neville invited me to read at Butler. She met me at my flight’s gate. You could do that then. Walking to the car, I saw a new skyline in the distance. She drove me downtown on the new expressway to a new hotel in the old but newly renovated Union Station. There was a new arena, a new stadium. The one high-rise bank building had been eclipsed by higher-rising bank buildings. The sun, the sun was out, and the sky was sky-blue. “Susan,” I exclaimed, “what the hell happened?” She paused, rounding a southside curve. The Eli Lilly complex hove into view. “Prozac,” was all she said.

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CP 27

Hotbed

Tuscaloosa
2004

I wrote to T. C. Boyle. I had a question about something I read in his new book, The Inner Circle, a novel set in Bloomington, Indiana, and involving Alfred Kinsey, the sexologist, and his inner circle of researchers. Early in the book, a minor character is introduced with the name of “Martone.” I wrote to T. C. Boyle about that. I thought it might have been a nod my way as two decades before The Inner Circle appeared, I wrote and published a story called “Alfred Kinsey, Alone after an Interview, Dreams of Indiana.” In the email, I asked T. C. Boyle if that was maybe the case. He wrote back right away, saying no, he used the name of a childhood friend (he was born and raised in Peekskill, New York) and had never read my story but would try to read it soon. Martone is not that common a name, I thought. I did a cursory search online and discovered Peekskill is a hotbed of Martones—Martone & O’Toole Appraisal Company, Martone Realty, Martone Auto Collision—and we are all probably related one way or the other.

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CP 21

Yachts

Tuscaloosa
2000

I had driven Honoree Fanonne Jeffers to North River Yacht Club where she would give a reading from her new book The Gospel of Barbecue. She had graduated from Alabama a few years before I arrived to teach. We sat in the car in the parking lot of the Yacht Club, the tony country club overlooking an artificial lake. The paper company had built it on paper company land in the 70s when it became more profitable to grow houses and golf courses than pine trees. Jack Warner, who owned the paper company, also owned the largest collection of American Colonial Art in the country. The Smithsonian asked him every year if he will will the art to them, I told Honoree. We talked about local barbecue. Tuscaloosa is located at the intersection of red and yellow sauces. And we were (are?) both Hoosiers. She was born in Kokomo. What did it mean to be a writer of “place” when writing in some other place? Inside, the Yacht Club’s walls were filled with 18th century American art, so many folk art renderings of Washingtons on white horses.

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