Art Chowder September | October, Issue 23 | Page 32

An Interview With Writer
Gregory Spatz
Who are your favorite writers, publications or
events?  Where should readers go for rich writing
or experiences?
A short list of my favorite writers, or writers
who’ve influenced me over the years, would
have to include James Agee, John Williams,
Alice Munro, Flannery O’Connor, Franz Kafka,
Bruno Schulz, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Zora Neale Hurston, William Trevor, John Edgar
Wideman, Marcel Proust and William Maxwell.
How does teaching inform your work or does it?
The main way in which teaching informs my work
is that it sets my schedule. There are months where
I can write and months when I just can’t write very
much. But teaching also keeps you mindful of
what first inspired you to write and what gave you
a sense of direction. Seeing that proverbial “light”
suddenly come on for a student as some particular
set of cues or instruction or advice suddenly takes
hold, seeing them make a breakthrough in their
own work is always surprising, satisfying, and a
good reminder of what this business is all about.
It’s also valuable to know what younger writers
are reading and what inspires them, artistically.
I’m always hearing from students and/or former
students about new trends and books I need to
check out. And there is nothing more satisfying
than hearing from a student who finished long
ago, learning that they’ve somehow kept at it,
kept writing and revising, and that now their work
will be published. The friendship and camaraderie
engendered around all of this is a vital and ongoing
inspiration.
For more information about Spatz’s books, music,
and performance go to http://www.gregoryspatz.
com and http://www.thejaybirds.com.
32
ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE
Excerpt from the second novella in What
Could Be Saved by Gregory Spatz, published
June 2019 by Tupelo Press
In the last weeks of her pregnancy with
us, our father says our mother developed a
set of faint scrims, ghost marks on either side
of her belly, each shaped more or less exactly
like a violin f-hole. And in the center of her
belly, a seam like a loosely furled upside-down
violin scroll centered on her belly button. “A
sign,” he insisted, though to our knowledge
our mother did not share either his perceptions
or his readings of them. “Sign of nothing,”
she’d say. “Sign of a bladder shrunk to the size
of a pancake and lungs halfway up my throat
… twin boys kicking to get out…” Our father
would not be talked out of his belief: “No, no,
no. An indication from the universe! They will
be good, these boys.” This was in the days
before cell phone photography and the habitual
archiving of important life events in a stream of
instant-access visual data, so there are no pic-
tures to prove, one way or the other, which of
them was right.
The labor was hard and nearly killed
our mother. For months afterward, we’re told,
we didn’t see her. First blood loss and then a
rare form of infection held her hostage. Then
a life-sucking post-partum depression. By the
time she returned to us … our recollections
from early childhood, let’s say, do not align
with pictures of her we’ve seen from before our
birth — spinning in polka-dot dresses, smiling
avidly, eating cake, smoking slim cigars, looking
defiant on a walk up Mount Baker. Of this time,
the time of her recovery, we know only that our
father was as attuned to her as he was to the
instruments on his workbench. And perhaps
this is all those transforming marks on her belly
foretold, if there were any such marks: not
greatness for us, her sons, but a time of life for
her where she’d have to be at our father’s mercy
and requiring of him all the patience, skill, and
care of a fine stringed instrument.