Peridyd's Progress

Part of my job working at the Center for Writing and Learning at Oregon State University is to be the faculty adviser for the Craft of Writing Series. It's one of the more rewarding parts of my job, and it's given me the opportunity to work with a great group of students (they're the ones who pick who to invite to campus to speak to their peers), and I've had some unparalleled moments speaking with and listening to the writers we invite. The best moments are almost always unexpected: the luscious prose in Charles D'Ambrosio's essays (the best reading in the series so far); Sherman Alexie's generosity to the students on the Craft of Writing Committee--he gave them so much time; and, today, a gift from a writer whom I'm not even sure that we'll end up inviting to speak on campus.

Jane Smiley's agent contacted me, asking if we might be interested in bringing her to OSU. Smiley, of course, is huge. She won a Pulitzer in '92 for her retelling of King Lear, A Thousand Acres. I know her from her novel Moo, which is about the intrigues of an English department at an agricultural university. Not that I have any experience with that (cough, cough).

Since her agent is fishing for readings, I thought I'd put her name forward to the committee and see if they were interested, so I started doing my homework. Because I'm aware of the fact that we live in what I term the "Age of Google," I, of course, started with a search engine, and I found some astounding essays.

My favorite is "Notes for Converts." It was written back in March, for the Huffington Post. And like all great commentary, it has legs. In my opinion, it will have legs long into the next decade, which, in my opinion, is the first chance that we'll have to undo the damage that's been done since December, 2000, when George W. Bush successfully usurped the democratic process and was declared president by a pliant Supreme Court that didn't concern itself overmuch with context in the State of Florida.

Speaking to the recently-converted, conservative opponents of GWB, Smiley deftly delivers an indictment of Bush and, by extension, the converted since 2000. Here's a brief excerpt:

Bush does what he feels like doing and he deeply resents being told, even politely, that he ought to do anything else. This is called a "sense of entitlement". Bush is a man who has never been anywhere and never done anything, and yet he has been flattered and cajoled into being president of the United States through his connections, all of whom thought they could use him for their own purposes. He has a surface charm that appeals to a certain type of American man, and he has used that charm to claim all sorts of perks, and then to fail at everything he has ever done. He did not complete his flight training, he failed at oil investing, he was a front man and a glad-hander as a baseball owner. As the Governor of Texas, he originated one educational program that turned out to be a debacle; as the President of the US, his policies have constituted one screw-up after another. You have stuck with him through all of this, made excuses for him, bailed him out. From his point of view, he is perfectly entitled by his own experience to a sense of entitlement. Why would he ever feel the need to reciprocate? He's never had to before this. (emphasis added)

I hope we can swing the finances to bring Smiley to campus, just so I can thank her for having so perfectly captured the unparalleled absurdity and hubris of this man, his supporters, and of this cultural moment.