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David Surface, who has led writing workshops in public schools and social service settings for over twenty years, blogs about P&W–supported writing workshops with Veterans in Westchester, New York. He is the founder of the Veterans Writing Workshop, which runs free writing workshops for U.S. veterans.
I first met Frank at the Common Ground Residence for Homeless Veterans in Montrose. I was there to start a ten-week creative writing workshop funded through the Readings/Workshops program at Poets & Writers. Frank’s pale blue eyes were intense and attentive. He was interested but expressed doubt about his writing abilities. I assured him that he already had everything he needed to write a good story—all we needed to do was to help him get it down on paper.
I later learned that Frank had just graduated from the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Program, and his counselor had recommended that he participate in the writing workshop. “She thinks it’ll be good for me,” he said.
Not all veterans’ traumas happen on the battlefield. Frank’s had happened during his service in the Military Police at a U.S. Naval Air Station base, though exactly what happened was unknown to the rest of us.
For the first few weeks, Frank wrote about struggling to fit in with the culture of the Naval base; his discomfort with guns, his poor performance on the firing range, the “liquid debriefs” with the other MPs, and their nightly drunken jackrabbit hunts.
"They would pull a patrol car up in front and point the high beams and spotlights at the dusty and sparse vegetation. Then these guys would shoot at the jackrabbits that were hopping around; creating puffs of dust as the rabbits scattered to get away."
Week after week, Frank continued to work his way toward the incident he’d come to the workshop to write about. I never pushed him. This was not, as I’d explained, a “writing therapy” group—this was a writing workshop, and our goal was to create the very best stories we could write.
Finally, Frank brought in the pages he’d struggled so hard to complete. With his friend Eddie’s hand on his shoulder for support, Frank read to us about the day he’d gone out on a call to search for a missing child.
"After ten minutes that felt like ten hours, I decided to go into the house myself. As I walked up the steps, something at the left of the entrance caught my eye. It was a medium-sized Coleman cooler with the lid closed. I walked up to the cooler and opened it up on a hunch. To my shock and dismay, the little boy was in there, his ball lying right next to his hand. The odor was overwhelming and his skin was clammy and grey. Instinctively, I reached into the cooler and pulled him out."
Taking deep, shaky breaths between words, Frank read about his unsuccessful attempts to revive the child, his subsequent realization that he could no longer be a policeman, and the hard-won wisdom he’d come away with.
"It would be years before I accepted the fact that there was not anything I could have done to prevent that child from dying like that. As I look back now, I realize that there are things that happen in life that you cannot control."
Watching Frank read that story for us was the bravest thing I’d ever seen—until two weeks later when I saw him stand up in front of a large audience at a public reading and do it again. Afterwards when I asked him how he felt, he wiped the sweat from his brow, grinned and said, “Great!”
I’ve seen Frank read that story three more times in public. Every time, it’s like watching someone climb the highest, most difficult mountain in the world to end up on top. It’s not easy, but, as Frank will tell you, it’s well worth the climb.
Photo: (Left) Frank Muer and fellow workshop participant Eduardo Padilla. Photo Credit: Howard Charton.
Support for Readings/Workshops in New York is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with additional support from Friends of Poets & Writers.
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Last week, the British betting firm Ladbrokes announced that Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami had emerged as the favorite to win this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, coming in with 10/1 odds. As of yesterday, the international literary star has moved up in the rankings to 7/1—with none other than Bob Dylan, at 10/1, following tightly on his heels. Dutch novelist Cees Nooteboom and Chinese author Mo Yan are right behind them, at 12/1.
Last year, the eventual Nobel winner, Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, was given 9/2 odds. But he wasn’t expected to win: Syrian poet Adonis was the final favorite, coming in at 4/1 (this year, Adonis still makes the top twenty, but has fallen to 14/1). Dylan was also a close candidate last year, at one point late in the betting even coming in as the number-one pick, pulling ahead of Murakami (who was at the time 8/1), Adonis, and eventual winner Tranströmer.
In the past decade, North America hasn’t fared so well in the Nobel race. The last American to win the prestigious literary prize was Toni Morrison, who won in 1993. Aside from Dylan, the only United States authors to make it into the top twenty this year include Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Phillip Roth. Canada, who has never had a Nobel Laureate, tops the list with short story writer Alice Munro (whose newest collection, Dear Life, will be released by Knopf in November), at 20/1. Other Canadians to make it into the betting pool this year include Margaret Atwood, at 50/1, and poet Anne Carson, at 100/1.
Also sitting in the 20/1 position is Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, whose forthcoming memoir, There Was a Country, will be released by Penguin in October. Hovering just above him in the line-up are Umberto Eco at 25/1, and Don DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates, and E. L. Doctorow, all at 33/1. Joining Atwood at 50/1 are Ian McEwan, Maya Angelou, Chang-Rae Lee, and Peter Carey. And the list goes on and on, including such contemporary literary greats as Kazuo Ishiguro, Ursula Le Guin, David Malouf, Salman Rushdie, A. S. Byatt, Milan Kundera, Julian Barnes, and John Ashbery, all at 66/1; and Michael Ondaatje, Paul Auster, Louise Glück, and Jonathan Franzen coming in at 100/1.
Candidates to win the Nobel Prize in Literature may be nominated by Swedish Academy members or esteemed international literary figures. Earlier this year, Peter Englund, the head of the Swedish Academy, revealed that 46 of the 210 nominated writers for this year's prize were first-time selections.
The 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced later this fall. For more information about the prize, visit the Nobel Prize website.
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