Nelson Algren lived the writer's life in the 1930s and J. Edgar Hoover was watching

I write a fan letter to fellow writer Colin Asher:

Dear Colin:

Just finished reading “Never a Lovely So Real.” I loved it. Your intro sections read more like an historical novel than standard biography. It helps that Nelson’s origins and his writing life were so real and unpredictable. Overall, I found out so much more about the writer who conducted my creative writing workshop at University of Florida in 1974. Nelson’s reputation preceded him and he took it with him after the 12-week session. Until I read your book, I was content to remember the grizzled old 63-year-old who wandered into the classroom on a hot September night in Gainesville. Now I know better. I’m glad you found his life worth writing about.

Nelson was my first writing teacher. He was a gruff but entrancing presence in the classroom. I only knew him by reputation. As you write it, that was part fact and part fiction, some of it fed by Nelson. I’d read one of his books and a half-dozen stories. His past was checkered but I knew little about it. He’d been friends with James T. Farrell and Richard Wright and lover to Simone de Bouvier, a feminist writer found on many women’s studies reading lists. Two of his books were made into movies and he spent some crazy time in Hollywood. His political activities earned him a file in J. Edgar’s commie blacklist (886 pages – one heck of a file).

Remembering that time almost 50 years later, Visiting Writer Nelson Algren was an unsettling presence on the sprawling University of Florida campus. His clothing was more Dust Bowl Goodwill than Central Florida Casual. He wore rumpled shirts, loose-fitting slacks, and what looked like the army boots he wore during his time with a medical unit in France during World War II. He sported a grizzled beard and a cap that looked better on Tom Joad. He was old, probably the worst sin you could commit on a campus known for frats, football and consistent listings on Playboy Magazine’s “Top Party Schools.” Schools made the grade by earning an A-plus in three criteria: Sex, nightlife, sports. Creative writing is not mentioned. Keggers under the palms were the order of the day and nobody really wanted to take a walk on the wild side or meet the man with the golden arm who prowled The Windy City’s mean streets.

Me – I wanted to take that walk. Nelson Algren was the real thing. Here he was, stuck in a classroom in one of the campus’s oldest buildings teaching writing to kids from Daytona and Apalachicola. I looked at him as a weathered sage. We were a wave of youth in the U.S.A. who knew very little about what life was like for most Americans. We wrote stories about surfing and soured relationships. The stories in Algren’s “Neon Wilderness” might have been about Martians for all we knew. Grifters and gamblers, whores and junkies. I wanted to know these people because I desperately wanted to be a writer. I just didn’t know how to go about it.

Nelson was generous of his time and expertise. He told great stories. One of our fellow students invited us to her apartment where we smoked dope. Nelson partook, noting that he used to smoke it with Chicago’s jazz musicians and the addicts he met when writing “The Man with the Golden Arm.” He even grew his own brand of weed outside his bungalow near Gary, Indiana.

Another night, my pal Big Mike, piled us into his big black station wagon and took us to the strip club where he was a bouncer. Big Mike was a teetotaling Vietnam vet whose studio apartment was piled high with cases of bottled Pepsi because he could never find enough Pepsi in Coca-Cola country. I had a feeling that Algren had been in rougher places but he was a good sport. After his second drink, he demonstrated how he would put his head between the dancer’s big breasts and make motorboat sounds. It shocked me, the idea of this old writer motorboating a stripper. What he might have been saying is this: “Don’t waste any time, boys. Do motorboats when you can. It all goes by faster than you know.” I wasn’t listening then but now know something about the brief span of a lifetime.

In class, Algren was kind to our stories but made suggestions to make them better. I wrote a story about a homeless guy getting evicted from a tent in a mall parking lot. Algren said it needed some work. He handed out his recommended reading list. I wish I still had it. Hemingway was on it along with books I didn’t know: “A House for Mr. Biswas” by V.S. Naipaul, “The End of the Game and Other Stories” by Julio Cortazar, “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “The Good Soldier Svejk” by Jaroslav Hasek, and the collected stories of John Collier. On the last night of class, Algren handed me a slip of paper with his agent’s name and address and told me to contact her. I didn’t see him do that with any of the other students and felt pretty special. I never followed up. I had nothing to show an agent except a half-finished story and late-night journal entries.

A year later, my next writing prof was Harry Crews. I figured he probably knew some of the same people Algren did, ne’er-do-wells and junkies and killers. Algren came from the mean streets and Crews from the mean swamps of the Okefenokee. If you’re curious about how mean it was, read his memoir “A Childhood: The Biography of a Place.” This was before Crews got sober and didn’t always make it to class, regaling the locals at Lillian’s Music Store which wasn’t a music store. When he did, he told great stories. One night, he read aloud his favorite story, “How Beautiful with Shoes” by Wilbur Daniel Steele, a wonderful writer whom nobody in class had ever heard of, This from Wikipeda: “Steele has been called ‘America's recognized master of the popular short story’ between World War I and the Great Depression.” Crews wrote an Esquire column called “Grits” and had stories and essays featured in Playboy. One I remember the best was “The Button-down Terror of David Duke,” infamous KKK grand wizard from Louisiana. Crews wrote about an ill-fated backpacking trip along the Appalachian Trail that ended in a Tennessee town that once convicted and hung a circus elephant for stomping a boy to death.

I was lucky to have two great early mentors. At the time, I didn’t understand it but knew it was important to my imagined writing career. After graduation, I worked in Denver as a sportswriter and edited a weekly alternative newspaper. I was a corporate editor until I decided it was killing me. I wrote a novel and snagged myself an agent in Ray Powers of the Marje Fields Agency. He helped me revise the book and shopped it around. I told him I was quitting my job and he advised me to get a numbing day job so I could have plenty of energy left for writing. Instead, a went off to get my M.F.A. at Colorado State University. It helped my writing and helped me get published. It also sent me off with a career as an arts administrator at a state arts council and then the National Endowment for the Arts. It cut into my writing time. I’m retired now and have time to think about paths taken and not taken. I write every day and have a short list of published fiction. I have a fine family and a house. Still, Ray Powers might have been right. I’ll never know.

Thanks again. I look forward to reading your other work.

Sincerely,

Michael Shay, michaelshaywyo@hotmail.com, hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com

P.S.: Ordered a copy of “Nelson Algren’s Own Book of Lonesome Monsters” after reading about it in your book. Couldn’t resist.

Sunflower fields forever

We awoke to sunflowers.

Millions of them. The rising sun lit up their golds and bronzes and greens.

Pat and I were in Oklahoma, a few exits south of the Kansas border. We had reached the spot late at night after hitchhiking from Houston the day before.

Now it was time to get our gear and get on our way to the Colorado Rockies.

The sunflowers dazzled the eyes. Trucks roared by, tall flower stalks bowed in their wakes.

On this day when we celebrate Pat's life, I remember that summer day 35 years ago. Two brothers on an adventure. We left behind hot and muggy Florida for a high-country jaunt.

But on this Oklahoma morning, the mountains seemed far away. Someone finally had mercy on us and gave us a ride. Later that day outside Salina, Kansas, we almost were arrested. "Go 50 miles per hour or go to jail," said the burly state patrolman. Pat always liked that quote.

No way we were going 50 miles an hour. So we went into town and found the bus station. The bus we took to Denver barely broke the 50 m.p.h barrier But we did arrive in Denver and eventually the mountains.

Backpacking into wild country. In the evening, I cooked freeze-dried meals on my tiny stove. As night fell, Pat built a fire and I read poems from Gary Snyder's "Turtle Island." As a rule, Pat wasn't into poetry. But Snyder wrote of wide-open skies and wild, unconquered nature. It seemed fitting.

A month passed quickly. Too soon I was back in Gainesville and Pat back in Daytona Beach. In a few months he was off to the Air Force.

We talked many times over the years. Once, two years passed in which we didn't speak. I said some harsh things that he didn't like. We each were too stubborn to make the first call. Pat broke the ice and called me when he became a grandpa for the first time. We talked more when he was in treatment for a month. We wrote letters for the first time in decades.

Pat and I talked about our Colorado trip many times. I wish now that we could have done it again. That we could have spent more time together.

But the 1975 trip was a moment in time. Two brothers waking up in a field of sunflowers.

We saw nothing but a bright future spread out before us.

We saw it together, as brothers.

So I say this to my dear departed backpacking brother Pat, to my Air Force brother, to my Gator-loving brother, to my brother the softball coach, my brother the gardener, the planter of trees and flowers and tomatoes....

Pat, may you always be surrounded by fields of flowers.

Update: This is the eulogy I delivered as part of my brother Pat's memorial service on Monday, Dec. 13, at the Fred Lee Park softball field in Palm Bay, Fla. I will share the full text of the memorial in later posts...

Obama advocates for community colleges

Look, private colleges are O.K. I hear they have some good ones in places like Cambridge and Palo Alto and Oberlin. But, as a graduate of one community college and two land-grant universities, I'm a firm believer in public-funded higher learning.

Yesterday, Pres. Obama unveiled the American Graduation Initiative, a 10-year, $12 billion plan to invest in community colleges.

During his announcement at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan, Obama noted that the economic recession and a changing U.S. economy have reduced the number of automotive industry jobs, a mainstay in Michigan.

The "hard truth is that some of the jobs that have been lost in the auto industry and elsewhere won't be coming back. They are casualties of a changing economy," Obama said, adding that "even before this recession hit, we were faced with an economy that was simply not creating or sustaining enough new, well-paying jobs."

Obama called the investment in community colleges crucial because "jobs requiring at least an associate degree are projected to grow twice as fast as jobs requiring no college experience" in coming years.

I enjoyed my classes at Daytona Beach Junior College (then D.B. Community College and now Daytona State College) more than I did the first two years at Enormous State University in a C.S.A. state. At 22, I was older by a few years, time tested and weathered after a sojourns as a college ROTC dropout wandering the U.S. That may have helped. Time to knuckle down and take enough courses to graduate and head off to another Enormous State University. I rode my bike or hitched a ride to class, and spent off hours at the library or canoodling with my girlfriend who lived a few blocks away.

At 3, I clocked into my job at Halifax Hospital where I spent the next eight hours riding herd on alkies and druggies dredged off Daytona's streets and thrown into the place officially labeled 1100 but we called it the drunk tank. Usually there were two orderlies working behind the ward's locked doors. Sometimes it was just me. I was a big dude, and I held the keys to the kingdom, so they didn't mess with me. We all played cards and told stories, some of which were true. Every so often a patient would go into D.T.'s or devolve into a seizure. I was ready for either. Every so often a call came over the loudspeakers for "Dr. Blue." That meant that all the ordleries were needed at 1400 -- the psych ward. Some very large loonie the size of Chief Broom was going haywire, knocking down doctors and nurses like a scythe through Kansas wheat. I was lucky -- I never got my teeth knocked out during those calls. Usually it took three or four of us to subdue the subject. A few scrapes, a few stories for later regaling at Big Daddy's Bar.

Education comes in many forms. I graduated in May 1974 with a group of auto mechanics and nurses and dental hygienists and pre-law candidates and a few other misguided English majors. I quit my job that August, saying my farewells to the patients (I knew them all by then) and the ghosts and some of my compatriots who were still working on their educations. I headed 100 miles up the road to Gainesville and the next phase of my public education, paid for with loans and work-study jobs. I graduated from UF in 1976 and kept moving on, eventually landing in Denver in 1978 for the adult phase of my education.

The education never ended. Nor will it. I've taught at several community colleges. I like the range of students -- 18 to 78. Some who are just taking composition 101 for the credit and don't give a hoot about the minimalism of Carver and the maximalism of Henry James. Others are like the Vietnam vet whose daughter urged him to finish his associate's degree at the same time she earned hers. Or the grandmother who travelled 140 miles round trip from Kimball, Nebraska, to Cheyenne to take my creative writing class. She had stories to tell. Or the Air Police zoomie who loved to write -- and told me the stories of the ghosts swirling around Warren AFB. Or the recent divorcee who kept journals for the 20 years of her marriage but ripped them up in a burst of anger. And now she wanted to resurrect those shredded memories.

It's not too outlandish to say that there's a direct line from my time at community colleges to my work last year to elect Obama. Sure, Harvard is great. But real democracy is born in the crowded halls and classrooms of your local community college.

Take time to check out the American Graduation Initiative at http://tinyurl.com/m4u746.

UF protesters make their point

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, defender of torture, recieved a warm reception at my alma mater of the University of Florida during his first appearance at a university since resigning from office under a big dark cloud.

The reception by Gator Nation was not friendly.

According to a story by Devin Culclasure in the Independent Florida Alligator where, in 1976, I was a general assignment reporter, protestors greeted Gonzales's canned remarks at the Philips Center for the Performing Arts:

About 15 minutes into his speech, two UF students, Richard Gutierrez and Kevin Hachey, climbed onto the stage wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods on their heads. University Police Department officers scrambled onto the stage to remove them. Matthew Cox, an employee of the Phillips Center, wrestled with one protester on the far side of stage, grabbing his legs and pulling him down. The other stood directly next to Gonzales, who calmly avoided looking in his direction. As police took the protester away, Gonzales glanced in his direction before attempting to continue his speech while he waited for the raucous crowd to settle down after a few minutes. A few more protesters climbed onto the stage. Meanwhile, even more protesters stood up, removed shirts or jackets revealing yellow T-shirts that read "SHAME," and stood with their backs toward Gonzales. They remained standing in their positions for the rest of the event.

UF cops seemed to handle this event much better than it did a few months ago when they tasered a rambunctious student during another political speech.

Steve Orlando, UF spokesman, said the usual number of four security officers was present. He added that he also thought most of the protesters expressed their views reasonably."A few crossed the line, but I think it went pretty well," Orlando said."I think Mr. Gonzales saw a whole lot of First Amendment tonight," he added with a laugh.

Gonzales remains under investigation by Congress for his questionable firing of attorneys who refused to do Dubya's bidding. One wonders if Mr. Gonzales has actually read the First Amendment -- or any other part of the Constitution of the U.S.

Read the entire Alligator article by going to http://www.alligator.org/articles/2007/11/20/news/campus/gonzales.txt.

PHOTO CREDIT: (Scott Robertson /Alligator Staff) Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales pauses during his speech as a protester stands next to him at the Phillips Center on Monday night.