Indiana Writers—Susan Neville
If you think literary readings are dry, humorless, static occasions,
drop in on one of Susan Neville's presentations. For her reading at
Wabash last week, she opened with a joke from Kurt Vonnegut (who once
called her late one evening searching for the right phrase for his novel Timequake)
and read extensively from her book Sailing the Inland Sea: On
Writing, Literature, and Land, recently chosen Best Book of Indiana
in the nonfiction category by the Indiana Center for the Book.
"So much of life lies hidden beneath the surface. As I stand on the
banks of the Rise [of the Lost River], I try to see downriver in the
early evening fog. But it's like trying to see the future. From this
point on, we're told, the water will make its own way toward the west,
leaving behind its underground bed. But the river itself will always be
lost, like the submerged psyche of a state. And like its sin will appear
and reappear: mysterious, tempting, and forbidden."
—from "On the banks of the Lost River," Sailing the Inland Sea
—from "On the banks of the Lost River," Sailing the Inland Sea
"The boy in New Castle may not write because he thinks it's all been
said before. Of course it's been said before, but not by him. Second
rule for the fierce writer: Know this—every place on earth is filled
with stories, with layers of forgotten history. It's Chekhov's
brilliance or Alice Munro's or Thomas Hardy's or Welty's or Kimmel's or
Faulkner's or Flannery O'Connor's—regionalists all—to excavate those
layers and include them in one human story. To deny invisibility.
"In the Midwest, we need to work at being fierce."
—Susan Nevill, from Sailing the Inland Sea
"I write as a Hoosier," Kurt Vonnegut says. "That's all I've ever been.
Eastern seaboard people who don't know much about the Middle West think
we're all fundamentalists, really primitive people. But Indiana is a
great seat of free-thinking and religious skepticism."
—Susan Neville's "Vonnegut," from Sailing the Inland
Sea.
"It's a straight shot from Indianapolis to Lost River. Drive out of
town, down Highway 37, past Bloomington, until you start to see the
moonscape of limestone. First there's Oliver's Winery with it's
mini-Stonehenge, then the square stacked boulders of Bedford. You drive
away from the swampy shoreline, remnants of an inland sea, veneered now
with glacial drift. It seems important to try and imagine this as often
as possible, to remember that our cars are always sailing on what used
to be an ocean."
—Susan Neville, from "On the Banks of Lost River," Sailing On an Inland Sea
—Susan Neville, from "On the Banks of Lost River," Sailing On an Inland Sea