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Creative Non-Fiction With Lee Gutkind July 5, 2010

Posted by pacejmiller in On Writing.
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This one’s a little overdue.  Weeks before my trip to India and Hong Kong, I attended a free session presented by the “Godfather of Creative Non-Fiction” (not originally his own name but more recently it has become self-proclaimed), Lee Gutkind.

Just what the heck is “creative” non-fiction?  Aren’t the two mutually exclusive?

To be honest, the seminar never explained exactly what creative non-fiction is.  Fortunately, I had come across the term before and had a fair idea.  Essentially, it’s writing a true story (ie non fiction) in a creative way (ie like a story).  I believe Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is a good example of creative non-fiction.  A bad example would be James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces (just kidding, that’s just pure fiction parading as non-fiction).  Other names for creative non-fiction include literary or narrative non-fiction.

What I expected to be an informative seminar about how to write creative non-fiction turned out to be an hour-long pitch by Lee Gutkind to budding writers (such as myself) about how wonderful creative non-fiction is.  Lee was down in Australia for the Sydney Writers’ Festival, and was promoting his magazine Creative Nonfiction and his new book about travelling cross-country with his son.  The session had the same problem as my main issue with the Sydney Writers’ Festival: too much promotion and not enough learning.  Nevertheless, his website can be found here.  The website for the magazine can be found here.

Of course, this is not to say the talk itself was not fascinating.  According to Gutkind, creative non-fiction was the future of writing and publishing.  Creative non-fiction was breaking into education.  Law, medicine, engineering — disciplines previously dominated by textbooks are now using creative non-fiction to teach the new generation.

I can understand why, because textbooks are bloody boring.  It’s much easier to remember elements of a story than rote learn a list.  That’s why when I studied law, it was always easier to remember the facts of a case than sections of a statute.

Actually, a lot of the creative writing stories I have been doing for my classes could be classified as creative non-fiction because many of them were based in fact, if not entirely true.  I definitely see the appeal in such writing because it’s a different type of challenge.  Rather than coming up with a brand new story from scratch, you already have the story right there — you just have to find a way to tell it in a way that is compelling and connects with your audience.

Lee finished his talk with an extract reading of Gay Talese’s creative non-fictional piece, “Frank Sinatra has a Cold”, which was published in Esquire in April 1966 and is regarded as one of the best creative non-fiction stories ever.  Esquire even declared it the “Best Story Esquire Ever Published” in 2003.  It actually is very good.  Check it out here.

PS: When I entered the auditorium, I saw copies of the latest issue of Creative Nonfiction and Lee’s new book on a table by the front.  Thinking that it was free, I almost grabbed a copy, only to find out later that the whole point of the talk was so that he could sell them.  Oops.

Indian Journey Part XI: Hello Delhi! July 5, 2010

Posted by pacejmiller in India, Travel.
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Our flight to Delhi took off around 4pm.  We got to the so-called award-winning Hyderabad airport (which caters for both domestic and international flights) at around 12:30pm and had, you won’t believe this, Pizza Hut for lunch.  There wasn’t much choice once you’ve checked in, and we opted for the most familiar, but most expensive choice.  To be fair, the pizzas were pretty good.

Hyderabad to Delhi was roughly two-hours.  When we exited customs and gathered our luggage, we looked for a sign with my name on it.  This was harder than it sounds because there were literally dozens of people with signs out there.  Anyway, we found our man, a smiling Indian fellow with the surname Kumar (as in “Harold and Kumar”).  He spoke excellent English and was very friendly.

The drive from the airport to The Park Hotel (where we stayed) was about half an hour with some traffic.  Delhi is split into “Old Delhi” and “New Delhi”, the latter of which is the capital of India.  It’s more of a metropolis than Hyderabad, but it’s nowhere near as crazy as Mumbai, Kumar tells us.  Mumbai (Kumar likes to call it “Bombay”, it’s former name) is all Bollywood, whereas Delhi is more serious.

We had arrived at possibly the worst time of the year.  It was the hottest time of the year — hotter than a freaking furnace (seriously, you could have told me I was on fire and I would have believed you), and dustier than a monster truck rally thanks to the construction taking place for the Commonwealth Games in October.  Everywhere we looked, construction was taking place, especially the Delhi metro, which was already operating but a lot more needed to be done.

Near our hotel we saw an electronic sign saying that there were only 107 days left till the Commonwealth Games.  Kumar says they’ll get everything done in time because they have people literally working around the clock, 24 hours a day.  We saw workers either sleeping on the ground or in makeshift tents on the actual construction sites.  It was kind of scary and depressing.

The Park Hotel where we stayed is rated 5-stars, but it’s not quite as extravagant as some of the other luxury hotels in Delhi like the Oberoi, ITC Maurya, The Taj Palace, Claridges, the Lalit, the Shangri-La and the Sheraton.  However, it was still very good — clean and the well-equipped — and besides, we were only there to sleep.

We were pretty tired by the time we checked in and threw our bags down in the small but excellent hotel room.  Too tired to go out, and having agreed with Kumar that we’d leave for Agra (to see the Taj Mahal) at 7am the next morning, we decided to have dinner at the hotel restaurant, called “Fire” (probably named after how it felt outside).

Let me tell you, Fire ended up being our best meal in India.  Sure, it was expensive, but the dishes were catered towards foreigners and we absolutely fell for the heavy cream and strong flavours.  The initial free appetizer was sublime, their naan was quality, and yes, we ordered butter chicken and chicken tikka.  It’s so sad but it really was delicious!  We also had this eggplant thing which was very nice too.

This free appetizer was awesome, but I can't tell you what it was

The stuff we ordered was great too

With heavy heads and heavier stomachs, we retreated to our rooms, watched a bit of soccer and promptly fell asleep.

Indian Journey Part X: Testing Patience July 5, 2010

Posted by pacejmiller in India, Travel.
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Our time in Hyderabad was drawing to a close, and it was time for us to prepare for the next leg of our journey, a short stay in Delhi.  It wasn’t every year that we’d get an opportunity to visit India, so we thought we’d make the best of it.  There were several other options (such as Mumbai and Cochin), but in the end we settled on Delhi and the Taj Mahal.

Well, as it turned out, preparations for the Delhi trip was a test of patience.  It had to be planned seamlessly because we were going to arrive in Delhi after 6pm at night, take a day trip to Agra (for the Taj) on the second day, and the third day would be spent sightseeing in Delhi before catching a red-eye flight to Hong Kong that night.

Having had numerous warnings about touring in India without a local guide, we knew how important it was to have everything ready in advance — from the hotel to the airport transfer to the personal taxi.  The last thing we wanted was to arrive at Delhi airport without anyone to pick us up and no hotel to stay at!

Anyway, we began looking around about a month before our trip, but my marrying mate told us that his dad knew some people who knew someone that could arrange the whole thing for us at a good price.  Excellent!  It’s always good to know someone local that knows what they’re doing and can put our minds at ease.

Well, things didn’t turn out as easy as we expected.  After not hearing back for a week or so, I contacted my friend’s father who said basically they had a family friend who went with this agency in Delhi and thought it was pretty good.  He then emailed me the correspondence he had with the tour group (Golden Triangle Tours), which included a draft itinerary.

It included: 2 nights stay at the 5-star The Park Hotel near Connaught Place (essentially the centre of town) and a personal driver who would pick us up and drop us off at the airport, take us to Agra for one day and drive us around to see Delhi’s main attractions for another.  We’d also get a local guide in Agra to show us around the Taj.  All for US$550.  We actually could have probably gotten it cheaper had we booked it ourselves (through this place — Intrepid Tours) and gotten an even better hotel (such as the Oberoi), but going through our friends was less hassle…or so we thought!

Problem number 1: email issues.  For some reason, my emails go through to my friend but not all of his emails go through to me.  I know this for certain because others in group emails have gotten the emails I’ve missed.  As a result, the correspondence between me, my friend, and his dad, was all over the place.  All I got was the draft itinerary, and even though I was promised an updated one (with some small amendments), I never ended up getting it.  We were told not to worry and everything, including payment, would be sorted out once we got to Hyderabad.

Problem number 2: families where a member is getting married are busy — very very busy.  When we arrived in Hyderabad, I spoke to my friend’s dad at the first available opportunity to ask whether our Delhi arrangements were “locked in”.  Yes, it was locked in, I was told, but he still had to call the guy to confirm and to give him our flight details.  He would do this after the morning session.

For the next day and a half, I didn’t want to bother them.  They were ridiculously, insanely busy, and I doubt any of them got much sleep.  And so I stayed silent until the last day, until after the couple were wedded, before asking again.  Oops, amidst the chaos, the Delhi arrangements had been forgotten.  But don’t fear, my friend’s brother would help us sort things out.  He’d call the guy this afternoon and then call or message me.

Problem number 3: poor telephone networks.  We waited and waited that afternoon but didn’t receive any calls or messages.  I tried calling with my roaming phone but couldn’t get through.  Understandably, we were a little concerned because we were flying out to Delhi the next afternoon.  I tried calling using a land line in the hotel that night, but no one picked up.  I tried emailing to their Blackberries, but no response either.  As expected, they were still immersed in the festivities.  By the time I went to sleep that night, it would be fair to say that at this point I was freaking out a bit.

The next morning, I finally got through on the land line.  As it turned out, my friend’s brother had sent me a lengthy text telling me that everything was okay except that I had to contact the guy myself to give him our flight details.  Unfortunately, such was the nature of the Australian and Indian telecommunication networks!  Nothing came through!  My emergency texts sent the night before weren’t even received until the day after that!

So we called the guy (it was 10am but I’m sure I woke him up) and finally got everything sorted out over the phone.  Yes, someone would be there to pick us up and drop us off at The Park Hotel that night.

Talk about a sigh of relief!

And here’s one of the best songs ever!