Michael Steinberg

Metro Times "My Life, According to Me. Former MSU Prof Touts the 'Fourth Genre'" 12/​22/​2004
Metro Times.

A virtual conversation with Michael Steinberg
Interviewer: Donna Lee Brien, Queensland University of Technology
Creative Nonfiction 2:

The following is extracted from email conversations and the author's publications as detailed in the references at the end of this article. (See Appendix)
Queensland University Interview.

Emerging Writers Forum
Interview With Michael Steinberg, Author of Still Pitching
Conducted by Dan Wickett, 1/​1/​04

The following is an interview with Michael Steinberg, author of the recent memoir, STILL PITCHING (2003). He is the founding editor of the award-winning literary journal, FOURTH GENRE:EXPLORATIONS IN NONFICTION. He's also edited a collection, PENINSULA: ESSAY AND MEMOIRS FROM MICHIGAN (2000), co-edited an anthology, THE FOURTH GENRE: CONTEMPORARY WRITERS OF/​ON CREATIVE NONFICTION (1998, 001,2004), and the sourcebook, THOSE WHO DO CAN: TEACHERS WRITING, WRITERS TEACHING
(1996)--in addition to co-authoring both THE WRITER'S WAY (1979, 80, and 81), and a stage play, I'M ALMOST FAMOUS (1982).


Dan:

Hello Michael, thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions.

Michael:

My pleasure, Dan.

Dan:

You've done a lot of editing of books in the past, as compared to the writing of this memoir. What skills does an editor need to bring to the table to pull off putting together a good collection?

Michael:

The most important skill/​challenge is also the most obvious one—picking the right work. That, and choosing pieces which are stylistically and structurally diverse, and at the same time complement one other. The other concern is how to arrange the pieces. PENINSULA is an
anthology/​collection of essays and memoirs about Michigan. THE FOURTH GENRE is an anthology/​collection of essays and memoirs on/​about creative nonfiction. And the literary journal, FOURTH GENRE, is also a collection of sorts.

In editing PENINSULA I had to decide whether to arrange the book by geographical location or theme--or simply by listing the pieces in alphabetical order. I eliminated geography and theme because I felt that both categories seemed too much like the academic and categorical
readers that college writing teachers use. I wanted the reader of PENINSULA to feel free to pick up the book and read it in whatever order he/​she wished. The least intrusive way to edit/​arrange the collection then, was the alphabetical listing. The FOURTH GENRE (anthology) and the literary journal presented somewhat different challenges. But the same criteria still apply; choosing diverse work and arranging the pieces in an aesthetically pleasing way.

Dan:

You also spent some time co-writing the stage play, I'M ALMOST FAMOUS. What was it like writing a play, and how did you like co-writing?

Michael:

I've been a collaborator on a lot of projects--from my first book, THE WRITER'S WAY, to co-editing the literary journal. I'm also drawn to Team sports and I've directed many plays--both of which are also forms of collaboration. But in co-writing the play, I found it more difficult to compromise because it's an imaginative construction--an invention. And trying to integrate two different sensibilities, imaginations, and Voices seemed more confusing than helpful. So as a compromise, we each wrote different scenes and then edited one another's writing. And during the rehearsal period, the director and the actors added their own suggestions. The play fell together in some mysterious way--the way a lot of theater projects seem to do. It ran for eight weeks in Chicago, but it wasn't an altogether satisfying experience. After it closed, I told myself that I'd never collaborate on a literary/​imaginative work (poem, story, essay/​memoir, or play) again.

Dan:

I understand that you came to Michigan to attend graduate school. Have you lived in Michigan ever since then? How long after you began to live in Michigan did you begin to put together your essay collection about the state?

Michael:

Place plays an important role in how we define ourselves. I've lived in Michigan for almost four decades and I still think of myself as a displaced New Yorker. I've written several pieces about that feeling of dislocation. I didn't do PENINSULA until the late 90's. Bob Root, who I've co-edited a few books with, suggested that I edit a collection of Essays and memoirs about Michigan. He thought that as an outsider/​observer, I'd bring a less romanticized view to the project. An understatement, at best. Sorting through all those pieces--and having to write my own--gradually altered my view of Michigan. Mainly because of the power, passion, and imagination in the writing, by the time I finished the book, the Michigan I'd resisted embracing for so many years now seemed to be a more complex and interesting place.

Dan:

Most of the remaining questions will deal specifically with your memoir, STILL PITCHING, or topics you bring up in it. First off, did you have any qualms about writing a memoir and getting as personal as you did? Did you ever consider taking the topic material and writing a novel?

Michael:

In writing a memoir, you can't help but be personal. But the impulse to write this memoir wasn't to reveal my personal history so much as it was to try and discover how the kid who used to be me became the person I am now. To do that, I had to explore and interrogate my most vivid and jarring childhood memories. What I found was that my early influences and predispositions--being an self-proclaimed outsider/​underdog, an avid reader, and a baseball aficionado--were major factors in shaping my adult self. In memoir, there's no other way to proceed without revealing yourself to yourself. The personal revelations and confessions, I found, weren't significant in and of themselves, they became important only as they served the larger story I was trying to discover/​tell.

In some ways, writing a childhood memoir is about creating your own mythology. The best you can do is to recreate a version of who you think you once were. When I'm writing scenes that are intimate or personal, I'm always aware that these aren't literal renderings of remembered situations and events. They're the raw materials I need to shape the narrative. In writing the memoir, I'm all the time trying to figure out something about myself--and hopefully about human nature--in other words, things that I couldn't discover any other way. And if I'm emotionally honest in my search--if I can render and reveal my inner struggles to the reader--he/​she might be able to understand and enter the narrative--and maybe ever identify with my story. I like Patricia Hampl's statement about memoir. She says, "You tell me your story, I get mine." That's exactly what I hope for when I write.

As for the second part of the question, I've never had the impulse to fictionalize the material. I think that writing essays and memoirs suits my natural bent. My imagination is actually freer when I'm writing about things I've experienced and/​or felt but don't fully understand. Writing memoir, like writing fiction or lyric poetry, is just another way of seeing--in this case, using memory and language to imagine/​interpret your own life.

Dan:

How did you go about deciding which names could be accurate, and which needed to be changed? We're any of the people depicted in the memoir actually compilations of more than one person?

Michael:

As my friend Mimi Schwartz always says, "Have some compassion. The people in your memoir didn't ask to be there. "On the other hand, they're part of the story you're writing. That's the ethical dilemma most memoirists face. To make it short, I changed only the names of those people, mostly minor characters, who I may have said some unkind things about. But I did keep the real names of the people who are the most prominent characters. When all is said and done, this is only my version of these people and of what happened. They become characters in my book/​story. Unfair, maybe. Unethical, I'm not so sure. But for the memoirist whose intent is to make literature out of life, what are the options? And no, I didn't use composite characters, though there are two coaches in the book who are so similar in temperament and disposition that if I didn't know them, I'd swear they were the same person.

Dan:

You actually depict conversations in the memoir. How accurate do you believe a memoirist needs to be in such instances?

Michael:

In most scenes where there's dialogue, I'm trying to render a feeling and/​or a mood--usually a tension or unresolved conflict of one sort or another. I write the dialogue/​conversation not as it actually was said—no one can honestly remember that unless they're taping everything. I write the dialogue as best I can remember it--and as it best serves the scene or situation I'm writing. Once again, this is a literary construct, not a literal rendition or transcript of what was said. For example, in a locker room scene with one of the coaches I mentioned earlier, he told me unequivocally that he wanted me to be the water boy for the football team, instead of inviting me to try out for the baseball team as I'd expected. I can't remember the exact words that we both said, but I'll never forget that awful sensation of humiliation and profound disappointment. And that's precisely the feeling I want to convey through the dialogue.

Dan:

Your grandfather had a love of horse racing and everything that went along with it, and took you to the track frequently when you were young. Do you still have the affection for the track that you had as a child?

Michael:

What I got from my grandfather was the permission to explore the things I was curious about. He was a horse racing aficionado, and I admired his knowledge and love of that world. As a kid, I wished I was as passionate about something as he was about the horses. Maybe because I saw him indulging that passion, I learned later on how to indulge my own. What going to the track was to him, going to Ebbets Field to watch the Dodgers was to me. I still feel that same wonder and awe whenever I'm in a baseball stadium.

Dan:

Growing up in New York, during the fifties, a baseball fan such as yourself must have been in Heaven. The Yankees, Giants and Dodgers dominated the decade in terms of playing in, and winning, the World Series. You were drawn to the Dodgers, mainly in your belief, because of their being the underdogs of those three teams as you began to pay attention to the sport. Do you believe that they would not have been your team if they were more successful before you became interested in the game?

Michael:

Actually, growing up in that environment was more like being on a battle field than it was a vision of Heaven. My parents were Giant fans, the rich, popular kids in the cliques wereYankee fans, and the underdogs and outsiders like me were Dodger fans. At the dinner table and in the schoolyards and on the ball fields, I was always having to defend and stick up for the Dodgers, who lost the '51 playoff to the Giants after blowing a thirteen and a half game lead in August-- and who year after year came close, but could never (until 1955) beat the Yankees in the World Series. Who do you think won most of those arguments?

Yes, I identified with Dodgers because they were a reflection of how I saw myself. And yes, they were the underdogs. And to the press and fans, they were perennial losers. But like Jackie Robinson, the first black player in the major leagues, they were resilient and determined. I admired their persistence and will. Because they never gave up, they finally did win a World Series in 1955. In that way, they were perfect role models for the likes of me. If they could come back from so much adversity, I thought, then so could I. And in some ways that's the self-created story/​mythology of my childhood.

Dan:

As the decade neared it's end, the team followed the Giants out to California (though it certainly sounded as if their decision was made long before that). Do you believe that this move began the process of sports becoming a business, and not a means of wealthy individuals to enjoy their money with hobbies?

Michael:

I think that professional sports has always been a business. The 1919 Black Sox scandal made that much clear. Besides, the Dodgers and Giants were not the first major league teams to shift cities. The St. Louis Browns and Boston Braves moved their franchises earlier in the 50's. NBA and NFL teams also moved with some regularity The Dodgers and Giants' move to California got more publicity because both teams were from New York, and because both had seemingly successful organizations. From 1947-57, t he Dodgers were in the World Series five times and won it once (1955). The Giants were in the World Series twice during that same period, and they won it once (1954) as well. Having said that, the move was a wake-up call to those of us kids who wanted to entertain the fantasy that the game was not a business. Before free agency and the player's union arrived in the early '70's, players--even the highest paid ones--were virtually indentured slaves. The owners set the salary limits and player had few options but to comply. So, in some ways, the good old days weren't so good, after all. It was great for the fans, but not for the players.

Dan:

As you wrote the book, were you surprised at all of how successful you really were in your youth?

Michael:

It's interesting to hear you say that. I wrote a piece about my struggle with my high school coach that won The Missouri Review Editor's Prize in 1994. And in the editor's notes, Speer Morgan wrote "Michael Steinberg's demon was....the ceaseless, seldom satisfied habit of striving. Steinberg wanted to be an athlete, and he struggled against his own limited talents and against a high school coach who he thought was bent on humiliating him. Like many young athletes, fierce with drive and desire, he was scarcely aware of his own accomplishments, and for years he was not aware of the skill with which his coach managed him."

I think that's a pretty accurate depiction of my m.o. even today. I admit that I did feel vindicated by my childhood success. But it didn't last long. Pretty soon after, I was playing college ball and struggling all over again. Even today, I still have a fierce drive and desire--only now it's been channeled into my writing. And we all know that writers are never fully satisfied with what they write. For a short period of time, we might feel some pride or success. And it's an earned satisfaction. But then we become restless and itchy to write something else, to reach beyond what we accomplished in the last book. A friend of mine, a very successful writer, just came back from a US book tour where he was very well received. In a month, he'll be touring in Europe. Yet in his last email to me he said that he needed to write a few short stories in the interim just to prove to himself that he isn't a fraud.

Dan:

As you accomplished many of your goals - getting a varsity letter in baseball, becoming an editor of the high school paper, and finding the right woman – have you exorcised the loser mentality that you dragged around in your earlier years?

Michael:

As a New York Jew, that "loser" mentality," as you so accurately put it, is partly embedded in my personality, and partly it's a persona that I've adopted mainly out of habit--much like Woody Allen when he plays the bumbling nebbish in his own films. It's him and it's not him. Now , as an adult, I don't think of it as a loser mentality so much as it was a lack of confidence in my abilities--no matter what the evidence to the contrary might be. As a ball player or high school sports editor, or even in pursuit of the right woman, I was always comparing myself with the better players, the better writers, and the most successful ladies' men in school. I can see now how self-defeating that point of view was. But it was also the source of my resilience and will--my continual need to keep striving, to keep on proving (and improving) myself. Though the loss of confidence doesn't dominate and define me anymore, there are still traces of it in my character. And just as it was back then, sometimes those confidence lapses set me back, and sometimes they make me push myself harder than I might without those prods.

Dan:

One of the things I noticed is that you had a female friend, Carole, that you actually liked, setting you up on dates. In none of those cases were you really suited for the girl she set you up with. Seeing that you and Carole ended up together, have you been able to get her to admit that she wasn't really trying all that hard to find the right woman for you?

Michael:

Oops, sorry to confuse you on that one. A lot of people who know me thought that the Carole who was my platonic friend and confidante in the book is the same Carole as the woman I later married. But they're two different people. In the final version of the book, I identified the one in the memoir as Carole Wertheimer and the other (my future wife) as Carole Berk. Both of them went to the same high school as I did. But I didn't meet Carole Berk until I was in college.

Dan:

As a huge baseball fan of the fifties, did you read at least the prologue of Delillo's UNDERWORLD? If so, how did you like it?

Michael:

I still have the original version that was published as an insert in Harpers. It was surreal--Sinatra, Kennedy??, J. Edgar Hoover, et. al. at the Polo Grounds for the '51 playoff game--the one that eventually went down in history as one of the most dramatic baseball games ever played. Even though it was fantasy, he captured all the details, got the facts right, and created the feeling what it was like to be there. It transported me back in time to the days when my father used to take us to the Polo Grounds to watch the Giants and Dodgers go at it.

Dan:

Your book was published by Michigan State Univeristy Press. I know they are also publishing a memoir of poet Ruth Schwartz in the Spring of 2004. How did you come about getting published by them? Are they known for their memoir publishing?

Michael:

I published my last book, PENINSULA with the MSU Press. And the journal I edit, FOURTH GENRE, is also the province of the MSU Press. So yes, creative/​literary nonfiction is part of what they're known for. I also like the line of literary books--especially the poetry series--that they've been publishing for the last five-seven years. All of their literary books--creative nonfiction, poetry, and fiction-- are well-written and beautifully designed. I'm happy to be part of that group.

Also, my editor, Martha Bates, was a perfect match for this book. She's a New Yorker who grew up at roughly the same time I did. And she's a baseball lover who knows more about the game than even I do. In addition, I liked the idea that I could meet with her periodically during the writing of the book as well as throughout the entire journey from contract to final copy. I also knew everyone on the staff. They're committed to doing good work, and they love literature and the arts. Whenever I want to talk about books, I go over there and we sit around and schmooze about what we're reading. And when it came time to discuss design, production, photos, distribution, marketing, publicity, etc., they made sure to include my suggestions in the mix. Even though they made the final decisions, I felt as if I was part of the whole publishing process. It was all very personal, and at the same time, very professional. An unusually gratifying experience and education.

Dan:

I understand that you did a reading recently at Newtonville Books in the Boston area and that Dennis Lehane introduced you. How did that come about? What did you think about Tim's store?

Michael:

I'd recommend Newtonville Books to any writers who happen to be on tour and/​or in the Boston area. Tim Huggins is the most congenial, accommodating, and writer-friendly bookstore owner I've had the pleasure to work with. It's a wonderful independent bookstore with a funky and inviting reading space, and a regular crowd of interested readers. Tim is a class act. After the reading and signing, Tim takes everyone down the street to a cafe to meet for some drinks and conversation.

Dan:

I understand that you also teach. How do you enjoy that and how do you think it affects your decisions, specifically as an editor?

Michael:

This is something I could (and might) write a book about. Suffice to say here that I love to teach and edit the journal. And I'll gladly talk about writing to anyone who is curious and interested. But I find that as I get older, and as my own writing becomes more urgent and inviting, I find that I wind up serving three passions at once (teaching, editing, and writing). It's something I've written about many times. All three, I think, are callings rather than professions or jobs. For example, I'm always reading student work, journal submissions and my own work in progress, as well as reading for my own pleasure and self-enrichment. All of these take concentration, energy, and commitment--not to mention the time you put in preparing to teach. Still, depending on a host of variables--deadlines, moods, pressing personal matters, having a good or bad day, how tired or alert you are, etc., teaching and editing can steal time and energy away from writing--or they can energize the writing.

As for how teaching affect my decisions as an editor, I think they each demand separate mind sets. As a teacher, I'm more interested in the writer's process, not the final, polished draft. My charge is to help the writer find options and opportunities to improve his/​her craft. As an editor, I'm judging the quality of the work. However, there is some teaching involved here as well. There are times when we'll suggest some changes to writers whose pieces we've already accepted. It's up to them to take or leave those suggestions as they see fit. Then there are the "almosts," the pieces we send out to readers who then write reports that include suggestions for the writer. David Cooper, the co-editor and I sift through those responses and edit them before we send the reader's notes (along with our own suggestions) to the writers. Often, writers will contact us when they receive the notes. It's that kind of give-and-take that I like most about being an editor. That, and sending out acceptance letters.

Dan:

Finally, if you were a character in FAHRENHEIT 451, what work(s) would you memorize for posterity?

Michael:

Different books become favorites at different times of life. But off the top of my head, I'd say Huck Finn, Catch-22, The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, Portrait of a Lady, and Straight Man. There are a lot of others--fiction, poetry, and nonfiction--that I'd have to think about before I could offer more titles.

Dan:

Thanks again Michael - I certainly hope anybody reading this who grew up a baseball fan in the fifties is paying attention. Also, anybody with a young boy facing any self-confidence issues.

Michael:

Thanks for taking the time and trouble do this, Dan. Reading these interviews, I've learned some helpful things about writing and how writing is made. And some of them have helped reinforce what I already think and feel. Which is always reassuring and comforting.

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INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL STEINBERG--AUTHOR, STILL PITCHING: A MEMOIR

Q. What prompted you to write Still Pitching?

A. It began as a memoir about how my passion for baseball led to my becoming a writer. But I realized I was trying to cover way too much ground--and too many years. One reader kept telling me that the childhood sections were the richest in the memoir. And she was right. Until I understood my childhood history, I couldn't write very convincingly about my adulthood.

Q. There are a lot of memoirs about growing up in New York in the 50’s. How is Still Pitching different the others?

A. You always think your book is different because you wrote it. That’s because you’re fashioning your own mythology. But what’s different about Still Pitching is that it uses baseball--both playing and watching the sport--as a lens through which I look at my childhood. One of the reasons you write a memoir is to try and find out which people and events helped shape you into the person you are. The book is about some of those people and events: but the most influential shaping force in my childhood, I found, was my love for baseball. So I organized the memoir around that discovery.

Q. What do you hope people will take away from reading your book?

A. That it’s not just a book about baseball, or being a die-hard Dodger fan, or even growing up Jewish in New York in the 50’s. Those are the facts, of course. But the book is about yearning and striving. About wanting and not getting. Everything you want in life is a tradeoff and a struggle. In order for a goal to be meaningful, you have to earn it. It doesn’t matter if it’s making the high school baseball team or wanting to sing lead soprano at the Met.
Talent is important, of course. But it won’t get you anywhere without determination, preparation, and rigor. Still Pitching focuses not on heroic results, but on the struggle, on doing the hard work. That’s where the real achievement and satisfactions are.
A colleague observed recently “the way most people learn to succeed is through the slow, steady accrual of accomplishment by dint of passion and intelligence and careful management of what one is given.”
It’s a notion, it seems to me, we can all relate to.

Q. What surprised you most in writing this book?

A. It’s something I should have anticipated but didn’t--the old “art imitates life” cliché. I found that writing the book was as difficult, and humbling, as exhilarating and discouraging--as the struggle to make myself into a baseball pitcher. In other words, it took the same kind of resilience, passion, and force of will--as well as the ability to fend off constant bouts of self doubt--you know, the voice in your head that whispers, “whatever made you think you could write this book in the first place?”
The loss of confidence and how we regain it is something everyone, not just writers, has to contend with.


Q. What part did baseball play in helping you to become so tenacious?

A. In writing a childhood memoir, we’re also creating our own personal mythology. It’s all speculation, of course, but in one of the things I tell myself is that because I was a relief pitcher, specifically a “closer,” I had to finish every game or else suffer the humiliation of failing in front of a lot of people. That’s one of the reasons I make most of my deadlines and finish most every piece of writing I begin. But promise me you won’t tell my editor I said that.
Another thing is that as a kid growing up during “the golden age of New York baseball,” the team I identified with was the Brooklyn Dodgers--the city’s perennial also-rans and underachievers. Everyone knows the story of how they lost the ‘51 pennant to the Giants after blowing thirteen and half game lead. Add to that the disappointment of all those World Series losses to the Yankees. But they still managed to remain a resilient and determined team, until in 1955 they finally won a World Series.
I saw their story and my own as synonymous.

Q. That was almost fifty years ago. Is baseball still a big part of your life?

A. We all know how much the game has changed over the last five decades. For years after the Dodgers left Brooklyn, I felt betrayed by them and by baseball. So, for a long time, I fell away from the game. After I quit playing, the only ball games I went to were in the old parks like Wrigley and Fenway--mostly when I was on a trip or vacation. But about five years ago, while writing a memoir, called “Elegy for Ebbets,” I found myself feeling that old pull again.
Pete Hamill, the wonderful New York writer, articulates it best. Why,” Hamill writes, “are the middle-aged almost always talking, at the risk of maudlin cliché, about the ‘old Neighborhood’, about places gone and buried, about Ebbets Field and Birdland, the Cedar Tavern and the old Paramount. The reason is simple. In those places, they were happy. Sentimentality is always a form of resentment.”
It’s true that I was angry at the game for decades. That’s why I find it so interesting that baseball became the subject of my first memoir. It was the writing that brought me back to the game. As a kid, it was just the opposite. Playing ball and following the Dodgers left me little time for doing much of anything else.

Q. You’re writing about real people in this memoir, some of who are still alive. What’s the ethical dilemma in that?

A. Every memoirist has to find his/​her own answer to that that question. Mine is that this is only one version of what happened. It’s true as one of my colleagues says, “those people didn’t ask to be in your book.” But as memoirists, we can only draw on our own experience and perceptions of situations and people. And of course, our flawed memories. The writer Pam Houston once said, “I’m not going to tell you the story the way it happened. I’m going to tell it to you the way I remember it.”
Let me give you a brief example. The first piece I wrote that got any real attention was a memoir about my grandfather, a notorious horseplayer. He took me to the track when I was a kid, which was certainly a big adventure. I was so proud of the piece that I showed it to my mother and aunt, both of who were his children. I was devastated when each of them told me that he wasn’t anything like the character I’d described in my memoir. When I got over my disappointment, I realized that the person I was writing about was my grandfather. And I was telling the story from the point of view of a ten-year-old boy who idolized and idealized him. The person they were remembering was their father. They had a different relationship to him than I did. Consequently, they saw him in a much different light.

Q. So, what are a memoirist’s responsibilities?

A. That’s a more complicated issue than I can do justice to here. Let me first distinguish between two different types of memoir. The impulse to write a memoir that’s meant to record or preserve say, a family history, or a memoir that’s written to retell a story as accurately as possible, is not the same as the impulse to write a literary memoir. One reason I write memoir is to find out things about myself and my relation to other people that I couldn’t discover any other way. I’m not trying to document an objective or literal “truth.” What I’m after is a transformation of sorts. That is, I’m using my childhood experiences as raw materials to craft a memoir. And memory and imagination of course play a big part in that transformation.
In other words, I don’t deliberately try and distort what happened. But I do try and utilize my experiences to achieve what Annie Dillard describes as “fashioning a text.” And the truth of the constructed text will always be different from the truth of objective reality, if there even is such a thing.

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