lifestyles
EXPANDING FICTION'S FRONTIERS
A KU graduate has hit the big time with a novel about the people and places of central Kansas.
Stories by Jake Arnold Kansan staff writer
"With fiction...I take my experiences and fracture them."
Scott Heim
Scott Helm author of the book Mysterious Skin
Scott Heim, born and raised in Kansas, is returning to the source of his inspiration. Heim will stop in Lawrence as part of a two-week promotional tour. He will give public readings of his work at 7:30 p.m. March 30 at the Spencer Museum of Art,
Museum of Art. and at 8 p.m.March
He also will sign books at 11:30 a.m.
March 30 at the Kansas Union Bookstore.
31 at Terra Nova Books, 920 Massachusetts St.
Heim's book, "Mysterious Skin," has received positive reviews.
"Reviews are a little nerve-wracking," Heim said. "Even in good reviews they nitpick on something."
"Mysterious Skin" is set in and around Hutchinson. It is a disturbing and graphic tale of two boys who have been sexually abused by a little-league coach. One boy can't remember the molestation and thinks he was abducted by aliens. The other views it as a positive and loving experience.
The narrative is made more complex as Heim follows the main characters' lives from their own vantage points and from those of other characters.
Heim was born in Hutchinson and grew up in the nearby town of Little River. The small town plays prominently in the book.
"I still have really strong sensory memories of Kansas, but I have to take
a road trip to get the details," said Heim, who lives in New York. City.
I inevitably, people wonder how much of the book's disturbing material has an element of truth.
"People assume first novels are auto biographical," Heim said. "The emotions behind it are true. If you don't write from what you know, it doesn't ring true."
Heim wouldn't say how much of the novel was true or based on truth.
"If people ask me really personal questions, I say it is fiction," he said. "I like letting people wonder if it really happened to me."
Heim uses fiction as a variance of the truth.
"With fiction, you can take personal experiences and let your mind do whatever you want," he said. "I take my experiences and fracture them."
Heim, 28, has been doing this for a long time.
"In grade school, I wrote horror stories to scare my friends," he said. "If I am not writing every day, it is frustrating. There is a force pushing me on."
Heim did not take his writing seriously until he attended the University of Kansas. There he discovered another force that would push him: Carolyn Doty.
Doty, associate professor of English, teaches fiction writing.
"I was going, 'Do I want to be a writer?' and she pushed me," Heim said. "I think Doty is a visionary."
"He has a very strong voice in his work," she said...
Heim earned a B.A. and an M.A. at Kansas before earning an M.F.A. from Columbia University in 1993.
"Doty was the most influential on my writing career," Heim said. "I had
Although he recognizes Columbia's prestigious writing reputation, Heim gives much of the credit of his success to Doty.
teachers at Columbia that were really good, but she came along at the right time."
Doty directed his thesis, a collection of poetry, and at her suggestion, he moved to New York, where he supports himself by working part-time for a literary agent and doing free-lance copy editing.
"I have sought her advice and help along the way," he said of Doty. "I was advised that if I was really serious about writing, go to New York. It is the publishing center of the world, and I have met a lot of influential people. It is a competitive atmosphere.
"Writing is a lonely thing. A sense of community is good."
Connie May Fowler, a former student of Doty's, has published Sugar Cage and River of Hidden Drawings.
Carolyn Doty
Doty's fourth novel, Whisper, was published in 1992.
his money anyway. I wrote a story a week to punish him."
"This is the first time in 20 years I am not working on a novel," she said "I don't have all those people walking around in my brain. You get sick
MENTOR FINDS WRITERS' POTENTIAL
of them, like you would family. When it is done, I tell my agent, 'My people are coming to live with you.'
Scott Heim was not the first student Carolyn Doty pushed in the right direction.
Now, Doty's family consists of three cats, although she is slightly allergic to them.
"She gave me the courage," Fowler said. "If I had not met Carolyn Doty, I wouldn't be writing today. She is not a pushover. I have never seen anyone as good at zeroing in on a story's weakness."
"I can talk to them, and they look like they understand," she said. "Husbands tend to talk to you. I never liked that much."
Doty has two ex-husbands and two grown children.
Sugar Cage started as a short story in one of Doty's fiction-writing classes. Dotty saw the seed of a novel
Doty taught at the University of California-Irvine before moving here nine years ago. She discovered a different, interesting fiction.
"It is like a Midwest Gothic," she said. "It comes strangely, partly from the landscape. There is a strong fundamentalist religious element. A lot of writing comes against that."
class, and Doty went, too. She kept going for three years, despite a tough teacher.
Doty took awhile to find her potential. She had a bachelor of fine arts degree in drawing and painting but didn't start writing until she was 35. A friend took a short story writing
"People would cry in his class." Doty said. "He said he didn't give a damn about the class because he got
Doty runs her classes in a workshop format. Students analyze other students' work aid are graded on their criticisms.
"I think I'm really demanding," she said when evaluating her teaching style. "I think I push my students as hard as they can be pushed.
Doty said she had never told a student to give up writing. However, she said students gave up because their work doesn't compare to others in the class or because it is hard
Doty has no intentions of giving up teaching.
"Writing is a terribly difficult thing to do and terribly difficult to succeed at."
"I think I have the best job in the universe," she said. "I'm 53, and I have had a really good time."
Powerful novel gets under one's skin
By Nathan Olson
Features editor
In that fateful five-hour period, Brian and Neil Cornmück, both 8 years old, are sexually abused by their little-league coach in the coach's house in Hutchinson. For Brian, the event is to be forgotten: It is so traumatic that Brian can only endure it by closing his eyes and imagining himself being abducted by aliens.
"The summer I was 8 years old, five hours disappeared from my life."
These tanzalizing words open KU graduate Scott Heim's first novel, *Mysterious Skin*. They are spoken by one of the novel's two protagonists, Brian Lackey.
For Brian's friend Neil, the experience is more of an awakening. Convinced that the experience was an expression of love, he quickly comes to accept his homosexuality as an important part of his life. He uses it for power over others, for money from lonely older men and for escape from the plains of central Kansas.
But the story, at least until the last few chapters, belongs to Brian. Neil remembers the important details from that day, but Brian's attempt to piece together the bits he remembers becomes the novel's driving force. His attempt takes him to
Avalyn Friesen, a woman who claims she was abducted by a UFO.
The book succeeds in more ways than I can articulate in the space I'm allowed. Heim has a tremendous ability to show characters' personalities, from shyness (Brian) to arrogance (Neil) to uncertainty (Eric Preston, a mutual friend of the two). The dynamic of the Lackey household, with an emotionally and possibly physically abusive father, is haunting and real.
Eventually, Brian finds out that Neil, not UFOs, had something to do with that day, but by that point Neil has left for New York. When Neil returns for Christmas and the two finally meet — for the first time since the abuse — we hear the full story
Minor characters, too, are given real voices. My favorite is Neil's mother, an alcoholic who is just as much of an outcast as Neil but who always retains some dignity and intelligence.
Of the two main characters, Neil's character is handled with an incredible amount of sensitivity and subtlety. Just when I start to lose sympathy, Neil appears human, especially in the last few chapters, when the realities and horrors of prostitution are explicitly made known to him. By the end of the novel, he appears as small and child-like as Brian, only from a different perspective.
The novel isn't without lapses, however. The most problematic is the climactic scene. When they have finished recounting their abuse, Brian says, "It's over." He has figured out what happened in those five hours, essentially ending the novel. But I've known enough sexual abuse survivors to know that knowledge of abuse is far from the end; for many, it is only the beginning. I wanted to see what happened to Brian and Neil after their new-found knowledge. How would it affect their lives?
One question I struggled with is why Heim chose to set the novel in central Kansas. At first the landscape forms a backdrop, a solid point of reference for the characters in the story. But by the last few chapters it seems to disappear. Although some of those chapters are set in New York, I would have liked to have seen more about the effects of the geography on Neil. I wanted to see just how central Kansas infiltrated itself into the lives of people who disliked and even hated it.
Cultural Calendar
But these are minor problems. Overall, the novel is bold but sensitive. In Mysterious Skin, Helm takes us to places both known and unknown. And when we are through, we cannot help being changed.
EXHIBITIONS AND LECTURES
Exhibition — Etchings of Peasant Life in Holland in the Golden Age, by Adrianse van Ostade, through May 14, at the Spencer Museum of Art.
Exhibition - Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition, by Paulin Cowart and William Harmon, through Friday, at the Art and Design Gallery in Marvin Hall.
Exhibition—Prints from the United States since 1945, through May 21, at the Spencer Museum of Art.
Lecture — "Mysterious Skin," book reading and signing by Scott Heim, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. tomorrow, Mt. Oread Bookshop.
Exhibition — Juried Photography Exhibition, Saturday through April 30, at Lawrence Public Library, 707 Vermont St.
Exhibition - The Wheel of Compassion Sand Mandala, Tuesday through April 29, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak St., Kansas City, Mo.
- Lecture — "An Afternoon with Vincent Scully," 2 p.m. Saturday, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak St., Kansas City, Mo.
Department of Music and Dance presents a Doctoral Recital, featuring Kelly Mahon, 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at Swarthout Recital Hall.
Department of Music and Dance presents a Graduate Music Honor Recital, 7:30 p.m. Friday at Swarthout Recital Hall.
Department of Music and Dance presents a Master's Recital, featuring Angela McComas, 7:30 tonight at Swarthout Recital Hall.
PERFORMANCES
**Inge Theatre Series presents "The Crucible," 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday at the Lied Center. Tickets are $3, $5, and $6.**
Department of Music and Dance presents a Student Recital, featuring KU Saxophone Quartet, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Swarthout Recital Hall.
- Topea Symphony Chorus presents a Spring Concert, 3 p.m. Sunday at White Concert Hall on Washburn University Campus, Topea. Tickets are $8,10 and $14.
Folly Theater presents the Mammoth Follies -- A Dinosaur Musical, 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Sunday at 300 W. 12th St., Kansas City, Mo. Tickets are $7 and $.
UMKC Theater Department presents SPEED-THE-PLOW, 8 p.m. tomorrow, Friday and Saturday, 5 p.m. Friday at 2 p.m. Sunday at 50th and Cherry Streets, Kansas City, Mo. Tickets are $3 and $5.