Arts & Entertainment
"1 love compositions Of words
that move through time and
make readers wonder what' s
going to happen next."
(We've Got
A Writer In)
Kalamazoo
Jaimy Gordon
... and she is the winner of the esteemed
National Book Award for Fiction.
Meet Jaimy Gordon.
Suzanne Chessler
Special to the Jewish News
I
t's a good bet that the Hadassah Book
Club in Kalamazoo will draw a robust
turnout for an April event still to be
fully arranged.
Member Jaimy Gordon, fiction win-
ner of a prestigious 2010 National Book
Award for Lord of Misrule (McPherson &
Company; $25), awarded by the National
Book Foundation, has agreed to read from
her novel detailing struggles at a rundown
racetrack.
The book, released in November, has
sold some 45,000 copies and has been on
the New York Times extended bestseller list
for about eight weeks.
"It's been a pretty exciting time for
me," says Gordon, 66, a Western Michigan
University English professor whose recog-
nition places her in the company of earlier
award winners William Faulkner, Saul
Bellow and John Updike.
"Although I wrote about what's going
on in a rougher part of American society,
the language varies from the slangiest to
the most bookish.
"The contrast is characteristic of
my work. I'm filtering others' mindsets
through listening very hard to dialogue,
something that has become my specialty."
In Lord of Misrule, the earthy char-
acters, from loan shark to groom, go
through a year of four races at a West
Virginia track in the 1970s. Their chang-
ing relationships and their expectations
of the horses they tend move the novel
forward.
Just as Judaism is part of the author's
background and continuing interest, so
is the world of racing, and the two come
together through character and narration.
"Maggie Koderer, as a young woman, is
not that far away from the way I pictured
myself in my 20s," says Gordon, who
learned about racing through extended
family and whose invented persona is the
trodden girlfriend of scheming horseman
Tommy Hansel.
"If the reader looks carefully at the
quality of Maggie's ruminations, at what
she thinks to herself, the reader will have
to see that Maggie is herself a reader.
She's well aware of language, and she
writes about food for a living."
Gordon, who grew up in Baltimore,
has referenced the neighborhood where
her family first settled and adapted
anecdotes known through horseplayer
relatives.
"My connection to horseracing was
always there," she recalls. "I went to
Pimlico Junior High School; and any time
I went downtown, my bus would go by
Pimlico Race Course, where I would see
the heads of the exercise boys and girls at
the top of the fence.
"I went to the racetrack with grown-
ups, but I never knew I was going to end
up on a racetrack for any length of time.
I got recruited as a groom and hotwalker
by a horse trainer when I lived 50 miles
from Baltimore."
Gordon worked at the track for three
years between academic achievements —
a bachelor's degree from Antioch College
in Ohio in the 1960s and master's and
doctoral degrees from Brown University
in Rhode Island during the 1970s.
"The minute I got to the place where
these animals that weighed more than
1,000 pounds were pounding by on a
racetrack, I was thrilled:' says Gordon,
a pet enthusiast who has a dog and two
cats.
"Like most people who work on the
backside of a racetrack, I knew more
about the races than other people would
know. As the book illustrates many times,
lots of different people think they have
inside information.
Jalmy Gordon's novel
follows five character%
the (Ammo of a year in t n,
ruthless and often violent
world of cheap horseracin
"It's not always the same information,
especially on a cheap racetrack. I made
bets under those circumstances and
sometimes won money."
Gordon's interest in literature grew out
of hearing her parents read to her, and
she never wished to be anything but a
writer.
"I wanted to own those words and
move them around into stories and
poems of my own: says the author,
who has won grants from the National
Endowment for the Arts and was named a
fellow at both the Provincetown Fine Arts
Work Center and the Bunting Institute of
Radcliffe College.
"I never chose between being a poet
and a fiction writer. I had better success
as a fiction writer, but I still write poetry
a little bit and occasionally publish it.
"Even my poetry has a narrative feel-
ing, but what I really like best of anything
are stories. I love compositions of words
that move through time and make readers
wonder what's going to happen next."
Gordon, who taught at Stephens College
in Missouri before joining Western
Michigan University in 1981, started
serious writing while attending Antioch,
where she did newspaper reporting as a
co-op student. When earning her doctoral
degree, she was writing performance
pieces based on poetry.
Three other novels (Bogeywoman,
Shamp of the City-Solo and She Drove
Without Stopping) preceded Lord of
Misrule, which is based on her short
story "A Night's Work," selected for Best
American Short Stories in 1995.
Gordon and her husband, Peter Blickle,
a German professor at Western, live in
separate houses within walking distance.
"Both of us enjoy having our privacy
and complete control over our environ-
ment," she says. "I often tell myself I feel
more like a writer if I'm alone in the
house."
With reading as a favorite pastime,
Gordon also enjoys classical music and
walking. She hasn't spent much time at
racetracks as she looks forward to the
paperback release of her award-winning
book by Vintage in March.
"If there were a racetrack in this town,
I would sure go to it," she says. "I debate
constantly whether I should get horserac-
ing on cable. If you're willing to plunk
down enough money for cable, you can
watch horseracing all day long. I'm afraid
that's what I would do." J
January 20 2011
37