The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, September 21, 1999 - 11 lavin d( C t1Sngton Post A f"& years ago, Julia Slavin devek g c~tush on her teen-age lawn boy. ar"ived, tan and buff, to cut her gran: ouldwriggle into a miniskirt, blast ddidn on the stereo and freshe o s ink lipstick. She counted the cuttings. Th+s nrequited experience morphe e fPmt story in her new collection. on Who Cut Off Her Leg al aicone Club." Except, in the boo omanswallows the lawn boy. Whole. ve1,few weeks of constant sex, ror nners fights and making-up. And thei y s wakes up on a bloody slipcov offtt's gone. W ttme to Slavin's skewed sub = where the seemingly impo t has a kernel of the possible. Onstory, "Covered," explores the a :nddle-aged man plagued by a odcurity blanket that refuses to s e a=, ruining a love affair and forci nd4nto a botched sea burial. "Big 1Is ;; a divorced woman who has an ith 4ber endangered oak tree and even vecbrth to a crop of acorns. Withou ng holly into science fiction or the vin brings these inanimate obje fe, geerating sympathy for the needy it aradmiration for the oak tree's m o biter. "ls lot to ask of someone to su eirbdicf in that way." Slavin says. "I ,d challenge people with some < bj6Xmatter, but I do it in a non-thr gwy " Her characters are humorously d iblelled regular people struggling e old issues of love, death, jeal oeliness. It's just that some c je of these emotions happen ti nusua or taboo. The lawn boy w4Uowed Whole," essentially deliv Will' de Elber s ated Press Vi" "ers taking part in this week's ati6o/a boycott of major broadcast etworks, dubbed a "brownout," are rotesting the new season's lack of inority characters. That means they'll miss tonight's remiere of "Will & Grace" on B( or which they might be grate- ascene that plays with startling a siivity, tart-tongued character arW Walker notices that her alvadoran maid has paused for a onversation. " , you're on the clock, tamale. et t~ work," snaps Karen (Megan ullly). I tihe melting-pot Southern ali nia neighborhood where I rew p, epithets like "tamale" were i g words. Turns out they still "Qh no," Federico Subervi, a ni'rsity of Texas media professor, aid fter hearing the sitcom xch1nge. "It's an ethnic slur. ... I on'i know what it is with these criptwriters. What's in their heads? "The writers and the network xemutives, the ones who have the inal word, they don't get it. They ealiy do not get it," Subervi said. n Latinos and others are saying ncrease our numbers, it does not ealncrease our stereotypical rep- eserati ons." The verbal sparring between osario Salazar and her boss on Will & Grace" isn't a fair fight, a ase of tit for tat. Rosario responds to Karen's very ersotal barb with a weak "Listen, a ,'ll squash you like a wormy Asked about the use of the word 'tamale," which was included in a preview tape of the episode distrib- uted by NBC, series executive pro- ducer David Kohan said a longer version of the scenecalled Karen to task for her ignorance. It was edited for time. Although no offense was intended, he was not minimizing anyone's o etions to the scene, Kohan said. osario and Karen have a prickly but caring relationship, one that is "much more evenhanded" than tonight's episode indicates and which will be demonstrated in the future, he added. A more thoughtful approach clearly is needed, said Lisa Navarrete of the National Council of La Raza, the group coordinating the tA-week boycott of ABC, CBS, Fox anj NBC that continues through Saturday. She said the sophomore series about the friendship between homo- sexual Will (Eric McCormack) and heterosexual Grace (Debra Messing) takes care to include a range of gay velops fun, intimate characters in ' . 4 £". . ; . ~ , ," . ry , ' ., ual scenes, so Slavin says she didn't sleep well the night she gave it to her parents to read. "After my mother read 'Swallowed Whole' she said, 'I guess I'm not going to send this to your Uncle Sonny,"' says Slavin with a shrug. "Many writers are paralyzed by the thought of their parents in the room, looking over their shoulder. You have to get through that or you'll get nowhere." Slavin, who with her long, dark-blond hair and black tank top looks more a California beach girl than a Washington mother of two, planned to be a playwright when she moved to New York after graduating with an art his- tory degree. "In three days I saw what it was like to be poor," she says. "I didn't write a word for 10 years. She got a job at ABC, eventually working her way up to producing "PrimeTime Live" with Sam Donaldson. By 1992, Slavin felt burned out by the long hours and was eager to try writing again. She persuaded her hus- band, a lawyer, to relocate to suburban Chevy Chase, Md., near her childhood home in Bethesda, Md. Here she retreats to her study to write in the mornings, a process she describes as lonely and tedious, In the afternoons, she fer- ries her children to the local park or play- ground. Not long after the move, she published her first story. "Rare Is a Cold Red Center" aches with loneliness and longing, themes that thread through most of Slavin's works. Narrator Corky voluntarily lives in a halfway house, works at a downscale chain restaurant and fantasizes about a slightly cross-eyed girl who eats there twice a week: "Thursday she comes in. I feel clumsy and crazy, looking at her hair, watching her laugh at something her friend said, imagining she's laughing at something that I said." Woman The day his luck seems to turn he gets a promotion and discovers the girl's name - Corky can't handle the possibility of success. ie busts out of town, leaving behind his job and any possibilities with the girl. "He's a very nice guy who means well but who has all of the failings that we all have," says Slavin, who says Corky is the character most like her. 'We're all flawed. There's only so much you can do about that but try to do better." A New York Times review of "Woman" described Slavin as "alive to the beauty of imperfections." Indeed, she seems to sketch people who, through human error and insecurity, sabotage their own shot at happiness. But as told in Slavin's sensitive, natural prose, their choic- es make them human, not simply pathetic or contemptible. "I don't despise those characters at all," says Slavin, referring to two narcissists hav- ing an affair (while one grossly disintegrates, body part by body part) in her story "He Came Apart." Readers and critics apparently don't despise her characters, either. "Woman" is in its second printing. "Red Cold Center" won GQ magazine's Frederick Exley Fiction Competition; another story snagged a Pushcart Prize. The Washington Post described her as "a major discovery" whose "writing gets into your bloodstream like a fever." Although she spent a decade in Manhattan, none of her stories take place there. Perhaps they wouldn't seem as unusual in a place as out-there as New York can be. Instead, leafy, quiet suburbia calls to her characters. "It's a place I'm very familiar with," she says. It's a place where the grass always grows and'teenage boys usually mow it. It's a place of the possible. ;; Associated Press Julia Slavin has turned personal experiences into stories in her new collection. tale of illicit lust by way of ingestion. "For me, the best way to write about pas- sion and its enormity is through that metaphor," says Slavin. Despite the story's grotesque theme, Slavin has fun with her subjects. Light moments crop up on nearly every page, such as this scene at a French restaurant: "I felt his hands slide down the back of my ribs as he fell asleep. I ordered a plum tart so he would have a treat waiting for him when he woke up. I'd forgotten how much teen-agers need to sleep." When she reads this before an audience, Slavin says, hardly anyone chuckles. "It's funny," says Slavin. "But it's not really funny." The youngest child and only daughter among five children, Slavin, 40, describes herself as "a complete washout at school. I had one of those diseases with initials that when I was growing up just meant screwing up" that would now be called attention deficit disorder or something similar. She credits her father, a psychologist, with help- ing her "find a road to the unconscious that one needs to find when one is writing," and her mother, a Southerner, for showing her the "gift of idiom" through stories she created especially for her daughter starring a charac- ter called Little Miss Nothing. The stories in "Woman" feature many sex- picts ethnic slur Read the Daily online! michigandaity. comr us; people are not connecting the dots, and this is an example," she said. "Here's the network under siege for not having enough diversi- ty in its minority characters, and the writers and producers aren't making the connection that maybe they shouldn't engage in this kind of thing." The sensitive nature of ethnic (or racial or religious) differences, how- ever, does not mean that they have to be skirted or treated in a timid, polit- ically correct fashion. Consider scenes in two new series. NBC's "The West Wing," debuting Wednesday, shows presidential aide Toby Ziegler trying to mend fences with members of a Christian politi- cal group at odds with the White House. His diplomacy ends when a woman in the group castigates another White House aide for his "New York sense of humor. ... They think they're so much smarter." A seething Ziegler snaps back: "She meant Jewish. When she said, 'New York sense of humor,' she's talking about you and me." Last week's premiere of the risque Hollywood satire "Action," used religion to make a funny, telling point about its unscrupulous main character, producer Peter Dragon, and the movie business. Dragon is berating a Jewish screenwriter for talking business at a Christmas party when Drag~on is abruptly summoned to confer with his studio chief. "Probably about the Baby Jesus or the Maccabees," the producer sput- ters. Latino/as and other minorities are calling for such well-considered attention - and the sooner the bet- ter. "Not only have we been penal- ized and offended by being exclud- ed (from television), but we're being insulted with the kinds of roles we get," said Alex Nogales, chair of the National Hispanic Media Coalition. "It's unbalanced, it is unfair, it is prejudicial." ^rwq. Academically (Priced Software for { macromed aftS urden 's and Faculty 'MetaCreations" Save up to 70% on software products from more than 60 Autodesk publishers. Secure online ordering. Proof of academic status required. Call 1-800-843-5576 or check our website. 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