Today for father's day we had banana and kiwi crepes with lime yogurt and Callan presented me with a new tie from the dollar store. Melissa got me In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction edited by Judith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones. The book has 90+ contributors and fills more than 300 pages, not including the 15 pages of biographical information and 7 pages of permissions, and a five page index of authors and titles. The essays are brief, meaning less than 2000 words, most much less. Some are only a few paragraphs, and all capitalize on creative nonfiction's ability to shows expansive human truths by reflecting them in tiny truths of every day. In the preface, Bernard Cooper writes: To write short nonfiction requires an alertness to detail, a quickening of the senses, a focusing of the literary lens, so to speak, until one has magnified some small aspect of what it means to be human. To read In Short is to experience, in essay after essay, the disproportionate power of the small to move, persuade, and change us."

This may not be a good book for someone unfamiliar with the genre of creative nonfiction, or the literary world in general. As the following comment on Amazon.com form the books listing shows, creative nonfiction has a long way to go in entering into the popular psyche.

From a customer review entitled "A Never-Ending Parade of Lightweights" by someone who calls himself 'doomsdayer520.'

"I can't figure out why the editors and publishers of this volume are claiming it to be a celebration of a new art form. Brief creative nonfiction? Hardly. Some of the pieces here could be called creative, but absolutely none of them are nonfiction. Nonfiction is the study of issues or phenomena with evidence and analysis. Here we have a collection of what everyone else in the world calls memoirs, and which have been easily found for decades in magazines and newspapers. While such works can be a relaxing and non-stressful read when you come across them, in a compilation such as this book they are repetitive and mind-numbing. I count 91 submissions in this book, and every single one can be categorized as a simple memoir, especially since almost all of them have "I" or "me" or "our" in the opening sentence. Very few stand out from the crowd in any way. Incongruous winners include Richard Rodriguez's disturbing meditations on the struggles of Mexican migrant laborers, David James Duncan's piece about witnessing an accidental death, Michael Shay's thoughts about giving his son Ritalin, and six or seven pretty good pieces on the various horrors of war. But otherwise, the book inflicts upon us a never-ending parade of quaint musings and meditations, attempted deep thoughts on minor matters of human interest, and several dozen interchangeable Thoreau-like nature reflections. Memoir writing has its own strengths and usefulness, but this lightweight and sluggish book is not the groundbreaker it thinks it is."

First I must say that having not yet read the anthology, I can't say much for his opinion of the book, but I am disappointed in his understanding of the genre. If nonfiction where solely, "the study of issues or phenomena with evidence and analysis," as I believe he terms the issue, we would be left with nothing but history books, encyclopedias, and marketing reports. However, I think interpreted correctly his definition goes along way for the genre. Creative nonfiction is all about issues and phenomena-human issues, love issues, trauma, class, sex, race, gender, family, thought-all supported by the evidence of memory distilled into words and supported by data and research-often in the vein this reviewer was hoping for, but more often in the less easily identifiable evidence of emotion, experience, and recollection. There are plenty of anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists in the world gathering data, running tests and analyzing it all to death, and perhaps not enough good writers sitting down to record what it all means on a human level. That, to me, is what this genre is about. Creative nonfiction is meant to entertain and envelope, as much as it is meant to educate and enlighten. If you just want hard 'facts' and cold 'analysis,' then pick up a copy of JAMA or the Encyclopedia Britannica. If you want liquid reality and living truth, if you want to know what life tastes and smells like in to those who may have been, done and seen things you may never get close to yourselves, then turn to a collection of essays, and there you will learn the patterns of humanity that we use to measure out the truths of life every day.

This was supposed to be a blog entry about father's day, but I guess I have switched tracks a bit. To continue, after breakfast we headed to Church, which was pleasant, but a bit warm. We are in the time of year in Japan where it hot, but not hot enough for the powers at be to feel justified in turning on the air conditioning. In my primary class we talked about Joseph forgiving his brothers in Egypt during the famine, and during sharing time we made cards for father's day.

After Church I translated an interview for the branch president and made it to choir practice just in time for the closing prayer. Later at home, we had Melissa's visiting teaching companion over to visit teach another sister at our house and then after everyone left, Melissa, Callan and I went for a bike ride. Melissa only lasted a few minutes being pregnant and hot, so we dropped her off and Callan and I continued on around the neighborhood for about twenty minutes. We took the following pictures on our ride and had some good daddy-son time. He switches between asking me to go faster and telling me to be careful not to drive off into a rice field.

Tonight we went t the Takashima's house for a big dinner with all of the foreign teachers. We had yakisoba, steamed potatoes, Jell-O salad, green salad, grilled chicken, cookies, ice cream, and home made root beer. I teach two of the Takashima kids in my primary class and it was fun to be at there house where they are more relaxed, less interested in talking out, fighting, and disrupting and more interested in being themselves. We played Uno, ate good food, and got to talk with lots of people.

Brother Takashima and I were talking about children, and I told him that Melissa and I were fairly used to one child, but weren't sure what to do with a second. Brother Takashima, who has six children, told me that the first two are really difficult because you are still trying to figure out what to do, but the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth kids don't make it any harder, because by then you don't have any choice but to just go with the flow. We'll see.

On the way home we saw the left-overs of pretty bad accident (a half dozen police officers, one dented car, another car in a rice field, and several concerned looking bystanders) and it must have scared Callan because the rest of the trip home he wanted us to take a different road, and even after getting home he was really upset. He finally fell asleep at ten thirty and then Melissa and I fell asleep on the living room rug (only slightly more comfortable than the hard wood floor) and we woke up at eleven pm. She brushed her teeth and headed to bed and I sat down to write this, but five minutes into it Callan started screaming and I had to go in his room to help him (I think he had a bad dream). He is now asleep on the couch in the living room.

When Callan is that tired and that frustrated it is really difficult to know hat to do to help him. I asked him if he wanted a drink, if he wanted some raisins, or a cold rag. I even asked him if he wanted to watch soccer (world cup, you know, is on every night here), but he just kept screaming as he sat on my lap in a half asleep stupor. He moved to the floor, and then to the couch, and finally I asked, ‘Would you like a blessing?’ He said, ‘Yes, I want a blessing.’ So I put my hands on his head, and gave him a simple blessing in the name of Jesus Christ, and he calmed down and went to sleep. Callan has seen his mom and Dad get enough blessings to know I guess that they can help when you are feeling rotten. I think he was hot, tired, and maybe suffering a bit from a sour stomach brought on by the root beer and other junk he ate too much of tonight.

Tomorrow we’re going to the Doctor’s to find out the sex of the baby, we’re going to Takamatsu to look for a maternity swim suit that will fit Melissa for Hawaii, and in the evening we’re going to the batting cages with Brother Morimura and the Walthers.