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Matthew Stadler is The Citizen Intellectual
by J. DAVID SANTEN JR. for the Oregonian:
Matthew Stadler looks out on a room of friendly faces, more than 50 people seated at tables arranged in a horseshoe. Stadler, a writer whose parallel life as Northwest literary gadfly has won him many ardent admirers and a few dissenters, asks those present at Podkrepa Hall in North Portland not to leave after dinner has ended.
This is the Back Room, a concept that brings together friends and strangers for an evening of food, music and conversation. Since the Back Room began in summer 2005, Gore Vidal, Mary Gaitskill, Lawrence Weschler and many others have spoken. Musicians such as Stephen Malkmus and, on this night, Carrie Brownstein (formerly of Sleater-Kinney) have performed.
Per custom, the menu reflects the evening's theme. With authors John Trombold and Peter Donahue discussing their anthologies "Reading Portland" and "Reading Seattle," chef Naomi Pomeroy has prepared a quintessentially Northwest meal.
Read the rest at OregonLive.com.
Comments
Thanks for the mention. I wish I had more grace and lightness about these things, but I don't. So, let me say I had a bad time reading this article. By focusing on me, it erased the collaborators who actually make the back room happen, and I was very aggravated by that. I also had a hard time with all the unattributed, non-quote "opinions." So, I sent the following letter to The Oregonian. And, all that said, I think David Santen is a really good writer and I hope he gets more space and better guidance from his editors the next time he writes a profile.
To the editor:
Was the subject of David Santen's piece me or the back room? If it was the back room, why didn't he mention Curtis Knapp, who has picked musicians for all twenty events (we've been doing this almost two years) and helped shape this collaboration from the outset? Or the fact that we commission and publish original essays for these evenings, nearly a dozen commissions and six chapbooks. A 500-page anthology of essays and visual art from the back room is about to come out. This isn't "cultural chat" for "the hip." And why not quote even one of the many back room attendees David interviewed? Instead he recycles a blog tantrum from The Stranger regarding an unrelated dinner in Seattle. If this piece was about the back room, we might hear about collaborations with Literary Arts, PICA, Reading Frenzy, The Cooley Gallery, PNCA, or learn that Stephanie Snyder has been shaping the program with me all along, bringing the likes of Gregory Crewdson, Walid Raad, and Sutapa Biswas, to speak with her at the back room. Or that Naomi Pomeroy is more than just a cook, but an essential shaping force of this program. No. Instead, it's "his back room," a really unfortunate and misleading elision that must be David's attempt to solve the split in his subject.
And if the subject is me, why not quote someone, anyone, who has read or witnessed my work (book jacket blurbs aside)? We get two lovely acknowledgments from Rich Jensen and Michael Hebb, that I work hard and, apparently, inspire radical change. Thank you. Beyond that we get a series of unattributed, well, not even quotes making generalized dismissals: "critics...question Stadler's relevance…," "urban planners don't necessarily buy his lecturing…", my novels are "disturbing to some readers…."
I've always had strong critics. I'm grateful for it. I want more. But critics speak by name, with their own voices, in detail. None of that happened here. Unattributed opinions don't make a public discourse. They squelch it. They are the unbreathable gas that gets pumped in to displace much-needed oxygen. I work in public because I want a vibrant give and take. I don't expect to be liked for it, but I do expect real criticism from real people making real claims about what they believe.
Matthew Stadler
Posted by: Matthew Stadler at June 16, 2007 12:23 PM
Thanks for the mention. I wish I had more grace and lightness about these things, but I don't. So, let me say I had a bad time reading this article. By focusing on me, it erased the collaborators who actually make the back room happen, and I was very aggravated by that. I also had a hard time with all the unattributed, non-quote "opinions." So, I sent the following letter to The Oregonian. And, all that said, I think David Santen is a really good writer and I hope he gets more space and better guidance from his editors the next time he writes a profile.
To the editor:
Was the subject of David Santen's piece me or the back room? If it was the back room, why didn't he mention Curtis Knapp, who has picked musicians for all twenty events (we've been doing this almost two years) and helped shape this collaboration from the outset? Or the fact that we commission and publish original essays for these evenings, nearly a dozen commissions and six chapbooks. A 500-page anthology of essays and visual art from the back room is about to come out. This isn't "cultural chat" for "the hip." And why not quote even one of the many back room attendees David interviewed? Instead he recycles a blog tantrum from The Stranger regarding an unrelated dinner in Seattle. If this piece was about the back room, we might hear about collaborations with Literary Arts, PICA, Reading Frenzy, The Cooley Gallery, PNCA, or learn that Stephanie Snyder has been shaping the program with me all along, bringing the likes of Gregory Crewdson, Walid Raad, and Sutapa Biswas, to speak with her at the back room. Or that Naomi Pomeroy is more than just a cook, but an essential shaping force of this program. No. Instead, it's "his back room," a really unfortunate and misleading elision that must be David's attempt to solve the split in his subject.
And if the subject is me, why not quote someone, anyone, who has read or witnessed my work (book jacket blurbs aside)? We get two lovely acknowledgments from Rich Jensen and Michael Hebb, that I work hard and, apparently, inspire radical change. Thank you. Beyond that we get a series of unattributed, well, not even quotes making generalized dismissals: "critics...question Stadler's relevance…," "urban planners don't necessarily buy his lecturing…", my novels are "disturbing to some readers…."
I've always had strong critics. I'm grateful for it. I want more. But critics speak by name, with their own voices, in detail. None of that happened here. Unattributed opinions don't make a public discourse. They squelch it. They are the unbreathable gas that gets pumped in to displace much-needed oxygen. I work in public because I want a vibrant give and take. I don't expect to be liked for it, but I do expect real criticism from real people making real claims about what they believe.
Matthew Stadler
Posted by: Matthew Stadler at June 16, 2007 12:23 PM