Books

When author Brock Clarke set out to write his latest book, one of his goals was to play around with the memoir genre. His book was a novel, but as he points out, "Who can tell the difference these days?"

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, which came out last fall, was being written as James Frey and others cast a pall on memoirs by admitting that some or all of their stories had been made up. Mr. Clarke presciently flipped things around: His story casts an actual criminal in the lead role, as opposed to books by Mr. Frey and Margaret Seltzer, a.k.a. Margaret B. Jones, that portray the authors as far more criminally nasty than they really were.

Mr. Clarke, who teaches at the University of Cincinnati and has written three other books, will talk about his faux memoir and its literary inspirations tonight at the Dallas Museum of Art.

An Arsonist's Guide tells of hapless Sam Pulsifer, who accidentally burns down the historic Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, Mass. A couple upstairs, engaging in some sort of literary kinkiness, die in the blaze.

Sam spends 10 years in prison, where he joins a behind-bars memoir-writing group. When he gets out, the son of the couple he killed starts stalking him and his family. Then other famous writers' homes start going up in flames. Mystery ensues.

"What I was lampooning was that self-helpish impulse in a lot of American memoirs," says Mr. Clarke from his home in Cincinnati. "You know, 'If I write this, I'll feel better,' and 'If you read it, you'll feel better, too.' "

That, he says, leads to ruin, both as a writer and reader. "I don't look to literature to feel better about myself," he says. "If I did, I would be profoundly disappointed."

The author, 39, points out that he's "not really picking on Emily Dickinson, whose poetry I love, or the people at the Emily Dickinson House, who have been really lovely to me ... especially, considering."

Instead, he says, he wanted to make the point that readers tend to overly revere authors' homes and belongings, sometimes at the expense of the literary works themselves.

"I think we secretly hope that the houses, the things, are a little bit simpler than the books themselves, a little easier to understand. You know, great literature – it tends to make our heads hurt a little bit."

He was first inspired to write what became An Arsonist's Guide while a student at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. (named for John Dickinson, not Emily).

"We went to Emily Dickinson House in Amherst as part of my senior seminar. ... It was staffed by nice people who offered us hot chocolate, and we touched Emily's bedspread and her desk chair. It seemed goofy in the extreme. I stewed about it for years."

How, he wondered, could caressing this woman's bed coverings bring one closer to her poetry?

His final answer: It couldn't. "I don't want to discourage people, or dismiss the need or desire to go on these pilgrimages, ... well, as long as it brings them back to the books," he says.

Arsonist's also touches on identity as tied to a sense of place. "As a New Englander, for instance, I hate that the Boston Red Sox fans have come to stand for an entire region," he says. "I was unsatisfied with the clichés about places that come to stand for the facts. You probably understand that, being in Texas."

Part of a writer's obligation, Mr. Clarke says, is to "look at anything treated with reverence, and that includes literature, and look at it a little differently. ... But you don't want to confuse irreverence with gratuitous- ness."

Still, he concedes that "some people might take offense" at his premise in An Arsonist's Guide.

"I did get a few e-mails, and I'm sure some people got a little cranky. There are probably thousands of readers out there chanting for my scalp. ... But thankfully, the people at the actual writers' homes have really good senses of humor."Plan your life

Brock Clarke appears at 7 tonight at the Dallas Museum of Art, 1717 N. Harwood St., as part of Arts & Letters Live. Free with museum admission. Reserve tickets at 214-922-1818. Find a list of the museum's "Late Night" events at GuideLive.com/texaspages.

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