Winona State University's Newspaper since 1919

The Winonan

Winona State University's Newspaper since 1919

The Winonan

Winona State University's Newspaper since 1919

The Winonan

Polls

What is your favorite building to study in?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Great River Reading Series commences with visit from author Joe Meno

Courtney Kowalke/Winonan

“Only connect…”

So E.M. Forster tells readers in the epigraph to his novel “Howard’s End,” and so author Joe Meno told students – more implicitly – Thursday during Winona State University’s first event of its annual the Great River Reading Series.

A writer of all novels, short fiction, and plays, Meno currently lives in Chicago and is an associate professor in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago.

Story continues below advertisement

While at Winona State, Meno gave a public reading of his novel “Office Girl,” and his short story “Animal Hospital.” The event was attended by 80 students and staff members and held in the Benjamin A. Miller Auditorium in Stark.

“I think a public reading is just like any other moment of story-telling at your house, or at a friend’s house, or at a bar,” Meno said, encouraging the audience to react audibly to his tales of an office romance and of children learning to cope with their cat’s death.

English Professor Elizabeth Oness believes Meno is a great writer to kick off what she calls “a terrific line-up” for Winona State’s Great River Reading Series.

“There many are more than two types of writers, but there are those writers you’ve heard of and who you never, ever want to know,” Oness said. “Then there are those writers who you think, ‘He seems like a nice. He seems like someone I’d like to meet,’ and Joe Meno is one of those people.”

Meno attended Columbia College Chicago and has since had short fiction work published in a host of literary magazines and two short story collection. Meno has also written non-fiction, which appeared in The New York Times and Chicago Magazine, and was a long- time contributor to and editor of Punk Planet magazine.

He is also a playwright, with works that have been produced in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Paris.

“As with any kind of storytelling, I love the characters above all,” Meno said of his stage pieces. “I’m completely content to have people talk and nothing happen, but apparently that’s not a common practice for a good reason.”

While describing live theatre experiences as “communal,” Meno also mentioned the intimate experience of reading a book, a solitary action with which he has plenty of practice as he has also published six novels. His most recent effort, “Office Girl,” was published in July.

“’Office Girl’ is about art and 20-somethings who are at a time in their life where art is so important, but that is really only it’s apparent subject,” Oness said. “ It’s about this yearning for connectedness, and that’s really what the characters are trying to do throughout the book. The characters are trying to connect with other people, with art.”

“Office Girl” chronicles

the romance of Jack and Odile, two young adults who, as summarized by Meno, meet “in an awful office job selling Muzak at the end of the millennium, in 1999.” Meno admits the book is heavily steeped in French influence, particularly the Surrealist movement. The cover is even Meno’s take on New Wave filmmaker Jean- Luc Godard’s movie posters.

As with any artistic effort, Meno wrote the novel for a number of reasons. “My life was very close to the lives of those characters,” he said. He also cited his greatest inspirations for writing as his family, friends and past life events.

“There was also a specific mood of that era that I felt wasn’t being captured, this feeling of joyful abandon,” Meno said. “Believe it or not, there was a time when you could go to art school and get a job.”

Meno considers himself lucky to have been around during that time. However, he was disappointed by the lack of books focused on said era.

“I kept coming back to these characters, this art school girl archetype, what it’s like to know someone so intimately, so deeply for a short period of time, and there was no book I could find about it,” Meno said. “If another author has stuck his flag in a certain time or subject, in a particular literary field, then I don’t really want to write about writing about it, I figured I could be the one to explore that time and feeling.”

Meno also talked to several Winona State English classes about his writing process.

“The goal of story-telling is that ultimately we have all these things in common, and we want to connect,” he said, calling back to Oness’s sentiments regarding “Office Girl”’s central theme.

“The way some people see it is that you only write about first-hand experiences,” Meno said. “I can only write about what it’s like to grow up on the south side of Chicago and what it’s like to be a student and to work odd jobs. Or, the way I see it, is that you write about everybody. Most writers tend to be observers, at least in my case anyway, and we can see how different people are like us, what we could possibly have in common. As a 38-year-old man who sits in front of a computer all day making stuff up, I think I probably have more in common with a 14-year-old girl than with ‘real men.’”

Meno also emphasizes the notion that a book takes “more than a couple drafts” to realize its true potential.

“There’s this idea of the story being smarter than you are, that it has its own wisdom and you can’t put it in a crazy little box,” Meno said. “Accepting that idea is a crucial step toward your goal. The work never turns out like the image in your head.”

The idea is one Meno struggled with while writing “Office Girl.”

“I didn’t know how to capture these images in a way that was permanent,” he said. “How do you build this transitory, brief quality into marks on a page? The feeling is fleeting but a book lasts forever. How do you build that moment?”

When he described the images he had as being “like a Polaroid someone took half-drunk,” one of Meno’s friends suggested he do just that, and so came the element of pictures into the world of “Office Girl.” Meno enjoys the added dimension because it gets the audience to further engage into his story’s environment while also giving them a break in the action.

Meno also encourages students to be as adaptable as possible. “Say yes to everything. If someone asks you to write a play and you haven’t before? Say yes anyway. If you’re a creative writer and someone asks you to write a non-fiction news piece, say yes. Try a lot of different forms, not just for versatility’s sake but because there are almost no fiction writers who live simply as fiction writers.”

Regardless of subject, there is no right or wrong way to write. “80 to 90 percent of what I do is get lost,” Meno said. “Once you start to enjoy and understand that feeling and process, then you give up some control more joyfully. Just dive in. Just sit down and start writing.”

Contact Courtney at [email protected]

More to Discover