Fiction Is the Lie That Tells the Truth Truer

On the Legacy of Tom Spanbauer

- BY ROB HART

This is not an obituary. Tom Spanbauer died on a Saturday in September 2024, and those pieces-about where he grew and the books he wrote-have already been written.

The point right now is the assignment; the same assignment Tom gave me 11 years ago.

To write about a moment, that after, I was different.

Those were the instructions I received on Oct. 29, 2013. I had signed up for Dangerous Writing, a workshop hosted by Tom, held in the basement of his home in Portland, Ore. It had been brought to my attention by Suzy Vitello, a friend of mine and a student of his.

There were things I knew about Tom.

I knew I loved his books-In the City of Shy Hunters is my favorite novel of all time, full stop. I knew that he had taught writers I admired, like Suzy, Monica Drake, and Chuck Palahniuk. I knew Tom developed Dangerous Writing on the backbone of minimalism, a style that appealed to me as a genre writer reared on hardboiled and noir. I knew the class was wildly popular, and it was a oncein-a-lifetime opportunity.

That's it.

I knew one other thing: that I was a baby writer, with maybe two short story credits to my name, and I was flying across the country to sit in the basement of an esteemed writer's home, with a bunch of strangers, for an intimate and intense three days of workshopping.

Anyone who is a writer can appreciate the emotional peril.

I brought with me a story about a reporter who covered Hurricane Katrina, saw the endless destruction, came home, couldn't sleep, would cry out of nowhere, and learned to cope from a friend who'd served in Iraq.

There's a trick to coping with death ... but we'll get to that.