Review of Alex Kudera’s Fight For Your Long Day by Lavinia Ludlow

Duff Man, Oh yeah.

Cyrus Duffleman is an adjunct university professor fighting to reach the end of what seems like the single longest day of his life. From dawn till midnight, he sprints amongst four different educational institutions where students test his patience levels–particularly the ones with a raging sense of entitlement and blind patriotism–and where tragedies such as suicide and murder go down. In the rare moments when Duffleman does catch a breather, he can’t help but stress about his financial limitations, school administrative bureaucracies, and on a more personal level, crippling loneliness, which emerges in his daydreams of what-if scenarios.

Occasionally, Duffy doesn’t always make the most rational decisions, but we sympathize with him since he just can’t seem to catch a break. On top of dealing with an aching knee, empty wallet, the chronic fear of not having his classes renewed, he falls victim to internet phishing scams, temptations gone awry, and losing control of classroom discussions. He also strains to come to terms with his failed pipe dream of writing a novel:

[Duffleman’s] terminal degree states that he has a “Masters” in theso-called “Fine Art” of creative writing, and he applied years ago, long before the seven deadly sins of literary blockage—daily drudgery, anxiety, low self-esteem, depression, lack of talent and ambition, and above all, laziness—stole away any chance he had of concentrating for long enough to produce anything even loosely resembling a work of art, or tight and tidy enough to be considered that marketable commodity, “the contemporary novel.”

Despite the stressors and personal doubt, Duffleman never ceases to put his full effort into his work and his heart into the community. He tutors students for minimum wage, often gives away his last few dollars to those he feels need it more, and at the very end of his long day, he helps end a domestic terrorist attack.

An author with a phenomenal writing ability, Alex Kudera has written a powerful debut novel about perseverance, and seeing through not only work but life commitments with dignity, respect, and most of all, unyielding passion.

Interview with Dave K. & Micro-Review of How to Stone a Pig

Dave K recently released a collection of steampunk stories drafted and fine-tuned throughout his creative writing degree program at the University of Baltimore. He’s generously taken the time to allow me to interview him about his collection How To Stone A Pig, his writing process, among other interesting tidbits.

 

L^2: You have a unique writing style in How to Stone a Pig; it’s almost Victorian intellectual but modernized with interjections of blatant Gen-X vocabulary. In your own words, what was your literary angle?

DK: There are two angles at play with that, actually. I felt like a combination of semi-formal narrative voice and modern casual dialogue would be both a fun anachronism to play with and a way to build up the surrealistic tone that I wanted for this collection. Speculative fiction (or genre fiction, whatever you want to call it) is uniquely equipped to do stuff like that, so I wish more writers in that ouevre would take advantage of it.

The other angle is that I didn’t want readers to think I was trying to sound British. Most people associate anything Victorian with England, after all, and I wanted a more American sound to my work because that’s where I’m from and where I live. The best way to achieve that, I thought, was through informal, American vernacular dialogue.

L^2: Throughout your writing career, who have been your greatest influences and inspirations?

DK: The writers who’ve impacted my voice the most are John Bellairs, Robert Louis Stevenson, Philip K. Dick, Douglas Adams, Hunter S. Thompson, and Dave Barry. I’ve made it a point in recent years to build up a more diverse reading list, but those six guys grabbed me early.

My inspirations aren’t writers at all, for the most part. A lot of them are musicians: Jello Biafra, Henry Rollins, and Lemmy being the dominant three. I like people who are stubborn and unorthodox and get away with it without sacrificing their curiosity along the way (which is why G.G. Allin is not on this list). There are some visual artists who stir something up in me, too; Edward Gorey is a big one, as is Ralph Steadman, and I really like J.M.W. Turner’s work, even the more Impressionistic stuff he did late in his career.

L^2: Who are you reading now and name the last 3 great works you’ve read, and why.

DK: Right now I’m working on my friend Justin Sirois’ book, Falcons On the Floor, and also reading Ekaterina Sedia’s The Secret History of Moscow. They’re both fantastic.

As far as great works go, I’ve been singing the praises of Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun to everyone everywhere – the prose is both gorgeous and graceful. Ander Monson’s Other Electricities is also a phenomenal book; the structure is as poetic as the content. And while it’s not a novel or even a piece of fiction, Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life is a thumping good reminder that you don’t need traditional channels of patronage and distribution to be a working artist. Hell, you can even be riddled with insecurities and behavioral disorders and still make a go of it.

L^2: How has your formal education at University of Baltimore in Creative Writing and Publishing changed your approach to writing? The publishing industry?

DK: Well, it broke any lingering desire I had to work in the publishing industry, that’s for sure. But my MFA program introduced me to a lot of people who believed in my work and helped it grow. I don’t absolutely have to write from anger or cynicism anymore, as I once did, and it’s much easier for me to draw inspiration from other things (music, visual arts, etc.) now. To paraphrase Garrison Keillor, I have a lot more keys on my piano these days.

Most importantly, my MFA program helped me really enjoy writing. I went through a phase where I was pretty bitter toward it, because I felt like I wasn’t good at much else and had therefore been shanghaied by fate into writing. I feel much differently now. There’s more joy in my process now than ever before, and that makes it a lot easier to tell stories.

L^2: As a writer, describe your writing process.

DK: A lot of things change depending on what I’m working on, but I tend to be a night owl who doesn’t start writing until well after dark. I need to listen to music while I write, and lately I’ve been exploring experimental/ambient music; lots of soundscapes and long, droning instrumentals. What I’m listening to has a direct effect on my narrative voice, so it’s fun to listen to different things and pick out the changes they make in my writing.

I also have trouble concentrating in my apartment, so I often go elsewhere to write. Coffee shops and libraries are my go-to places right now.

L^2: There are some creepy and somber photographs woven in between each piece of How to Stone a Pig. Did you create them? What were you trying to highlight by placing them where you did in the collection?

DK: I did create those images, yes. They’re a mix of public domain photography, stock photos, hand-drawn stuff, and clip art, all fed through Photoshop sketch filters and layered with grunge textures to give them a worn-out, used look. I really like combining text and image – it brings me back to being a kid and tearing through John Bellairs books so I could look at Edward Gorey’s weird, wonderful illustrations.

Creating those images helped my writing, too. It’s easier to find the right words for things when you’re seeing what your characters see, and I’d like to think the images contributed to the overall mood of the collection.

L^2: Some of us are familiar with the genre of “steampunk,” for those who aren’t, would you mind explaining the genre?

DK: Steampunk has a lot of definitions, but I like to think of it as science fiction set in the Victorian/Edwardian era. Victorian interpretations of fashion, technology, art, politics, and culture are centerpieces of the genre, to the point where it can veer into alternate history at times. There’s also a pervasive man-against-the-world element to steampunk protagonists, which is where that “punk” part comes in, as well as a sense of optimism about human potential.

That said, a lot of steampunk literature is overly focused on the technology and aesthetics, and so there’s a lot of empty, rich-guys-in-airships fanservice as a result, but it’s such a clever and provocative setting when it’s done well.

L^2: I recall you mentioning that this collection was part of your thesis. Can you tell us about the journey to getting it from concept to print?

DK: All the stories in the collection were written at various points during my time in the program, and the first semester of my final year was an advanced fiction workshop where my classmates and I wrote some new stories and revised old ones and put together the manuscripts that would become our self-published books. The following spring was the thesis semester, where we all revised our manuscripts, thinking of them as whole collections rather than just clumps of stories.

Once my manuscript reached the point where my advisor signed off on it, I got to work designing the thing. Page size and layout, margins, typeface, all that stuff. I also designed the cover. That whole process was grueling, but I imagine it would be a festival for someone more OCD than me – there are so many mental doorknobs to touch, and the Adobe suite just enables that tendency in people.

My book design had to be approved as well, and I contacted a printer once it was. That was the most stressful part, honestly. Not because of the printer, but because that was the first time the book was actually out of my control, and they were far enough away that I couldn’t watch them physically assemble the books to make sure they didn’t do anything wrong. It was like sending my manuscript to summer camp for the first time and hoping the counselors would keep it from drowning or being eaten by bears or something.

When the books arrived, it took me a minute to accept that they were real, that all the stress and fatigue and countless hours of resetting paragraph indents and making Photoshop collages finally had a real, physical presence. I’ve never been prouder of anything in my life.

 

 

L^2: Big thanks to Dave for taking the time to chat. I’ve also highlighted a few of my favorite stories below of How To Stone A Pig in a flash review.

One of my favorite stories was How to Adopt a Cat, a story written in a somber, almost sedated tone, fitting of the protagonist’s state of mind post-psyche ward release. He touches on what it’s like to feel like an outsider in the “outside world,” and how the hustle of passersby created a deep-rooted anxiety for the protagonist. One of my favorite passages is: “When the conductor passes by and tells me my stop is next, I can only nod. My speech has slurred during the years, and I’m hesitant to converse above my station. When he leaves, I pat myself down to make sure I still have my papers, that none of them have fallen out of my pocket, that I am real and solid and free of that wretched place.”

My other favorite was a disturbing piece titled The Experiment, a story that draws on the haunting and eerily creepy images of a man strapped down and electrocuted by a sadistic doctor without concern for safety or well-being of his subject: “Few words native to English or any other language are fit to describe how Mr. Crisp felt. Suffice it to say that the second-to-last thing coursing through his mind was a brief, white-hot, explosive realization of complete and total independence from everything. He flushed numb from fingertips to brain as electricity folded him into thin, sharp creases. The last thing to go through his mind, of course, was the fatal shard of current that popped his eyes like paper bags.”

There is inherent melancholia woven into Dave’s mature writing and bizzaro story lines. Reading this collection induced occult sensations, and though I was not always 100% certain about a story’s intent or direction at times, the literary ride was a psychedelic journey, and one worth taking a few times over. Check out his collection in limited availability here: www.beeohdee.blogspot.com

Review of The Antisocial Network by Timothy Gager

Timothy Gager’s recent poetry release called The Antisocial Network takes on numerous facets of the human condition such as addiction, the loss of innocence, father issues, and even suicide. Many of his poems reflect one’s struggle to get sober, stay sober, and find meaning in sobriety amidst life’s everyday stressors like breakups and loneliness, even the changing seasons.

As a writer, Gager relies on intense content to shape a narrator’s voice in a matter of a few lines. Some passages contain bizzaro analogies such as those found in his poem about a serial grape eater. Others were angst-ridden and unforgiving, like those in his poem titled poem for the ex-ex-girlfriend of the OD victim

you are
nothing that the world of vastness cannot smell
like bad karma caught in a pretty little package,
a trash bag, all tied up into this: yo hon
he’s dead now but recently
told people you were
a fucking bitch.

Gager’s unique perspective often emerges in his unhinged analogies. For example, in April Ends, he writes:

These are the truths to be told —
not the ones to cover up, like
schizophrenia runs in my family

(I try to hide that from my therapist)
what good would that do, she’d pick
daffodils from my head, plant them in her vase,

say to me they didn’t exist.

Gager ends his collection with a brutally honest poem called About Alison. It’s last line gives The Antisocial Network a final shank to the kidney to end on a memorable note:  

months go by
before you
call yourself an asshole,
for being out of touch,
then say, you think
of me often.

 

The Antisocial Network is available over at Redneck Press.

Review of Emergency Room Wrestling by The Dirty Poet

The Dirty Poet depicts the horrors of emergency room atrocities through desensitized eyes and powerful narratives in Emergency Room Wrestling, a poetry collection released in April 2011 by Words Like Kudzu Press.

The poems blatantly de-glamorize hospitals, emergency rooms to be exact, not that there was ever so much glamorization (maybe just a little with shows like ER and House). Everybody knows our bodies are disgusting, they seethe random juices, crust, disease, even terminal illness, but no one has highlighted all those ailments quite like The Dirty Poet. Take this excerpt from his opening piece titled You Think You Need A Beer

he’s got necrotizing fasciitis — flesh-eating bacteria —

of the crotch

and i’m helping three nurses reinsert his rectal trumpet

Yet amidst the twists and turns of the disease, emergencies, and sick humor, there remains a fragment of hope in The Dirty Poet’s overall conclusions:

dead end

i’m going to tell you the saddest story i know

because it happened

he was big and handsome, just 22

an unrestrained passenger in a car crash

he suffered a traumatic brain injury

leaving him wide-eyed and gone in an ICU

yesterday the nurses shoveled him into a chair

mom and dad resumed their vigil

mom shaky and crying, dad boisterous

all their family superhighways

leading to this disastrous dead end

dad took his son’s large, limp hand

and said come on buddy, thumb wrestle

i bet i can beat you

come on buddy, let’s do it

let’s thumb wrestle, let’s go

his thumb hopeful in a hopeless world

Emergency Room Wrestling is a gritty and grotesque read. It is a poetry collection which has emerged from the depths of the dankest hospital bowels, unbridled and unapologetic. Kudos to The Dirty Poet on a phenomenal debut. I definitely owe you a beer, if not a tall glass of scotch.

Charles Portis

Julie Cline writes a dandy piece about Charles Portis for the Los Angeles Review of Books. 

In 2003, Ed Park wrote an excellent essay on Portis that is well worth checking out as well.

Best known for penning True Grit, Portis’s cult-like status was built on his novels Norwood, Dog of the South, Masters of Atlantis and Gringos.

Sandy Longhorn Talks Fairy Tales with Cynthia Reeser

Fairy tales. The genre shows up all the time, everywhere–in film, art, and literature. Consider films like M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water, and the very aesthetic of Shyamalan himself, across the body of his work. (Lady in the Water  is itself a treatise on the interpretation of modern myth in light of its historical distillation.) With regards to literature, I recently had the opportunity to discuss the use of the fairy tale genre in contemporary writing with Sandy Longhorn, someone who is thinking and writing about this very subject. Sandy is the author of Blood Almanac (Anhinga Press), which won the Anhinga Prize for Poetry.  Her newer poetry is forthcoming or has appeared recently in Cincinnati Review, New South, The Rumpus, South Dakota Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere.  Longhorn lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, is an Arkansas Arts Council fellow, and blogs at Myself the only Kangaroo among the Beauty.

CR: Could you talk about your interest in fairy tales as a medium of interpretation in literature? What sparked it and what elements provide for the continuation of your interest?

SL: First, thank you for the interest in my work and for posing these intricate questions.

I started writing a series of fairy tale poems based on the Midwest after reading Mary Biddinger’s book of poetry, Prairie Fever.  Although not a book of fairy tales, I was impressed with the way Biddinger presented some of the darker undertones of living in the Midwest.

After I drafted the first poem “Midwest Nursery Tales,” I went back and read many of the iconic Western fairy tales as they are presented in the original Brothers Grimm books.  These are the non-Disneyfied versions where the ‘good guys’ are often injured or horribly transformed and the ‘bad guys’ often meet bloody ends.  There are versions that go back even farther, but I haven’t done the research yet to find those books.

The gender issues presented in both the Disney versions and the Grimm versions may be one of my primary interests, that and the social ethics the tales attempt to prescribe.  An education in literature gave me the skills to think critically about the tales, and from my first lit classes in college, I began to look beneath the surface of any media I absorbed and into the ideas of self-identity and social positioning, those powerful messages often at work without our acknowledgment.

 

CR: What are you doing in your own work in regards to the fairy tale genre?  How are you using it?

SL: My work in fairy tales is a bit different than what I’ve seen in the past when I’ve read re-interpretations of traditional tales.  Instead of building on the past, I’ve attempted to create new tales, tales that more accurately reflect my own experiences.  Those experiences are grounded in the landscape and the people of the rural Midwest.

In my reading of the Grimm tales, I was struck by the idea of transformation.  In many cases that transformation results from a spell put on a person by a witch or due to some other magical element.  However, in my reality, there was a rock-solid disbelief in anything but hard work and a pure heart.  People got what they deserved; we reaped what was sown, literally and figuratively.  Thus, each of my fairy tale poems is about a girl who is transformed not by magic but by the weather, the land, and/or the industry of agriculture around her.

CR: Going back to the original fairy tales–the gritty, unprettified versions where sometimes the characters get picked to shreds–do you think there is a need in the literary world for the censored (Disney) versions to be ousted?


SL: I don’t know about a need, but I do know that kids can take a lot more than Disney gives them credit for.  Even while I was happy as a child to watch the Disney versions of Cinderella, Snow White, and all the rest, I knew that they didn’t match my reality.

I’m not one to exclude much of anything, but I would argue for a balance.  In particular, when talking about the ‘censored versions,’ we are usually talking about books and/or movies designed for children.  I’m not a parent and I wouldn’t begin to impose my beliefs on those who are; however, we live in a perilous world.  Ask the children who survived Hurricane Katrina about terror, stress, and heartache.  Ask the children whose homes burned down in wildfires in California, Texas, and Oklahoma.  Ask the children whose parents have lost lives or limbs or mental stability to wars overseas.  Ask those who have suffered from domestic violence.  Perhaps the argument for the ‘censored versions’ is one for pure entertainment and escape.  There is a place for that, surely, yet that escape will not necessarily help heal the wounds.  Reality will be waiting when the book cover closes or the movie reaches the end of its run.  How will we prepare our children to return to reality?

 

CR: Do you think we are creating our own fairy tales in this day and age?  If so, how and to what extent, in your opinion?

SL: I do.  The first examples that come to mind are many of the Pixar movies (and the like) that appeal to both children and adults.  I think of Wall-E, Up, and Finding Nemo right off the top of my head.  There are truly scary scenes in each of these movies that expose the hard truths about danger in our world and how we navigate it.  Certainly, the Harry Potter phenomenon lends itself to the fairy tale and draws in modern issues of diversity and a global morality.  The idea of Voldemort as the embodiment of evil fits how overwhelming the bad things of the world sometimes feel.

I suppose some might claim the rise in vampire and werewolf novels for young adults is another foray into fairy tales.  I confess I haven’t read them, as I have a really low scare tolerance (I’ve always had trouble with the line between fiction and reality).  Stephen King’s novels might fall into this same category, in particular The Green Mile comes to mind, although I can’t read much of his work, either, for the nightmares his scenes induce in me.

At the root, a fairy tale goes beyond entertainment.  There is a cautionary purpose there, a moral lesson meant to build a stronger community.  Even though we no longer gather around the hearth, we still have folk tales, just in a variety of media.

 

CR: Do you think there is an aversion toward fairy tales in some literary circles, and if so, why would you say this exists?

SL: This is so interesting.  I’ve heard this question several times now, and I must admit, I wasn’t aware of any aversion to fairy tales.  However, since the question has been raised, I’m beginning to sense that others have felt this aversion.

My own poems are quite new and still making their way out into the world of lit mags and publishers.  I simply might not have felt any push back against the content yet.  I did have one editor email me a rejection with a note that the poems I’d submitted (four of my fairy tales) didn’t fit her journal’s aesthetic but she would welcome a submission with other poems.  I suppose that could be the aversion to which the question refers.

I’m guessing that there have been a lot of poems and stories written that are based on traditional tales that have not gone beyond the tradition and made something new.  In some ways, writing in response to fairy tales might be similar to writing ekphrastic poems.  The writer’s duty is to use the previous art and explore some new territory.  If that isn’t done well, it could lead to a negative branding of the genre, I suppose.

There could also be some gender issues at work here, although I have no scientific proof.  Fairy tales fall in the realm of the domestic.  The connotation of the words brings to mind a mother, grandmother, or nanny with her children gathered around her listening with rapt attention.  Many feminist writers have re-imagined the traditional texts as a way forward into empowerment and a new paradigm.  If anyone has a problem with fairy tales for those reasons, then I’d say it is his or her loss.  Everyone’s voice, everyone’s vision, should have a place at the table.

 

Band Notes: Ludo – Geek rock. You’re wonderful, I heart you.

I rarely, for the lack of better terminology, “fall” for a band, but recently, I’ve hit the asphalt hard for a band called Ludo: geek rock flavored with the ol’ synthesizer.

This band kicks ass because it takes on the quirky, possibly insane characters we all know: the creepy, the awkward, the desperate, and heartbroken. It’s all laid out in their brilliantly titled album You’re Awful, I Love You. Yes, at the end of the day, it’s pop rock from possibly three or so more years ago, but it tastes so good going down, and it’s fun to play in the background at a party because it’s like listening to our (possibly your) own woeful stories.

Take a track called Go-Getter Greg. There’s blatant creepiness in subject’s unrelenting attitude, and Ludo manages to maintain musicality and rhythm in the song despite the dialogue-riddled lyrics: “I haven’t seen you at the pool since the barbecue/Not that I’ve been checking/Here’s the deal/I’ve got this thing for work this weekend and I was wondering/If you don’t have anything going on that maybe/Okay, hey that’s cool you’re busy/But we should hit up Jose O’Flannegens for jello shots/Your call/It’s ok not this week/But Monday you could come over tonight/I’ll be watching cop dramas and smoking fatty fatties.” And of course, there’s the matter of the comical chorus, “I’m a go-getter guy with a gun on my hip/I’m just searching for that someone to be firing it…”

Other fabulous songs, Lake Pontchartrain and Drunken Lament, and their epic Love Me Dead. I’ve been told that every guy I’ve ever gone out with is singing this song now. Even funnier is the fact that my current boyfriend is the one who made mention of it. “Kill me romantically/Fill my soul with vomit then ask me for a piece of gum” ; “You’re an office park without any trees/Corporate and cold” ; “You suck so passionately/You’re a parasitic psycho filthy creature/Finger-banging my heart.” And then there are the awesome oxymorons “You’re hideous and sexy” ; “You’re born of a jackal, you’re beautiful” and the album title, “You’re awful, I love you.” The video is undeniably hilarious, and frontman Andrew Volpe proves himself to be one animated guy in this (seemingly…) one-shot production:

Ludo’s recent album kind of sucked balls, Prepare the Preparations (wtf, right?) but it’s possible I didn’t give it enough of a chance after a few run throughs. I was just so awe-struck by the previous album; though, the song Anything For You is a sweet take on the contemporary amorous ballad: “My ancestors planted some sequoias by a road/I’ve driven down that road since I was born/Oh, never have you ever seen so many perfect evergreens/But I would chop them all down just for you” And then “I’ve gotten drunk and shot the breeze with kings of far off lands/They showed me wealth as far as I could see/But their kingdoms seemed all shrively and they cried with jealousy/When I leaned in and told them about you.”

All in all, there is a crispness to Volpe’s voice, purposeful crackling on the high notes, a silliness engrained in the music and lyrics, lots of synthesizer and neurotic moments of self-loathing and unhealthy infatuation, though it’s all done tastefully.

Check them out, you won’t be disappointed, if anything you’ll laugh pretty hard. Happy geek rocking!

Pynchon, again

Returning to Pynchon, now, I remember my first taste of his work. A bargain store copy of The Crying of Lot 49 that I bought without expectation. I found the book to be a revelation. I wandered campus in a fog, asking people what they knew about this Thomas Pynchon. I’d never heard of him. Professors were, occasionally, dismissive: “Well, he’s an important post-modernist” they would say in a way that let me know they meant “not important at all.”I thought they were crazy to be so dismissive. Very quickly thereafter I devoured V. and Gravity’s Rainbow. For a little while I considered Gravity’s Rainbow my favorite novel and Mr. Pynchon the greatest writer this country had ever produced. By far. His range, his intelligence, his … greatness seemed to tower above every other possible writer.

I was 22 or maybe 23 at that point. In some ways I was well read for my age. And in other ways I was not. Many of the writers I found impressive in my middle twenties, in particular, the post-modernists and the absurdists (and those who influenced them) were unknown to me and so Pynchon seemed a giant existing in a vacuum.

I wonder if this is why at some point Pynchon became less interesting to me–I stopped reading him entirely after a re-read of Lot 49 my first semester in grad school. In the subsequent years I’ve picked up all of his other novels, once or twice, and considered re-reading Rainbow. Harold Bloom’s high estimation of Mason & Dixon (he sees the novel as towering above all others of the last… however many years or so) has always brought me to that book and back over the years, but I’ve never wandered beyond page 40. I’m reading it again and enjoying it but not nearly at the level of when I was younger. Pynchon no longer seems so gigantic, in short. I wonder now if he’s that certain type of novelist who flares within the mind of the reader for a brief time, but whose work you cannot return to again and again, as with Kerouac, for instance.

However, I’m hoping I’ll rediscover him this time and regain some of that youthful passion. Certainly if there’s any writer my own work would hope to emulate it’s probably Pynchon. Which makes my reluctance these last 8 or 9 years all the more mystifying.

Can anyone relate? Are there writers who meant a great deal to you at a younger age but, upon returning to them, refused to grant the same pleasure?

Band Notes: PK – Do You Really Mind? I’m Reviewing You.

Cross the sounds of The Killers with a dash of Journey, and garnish it with Thursday’s Geoff Rickly (if Geoff Rickly had a British accent that came and went), and you have the independent sensation PK. Every one of their songs is amazing, but three on their full-length album in particular are ones worth checking out first.

What defines a good song? To me, it’s one that retains a bit of musicality in the vocals, lyrics I can personally relate to, and how well the moving parts (bass, drum, and riffs) fit together. PK’s song 1920 is filled with nostalgic and heavy lyrics such as “My brother’s home in the darkness/Oh I remember how she was still/It haunts me in my evenings/Where will this set me in the stars?” This particular song is a great example of a piece that’s melodic but not to the point of being generic or predictable.

My favorite song off their album Into the Roaring is called Roam, which I interpret as this guy pining over his female friend who, like many stereotypical masochistic women, chase after the same asshole time and time again and no matter how many “lessons” they say they “learn,” they still end up in the arms of the next asshole. How could I decipher all of this you ask? In bits and pieces of the lyrics, “Roam/But it’s never going to change your ways/No, it just won’t change a thing/I know I’m never going to break your heart/Roam/Till it leaves you feeling old/But he’s never going to take you home.”

London is upbeat, a story perhaps of an overseas affair, told through lyrics that are terribly romantic without being cliché or tacky: “It takes me back to my hometown/My first kiss/Down under oak trees/Does it take you back to your chateau/Or Marseilles down on the seaside/It takes me back to my hometown/When you kiss me/I feel the whole train shake.” The music is a bit on the poppy side, the chorus sounds like popcorn might if it was exploding out of a drum set, but it works, and the bass line grants the quieter parts justice without overkill, and it’s all this that makes me believe this is PK at its finest. “’Cause it ain’t never felt like this/I swear I’m not fooling/Yeah, you floored me/Why I’ve never had a kiss like yours/I’m drunk still.”

They have multiple acoustic videos online, one of Roam

and another of 1920 brilliantly shot in the middle of a moving elevator 

and their music video of London, a one-shot production of Hawley migrating through the caverns of a train

To top it off, they are giving away their full-length album Into the Roaring for free at their website: http://www.pkband.com/ Keep a look out for their EP soon to be released. It’s one that I look forward to most in 2011.

Some Kind of Monster

Recently my wife and I happened across the last forty minutes or so of the Encore mini-series version of Moby-Dick with Ethan Hawke as Starbuck and John Hurt as Ahab. This was the first I’d heard of this newest version and certainly I watched as I always watch these things: possessed by something like disgust and horror (plus, I’ve never watched Ethan Hawke without wanting to punch him in the face).  This trailer seems to confirm my initial impressions (I don’t think I’m capable of watching the entire mini-series): that this version is about Ethan Hawke’s tug of war with John Hurt’s obsession plus some action and some adventure and some period costumes and some guy with mutton chops playing the role of Ishmael. From what I’ve seen, it is another fairly literal translation of the novel onto the screen with some alterations made to appease Hawke’s ego.

And according to this review from the NY Daily News “For the first 10 or 15 minutes, the film lingers on the genteel life Ahab has built on Nantucket, heart of the whaling industry in 1850.Whaling captains were royalty then and Ahab lives accordingly. This is no ruffian who slouches around until he can climb on a boat and go kill something. Hurt’s Ahab is a man of culture and refinement. He lives in a grand, tastefully appointed house. He eats good food, drinks good wine and enjoys relaxing in his library with a good book. He has an obviously caring wife, Elizabeth (Gillian Anderson) and all the money he needs to live out a comfortable life.”

To me, these seem like perfectly reasonable additions to add background depth to Ahab’s character (even if I disagree with them). In general, I’m in favor of any adaptation that bends from the source material and creates its own logic and reality. If this were, say, Pride and Prejudice I would see nothing offensive in any of this. However, Moby Dick is not a perfectly reasonable book. It is not about period costumes and mutton chops. Moby Dick is a novel written in full fever. It is a little bit insane, in parts, and all parts are written by a writer of high ambition.

I’ve been on a Metallica kick these last few weeks. I have no idea why, but every so often “The Call of Ktulu” calls to me. Anyhow, I’ve been listening to the entire output, but the album that I come back to, and enjoy the most, is the much derided St. Anger, best described as a 75 minute bludgeoning although it is probably most commonly called “laughably bad.”   The 2004 documentary of the recording of this album, Some Kind of Monster, shows a petty, desperate, emotionally strained group of musicians with enormous egos and thin skins who spend as much time in group therapy as they spend recording the album. Most seem to use this documentary to illustrate the reasons why the album is bad. To me, it sort of explains why it sounds so good. To me the album sounds furious and unhinged and frustrated and confused but it also sounds like a band of great talent going all out to make a really good record. There’s something about this coupling of insanity and uncertainty and talent and ambition that, for me at least, makes a really nice sound. At the least, I suggest giving this youtube clip of Frantic a listen. I may be the only person who like this record.

Anyhow, for me, this is what all film versions of Moby-Dick are missing–the unhinged ambition and risk taking and fearlessness. This brings to mind an article (I’ve since misplaced where or when it was from) about Werner Herzog’s Hollywood adventure/ rescue film Rescue Dawn. While making the film the Hollywood crew and producers were horrified by Herzog’s approach–considering him no better than an amateur in his methods. Not surprisingly, Rescue Dawn is a very safe, button-down movie compared to Herzog’s non-fiction take, the slightly unhinged and risk taking Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Dawn only works when Herzog’s madness peeps through, fleetingly, here and there. Give me madness and ambition and risk taking over professional and safe and well done any day.

Certainly, as critics of his day were glad to point out, Melville’s great novels from Moby Dick on were not “well made” in many aspects. Potentially major characters and plot points are introduced and then forgotten, inconsistencies abound in the point of view and in the plots (to the extent that there are plots). And a few even accused him of having gone insane.

I’ve often said that Moby Dick should be made into a film–I’m all for our greatest literatures being translated into other mediums. But it would take a filmmaker of a certain greatness and madness to pull it off. At times I’ve thought the Wes Anderson of The Life Aquatic (probably the film closest in spirit to the true Moby Dick) is just weird and ambitious and fearless enough to pull it off. Other times its clear that the Paul Thomas Anderson of There Will Be Blood and Magnolia would make a masterpiece. What do you think?

 

On Heroes and Hero Worship

Saul Bellow’s great novel, Humboldt’s Gift, partly fictionalizes his own idolization and subsequent friendship with Delmore Shwartz. The idea of a young, unknown writing a fan letter to a famous writing and then moving half-way across the country to essentially study under the master was a profound one for me when I first read that book.

Rimbaud similarly contacted Paul Verlaine. Their famously tumultuous love affair soon followed.

I doubt Philip Roth had much of a physical relationship with Bellow, but it seems their three decades of friendship began in much the same way—with the young, unknown upstart meeting the literary figure who so influenced him. I’ve
never felt Roth surpassed Bellow as an artist, but he certainly achieved a wider fame and sold more books than Bellow did. No matter these two literary friendships, Bellow did famously complain about the lack of community with his generation’s great writers.

I always thought the only people who could possibly connect, on that very deep and fundamental level, with a great writer was another great writer. There is something deep and shared between them that is unsuspected by regular people. Or maybe there is no mystical bond. There’s no more of a special connection than the truth that people who share a mutual hobby or interest often flock to each other, while in public and in regular life they often suppress their true passions. Railroad enthusiasts and stamp collectors. I suspect these stories carry across all the arts, though, and there is always something fascinating about the friendship and appreciation between two great artists.

The literary importance of the friendship between Hawthorne and Melville after Melville contacted the older, more accomplished writer (although Melville had the earlier commercial success) is without question. Here we find Hawthorne’s genius (as Melville saw it) awakening something nascent in Melville’s own soul. Under this encouragement Melville ceases to be the man who wrote sea adventures and became the great artist we remember and admire today.

Of course, sometimes hero worship leads not to surpassing the idol, as Melville surpassed his, but to emulation, as Woody Allen, who so admired Ingmar Bergman from afar, and then later emulated in films like Interiors, going so far as to use Bergman’s iconic Persona cinematographer Sven Nykvist in films like Another Woman and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Through this relationship Allen learned of Bergman’s admiration for his films, and the two later became good and mutually respectful friends.

I remember thinking about this story when, years ago, in my early 20s, I wrote an ailing Saul Bellow a letter of appreciation. I may have implied or made assertions of our, ah, kinship, letting the master know I was also, in my small way, attempting to become a writer. Thankfully I did not bore him with any of my pages, although I have since, occasionally, reached out in this way, as they did in the old days—although, mostly out of desire to share my appreciation and humble thanks, than any attempt to make friends.

Who are your idols? Have you contacted them? Met them? Surpassed them?

Charles Willeford

I’m always surprised to learn how few people have read Willeford.  Largely characterized as a writer of noir and mysteries (which is mostly true), my favorite Willeford novel The Burnt Orange Heresy isn’t really either of these.  At its most basic level its structure is a familiar genre setup, but then it immediately veers into satire and parody and it is funny, although in an understated way.   And for a relatively short novel it’s full of lengthy digressions into the theories of art and other such matters that more closely resembles the meta-fiction of the Pynchon and DFW sect than the standard noirish rattle of action and dialogue.   

 

Review: The Snow Whale, by John Minichillo

You don’t need to have read Moby Dick to enjoy John Minichillo’s witty, short re-telling, The Snow Whale. But does it help? Having spent my life in academic literature programs, somehow I never read Melville’s seminal work, so I have no idea. And given that I have smaller, prettier fish to fry, I’m happy to leave the Dick appreciation to my co-bloggers. But if I missed all or some of the referential nuances of The Snow Whale, it didn’t interfere with my enjoyment. Essentially a story about a man in search of identity, The Snow Whale is an accessible, smart satire that is full of snow, making it a perfect summer read.

(Full disclosure: John is a writer-friend, and I got my copy for free, so I may be biased, but honestly? So far? Everyone loves this damn book.  It’s got a great hook, real momentum, and relevancy.)

In a nutshell, John Jacobs, an office drone who sells corporate novelties for UniqCorps Plastics Division, has grown tired of his middle class suburban life and his stale marriage. Ripe for a mid-life crisis adventure, Jacobs’ imagination is stirred when he learns that a co-worker has taken a DNA test that suggests Mongolian ancestry:

“I need to be with my people,” Mike said. “To walk knee-deep in the Mongolian snows and breathe the free Mongolian air. Before this DNA test I was nobody. Did you know they drink oxblood and have seventeen varieties of yogurt unique to the region?”

“You’re always eating yogurt,” Jacobs said.

 “I know!” Mike said. “Now it all makes sense.”

Inspired, Jacobs orders his own DNA test and discovers that his is “37 percent Inuit,” and so begins his journey to reclaim his heritage, an obsession that is almost irretrievably hazardous to his domestic life.  A turning point comes when he discovers an online  protest against the annual Inuit bowhead whale hunt:

Despite PETA’s complaint, Jacobs knew the hunt was for the continuation of his culture. . . . He imagined chewing the raw meat and using the whale oil for light and for heat. His mood improved immediately, and he called to his wife as he read on.

“Look,” he said, oblivious to her resentment because he’d threatened their marriage, “the Inuit are allowed to hunt whale.”

“I’m supposed to care?” she muttered to herself.

“I want to hunt a whale. It’s my right.”

She stared at the lanky pale man who had been her husband for over a decade. People thought she settled when she married him, but he at least held more promise then. All her old ballroom dancing friends thought so. They called him light on his feet.  They said he cut a nice figure. Now she was married to a desk doodle salesman and he was losing his mind.

This is by no means a bad thing, but I think a lot of readers will enjoy The Snow Whale for its appeal to their research interests, whether it be cultural studies, environmental issues, general Melville enthusiasm, etc. For example, I know of a folklorist who plans to use the novel in her “Xenophobia/ Xenophilia” class. It’s the same for me I guess–I can’t stop reading as a writer because Minichillo’s modulations are so impressive; the tone adjusts to the emotional development of Jacobs, and the variation in intimacy and attention results in a dynamic narrative. The first three chapters of The Snow Whale are essentially about the frustration of being trapped in white suburban mediocrity, and the satire is dry and contemplative. But when Jacobs leaves to join the whale hunt with a black teenager named Q enlisted to film the adventure, The Snow Whale shifts into a lively buddy comedy. By the final third of the novel, when the thing-we’ve-been-waiting-to-happen happens, the tone shifts again, this time to make room for a genuinely thrilling adventure to play out. And while we think we know what to expect from The Snow Whale’s conclusion, the final chapter manages to be quite surprising and moving.

The Many Talents of Bl Pawelek

Bl Pawelek is the jack-of-all-trades artist. His work has been featured in places such as Blood Lotus Journal, Curbside Splendor, Prick of the Spindle, Monkeybicycle, LITnIMAGE, decomP, and Dogzplot. Over the past few months, he has worked hard to craft the photographs and prose featured today at Plumb Blog. Below, he opens with an amazing shot of an oak paired with amazing prose.

one definition of ‘plumb’ – ‘a weight at the end of line’

the plumb oak
the shortest route: a five-mile hike to get there. The last mile,
fields and stream. He is at the end of his line. I feel the weight on
me.

I have visited about every month since I moved here, sang him Leopold
songs and fed him purple coneflower dust. He gave prizes in return.

Deer Creek slides along, small trout in its water. On sunny days, I
hide still, jump and dive, splash about in the water. Come up with
nothing in my hands.

Dinner the found fruit. Nothing more sour, tart and delicious than a
not-yet ripe wild apple. Nothing as sweet as wild raspberries.

Dead branches, black lines in the sky I sleep under. I ignore the
memories of Maryland’s black rat snakes, waiting in trees.

Parts of him will stay on the line after winter. Others will drop off
the end. Like the movie, I rub the bark, whisper, “you can, you will.”

In addition, Bl Pawelek snapped a few other photos on his journey to that beautiful oak tree.

Mr. Pawelek has given me the opportunity to to a bit of Q&A with him as well:

What came first? Writing, painting, photography?

Honestly, it all started with hiking.

I started to take hiking seriously in 1997, and everything else started to branch from that. I brought a camera with me everywhere I went; started to read books of places I hiked (Desert Solitaire, Wilderness Journals of Everett Ruess, Death Valley and the Country, etc); and started my hand in writing and painting what I saw. Most of my creative effort is still centered in that world.

You often pair photography and other artwork with a few lines of poetry. What is your process? Do you have a muse in mind that you seek out when you go out and snap photos? Do you write first then pair?

If I pair them, the artwork definitely comes first. The artwork is more intricate, takes longer and there is plenty of internal critique before I think it is “done.”

The lines that I typically add to them are based generally on the theme/tone/thought of what was happening during construction.

You have an MA in literature. How do you feel that’s shaped your literary voice and style?

Props to Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles!!

Although the university did not have an MA in Environmental Literature, I did my best to weave as much as I could. The professors allowed me to bring in texts from Carson, Eastlake, Stegner, Snyder while taking some “deep dives” into Thoreau, Muir and Emerson.

As for the “voice and style” – I was (and am) horrible in the technique and mechanics of writing/editing/critiquing. I am sure that I have some sort of voice and style, but hell if I could describe what it is. Maybe Ben Tanzer said it best …

“Poems of isolation and detachment, punctuated by blasts of color and a longing for nature.” – Ben Tanzer, author of You Can Make Him Like You

What is the best independent novel you’ve read?

I could never do one! How about these best ones of the last year-ish:

We Take Me Apart, Molly Gaudry (the writing is so elegant)

Normally Special, xTx (the writing has zero fat)

Inconceivable Wilson, JA Tyler (the story is only the tip of the iceberg)

Whose releases are you looking forward to this year?

I am checking my mail every day for: Finding Everett Ruess (The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer) by David Roberts.

Your kids are drop-dead adorable. Do you find that they are a source of inspiration in your art?

Sidebar: Many times I have been asked if writing or artwork was a “passion” of mine, or something that I felt I was “meant to do.” I have always said “no.” I have always felt that I could simply “stop” and move on to something else.

However, once I started a family, I knew I was meant to be a “dad” – nothing else.  So, my wife and kids are the cornerstone of everything. They influence everything. Sometimes they are included in different pieces that go public, but mostly only my Facebook family and friends get to see my dadliness.

You’re a very active member in the literary community. What are a few words of advice you could provide aspiring writers out there? What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned since jumping in?

I cannot say it any better. Aspiring writers should start with this – http://htmlgiant.com/behind-the-scenes/22-things-i-learned-from-submitting-writing/

If you could pair these marvelous images with a brew of your choice, what would it be? Why?

Take a long hike, get lost, get worried, pray frequently, get bitten by an animal and try to bite back. Forget your phone, your map, your way home, your watch, bug spray, sun screen, sun glasses. Forget to tell your loved ones where you were hiking, forget to tell anyone.  Thankfully, you remembered your journal and pen. Forget food and water, drink water from a stream, drink rain water, lick it off the plants. Try wild fruit, eat cobwebs, try to catch a rabbit.

Hike quickly at night when you can’t see a thing; hike slowly through the desert feeling the water leave you. Jump cliffs, balance on rocks, climb tall skinny trees. Get hurt, lose blood, get worried again and pray more frequently, do not see another person for days, and then remember the one beer in your pack. For me, it was a Boddingtons.

My sincerest thanks to Bl Pawelek for devoting the time and efforts to this Plumb feature. You can find more of his amazing photography, art, and writing over at http://blpawelek.wordpress.com/ and he can be reached at blpawelek(at)gmail(dot)com

Endings

In college we were always told the best endings were those that wrapped up and elevated a story. We were also told the most important part of any story or poem or play or novel or essay were those last few lines.

In the midst of another summer session teaching Intro to Literature where it seems the only stories I’ve ever taught, and indeed the only stories I’ve ever read, are those concluding with some grand statement, some beautifully perceived epiphany. “Do the clouds open up for you?” I want to ask my students when I’m in the mood to criticize these endings. “Does the sun shine down and suddenly you understand your life?”

I think for the most part my students enjoy these stories about  the boys who quit their jobs for persecuted rich girls in bikinis or drunk men who draw on the floor together or young boys who promise to buy trinkets for the girl next door, but I don’t know if they’re terribly impressed by the endings of these stories–they find them mysterious in a bad way, false, and, surprisingly, inconsequential considering many of these endings seem designed to illuminate the consequence of seemingly inconsequential tales.

Do people still end stories with epiphanies? I don’t know that I’ve seen many new stories like this–other than the dozens I wrote in my early to middle 20s.

It seems to me the way you end a story or a novel or a film says something about your philosophy of art or life in a way that the beginning of your work maybe doesn’t do.

My favorite endings are the ones that project to some event outside of the story while relating to the story–like the dead letter office in Bartleby– or that project the outcome of the next fifty years in the space of 100 words–something like Young Goodman Brown’s conclusion or, jumping to novels, those in 19th century novels, the final years of Mr Bovary’s life, his fall into ruin and his death and the sad life of his little girl. Or the ones that seemingly have nothing to do with the actual story of the novel you’ve just read–some weird event or parable in italics –Cormac McCarthy, for instance, does this often and grandly although I wonder if these endings aren’t now all outdated or clichéd in their way. It’s hard for me to believe anyone ends their novels now with the last 30 years of a character’s life, for instance.

I don’t particularly care for endings to novels that are melodramas that attempt to elevate the story to some cosmic significance although when I was 21 I thought the ending to The Great Gatsby was pretty fine. I also rather enjoyed the endings to Hemingway’s novels, the understated walks in the rain, the perfect final line. I concluded many a clumsy manuscript with attempts at emulating those forms until someone finally suggested I was treading a well-worn path. Until I stopped asking: “How do you end a story?” and started asking: “What is the point of ending a story? What should someone attempt to achieve with that last page?”

As far as films go I like the ones like City Lights that end poetically and sadly and quietly or the ones that end with grand fevered madness like the monkeys on the raft and other outrages that conclude Aguirre or the bludgeoning by bowling pin at the end of There Will Be Blood or the ones that end with some ambiguity or strangeness like 2001: A Space Odyssey. We rewatched A Thin Red Line last night and I thought that ending was particularly strong, ending as it does with a voice over soliloquy and some beautiful images and the idea that nothing has really ended, that our characters will continue to do as they did within this film, until they are killed or until the war is over.

I like endings by people like Woody Allen who emulate the great endings of the master filmmakers with similar endings of their own–repeating the great finishes of Chaplin, Fellini, and Bergman in various films–as if to acknowledge, yet again, his admiration for the great filmmakers of his youth and to say, again, how small he is compared to those greats.

I like the sort of endings that prompts most other people to say “What was that ending? Is that even an ending?”

Learning from Faulkner

Lately I have been re-reading Absalom, Absalom! It is a book of such high brilliance that it seems almost impossible to relate to the person who wrote it. In fact, I have often shied from reading Faulkner biographies because his genius seems almost too vast–whereas when I was in my teens I would read Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Kerouac and Stephen King bios to pick up hints on “how to be a writer”–how long to write, what to write with, what to read etc. Faulkner hardly seems to offer any useful inspiration–even a writer as talented as Cormac McCarthy is criticized for failing to improve on Faulkner, or incorporate, so much as attempt to emulate.

Yet, I’ve become more and more interested with the idea of how geniuses are created or forged–so many great writers showed little hint of their greatness before making some unsuspected leap–Bellow, Melville, Proust come to mind, so too does Balzac who, upon conception of La Comedie Humaine declared “I am about to become a genius”–So, with this rereading of Absalom! I read also a biography, William Faulkner: His Life and Work by David Minter. Here were learn Faulkner was started early on great literature–by the time most readers begin reading “chapter books” Faulkner had mastered Dickens, Shakespeare, Balzac–perhaps more of a credit to his mother’s schooling than to his genius. Early on, then, a sense of the vast, and epic, and ornate, and interconnected was wound with his DNA. Still, for all the talent he clearly possessed, and there were those (his mother) who believed young Faulkner possibly a genius, his work through his twenties show little evidence of what he would become. From the time of his boyhood Faulkner had been a serious writer, a serious reader, and a serious watcher of people and listener of stories, and he was mentored by writers such as Sherwood Anderson, but it was not until he was liberated from the constraints of writing poetry, of literary rules, that he was able to recognize the voice he sensed struggling within–a sort of combination of influences: those authors he had read as a boy, those stories he heard on street corners and on stoops all his life. And when he became convinced he would never achieve literary fame or fortune, and that he should simply write for himself, that Faulkner tapped into his genius. Now, something heretofore unsuspected and brilliant emerged and, with this emergence came the confidence to become ever more original and ambitious–thus was born The Sound and the Fury and his subsequent masterpieces.

In this context, then, an awesome book like Absalom, Absalom! is more understandably the work of a writer who lived and worked like the rest of us. Less the work of dark arts or inexplicable genius, Absalom, Absalom! is but the combination of influences–a boyhood before Balzac and Shakespeare is apparent, and so too is the time spent listening to endless stories of the past, told and retold, from an endless array of strangers, parents, uncles, aunts, teachers. It is also a masterpiece which towers above other masterpieces, a book that stands as a culmination of a writer who gained ambition and courage and strength and wisdom from novel to novel. It is a novel that learns not from other novels, but from the experiences and authentic nature of its author. And then Faulkner, we learn, finally reached a point when he looked back, and he lost much of his greatness.

I think only a madman would assign Absalom, Absalom! to a creative writing class, but the works of Faulkner can offer a great deal to the young writer in the way of advice and inspiration. For all of its brilliance and the delight it offers the reader, then, I think a book like Absalom, Absalom! offers something of a roadmap by the route one writer took to learn how to write it, than anything a young writer should learn from its technique. For, ultimately, Absalom is an authentic work, the work of a combination of who Faulkner was and what he learned and what he heard throughout his life, rather than something he tried to copy or tried to write or tried to emulate.

Philip Martin

Like most people, I have certain books that I frequently pull down from my bookshelf and re-read.  Mostly these books are short story collections, philosophy and collections of essays.  I can open them up, read a few pages, an entire essay, a favorite passage and it’s enough to get my fill, to recharge me – which is often why I reach for them in the first place.  One of my favorite writers I reach for is Philip Martin.

Philip Martin is a primarily known as the long time movie reviewer for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.   I’ve read Philip’s work for years,  including the years before and after I resided in Arkansas.  Beyond his film review talents – I’ve heard from many people who have said they believe him to be one of the best and most underrated film reviewers in the country – he’s an astute cultural critic who consisently composes entertaining and sometimes brilliant social commentary.   He’s published two collections of short essays: The Artificial Southerner and Shortstop’s Son.   You can also find him blogging here. 

If you have trouble finding copies you might try contacting the University of Arkansas Press directly and see if they have any copies available.  And tell them that I sent you, and maybe they’ll give you a great discount? Maybe not? But it’s worth a shot.  However you get your hands on Philip’s books, it’s well worth it.

 

Thank You, Reb Livingston

Yesterday, while kibitzing at the inaugural Indie Lit Summit in DC, I saw the news that Reb Livingston has decided to shut down her enormously influential online poetry magazine,  No Tell Motel after October and that No Tell Books would be going on hiatus after August. In a blog post Reb reassures us that this is a natural conclusion for a project that has required a lot of commitment to sustain:

Anyone who edits a publication knows the amount of time and energy required to start and maintain a literary magazine. After 7 years of channeling much of my time and energy into NTM I decided that I very much wish to channel it into new directions . . . I’m not sad about NTM ending. Everything has a lifespan.

Reb’s contributions as a writer and publisher of contemporary poetry cannot be over-estimated. I look forward to her future projects, should they be public ones. The body of work showcased at the elegantly designed Motel will astound you. If you have never been there yet, go now and spend the rest of 2011 getting caught up.

Where Do We Go Now?

Two days ago I “finished” (as much as these things are ever finished) work on what I will call my first novel. There was a little joy, some anxiety, and then I looked around the room and I thought, now what?

Typically I am the sort of writer who writes every day, with whatever time I have. If the only time I have to write is during my commute then I write on my commute. Since summer began I have been working on my novel up to 10 hours a day–researching, rewriting, revising, read aloud. My novel has been, for the last 8 months, my all-consuming occupation and fascination. A few months ago I decided I wasn’t working on my book enough, that with classes and prep-work and commuting I didn’t have enough time in the day, so I began rising from bed at 5:30. Yesterday I rose at that time and I wandered the silent apartment, unsure of what to do with myself. I looked out the window for a while, I made a shopping list, I thought about doing the dishes, looked forward to doing the dishes, and the laundry, and then I decided to read.

Initially I vowed to not write a word of fiction for several weeks. My logic was that after working every day, and almost every spare moment, on one project, that I probably need time to reflect, to rest, and to gather new ideas. In a way I feel like the end of this project is the end of what has been my most creative and productive period–from April ’09 to this point–and there is some sense that now something else needs to happen–some new direction, some new goal. My thought was that all writers must take a pause after a large-ish project, and they must go around, doing things, and then after a few weeks or months they must return, reinvigorated,  ready to assault the next project.

Yesterday I read the last 200 pages of Madame Bovary with my new spare time and the first 80 pages of Kate Racculia’s This Must Be The Place (which I then finished today). I suppose I could keep on reading a 300 page novel a day through the end of summer break. But my arms are already a little itchy–up through my elbows, and my fingers are getting restless. There’s a little panicky catch in my breathing. I daydreamed for a couple hours, yesterday, about writing a new story. Today I opened a new word document and titled it NEW STORY and a wave of joy washed over me, even though I have no ideas for a new story other than the first sentence:

If not for the animal noises, I would have only the darkness.

I feel like I should take the break, and just walk around, doing things–whatever things it is people do. Yesterday, my wife and I talked about taking a vacation and, amazingly, I didn’t  immediately think “Well, I suppose I could write on the way, and in the mornings” and this was sort of nice. But then, of course, I think: What if I get lazy? What if that drive to write somehow goes away once I get used to not working all the time?

Today I’ve been thinking about the writers I admire–what was their post-project mode? Did they take time off? Did they wait for the next project to dawn on them? Or did they immediately rise the next morning and wander again into the white screen, fearless and uncertain? For all of the author bios I’ve read over the years I don’t know that I’ve ever paid much attention to the time they spent in-between projects, and I don’t know how much of a focus it has been in those bios.

What about you? I’m curious about your habits (and the habits of your favorite writers). Do you take the time to recharge? Or should those writerly muscles, those gained through repetition and rigor, be kept in shape, no matter if a large project has been finished, and the next is yet to appear on the horizon?

Review of The Mimic’s Own Voice by Thomas Williams

Thomas Williams’ novella The Mimic’s Own Voice is nothing short of extraordinary. It details the enigmatic life of Douglas Myles, a mimic, in his rise to the spotlight, the tours of his talents, his death, the ignition of awe and greater fame postmortem.

What stood out the most was the intellectualism of the writing. Where the hell did this guy come from and how has he managed to craft such an artful and clever production? Williams packed a kick in every single line, not just in detail but also style. Think the formal approach of Shakespeare crossed with the class of F. Scott Fitzgerald, something immediately illustrated in a potent opening line, “In the halcyon days of professional mimics, shortly after they’d outpaced their predecessors, the vernacular storytellers, who had, a decade earlier, wrested the comedic throne from the one-liner royalty, it would have been difficult to name a town of ten thousand souls that didn’t possess some venue where performed those artists who made their fame and fortune with stunning mimicry of the period’s political leaders and actors, athletes and musicians, scholars, and men of science.”

It’s not easy reading, and it takes a great deal of focus to wade through the complexities of his narration. Take this string, “Had any other comedian been enlisted to provide Myles’s comeuppance, the last line of their exchange might have eventually faltered, as most, when surveyed by The Jester, replied that they’d have avoided the stage for a week, allowing the public to forget Myles’s prediction (our national attention span as short as it is). But King David Blum was not called king for nothing. Few had a mild response to his act, so he was met at every concert by fans and detractors alike, all of them now turning out to see if the upstart from, as Blum called it, ‘the fucking prairie,’ knew more than the comic’s voice and routine, but as well the workings of his mind.”

There’s definitely a heaviness in the novella’s lengthy passages (sometimes it read like an encyclopedia), but by far this writer has one of the most unique styles I’ve come across in today’s indie contemporary market. Definitely check it out, you will be awed.