Late Night Writing Tangent

I have eaten the Velveeta cheese intended for the dog; I have re-vivified the frozen peas; this is my dinner. I can feel the drift of my ass across the seat cushions. Did you know that to sit is to kill? When we die, our buttocks renounce the seat. I cannot sustain an interest in anything, not even the hair on my chin. Yesterday, I could. Yesterday I believed I was fair of face and at least destined to ride in a hot air balloon. Funny, that, because I am afraid of heights, no matter how beautiful and bulbuous. When I stand at the top of the cathedral, I do not feel closer to God, merely closer to the casual jointmanship of disgruntled 14th century stone masons. Thus, realism kills the grace. Writing with my discarded sweater set to the side and my one foot encased in a fur slipper, I am sure to be remembered by the ages. I am sure to remember about Norwegians. I am sure to forget what I ought to have remembered. I cannot even sustain the attention to fashion this memory. I shall have to stand and admit surrender.

(Stephansdom, Vienna)

Just Shelved

Just Kids by Patti Smith

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a book about the self-fashioning of an artist. A young woman surrounds herself with totems; she bends towards and away from the artistic visions of others; she finds muses and is herself a muse.

This is certainly a love story. This is about being in the right place at the right time (but surely chance meetings with Janis Joplin and Sam Shepard and William Burroughs say just as much about what kind of magnetism Smith herself must possess).

I wept through the end of Just Kids; I found it very moving as a testament to a friendship and a person and another artist. When do we become an artist? Is it when we declare it? Is it when we've been recognized for our art? Is it when we dedicate ourselves to it? Is it simply when we believe it of ourselves?

I also thought about poverty as a purifier for Smith and the circle of creatives around her in NYC during this remarkable time. I've never been comfortable with giving up material comfort for art. Smith and Mapplethorpe begin as young ascetics, and yet they're getting things done; they're making the connections they need to succeed. I believe it's a function of my background: once comfortably middle to upper middle class, forever hoping to keep that standard. But it's not hard to feel a sense of envy or nostalgia for Smith's romantic vision of art-as-sustenance, for this brave girl showing up in New York with nothing but a few possessions and a belief in where she needed to be, and making a go of it. She demonstrates blistering courage. Of course I don't have regrets, but it is provocative to consider the paths of others, especially someone like Patti Smith who began not even sure what medium would be hers, but was so clearly meant to be a VOICE, and now, successful memoirist.

View all my reviews

Tree Poem

Sometimes what you see is saying all it needs to say.

Miscalculation of the Day

A Dvorak Pandora station does not necessarily create a soothing soundscape for writing. Am now tempted to add bayonets, homicidal swans, and men with florid noses to my story-in-progress.

Just Shelved

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you are the kind of person who thinks finding a crumbling old manuscript in a dank monastery that turns out to be a fascinating glimpse into a nearly-vanished pagan philosophy on living written in verse would be cool...then you and I have a lot in common, and we both like this book already. We are also both nerds, and that's okay. We should probably travel together in order to avoid irritating our companions.

Greenblatt is clearly a scholar of considerable erudition on the Renaissance and European art and thought. While very engagingly written, I do sense that Swerve was written for the general reader rather than a more specialized audience. Perhaps because I have studied and written on similar subjects in the past, I yearned for more overtly scholarly writing (which does NOT have to be boring--The Age of Wonder and its endlessly-entrancing digressions comes to mind). I would have been happy to read several hundred more pages, especially about the ripple effect in Renaissance art that Greenblatt cunningly traces back to the discovery of Lucretius' poem. More than anything, I realized that going to the primary text--"On the Nature of Things" itself--will be the key to serious explorations of this subject.

So, on the hunt I go, but with some delightful background knowledge to buoy me.

View all my reviews

Just Shelved

Drop City by T.C. Boyle

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes when you are trying to express the worldview and interior, like, tone of your characters, it becomes necessary to write in the passive voice, and then you are writing all of the descriptions of action in the passive voice, and you are relying on that technique pretty consistently. And could it be repetitive? Is asking a lot of questions in a row something a hippie might do? Does that seem like a realistic trope? Yeah, man, because they've got a shaggy dog style of talking and thinking and appending to their thoughts with more and more filler and more and more interjections.

It is possible you are annoying your readers with these stylistic tics, despite the fact that there are vivid characters, strong dialogue, and some appreciated ribald humor in your book.

Whatever, man. Let's get high.

(Drop City recommended for entertaining and briskly plotted look at a band of flower children trying to hack out their Utopian farm ideal in Alaska. Caveat: the annoying prose style cited above.)

View all my reviews

On Deadlines and Resisting the Hot Dog

I recently challenged myself to write a page per day of my novel-in-progress. I finished most of the beginning almost a year ago before being distracted by other projects, other calamities, other beers, and other vacations. But no more! I am pleased to say that I have stayed true to my goal since I made it...a few days ago. (7 pages must be the gross product of a week; make-up pages can be turned in on Sundays by midnight). It's really amazing how well I work under a deadline or artificial mandate. That's why I've often preferred to write short pieces: I generally finish them in one sitting, and the sense of the finite time around the act of writing itself tends to make the stories sharper, leaner, and better. So far, I've been rather pleased with how I've kept to this fledgling goal. The only problem is when my one page go-get-'em attitude kicks into gear, it is almost invariably 1:30 in the morning. This work ethic was slightly more okay in college and grad school, when I had occasional mornings off from work, class, and teaching, or only had to fill a seat rather than engage. It doesn't work as well with a lifestyle that includes an every day job. It's not even that I'm not sitting in front of the computer before the 1:30 mark. Not at all.

Allow me to illustrate for you: let's say I am baseball player with a decent hit (no idea why I would choose a sports metaphor given my lack of knowledge about sports, but bear with me). I head to the field, or, erm, the batting cages to practice my swing. Except, I don't practice my swing at first. Even thought it's afternoon and there are other people around practicing their swings and catching and pitching and waving my way, I'm not ready yet. I think about getting a hot dog and then I DO get a hot dog. While there, I do a bit of a condiment taste test. Oh, yeah, sauerkraut is disgusting. Now I remember! How hilarious. I find someone to talk about condiments with. Actually, you know, the more I think about it (alone now with just my thoughts and the hot dog), there's something so relatable about a hot dog; something that taps into a shared experience of America, ya know? Hot dogs. They tie together the tipsy person on the street corner at 2 a.m., the weekend weenie roaster, and anyone with a functioning microwave. I even made a hot dog solar cooker when I was eight years old using tinfoil! At this thought, I tear up. And, suddenly, I am filled with the conviction that HOT DOGS are where the meaning really lies. Why have I wasted my time on something so comparably esoteric? My pastime is neither delicious nor sandwiched by an oblong bun. It's a fool's pastime. You know what? Maybe I should get into hot dogs. I've always liked them, after all. Almost as much as hitting.

(time passes...like, maybe, five minutes of time)

Anywhere, where was I? Oh, hot dogs? Yeah, I'm not going to finish this one. They are soooo unhealthy. I can't wait to hit a perfect ball. THAT'S what I really want to do. But first I need to have this conversation about why astroturf is weird. Yes, I know, I've said it before, but this is an essential conversation, and it clearly needs to be had. I have different points than yesterday. Like, maybe one slightly less rehashed point about the qualities of fluorescent greens as illuminated by floodlights. So, I chat about astroturf with whomever happens to be handy. Odd how that guy that sweeps the edges of the field always seems to be on the other side of the field whenever I'm in the mood to have this discussion.

(time passes)

Man, where has the time gone? I am EXHAUSTED! It must be all those fine motor skills I used wiping that ketchup off my shirt. Wait, was that five hours ago?! I guess that astroturf conversation was pretty gripping. Or maybe when I was wandering around trying to find the bathroom....? Regardless, I don't even know if I have the energy to hit today. I mean, I hit a few yesterday, right? Some people have never even been to a major league game before! Hitters like me are rare, after all. I can probably pat myself on the back just for, you know, dreaming of hitting a homer now and again. Or you know what? Even driving here. I mean, I put my bag in a car and I drove here. That's pretty good, right?

So, I start getting my gear together and start heading off the field. I notice that all my other teammates are gone; even the guy that sweeps the edges of the field is gone. Someone is turning off the floodlights, one by one, and darkness whooshes into each portion of the field where the lights have been shining. Finally, there's just one lone floodlight still going--perhaps they've left it on for me and are even now waiting for me to get the hell off the field.

Except I'm not. Suddenly, I'm ready. Drop my bag to the ground. Get my bat out, and magically, a ball pops my way from somewhere off in the darkness (don't think too much on the details) and I swing and swing, the cracks of wood meeting canvas echoing throughout the stadium. And one or two of those hits might even be good (I'm not totally sure, since they're flying off into unlit stadium stands, but whatevs). It feels good, though. It feels really good, like--

--and the last floodlight is switched off. Crap. And I had a really good metaphor for that feeling, too.

That, in short, is my writing work ethic if I were actually a baseball player. You might not want to pick me for your team, but I am still going to finish this novel. One page, one day at time.