Yikes, nothing since October???

I've been ruminating a bit about some feedback from a WFoD reviewer. I do that a lot, ruminate over the feedback - it's great knowing someone actually read my stuff, and even better that they had something to say about it (nevermind that some of them write as well, and expect me to read & respond to their stuff, so it's a little logrolling I guess).

So anyway the feedback of note mentioned that Arthur Mackay (it's pronounced "mackEYE" BTW - the narrator/protagonist of "Bogue and Handelman") was reminiscent of Charlie Samuels (not my link, don't know where it came from) of Betty in the Library (aka Betty Gets the Vapors). Well, certainly. And in some respects that's not the least bit surprising, since they both share a few characteristics with their creator. They're both bookish, a bit past middle age, somewhat solitary (here I plead not 100% coincidence since I'm not solitary, though I am pretty asocial). The question that piqued my rumination though was "why do people - Betty and Emory Bogue - seek these people in particular out for help?"

Well I'll eschew the obvious answer (because otherwise this would be a different story about someone else). But I'm really having trouble not simply answering "why not?"

In both cases the person seeking help is even MORE reclusive and solitary and unconnected (and unworldly) than the prot/narr. In both cases the prot/narr is someone connected to the outer world to a greater extent than the persons seeking their help/guidance. Charlie Samuels is a writer of some sort - he mentions an article for some periodical, and a "story" for another. Arthur Mackay is a "professorish" sort - so bookish, but participating in the world. They know stuff, they know what's going on, they know - it's logical for Bogue and Betty to conclude - something about the way the world works. And most importantly, they're THERE - they're present and relatively familiar to the distressed ones. In short, they're older and (ostensibly) wiser.

So in fact I really don't think it's all that unreasonable that Bogue and Betty would seek out Samuels and Mackay when their worlds go weird. Who else?

Also, to some extent they (Charlie and Arthur) are a combination of the unwilling quester and the "wizard" of Campbell's Hero Quest rubric. I like to turn it slightly on its head in that unlike the epic and Romantic traditions, the protagonist isn't a hotshot warrior or prince but more of an ordinary schlumpf cast into the adventure by fate or destiny or a case of Hitchcockian mistaken identity.

But the REAL driver for this blurt is a little deeper than that. Underlying the queries about "why would these people seek help from those people?" is an implied comment that "it isn't rational" for them to do so, or it's not "reasonable" or "realistic."

I'll certainly plead guilty to the "realistic" comment; maybe not so much on the "rational" and "reasonable" but in fact that's really beside the point. Which is that these are not "real" people. they don't live in the "real" world, i.e. the one I live in. They're fictional inhabitants of a place that LOOKS like, and sounds like and smells like, and feels like the world I live in, but it isn't the same world at all. I live in a world of fact; they live in a world unconstrained by fact. I flatter myself that they live in a world that's parallel to that of Jeeves and Wooster, as well as Philip Marlowe and Sherlock Holmes and maybe Alice and Mike Hammer and Conradin and Nayland Smith and even Charlie Chan. Spend a little time with these people and you either lose the requirement that people act rationally, in "logical" way, or you end up not enjoying their adventures very much.

It's a fantasy world. Unlike the worlds of JRRT and the hosts of his heirs, it looks a lot more like ours than Middle Earth and all those places that line the shelves of B&N. But it's NOT ours. People are placed in unexpected circumstances, and do unexpected things, and incredible things happen. It's the incredible things that make the story a story and cause the entertainment (one hopes).

There never really was a London exactly like that inhabited by Holmes, nor by Jeeves & Wooster. It's a stage set; it contains stock backgrounds (people as well as real estate) against which "hilarity" or "dark doings" can ensue. There never was a valet like Jeeves, really, though there may well have been any number of upper-class twits like Bertie Wooster and his clubmates at the Drones.

Now it's true that I agree that the characters - once established - need to be consistent to themselves (keeping in mind that people aren't necessarily consistent) and to the rules by which they're created and which govern their worlds. But when I hear the comment that "he wouldn't DO that!" I have to respond "but he DID!" As long as an action isn't completely out of well-established character "wouldn't do that" isn't really a valid comment. True it wouldn't do to have Barkis parade down Market Street in drag, but that also might be as much a function of "1948" as it is of Barkis.

We surprise people all the time with our choices and behaviors (at least I have), both positively and negatively. People ("real" and fictional) are capable of breaking out of other peoples' expectations.

Furthermore (which might undermine the above, I dunno) it's the unworldly character of the events that make for entertainment. If we want to watch upper-middle-class suburban folks behaving as upper-middle-class suburban folks behaved in the 70s we only need to read Updike or Roth or Ford. (I hope Yates is over the line, but my son disagrees). Or Dubus (either one). I think I'm after something else though - closer to Wodehouse in content & sentiment, though with a helping of Hammett and Serling stylistically.

The people do what they do "for your consideration."

A couple of things pertinent to the "writing group" experience.

Why do people, when they're reading for response, indicate words they didn't know? Either with a circle or a question mark, or a "huh?" penciled in the margin. If they think the word is used inappropriately that's one thing, and I would expect them to comment, but the comment - it seems to me - should include some notion of what they think the "correct" (or at least "more commonly expected" usage should be). But usually it's pretty clear they're saying "hey, I don't know this word." Perhaps it's just a quirk of mine, but when a writer introduces me to a new word, my response is usually "Thanks! great new word for me!" or so. I'm eternally grateful to S.J. Perelman and P.G. Wodehouse for enriching my vocabulary immeasurably. I can't go three pages in either of them without learning nifty new stuff.

And why do people correct dialog (except the spelling of words clearly not intended to be rendered phonetically, or placement of punctuation & quotes, etc.)? Or comment that this or that phrase "wasn't necessary" or "he just said 'indeed' two sentences ago..." - well yeah, he did, because that's the way he talks. It's a little like reading "He was wearing a brown fedora" and writing in the margin "I don't care for that shade of brown."

It is the 13th of August. For as long as I've been posting anywhere, "journal" or "discussion board" or "blog"

dating all the way back to the Compuserve days, on the 13th of August I report that "On this date in 1969, Class 70-01 of USAF Officer's Training School at the Medina Annex of the Lackland Military Training Center in San Antonio Texas, pinned on its gold bars and became Second Lieutenants (2LTs) in the USAF."

And we really did throw our hats in the air, and we really did all manage to find them, and then we got salutes from enlisted men for the first time (and we did tip the first enlisted person to salute us $1.00, as is - or was - customary). My first salute came from TSG Jack Adams, who had been one of my TIs in Basic Training. He had a bunch of former Airmen Basics in that class, and we were proud to get the first salute from him in particular - in fact we sort of lined up in front of him. He was one of those movie-type TIs with the smokey bear hat and razor-edge creases in his suntans, and a stogie, nearly always cocked at an angle such that the end of it almost made a right angle with the severely tilted-down brim of his campaign hat. He was all tough talk and yelling and so on, but a sweetheart underneath and did a good job getting such a bunch of weenies as us through Basic and into uniform with a minimum of pain & agony. I have a scan of a photo of him saluting me, somewhere. After Basic, OTS was not such a big deal; when you've been screamed at by professionals, upperclassmen aren't even in the ballpark. OTS also had the benefit of our own club, where we could actually drink beer (alcohol is prohibited to enlisted trainees). It was in the OTS club that a couple hundred of us stood around on 20 July, 1969, and watched Apollo 11's triumph.

A little less than four-and-a-half years later (December 13, 1973) I was a civilian again, never having been shot at. Imagine that.

I've had the DVD from Netflix for a month or more, but I finally watched "Inside Llewyn Davis"

I think I put it off because I've read mixed responses to it from a variety of sources, and I'm a fan of the Coen Brothers' work - at its best there is no better filmmaking. But I also find their work uneven and unreliable. I think this is largely because they're willing to give lots of different ideas an outing and don't feel the need to produce a steady stream of nothing but blockbusters. Hence the population of films like "Fargo" and "No Country for Old Men" and "Miller's Crossing" (than which there just ain't any better movies, nowhere no-time) are peppered with "almost but not quite as great" titles like "The Big Lebowski" and "The Man Who Wasn't There" and "Barton Fink" and "A Serious Man" (all of which I like a lot but which aren't in the "Whoa-what-a-great-movie" exhaled over the closing credits category as are the first batch.) And then there's "Raising Arizona" and "The Hudsucker Proxy" (maybe a couple of others as well) which I just plain don't get. (I haven't seen the entire oeuvre, holding out on "True Grit" and a couple others for some reason).

So I was hesitant about "Llewyn" - also because of the subject matter. As a dyed-in-the-wool folkie, survivor of The Great Folk Scare as Dave van Ronk is credited with styling it,  and a huge fan of Christopher Guest's "A Mighty Wind" I couldn't figure what the CoBros might make of the period and the personalities (and the music) that wouldn't be either parody or hagiography.

Well it's neither. And the Great Folk Scare is pretty much wallpaper - there are allusions to the major personalities (a few of them anyway - Dylan, Paxton, Jim & Jean (I think the only ones actually portrayed & named) and Peter, Paul & Mary (though the allusion is to them as a project that Grossman is putting together).

The protagonist is not a nice man, and he's only moderately talented. There's plenty or reason to agree with "Jean" (and his sister) that he is, in fact, an asshole. There's nothing in the film, neither in his actions nor his words, that kindles the slightest bit of sympathy for him, except that he is pretty good to the cat. Two cats, actually. But he's an insufferable shit to just about all the people he comes in contact with. It's a rare experience for me to reach for the "Stop" button any number of times after the first hour and not actually hit "Stop" but give in to the "Wait, let's see, something might develop here after all" - I forbore because it was The Brothers working, and they've pulled things out before.

But they didn't. "Inside Llewyn Davis" is a well-made film; the music could be more; most of the performances are sturdy, the script is certainly well-crafted. I didn't like the movie, mostly because the protagonist is, after all, a narcissistic asshole.

According to The Writer's Almanac today, Gloria Steinem said

"Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else."

How interesting; for me, the struggle is to overcome the feeling that I should always be doing something else than writing. Time writing feels like time stolen from "better things to do" and yet it's the only endeavor in which I don't feel that I'm poaching on someone else's territory.

Dream journal 3/24/14

The space between getting up to let the dogs out, sometime between 2:30 and 3:30 AM, and hitting the final snooze, usually around 5 or 5:15, has become filled with very odd dream snippets. I suppose dreams tend to be odd by their very nature, but I’ve begun to be more and more aware of the dreams as they’re happening, and remembering more than usual afterward. So this morning there were dreamlets in which I was driving the old highlander and the brakes failed and I rear-ended what looked like a pickup truck full of Okies and their worldly possessions piled high on it; I may have pranged some kid’s bike. In another I was without my wallet for some reason, then found it on the grass. 

My favorite from this morning (I do remember thinking (in the dream) “I must remember this one, it’s good!”) 

So I was (in the dreamlet) standing talking to Neil deGrasse Tyson, and though I don’t remember specifically I’ve no doubt I was fascinated and thrilled because I admire the guy enormously. He was wearing a cape or academic robe of some sort, very dashing. Some nut job came up to us (apparently either a creationist or a Plutonian) and brandished a long knife (or a short sword, coulda been either, the dream wasn’t terribly clear on that point). Tyson whipped off his cape (or robe) and without missing a beat, in matador fashion whirled it around the attacker, enveloping him totally, rendering his blade useless. Then he (Tyson) looked at me and I looked at him and we laughed, and laughed and laughed, and I said “and you didn’t even need a veronica!”

Well I really didn't intend this to become a "Hey look who just died" blog, but

Pete Seeger followed in rapid succession by Shirley Temple and Sid Caesar shouldn't go by unnoticed, I guess. The word "iconic" is grossly overused, mostly by people who don't really know what it means, so I won't use it. These three folks really are "classics" in their fields - in the sense of defining a class, of things or people or works of art. Feel-good 30s musicals, the Great Folk Scare of the 40s through the 60s, and early TV comedy, all summed up in three names, and all gone within a few weeks of each other. So maybe we can say the cultural 20th century is finally over?

Wasn't that a time? Pete Seeger's gone, The Great Folk Scare must surely be over.

Whatever one thought of his politics (or his music) it's undeniable that Pete Seeger summed up a great deal about a generation of us, and in a way was the conduit for us of the best from an earlier generation, and inspired us with it. I can't help thinking we're all very much better off for his influence, however it exerted itself on us - musically, politically, spiritually. His intrepid wife & partner Toshi died a few months ago - I suppose some will be gratified that "now they can be together" and maybe that's true, but at least it's a sure bet that Pete won't have to endure any more of this life without her.

So long, Pete, it's been good to know ya. (And yes, that'll show up all over the place I'm sure)

In (yet another) creative lull - not sure what to call it/them

Not "blocked" really since that implies - to me at least - sitting down to write and being unable to. In other words making the effort to make the effort but generating no product. My "stuck" seems to take the form of not sitting down to try - not as a conscious decision, not as a result of circumstance, simply as a result of me. I did well for a couple of years, produced a lot of text (for me) much of it fodder for later rewrite/revise sessions when I progress that far. So I'm happy with progress, but stuck again, though with a different attitude since now I'm pretty sure I can actually produce more than wee snippets grasped from thin air and leading nowhere. in particular. Need a renewal of the discipline, need to stop the internal grumbling about not being able to devote full time to it, as planned all these years.

Odd little sequences of dreamlets in the segments between eruptions of the snooze alarm; none recordable, but they're really odd. How can I know that without knowing what they were?

Well yesterday was George's 102nd birthday, so I guess it's safe to say

he'd have died quite some time ago even if he hadn't died in '68. And I myself have, as of today, realized that I'm almost old enough to be inappropriate with impunity.

Well I've just finished reading my first piece of Stephen King's fiction, and

I liked it. It was not a horror story. It was The Colorado Kid a short(ish) piece, perhaps for SK a novella; too long for a short story at just under 200 pages according to amazon, but I read it on the Kindle which doesn't do page numbers, so who's to know?

It's a mystery story. But it's not a "detective" story, there's no detective involved, and there's no resolution - no scene in the library of the country house (or courtroom) where some brilliant Sherlock rolls out the clues and what they mean and finalizes the whole thing by wheeling on the culprit and shrieking "But it was YOU...."

The only available spoiler is that in The Colorado Kid you will not only not find out whodunit, you won't find out what there was to be done, nor why.

King very cleverly sets up a frame story around a completely "told" mystery plot - we never meet ANY of the characters involved in the actual mystery - that whole story is "told" by two old downeast geezers, to their young midwestern associate. The true cleverness King displays is in getting us fascinated by the "mystery" that the old farts relate to the young woman, as a means of grabbing & holding our interest in the three "real time" characters, whom he portrays very cleanly & economically.

King's handling of "voice" is brilliant, especially in his handling of downeast dialect. Dialect, as most writers will tell you, is very dangerous territory (in fact I think SK mentions it himself in "On Writing") - an attempt to render any extended passage in accurate representation of any regional or ethnic accent practically dooms the dialog thus attempted. But King manages to suggest to the reader how these folks sound, then judiciously (and sparingly) reinforces it with occasional phonetic renderings, and the magic is done - every time Vince and Dave speak, I hear the down Maine twang as clearly (cle-ah-ly) as if I was listening to the geezers myself, somewhere up (down?) the coast, perhaps in the vicinity of Wiscasset.

I enjoyed The Colorado Kid immensely, and I recommend it for anyone who likes a tale well told, but who doesn't require resolutions to their mysteries (like real life).

What does anyone think of these notions?

(Assuming anyone's reading, which may be a totally unwarranted assumption). I seem to be forming better defined principles with which to approach my new-found "life's work" (i.e. writing fiction).

It is art. I am almost to the point where I can say that without blushing and feeling pompous. (Almost, it still feels pompous and self-aggrandizing, but it's what I've secretly (almost guiltily, I don't know why) believed for a long time - I am an artist, or at least an artist-in-training).

The point of art (in my opinion only, this is a hugely contentious assertion, I'm aware, but it works for me) is to observe, examine, contemplate, and report on "what it means to be a human being." Whether any of the many art forms that are apparently unaware of the human race beyond the artist are therefore "not art" or are "bad art" I don't know and I don't care. I'm only concerned with my own notions here (it's MY blog after all). Let's say "The point of MY art is to observe, examine, contemplate, and report on WIMTBAHB." Any "self-expression" on the part of the artist that is not employed in this, is superfluous. It's perfectly fine of course if an artist uses his own feelings in a particular situation to communicate some generalities that apply to "What it means" and more importantly to make me feel what he's feeling in pursuit of identifying with the generality of la condition humaine. (Or whatever). But unconnected, incoherent blurts, whether visual, verbal, or aural seem not to do this.

Fiction is Truth unconstrained by Fact. More ruminations and cogitations on this later, but it's a phrase I came up with some time ago and have been turning over in my mind for the past 3 years or so that I've been pursuing this fiction-writing endeavor seriously. The capitalizations in that phrase are intentional and significant, BTW.

I was disappointed by "Quartet" and haven't finished watching it yet. I may not.

The first half hour is fun, how could it not be with Pauline Collins and Billy Connolly being all rascally and scatty? (Not in that order of course). Michael Gambon in his patented "irascible old goat" routine and Tom Courtenay being sensitive and pensive all over the place. So far s'ok. But just about 30-40 minutes in it begins to sag; and the second time Connolly pees into the bushes to tittering effect (and believe me, at my age I do understand the thematic point of his micturitive distress), I bailed out. It became clear to me what was going on: these absolutely marvelous actors had been placed in cardboard suits patterned after characterizations for which they've become (justly) famous, wound up like little clockwork figures, and set in motion to totter across the frame like little wind-ups: "Billy Connolly doing his randy old bandit of a Scot" and "Maggie Smith doing her Jean Brodie Way Past Her Prime shtick" and so on. Well it's not their fault, it sits squarely on the director's shoulders. I had very high hopes for Dustin Hoffman's directorial maiden voyage - very fine actors frequently make very fine directors (and he might, I hope he takes another crack at it soon). But I have the feeling that in an overflow of (deserved) respect for his cast, Hoffman indulged them with one too many "Just give me something of yours, never mind the script" and they fell into their set modes and set pieces instead of coming up with new people.

I'll pick it up again soon, but unless it begins to move in a more original direction I doubt I'll make it through the remaining hour. Sad too, I was really looking forward to it, I love the work these people have done. (Andrew Sachs, BTW, seems to have been entirely overlooked and he's pretty much wasted as wallpaper. Too bad, the guy has huge talent.)

Well damn, July slipped by unblogged.

It was hot hereabouts, and much spare energy got sucked up by chores and projects. C'est la vie I guess. Early August has been consumed mostly by illness and recovery therefrom. I'll use that as an excuse for letting the 13th slide by unmarked. I usually have some little thing to say on 13 August, mostly amounting to "Hey look at that one of the few remarkable days in my life." It was on 13 August 1969 (longtime followers of this blog - if such exist - will know this) that Yours Truly became Second Lieutenant Yours Truly, USAF, at the Medina Annex (AKA "USAFOTS") of Lackland Military Training Center in San Antone Texas. It was a sunny day, and hot, and we marched around a big-ass parade ground, and some bigshots (relatively speaking) blathered on and we threw out hats in the air, and shortly thereafter got our first salutes. Mine was from TSgt Jack Adams, who had been my TI in Basic Training (oh yes, I was double blessed, most folks only have to do one or the other, Basic or OTS - I got to do both; long story) and was a hell of a good guy, Smoky Bear hat and stogie meeting about 8 inches in front of his face at a nearly 90 degree angle.
Why we remember such occasions - epsecially guys, and especially military-related stuff - so long is an interesting phenomenon, and I'm convinced it has to do with things surrounding the notion that being in the military, for guys, especially, is a big developmental marker along the road - "here's where I put away the kid stuff." (Though that's pretty much bullshit, as we learn over the ensuing decades, but the notion sticks.)

On recommendation of one of the members of the "new writing group" I got a copy of

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Having shaken the notion embedded in me brain that it was an autobiography of Charlie Parker, and figured out that it was another one of those "writers on writing" books, of which so far my repertoire consists of Stephen King's On Writing (which I heartily recommend, it's the only thing of King's I've read). I like her style, it's breezy if a trifle adolescent in its studied flippancy, and so far it appears to be an affectation to hide the fact that there's serious cogitation underlying the verbal vaudeville. All of which is a perfect fit for me, it's what I'm trying to perfect. The introduction fit my 30-minute treadmill workout perfectly; it's on the kindle and will be my workout accompaniment for as long as it lasts.

So the second meeting of the new group* last night; first "critique" meeting, where

four of us actually put "skin in the game" to use one of my favorite phrases. Of the eight of us, two were entirely new faces, six had been at the "organizational meeting" two weeks ago. After heroic efforts on the part of the Organizer failed to find a completely appropriate venue (library, for example) we met at a local Panera, who seemed not to mind us sitting there for two hours for the price of a couple of coffees. As long as there were no paying customers standing waiting I guess it's ok - works to their advantage to be seen to have groups of people using the place. It ain't Deux Magots, but I guess ya takes whatcha can get. An interesting, disparate bunch of folks, with some interestingly divergent views on writing (the process as well as the product). A promising endeavor, so far. So watch this space...

* This is Writing Group number 3 for me, number two in terms of active groups; the previous "number two" fizzled out, though one or two of the folks from it have shown up in this new one. When I mentioned to a pal that I had joined another writing group, he asked, "What's wrong with the other one?" Well, nothing or course, but if one is good, two will be twice as good. I guess I should have asked why he bothers to play golf at more than one club.

There's got to be a trick, a knack to this discipline stuff, this

making one's self sit down every day and work at the thing we want to do (to have done?) more than anything, but which eludes us and engenders no end of excuses. And even as we mouth the excuses we (I) know they're bullshit and the real answer is buried somewhere in the murk of the mind, possibly, probably out of reach of the waking search. Fortunately, I have convinced myself that it is real, and it is the right thing to be doing, and it is a worthwhile - indeed perhaps THE worthwhile - endeavor of a lifetime, else why would it be so persistent and not have gone away after all these years of neglect and diversion? "Perhaps you're just not a writer" someone said to me once. I sincerely tried to follow through on that notion, and several times got on the wagon, ignoring things I'd written up to that point, and trying to be comfortable with not writing anything more except in conjunction with business - tech writing, emails, etc. Well it didn't work, and it sort of felt like I imagine it would have felt like in the old days, being left-handed and suffering the corrections of a culture that saw fit to make left-handed people into inept and uncomfortable right-handed people. So the past few years have been a bit of a struggle but I persevere and sooner rather than later now (though it's already too late for it to be really "sooner rather than later") the pile of stuff produced will be a respectable corpus.

Dream Journal 6/4/2013 - So it's been since April I haven't posted. Shame on me.

Twice in the past week or so I've had a similar dream, or sequence of dreams. I'm on some sort of campus, with many buildings of differing ages and architectures, and apparently differing functions. There are lots of other people around but they do not seem to be aware of me, or at least not concerned with my existence. They also don't seem to be engaged in any communal or concerted effort - they all seem to be to-ing and fro-ing on their own individual agendas (what's the Latin plural for a plural?). The thing about this "campus" - a word I choose solely because it describes a plot of land with a clump or cluster of related buildings, not because I think the nature of the place was academic, though it might well have been, I never did really identify the place to myself - the thing about it was that the buildings seemed to have been sort of strewn higgledy-piggledy around the landscape of the place, with little or no attention to connections between and among the buildings. And their relative positions kept changing, or else (worse yet) the buildings themselves kept changing, and when I left one and passed by others, then had to return to the one I'd left, there was no way to find it. Neat quadrangles (there's that academia connection) turned into rock-strewn paths through the woods; then the rock-strewn paths turned into steep downhill paths, still among rocky outcrops. Buildings were placed randomly among seemingly derelict patches of woods and trees. In no case could I return to where I'd started, and someone was waiting there for me; not sure who nor what for, but it was important to my dreaming self, and it was the driver of the dream - getting back. And it couldn't be done, "back" seemed either no longer to exist, or else it had moved, or else it had shifted shape so as to be unrecognizable.

There wasn't any water in this dream though. But it was disconcerting to my dreaming self.

I'm dithering a bit, pondering all the this-and-thats, and

all the hems-and-haws and shill-I-shall-I, that (for me at least) are conspiring to keep me hesitating to pull the trigger on an e-publication. Having said that, I don't know what-all is really holding me back. I have a wee collection of stories, more or less concocted precisely for the purpose of putting out as a "loss leader" - something to put on the shelf, more as a means of having a "real" tangibility to deal with in the toe-dipping trial phase of looking up the details of a new venture.

The whole notion of e-publication is exciting: I really want to participate in the "democratization" of publishing. I really would like to get my writing out for a taste of what the greater public's response (or not, which will be telling too) will be. And I've also pretty much convinced myself that at this stage of my life I don't have what it takes to pursue the "conventional" avenues of sending query letters to agents, or magazines (in the case of short stories) of any of that bullshit. If I'm going to do that, then I'm right back in the mode of "doing stuff I don't want to do for some purpose other than the joy of the actual work at hand." My "work at hand" needs to be writing, for the next (last) five, ten, fifteen, twenty or however many more lucid years I'm blessed with. All that other crap is diversionary bullshit - I'm not contemplating a joyful entry into the book publishing business. I don't need to make a living at writing, but it would be very nice to generate some attention, some buzz, and a few bucks here and there are a means of keeping score, I guess.

It appears to me that between them, B&N and Amazon are doing their damnedest to make it irresistible for an independent, unknown writer to publish his or her own works, and widely, and at no real risk or expense. I'm trying very hard to find a downside, and if I don't come up with one soon, I'm a goner, and will be a published ("e-published" I guess, I'm still antsy about "self-published") author.

"Somebody stop me!"

A propos of nothing in particular

In 1960 or ’61, I was in the eighth grade, stuck out in a little whitebread suburb of Boston, perfectly happy & content listening to Elvis and The Kingston Trio. Then Charley moved to town. Charley was from East Boston, but unlike most all of the other people from East Boston (or “East-a Bost”) who moved into town, he was not of Italian origin, but Greek though Charley had a bit of the wise guy (and “Wiseguy”) about him, and hadn’t shed his big city attitude. But he had a good sense of humor, and a pretty good heart, so he found his way into our small town junior high circle fairly painlessly. He brought some interesting expressions, and mannerisms, and a few dirty pictures that he’d copped from somewhere in his childhood and managed to secrete from his parents, but more importantly, he brought Ray Charles to us. It was the beginning of Ray Charles’s career, and he was news to us entirely, and “What’d I Say” was electrifying in the same way that “Tutti Frutti” and “Great Balls of Fire” had been a couple of years earlier. You sit up and say “What’s THIS then?” when you hear one of these guys for the first time – whether the Killer or Janis Joplin or Dylan – there’s usually a shudder of unrecognition when someone outside the box comes along. Charley had a party, early in the 8^th grade term, to sort of introduce himself around etc. At that party we heard Ray Charles, and a few of us WASPy types were puzzled and a few were too good to be bothered with it, but most of us ate it up.

A couple of years later (late ninth grade), I fell, for the first time, arse-over-teakettle in lust with an adorable little blonde named Susie (Susie M. if you must know more details). It was at a dance of some kind, in the parish hall of the Congo church. Susie and I danced a few times together, mostly slow tunes of course, not because I couldn’t dance fast but because for me the point of dancing was body contact with one’s partner. Then on came a brand new release – “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” Ray Charles first significant departure from the R&B/Soul stuff he’d mastered then reinvented. And now here he was reinventing Country, taking this old Don Gibson chestnut and breathing something into it that no country singer could. And Susie and I danced to that record, and when it was over we held onto each other for dear life, and we were in love, and ICSLY was our song, and it’s our song to this day, though I’ve no idea in the world where she might be or what she might be doing, but she’s forever in my arms, thirteen years old, smelling like a garden in paradise, and Ray Charles is singing … “I’ve made up my mind….”