Monday, February 20, 2012

So You Wanna Be a Writer? Grab the Wheel...

… of your nearest war-zone ambulance.

 
Many an important war-time novel was dreamed up by the men who freighted the dead and dying from the terrible din of the battlefield. Men whose bad eyes, small stature, age or nationality were obstacles in the way of their heart-felt war-time duty, found they could make valuable contributions to the cause with their “hands at 10 and 2.” In his classic war-time novel A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway gives us a taste of what it was like to take the wheel of a converted Fiat truck on the Isonzo Front…
“Two caribinieri held the car up. A shell had fallen and while we waited three others fell up the road. They were seventy-sevens and came with a whishing rush of air, a hard bright burst and flash and then gray smoke that blew across the road. The caribinieri waved us to go on. Passing where the shells had landed I avoided the small broken places and smelled the high explosive and the smell of blasted clay and stone and freshly shattered flint.”
…and, a little later on in the story, he has the unfortunate opportunity to describe what it was like to be a passenger:
“I felt the engine start, felt him climb into the front seat, felt the brake come off and the clutch go in, then we started. I lay still and let the pain ride.
As the ambulance climbed along the road, it was slow in the traffic, sometimes it stopped, sometimes it backed on a turn, then finally it climbed quite fast. I felt something dripping. At first it dropped slowly and regularly, then it patterned into a strem. I shouted to the driver. He stopped the car and looked in through the hole in his seat.
‘What is it?’
‘The man on the stretcher over me has a hemorrhage.’
‘We’re not far from the top. I wouldn’t be able to get the stretcher out alone.’ He started the car. The stream kept on. In the dark I could not see where it came from the canvas overhead. I tried to move sideways so that it did not fall on me. Where it had run down under my shirt it was warm and sticky. I was cold and my leg hurt so that it made me sick. After a while the stream from the stretcher above lessened and started to drip again and I hear and felt the canvas above me as the man on the stretcher settled more comfortably.
‘How is he?’ the Englishman called back. ‘We’re almost up.’
‘He’s dead I think,’ I said.
The drops fell very slowly, as they fall from an icicle after the sun has gone. It was cold in the car in the night as the road climbed. At the post on the top they took the stretcher out and put another in and we went on.”
Now, you can catch the flavor of the ambulance driver’s life in books like the one just quoted or in John Dos Passos’ 1919, but the literary magic of the experience seems to have permeated even the authors’ peace-time subject matter and was by no means limited to superstars like Hemingway, Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings or Somerset Maugham. A war-time stint in the ambulance corps quickened the talents of writers far and wide:

C. Leroy Baldridge, Louis Bromfield, William Slater Brown, Samuel Chamberlain, Malcolm Cowley, Harry Crosby, E. E. Cummings, Kati Dadeshkeliani, Russell Davenport, John Dos Passos, Helen Gleason, Julien Green, Dashiell Hammett, Sidney Howard, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Hillyer, Sidney Howard, Jerome K. Jerome, John Howard Lawson, Desmond MacCarthy, Archibald MacLeish, John Masefield, F. Van Wyck Mason, Somerset Maugham, Charles Nordhoff, William Seabrook, Robert W. Service, Olaf Stapledon, Sir Hugh Walpole, Edward Weeks and Amos Niven Wilder

Just look at that list. I’m not ready to say that the path of the war-time ambulance driver is a surefire path to literary greatness- but it definitely doesn’t hurt. And the resulting eminence doesn’t necessarily have to come in the world of letters. The French composer Maurice Ravel and American artist Waldo Pierce both spent formative years in the cab of a war-zone ambulance. Ray Kroc and Walt Disney were two others who drove ambulances in the Great War. Can you imagine a world without Kroc’s golden arches or Disney’s mouse ears? At some point the evidence crosses the threshold from anecdotal and coincidental to downright empirical. There’s something to all of this.

But maybe being a war-zone ambulance jockey just isn’t your thing. No problem. There’s still some literary magic to be found far behind the front lines. Gertrude Stein was a driver for French hospitals. National Book Award winner AJ Cronin was a Royal Navy surgeon. Famous critic Edmund Wilson was a stretcher-bearer. And both Walt Whitman and E.M Forster made a practice of sitting with the wounded during the Civil War, and World War I, respectively.

So, you wanna be a writer? Be a war-time ambulance driver. Grab your driver’s license and get your passport handy. Literary greatness awaits you.

 -photo by Barry Armer

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Literary Suspects

What would happen if you took descriptions of literary characters and ran them through law-enforcement composite sketch software? Hop on over to the Composites to find out. A few samples of their work below:


Edward Rochester, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Mr. Rochester, his foot supported by the cushion; he was looking at Adèle and the dog: the fire shone full on his face.  I knew my traveller with his broad and jetty eyebrows; his square forehead, made squarer by the horizontal sweep of his black hair.  I recognised his decisive nose, more remarkable for character than beauty; his full nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler; his grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes, all three were very grim, and no mistake.  His shape, now divested of cloak, I perceived harmonised in squareness with his physiognomy…My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth.


Saturday, February 18, 2012

All the Pretty Businesses


With three kids 6 and under, Mrs. DeMarest and I don’t get out much. As a result, I have little to no use for review sites such as Yelp.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the humor in imagining how Cormack McCarthy might grade various local businesses. Courtesy of Yelping with Cormack, here’s one such review for Design Within Reach, in Pacific Heights - San Francisco, CA
Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM

Three stars.

They emerged from the crucible of adolescence rosyfaced and long of bone, inheritors of the hurtling world of their progenitors. Cocksure but for the onerous legacy of war and rapacious greed and around them the soaring monuments and dolmens of their race fissured irreversibly. And like spawning salmon in their scaled finery they coursed heedless to universities and to the walled cities of Europe and the jungled ruins of Asia and they did so listlessly and yet with some driving hunger undeniable. For before them lay the promise and the yoke of some vague everything. And despondent they turned to those glowing gadgets and the vast and false electric nation and they soured like stable ponies for in everything they found nothing. And drowning now their horizons sinking and obliterated they lashed out. Fingers clawing that Eames chair. Eyes blazing and lustful before that Sussex credenza. Fornicating with that Brix modular drawer set.

Here’s another for Red Lobster in Wichita, KS


Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM
Two stars.
The manager sat tied to the chair in the corral, firelit on all sides by the torches of the townfolk. Dean stood next to him with a Colt army revolver pointed to the hardpacked earth. Who else will speak, he said.
A chorus of voices rose at once. From the din a miner hollered: The shrimp was rubberlike.
I believe Pastor Macabee already done spoke to that, said Dean. He looked around him. Ghastly amber faces staring back like funeral masks. Are there any other charges, he said.
A prostitute in dusty finery stepped forward. She spoke haltingly. I made a reservation for six persons. And we still had to wait 45 minutes to set down. Her face fell into her hands and she began weeping softly. We was on time, she said.
A drunk cowboy carrying a rusting hatchet lurched toward the manager. I’ll tickle his neck with my axe so help me, he said.
Dean leveled the big revolver at the cowboy. The man regarded him wetly and melted back into the crowd. Dean spoke loudly so that all could hear. We will do this orderly or by God I’ll send him to the capitol and to hell with the lot of you.
A little girl strode forward into the light and looked up at Dean and the manager with eyes shining and obsidian. Hang them, she said. Hang them both.


Check out more at Yelping with Cormack.

Friday, February 17, 2012

First Line Friday!

Lately, I've been more intrigued by short first lines than their long counterparts. Short first lines seem to pack a swifter kick to the crotch then a more wordy first line. So have a look at this one:

Now I believe they will leave me alone.

What? Who will leave you alone? And Booooom, you're into the novel. This first line comes from one of my all time favorites: The Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. The rest of the novel is perhaps one of the more artfully configured works of literature that I have ever laid eyes upon . . . and it has a good first line to boot!

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Poet's Corner

-Walker Evans, 1936, Vicksburg Mississippi.

Here’s another helping of poetry for the poetically-impaired. I came across this one on the Writer’s Almanac podcast. As it says in the one line intro of the poem, it’s based on a Walker Evans photograph, which we’ve dug up and displayed above. Pretty cool to see the poet’s inspiration and final product side by side. What do you think?

Hitchhikers
By Charles Simic

After the Walker Evans photograph from the thirties

Hard times brought them out early
On this dreary stretch of road
Carrying a suitcase and a bedroll
With a frying pan tied to it,
The kind you use over a campfire
When a moss-covered log is your pillow.

He's hopeful and she's ashamed
To be asking a stranger to take them
Away from here in a cloud of flying
Gravel and dust, past leafless trees
With their snarled and pointy little twigs.
A man and a woman catching a ride
To where water tastes like cherry wine.

She'll work as a maid or a waitress,
He'll pump gas or rob banks.
They'll buy a car as big as a hearse
To make their fast getaway,
Not forgetting to stop for you, mister,
If you are down on your luck yourself.

This is from Simic’s 2005 collection. Take a look:

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Review: Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta


When I made a resolution to read more women this year, there was a fear lurking in the back of my mind that by the time summer rolled around I’d have 19th century English authoresses coming out of my ears. Now, I do have Emily Bronte on my bedside table as we speak, but I’ve also tried to ease myself into this goal by reading more contemporary fiction (See Munro, Alice here) and branching out into genres I wouldn’t normally read (See Christie, Agatha which is sitting in my queue.)

Dana Spiotta in another female author I’d never read before I picked up her book Stone Arabia. I checked it out on the recommendation of a commenter here on this site. (Thanks Fi.) And after letting the experience marinate for a few days. I’m glad I did.

It’s a novel that’s had praise heaped on it from all directions, and is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. But I couldn’t help but wonder as I read it, whether this was really a book that will stand the test of time. I still can’t say I’m sure.

First of all, I genuinely liked the premise. The narrator’s brother is a failed musician who not only forges ahead with his obsession year after year- and does so despite being ignored by all but a handful of very close friends and family members. But he also compiles a comprehensive pseudo-history of his imagined rock-star past and all of his various bands- complete with fake reviews, album covers, news articles, obituaries and the like. When her brother goes missing, the main character tries to make sense of her own life by examining her eccentric brother’s “chronicles”, and by penning some competing chronicles of her own.

I will say that the book does a great job of evoking a place in time, whether it’s the narrator’s childhood memories of the late sixties, the LA club scene of the 70s and 80s, or the “present action” that takes place in 2004. In some ways it’s a time capsule of the modern era. And I’ll admit it’s somewhat refreshing to see lit-fic references to our 24-hour news cycle, and modern news events such as Abu Ghraib and the Beslan Hostage Crisis. Not to mention the repeated, gentle ribbing of Thomas Kinkaid Painter of Light . But I wonder if someone who picks the book up fifty years from now will care about these themes or identify with the book's characters. Not saying they won’t, just wondering if they will.

In the end, I wouldn’t classify it as an important book, but my guess is that it will exert a certain staying power. Spiotta writes compellingly about the sibling relationship, the plight of aging, the ways we choose to remember our past, and maybe most importantly about the pure creative impulse and where it comes from. It’s not the kind of book I’d hand to someone with an emphatic “You’ve got to read this” endorsement, but it is the kind of title I’d toss out there with an “I’d be interested to hear what you think about this one” curiosity. Anybody read it? If not, take a look:

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Happy Valentine's Day


It’s Valentine’s Day, and that can only mean one thing around here: it’s time for some love-themed holiday fiction. What better story to share than Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love?” And who better to read it than that ultimate paragon of perfect love, Leonard Nemoy.

Commentary begins at 2:00 in, Mr. Nemoy’s gravel-mouthed narration starts at 3:40. Story’s over at 37:25. Enjoy!

Hosted by kiwi6.com file hosting. Download mp3 - Free File Hosting.
-This recording is from a recent Selected Shorts Podcast

Monday, February 13, 2012

Forget flouridation, Let's look at literary additives


We're all familiar with the monumental genius of Harper Lee's classic book To Kill a Mockingbird. It turns out that the character of Dill just happens to be based on a very good childhood friend of Lee's.

Apparently, the real Dill was a kid named Truman Streckfus Persons and, as the years passed, Persons became a rather accomplished novelist in his own right. After his mother remarried, he took on a name that’s probably more familiar to you: Truman Garcia Capote.

This leads us to ask the obvious question: What was in the water in Depression-era Monroeville, Alabama? (And whatever the answer is, can I please get some?)

    

Sunday, February 12, 2012

May the best man win

It's that time again. Voting for Haiku-ption Contest #4 is now open to the reading public. Have at it!


Saturday, February 11, 2012

An atomic explosion of awesome


Today’s post shares the dual distinction of officially putting our third month in the books, and being our 100th post since kicking things off here in November.

Now, we don’t want to pat ourselves on the back, but since there’s no one else to do it we’ll just go ahead and say that it’s pretty amazing that in the past 30 days alone we have thrown the spotlight on 26 different authors. We may not be bottomless fonts of knowledge and insight, but you can’t say we lack range in our literary interests. Just take a look at this past month’s line up:


John Cheever
Roberto Bolano
John Steinbeck
Billy Collins
Wallace Stegner
E.L. Doctorow
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Alice Munro
James Joyce
Aldous Huxley
George Orwell
Thomas Mann
Italo Calvino
Joseph Conrad
Edith Wharton
H. Rider Haggard
Toni Morrison
Sue Monk Kidd
David Grann
John Hersey
J.D. Salinger
Annie Proulx
Eudora Welty
Douglas Thayer
Henry James
Daniel Orozco
Philip Roth
That's a decent list by anyone's standards. And there's lots more where that came from. You just need to strap in and feel the 'Gs.' As always, here are the 5 most popular posts from this past month:

We’re glad to have each and every one of you as readers, and we hope you’ll continue to spread the word about the atomic explosion of awesome happening over here at ShelfActualization.com.

Friday, February 10, 2012

First Line Friday!

It's "First Line Friday" again. Today's first line is a great one for memorizing, if you are in the business of memorizing first lines:

"I knew her eight years ago."

Now, I like this line. I don't love it, but I do think it's a good first line. I like that it's concise (very concise . . . 6 words), but completely introduces the reader to the subject, which is obviously a girl. But, I also wonder about its efficacy? Does it work? Is too basic?

The writer, of course, is Phillip Roth. The novel is The Dying Animal.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Short Story Club Selection for February



Alrighty. Time to unveil our February selection for the John R. Lyman Memorial Short Story Club. It’s a short one, but it’s an instant classic for anyone that’s ever worked out of a cubical. (I’m typing this post in the bath of fluorescent light that pervades my own little 8’x8’ slice of cube heaven, and some of you might just be reading this in similar surroundings.)

The story for this month is “Orientation” by Daniel Orozco, from his collection by the same name. Access the four-page story for free here, or purchase the entire collection below. Then come back here on Saturday the 25th of February, and we’ll heap praise/pick it apart/do whatever it is we do at Short Story Club.

Here's the opening:
“Those are the offices and these are the cubicles. That’s my cubicle there, and this is your cubicle. This is your phone. Never answer your phone. Let the Voicemail System answer it. This is your Voicemail System Manual. There are no personal phone calls allowed. We do, however, allow for emergencies. If you must make an emergency phone call, ask your supervisor first. If you can’t find your supervisor, ask Phillip Spiers, who sits over there. He’ll check with Clarissa Nicks, who sits over there. If you make an emergency phone call without asking, you may be let go.” 
[Read More]



Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Mini-Review: The Turn of the Screw


Since I’d never read anything by Henry James before, I didn’t quite know what to expect when I picked up The Turn of the Screw. Call me clueless, but the last thing I expected was a good old fashioned ghost story- which is essentially what this book is (unless you subscribe to the “insane governess theory.”) It was admittedly an interesting read, but I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about this one. I really enjoyed the premise, and the jaw-dropper of an ending gave the book a punch I didn’t think James had in him. But the fact I didn’t love it probably comes down to a question of style.

James’s reputation as a writer certainly precedes him, so I was preparing myself for pantloads of florid prose. And that, as the snippet below illustrates, is something he delivered in spades:

To gaze into the depths of blue of the child’s eyes and pronounce their loveliness a trick of premature cunning was to be guilty of a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred to abjure my judgement and, so far as it might be, my agitation.
A little much, right? But my recent immersion in Conrad, Mann and Faulkner had prepped me well for the challenge. No, it wasn’t so much the flowery nature of the writing that doomed this book for me, as the sheer quantity of it. He was too blasted thorough for his own good! James essentially talked all the tension out of a very promising tale that was meant to keep you on the edge of your seat.

I don’t need to know every thought, every impression and every detailed description that passes through the narrator’s brain. And I don’t generally need to know the three or four courses of action she considered before finally opening her mouth to reply to another character. As a reader I felt like I could form no reactions of my own, because everything was already explained for me in excruciating detail.

To sum up: I think beautiful and elaborate language definitely has its place, I just don’t think it served this story as well as a simpler approach might have done. Any James fans out there? Am I completely off base on this one?


Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Review: Wasatch- Mormon Stories and a Novella


Before picking up this book, my only exposure to Douglas Thayer was his short story “Opening Day,” which you can access for free here. This collection contains some of his previously-unpublished stories, and returns to print others that are described as among his ‘career-best.’ If you’ve never heard of him before, you might be wondering what kind of career we’re talking about here. I was in the same boat, but after Wikipedia told me he’s been referred to as the “Mormon Hemingway” I admit I was intrigued. I decided to take the plunge, and I’m glad I did.

On the face of it, you could say that Thayer is firmly entrenched in telling only one kind of story, as almost all of these selections feature coming of age tales told from the perspective of the Mormon male. But to dismiss the collection on those grounds would be to do the author and the reader a great disservice. There’s considerable range lurking beneath the surface. Whether it’s the magical realism of “Brother Melrose,” or the black comedy of “The Gold Mine,” Thayer explores themes of life and death, survival and forgiveness, faith, doubt, friendship, heroism and more.

Thayer’s Mormon-ness, which is altogether absent in a number of the stories, is doled out by varying degrees in the interior monologue of his characters, rather than explained overtly in sermons and worship services. Sometimes this method gives an air of expository doctrine dropping (as in “Crow Basin” and “Apache Ledges”), but for the most part it is handled deftly- as a backdrop or a motivation for the character action. In fact, those stories that delve for deeper religious meaning (“The Locker Room” and “Fathers and Sons”) are among the most powerful in the collection.

The author has described himself as having “a mind that deals in images.” His straightforward prose certainly conveys those images clearly, and above all, evokes a strong sense of place. The mountains, rivers and elements of Wasatch are maybe more accurately described as characters than as settings. They shape and challenge his protagonists, and in some cases give them their very purpose.

If I were to level one criticism of the writing, it is that Thayer has a strong affinity for leading with dependent clauses. This isn’t a problem in and of itself, but when two or three such sentences are grouped together, it can be a little distracting:
Sometimes at night, almost feverish, not wanting to go to bed in my deep, dark room, and not knowing why, I stayed out late. Dressed in Levi’s and low-cut tennis shoes without socks, my T-shirt wadded in my pocket, I rode my bike under the dark summer trees to town. The sidewalks nearly empty, driven by some strange desire to know myself, I rode past the dark store windows to see my reflection flash by.
I should mention that the above excerpt isn’t representative of the whole, but was simply dog-eared by me as a noticeable offender. Overall, his skills as a storyteller should not be left to doubt. Thayer moves effortlessly between backstory and present action in all of his stories, but does so to special effect in his novella “Dolf,” which will have your heart pounding right up until not one, but two final twists knock you squarely between the eyes. It’s like something out of Cormac McCarthy or the very best Louis L’Amour.

His characters are introspective and interesting, and they inhabit a wide range of time periods and settings. He’ll take you from the frontier of the Old West, to Depression era small towns, to modern day settings of all sorts- including hobo camps, national parks, red rock deserts, abandoned mines and ice-fishing reservoirs. You see a Mormon perspective played out against any number of backdrops, but as I said earlier, Thayer is by no means a one-trick pony. I’d be glad to read him again. Check him out. 


*** Update: This Book was awarded the Association for Mormon Letters' award for Short Fiction in 2011 ***





Monday, February 6, 2012

The eructative Eudora Welty


I shared in another post how I was introduced to John Cheever through a pop-culture reference in an episode of Seinfeld. But I’m sure Cheever’s not the only writer to befall this sorry fate. Sadly, my first introduction to Eudora Welty came in a 1995 episode of the Simpsons.

In “A Star is Burns” film critic Jay Sherman comes to Springfield to judge a film festival. It’s an important episode in the Simpson’s canon if only for the two short films embedded below, “Man getting hit by Football” by Hans Moleman and “Pukahontas” by Barney Gumble (You’ll have to ignore the Polish subtitles.)



The reference to Mme. Welty comes as Sherman is bragging about having won the Pulitzer, to which Homer responds with some bragging of his own:




The exchange between Lisa and Sherman is cut off at the end, but it goes something like this:

Lisa: “Wow! How many Pulitzer Prize winners can do that?”
Jay Sherman: “Just me and Eudora Welty.”

Later in the episode Krusty the Clown announces that he has a date with Eurdora Welty, after which a giant belch is heard offscreen and Krusty shouts, “Coming, Eudora!”

My own internet sleuthing (which is notorious in some circles) has failed to come up with any substantiated basis for this running gag at Ms. Welty’s expense. I’d love to learn that she was a profligate belcher, but highly doubt it. Anyone out there know if there’s a source for it? Anyone?

Sunday, February 5, 2012

In Defense of the Books You Hate: Catcher in the Rye


Tucker got me thinking about Catcher in the Rye the other day, and I left a comment voicing one of my pet peeves.

I can’t stand it when people hate things just because they become popular. I mean, I get it. We all like to be in on the ground floor. We all like to be curators of our own little pop culture universe. But if you ask me, there are few things stupider than yelling “sell-out” just because someone you don’t like happens to like something you liked first. A good indie rock band can be absolutely ruined for some folks, for no other reason than that their songs finally get airtime on mainstream radio stations. What a joke.

I’ve read enough crap commentary about Catcher in the Rye to know that it’s one of those books that people just love to hate. It’s a simple-minded creation. Holden’s a self-centered, whiny little pipsqueak. Nothing really happens in the story. Why are we celebrating this dope? But when it comes right down to it, where’s all this vitriol coming from?

My guess it’s one of those books most people love as a teenager, but one which you’re supposed to “out-grow” once you get a little life-experience under your belt. I just don’t get it. Nobody’s saying it’s got to be your favorite book, but let’s recognize it for what it is. It gives us one of the most memorable narrator’s voices of all time. In fact, on that score, I’d rank it in slot number one. It’s a book that continues to resonate with generation after generation, despite an avalanche of arrogant dismissals by the well-read masses. -And I’m no died-in-the-wool, angst-ridden teen- I say all this as someone who didn’t pick the book up until my thirties.

Here are just two passages that caused me no small embarrassment when they produced involuntary, audible guffaws on-board a packed airplane:


I got bored sitting on that washbowl after a while, so I backed up a few feet and started doing this tap dance, just for the hell of it. I was just amusing myself. I can’t really tap-dance or anything, but it was a stone floor in the can, and it was good for tap-dancing. I started imitating one of those guys in the movies. In one of those musicals. I hate the movies like poison, but I get a bang out of imitating them. Old Stradlater watched me in the mirror while he was shaving. All I need’s an audience. I’m an exhibitionist. “I’m the goddam Governor’s son,” I said. I was knocking myself out. Tap-dancing all over the place. “He doesn’t want me to be a tap-dancer. He wants me to go to Oxford. But it’s in my goddam blood, tap-dancing.” Old Stradlater laughed. He didn’t have too bad a sense of humor. “It’s the opening night of the Ziegfield Follies.” I was getting out of breath. I have hardly any wind at all. “The leading man can’t go on. He’s drunk as a bastard. So who do they get to take his place? Me, that’s who. The little old goddam Governor’s son.”

“All of a sudden- for no good reason, really, except that I was sort of in the mood for horsing around- I felt like jumping off the washbowl and getting old Stradlater in a half nelson. That’s a wrestling hold, in case you don’t know, where you get the other guy around the neck and choke him to death, if you feel like it. I landed on him like a goddam panther.”
Now, you may not have relied on such random feats of stupidity for laughs when you were young, but it sounds an awful lot like a million moments of boredom I passed with my highschool friends.  And just because I haven’t pulled a half nelson on anyone in the last twenty years doesn’t mean it doesn’t ring true. It’s a veritable work of genius, and if I had written it, I’d probably be just as likely as Salinger to hole up in New Hampshire for the rest of my life for fear of never producing its equal. It’s that good. Run, don’t walk…


Saturday, February 4, 2012

From the pen of Annie Proulx


I’ve said it before, but I read a lot of short stories. It’s my primary method for exploring new authors. Between podcasts, stories people send my way, and the John R. Lyman Memorial Short Story Club, I probably take in a dozen or more stories every month. That’s a book-length pile of fiction, every month, that doesn’t end up in my regular reading tally.

But just because I don’t keep track of them doesn’t mean I shouldn’t share some of their better lines every now and again. So today on the free sample trey, I give you a smattering from Pulitzer Prize-winner Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News. The lines below come from her short story “What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?”. All emphasis is mine- the phrases that jumped off the page at me in bold.
"With his mother gone, civilization began to fall away from him like feathers from a molting hen. In a matter of weeks he was eating straight from the frying pan."

"A section of the high-school band straggled past, sweaty kids, many of them obese, their white marching trousers bunched at the crotch. He remembered schoolmates in his own childhood, skinny, quick ranch kids, no one fat and sweaty, Pete Kitchen looking like he was made of kindling wood and insulation wire, Willis McNitt small enough to shit behind a sagebrush and never be noticed."

"Behind the band came two teen-age boys dressed as Indians, breechclouts over swim trunks, a load of beads around their necks, black wigs with braids and feathers."

"They were followed by a stock outlaw and a sheriff’s posse, and behind them half the town’s women and small children in pioneer regalia—long calico dresses, aprons and sunbonnets, big Nikes flashing incongruously with every step."

"The sky was a hard cheerful blue, empty but for a few torn contrails. Plastic bags impaled on the barb fences flapped in the hot wind." 

"He got out, threw his chicken box at the trash can. Rod, too, tossed his crumpled box, but it hit the side of the can and sprayed chicken bones."

Friday, February 3, 2012

First Line Friday!

Today's first line is a rockstar pioneer of a line. Written in 1951, I am unaware of this type of tone in any other literary work from the period, let alone to commence a masterpiece novel. Now remember, this was written in 1951 (the era of Leave-It-To-Beaver):

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."


It's a great first line because the tone itself slaps you in the face. You reach the end of the sentence and are left thinking, "Hmm, I didn't expect that. This kid sounds like a real ass." And you're only one sentence into the novel.

This novel is so prominent and respected and blah blah blah that I would assume most of you recognize the line immediately. As such, I am not going to disclose it here. If you don't recognize it, you'd 'better get your shit together.' (I am confident that Holden would phrase it that way too, if he lived in 2012).

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Review: A Bell for Adano


My search for audio books at my local library is a pretty haphazard thing. I don’t place holds, and generally don’t plan ahead. My selection just depends on whatever they have available whenever I happen to drop by. Sometimes I come across a book I expect to be phenomenal, and it ends up falling flat. (I’m looking at you, Toni Morrison’s A Mercy) Other times I pick something up out of sheer curiosity and end up loving a book I’d never heard of before. That’s exactly what happened when I pulled John Hersey’s A Bell for Adano off the shelf.

Turns out this book won the Pulitzer in 1945. It’s the story of a Major in the American Army who is stationed as the Allied Military Government Officer in the fictional occupied town of Adano, on the coast of Sicily. It is a novel full of colorful characters: the eccentric villagers of Adano, the cantankerous army General, the conniving former fascists, and the hapless soldiers who try to make sense of it all.

The book’s amusing descriptions of military incompetence and beaurocratic inefficiencies rival those in Heller’s Catch-22 or any good episode of M*A*S*H. Here’s a description of the runaround a local Italian gets when he wants to relay some piece of intelligence to General Marvin (who is modeled after General Patton):


After an argument with Colonel Henderson, Cacopardo was sent upstairs under guard, was stopped and questioned by a sentry at the head of the stairs, was sent downstairs because he did not have a proper Division pass, was given a pass, was taken upstairs again and was questioned as to age, religion, political beliefs and sex by a Sergeant, was interviewed by a staff officer who doubted whether the General  would be free to see him, was referred to Colonel Middleton, the General’s Chief of Staff, was questioned by Colonel Middleton’s secretary, who thought the Colonel was busy, was finally admitted to Colonel Middleton, who after an argument, agreed to see whether the General would see Cacopardo, which he doubted. At the moment, General Marvin was playing mumblety-peg with Lieutenant Bird, his aide.
The main character, Major Joppolo, is a competent, well-meaning officer and all-around good guy. A rarity in both the U.S. beuracracy and the long-oppressed Sicilian town. There is truly nothing not to like about the man. The reader wants him to do well, wants him to succeed in establishing democracy in Adano and in replacing the 700-year-old bell that the fascists had melted down for war munitions.

Unfortunately he’s in a race against the clock to accomplish everything he wants to in Adano. Early in the book he countermands a ridiculous order of the General’s and a memorandum explaining the insubordination is mailed off to the General to make sure he knows where to place the blame. In intermittent chapters we trace the memo as it makes its way from wrong Division to wrong Division, back to Allied Command in North Africa, and then finally to the General’s desk in Sicily. The feel-good ending turns bittersweet just at the crucial moment, but the book was as enjoyable a read as I’ve had lately.

The writing won’t knock you over with its lyrical beauty, but it is a great story, well-told. And what it lacks in breathtaking prose it makes up for in delightful lines from crass characters:
“This place is such a dump. Say, if they ever give this old world an enema, this is where they’ll put the tube in.”
A very strong recommendation for A Bell for Adano, a light but powerful read. Check it out.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Haiku-ption Contest #4

By now, you know the drill. My entry is below. Yours are in the comments. Winner will be determined by the voting public. Make them count!



Penetrating gaze
Five knobs and two antennae
Our bow-tied future