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A Purple Scented Story by Any Other Name

3/28/2016

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A WRITER'S WIT
Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.
Nelson Algren
Born March 28, 1909

New Yorker Fiction 2016

PictureCornett | Doyle
March 28, 2016, Ian McEwan, “My Purple Scented Novel”: I love short stories that nonetheless compress decades into a mere 4,337 words. In this case two young writers in the 1970s, great friends, develop parallel albeit unequal careers. The narrator, one Parker Sparrow, unveils their friendship, how his pal Jocelyn Tarbet is awarded the more commercial success, whereas Parker the life of an academic with four hungry children, a faithful and beautiful wife, and four novels that eventually go out of print. At this late-career point in their lives, one of the authors contrives to steal a novel manuscript from the other, and, as can only happen in fiction it is a huge commercial success. One writer (you must read to find out which) ends this purple-scented story by saying,
 
“Our lives, he says, were always entwined. We talked over everything a thousand times, read the same books, lived through and shared so much, and in some curious way our thoughts, our imaginations fused to such an extent that we ended up writing the same novel, more or less” (67).
 
This story might have been written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, even O. Henry, or perhaps John Cheever—fitting quite well into the New Yorker schemata of publishing particular stories that blend accessibility with a certain blandness of predictability. All fine writers, McEwan included, are capable of producing such an animal. Question is: should they? McEwan’s latest book is The Children Act.
Photography by Grant Cornett
Illustration by Stephen Doyle

NEXT TIME: My Book World


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READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!
 
Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
"My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"Ghost Riders"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Blight"
"A Gambler's Debt"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Engineer"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"The Age I Am Now"
"Bathed in Pink"
 
Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"My Long-Playing Records"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes.

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The Journey to War Is Always the Same

3/25/2016

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A WRITER'S WIT
All my years of campaigning have given me one clear message: Voting isn’t the most we can do, but it is the least.
Gloria Steinem
Born March 25, 1934

My Book World

I'VE MADE IT MY GOAL to read the entire oeuvre of late Anglo-American author, Christopher Isherwood, over a twelve-month period. This profile constitutes the eleventh in a series of twenty.
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Isherwood, Christopher and W. H. Auden. Journey to a War. New York: Random, 1939.
 
Books have a strange life of their own. In checking the date due slip of this tome accessioned to the Texas Tech University Library, I see that it is checked out in November, 1966, the autumn I go away to college, then in 1968, when I’m a junior, 1969 a senior. 1971, 1972, 1973. And last, 1976. This book about Isherwood and Auden’s joint trip to China in 1938—brown and worn with its spine heavily taped—sits on the shelf for forty years, until I pick it up, as part of my marathon to read all twenty works of Isherwood. Odd. I literally blow dust off its top and begin to read.

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Journey begins and ends with verse, most likely Auden’s. This first section of six poems is entitled London to HongKong [sic]: “The Voyage,” “The Sphinx,” “The Ship,” “The Traveller,” “Macao,” and Hongkong.” The journal as a whole covers a long journey the two men—good friends, having studied together at Cambridge—make to cover the war Japan is waging against China (from the late 1930s until the Japanese empire’s demise in 1945)—a piece of history the West often ignores or forgets.

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Isherwood’s accounts are as lively and engaging as his novels, including many details. “It was a fine, hot, steamy morning [February 28, 1938]. We breakfasted on board, and hurried out on to the deck, eager to miss none of the sensational sights which had been promised us. Friends in Hongkong, who had made the trip, had described how Japanese planes, returning from a raid, might swoop low over the Tai-Shan, playfully aiming their machine-guns at our heads” (27). His tone is almost lighthearted as he and Auden cruise the river. At times, the conflict indeed seems more like a cat-and-mouse game: the Japanese appearing to pick their targets carefully so as not to kill too many people, and the Chinese hiding skillfully, waiting to pounce, rather than returning fire openly—largely because the Chinese are poor and undermanned and underarmed.
 
The book closes with two sections, In Time of War, a Sonnet Sequence of twenty-seven poems and thirteen pages of “commentary” in the form of verse—courtesy of W. H. Auden.
 
Some nuggets from the book:

“That is what War is, I thought: two ships pass each other, and nobody waves his hand” (29).
 
“During the past fortnight, eleven Japanese had been brought down. The Government had offered a reward to anybody who could bring down a plane; as a result, anti-aircraft defence had become a local sport, like duck-shooting. When the planes came over, everybody blazed away—even the farmers with their blunderbusses in the fields” (37). Isherwood peppers his prose with “Japs,” an acceptable appellation in those days.
 
“Most of the Germans have been in China for several years. They belong to the pre-Hitler emigration period, when an ambitious officer could foresee no adventurous military career in his own country, and often preferred to be abroad” (57). Isherwood speaks fluent German, and he sometimes has interesting interchanges with the Germans.
 
“As we walked home the whole weight of the news from Austria descended upon us, crushing out everything else. By this evening a European war may have broken out. And here we are, eight thousand miles away. Shall we change our plans? Shall we go back? What does China matter to us in comparison with this? Bad news of this sort has a curious psychological effect: all the guns and bombs of the Japanese seem suddenly as harmless as gnats. If we are killed on the Yellow River front our deaths will be as provincial and meaningless as a motor-bus accident in Burton-on-Trent” (59). The two men are conflicted about their past involvement—in their twenties—with Germany and Austria.
 
“China, says Dr. MacFadyen, is a terrible place for growths and tumours. In the hospital he has a whole museum of bladder-stones. One of his patents had a polypus [polyp] growing out of his nose, so long that you could wind the pedicle round his neck” (103-4). From this passage one realizes just how backward, how terribly poor 1930s China is.
 
Isherwood manages to capture the ironies of war, a pretty dog with no moral sensibilities: “Meanwhile there was time for a stroll round the village. It was a glorious, cool spring morning. On a waste plot of land beyond the houses a dog was gnawing what was, only too obviously, a human arm. A spy, they told us, had been buried there after execution a day or two ago; the dog had dug the corpse half out of the earth. It was rather a pretty dog with a fine, bushy tail. I remembered how we had patted it when it came begging for scraps of our supper the evening before” (112).
 
Here, he comments on the hale attitude with which the Chinese approach war: “The average Chinese soldier speaks of China’s chances with an air of gentle deprecation, yet he is ultimately confident or, at least, hopeful. ‘The Japanese,’ said one of them, ‘fight with their tanks and planes. We Chinese fight with our spirit.’ The ‘spirit’ is certainly important when one considers the Chinese inferiority in armaments (today’s new guns were a remarkable exception) and their hopeless deficiency in medical services. European troops may appear more self-confident, more combative, more efficient and energetic, but if they had to wage this war under similar conditions they would probably all mutiny within a fortnight” (117).
 
Here Isherwood comments on the amenities of a particular inn: “The Guest-House at Sian must be one of the strangest hotels in the world. A caprice of Chang Hsueh-liang created it—a Germanic, severely modern building, complete with private bathrooms, running water, central heating, and barber’s shop; the white dining-room has a dance-floor in the middle, and an indirectly rose-lit dome. Sitting in the entrance-lounge, on comfortable settees, you watch the guests going in and out. With the self-assured briskness of people accustomed to luxury and prompt service, inhabitants of a great metropolis. Those swing-doors might open on to Fifth Avenue, Piccadilly, Unter den Linden. The illusion is nearly complete” (129).
 
The following is an interesting anecdote that a Dr. Mooser passes onto Isherwood: “While he was working in Mexico he was summoned to the bedside of an Englishman named David H. Lawrence, ‘a queer-looking fellow with a red beard.’ I told him: ‘I thought you were Jesus Christ.’ And he laughed. There was a big German woman sitting beside him. She was his wife. I asked him what his profession was. He said he was a writer. ‘Are you a famous writer?’ I asked him. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Not so famous.’ His wife didn’t like that. ‘Didn’t you really know my husband was a writer?’ she said to me. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Never heard of him.’ And Lawrence said: ‘Don’t be silly, Frieda. How should he know I was a writer? I didn’t know he was a doctor, either, till he told me.’
         Dr. Mooser then examined Lawrence and told him that he was suffering from tuberculosis—not from malaria, as the Mexican doctor had assured him. Lawrence took it very quietly. He only asked how long Mooser thought he would live. ‘Two years,’ said Mooser. ‘If you’re careful.’ This was in 1928” (138). [Lawrence dies in 1930.]
 
In Hangkow, near their journey’s end, Isherwood comments about one of the hotels: “Running out to meet us came a drilled troop of houseboys in khaki shorts and white shirts, prettily embroidered with the scarlet characters of their names. Mr. Charleton’s boys were famous, it appeared, in this part of China. He trained them for three years—as servants, gardeners, carpenters, or painters—and then placed them, often in excellent jobs, with consular officials, or foreign business men. The boys had all learnt a little English. The could say: ‘Good morning, sir,’ when you met them, and commanded a whole repertoire of sentences about tea, breakfast, the time you wanted to be called, the laundry, and the price of drinks. When a new boy arrived one of the third-year boys was appointed as his guardian. The first year, the boy was paid nothing; the second year, four dollars a month, the third year, ten. If a boy was stupid but willing he was taken on to the kitchen staff, and given a different uniform—black shirt and shorts. All tips were divided and the profits of the business shared out at the end of the year” (178).
 
And of course, the two writers cannot end the book without commenting on war, an abstraction transmogrified into the concrete: “But war, as Auden said later, is not like that. War is bombing an already disused arsenal, missing it, and killing a few old women. War is lying in a stable with a gangrenous leg. War is drinking hot water in a barn and worrying about one’s wife. War is a handful of lost and terrified men in the mountains, shooting at something moving in the undergrowth. War is waiting for days with nothing to do; shouting down a dead telephone; going without sleep, or sex, or a wash. War is untidy, inefficient, obscure, and largely a matter of chance” (202). And what has changed?
 
More of the same: “Mr. Wang was the civil governor of six counties, and he had prepared an exhaustive report on the atrocities of the Japanese against the civilian population. In Mr. Wang’s area eighty per cent of the houses had been burnt. Out of 1,100 houses in Siaofeng only 200 remained. Out of 2,800 in Tsinan only 3. Three thousand civilians had been killed during the past four months. Children were being kidnapped by the Japanese and sent to Shanghai—for forced labour or the brothels. Out of 110,000 refugees only ten per cent had been able to leave the district. The rest were returning, where possible, to their ruined homes, with money from the Government to buy seeds for the spring sowing. If they belonged to areas occupied by the Japanese they would be given work—either in repairing the roads or in their own handicrafts” (213).
 
Isherwood makes clear how conflicted he is about being conveyed by coolies in carts over muddy terrain: “The coolies strode along, relieving each other with trained adroitness. We gazed at their bulging calves and straining thighs, and rehearsed every dishonest excuse for allowing ourselves to be carried by human beings: they are used to it, it’s giving them employment, they don’t feel. Oh no, they don’t feel—but the lump on the back of that man’s neck wasn’t raised by drinking champagne, and his sweat remarkably resembles my own. Never mind, my feet hurt. I’m paying him, aren’t I? Three times as much, in fact, as he’d get from a Chinese. Sentimentality helps no one. Why don’t you walk? I can’t, I tell you. You bloody well would if you’d got no cash. But I have got cash. Oh, dear. I’m so heavy . . . . Our coolies, unaware of these qualms, seemed to bear us no ill-will, however. At the road-side halts they even brought us cups of tea” (226).
 
Isherwood’s utter amazement at the Chinese concept of thrift: “We stopped to get petrol near a restaurant where they were cooking bamboo in all its forms—including the strips used for making chairs. That, I thought, is so typical of this country. Nothing is specifically either eatable or uneatable. You could begin munching a hat, or bite a mouthful out of a wall; equally, you could build a hut with the food provided at lunch. Everything is everything” (231). Everything is everything.
 
From Sonnet XIX:
But in the evening the oppression lifted;
The peaks came into focus; it had rained:
Across the lawns and cultured flowers drifted
The conversation of the highly trained.
My posts about books don't usually run this long, but Journey to a War seems filled with information that one ought to pass on. Even though the events Isherwood covers happen over seventy-five years ago, he makes them seem immediate and universal.

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2016

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Resolutions

3/21/2016

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A WRITER'S WIT
Republicans run the machine when it's their turn, and then hand the wheel over to Democrats when the public has had enough.
Thomas Frank
Born March 21, 1965

New Yorker Fiction 2016

PictureRui Tenreiro
March 21, 2016, Annie Proulx, “A Resolute Man”: As a child James Duke is rejected by his father (because his birth causes his mother’s death) and forced to eke out his own life, but at fifty-one, in the early 1800s, James inherits his father’s considerable fortune. ¶ As is typical of any Proulx story, this one is plump with twists and turns, coincidences that almost seem too good, or too insidious, to be true. The yarn is also plump with details that plop the reader full into early nineteenth-century life in England, Boston, and the high seas in between—from the stink of an untended kitchen to the rot of NYC streets laden with animal shit. But Proulx, as well, showers the reader with sweet smells of food, drink, and love. The narrative could very well have been written by Charles Dickens himself except for one thing. Yes, what sets Proulx’s story apart is its ending: James Duke, most resolute in his demeanor, holds a certain power over his new wife, and, in return, the equally resolute Mrs. Duke holds a certain power over him. Uncannily O. Henry in its check-checkmate nature, the conclusion ensures that members of this couple will keep a steadfast eye on each other forever. ¶ One quarrel with Ms. Proulx's research: pineapples being shipped to NYC from the Bahamas in the early 1800s sounds a bit off, so I look it up (Wikipedia, corroborated by two other online sources). Yes, pineapples are being grown there at this time but not widely exported until the 1850s. Does this make me a nitpicker or Proulx a fact stretcher? Her sixth novel, Barkskins, is out in June.
Illustration by Rui Tenreiro

NEXT TIME: My Book World


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READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!
 
Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
"My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"Ghost Riders"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Blight"
"A Gambler's Debt"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Engineer"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"The Age I Am Now"
"Bathed in Pink"
 
Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"My Long-Playing Records"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes.

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Violets Are Bluish

3/15/2016

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A WRITER'S WIT
I think people underestimate the romance audience. It's everything from career women to high school girls to elderly women. I have male readers, too, especially for the Civil War books.
Heather Graham Pozzessere
Born March 15, 1953

My Book World

I'VE MADE IT MY GOAL to read the entire oeuvre of late Anglo-American author, Christopher Isherwood, over a twelve-month period. This profile constitutes the tenth in a series of twenty.
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Isherwood, Christopher. Prater Violet.
     New York: Random, 1945.
 
Prater Violet is a short novel about the film industry of 1933 London. The movie being made, Prater Violet, is set in pre-1914 Vienna, where a young woman named Toni sells violets in the streets. Soon she meets a handsome young man, who, at first, seems like a student but turns out to be Rudolf, the Crown Prince of Borodania. As Isherwood does in other fictional works, his persona becomes a character in this work. The novel draws upon his experience as a scriptwriter, a role that he will later continue in Hollywood. As always, he has a sharp eye for telling details. In this passage, he describes the director with whom the fictional Christopher must work, Friedrich Bergmann:

“Bergmann’s strong, hairy, ringless hand rested on the table. He held his cigarette like an accusing forefinger, pointed straight at Chatsworth’s heart. His head was magnificent, and massive as sculptured granite. The head of a Roman emperor, with dark old Asiatic eyes. His stiff drab suit didn’t fit him. His shirt collar was too tight. His tie was askew and clumsily knotted. Out of the corner of my eye, I studied the big firm chin, the grim compressed line of the mouth, the harsh furrows cutting down from the imperious nose, the bushy black hair in the nostrils. The face was the face of an emperor, but the eyes were the dark mocking eyes of his slave—the slave who ironically obeyed, watched, humored and judged the master who could never understand him; the slave upon whom the master depended utterly for his amusement, for his instruction, for the sanction of his power; the slave who wrote the fables of beasts and men.”
One sees that the author begins with the concrete details of Bergmann's body. But he masterfully moves beyond the merely physical, which is vivid enough, to venture into the director’s soul, creating the master/slave image which inhabits one character. In this lyrical paragraph Isherwood brings alive the director of the film, the heart of Prater Violet.
 
Moreover, he slyly indicates that the “Christopher Isherwood” of the novel is homosexual but never, of course, uses any such language:
“But there was a little waiter who, for some reason, had taken a fancy to me. We always exchanged a few words when I came in. One day, when I was sitting in a large group and had ordered, as usual, the cheapest item on the menu, he came up behind my chair and whispered, ‘Why not take the Lobster Newburg, sir? The other gentlemen have ordered it. There’ll be enough for one extra. I won’t charge you anything.’”
 
Or consider this passage:
 
“Love had been J. for the last month—ever since we met at that party. Ever since the letter which had arrived next morning, opening the way to the unhoped-for, the unthinkable, the after-all-quite-thinkable and, as it now seemed, absolutely inevitable success of which my friends were mildly envious. Next week, or as soon as my work for Bulldog was finished, we should go away together. To the South of France, perhaps. And it would be wonderful. We would swim. We would lie in the sun. We would take photographs. We would sit in the café. We would hold hands, at night, looking out over the sea from the balcony of our room. I would be so grateful, so flattered, and I would be damned careful not to show it. I would be anxious. I would be jealous. I would unpack my box of tricks, and exhibit them, once again. And, in the end (the end you never thought about), I would get sick of the tricks, or J. would get sick of them. And very politely, tenderly, nostalgically, flatteringly, we we would part. We would part, agreeing to be the greatest friends always. We would part, immune, in future, from that particular toxin, that special twinge of jealous desire, when one of us met the other, with somebody else, at another party.”

“J” could be a woman to an unknowing reader, or a naïve one. Isherwood can only be speaking of his relationship with another young man—this book set in 1933, published in 1945. Ah, young love, dissipated before it ever begins—and does so in such a way that would never occur now, or would it? As can happen with the production of any dramatic fare, all parties can become close, and this telling passage arrives very near the ending:
“We had written each other’s part, Christopher’s Friedrich, Friedrich’s Christopher, and we had to go on playing them, as long as we were together . . . [f]or beneath our disguises, and despite all the kind-unkind things we might ever say or think about each other, we knew. Beneath outer consciousness, two other beings, anonymous, impersonal, without labels, had met and recognized each other, and had clasped hands. He was my father. I was his son. And I loved him very much.”
That last bit of sentimentality, a rarity in Isherwood’s writing, might be excusable if we recall that he lost his own father at a very young age to the Great War. The excerpt gives voice to one of those deep needs that anyone of us can fall prey to, and Isherwood never ceases to address it in one way or another.

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2016

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READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!

Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
"My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"Ghost Riders"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Blight"
"A Gambler's Debt"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Engineer"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"The Age I Am Now"
"Bathed in Pink"
 
Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"My Long-Playing Records"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes.

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Beattie Story Is a People Mover

3/12/2016

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A WRITER'S WIT
Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.
Jack Kerouac
Born March 12, 1922

New Yorker Fiction 2016

PictureJohn Gall
March 14, 2016, Ann Beattie, “For the Best”: Gerald, a seventy-nine-year-old former model (among other things), attends an early December party in Manhattan, where he knows in advance that his ex-wife may appear. ¶ And she does. Jumping out from behind the Christmas tree in the lobby, she materializes, terribly inebriated, right as Gerald is leaving the building where the party has been held. They stroll up the street to gaze at the newly lit tree at Rockefeller Center, she verbally jabs him a few times, and he puts her in a cab. One finds it difficult to know what this 7,000 word story is about. Beattie references the terrorist attacks in Paris (November 13, 2015) and in San Bernardino (December 2, 2015), more as set design, perhaps, than as authentic threads of the narrative. She goes to great pains to replicate the dialects/manners of three discrete generations. However, the story seems to whiz by as if you’re aboard one of those moving sidewalks at an airport, without really establishing an arc. Why is the couple’s adult son, who lives in Seattle, mentioned at all, except as the couple's mutual failure? Why the name dropping?

“To his great surprise, he found out that Charlotte and Willers had a psychiatrist in common, a Dr. Frederick Owls, known as the Owl, on Central Park West.”
Please. Are we still referencing Gatsby (even subliminally), not to mention Hillary Clinton, Yale, and Woody Allen? The climax may well be more of a punch line, which appears in the last three sentences of the story:
“But she’d been delighted that he was rich. It was one of the reasons she’d married him. He shook his head over the illogic of that, unaware that he was doing it until he caught sight of his reflection in the mirrored wall of the elevator, and it was as he’d thought: he’d grown old.”
Must Beattie make Gerald’s difficulty with aging that explicit? We’ve known it since the first paragraph. Her collection, “The State We’re In: Maine Stories,” came out in 2015.
Illustration by John Gall

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READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!
 

Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
"My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"Ghost Riders"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Blight"
"A Gambler's Debt"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Engineer"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"The Age I Am Now"
"Bathed in Pink"

Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"My Long-Playing Records"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes.

0 Comments

"No Fracking Way," Says Denton

3/8/2016

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A WRITER'S WIT
There won’t be any revolution in America... The people are all too clean. They spend all their time changing shirts and washing themselves. You can’t feel fierce and revolutionary in a bathroom.
Eric Linklater
Born March 8, 1899

My Book World

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Briggle, Adam. A Field Philosopher’s Guide to Fracking: How One Texas Town Stood Up to Big Oil and Gas. New York: Norton, 2015.
 
I became aware of Briggle’s book by way of C-SPAN’s Book-TV. Having long been concerned about fracking, I was impressed with his oral presentation and ordered the book immediately. To his credit, he explores both sides of the issue—the full spectrum of choices citizens have concerning the issue of fracking.
 
Philosopher Briggle opens with an epigraph from Goethe’s Faust, which I cannot possibly translate, so I offer up what two different auto-translate sources seem to do with it.

Daß ich erkenne was die Welt
Im Innersten zusammenhält
 
That I know what the world (Google Translator)
At the core holds together
 
The fact that I recognize what the world
In the most inner holds together (Reverso)
From the beginning Briggle, a philosophy professor at the University of North Texas in Denton, is trying to convey what his book will be about: an ancient struggle, which continues today, between those who have little power (David) to stand up against those who seem to possess it all (Godzilla).
 
His narrative is part memoir, part science, part philosophy, and part sociopolitical. He sets it motion by relating how he first comes to know what fracking is. Pushing his son’s swing at Denton’s McKenna Park in 2009, he chats with a young mother, who matter-of-factly informs him that the area next to the park, open ranch land, is soon to have three new gas wells.
 
In some ways how else can a philosopher examine this situation except through the lens of his specialty? Such a lens offers a logical and sensible view, not often held by proponents of fracking.
“Fracking exemplifies the technological wager, by which I mean a gamble or even a faith that we can transform the world in the pursuit of narrowly defined goals and successfully manage the broader unintended consequences that result. In many ways, we are gambling on present innovations. I think that if we are to live with high technology we cannot avoid this wager. The question is whether we can establish conditions to make it a fair and reasonable bet. In the case of fracking, I will argue, these conditions are largely not in place” (3).
In other words, hydraulic fracturing of regions deep within the earth for the purpose of sucking out energy in the form of gas is perfectly acceptable to oil and gas companies, no matter what the cost. Our children and their children, state the corporations, will have to figure out how to correct any mistakes we make, if any.
 
But Briggle’s book is also, as I said, part science. He walks us through the ugly steps of the fracking process. First, pieces of heavy equipment deface the land. Then millions of gallons of fresh water are mixed with toxic chemicals, forced back into the earth to shake loose the shale, and then disposed of once again by pumping it deeper into the earth once the process is complete—for now the water cannot be filtered and purified for reuse, because it has been so utterly polluted. Next, at certain times these toxic chemicals leak into the air, and if you live downwind, they can complicate, in the least, chronic breathing problems such as asthma, and at worst, after multiple exposures, cause more dire conditions. He provides proof of how the groundwater in Denton and the surrounding counties is being depleted, often with little or no remuneration to anyone. To the big companies the water is “free,” part of their ownership of the mineral rights to what lies below the soil which a family may have owned for generations. And I have mentioned neither the number of “earthquakes” that plague Oklahoma and North Texas nor the noise that pollutes 24/7, once the well is being constructed—neither one of which is a minor consideration for urban life.
 
The sociopolitical aspect of this book may provide its most prominent strand, as Adam Briggle relates the struggle of Denton’s Drilling Awareness Group (DAG)—an amalgam of Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians—who battle Godzilla to keep their city fracking free. The years-long crusade results in a referendum which appears on the ballot in November 2014. Briggle and his associates debate the issues with the Big Boys in every possible venue. Thugs make threatening phone calls. DAG members are sneered at or spat upon by local gentry, who believe a ban on fracking, among other things, will cause Denton’s merchants to lose millions of dollars in revenue.
 
Close to the end of the ballot count, the numbers are 9,000 in favor of the ban on fracking and 6,000 against. When pro-bans are sure they’ve won the victory, there is much rejoicing on the part of those who have for many years sacrificed time, energy, and sleep. However, Briggle and his wife must spend the night in a hotel room, having been informed that their house might not be safe if voters approve the ban.
 
In the acknowledgements, Briggle writes that immediately following the election, several oil and gas companies file lawsuits against the city of Denton. And Governor-elect Greg Abbott and his cronies have vile words for them, as well.
 
“I don’t know how things will turn out, but I do know that I have been educated and inspired by my journey as a field philosopher in Denton” (284), Briggle concludes, er, rather philosophically.
 
On election day, Briggle monitors one of the polling stations for twelve hours to make sure there are no shenanigans by the opposition, and he speaks with a young man who fracks wells in West Texas. He wants to know why DAG wants a ban in the first place. When Briggle explains that the companies plan to frack within the city limits, the young man says, “‘They’re fracking in the city? That’s crazy’” (277).
 
From his mouth to . . . Godzilla’s ears. Adam Briggle’s book is a candid yet uplifting read! Get it. Read it. Give it to your friends. Keep it near as a handbook for your community. Seriously.

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READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!
 

Introduction to My Long-Playing Records

"My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"Ghost Riders"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Blight"
"A Gambler's Debt"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Engineer"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"The Age I Am Now"
"Bathed in Pink"

Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"My Long-Playing Records"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes.

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Buttony, Buttony

3/5/2016

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 WRITER'S WIT
Theories are like scaffolding: they are not the house, but you cannot build the house without them.
Constance Fenimore Woolson
Born March 5, 1840

New Yorker Fiction

PictureBen Thomas | Annie Jen
March 7, 2016, Fiona McFarlane, “Buttony”: A teacher of young children, Miss Lewis, engages her pupils in a game of Buttony, and it ends rather badly. ¶ The primary classroom is a universal setting: twenty-one pupils, a youngish female teacher, a simple game played outdoors under a jacaranda tree. Button, button, who’s got the button? All must recall having chanted those words during their own tender years. The mustard-yellow button is hidden in one child’s hand by teacher’s pet, Joseph, an adorable youngster, half Vietnamese, half Polish. Even though Miss Lewis admonishes her pupils not to select Joseph a second time, they do, again and again, and Miss Lewis says nothing. Finally, given the button one more time, Joseph stares at Miss Lewis and hides it in his mouth. Her judgment rather clouded by her love for the child, she becomes complicit in executing his practical joke. When after rounding the circle once again and no one apparently has the button, a certain chaos ensues. McFarlane’s deft conclusion is unique, delicious—just what the teacher may deserve. McFarlane’s collection, The High Places, will be out in May.
Photograph by Ben Thomas
Design by Annie Jen.

NEXT TIME: My Book World


Picture
READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!
 
Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
"My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"Ghost Riders"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Blight"
"A Gambler's Debt"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Engineer"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"The Age I Am Now"
"Bathed in Pink"
 
Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"My Long-Playing Records"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes.

0 Comments

Ian Fleming's Golden Letters

3/1/2016

0 Comments

 
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A WRITER'S WIT
Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
Ralph Ellison
Born March 1, 1914

My Book World

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Fleming, Fergus, ed. The Man with the Golden Typewriter: Ian Fleming’s James Bond Letters. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015.
 
When Ian Fleming achieves notoriety as author of the James Bond 007 series, following the publication of Casino Royale, in 1953, he purchases a gold-plated typewriter. Presumably, he continues to pound out the remaining books in the series on this golden instrument. I’m not sure why I am drawn to this book except that, like most voyeurs, I enjoy reading authors’ letters, especially those written to other authors, agents, and publishers. Their words open up a world of publishing that many of us only dream of. In large part, I am not disappointed by the letters’ contents.
 
As the title would suggest, the letters all pertain to the famed James Bond novels. Twelve of the sixteen chapters are organized around those titles. The remaining four relate in different ways to the 007 series, not the least of which are letters exchanged with Herman W. Liebert, Yale librarian in the 1960s. Mr. Liebert is a fan but a critical one, the type of fan that Fleming seems almost obsessively drawn to, the type of fan who seems to have caught Fleming in a mistake or two and is intent on seeing that they are corrected. Fleming, rather that being put off by it, as would be many writers, rather enjoys corresponding with such critics. He drains them dry for information that, in his estimation, will make his corrections for the novel’s next edition or, indeed, his next book, even better. And he composes such charming letters, how could one possibly refuse? The following passage provides a fine example:
 
“What I would pray you to do is to pay particular attention to the gangsterese—improving, re-writing, and even editing snatches of conversation wherever you think fit” (303).
 
Here Fleming cleverly enlists the aid of an unsuspecting critic, and he aims to milk the epistolary relationship for all he can. I don’t believe his pursuit is mean-spirited or cynical. I only think he wants to make his novel as authentic as possible. Later in this same letter, Fleming says,
 
“So, as you see, I am taking your kind offer very seriously indeed and I am embarrassed to suggest what fee to offer you for this invaluable work. But if you can successfully bring about this vital piece of collaboration I propose to present you with a handsome present from Cartiers as a memento.
 
I am coming out to New York by the Queen Elizabeth sailing on July 20th and shall be about two weeks in the States, when perhaps we might meet and I could make the presentation!” (303).
 
How could one not accept? Well, as it turns out Mr. Liebert declines payment of any kind, responding:
 
“Grateful as I should be, I hope you will not indulge in a present, for the pleasure and pride I have in the offer to go over the book are more than sufficient reward. The fact that I am doing this work will be graveyard so far as I am concerned” (304). He continues by offering to meet Fleming in New Haven, a proposal which Fleming must decline because of a tight travel schedule, so the two gentlemen never meet. However, the exchange of letters is a fascinating one, highlighting Fleming’s generosity, as well as his pursuit of perfection in his work.
 
Editor Fergus Fleming has selected the best to publish, but toward the end of the author Fleming’s life, (he has severe heart problems), the letters diminish by way of texture and content. Yet the overall collection is worth the time whether the reader is a James Bond fan or merely one of the art of letter writing. Judging by these that are now over fifty years old, it is an art that has probably been lost. I dare anyone’s most recent e-mail to stand up to the quality of these missives.

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction


Picture
READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!
 
Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
"My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"Ghost Riders"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Blight"
"A Gambler's Debt"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Engineer"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"The Age I Am Now"
"Bathed in Pink"
 
Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
"A Certain Kind of Mischief"
"The Best Mud"
"Handy to Some"
"Tales of the Millerettes"
"Men at Sea"
"My Long-Playing Records"
"Basketball Is Not a Drug"
"Snarked"
"Killing Lorenzo"
"Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes.

0 Comments
    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

    See my profile at Author Central:
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    Richard Jespers's books on Goodreads
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