OK, the cat puke’s cleaned up, cat bowls cleaned, cats are fed, cat boxes emptied, towels changed, recycling is out, grocery shopping done, and there’s a moment to breathe & blog before mom & the kids show up for Saturday brunch. Carol’s teaching her Saturday morning yoga class, so I’m the chef. How do writers do it, spilling words in the interstices of life? It’s like breathing, another part of living. Weave it in. Draw from the shopping for the writing; draw from the writing for emptying the cat box. OK, that’s bullshit (kitty shit, actually), but it made a nice line. Still, honestly, the real work – things like my historical novel of Puget Sound, BONES BENEATH OUR FEET, or my new novel, or a new poem, do not respond well to constant interruption or the distractions of making a living or the drama of family crises. You have to carve out time; leave things that might otherwise be a priority; go into debt; sometimes even disengage (temporarily!). I wouldn’t want to live with a writer; kudos to Carol for tolerating me. But it can never be Writing versus Life. Writing is life distilled. It is so deeply informed even by the cat box, that we can’t help but improve our voice by embracing the mundane. The rhythmic ebb and flow of the everyday. OK – time to go crack eggs.
So I’m spending Thursday afternoon & evening at A GOOD BOOK on Main Street in Sumner. Sumner is small town. I’m from Vermont; I know small town. City folks embrace every new fad, small town is about never changing. Personally, I think everyone is equally crazy, so count me in. I’m a Luddite with the best of ‘em; I’m a hipster too. Meanwhile, if you happen to be in Sumner, stop by!
Please join me at Richmond Beach Library this Saturday, Nov. 5, 2:00-3:30, for a FREE CLASS in historical novel writing: Piloting the Time Machine – We will explore some of the special challenges and rewards of writing historical novels. The class is sponsored by the King County Library System. Richmond Beach Library, 19601 – 21st Ave NW, Shoreline, WA 98177. Please bring your preferred method of writing, lots of questions, and keen curiosity for the juice of life.
We have to say something, but what? What’s true, what’s close to the bone, isn’t always fun or entertaining. In late-stage capitalism, where everything is commodified, each pen/keyboard fart is expected to entertain and warm us, like a Garrison Keillor monologue. Meanwhile, in Thoreau’s memorable phrase, most wo/men continue to live lives of quiet desperation. One of the great rewards of being a writer is that we get to live lives of noisy desperation. Desperation, nevertheless. Love gone wrong. Children raised with care infected by our flaws. Fear for the planet, fear for our grandchildren. The unwavering certainty of death and oblivion. From this we make art, to console the inconsolable. To search for a loophole – a day, in Li-Young Lee’s memorable phrase, in which death is nowhere in the background. From joy, to joy, to joy, to sweet impossible joy. Thank Dog for death. Without it, how could there be art, poetry, beauty, even meaning itself? That meaning should spring from what at first glance seems to render life meaningless is a profound koan. Let’s meditate on it.
Secret Garden isn’t just a wonderful children’s book, or even just a wonderful children’s bookstore. It’s now (has been for a while) a wonderful everybody’s bookstore, on Market Street in Ballard. I’ll be there tonight (Thursday 10/27) at 7pm, to squawk about Bones Beneath Our Feet. See you there?
Please visit THIS LINK.
I am grateful to have my work embraced. I am especially touched that Mr. Wolff saw that I was not merely stereotyping Isaac Stevens, though he certainly is amenable to stereotype. The difficulty is that the ideology of Manifest Destiny seems unbelievably crass (thus stereotypical) to educated moderns, yet it was believed and embodied by Stevens and most of his contemporaries. It is always easier to spot the holes in past ideologies. Our current perceived wisdom ought to provide future generations with a few good laughs.
How can one love an acronym? By what it stands for – the independent booksellers of the Pacific NW, who were kind enough to embrace BONES BENEATH OUR FEET at their annual convention this past Thursday. BOOKSELLERS & LIBRARIANS – I’m available for events! At PNBA, I did a talk at lunch to the biggest room full of booksellers and librarians I’ve ever seen, showed some historical slides, and gratefully received lots of positive response. Then I was on a panel featuring Molly Gloss, Jonathan Evison & Jim Lynch, to discuss NW Novels for NW Readers, and we discovered . . . [drum roll] . . . that we are on the cusp of a major Pacific NW literary renaissance. Well, that’s the topic for a whole separate blog entry, so stay tuned. & keep reading! Here’s my fave from the past week – Wild Life, by Molly Gloss.
Here’s the latest praise for BONES BENEATH OUR FEET from a discerning book blogger who shall remain anonymous until his actual review is posted. This is cribbed from an email to my publicist:
“Just wanted to write you to thank you for sending me Bones Beneath Our Feet. . . . I really enjoyed reading this. I mentioned this book in a Librarything discussion thread, saying it begs a small screen adaptation a la Deadwood (a movie wouldn’t do it justice). I’ve been checking out historical info about Washington Territory, since it piqued my interest. What a wonderful book. More people should read it. . . . This is top notch writing. Romance, war, trial scenes! The book has it all! (And I usually don’t get this excited or sound like a town booster with every book I read.)”
One should be wary of blogging after midnight. The dark hour of the soul . . . Tonight I heard Russell Banks read at the SPL. Wow, what a fine writer. And courageous – he doesn’t rest on laurels; instead, he uses his position in the literary world to push into new and controversial areas. His newest novel (Lost Memory of Skin) is told from the perspective of a sex offender. The excerpts he read were inspired. A master at the height of his powers. Ahh, fiction . . . Sometimes nothing is more true. This is not to glorify sex offenders. Rather, to humanize all beings. & to draw the distinction between the predatory serial rapist on the one hand, and the young boy who merely loves a girl a few years younger who is 17, or the drunk who is caught peeing in the park. There are differences in degrees of culpability that our Puritanism and fear has led us to overlook. These pariahs are not all created equal, says Banks, and he seems to make a good point. Before we burn too many more witches, we might want to stop and hear their stories. Some are reprehensible, incorrigible, from whom protection is needed. Others, not so much. All live under banishment from society, which can only make them into the monsters we feared.
Google BONES and what do you get? Not a forensic physician’s or anthropology site, and certainly not my novel BONES BENEATH OUR FEET, but the TV show BONES. Why am I not writing for TV? Leschi and his intrepid band of noble Natives, battling the evil, power-mad Governor and his sycophant, Colonel Blunt . . . In episode one, opening in Mother Damnable’s whorehouse, the Governor and the leading industrialists of the fledgling ‘burg of Seattle are enjoying a night’s carousing, when word arrives of an Injun plan for a sneak attack. Meanwhile, young, impressionable Ainsley McAllister courts her beau, to the dismay of her secret admirer – the Similkameen serving boy rescued by her father when he was staked to his master’s grave. And Lieutenant Slaughter and his Merry Pranksters slog around the wilderness, shooting one another in the rear, drinking moonshine, and singing Yankee Doodle. All are rescued or blown to smithereens by the good Sloop Decatur, but Leschi manages to slink off to fight another day as the Governor and his kitchen cabinet return for sloppy seconds. [Last part censored]. Cue the Viagra & car commercials, not to mention the audience of millions. Well, quality tops quantity. I’ll stick to the discerning readers whom I love love love . . . Please read & recommend the real BONES, my book!
