JR Angelella: The Agonist

In the spirit of change. With my final semester winding down. With 10 days remaining until my creative thesis is due. I am changing homes.

http://jrangelella.blogspot.com

It's Thursday in my apartment. Morning to touch on a particular part of the day. Joe is en route to Brooklyn. He drives a sick ride. Suitcases pile about my living room. I am freshly shaven, scrubbed, dressed and listening to The Killers' album Sam's Town. This is the album I listened to when I first went off to Vermont. It gives me chills to hear it.

My third semester wrapped earlier this week with a solid packet response. Now it's time to turn my target back onto the Novel that I have been writing for close to 7 years, but avoided for the last one. It has become a trilogy over time. This is the first book. There will be two more at some point. The new advisor is in Vermont. I am hesitant to approach him about it. Baggage. Much baggage, but not the ones in the living room. Regardless, the end is only off in the distance somewhere over the hill I am climbing. I am almost to the top.

The Novel is close. I took a year sabbatical from writing it, giving it distance, allowing myself time to grow, allowing time for the material to mature. The violence buried at the heart of the book is attainable now. I am no longer afraid to approach it, write it, devour it, digest it. My boy, Jeremy, has been calling me for weeks now, letting the phone ring and ring and ring, waiting for me to pick up. His message is always the same. "Ross, I'm ready to die now. Not that I want you to kill me, but you always say you have to be ready to die for something in order for it to mean anything." This I believe to be true. I would die for my wife because what we have means something. This is an important example. Jeremy is ready to die for the book, not that it will happen. Although, it could. The final scene is a question mark. I see how it ends, but the body count is a blur.

Another song fades out a new one begins and another chills climbs my skin.

There is a push now for my fiction to find a home. One story has recently found a home. Another is being considered. A third will be discussed at residency and also sent off to find shelter. The learning curve is over. I have finally heaped my fiction upon my back and am carrying it with few stumbles. Up the hill. To see the view first hand for myself.

I read Aristophanes' play The Birds where the space between the mortals and the Gods is created. They call it Cloudcuckooland. This is the new world where the best of both worlds can exist and thrive. Once I reach the top of the hill, i will spread my wings and take flight, soaring to this place. I will join the ranks of my heroes and become a proud resident of the original thinkers, the creators, the storymakers, my other family.

And there will be a great festival, welcoming my arrival.

Cafe Suttra is a coffee shop in Brooklyn. So small you would never find it. My office this weekend. Computer and coffee and cookies, aimed at finishing the last packet of the semester. Stuck under headphones, listening to the new Death Cab and old Tom Waits. Life passes by on the sidewalk outside, while I creep closer to the finish line.

Cafe Suttra is run by a friendly Russian who never lets me pay. Tells me to settle the bill before I go. He is small, not as film and TV portray Russians to typically be, but he is small in a very big way. Keeps saying he knows many old sales tricks. Tells me to tell people to relax and be happy with what they buy. Tells me to make people feel at home. Old sales trick. I can't help but wonder how big my bill is right now.

I pass a mirror and see my face. I shaved my beard away this morning to look like a Shakespearean actor. I look like one, but feel less than that.

Finish a story about death and sex.

Work on a story about anger and apology.

Left, to finish a critical paper on violence and humor in fiction.

The Russian tells a man outside with a dirty mop and a grocery cart that he doesn't need the coffee shop windows cleaned.

The man outside says it'll only cost five dollars. Maybe three.

The Russian says it will rain later and doesn't need window washing services. The Russian tells the man to check back later. Good business. The Russian walks back inside and winks at me, saying, "Old sales trick. Make them come back. Make friends."

My wife sits across from me, sick, sniffling, fever-fueled and sleepy. I tell her I lover as much I can. She types out her magically real, really magical novel about sideshow freaks.

Thunder drops. Rain coats everything outside, flooding sections of the street. A mother and her teenage son run cross the street, kicking through a shallow pool. The son looses his flipflop and chases it with his bare foot as it slides into a current of gutterwater. He snags it with his toes. The mother never stops laughing. They do not even have umbrellas.

The Russian tells me I need to have another coffee as he busses my table and takes away from empty glass.

I ask him how much I owe and he says, "Doesn't matter. Pay when you leave. You are home here. Enjoy being at your home."

"Old sales trick?" I ask.

"Yes," he says for everyone to hear. "I know many. Let me get you coffee and I will tell you more."

Evening approaches as I write this. The rain has stopped. Birds are out again. The man who wanted to clean the window returns. He leaves his grocery car outside and comes in to order a coffee. The Russian does not let him pay and asks him to sit and make himself at home. He and the Russian sit together at a table and begin a game of chess.

And the windows are clean.

Sinners and Winners.

In a world where "wrong" isn't always "right-ed," you wonder how can it be that the person doing the wrong can go unscathed for so long.

The answer is simple--weakness.

To be strong is to right the wrong and go home and sleep, heartily.

Destroy the sinner.

Be the winner.

Hello there. Been a while. Hope you are well.

The river of what looks like life has been moving at a clip these past few months as the glaciers melt faster and the rain picks up intensity. My boat stays a steady course, knocking against the rocks, occasionally scraping the gravel pits in shallow turns of the river's neck, but for the most part, steady. There was a hole punched in the hull by the leafless branch of a fallen tree, causing a leak that quickly turned into a full-on rush of mudwater. But the hole has been patched up. With love and attention. No more leak. No more mudwater.

The river ride comes to an end in a spell. Not too long now. I can see the dock down a ways, thumbing out into the current, flagging those who make it to the end. Couldn't see it two years ago when I began down the river. Fuck. Years before that I hadn't even made it TO the river. But now I can see it. Can taste the spray of the fish-stained water. The breeze is cooler than usual, and warming up. I will have to abandon this boat in a few weeks for a stronger one, a final one, the one to carry me to the dock. It should be the best boat yet, according to all accounts.

My wife is on her boat as well, a bit farther than me, but still within in sight distance. We keep close together, sharing provisions and often similar careless mistakes made by us both. Her boat is strong and sturdy. No leaks. Her smokestack and flagstaff rise up high from the heart of the hull and tower over the other boats we come upon, either stopping to rest or crashed up on shore. The other boats envy her persistence, like she has been traveling the years. Like she was born on the banks of the river and from the womb dove into the current, baptized with a brief afternoon swim. She is persistent and powerful at the helm. She never slows. Never stops to rest. Just keeps on. Keeps on.

On off days, mostly early evening to be exact, I take refuge from the days labor at the river and power myself through a traditional boxing circuit workout. I shadowbox and jog along the deck and pound out situps for 15 minutes. I do a pushup-crawl which needs a lot of work. I power through my combinations. Jabs. Double jabs. One-two combinations. Haymakers and uppercuts. I stretch for just as long. I take pills, mostly muscle-relaxers and pain-reducers. I sleep hard and drink only water now. Mostly water. Beer too. And some scotch when it hurts too much. My body burns and tightens, causing hard knots and and phantom fires to ravage under my skin. But the tension from the riverwork disappears afterwards and is dialed down to zero.

The River. Boxing. These two main modes balance each other. One to set sites on the target--the dock. The other to maintain order and keep up the heart and passion for the work along the way. If I can make it through training, one day at a time, I can make it to the dock. If I can make it to the dock, I can buy a bigger boat and with the bigger boat I can travel the world, riding out from the river onto the mystery sea.

The river and boxing beat with the same heart: victory is painful, but at the end tastes so sweet.

Coming to terms these days with the crushing weight of change, I find myself living life in the darkest of corners. Not in a brooding, dramatic, depressing skew, but rather the day-to-day type, the "shoveling through shit" kind of way. Dealing in the grind. Hustle City.

In a greater sense, there are friends suffering adversarial elements to their lives, fighting sickness in the scariest of ways. For them, I keep in my thoughts, closer to my heart in the warmest of ways. I let the rest fall by the side.

I guess, in effect, we all bear the weight of the elements. It's only that the elements change, unfairly so.

But as far this life goes, in the dark corner of my world, I get by. The hustle. Hypnotic pull of everything left of the center. Bills. Buyouts. Cancer. Coughs. Tardiness. Buck shot. Lost. Dip down. Delirious. Thumbs up. Frown around. Figure it out and fuck you.

We fight it out.

We call to our friends.

We share this life with those of wondrous love and will.

Because when good things happen, you want to share that energy with those of similar cloth. Not shame them with it, wrap them up in it, twist it around their throat. No one hangs around for these moments. No one respects megalomania.

The art form of luxury writes the outline of a life and when that luxury is corrupt with the self, the art form suffers and talent wanes to the point of vanish.

Rise up. Call down from the clouds for a hand. Lift out. Be one of many, not one of few. Hold each other up in the light of angels and refuse the cold-as-steel contact of ego. Ego helps no one.

Rich is the person who writes for the self, not for the green.

Free. Free. Free. Free.

Right now. Don't wait. Rush even. As fast as your fingers will allow. To. The link below. My god. The link below. And see what my creative process is like with my editor. See it first hand. Rush. Move it. CLick, click, click. Snap it down. Move it along. Before it goes away.

Or don't


True, no?

Packet #2 is due tomorrow. I am at a loss for where I've been. The novel has been turned over, beat up, knocked down, twisted up, gut-punched, cut deep, spit on, gouged, shot and lit aflame, denounced, cursed, bitched at and written off. Then my editor, my wife, stepped in and gave great advice, helping me, healing me, holding me accountable, telling me how to make a good story great. And here I am--in the midst, out of time, running low, ducking from friendly fire. I have re-envisioned it, rewritten it, am at the halfway mark and truckin'. New title in place. Unlike anything I have ever done. New characters. New world. New target. New sniper-attack on the war, on politics, on trauma, on home and life as a survivor sees it. After all, we are all survivors in search of somethinng. The heart. The heart of things. FInding the way inside. I owe all the best of this to Kate, my editor, my god-damn amazing wife, my best friend. I owe the rest to Fyodor Dostoevsky for NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND, to Franz Kafka and THE METAMORPHOSIS, and Samuel Beckett for MALLOY. Not that I am writing at their level, nor am I aligning myself with them or work to work. Never. Simply put, I am channeling energy, guts, scope and strength. The writer soul of it all. It is the eve of everything and so much is riding on it. This is where the clock runs out and the referees walk off the court and the players shake hands and hug and hope it has ended in their favor. I am on three cappuccino's. I am on candy and soda. I am on Chinese and Indian cuisine. I am high, but without the drugs. I am talking to no one, and listening to everyone. No one outside this world understands the gravity of a necessary project. Not one that is written for money. Not one that is purchased before it even exists. I mean the gravity of the need to write, to write to survive, to get down those thoughts that make you crazy, make you want to start a literary revolution. Asses on the line. Guts exposed. To write as though your life depends on it. To re-make a life. To re-create the scope to live. A marriage to the work. Otherwise, what's the point? If I wanted to JUST make money I'd have been an investment banker. I am writer because I don't have a fucking choice.

You?

I had a camera. I didn't have batteries. So what I have is only what I have. Next time I am packing a city of batteries.

However, what I have is what you want. Photos of Pre-Cocktail Cocktail Hour.

Sham on.



Joe Stracci aka "The Nose"





Dr. Ian H. Williams aka "Doc Williams"





Pre-Cocktail Cocktail Hour

And it is that time, sitting in my now stripped room. Stripped of linens and toiletries. Clothing and loose change.

Our collective community of writers is embarking back out into the world to face our REAL lives head on. We resume paying for things with cash, instead of our ID cards. We relate to people who could give a shit about narrative structure, white space on the page, or the commonality of objects and emotions. We resume living in the world as one does without support.

Yet we have that support and have for a year now.

It was one year ago today that I wrote my first blog journal entry. One year ago that I entered the writing world willingly. There can be no comparison for this sort of experience. A writing life is a constant one, thinking on it at every moment, both in waking and in sleep. The craft of it. The soul if it. The nature of a writer's relationship to his or her work and that deep, marrow love of American literature and letters.

We writers are the lens through which life is interpreted and examined critically, honestly, hopefully. If writers are not pushing these limits, the limits of their craft, forcing themselves to lay their life on the line every time they write a sentence, then why write at all? Why waste our time? Why pursue the craft?

Last night, I gave a brief speech at the graduation reception and touched on the common experience of struggle and pain we, as writers, endure on a colossal level. This is the ether from which our brilliance is born and the sheen of our soul bore to the world.

Heading home, I cannot wait to meet my fiction for drinks, and ask the fundamental question that dogs at (my idea of) a writer at every turn: So what?

Why write? Why spend time creating a world, especially one in which you WANT people to read, and choose to soft-shoe around the revision process? Would a first draft followed by a weak-ass revision be enough to make you able to sleep at night? Does an astronaut guide her rocket to the moon as soon as they enter the NASA academy? Does a surgeon crack your ribs and replace your heart on their first try?

The answer is: no. They fucking don't. They practice their craft.

As writers, we take comments from teachers, fellow-writers, editors, mentors and rewrite. Not line edit, but REWRITE their fucking piece. Chop off a block. Burn it down to build it back up. A phoenix from the ash. It's the process of the thing. It's the life a writer chooses. You don't write a shit draft and leave it up to a committee or a person to fix it FOR you. YOU do the fixing. Your world, your words, your life of letters, your fucking problem. And an easy one to have, considering the ailments of our culture, say, as in heroin addiction and poverty. Use revision as your god-damn ice-pick to climb that god-damn, motherfucking mountain.

This may not be a popular opinion, but fuck it, I am gonna say it anyway: A writer who does not revise (and revise in the "entirety" sense of the meaning) is not, in my eyes, a writer.

My wife, Kate, and dear friend, Joe, are my harshest critics. Worse than me. But they represent the world I yearn to write towards. They slash and spit and mark up and question and lop of entire chapters of my work--all to the notion of the work not being "good enough." So I revise. So I sit the fuck down and push through the bruised ego. So I slog through the quagmire of my sluggish prose to find the work that makes them sit in silence, pouring over my words. It's rare, but fucking gratifying when it happens.

Fuck the bullshit myth of first draft writers. Untrue. And I don't care about your limp examples. As you read this post, know that this has been revised four times, not counting the line editing. Because I don't want insincerity and bullshit to be my reputation. Show me a writer who "claims" to never revise and I will show YOU nineteens ways in which they do. And if, in the ridiculous realm, they are honest in saying they never revise, then they are NOT writers.

Read a hundred books to write one.

Write a hundred pages to get twenty.

In the process of writing prose that will eventually be lost to the underworld of bad form, you find the HEAT of the story.

Come prepared. Follow direction. Conflict and disagreement is encouraged, but as some point realize you are most likely wrong. Give in to the people who see flecks of gold in your shit writing. Copious amounts of time would not be spent on prose, if there wasn't merit stuck inside. Understand your place in the lineage of letters. Don't presume you are above the rest. Because if you do presume to be Godly, revision be damned, then you will never accomplish something real, the tangible success of good prose. Leave ego and laziness at the door, or find a new profession. FInd a new craft. Or demote your work from "craft" to "hobby" because this is what you are at best.

Revision is not easy, nor is it fun. But it sure as hell is better than wasting time writing shit. Because you could die tomorrow and leave behind a legacy worthy of little praise and deserving disrespect.

The pain in my side is not my liver, but the digestion of a lazy writer. Motherfuck! And Amen!

Sunday. Shit. Can a liver die in a week? Yes? I am not so sure. Tonight was similar to yesterday which was similar to the day before that. Except I am not QUITE so drunk. Also, I like Joe's juice. Allow me to explain. Joe Stracci squeezed fresh grapefruit juice before leaving for residency. Add some of his Grey Goose and you have a "Joe Goose." Dayna and Joe and I drank "Joe Goose" talking about our top five favorite books.

Oh, so you want to know mine?

James Salter--A SPORT AND A PASTIME
Joe Brainard--I REMEMBER
Mary Robison--WHY DID I EVER
AM Homes--MUSIC FOR TORCHING
Don DeLillo--WHITE NOISE

Oh, yeah!

So today was so long. SO fucking long. Lectures and readings. I learned about sonnets, Dante's INFERNO, the poet Hart Crane, approaching writing literature that scares you, Star Black's brilliant photography, and wonderful fiction reading by faculty.

I read a one line short story tonight at an open mic, which upset many people because they didn't get it (fuck 'em) and Joe Stracci read his story tonight which solidified his emergence as one of America's young talents in the stripped fiction form. After the reading, Joe and I drank in celebration and absorbed the heavy sparks of possibility.

I also had a lunch with my advisor, Askold. He gave us our requirements for the semester. I have so much to read and write and edit and review and annotate that I am smiling. My last semester was brilliant, but I am equally yet differently excited about this semester. My new novel is formed and tight and formed and there and lit and burning and open and scary and drunk and high and fucked and alive and speaking to me like a corpse, propped up and dressed in a tuxedo.

DO you know what I mean?

So we go. Today I purchased the Killer's album SAWDUST. Their album SAM'S TOWN is devastating and can change one's world. SAWDUST is a collection of the B sides. It will enlighten you. Listen to it. WIth scotch. Whilst writing. it will light your words on fire.

Today was another day. Good lectures. Okay workshop. Excellent graduate readings. I give a good heavy cheers to my fellow fiction minimalist cohorts!

Tonight was Liam's first memorial. People spoke. True stories. Sexist stories. Racists stories. Ageists stories. Degradist stories. Fucked up stories. I am keeping my story until later. There were tears and laughter and a good solid silence.

After, we all got good and, as my wife describes as, rollicking drunk. We drank hard and heavy and spoke of Liam and his vision of writing as a conduit of change.

After everyone had gone to sleep in Bennington and all the bars closed down, a small group of ten collected in the commons in front of a sleeping fire to sing songs with guitar and scotch. We drank and sang and nodded to the obvious missing piece of the puzzle.

Tomorrow is another day and as one of the singer/teachers said, we are not leaving until the song is sung.

So today was filled with more douchebaggery! Much talk of books I suspect very few people have ACTUALLY read. I, myself, enjoy making up FAKE authors and FAKE books, trying to get the "douche-bags" to confirm with emphatic head-nods that they have IN FACT read my FAKE book. Dan Googenflenkman's novel THE HOTDOG JOURNEY INTO NIGHT.

I met my advisor for a one-to-one today. Askold Melnyczuk. A great man and fellow lover of Don DeLillo. Nice. Askold told me that he sees an obsessive quality in me and my work and recommended I read the following obsessive writers this coming semester:

Malloy—Samuel Beckett
Malone Dies—Samuel Beckett
The Unnamable—Samuel Beckett
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Notes from the Underground --- Fyodor Dostoevsky
War and Peace—Leo Tolstoy
The Third Policeman—Flann O’Brian
Gargoyles—Thomas Bernhard
Moby Dick, or The Whale—Herman Melville
“The Judgment,” “The Metamorphosis,” “In The Penal Colony” --- Franz Kafka
One Hundred Years of Solitude --- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Ouch. Don't get me wrong, I am VERY excited, but ouch! According to Askold, these books will make my writing shine. I say, if it doesn't, I am gonna make Askold shine.

Askold also told me that my new novel was a good endeavor and looked forward to working with me on it.

HOT DAMN!

Earlier this evening I also drank with the troublemaker, Joe Stracci, who laughed his ass off at my list of books.

Tomorrow is the first Liam Rector Memorial. There will be song and dance and drink. We will be merry.

As my days begin and end I remind myself of Liam's montra: Always Be Closing!

They are closed, friend. Good and closed and warm from all the Russian literature.

Hello. How are you? It's been a while!

I am here at Bennington to start off my third semester as a part of my Master of Fine Arts in Fiction at Bennington College. I am in a building called Swan. My room is large with two beds, two dressers, a small closet and three windows. I have two outlets, but both are on opposite sides of the room. Right now I am sitting in the window nook, drinking Glenlivet (18 years) and writing this post.

I ran into fellow writer and friend Ian H. Williams at a reading tonight. He told me I was a hack and slacker for my not writing in my live journal for over a month. He said he checks in and that I never have anything new. Well, Ian, here you go! I will say that although Ian can be an insufferable BORE, he is a fantastic writer and one of the most intelligent men I have ever met. He is wise, hilarious, tall, and a fabulous friend. I raise my scotch to him!

I arrived on campus with Joe Stracci after traveling up from New York City. Joe spoke about his advisor, Askold, and the books Askold had him read. MIDDLEMARCH. PARADE'S END. MOBY DICK. MADAME BOVARY. Joe swears that Askold is solely responsible for giving him a soul! Hmm.

Askold is my new advisor.

Last semester, I studied with the brilliant Amy Hempel. All I will say about my time with her is that NOW I know how to write.

This evening my friends, all poets and fiction and nonfiction, gathered together to drink and cheers our semesters worth of work. Tomorrow the new work begins. Tomorrow everything becomes real again with workshop and lectures and breakfast and more drink.

The weather is cold and gusty and snow is frozen in piles on the ground. When you breath in through your nose, everything freezes.

I wear a coat, scarf and green gloves to keep warm.

The scotch is warm too.

See you tomorrow.

Last night was educational.

My wife met up with fellow editors, literary agents, fellow students and teachers at the Vermont College of Fine Arts drink night in New York City. I went as a writer/husband with the idea of tossing back pints and discussing the finer points of narrative structure, sculpting dialogue and plot tension. Something like that.

This was not at all the case.

I ended up spending the evening hanging out with Andy, the husband of my wife’s friend. He and I drank beer and, while he was NOT a writer, we discussed the finer points of Roller Derby and the city goat meal called “Hog Mall.”

Now Roller Derby can best be described as hockey without sticks and a puck on old-school roller skates, the kind with the rubber stopper at the toe, mixed with a touch of football and street fighting without weapons. Brut force fighting. Primal. At this point in the evening, I am in love!

Then Andy told me about “Hog Mall.” This is a fine delicacy of a pig’s stomach stuffed with potatoes, mushrooms, onions, sausage and so on. Who eats this, you may ask yourself. Hill people. Appalachian folk. City goats. My god! How wonderful! I, again, am in love!

Bizarre and befuddling.

I went into the drink night not knowing many people with the agenda of getting drunk. I left with the knowledge that there is an underground game out there where people beat the crap out of each other on roller-skates and a new recipe to add to my repertoire.

The important things you learn when you expect the unimportant.

As I continue my pleasurable read of Don DeLillo's MAO II, I wait for the final release of the super-hyped novel GODSPEED by the sick and disturbed mind of Will Christopher Baer.

I discovered Chris years ago on an intense internet search of writers like Chuck Palahniuk. I had only recently finished all Palahniuk and Bret Easton Ellis novels and was looking for the next best thing. Irvine Welsh was good. Russell Banks was fine. But nothing grabbed me by the throat like KISS ME, JUDAS by Baer.

I read the book in a night, but had owned it for close to six months. I kept and carried it with me everywhere I went. The book scared me. The words growled at me as i read them, always rereading the first page but never able to move past it. I finally figured my way around my fear was to writer the writer. I send Mr. Baer the following:

August 4, 2004

Chris:

I live in Ithaca, New York--deep in the heart of the finger lakes region. I graduated college in 2002 with a degree in English and have spent the remaining time working at a law firm: making copies, answering phones, loading staplers and writing fiction. Four months ago I finished my second draft of my first novel and began fishing the market for agents. So far no such luck, but I'm a patient guy.

Recently, I have started my second novel but hit a massive block. Usually when this happens I just switch books that I am reading. Switch gears. I had just finished Craig Clevenger's THE CONTORTIONIST'S HANDBOOK and Alex Garland's THE COMA and but couldn't get into anything else. I couldn't find anything that excited me. Then I stumbled upon your name which I had seen a number of times before. I did some research and found that you had two novels and a third on the way. So I searched the net until I found a copy of Kiss Me, Judas and bought it.

Now your book sits on my desk, in my shoulder bag, on my pillow at night, on my desk at work and I can't open it. And I'm writing again. Your book scares me, inspires me. My imagination bursts into a gazillion different directions every time I crack the spine and read a paragraph before slapping it shut. I don't think I have gotten past the first page (more out of superstition now than anything else). I feel like your work is the flame I needed to let me know that I am pursing the right career. Your work just feels so energized, like you absolutely LOVE what you are doing. That you really love your work. I am confident in my work standing on its own and making it to print some day. Which is why I am writing to you.

Three months before I started writing my first novel, I wrote to Chuck Palahniuk after reading CHOKE to tell him how much I fucking loved that book and admired his talent as a writer. I got a box of crazy shit from him not long after (a rubber chicken, signed t-shirt, soap, santa hat, diary). He enclosed a letter too telling me that I was on the right track as a writer. That working where i was working was fine. That I should just write and have fun and keep on moving. To never stand still. I got that letter and wrote my first novel.

This is how i feel with your book except that I can't read it. I really want to, really fucking bad. But I am scared. But scared in a thrilling, "holy-shit!" kind of way. I will let you know when I finish reading your novel. Best of luck on your current projects. And thank you for being my inspiration for my second novel.

With Much Respect,

Ross Angelella


His replied with:


August 5, 2004

ross

that's a great story, man. I love that you've got Judas there on your desk or next to your bed like a drug to take in small controlled doses. when I first started writing, I did that with books by people like Dijuna Barnes, Poppy Brite, Martin Amis.. people who wrote really intense visceral stuff. I didn't want to sound like them or copy them, but their stuff sparked me. don't let the 9-5 office drone thing kill you. in fact, that kind of discipline and rigorous schedule is good for you as a writer.

keep the faith

chris


I read the book and it was dynamite. I read the sequel PENNY DREADFUL. I then waited for the third book HELL'S HALF ACRE and read that. His work will infect you like a poison. It will work its way through your system until air becomes scarce and the lights dim.

And now, with the weight of his brand new novel GODSPEED on the cusp of being published, I find out that the release date has been pushed back another month. I have waited three years for a new novel from Baer. I need it. I want it. The work I have been reading is solid, don't get em wrong, but it's not Baer. My literary world has gone black, but from the darkness comes a light.

Here is the jig:

The game is on. After completing my last packet, I took inventory of my writing life. I stuffed my 100 plus page packet into my bag, wrapped my head in a scarf, tugged my NY Knicks hat on my head and rode the subway from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side. In transit, moving between subway lines, pushing people around, elbowing for seats, this is what I thought about.

I. Me and Joe Stracci.

What started as a fun drunken game between Joe and I has turned into an enormously exciting project, currently titled the JR Angelella / Joe Straci Untitled Project. Here is the hook: I give joe a homework assignment, a story he has to write. He, in turn, gives me a story to write. Each story must be flash fiction, under 500 words or no longer than 2 pages and MUST follow whatever guidelines were given tot he story. 3rd person narrative of a woman washing clothes. POV of a grasshopper drowning in a bowl od chicken noodle soup. And so on. We then write the story and send it back to the other for final approval. So far we have each written, I believe, four or five stories, each better, each stronger, each leaner and meaner than the last. This project will be one to continue for years. The hope is to publish them as a collection some day.

As a side note, Mr. Joe Stracci is in the process of possibly publishing one of the strongest short stores I have read in recent years. If all goes well, maybe you will get to read it too.

II. Collection of Short Fiction

What started as one or two OK stories, has turned in six strong pieces supported by a dozen flash fiction which together will BE a fucking tight collection. I have three revisions to complete and few new ones to write and will soon have a manuscript of short fiction to apply to contests and magazines. Also, my favorite story has been submitted to the Zoetrope All-Story 2007 Fiction Contest being judged by Joyce Carol Oates. Fingers crossed.

III. Old Novel

First draft of my EVEREST of a novel soon to be complete. This will be my project to complete as my thesis in graduate school. I am four chapters from the end and can taste it. This will be the book that will change everything for me. A book about boys and men and self-amputation.

IV. New Novel

What started as a short story has grown and layered itself into what will be my next novel. A book about the effects of trauma on an entire generation of lost boys and girls. This is the book that spawned from a meltdown I endured standing on line for chinese food, stuck behind trust-fund college kids. This book will have a hard time to find the light of day, I feel, with its focus on the government, war, PTSD, bankruptcy, eating disorders, drug addiction, rape, homelessness, and cancer. In the planning stages, I have been poking at this for close to ten years now and only six months ago has it all come together. What sprung from the effects of PTSD in my own life with the hostage/robbery situation will finally flourish and rid itself from my writing in this incendiary, leaping, listing novel. Part of it has been submitted for this last packet. We shall get a taste of its potency.

Collectively, this is the jig. The game is changing, moving faster now, and will only be a matter of moments before a spark is born.

I am, at the moment, bogged down with work. Packet four is kicking my ass, but reading more Miranda July and enjoying life in her quirky little world. It's 530 in the morning and have been up since 3. Writing a paper that I like, but want to love. Wish I had more time. Also, making a book list for the month of December. So far I have Don Delillo, Junot Diaz and Hubert Selby on the list.

I apologize for the time lapsed in keeping this blog. Life just keeps getting in my way.

A taste: James Salter Owns The World

James Salter owns the world. What I mean by that is when you read a description by James Salter, you realize that his description is final, that there are no other ways to describe it. He has gotten it exactly right. He owns the world.

His structure borrows from the script format where there is an establishing shot of a scene, then close-ups, some action, more close-ups, a slow zoom-out and sometimes even ending with another establishing shot. In A Sport and a Pastime, Salter executes this effortlessly. “I come back to the house, open the gate, close it again behind me. The click is a pleasing sound. The gravel, small as peas, moves beneath my feet and from it a faint dust rises, the perfume of the town. I breathe it in. I’m beginning to know it, and the neighborhoods as well” (11). Salter’s narrative is a camera on a dolly, tracking close behind his main character, pausing to zoom in and catch the subtle shifts of mood and atmosphere.

Another of my favorites:

“Sunday mornings. Gloved hands touching, they drive along the empty boulevard. Schools are closed. The iron gates are locked in front of those long, damp alleys smelling of pee. A watery sunshine, blenched by skies which refuse to warm, falls on the blocks and corners. Unexpectedly, like a band of survivors, there is a crowd, all decently dressed, just leaving church. They squint as they come out into the light. They leave the steps, walk along, stop at the baker's for bread. From there they scatter, the warm loaves under their arms" (66).

Salter’s settings influence and affect his characters through specific and sparse observation. His language is minimal and direct. Sentence by sentence, he builds a replica of our world using cinematic techniques to punch-up his descriptions all in the effort to further develop and nurture his story.

For the past four months, I have forced myself to focus on the art of the short story. Prior to this, I had not written a short story EVER. Maybe I tried to write two or three, but they were no good at all. Bad high school-eque at best. I couldn't write short stories, so I switched to novels. And wouldn't you know, I could write novels. I have written two, in fact. Well, almost two. Really one and three-quarters of the second.

And so with only one-quarter of a novel to go I decided to step away from it due to the dark nature of the material and focus on some light short stuff in the form short fiction. So I wrote a few longer stories, good stuff I think. But the majority of what I've written has been broken up into sections, fragments, numbered sections like lists at a grocery store. My advisor kept pushing me to try the broken stories because as she put it, my fiction really lends itself to this style. So I continued to write the broken stories.

An example would be:

1.
The only time I have ever been lost is also the only time I have ever been found.

2.
I sit in the car waiting for the police. They said they'd be here soon. I wonder how long SOON is. When I tell someone I will be somewhere SOON, I generally mean two to three minutes or hours depending on the circumstance. It has been three days now since I called the police and they have still not arrived.

3.
Fran is wedged, stuck through the windshield and, I know, is dead. I know because her twitching and screaming has stopped.

4.
When I turned six I got a horse for my birthday.

And so on and so forth. This is my new style that all of my fiction has been. Quick, hard gut-punches. But something still didn't sit right with me. I couldn't figure out what it was, until yesterday.

Yesterday I started a new novel. The novel is written in this style. In the style of Mary Robison's WHY DID I EVER. In the style of Lydia avis' "The Family." In the style of Barry Hannah's RAY. In the style of Leonard Micheal. I didn't mean for it to happen. It just did. And I don't know why I didn't see it coming.

I don't want to write a novel now, but it's what I have to write. It started as a short story and kept growing and growing. It's political. It could very well get my cell phone put on a governmental tap if anyone ever gets a glimpse at it. It burns.

Oh, how did I get here.

Years ago I read a book by one of my mentors, Fred A. Wilcox, called CHASING SHADOWS. In it he describes his years living in NYC, homeless, broke, drunk, stoned, fucked up and alone. He wrote of the Bowery, of his descent into hell. Yesterday I was there. I was in hell. I was in the Bowery.

Liam Rector was memorialized at St. Mark's Church. Half-a-dozen homeless men and women littered the cobblestone sidewalks and lined the doorways of the church. I entered. Inside, candles lit the open room where close to a hundred people gathered to pay their final respects. Men and women wore light blue bands tied around their elbows. Hugs were plentiful. Tears abundant. Th event hit some harder than others. I found myself walking the line. I would in one moment be happy, surrounded by my community of writers, and in the next breath sick with a heavy heart for the man who made the community.

Many people spoke for Liam. His wife, Tree. His daughter, Virginia. Amy Hempel. Jill McCorkle. Donald Hall. Sven Birkets. Lucie Brock-Broido. Victoria Clausi. Martha Cooley. David Fenza. Matthew Graham. Linda Gregg. Askold Melnyczuk. Bob Shacochis. Jason Shinder. Tom Sleigh. Jerry Winestone. Elizabeth Wray. Two songs performed by David Broza. One, a poem of Liam's set to music.

There was also a slide show, altogether a fine way to be remembered, especially the full-frontal photo of Liam lounging like Dionysus. Perfect.

After, a group of us wen to drink and celebrate the man, catch up and talk. It's weird to be out in the real world, NYC to be exact, with these people who you see for a ten day sprint and then mostly do not see or talk to for six months. In that regard, it was hard to be thrust together for such an event to celebrate a life that, at once, brought us together.

As Tree said, his suicide was not born out of depression, or acted on in a whim. It was calculated. Like his life, strategic and calculated. The night before he shot himself, as the story was told by Tree and a number of friends, Liam greeted his wife dressed in a tuxedo and a polo shirt, dancing with her badly to some hokey old song. The song turned out to be a hint to something bigger, a personal connection to Tree. But the way he danced, the way he wore that awful combo of tuxedo and polo shirt, well, that's just very Liam.

I know I have more to say about it. I am not fully settled with it. And January is coming, which means residency at Bennington without him. How that will be, I have no idea.

All I do know is Laim Rector gave me the keys to the kingdom and I've sworn to do him proud.

and things have changed. For starters, I have a job. I don't know what my job title is exactly. Okay, for the sake of this blog I will give myself one--I am a Shmenkman. It's a marketing firm that staffs promotional events for big companies. NASCAR. Crown Royal. Monday Night Football. DirecTv. ESPN. You know, bigger than Route 96A's Super-Supermarket Fresh Market Select in Upstate New York. So I'm a shmenkman there, doing miscellaneous stuff, working long hours, but it's better than sitting in my underwear on the couch all day, eating gummie bears staring at a blank page of my computer. I guess. At least it pays more.

Also, been continuing my savage reading of James Salter. All good. He can write like no one else, ever!

Just finished Kristy Gunn's RAIN. A sprint of a novel at 94 pages. Tight, lean prose. Dreamlike and naughty. The last chapter will destroy you. It comes out of nowhere.

Also, have undergone my long awaited decent into Cormac McCarthy land. I am reading the classic SUTTREE. Oh shit, am I excited! So far it is--as Terese Svaboda would say--way hot!

Also, finally bought sunglasses. I will at some point write a post just on my problematic, pain-in-the-ass mentality I have about sunglasses. A quick and dirty description of this problem is simply that I am so anal that I think most sunglasses make me look like either a woodpecker or look the way an infant looks when you put sunglasses on their tiny faces. Ridiculous, I know.

Also, last residency I showed up on campus, sporting the only good pair of shades I had found in the past four years when around the corner comes fellow writer-friend and drinking buddy Joey "Mumbles" Stracci and the motherfucker is wearing the exact same pair of sunglasses. So I took mine off and never wore them the whole residency. Everyone kept telling Joe how awesome he looked in his shades and it burned everytime I heard it. Sonuvabitch. Well, now I got two pairs Mr. Stracci!

Have an excellent work week! I know I will. Afterall, I am a Shmenkman!

This Wednesday. 7 PM. At the Knitting Factory in NYC. The hiphop.rock.funk.jazz band, Nouveau Riche, is performing. The guitarist, Dominic Angelella, said to me about the concert: It'll be dope.

So if you live in the New York City area and you are free Wednesday night and you want to see some Philly-based band set the stage on fire (not literally, I don't think) then come to the show.

And if you want to listen to some tracks, check out their website, a link to which can be located in the lower right column.

Oh, Oh, Oh.

Oh.



The One With the Beard is Dominic Angelella.

Walked out of my house today. Saw a girl. Young. Hair tied behind her head. She walked fast, green sports bag clutched under her arm. She walked fast and in front of me. She wore a black dress. The sidewalk was wet from a morning rain. A garbage truck trolled along the parked cars. Three men tossed trash into the back of the truck.

I walked fast too.

She caught a glimpse of me. She moved to the far side of the sidewalk. At the light, she crossed the street.

I walked faster because she was no longer in my way. I reached my subway station on 7th and 9th. I ran down the stairs. Swiped my card and pushed through to the platform. I cracked RAY by Barry Hannah and leaned against a pillar.

It was sticky hot. A thin gasoline stink blew across the open space underground. Two white lights turned on me, barreling down the track fast. The train stopped and few people got off. I got on. I found a seat. Put my bag in my lap and my book on my bag. I looked up.

The fast girl with the hair tied back and the green sports bag was sitting across from me.

I wonder if she was following me.

I'm a novel guy. I get the long haul. I feed on the exhaustion of full-on submersion into the adyss of a complete and unnatural world. I've written a novel. Four chapters short of another--the big one. Finally found its footing a few months back with the keen editorial eyes of Patricia Volk and Kate Angelella with some sharp suggestions from Joe Stracci, Hugh Ryan and Alka Roy.

But now I'm trying to be the short story guy. A different kind of beast.

My own personal idea of the difference between the short form and long form is as follows: my novels are longer than most and stories are shorter than most. I write super long or super short. Fellow small-time guy, Joe Stracci, and I both agree that for us, the perfect short story length is somewhere between seven and eight pages. That is not to say that I never go over that. I sure as fuck do! But that range is the sweet spot for our fiction.

However, what to do when you get stuck? If it were a novel, I would take that story all over the place until it made sense. In the short form, I can't. Not that I can't because of my seven page rule. I can't because I don't know the world as well as I do in my novels. Sometimes I get a story that just drops from the heavens at my feet and all I have to do is get the words down. But most of the time I have stories that just flip and flop like a fish on the deck of a leaky fisherman's boat.

Got a story now like that. Flopping. I'd tell you about it, but it keeps changing. Six revisions now. Was called "Cakes," then "Going Down," then "Bistro," "Bungalow," "Easy Come Then Go," and recently "I Hate This Story and Want To See It Die." This last one, I actually inserted myself into the story, like Nicholas Cage does in the film Adaptation. (My wife advised against that for this particular story and she was right to.)

But it's not the story that I am concerned about, it's the process. My journey through the form. Read some stellar short form writers of late. Lydia Davis. Mark Richard. Mary Robison. Amy Hempel. Gordon Lish. Grace Paley. But can't figure out how they do it.

Maybe I should makes this particular story a Choose Your Own Destiny story. Or perhaps post my latest version here and just have you add to it, so that by the end of the comments section you have helped me to complete this beast. My Everest.

Alas.

Am waiting to hear back from James Salter's people about me interviewing him. Fingers crossed. While I wait, I will be wading about in all of his fiction. Oh, what wonderful words the man can write.

Back to my problem story now called "Pat, Pet, Pick, Poke, Push."

Last week Liam Rector died. He was a talented and strong poet. He was a bear of a man. A born dreamer. A real leader. His words were fists. His language his own.

Later I will post one of his poems here for you to read.

Liam reminded me of a cyclops. Not that he had one eye, cuz he had two. I mean, he was all ego, surrounded by sheep. He ran the Bennington Writing Seminars and, in his mind, ruled the world. He stood up for FIrst Amendment rights. He debated Bill O'Reilly. Depending on how he looked he either resembled Saddam Hussein or Francis Ford Coppola. Liam could give a shit about you, and other times care only about you. Liam was a caricature of himself and loomed over all of us. He was the father of the program which could best be described as a feast. We, the writers, were present at Liam's table and as the advisors served us food, he told us dirty jokes.

All that is over now.

Now Liam has left us by choice and the program goes on, however how it will exist is still unclear. Not the same. Different in every way possible.

I've been reading a lot about him over this past week, been reading what others have written, and feel a great sadness for this world. We have lost a flag-holder on the front lines of freedom--literature his weapon and ignorance his enemy.

His wife and daughter are in my thoughts. His close friends. And all of those lucky enough to be apart of the community he created.

A poem to live by:

CORNER MAN by Liam Rector

You took that round,
Champ! You didn't
Just sit and pout:

Now get the hell
Back in there
And knock the fucker out.

(from his collection THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE FALLEN WORLD)

Back from Packet Town and feelin' fine. Got great notes on my work. Great reading suggestions. My work is thumpin' along.

Also trying to finish a mock article for this job opening as a reporter.

Also watching trucks haul away downed trees from the Brooklyn Tornado that hit on Wednesday.

Also keeping up with season six and seven of Homicide: Life on the Streets.

Also reading A SPORT AND A PASTIME by James Salter. This is FIGHT CLUB if it were set in France and instead of Tyler Durden there were two people having sex all the time. The language is insane and brilliant.

Just a taste:

"Sunday mornings. Gloved hands touching, they drive along the empty boulevard. Schools are closed. The iron gates are locked in front of those long, damp alleys smelling of pee. A watery sunshine, blenched by skies which refuse to warm, falls on the blocks and corners. Unexpectedly, like a band of survivors, there is a crowd, all decently dressed, just leaving church. They squint as they come out into the light. They leave the steps, walk along, stop at the baker's for bread. From there they scatter, the warm loaves under their arms" (72).

Finished Lydia Davis' SAMUEL JOHNSON IS INDIGNANT. I won't ramble, however, after reading it everything for me has changed. Everything.

Back to my mock article.

When I arrive in Bennington there are a number of things I immediately look forward to experiencing all over again. One is drinking with my circle of hack-writer friends, debating each other’s lack-of-talent. One is the Everything Brownie Cookie. (It’s so good!) One is listening to Joe Stracci try and convince me that any book published before 1994 is not worth reading. And one is listening to latest Ian Williams joke.

I have written about Ian in previous posts, but will describe him briefly again. Lanky, limey Brit. A smitter. A talented writer, even though it is non-fiction. A man with a great heart. Not to mention a true conversationalist.

When Ian arrives, Bennington is a twitter for his latest joke. Our first residency he WOWed us with his parrot jokes. They weren’t too bad. They also weren’t too good. This past residency he told a joke that took on a mythic quality. I was there the night he first told it. Then, I was there the next night. Then the third. And fourth. By residency’s end, we had convinced him to tell the joke five times and each time the joke got better. Now. In retrospect, I believe the joke is funnier after four beers or two glasses of wine. Nonetheless, here I have a documented account of the joke to share with you. It’s not the best version I’ve heard. I feel like the third one was the best, but that’s only because Ian was so hammered when he told it. The joke’s not that funny, but is also not that bad. And if you don't think it's funny at all, then you probably are not a grad student at Bennington.

Regardless of what you think, I will always look back on my graduate work as time spent drunk-debating the subtle nuances of “I Am That Man!” version 3 versus “I Am That Man!” version 5.

I Am That Man!

Charles Simic. Hot damn! He is the new Poet Laureate, following the illustrious tenure of Donald Hall. If you have not read, you must read Charles Simic's book of poetry THE WORLD DOESN'T END. Pulitzer Prize winner of 1990. But this collection of prose poems will leave you drooling, bug-eyed, and begging for more.

Donald Hall. A group of friends and I ventured out to visit Robert Frost's home in Bennington, Vermont. But not before stopping at a diner for breakfast.



Ten minutes after we arrived at Frost's tiny cottage, Donald Hall entered. Donald Hall was a friend, student, gossip-monger of Frost's. As we walked about the house, there on the walls were quotes, reflections, analysis and biographical comments from Donald Hall. We introduced ourselves. He could care less who we were. Still. He signed the guest book and left, smoking a cigarette. Rock star Poet-dom.


Below, Donald Hall signing the guest book.



Below, Donald Hall's name below mine.



Back in the car, as we rolled with laughter and giddiness, we got lost in the small backwoods streets of Bennington, which promptly put the kibosh on our morning. However, I still met Donald Hall.

Below, Ross lost in Bennington.



If Charles Simic comes to speak at Bennington, I might just have to rush the podium, like a ten year-old girl rushing the stage at an N Sync concert.

Just read it. Felt like it. Poe is always such a pleasure to read for me. Don't now why. I think it's because he's immortal. And by immortal, of course, I mean immortal. I can pick up any of his stories and somehow, to me, it just makes sense. Applicable to today. In some way. And I'll admit, he's not the greatest writer. He's flawed. Everyone is. Something I just recently came to realize. I know. Shocking, right? But, yes, Poe is creepy and dark and dangerous, but past all the goth-y-ness that people praise Poe for--Poe, he is honest. He gets at truth, and by truth I, of course, mean the fragile and false nature by which humans BELIEVE they are being honest. If I don't make sense, it's that you don't understand me. If I do make sense, it's that you too like Poe.

Also.

Read another interesting story by Joe Stracci. The man is on to something. People, he's on to something. Still crazy, but on to something.

Also.

Reading Chuck Palahniuk's new novel RANT. Hmm. RANT. I like it better than DIARY. And I like it better than HAUNTED. But it's not quite workin' for me. Not yet anyway. I'm 100 pages in and am tired of the story-telling. I get it. I get that we all tell stories differently, and that a story can be as powerful, even more so, as the truth, as what actually happened. But I'm not sure if I am completely THERE. I will say that Chuck is always a trip to read, no matter if the story grabs you or not. Always a trip. Sometimes like bad acid. Sometimes like good pot. Either way, always interesting. And I am super excited about his next novel, SNUFF. Sounds simply tasty. If ye don't know about it, ye should go to http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net to read about it.

Also.

Just ate a slice of cold pizza and my large, pink cat tried to grab it from my hands with his fat paw. Come on, cat. Not okay, okay?

Waiting to hear from advisor. To tell me when her response is ready. For me to pick up. Am waiting. But not patiently.

Today is my day of death.

I am trying feverishly to pull my packet together, however my fiction is crumbling right before my eyes. My annotations suck. My letter is long-winded and crap. Did I mention that my fiction is crumbling? My printer ran out of ink. My cats keep trying to crawl into my lap, except my computer is in my lap. One of my neighbors keeps screaming about "the reality of the situation" to someone else in the middle of the street. And the only thing keeping me going was a baggie of Peanut Butter M&M's in my cupboard, that I quickly remembered no longer exist. Because I ate them all yesterday.

And in other news:

Friend, fellow Bennington-ite and talented non-fiction writer Hugh Ryan is reading his piece "Sissies in the Woods" published in the collection A LEAKY TENT IS A PIECE OF PARADISE on August 8th at the independent bookstore, McNally Robinson, located at 52 Prince Street, NYC. The reading begins at 7PM.

Good luck to Hugh!

Blah to me and my stupid work!

You would think that living in Brooklyn would be enough. However, after ten days of living the bachelor life, barely speaking to anyone outside of the kid who delivers me my mexican food on his scooter, I was going out of my mind. There are only so many coffee shops to go to and jobs to apply to and addresses to change and bills to pay, before even Brooklyn feels like it is closing in around you.

So here is my two dollar day.

Okay, so it will probably be more like my eight or ten dollar day after I get something to drink and eat for lunch and after I ride the subway back to Brooklyn, but here i am in Central Park on this humid, yet beautiful and sunny day, looking up at the midtown buildings towering up over the bushy trees, writing this post. A nice breeze is dragging along the back of my neck. A car alarm is banging off in the distance. A mother is screaming at her infant child for not living up to her expectations, for doing something ridiculous, or not doing something which is even more ridiculous. A strange man with a pocked face that looks though he is made of leather is dressed in a nice suit, reading the Times and feeding birds from a bag of shelled peanuts he has in his lap. I wonder if they are salted, or unsalted.

Two dollars to ride the subway out of my space, out of my head. I am in one of the two greatest cities in the world, the other being London, reading Chuck Palahniuk's new novel--RANT--and writing, working on my first Bennington packet. All for the price of two dollars. A cheap day trip. At one, I will meet the wife for lunch, probably sushi because sushi is the least expensive thing to get near her work, (odd as that may sound.)

Then back to Brooklyn where my air-conditioned apartment waits for me to settle back into my comfortable couch, cue up my DVR to the latest series of Homicide reruns and sip some nice cold Brita-filtered water or Italiano soda Limonata. Not a bad day. (Especially when you watch an episode of Homicide and see the walk-on EMT role that your aunt had, Jeannine the EMT. Funny.) Sure there's plenty to stress about (dwindling bank account, no job, the heat), but I am learning quickly through the Zen state of mind my wife is in, that sometimes you have to give yourself a break.

Sometimes it's okay to spend two dollars on a trip to the City.

My short story that got worked over in workshop just got the overhaul I have been dreading.

It was brutal, brutal, brutal.

I mean, workshop was harsh. I can deal with that. But I believe that reading comments is way harsher than hearing them.

"No Kidding!"

"Really!"

"Wrong!"

"No!"

"Needs a way different ending!"

"Huh?"

"No kidding!" (Yes, indeed, two of these puppies!)

"Don't get this at all!"

Why are there so many exclamation marks! That's what I want to know! I mean, come on! I can do that too! But it doesn't hit my point home harder! Does it?! Huh?!

Anyway, a new draft complete and on the block for my editor.

Gonna go drink now. It's five o'clock somewhere.

Wednesday morning and woke to the heavy thump of thunder, echoing through the narrow streets of Brooklyn. At times it had the sound of artillery pounding the the pavement. Two cats--one asleep between my legs, the other crawling up my pillow onto my head, trying to get to high ground. He kept head-butting me in the temple. Come on, cat! Get a grip!

FInished reading a couple books.

WHY DID I EVER by Mary Robison

This woman has shown me the way to tell a story in a sentence. Three, if i want. Her novel of miniature subchapters tells the story of a dysfunctional script doctor living in the South, trying to keep her life from crumbling away by protecting her methadone-addicted daughter and gay son who is in the witness protection program from his rapist. Her script she is doctoring is about Bigfoot--a love story with action sequences. She suffers from dementia at times. Anxiety. Paranoia. She loves men and fears men. She has a cat that disappears, then reappears, then disappears again. Did I mention her name is Money? But not really. Her mind, like Robison's prose, is shotgun-scattered shot across the page--a beautiful fucking mess of fragments.

JESUS' SON by Denis Johnson

I am quickly finding that these collection of stories that people are requiring me to read are completely hit or miss. Story by story. Here, in Johnson's most famous work, his prose is hallucinatory and crackles with insight and terror. However, i found the stories widely varying for my taste. The highlights that I recommend: "Car Crash While Hitchhiking," "Out on Bail," "Work," "Emergency," and "Steady Hands at Seattle General." This collection is simple--drugs and love and a chemically altered state of the world. I found that the overall theme of "dope" could be redundant and wanted to see Johnson's brilliance flash as bright as it does in "Car Crash" or "Emergency." Still an exceptional collection of a slim prose, post-modern (I hate that term!), subversive minimalism. (Somewhere Joe Stracci's heart is beating faster!)

THE AGE OF WIRE AND STRING by Ben Marcus

This is a book I have had on my bookshelf for close to a decade and have never read. I came across it as recommended in an interview with Douglas Coupland. Along with this book, he also recommended HOUSE OF LEAVES by Mark Danielewski. HOUSE OF LEAVES was a wallop of a novel and completely inventive. Why wouldn't Ben Marcus' book be the same? Well. It wasn't the same. Actually, it was very much in the vein of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. It is all about the language. Marcus takes common objects and through his elaborate language reconfigures these objects to take on different meaning in a different world. Interesting read, but am walking away from it without having learned anything new. Actually, walking away from it with fewer advil.

WILL YOU PLEASE BE QUIET, PLEASE by Raymond Carver

Okay. Just finished this book this morning in the midst of the thunder storm. Carver can write a fucking sentence. And there are a half-dozen stories that just sizzle. However, there is a history here. In the past few years, it has become known that the famous editor, Gordon Lish, more or less may have ghost-written (or over-edited) these stories in this collection, as well as his next collection WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE. How do I feel about this? It gets in the way for me, I must admit. Not so much about the writing because most books, no matter how well finished we writers think they are, will be edited in some form by our editors. Right. I get that. But what about in this case where an unknown writer is taken from obscurity and thrown into the literati limelight all because of over-worked stories by your editor? I don't know. I could tell there were some serious discrepancies between some stories in style. Obviously, some over-worked more than others. Regardless, I will never read "a sentence" the same way again thanks to "Fat," Neighbors," "They're Not Your Husband," "Nigh School," "Jerry and Molly and Sam," "Signals," and the title story "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?"

And this passage from "Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarets:"

"The boy rolled onto his side and watched his father walk to the door and watched him put his hand to the switch. And then the boy said, 'Dad? You'll think I'm pretty crazy, but I wish I'd known you when you were little. I mean, about as old as I am right now. I don't know how to say it, but I'm lonesome about it. It's like--it's like I miss you already if I think about it now. That's pretty crazy, isn't it? Anyway, please leave the door open.'

Hamilton left the door open, and then he thought better of it and closed it halfway."

And so if that section was ghost-written by Gordon Lish, then I don't fucking care 'cuz that is one of the most moving moments in short literature that I have read of late.

Off to work on my brutalized short story that is in critical condition after my Bennington workshop. Maybe I should just ask my editor to ghost-write it for me?

So Kate, if you are reading this, give me a call. We need to talk.

A few days back, one of my first (seemingly easy) days here in NYC, I woke, walked the wife to the subway stop, ate breakfast at a diner and retreated back to a coffee shop to do some writing. There, I listening to angry emo music (that they were playing, not me) and wrote a few interesting flash fiction pieces.

At home, I settled back on the couch with two cats and continued reading Mary Robison's WHY DID I EVER. My phone rang. Actually, I lied. It buzzed. Vibrated.

"Hello," I said.

"Ross?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"It's Joyce. From your old job," she said.

I laughed. "Yes. Hello," I said.

"I hate to be calling like this, but Jodi died yesterday. In her kitchen."

"What?" I asked.

"She died. She's dead," she said.

"Oh," I said.

You don't need to know Jodi or Joyce or even why or how Jodi's death affected me. What you do need to know is what happened next.

I hung up the phone. Actually, I Iied. I flipped it shut. I sat there on the edge. The edge of everything. Edge of the couch. Edge of emotions. Anger. Guilt. Shock. Anger. Sadness. She had two little girls. She was only 38. How does this happen? I could feel myself slipping away inside, somewhere far away. To a devastating place.

Then I saw the cover of WHY DID I EVER. Not a particularly imaginative cover, but a cover that triggered a memory.

I met with my advisor before leaving residency at Bennington a few weeks back, and we discussed tragedy and how writing through it, writing through the tragedy, will ultimately save you.

I began tossing boxes around the room. I couldn't find my computer. In the bedroom I did the same. More boxes. Tables. Bed. Chairs. Found my computer. Opened it. I am telling the truth here. Opened to a blank page and just started pounding the keys. What was I writing? Nonfiction? Poetry? Flash fiction? I didn't know. I was writing in it. I broke apart everything sitting at the edge.

In the end, Jodi was still dead. In the end, sadness still sat next to reality. In the end, I wrote a true flash fiction poem about the absurdity of death and it saved me.

In it now. Actually, in a coffee shop. In a ripped old chair. In a window. Drinking cold coffee. They are playing Beck. I am cooling off from the fucking heat. I watch as some homeless guy walks in to the coffee shop--Tea Lounge--with an arm full of white, knee-high tube socks. He asks me if I want to buy them. I laugh. No. I don't want to buy them. I look back outside as a woman in a dress gets whistled at by some passing construction workers and she turns around and fires words back at them. But from where I sit all I hear is Beck crooning. A funny music video going on outside. Heard from a friend the other day--the ever talented non-fiction writer (I know, I don't trust non-fiction writers either) Hugh Ryan. Hugh lives in Park Slope too. He tipped me off to the best chinese food, which was needed. Last place I got chinese, the food was bad. More than that, the food was delivered by a Hispanic. And the last time I got mexican, it was delivered by an Asian. I guess that makes sense. And the cable guy or girl comes tomorrow to hook me up. Will get television. Will get internet. But not the crisp cold coffee I am drinking now. Was looking over my story edits yesterday from Amy Hempel and David Gates and became frozen with fear. The story has taken control of my life and I see it now everywhere I look. I exhale and the words of the story float out and up and begin to punch me in the temple and right eye. I heard from my boy in the Bronx--Joe "Joey Rags" Stracci. His car got smashed. His life changed into negatives. But he's reading MADAME BOVARY, so he will be okay. Good read, Mr. Stracci. You will owe me quite a large beer whence you finish. I see a moving truck pass by and am reminded of my father and I driving from Ithaca to Brooklyn. Getting lost in New Jersey. (Of course.) Arriving in Brooklyn. Waiting for the movers who never came. And unloaded the damn 14 foot truck ourselves, italian-style. Which basically means we kept stopping to eat. And now "Debra" by Beck is blasting over head and I think of a friend from years ago and hope he's happy in his life. Because I am. I wasn't. Not in the cosmic sense of my life. But now I am. In the cosmic sense. And I see a woman walk by with white, white hair and think about Amy Hempel again and wonder if she uses a red pen to edit or a blue. The other day the wife and I were walking back from the grocery store and passed a man who smiled at me. The man walked with a funny swagger. Like he was drunk without the alcohol. His facial hair was short and the hair on his head was long and thinning. I leaned over to the wife. "You know who that was?" "Who?" "Mr. Pink." "Mr. Pink? Who's Mr. Pink?" "Steve Buscemi. Steve Buscemi smiled at me."

Residency was a formidable experience. Learned a new joke, thanks to our token Brit--Ian Drank too much. Thought too much. Worked to much. Laughed too much. All too much. Working with one of the most talented short fiction writers alive today. And feeling the bar being raised; my fingers slipping, gripping to hold strong.

Got the wife settled into a studio apartment of friend and writer, Micol Ostow. Went from residency to NYC by way of another friend and writer Joe "Joey Rags" Stracci. (I hate Joey Rags because his apartment is what the kids call "smokin'.") Spent the week storming the nasty streets of the city looking for digs. Then found sweet digs in Brooklyn. Park Slope. Be there in three short days. Can fucking taste it.

Reading Denis Johnson's JESUS' SON. Drugs. Car-crash. Drugs. Homeless. Drugs. Sex. Drugs. Drugs. Drugs. A baby. And drugs. Seems dull when I type it out, but his style is the equivalent to being stabbed repeatedly and liking it. (Does that last line makes sense, or have I spent too long packing?)

Back in Fucktown now, packing. Don't know how I will get the apartment all snapped up and ready to roll, but hope the answer comes to me tonight in my dreams. Yes, my dreams. Back in my own bed. My own bed which is about to be shipped out the door and down into Brooklyn.

I am that man.

In Bennington. Bigger room. Fan blowing on the back of my neck. Stripped my bed of the School Linens. Remade bed with MY linens with bed pad. Ahh! Ooh-la-la.

Got killer blues on the computer. Makes me wanna set fire to my dorm.

Unpacking. Hungry. Ate a Cliff bar. Chocolate chip. Now full.

Ran into Joe Stracci. Plans to get drunk later. Ran into another girl who apparently knows me, but I have never met the woman in my life. Says I gave her good advice on her work, but I didn't. Really. Ran into another classmate who is in my house (Wooley House) and we chatted and I helped her up the stairs with her luggage and it was so fucking obvious that neither of us knew each others name, but were both being so polite. Just polite without using names. And when her back was turned I pulled at her luggage to find her name--ANDREA.

"Well, I'm gonna go unpack, but it was great seeing you again, Andrea. I'm sure we'll bump into each other again soon."

"I feel horrible. What is your name?"

"Ross."

We shook hands. Ha! I win.

Can I get a mic check. One. Two. One. Two.

As promised, below is what I have read over the past five months. The * indicates brilliance. The ^ indicates crap. At last, the last entry in my booklist is my adviser "Pamela." A tremendous memoir. Truly.

Last day of work today. Changed my last diaper. (At least for a while.) Applied my last ice pack to a knobby head. Fought my last fight with a 3 year old over the benefits of using the toilet as opposed to her pants. Am I sad? Not really. But will sure as hell miss nap time, or as I called it--"Catching Up On Reading For My Packet Time."

Off to Baltimore Monday. Then on to Bennington Thursday. Then back to Fucktown later in the month. And finally, moving to New York City where I will be reunited with my lovely wife. At last.

Enjoy the list.

Warning: I don't recommend reading this many books in five months. Not good for the immune system.

Januaury / February --- Packet One:
The Horse’s Mouth --- Joyce Cary ^
Lucky Jim --- Kingsley Amis
Poetry: The Executive Director of the Fallen World --- Liam Rector *
Poetry: Love is a Dog From Hell --- Charles Bukowski

March --- Packet Two:
One Writer’s Beginnings --- Eudora Welty
The Optimist’s Daughter --- Eudora Welty *
White Noise --- Don Dellilo *
The Complete Short Stories (Upper Michigan / Nick Adams Stores) --- Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea --- Earnest Hemingway
Everything that Rises Must Converge --- Flannery O’Connor
Poetry: What Narcissism Means to Me --- Tony Hoagland
Poetry: Diving into the Wreck --- Adrienne Rich

April --- Packet Three:
The Crack-Up --- F. Scott Fitzgerald ^^^^^
Heart of Darkness --- Joseph Conrad
The Secret Sharer --- Joseph Conrad
“In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” --- Delmore Schwartz *
The Collected Stories --- Amy Hempel *
Paris Trout --- Pete Dexter *
Shipping News --- Annie Proulx
Poetry: The World Doesn’t End --- Charles Simic

May --- Packet Four:
The Dead Father --- Donald Barthelme *
The October Country --- Ray Bradbury
Madame Bovary --- Gustave Flaubert
Lolita --- Vladamir Nobokov *
The Good Soldier --- Ford Maddox Ford ^
Poetry: American Prodigal --- Liam Rector

June --- Packet Five:
Audrey Hepburn’s Neck --- Allan Brown
Jernigan --- David Gates *
This Boys Life --- Tobias Wolff
The Duke of Deception --- Geoffrey Wolff
Stuffed --- Patricia Volk *

See anything you like?

At lunch now. Thinking about too much. Reading a dirty little book---DIRTY SALLY by Michael Simon. Somewhere out there Bennington is cringing. My life is spread out. The moving sale on Saturday sent my things into households I would probably never enter willingly. The only room left is the bedroom.

The wife leaves Sunday for New York City. For her new job. For good.

I leave for a number of engagements on Sunday as well, none of which are New York City or a new job. Not yet.

In school today a kid kept falling out of his chair. On purpose. Tipping it back, then crashing down to the ground.

"If you do it one more time, I'm gonna change the world as you know it, son."

He just blinked at me like he could knock me over with his spit.

"Okay?"

"Okay." He tipped back. He fell.

So I took away his right to a chair. Lunch. Snack. Working at a table. Coloring. Reading. All had to be done on the floor. They think I won't do what I say, but I do it every time and every time they are surprised. The beauty of a five year old mind.

Now I am off to read more about dismemberment and corrupt politicians and Austin, Texas and the mob and junky cops and street walkers and drug dealers.

Oh, somewhere out there Bennington is wondering what happened to Hemingway and F. Scott.

And the news of the day is . . . I am moving to NYC. The wife got a job as an assistant editor for Simon & Schuster and we are moving. Well, she is moving first. In two weeks to be exact. I am moving June 30th. Hot damn.

Ah, the CIty.

I send all of my love and gratitude to the amazing and talented Micol Ostow. None of this would have been possible if it were not for all of your selflessness. Next couple rounds are on me.

To my beautiful, relentlessly positive wife, all I can say is no one rocks high heels and sunglasses in the CIty quite like you.

And as for the fucking New York Knicks, get your shit straight. Stop sucking. You better get better.

Also, now that we're moving I can't wait to finally do my research on Roosevelt Island. What a creepy area. And what's with all of the paraplegics? Is it because the island is flat with only two roads?

NOTE TO SELF: Can't forget to buy a neon-pink fanny pack, bright green t-shirt with my name on it, a floppy hat that reads I HEART NYC and an over-sized Map of Manhattan. Buy these items and THEN you can move.

As for my MFA work, read THIS BOY'S LIFE by Tobias Wolff and THE DUKE OF DECEPTION by Geoffrey Wolff and will post on these in the coming days.

Reading my adviser's book now. Who is it? What book could it be? I am so interested? Will he ever tell us?

Finally, and I have so been holding this in, Warriors, come out and play-ay!

And the days flip over and out comes another chicken sun--sometimes chicken because it's chicken, chicken yellow, sometimes chicken because it hides behind clouds. Finally, the trees have popped and the snow has melted and the cars are no longer grey with salt stains.

Much happening in the home of the Angelella's of New York; however I can really only talk about roughly 35% of it. The rest, for now, is confidential.

Packet Four is out the door. Waiting on the response. By far the weakest of my packets, yet the reading (as discussed in previous posts) were stellar.

Recently finished the following:

AUDREY HEPBURN'S NECK by Alan Brown

This is an interesting take on global Americanization. How traditional Japanese culture fuses with culture of America (and others) to form an uber, or to use a Joe Stracci term, "hyper-culture." Fascinating read, although slow at times, Brown slaps the reader around a bit, waking us up. Great eye for detail and Japanese everything. On the whole, the book truly wanted me to eat Ramen noodles. I mean, Ramen Shops appear on almost every God-forsaken page. How is a man, especially a man who loves him some authentic quick-fix Ramen, suppose to live WITHOUT Ramen whilst reading ABOUT Ramen for 200 some-odd pages? I bought a lot of Ramen and ate a lot of Ramen. It was good. But none of this American Ramen crap. You gotta buy the Sapporo Ramen or the Korean Ramen that is so spicy it will scorch the hair right off your body.

JERNIGAN by David Gates

This book--a 1991 Pulitzer Prize Finalist--is what my novel aspires to stand next to. The language, the characters, the situations, even the tone and scope of the book mirrors mine, or mine mirrors his. Fathers and sons. Booze. Kinky sex. Mutilation. Self-inflicted mutilation. Men and manly things. Did I say booze? Sex. Did I say sex? A fucking brilliant ten-round-title-fight of a book. Read it and ye shall see.

Currently, reading MONSTER by Walter Dean Myers and MONEY by Martin Amis.

Finally, I leave you with some words of encouragement from a famous author, who the wife and I had the dis-pleasure of meeting a few years back. A Printz award winner and New York TImes and Publisher Weekly bestseller. In response to a gift from us and with the knowledge of the wife being a writer as well, she writes in a Thank You note:

"Don't quit your day job."

Fucking beautiful!

Vladimir Nabokov’s sick love letter-of-a-novel operates on the simple single idea of consumption. Consumption is at the root of everything. Sex. Death. Abandonment. Murder. Money. Food. Driving. Tennis. No matter what the characters are doing they are consuming copious amount of energy in the process. To underline this idea that exists in the book, Nabokov uses a brilliant, beautiful and buxom language to tell the tale. From the start of the very first chapter, he sets the sexy bar of his language.

A portion of it reads: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."

Here, we are introduced to an obsession, but in an addicting way. The rhythm and description apparent on the page tips us to the type of book we will read. Nabokov spares no expense in Humbert-Humbert telling the story of pedophilia. Humbert comes across obsessed with Lolita, in love with Lolita, needing, breathing, eating, blinking Lolita. The narrator of the novel is, himself, consumed with the idea of this young nymphet. This consumption therefore is sprayed onto the other characters as told to us their stories through the blurry eyes of Humbert-Humbert.

Examples of this consumption outside of the torrid love affair are in their continuous driving across the country. Here is a literal translation of gas and energy consumption. Another would be Lolita’s hurried excursion of energy in tennis matches. Humbert’s mother dying at the strike of random lightening, consumed with a natural disaster. Next to Humbert, the character of Clare Quilty is a fine embodiment of this notion of consumption. Quilty is the physical manifestation of evil to Humbert’s psychological manifestation of evil. Humbert does not see himself as a monster to the degree that he sees Quilty. Quilty consumes drugs, food, drink, and young girls on a greater level, a dangerous level. In the end, there is a fine explosion of conflicting morals and ideas as the rage of Humbert takes hold to execute Quilty for stealing Lolita, rather than for his crimes. On some level, Humbert is killing himself for exacting sick sexual acts upon her as a child.

Nabokov writes closely in the style of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, even references Emma Bovary on a number of occasions. The reader is assaulted with twisted, sticky logic of sexual deviancy throughout the entirety of the novel, but somehow the effect of it lessens quickly. Humbert’s language is so thick with malice, malice that he even recognizes as being wrong, however the novel is so grand in scale that the words whittle away our fear. The language consumes the reader as the idea of Lolita consumes Humbert and eventually both the reader and Humbert are on the same page.

Just as Humbert is in love, so am I with Nabokov. Even though not one moment of actual sex is described throughout the book, each line holds flashes of it, twists and turns of it. Nabokov found a way to turn a most abhorrent and unforgivable act into a beautiful and well-read manuscript of brilliance, standing the test of time. I don’t know if it was talent, bravery, ignorance, or sheer idiocy that supported him in writing this book, but whatever it was, I think as writers we should all hope to experience and use it in our own work.

Oh, and packet four is done, bitches!

A friend passed this along to me a while back. He teaches children in the Virginia Public School system with, if I understand him correctly, a puppet and references to Oprah. I don't know about his techniques to teach History, but I thought this was a bit of humor that made me feel right all over.

WARNING:

If you watch this video more than once, it is your own fault for any and all repercussions.

CHARLIE THE UNICORN



Shun the non-believer!

Shuuuuuuuuuuun!

I have spent the better part of this past week sipping Maalox. I will tell you what their motto is at the end. And I drank it not because I enjoy the silvery, milk-thick taste of the Peppermint-infused flavor. It was because I had a relapse.

I didn’t fall off any wagon. I am not an addict. Not in the addiction sense anyway. It has to do with trauma.

January 12, 1998. I was held at gunpoint. Had a gun pressed to my head. Told I was going to die. Told I was going to watch my brains spray out in front of me. Was held at gunpoint for a time. Standing. Kneeling. Then face down. Hands on my head. Execution-style.

Then he left.

The next day the symptoms surfaced. Burning gut. Nightmares. Fractured attention. Obsession with violence. Nightmares. Anxiety attacks. Shortness of breath. Extreme fear. Heavy breathing. Nightmares.

These are just some of the symptoms known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Last week I had a relapse of the symptoms. It was the Virginia Tech massacre that triggered them. I have been unusually obsessed with the case. News. Internet. His writings. His media package. The survivors. Their stories. The timeline of events. The gut burning started. Some nightmares. Some anxiety. And tears.

Fear cuts quick and before you know it you are at the counter of Rite-Aid buying a bottle of Peppermint Maalox and your wife is holding your hand, telling you she loves you.

I will tell you their motto soon.

I haven’t written about it because I haven’t really known what to write. What do you say? Do I say my sister and mother were visiting VTech the day before? Because they were. Do I say I know how to connect with those victims? I don’t really. I can only truly connect to my own experience.

But the violence of it. The pure rage of it. The “could care less” of it. I can connect to that. What are we to do? Where do we go with this?

When I got home after I was held at gunpoint, my father sat with me in my bedroom as we watched the climax to the film HEAT splash across the TV screen. A giant gun battle erupts across a street where civilians and thieves are gunned down by high-caliber weapons. A little girl is even held as a human shield. What does this tell me?

And when I sit down to write about violence, when I write violence into my work, when I see it on television, in the news, in my dreams, what am I suppose to do?

Live another day is the answer. Pick up and move on. Go to work. Eat lunch. Kiss my wife. Pet my cats. Call my family. Go to sleep. Then do it again. All over again. Write about it. Talk about. And never let it own me.

Never let it own you. Only you own you.

Maalox: It’s a Relief to Enjoy Life.

The weatherwoman with brown-blonde curls predicts and points to a seven day forecast for upstate New York on the TV when Tamara clops down the metal stairs of our apartment on the toes of her sharp, high-heeled shoes. Tamara and I met eleven years ago over an Amish oak table at an antique store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

"Walter, I'm leaving you for another man,” Tamara says, standing at the kitchen counter, pouring black coffee into her red travel mug. The coffee pours down fast, splashing over the lip and onto the tile. "I'm leaving you, Walter."

I sit on the corner of the oak table, gut-punched, and lean forward, my chin on my fist, my elbow on my knee. My wife is leaving.

I know this is real.

“Don’t try and stop me, Walter. Marriage isn’t for everyone." She turns from her coffee and pulls me close to her, kissing my forehead. She snaps the lid of her mug down with her thumb, picking at hairs on her black fleece coat as she leaves through the front door, closing it behind her.

A framed picture of our dead dog rattles against the wall.

I thumb the power button of the television. The pixilation shrinks the weatherwoman away, disappearing her to a tiny square. I pivot. My foot slips squarely in a puddle of coffee slicked across the tile. My feet swing out and up. I hit hard on my side, my body thudding with the thickness of a tree trunk. My head bounces against the floor, my skull cracking like the egg of an omelet.

The over-sized kitchen tiles support my body, an alter offering me up to the Amish oak table that towers next to me, over me like the lid of a coffin.

I look over to open window.

A short purr followed by a chortle emanates from the open window. Something black hops onto the sink. An old man blackbird wobbles in with its box-like broken wing, perching on the spigot of the sink, pecking at its ruffled chest. Its tiny pencil-point claws clink against the silver bar, redistributing its weight like the sharp tick-tock from the tongue of a Grandfather clock. The old man blackbird free-falls in a flutter of feathers from the spigot, landing with a squeak next to the sticky, leaky trail behind my head. Its own head bobs, sinking into its body without form, popping back out, twitching its mangled wing at hard angles.

Blood pumps faster through my heart, pumping louder in the nest of my ears.

The blackbird's eyes glass over like a wet frog blinking. His head tilts, cockeyed, questioning. His broken wing flails in sharp contortions, epileptic-like. His beak eases open like a rusty gate—silent at first. Then a screech. Into my face. Like misguided missiles.

I know this is real.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Born November 11, 1922. Died April 11, 2007.

Thank you.

How do you know when symmetry in fiction stops being symmetrical and starts being offensive? I don't feel offensive. I am not trying to be offensive. This is not my goal. Yet, somehow the thought is there. I am not sure I am being offensive. But I can't help but wonder.

You have a story where a man cannot control his urges. You write a history of his urges. His indiscretions. Yet upon reading them as a whole you wonder if others will find it offensive. As though you are commenting on the ideal man-vision of women, instead of focusing on the man as an animal. This is my problem. I have been writing so deep beneath the misogynist's mind in my novel for so long that coming up for air to write a simple short story fucks with my perception of reality. I'm sure I am just projecting fear, but I can't help but shake the question.

Not that I care if it does offend. It is fiction, after all. It's bound to offend someone. Just something I am wondering about.

How do you know when symmetry in fiction stops being symmetrical and starts being offensive?

more later.

Hello, dear friend. Been a while. We have some serious catching up to do. Let me start.

Read Annie Proulx's THE SHIPPING NEWS. And I give it a big fat NO. I will say this about the book: this book I know I will love when I turn sixty. This is the type of book an OLD Ross would like. But a youngER Ross--No. Too many fractured sentences. Odd plot turns. Sad sack life changes. All of which I love in novels, just not in this one. I did like her use of knot imagery and house metaphor, but must say I have read a better house metaphor in AM Homes' MUSIC FOR TORCHING. Now that's a book.

Read Ray Bradury's THE OCTOBER COUNTRY. Interesting. Really enjoyed his short fiction in a kind of little boy, still playing with HeMan and Thundercats-kind of way. Very Twilight Zone-y, but not in a bad way. Favorite stories: "The Wind," "The Scythe," "The Small Assassin," "Skeleton," "The Watchful Pokerchip of H. Matisse," and "The Dwarf." I read in an essay that (and I am paraphrasing) you never know where Bradbury's story is going until the last paragraph. And I found this to be widely true. Some of these stories still keep me up at night, just long enough to make me get out of bed three times to make sure the front door is locked. To make sure my car is still parked out back. To make sure my cats aren't sharpening knives in the kitchen. Yikes.

Ford Madox Ford's THE GOOD SOLDIER. This book was so boring that I will not dane to write a response to it past one one word--WASTEFUL. Of my time. And of his time.

Read Donald Barthelme's THE DEAD FATHER. Fucking fantastic novel. My friend--Joe Stracci--has yet to post on this book, but I suspect he did NOT like it. He is more intense than me and probably didn't like it's absurdist nature. (Well, Joe! Where's your post? Huh? We are all waiting!) Anyway, this book clearly is about, oh, everything. Love. Life. Sex. Death. Fathers and Sons. Daughters. Wives. Government. War. Money. Food. Alcohol. God. Religion.

My favorite line--the one that will be an epigraph to my novel: The father is a motherfucker.

Barthelme follows in the path of Albert Camus or Samuel Beckett, spinning philosophical statements with absurdist events. In fact, WAITING FOR GODOT would be a fantastic double feature with this. Even Camus' THE STRANGER. This book takes the reader on an absolutely bizarre journey where almost everything is to be interpreted, so in that sense if you are someone who needs everything spelled out for you, don't read this book. For those of you who will not read it, the book is about 19 men and two women dragging the enormous carcass of a man named The Dead Father through the Wends to his burial. However, The Dead Father is not dead. Not really. From the back of the book, The Dead Father is "half-dead, half-alive, part-mechanical, wise, vain, powerful being who still has hopes for himself, although he is, effectively, dead." Towards the end of the novel, Barthelme shifts his attention from his characters to a book thatt they are given by a hotel employee with the job title of "plant waterer." The book is called A MANUAL FOR SONS and has been translated into English from English. MANUAL acts more as a warning for sons, a manual on the pitfalls of the father, in this case The Dead Father. Great dissection of "the father" as it relates to psychology and life. THE DEAD FATHER has shot to one of my top five favorite reads of all time. My copy is marked up one side and down the other. To all of you who HAVE read it, I will end with a nod. Bulldozers.

Reading Gustave Flaubert's MADAME BOVARY. And, surprisingly, I am really enjoying myself. A poet friend of mine, Jeffrey, told me I would like it and he was right. Jeffrey, I doubted you. I did. But I was wrong. So far I have read what probably is the most non-pornographic, highly sexually-charged description of someone drinking. Ever.

"Because it was almost empty she had to bend backwards to be able to drink; and with her head tilted back, her neck and her lips outstretched, she began to laugh at tasting nothing; and then the tip of her tongue came out from between her small teeth and began daintily to lick the bottom of the glass."

Flaubert got it right with this book. Lame old husband. Sexually frustrated young wife. Every sentence is painfully perfect, which was immediately recognizable and something that was later confirmed when I read that he spent five years writing this book--to make it perfect. Right on.

UPDATE. My novel has passed the halfway mark and is on track to be finished in June. Skipping ahead to write the end, only because it scares me and just want it done. Jeremy wants it done. Over with. Will he live? Will he die? He wants to know now and I can't blame him. Never written a self-mutilation scene before. Never written an amputation scene before. Should be interesting. Need to pick up a bottle of Scotch.

And finally, am still punching at two short stories. One about lesbians and rum in front of a gas fire place. One about how sexual urges can destroy a life.

Wow. I've been busy.

I've been here. Where have you been?

more later.

Yeah! A new and improved blog.

Yeah! A new blog.

Yeah! A blog.

Yeah! Blog.

Yeah! Blo.

Yeah!

Ye

more later.