JR Angelella: The Agonist

A New Home

2008-11-16T22:17:59Z

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

Cloudcuckooland

2008-06-12T13:07:56Z

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.

An Evening of Old Sales Tricks

2008-05-31T19:40:45Z

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.

A Tuesday Morning Musing

2008-05-27T11:41:38Z

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.

The River and Boxing Beat With The Same Heart: Victory Is Painful, But At The End Tastes So Sweet.

2008-05-24T16:05:20Z

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.

Living Life in the Darkest of Corners

2008-03-30T18:19:07Z

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.

Go!

2008-03-04T04:13:07Z

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?

Eve of Everything

2008-03-02T21:22:06Z

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?

City of Batteries

2008-01-20T00:06:32Z

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

So What?

2008-01-13T18:06:24Z

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?

The Pain In My Side Is Not My Liver, But The Digestion Of A Lazy Writer. Motherfuck! And Amen!

2008-01-10T20:37:17Z

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!

Joe Goose and My Novel

2008-01-07T06:47:01Z

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?

Song Is Sung

2008-01-06T06:52:35Z

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.

Askold Melnyczuk Tells Me the Russians Are Coming

2008-01-05T05:47:30Z

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.

Ian H. Williams and My Green Gloves

2008-01-04T04:49:37Z

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.

The Important Things You Learn When You Expect The Unimportant

2007-11-19T22:48:30Z

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.

From The Darkness Comes A Light

2007-11-14T01:11:07Z

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.

A Spark Is Born

2007-11-04T16:53:22Z

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 Want To Sleep and James Salter Owns the World.

2007-11-02T09:44:40Z

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.

Oh, How Did I Get Here?

2007-10-07T15:53:57Z

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.

Down In Bowery. Keys To The Kingdom.

2007-09-23T15:58:50Z

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.

Afterall, I Am A Shmenkman!

2007-09-17T00:17:52Z

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!

A Call To All Friends

2007-08-27T13:59:51Z

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.

A Simple Observation

2007-08-23T23:08:06Z

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.

"Pat, Pet, Pick, Poke, Push"

2007-08-22T22:00:21Z

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."