Tag: authors

one of those strange moods

Yesterday I wanted to do a political post that somehow expressed my feelings about the current presidential campaign and Thomas Paine. It never really came together.

It was the anniversary of Thomas Paine’s death in 1809 at the age of seventy-two. When I think of him, I think of how he wrote the documents that inspired a group of rebellious individuals to overcome their personal disagreements and inner squabbles and turn thirteen young colonies into one new country full of hope for the future. He’s the person who came up with the term “United States of America.” He despised any kind of dictator or tyrant. He disagreed with slave ownership and said so. His beliefs and concerns for the rights of all people were expressed in concepts that would eventually become minimum wage, public education, and social security.

He also entered into a lifelong feud with George Washington that, along with his views on organized religion, led to a loss of esteem for him in the country he helped create. He had entire other lives in France and England until then-President Thomas Jefferson invited him to return to the U.S. His writings were eventually held in high regard by many great philosophers and thinkers, including Thomas Edison and Abraham Lincoln. Yet when he died, only six people followed his coffin to the grave, among them two freed slaves who wanted to pay their respects.

I suppose in every age, we are unjustly hard on forward-thinking individuals. We pick apart their flaws as humans and turn a deaf ear to their ideas and dreams for a better future. Two quotes from Thomas Paine:

When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.

We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

the charm of a book that apologizes for itself

When enjoying David Puterbaugh’s last post about summer reading as part of his MFA program, I started thinking about my current yearning for escapist reading.

I’m not a snob when it comes to novels–I will forgive authors much if they give me engaging characters–but when I need to escape, I’m less inclined to turn to light reading than to that hotly debated term: literary writing. I want language to cast its spell. I want to fall for words and how they’re put together. Most popular fiction–my own included–often neglects language for story.

Some of you may remember Greg’s mentioning that during one of his visits to The Compound, he had a chance to pick up some books from a personal library. That was my mother’s collection, and I was grateful for Greg’s discretion, in fact, the discretion of all my friends who respected my family’s privacy over the past few months. During that visit, along with making me laugh and continuing our ongoing conversation about writing, Greg also helped move furniture. He didn’t do it for any reason but friendship; nonetheless, I wish we’d had more books for him to choose from. Over the years, my mother had already given her children most of the novels we wanted and held on mainly to her comfort reads. There were a few literary classics left which I used to replace some of my college paperbacks, and some old first editions of books that she wanted my brother to have.

Somewhere in the sorting, I found a book I’d never noticed before. Here’s the order in which I examined it.

as if you were there

Hump Day Happy

It seems like a thousand days since Sunday.

I just took my sister to the airport, and my brother is traveling and will come back through town this weekend. Yesterday, we went through a footlocker that my mother left in my garage several years ago. I thought I knew what was in it. I have vivid memories of looking inside it once before. But I was wrong, because things I thought were there were not, yet there were lots of good and funny surprises, some of which I’m sure will become part of LJ posts in the coming months.

Mostly it was just comfortable and comforting to sit on the floor with my siblings and see some of the sentimental things that my parents thought were worth saving over the decades, even though they moved so much that they were constant purgers. From the time I was little, my mother used to say to me on special occasions, “I want to build memories.” As her own memory began to fade, we found that the trick for veering her away from frustration was to ask something like, “What was the name of David’s dog when he got out of the Air Force?” or “How did you and Daddy meet?” or “Who was your oldest sister?” She could look back twenty, fifty, seventy years and answer, which was like a little victory for her every time. Alzheimer’s is a cruel disease, and it’s a weird feeling to be grateful that cancer took her body before dementia could take everything else.

Last night I finished reading Armisted Maupin’s Michael Tolliver Lives, which turns out to have been the right book at the right time (thanks, Tim). I was struck by Michael’s perspective of our “logical” family, that family we create from our friends, as filling gaps very often created by a biological family. I’ve been blessed with great people in all of my families.

I wasn’t sure whether to do this post today, then I realized that my hesitation was because I worried people might think being silly was inappropriate. Yet I’m the first person to tell someone else, “Who gives a shit what other people think? As individuals, each of us manages our joys and our sorrows in whatever way and time works for us, not as others think we should.”

So I have fended off a headache with some pain medication, I’m enjoying my Starbucks mocha frappuccino, and I invite each of you to give me a page number from 1 to 612 and another number between 1 and 30, and I will tell you something to be happy about from this book:

Hump Day Happy–and some New Orleans photos

I won’t be able to scurry around town snapping photos today, but if you want one of 14,000 things to be happy about from this book:

 

 

just comment with a page number from 1 to 612 and another number between 1 and 30.

While you’re waiting for me to consult the book, you might enjoy some more New Orleans photos.

Last year, David and Shannon were walking through the Quarter when David noticed the Place d’Armes Hotel. David thought it looked like a promising place to stay. When everyone got back home, Shannon called and got information about the hotel and arranged a block of rooms with special rates. Although it ended up that Shannon wasn’t able to go to Saints and Sinners this year, David, ‘Nathan, and Lisa booked rooms at the Place d’Armes. Since all their rooms are non-smoking, Mark, Timothy, Rob, and I figured we’d stay in smoking rooms at the festival’s host hotel, the Bourbon Orleans. Unfortunately for the smokers among us, without warning, the Bourbon Orleans went all non-smoking on May 1.

Both places have plenty of features to recommend them. Both are in great locations. The Bourbon Orleans is convenient for the festival, has nice rooms, and has a gorgeous courtyard with a sparkling pool. I only saw Lisa’s room at the Place d’Armes, but it was spacious and charming. The Place d’Armes pool didn’t seem as clean, but the courtyards are lush. Especially good for us was that the courtyards didn’t close at ten p.m. as the courtyard does at the Bourbon Orleans. So Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, after meetings and parties and meals, a few of us gathered around the pool area at the Place d’Armes and talked (and smoked, because that’s okay outside), and enjoyed our sport of the weekend: Tormenting David Puterbaugh.

these are some of those late-night photos

And on that Friday evening in New Orleans…

The Saints and Sinners kickoff party was at the W Hotel courtyard on Friday evening. That afternoon, I had to run some errands, including buying a hairbrush or two at Wal-Mart, since that was something I forgot to pack. Thanks to Greg’s excellent directions, I got to Wal-Mart with no problem. I think ALL cities should have roads that dead-end into the parking lots of mega stores like Wal-Mart, Costco, etc. It’s very handy. Cities, take note: My personal preferences would be Target, the Container Store, and Michael’s. Oh, and Walgreen’s, since I spend half my life there anyway.

But back to New Orleans. Since gallivanting through the city on foot wasn’t in the cards this trip, I decided to drive to the W Hotel from Wal-Mart. Of course, I’d failed to get directions back, but Mark G. Harris led me to the hotel by cell phone. Or he tried. I was being very stressed out and uncooperative. Yet he managed not to click his phone shut and blow me off. See why I say the G is for Galahad?

Once in the courtyard, I flopped down on a comfy bench and did very little mingling. Between MGH and FARB, liquid refreshment was kept in front of me (Coca Cola, because I was high enough on pain meds all weekend–‘Nathan, did I really meet you, or just hallucinate it?).

I didn’t get a swag bag, but I did get some photos, and I offer them to you now.

crazy woman with Nikon alert

Button Sunday

On this day in 1803, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, dramatist and novelist, was born in London. Even if you’ve never read any of his work, you are no doubt familiar with the first line of his novel Paul Clifford:

If only Snoopy could do what I did on a Friday in New Orleans at Saints and Sinners. The first master class I attended was Stephen McCauley’s “Real Live Characters.”

I’ve already mentioned that I’m crazy about Stephen McCauley’s work, so much so that I, along with Tim, would have had the honor of inducting him into the Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame had he not been forced to leave the festival early because of a family emergency.

One of McCauley’s points was about collaboration between writers–not so much contributing to the same work, as I have with my writing partners, but even working in the same environment. Tim and I know the value of sharing the same space and writing independently of each other but still establishing an atmosphere of creative energy that benefits us both.

I was amused when McCauley had us do a writing exercise, and I had paper and pen to loan Tim, who had nothing to write with or on, but he had all kinds of ideas that he began furiously scribbling. Whereas I sat there hissing, “I don’t have a character… I don’t have but one thing inside a character’s imagined bedside table… I don’t know what to write…” etc.

At different times, one of us may meet the mechanical needs of our efforts, and the other may meet our creative needs. This is collaboration.

Jim Grimsley’s master class was canceled when his plans to attend the festival were changed at the last minute. During our down time, Tim kindly picked up lunch for us, then it was time to attend Mark Doty’s class, “The Challenges of the Memoir.”

Even as a person who has no plans to write any kind of memoir or autobiography, I knew this was a class I couldn’t miss. I’ve read Doty’s three volumes of his memoirs and most of his poetry, and I’ve heard him speak before. My instincts were right, because his exercises for helping writers remember and shape their personal histories into a narrative are just as useful for creating a fictional character’s history.

One of my most treasured books is this one, in which Mark Doty wrote:

And I was.

If you’re reading this and you’re a person who dreams of finishing your novel or crafting your poetry, take every advantage you can to learn from brilliant writers like Stephen McCauley and Mark Doty–and be persistent.

New Orleans, Part 1: The road there

Since it’s going to be a scorching three-day weekend, I’ll be inside dividing my Saints and Sinners/New Orleans photos into several posts, just in case you’re not out spending your tax incentive checks or whatever they’re called, or cooking over a grill, or sharing time with friends, or otherwise living it up on the holiday.

Lynne has promised me that she’s going to spend much of her weekend here figuring out what my yard needs. I think it needs Tommy Clyde, myself.

Somewhere on I-10 East on the way to New Orleans,

What, what?!?

Safe as houses

I think the phrase “safe as houses” may be more familiar to my British friends. I’d never heard it until I read Alex Jeffers’ novel Safe As Houses in 1995.

Jeffers is allegedly the grandson of one of America’s (often underrated and overlooked) great poets, Robinson Jeffers, who himself was the builder and inhabitant of one of the places I’d most like to visit in the U.S., Tor House and Hawk Tower. I came so close to it on my trip up the California coast in 1998, but my fear is that if I ever visit it, I might not leave. My grasping of rocks with fingers of steel might be a problem for the Foundation and the Jeffers family.

One reason I enjoy reading about Robinson Jeffers and his wife and contemporaries is because, as is so often the case, a group of gifted and intelligent individuals–poets, painters, photographers, writers, musicians, teachers–befriended, nurtured, and inspired one another. I think these groups are best when they’re organic, unforced… That’s really all I want to say about that.

I do want to publish the entire set of photos I took for Lindsey in West U yesterday–because she knows, as I do, that our friends are “safe as houses.”

hoping the spirit of Robinson Jeffers forgives me for the urban view

Fools For Love

You would think, looking at my photos, that I sought a co-editor and contributors to the anthology Fool For Love: New Gay Fiction on the basis of handsomeness alone. You’d be wrong to think that, however, as I can’t imagine a more talented group of writers. It makes me want to start another anthology right now just so I can invite them to contribute.

herding cats

The post in which I gush about Stephen McCauley


Saints and Sinners Literary Festival organizer Paul J. Willis and writer Stephen McCauley

Timothy and I were asked to induct Stephen McCauley into the Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, Stephen had to leave the festival to take care of personal business before the closing ceremonies on Sunday. Though we regretted his absence, we were lucky enough to attend his Master Class on creating unforgettable characters. Not only did he give us useful exercises to learn about and build our characters, but he also talked about the values of creating in the company of other writers, certainly a subject dear to the hearts of two writers who have worked as a team.

When I was initially approached to induct him, I nervously asked, Why me? and was told it was because I’m such an outspoken fan of his work. This is true. Later, when Timothy and I asked Stephen for biographical information and told him how we love his novels, in the most charming, self-effacing way, he was happy about the possibility that we wanted to focus on his work rather than on him. It’s so lovely to meet an author whose writing I admire who also exceeds all my expectations for who he might be as a person. I’m so happy to have had the opportunity to meet him, and I would have loved to have stood next to Timothy and made this induction.

Without further fanfare, this is what we’d planned to say about Stephen McCauley and his work. It would probably have been over-long, but we didn’t care, and we were told by our Saints and Sinners contacts that we were free to gush.

cross-posted in Timothy's LiveJournal