Looking back, and a bit of True Grit
On the one hand, I claim not to put a lot of stock in the significance of certain dates for their own sake, but the last day of the calendar year seems to encourage reflection. From a writing standpoint in particular, it’s definitely been a good one. I placed the odd and off-color story “Unnatural Deeds” with Leaf Garden, issue #8. Frankly, it took several months to find a publisher for that one, but I’m proud of it in the sense, especially, that the story is a testament to honesty — life as it really is, and not a sanitized version of it. It raised a few eyebrows, that I know of. I also placed the story “Walkin’ the Dog” in the debut issue of Spilling Ink Review. In that story I’d experimented with narrative that rests more heavily than usual (for me) on repetition of specific images, especially the color orange. It hasn’t come out yet, but Pisgah Review took my story “The Composure of Death”; it should be out this winter or spring. I realize now all three stories have in common that I borrowed their titles from other literary sources: Macbeth (5.1), “Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles”; the title of Walter Mosley’s conceptual novel Walkin’ the Dog; and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil,” “[T]he corpse had slightly shuddered, rustling the shroud and muslin cap, though the countenance retained the composure of death.”
The biggest stroke of luck of course was finding a publisher, finally, for my novel Men of Winter, which the new small press Punkin House picked up in the spring and released at the end of November. Thus 2011 will be in large part about promoting the novel. I also hope to release Weeping with an Ancient God, a novella and story collection, tentatively taken by Punkin House. The first chapter of Weeping, titled “Melvill in the Marquesas,” was published in September in The Final Draft. (I meant to provide a link to the story, which was published online, but the link has become inactive again — a bit disconcerting, as I’ve been hoping it would be floating around in the ether promoting in its way the coming novella release.) I thought I would have difficulty placing the novella excerpt — it is a bit unusual, in essence a fictionalized biography of Herman Melville’s experience among cannibals in 1842, during the whaling adventure that led to his eventually writing Moby Dick — but The Final Draft picked it up pretty quickly, and even though I withdrew it promptly from other journals’ consideration, I received three other offers of publication, and two rejections with long notes of praise (highly unusual, from my experience). So maybe the novella itself will generate some reading interest.
I was also invited to contribute to Glimmer Train Press’ Writers Ask series, a well-respected how-to publication, and thus my piece “Researching the Rhythms of Voice” will appear this winter or spring. I wrote about the process I’ve gone through to write my current project, whose working title is the Authoress, as its first-person protagonist is modeled after the nineteenth-century American writer Washington Irving. In particular I’ve been reading an obscure collection of Irving’s letters in order to get the feel of his more informal prose style. I’ve written about 340 manuscript pages of the Authoress, and hope to finish within a year or so. One other writing development was my establishing a new blog via my publisher, Punkin House. I decided what the world may need is a blog devoted to helping new(er) writers find outlets for their work, thus Pathfinding.
The Authoress has taken up all my writing energy, so I haven’t written any shorter pieces, nor any scholarly papers — both of which I miss, but it’s important to devote the necessary time and mental processing to the new novel. I’m not short on ideas: I have several writing projects, both small and large, creative and scholarly, in mind.
Finally, I don’t normally write about cinema, especially contemporary American cinema, but the other day I saw the Coen Brothers’ newest offering, True Grit, and I found it quite mesmerizing and wonderful. The acting is superb (and why wouldn’t it be, given the cast?), but beyond that the cinematic style is quite engaging, epic and even biblical in its scope. I know there have been some naysayers who don’t like the idea of remaking the 1969 John Wayne classic, directed by Henry Hathaway — and I love that True Grit, too — but the Coen Brothers have remained truer, apparently, to Charles Portis’s 1968 novel, and have given us a film that is darker and, well, grittier, than the original film, great as it is.
On the reading front, I continue to make my way through Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and am enjoying it very much. Winter break is nearly over, and it will be back to the three-job grind, but I’ve managed to make a lot of progress on the Authoress.
Thornhill, Hitchcock and more
I had the treat of attending an acoustic performance of the local band Thornhill last evening at the Walnut Street Winery in Rochester, Illinois. In a word, they were terrific. They performed for over three hours, and I was there to enjoy every note. The band — consisting of sisters Tina and Lynna Thornhill (lead vocals, rhythm guitar; bass, vocals), Joel Zulauf (lead guitar, vocals), Patty Kniss (percussion), and Terri Patterson (backing harmonies) — did a variety of covers, from classics by artists like Carole King, Heart, the Carpenters, and Neil Young (to name a few), new artists, like Neko Case, plus several cuts from their debut CD, Center of Town. They also performed an a cappella version of “O Holy Night,” and had other local musicians join them on stage for inspired renditions of Janis Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee” and KT Tunstall’s “Big Black Horse and the Cherry Tree.” In addition to Thornhill’s excellent musicianship, their rapport with the audience, which included long-time Thornhill devotees and newcomers like me, was easy-going, lighthearted and often laugh-out-loud funny. Throw into the mix the winery’s unique and intimate setting, and all in all it was a memorable evening to be sure.
Music-lovers in central Illinois should keep an eye out for Thornhill appearances, and check the band’s dates page on its website.
While I’m posting, I want to give a nod to Dr. Tena Helton’s graduate English class at the University of Illinois at Springfield for their impressive project presentations based on the films of Alfred Hitchcock. The students used a variety of technology/media applications to explore various aspects of such Hitchcock classics as Rear Window and Psycho.
As I’ve discussed recently, my novel Men of Winter has now been released in three formats: print paperback, Kindle, and ebook. Over winter break I’ll be starting to organize readings and other promotional projects. The Comments page of my website has been … light on traffic since I started it, but hopefully now that people are reading Men of Winter some folks will use the Comments page to initiate a dialogue about the novel and, really, anything related to writing, publishing, etc. It would be great to have an interactive readership.
I’m a little more than a third through Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and still enjoying it very much, and I continue to work on the Authoress, my novel in progress, feeling that I’m nearly finished with a draft of chapter 20. It has been a busy week, with final exams, writing portfolios, and research papers to grade — plus my home laptop was out of commission for a few days due to a nasty virus — so my reading and writing suffered a bit; but I hope to more than make up for the lost time over break.
Men of Winter fully released, and a little Kerouac
Men of Winter is fully released, meaning that all three versions — paperback, ebook, and Kindle — are available from Punkin House Press at punkinbooks.com. I haven’t seen the finished paperbacks yet, but I trust they’re on their way. As I discussed in a previous post, Punkin House Press is experimenting with different approaches to green publishing, described on PHP’s blog page. The fact that Men of Winter is available in Kindle is important, I think, as it encourages a wider readership. I saw a video blog in which the blogger was from Australia and she was saying that she’s become a much more voracious reader of new fiction thanks to ereading, as Kindle versions of books are much cheaper “downunder” than even paperback releases. In short, she simply couldn’t afford to buy a lot of print books. My Punkin House blog, Pathfinding, is on Blogger, which lets you see where people are who’ve looked at your post, and while I haven’t had a lot of traffic, period, yet, I have had people checking in from places like Russia, Croatia, Singapore, Italy, and of course the UK and Canada. So if folks abroad are going to buy Men of Winter, it’s more likely they’ll buy the Kindle or ebook versions.
Last Wednesday, the Poetry Collective at the University of Illinois at Springfield hosted a screening of the documentary What Happened to Kerouac? (1986), which I enjoyed very much (even though it was pretty late after teaching all day, and night). For a time I was a Kerouac fanatic, beginning with my reading of On the Road (1957) when I was in my mid thirties. I went on to read several, though not all, of Kerouac’s books. Probably, after On the Road, my next favorite is Tristessa (1960). The film uses footage from The Steve Allen Show in 1959 when Kerouac read from On the Road to Allen’s jazz accompaniment on the piano; in a word, it’s moving. The clip is available on YouTube, of course:
For Kerouac fans, or students of American literature, especially mid-twentieth-century, the film is well worth seeing, as it has extensive interview clips and rare footage from other Beat Generation notables like Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Beat scholar and biographer Ann Charters.
On the reading front, I continue to read and enjoy Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina — it’s a wintry morning here, and ideal for a cup of coffee and Tolstoy (though I’m in a springtime section of the novel — drats the timing). On the one hand, I enjoy Tolstoy’s description of the simple and happy peasants, who get such great joy from working the land; but I know that for the peasants themselves, toiling away on the land chiefly for the benefit of the owner was hard, hard work and probably joyful less often than Tolstoy’s book would lead one to believe. Nevertheless, the complexity of the novel, in terms of the diverse range of issues Tolstoy works into the narrative, is astounding.
I continue to work on my novel in progress, the Authoress, and will perhaps have a little surge of additional progress over winter break.
Print edition available Tuesday, PHP’s greenness, and more Tolstoy
The ebook of Men of Winter has been available since last week, but Punkin House says the print edition will be available Tuesday. A Kindle version should be available soon. Punkin House took a big step forward this past week, too, in its goal to become a greener publisher. For one thing, the paperback edition is printed on 30% recycled paper stock, and, I must say, it looks very good. Beyond that, however, they’ve launched a unique publishing model called the ROGO Program (for Recycle One Get One). In a nutshell, when you purchase a Punkin House book, you can return it and receive 20% off your next purchase — in an effort to get more authors read, bookshelves less cluttered, and fewer trees killed. They have other innovative green initiatives that are explained in more detail at their Punkin Green Commitment page — please take a look. It’s serendipitous that a house that’s committed to green publishing has taken on me and my work, as I’ve been committed to greener practices myself for years. You go, Punkin House.
I’ve been working away on my novel in progress, and am enjoying the process very much. On the one hand, it’s moving in the basic narrative direction I’ve had in mind for some time, but it still surprises me on a regular basis. In fact, the chapter I’m working on right now (20) is in itself a surprise; originally I’d planned the protagonist’s next move after chapter 19 to be further along the temporal sequence, but instead I’m inserting an entirely new scene that occurred to me as a good idea as I was finishing a draft of chapter 19. What I had planned for chapter 20 will now be chapter 21 (as it stands currently), so the new addition isn’t altering the basic narrative trajectory, but I believe it will enrich the final chapters of the book.
On the reading front, I’m still making my way through Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and the more I read of it, the more I enjoy it. Even though really big novels are out of vogue — notable exceptions of late being Adam Levin’s The Instructions (McSweeney’s), and Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) — there’s something to be said for delving that deeply into characters’ lives, and living with them for as long as it takes to make one’s way through the narrative. There are many short novels and novellas that I love, but a shorter work is a different reading experience than a long work. A key work in my dissertation was William H. Gass’s The Tunnel, also a big, wonderful book. Wow, I just discovered that Dalkey Archive Press has published a casebook for the The Tunnel, edited by H. L. Hix — okay, so now I know what to ask Santa for.
Pathfinding (my Punkin House author’s blog)
12 Winters Blog 
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