tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9577204538339640792024-03-05T12:38:24.686-08:00Long Pine LimitedPhilip Deaver on the craft of fiction.Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-59019886126710746822015-05-05T05:09:00.000-07:002015-05-05T08:19:46.256-07:00<h2>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;">
Arcola Girls</h2>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">On Saturday night, Arcola girls would
come north on the two-lane for the dance.
The road, Route 45, was flat, and the grass grew right up to the edge,
crowding in on them, narrowing the alley of their headlight beam. With their windows open they could smell the
warm, damp night air and the cornfields as they came. They could hear everywhere the swarms of
crickets. Sometimes grasshoppers would
land right on the windshield or thump onto the hood. Crows would sweep from the wires, stay on the
road until the last moment, picking at run-over barn cats and field mice. The car tires would thump on the seams of the
concrete road. It was a seven-mile
drive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> By
eight in the evening their white Chevys and green Mustangs and burgundy
Corvairs would be cruising through the drive-in and making the Webster Park
loop. They would glide through the
downtown, past the community building where the dance was just getting
started. Sometimes you’d hear their
tires screech as they stopped, or they’d peel out at the intersection, showing
off. You could hear them laughing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> One
of them, named Kelly, had beautiful blond hair, long like that of Mary
Travers. There was one named Karen who was
famous for singing like Connie Francis, and sometimes at the dance she’d join
the band and sing “Where the Boys Are,” just for fun. Another, Sandra, was very tall, and her hair
was ratted in a bubble after the fashion.
She had odd eye-habits, always seeming to observe. Sometimes, playing in the park, she’d be
running—her strides were long and confident like a boy’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> They
all wore shorts and colorful sweatshirts, white tennis shoes. At the dance they would d huddle together in
a corner, doing committee work on the latest rumor, the latest dirty joke. Sandra, alert in the corner of her eyes,
would look over her shoulder in case anyone was coming.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “I
think you love those girls,” my girlfriend said to me on the phone one night,
“the way you watch them.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> There
were two bad S curves in the road from Arcola.
They were where the highway was rerouted fifty yards west of itself for
a certain short stretch because it would always flood in a heavy rain and
people would get killed. So, instead,
people got killed in the curves. Late
one night in that particular summer, early June, Karen with another Arcola girl
named Marie, ran off the road at high speed on their way home. They went over the ditch and deep into the
woods, through a fence, flipped into a field.
They weren’t found until morning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> The crumpled ghost of their Chevy
rusted most of the summer and part of the fall where the wrecker let it down,
half a block from the Dairy Queen in the wreck lot of Ford Motor Sales. I don’t know what the fascination was, but
sometimes I’d go by there. Through the
crunched, blue-tinted windows, in the folds of the damp, bent seats, I could
see a Beatles album and a soggy package of Kools. There were stains of blood in the driver’s
seat. One of their shoes was decomposing
in the gravel next to the car. I’d find
myself staring. This was before Vietnam
really got going. Back then, the whole
idea of people dying who were about my age was a rare and somehow fascinating
thing. The Arcola girls, Karen and Marie,
they were the first I remember.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> There was one Arcola girl named Rhonda
Hart, a wild girl with dark brown hair and strange blue catlike eyes. Each Saturday night, late, when the dance was
almost over and the room was humid and warm like hot breath, a group would
gather around Rhonda, who was by then dancing alone, doing, if the chaperones
weren’t looking, a pantomime of taking her clothes off to a grinding on-and-on
rendition of “Louie, Louie” that the local bands had turned into the theme of the
summer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> I remember that her legs were skinny,
but she was round and ample under a pure-white sweatshirt, and her menacing cat
eyes stared into the group around her, mostly boys, her lips pouting like a bad
girl. She’d make-believe unzip her
candy-colored red shorts at the back, make-believe slip her panties off her
hips and slide them down the skinny legs to the cold cork-looking floor of the
West Ridge community building. A little
kick at the last and, imaginary pale pink, they sailed through the imaginary
air. And on she danced, her arms out to
you. She was pretty good.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> At Webster Park, there was an old
bandstand the Arcola girls used to gather at on summer nights. They would park their cars in the deep
shadows. The local high school boys would
go there, too, and in the black shade of the park maples they would all play,
smoke, make out, the Lord knew what else (there were always whisperings,
strange rumors going around). These were
country girls. Maybe some of them
wouldn’t have gotten a second look from the boys in Arcola, but in West Ridge,
they were exotic and different, from a place that, to us, then, seemed far
away. They made the air palpable with
sex and play.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> The first time I ever heard a girl say
“fuck,” it was an Arcola girl, and she didn’t say it mean or loud, but it
seemed to echo all through Webster Park, down the length of it into the cluster
of pine trees, beyond that to the ball diamonds, the deserted playground and
city pool, the walking gardens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “You’d love to go out with one of
those girls,” my girlfriend would sometimes say.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> We’d be at the drive-in and one of
their cars might spin through. The
curb-hops would jump back to avoid it. I
might crane my neck to see who it was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Cathy says they’re all as dumb as
posts,” she’d say. Cathy was my
girlfriend’s friend.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Cathy should talk,” I told her. I’d turn up the radio, the manic
rabble-rousing prattle of Dick Biondi, WLS.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> That summer a couple of classmates of
mine, Bob Reid and Buzz Talbott, slipped into a slumber party in Arcola. They climbed in a bedroom window, bringing
with them their sleeping bags and beer.
Rumors were it had been some great party. The rumor was that somebody’s farmer-dad
caught them, though, and there had been a shotgun fired and a quick getaway. Bob Reid, and a kid he paid who was taking
shop, had spent an afternoon rubbing out and painting a couple of pockmarks on
the white tailgate of his dad’s pickup.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> Sarah, a buxom little Arcola
cheerleader, maybe the prettiest in the whole group, got pregnant that summer
and disappeared. They said she went to
Texas. It seemed like everything you
heard about the Arcola girls was an exotic, strange, wild tale—full of skin and
possibilities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> So one Friday afternoon I called up
Rhonda Hart to ask her out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Tonight?” She seemed real indignant. “Out where?” she said. “For chrissake,” she added. She was chewing gum. “Give a girl some notice sometime, will
ya?” It was her Mae West act. She was laughing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Mattoon. A movie.
Champaign—I don’t know.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Mattoon a movie Champaign you don’t
KNOW?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> Shouldn’t have called, I thought to
myself. Her voice was hard and
confident. The Righteous Brothers were
playing in the background. I’m different
from her, I was thinking. She knows more
about the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “We could just go talk or
something. I don’t know,” I said. It was all wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “I’m not sure I know who you are
even,” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “My name’s Tom Nichols,” I told
her. I tried to explain myself to
her. Told her I was a friend of Bob Reid
and ran cross country with Talbott.
Tried to recall for her times when I was the guy <i>with</i> somebody she <i>did</i>
know when we were doing something she might remember, such as getting a pizza
or buying a Coke at the Sinclair station like a bunch of us did one night and
all stood around making wisecracks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Well, let’s drive around West
Ridge—we don’t have to go any place special,” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “That’d be okay,” I said. “I thought a movie maybe.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> She was quiet a moment. “So you don’t wanna be seen with me or what?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Nah.
I just want—I don’t know—quiet or something. That’s all.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Right.” She laughed.
She really liked that one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Wanna go dancing?” she said. “Up at the Chances R? I heard the Artistics are up there. I love their lead singer—he looks exactly
like Elvis. Let’s go dancing.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> Sometimes I’d see her cruising with
Bob Reid in his pickup. I knew she
occasionally went out with him, and he was never known to dance. So what did they do when <i>they</i> went out? Couldn’t we
just do that, whatever it was?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Okay,” I said. “We’ll find a dance or something.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “You don’t sound real enthused.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “I’m enthused.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “You don’t sound like it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Look,” I said, “I must be a little
enthused, I’m calling you up.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Down, boy,” she said, laughing,
chewing her gum. She thought about it
for a while.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Don’t make it a gift from the gods or
something,” I said finally.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Right,” she said. “Hang on.”
She put the phone against something soft to muffle the sound, and was
shouting. Then I heard the phone clank
down and she was gone, to ask her mom.
You’d always forget that Arcola girls had to ask their moms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Yeah, I can go,” she said when she
came back all breathless. “What time?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Eight. Suit yourself,” I said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Dancing, right?” She seemed to be setting it out as a
condition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Eight o’clock,” I said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Seven or eight?” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Whatever.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> After I hung up I went out in the
backyard and sat in a lawn chair. I was
nervous about this. Rhonda seemed
different from my girlfriend, rougher and faster. Then my sister yelled from the house that I
had a call.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Hi.
This is Rhonda,” she said. I
didn’t say anything. I expected a
cancellation. “Remember me?” she said,
and laughed. “One more thing. Let’s make it around ten-thirty, and you meet
me at the bandstand at the park. What do
you say?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Ten-thirty.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Right.” She was talking quieter than in the first
call.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “No way,” I said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “I got something going I forgot
about. I can get loose by ten-thirty.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “No.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “What’s wrong?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “It’s too late.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Look,” she said, I want to introduce
you to my friends. I’ll ride up with
Kelly, and you can bring me home. You
know Kelly?” Kelly had the silky,
white-blond hair, freckles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Yeah, I know her.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Well, I just talked to her, and she
doesn’t know you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “I think I’m losing control of this.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Ha.” She seemed to fade away. Then she was back. “You can handle it. See you at the bandstand. Ten-thirty.
Wait if I’m late.” She hung up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> At eight I was on the highway to
Arcola. I’d decided to try to get to
Rhonda before Kelly did. The sun was
going down and the Illinois sky was red in the west. The locusts were loud, wheeting in a
pulsating rhythm. Much later the moon
would rise full and red, blood moon.
Jupiter would linger near it all across the sky, stalking. The whole thing was a mistake.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> I’d never been to Arcola on my own
mission, but I found her house, using the phone book in the booth just outside
a place downtown called the Youth Center.
I parked down the street on the opposite side and watched the house in
my mirror. It was dusk. I got out of the car and walked back toward
the place, trying to think of what to say.
I hadn’t thought of anything by the time I knocked and Rhonda’s mother
came to the door. She was all fixed up,
maybe thirty-nine or forty years old.
Her perfume wafted through the screen door.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Hi,” I said. “Is Rhonda home?” I told her my name.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “You’re Tom? I thought she was with you,” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> I turned around to see if she was, a
little joke. “Nope.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> Rhonda’s mom didn’t laugh.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “I’m kind of late,” I said. “Are you sure she isn’t here?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “God, I’m almost <i>sure</i> she’s
gone,” she said, “but I’ll check.” Her
voice was raspy, had that same worldliness as Rhonda’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> She asked me in and had me sit on the
couch. There was what appeared to be a
half-gone seven-and-seven on the coffee table.
I heard her go up the stairs.
There was a cat on the couch with me, staring at me, and there was the
tank of fish in the room that I’d been able to see from the car. The whole room had the fragrance of Rhonda’s
mom’s perfume.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Look,” she said when she came back in, “I
can’t find her. I think she went out
already. I thought I heard you come to
pick her up half an hour ago. I’m really
sorry, but she’s gone.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> I sat there on the couch, looking at
her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “There are a couple of places you
might find her, is all I can tell you,” she said, sitting down next to the cat
and facing me. I looked out the window
into the Arcola night. I noticed that
sometimes she herself was looking out, over my shoulder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> I didn’t say anything. I didn’t move.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “She might have gone to West Ridge, is
all I know. Although if she did she’s in
trouble.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> Rhonda’s mother was wearing a cotton
blouse, a tight dark skirt. Her deeply
tanned hand was on the back of the couch near me. Her fingernails were ruby red. The house was quiet, immaculately clean. My quietness was giving her some
trouble. On the wall was a picture of
Rhonda when she was little. Next to her
her father, a truck driver.. They were
posing in front of his fancy new semi.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “I’m very sorry about this,” she said
to me. Her teeth were kind of crooked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Maybe she took off because I was late
or something.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “I don’t think so. There must have been some
misunderstanding. She was looking
forward to this, she really was. She
probably told you, I’ve had her grounded for a couple of weeks because of that
drunken slumber party business. She’s
supposed to be with <i>you</i> right now.
The condition for this whole thing was that she was going to the movies
with you. She’s in trouble.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"> “Well, I said. “It was a misunderstanding maybe.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">She was pretty in a grown-up way, as
she shrugged her shoulders and half smiled at me. “Well, she’s in trouble.” Rhonda’s mom was standing up by then, my
invitation to go. “Good night, Tom,” she
said. “I’m sorry about this.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
On the way back to the car I looked up at the sky. Moonless, clear as a bell. But a moon was coming—I remembered that from
the night before. As I was pulling away,
I noticed that a car behind me was passing slowly. I thought it might be Rhonda and Kelly. I drove around the block, and in those few
moments, Rhonda’s mom had turned off the lights and locked up and was darting
across the dark yard to the car. It was
a white Oldsmobile Starfire with the wide band of stainless steel on the
side. I couldn’t see the driver before
the arching trees and distance intervened.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
I imagined
that Rhonda had gone north with Kelly and that West Ridge was now aware of my
foiled, clandestine date. I decided to
drive around the streets of Arcola for a while.
West Ridge and Arcola, they were little towns. You could stand in the center of either of
them, facing north, and see the bean fields at the city limits to the left and
the right; standing there at dawn you could hear the roosters welcome the day
out on the farms. In both towns there
were the same white clapboard houses with an occasional red brick estate, the
same livery stalls down along the Illinois Central railroad where the Amish
parked when they came in from the country to shop. There was a grain elevator on the railroad,
too, and a lumberyard, and an old hotel downtown. All the themes of West Ridge played out in a
variation in Arcola.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
I passed
the Arcola policeman parked in the shadows up an alley, waiting. I could see the glow from his cigar as I passed. I would turn left at this corner, right at
this one, for no reason, but it was a small town and soon I was in front of
Rhonda’s house again. The lights were
all off, except for a lamp near the fish tank in the living room. I decided to park and sit a while.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Before long
Kelly’s car pulled up next to mine.
Rhonda looked over at me. I felt
like I’d been caught doing something.
Then Kelly pulled ahead of me and parked. I saw the car door open, and Rhonda was
coming back my way, walking like a curb-hop in her tennis shoes.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Is it
you?” she said. No recognition whatever.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“I thought
we could go south from here and catch a movie in Mattoon,” I said.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Now Kelly
was coming back, too.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“That’s
great,” Rhonda said, “bit it’s not the plan.
What about my friend?” She
introduced me to Kelly, who did not quite look at me. She’d been kind of pretty at a distance,
cruising by, but close up she had a hard mouth and a spacey stare. Both girls were chewing gum. I turned up WLS real loud. “What about my friend?” she said, talking
over it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Does Kelly
have a date tonight?” I asked Rhonda. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“No.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“You do, I
thought.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Rhonda
looked at Kelly impatiently, like I was missing the point.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“She can
come with us if you want,” I said.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Look,” she
said. “I’ve got a problem with
this. What are you doing at my house?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
I looked up
beyond the trees, at the ARCOLA in big block letters on the water tower,
lighted from somewhere below. I had once
climbed the West Ridge water tower.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“I mean
this is <i>real</i> creepy,” she said.
She looked back up the street, chewing her gum mouth-open style. “Did you blow this thing with my mom?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Blow
what?” I said. “She seemed real
nice.” Before she could say anything, I
said, “Your mom says you’re supposed to be with me. Let’s just have an ordinary date, wha’d’ya
say . . .”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“I’ve got
something I’ve got to do, that’s what I say.
Don’t you understand that?” She
looked at Kelly. “I think he blew it
with my mom.” Then back at me. “I’ve got something I’ve got to do,” she
said.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Yeah,
yeah. Do that tomorrow night. Go with me now.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“I’m busy
tomorrow night.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
We both laughed at that one.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Look,” she said. “Kelly and me talked about this. I was thinking maybe you’d come with us.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I stared ahead. No answer.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Finally she said, “Look. Park the car over at the Youth Center and get
in with us—we’ll swing by and get it later.
You know the center?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I was thinking about it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“C’mon! I’m in a big hurry.” She walked back to the car. Almost there, she turned around and gestured
big. “I’m in a <i>hurry</i>.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I parked my car at the Youth
Center and climbed in with them. I sat
in the back seat. They paid very little
attention to me as we drove around. It
was clear they were up to something.
Maybe they even went a little out of their way to be mysterious.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“She’s supposed to be a good
one,” I heard Kelly say to Rhonda.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Right. I can imagine.” She hummed the tune they play on <i>Twilight
Zone</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Seriously, she’s got a
certificate from some institute or something.
What time is it?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Kelly reached into a grocery bag
in the front seat. She pulled out a jar
of kosher dills and handed it back to me.
“Open this and you get the first one,” she said, keeping her eyes on the
street. I opened it, took a pickle, and
handed the jar up front. They both
chomped pickles for a while.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“What time is it?” Kelly asked
again. The radio answered the question.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Slow down, Nutso,” Rhonda said
as we approached the alley where the cop was.
“Hey Fat Jack!” she shouted and waved as we went by. He remained where he was.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: .5in;">
When the evening train whistle
sounded from out north of town, Kelly turned around in an alley and headed back
toward the downtown. By the time we got
there, the train was through and the Oak Street crossing gates were going back
up to let people pass, except nobody was waiting. We drove down a lane along the railroad, a
sort of alley. We went alongside the
steel Quonset-frame warehouses of the local broomcorn factory, passed the
railroad depot completely closed down and boarded up, and pulled up in front of
an old trailer. Dogs were barking off in
the dark.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Where are
we?” I asked them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“We’re at,”
Kelly said, “a . . . dark . . . house trailer.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Wonderful.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
She laughed
nervously, stared at the place, snapped her gum. Nobody came out. “Looks pretty dark,” she said in a loud
whisper. The nervous laugh again. “Shall I honk?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Kelly
lightly tapped the horn a couple of times and blinked the lights. The neighborhood dogs intensified their
barking. The trailer had burned at some
time and had scorch marks above the windows.
Several were completely out.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
Kelly
turned completely around in her seat and asked me if I would go check in the
trailer to see if the woman was in there.
She reached down under the dash.
“It’s worth another pickle to us.”
She handed me a flashlight.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“What
woman?” I asked.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Jesus! Just go see if anybody’s in that
trailer. Okay?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
So I went
to have a look. The only thing not
burned inside the trailer was an overstuffed couch. On it, sure enough, was a woman dressed in
black. She was staring straight ahead
and the flashlight did not seem to startle her.
“Ah. You’re here,” she said. “Are you Kelly?” she asked.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“No
Ma’am. Kelly would be a girl.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“What’s
that?” she said, coming to the door.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
“Kelly
would be a girl, ma’am,” I said.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “She
would, would she? If what?” With my help she stepped down from the
trailer to the ground.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “She’s
in the car, ma’am,” I said. She was
dressed in a black flowing robe. She
smelled like a scorched mattress.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “So
Kelly’s a girl, is she? Where is she,
then?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Right,
ma’am. She’s in the car.” I pointed toward the car, and we walked that
way. She breathed hard as we went. We had to step over junk.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Who’re
you?” she asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “I’m
a friend of Rhonda’s.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “A
friend of who?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Rhonda.” I shined the light ahead so she could see the
clear path to the car.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> As
we were getting there, she asked me, “So how far’s this barn?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “What
barn would that be?” I asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Kelly
heard the question. “Hi,” she said. “It’s about six miles out.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Are
you Rhonda?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Kelly,”
Kelly and I answered simultaneously.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The
woman bent down and looked into the car on Rhonda’s side. “Never mind names.” Her eyebrows seemed unusually heavy. “I need to be back here in time for the
Panama Limited—10:52. Is that going to
be a problem, you think?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “No,”
said Kelly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “What’s
that?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “No,
ma’am,” I said, for some reason acting as Kelly’s interpreter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The
woman sat in the back seat with me. She
was maybe sixty and wore a dark paisley bandana in her graying hair. She was very serious. Kelly started the car and we headed out. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Did
the train thing work okay?” Kelly asked her/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “It
worked very well. I thought it
would. It’s a whistle-stop, real chancy.
And sometimes they don’t stop and you end up in Carbondale. But I knew they’d stop for an old woman. I come from the age of trains. We speak the same language.” She was smiling as she said this, attempting
to be a typical passenger on the Illinois Central.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Now that we
were heading out of town, the woman said, “Girls, I usually am paid in
advance.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Kelly looked
over at Rhonda, who rummaged in her purse.
She came up with a leather bag of change which Kelly reached over and
took and started to hand back. No
telling how much. Rhonda stopped her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “You know
Kelly’s mother, right?” Rhonda asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Yes,” the
woman said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “And we
don’t’ want her or anyone else to know about this. You know that?” Kelly said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Yes.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Rhonda
handed over the bag.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> It
disappeared into the black flowing clothes.
“Onward, ladies,” she said, satisfied.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> After we
left the lights of town, there was very little talk in the car for a
while. Occasionally Kelly and Rhonda
might confer on the right direction. Out
on the country road there was a roar of crickets and frogs. The air was almost hot coming in the back
window. I slumped down. We were starting to get far enough north that
we were in familiar king territory for West Ridge. We turned, sure enough, onto the Black River
Road, crossed the old iron bridge, and went down into the bottoms. We turned onto the predictable tractor path,
went along the river and then across the field to the barn, <i>the</i> barn,
the great monument in West Ridge parking lore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> We were
about two hundred yards from the barn, on a tractor path serving as border between
head-high corn and hip-high soybeans, when Kelly and I spotted something at
exactly the same moment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Oh God,
Rhonda, don’t’ look,” she said, “don’t look,” and she actually groped to cover
Rhonda’s eyes. We were quietly passing
the tail end of the white Starfire, partly hidden in the corn. Rhonda stared straight into it as we passed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “It can’t
be.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Don’t
look,” Kelly said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “What’s the
deal, ladies?” the old woman said.
“you’re giving me the heebie-jeebies.
What’s happening?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Nothing,”
Rhonda said. “We thought we saw
somebody, but we didn’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Out here?”
the woman asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “We thought
so,” Kelly said. “Wrong again,
though.” She tired to almost sing it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Wrong
again,” Rhonda muttered. Is that dumb or
what?” she said to Kelly. “Coming
here? Is that goddamned stupid, or
what?” She was saying this real quietly,
her head down almost on her knees. “How
could this be happening?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> I sat
frozen. I realized something
amazing. Just as surely as the summer
sky was blue, Rhonda’s mom was an Arcola girl, too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> We went on
down the tractor path toward the barn, Rhonda staying low in her seat and
saying nothing. Once she squirmed up and
looked out the back window, but there was nothing to see.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “You wanna
forget this?” Kelly said to her, referring to the woman in the back seat. “No big deal.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Oh <i>come</i>
now, ladies . . .” the woman said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> We parked
the car at the side, and all of us went into the barn. The woman selected a spot on the dirt floor
in the middle of the dark, musty space, and Kelly produced six candles from the
same bag she’d gotten the pickles from.
The woman lit them. Kelly and
Rhonda sat and the woman sat next to them, a triangle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Suddenly the
woman looked at me. “He will have to
join us or get out,” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Sit down here,”
Rhonda said to me. She was stricken,
very tense. I sat down.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “My boy,
this is a seance, what we call a ‘circle.’
We’re here to call forth the spirits, and I’m not kidding, the good
spirits of departed friends, Karen Ann Kreitzer and Marie Beth McClain. Can you handle it?” She read the names off a small card in her
hand, slipped it back into her robe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I looked at
Rhonda.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “They were
our friends,” she said to me, her voice actually trembling.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> I pictured
their car in the wreck lot, the blood in the seat, and the shoe in the white
gravel. The woman was bowing forward,
toward the ground, staring down, changing postures from moment to moment. The candles made the whole barn jump. Gray webs dangled from the crossbeams.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “What
happens if somebody drives up in the middle of this?” I whispered to Rhonda.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “We won’t be
here real long or anything,” Kelly said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The woman’s
arms were out, embracing us as a group.
“Is there someone who can tell us of Karen and Marie?” she asked the
night air. The night air was very
quiet. “We wish for only good souls to
speak to us, friendly souls and no bad souls.
Satan lives and we want none of that.
Does anyone know of Karen and Marie?
And if you do, can you, will you, join our circle?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The
river-bottom sycamores rustled. I
realized I could hear the river.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “We join our
hands here to form a circle. We invite
you to be with us here. We are all
concentrating, thinking toward you, remembering you—your eyes, your smile.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Her arms
reached out on both sides, and she took the hands of the girls. Then they took mine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In the
candlelight the woman was alternately very soft and friendly-looking, then hard
and witchlike. It depended on the
candlelight, her movements. I realized
there was an old red Farmall not far off behind Kelly, and an old red hay baler
attached to the back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Now,
ladies, I want to tell you,” the woman said, “that these young girls might well
not be ready to talk. It may not be easy
for them right now.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Rhonda and
Kelly said nothing. I was wondering if
they had a money-back guarantee.
Rhonda’s hand was cool and damp, Kelly’s hot as fire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “I suspect
that could be the case,” the woman said.
“That they aren’t ready.” Again
she bowed forward, her arms out, her hands joined to ours. Again she moved side to side, staring
off. “We require the help of a friendly
soul, a good soul,” she said, “in order to speak with Karen Kreitzer.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Or with
Marie,” Kelly said very quietly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Marie?” the
woman said, suddenly tensing up. She
held herself very straight, upright, rigid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Kelly looked
at me and rolled her eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“Marie
honey, are you sad?” the woman asked.
She held herself rigid for several long moments. Amazingly, the woman’s eyes teared up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> In a second,
Rhonda began to cry also.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “I almost
had Marie there,” the woman said to Kelly.
“She was near. Did you feel
it? She was with us in this barn. She passed through here. She passed through us.” She looked around. “Marie, please talk to your friends, to Kelly
and . . .” She was stumped.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Rhonda,”
the girls said in unison.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Kelly and
Rhonda are here to talk to you, Marie.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Silence. A long way off a private plane was swooping
in to Land at the West Ridge airfield. I
listened to the river, the trees’ rustle.
I could hear a bird steadily cooing in a tree out there somewhere,
peaceful sound, made me feel better. I
think I had expected something violent to happen any moment—a barn door to fly
open wildly, a ghoul to appear, the old woman’s head to do a three-sixty, her
eyes to light up like the devil.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Ladies,”
the woman said, “this room is full of ghosts—restless souls from this land all
around, souls from all ages. There are
Indians here and old settlers, pioneers—children and farmers whose bones are
buried in this ground. We have made a
hole in the firmament and they are crowding to it. Can you sense that they are with us?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The girls
didn’t answer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Karen? Karen, have you come to speak with us? Will you join our circle? No,” she said in just a moment, quietly,
“it’s Marie who comes near. Marie! Will you speak to your friends? Karen?
Are you there, my dear?” The
woman’s eyes were closed in fierce concentration.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Karen?” Kelly said quietly into the black.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “What’s
that?” the woman whispered. “Did you
hear that?” She thought Kelly was a
spirit talking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Kelly looked
at her. “It was me,” she said. Kelly clearly conveyed impatience. This seemed to deflate the woman completely.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Ladies,”
she said after a moment, “these are girls who have died very young. Maybe to you your age doesn’t seem real young. I believe that they are not yet ready to talk. They are still very sad, I think. There is the sign that they are not happy on
the other side. They will be, but they
have died young and they aren’t happy yet.
I’m sorry.” She broke hands with
Rhonda and Kelly and leaned forward and blew out the candles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Or else,”
she said, “something’s distracting you ladies and keeping us from fully
communicating.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Abruptly
Rhonda went out the door. I suddenly
realized where she might be going. Kelly
followed me out but ran by me very fast, disappeared on the lane ahead. She wanted to stop Rhonda. I was having a hard time believing Rhonda was
really going where it looked like she was.
At one point I came around a bend in the path, and could see that Kelly
had caught up to her. The two of them
were talking, Rhonda waving her arms—she was pretty upset. Kelly had her hands on Rhonda’s
shoulders—trying to talk sense, it looked like.
Then in a moment Rhonda was coming back toward me, and <i>Kelly</i> was
heading on back toward the car parked in the corn.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “What’s
going on?” I asked when Rhonda was close enough. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Kelly’s
gone bushwhacking,” she said. “She’s
going to get a ride home for her and Ghost-woman.” Not knowing I knew what I knew, she lied for
my benefit: “I guess Kelly knows those
people or something.” She looked at me
to see if it was going to fly. I let it. “Anyway, I’ve got Kelly’s keys, in case
there’s a problem,” she said. Now she
was running back toward the barn with me right behind her. “Give me your keys,” she said to me, “so
Kelly can get back out here in your car.
Then we can go dancing and she can go to West Ridge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “I don’t get
this,” I said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Hang in
there,” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The windows
on Kelly’s car had misted up in the night air.
The woman standing next to it.
The moon was just up, red and looming low in the east. “The car broke,” Rhonda said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “It what?”
the woman said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Kelly says
it won’t start. But you wait
here—Kelly’s going to get you to the train on time. Him and me . . .” Rhonda indicated me. “We’re going to hide from the people in the
other car, then stay and guard Kelly’s car until Kelly gets back. How’s that?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “You mean
she’s gone to—er—interrupt those kids parked back yonder?” the woman said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Yeah. So you can get to the train. Give these to Kelly.” Rhonda said, handing my car keys to the
woman.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Well what
are those kids going to think of Kelly and me out here alone?” she said, as the
Starfire headlights glanced high off the side of the barn and changed the shadows.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> We were
retreating into the standing corn. “What
are you worried about?” Rhonda shouted. “You’ve got a whole bag of money.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Later we
were near the swimming hole, in a stand of oaks, sycamores, and river
willows. Rhonda was munching on a
pickle. There were hedge apples on the
ground, and I lobbed a few into the river.
Maybe she seemed a little shorter than I imagined she was. I’d never stood near her before.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Pretty
strange evening,” I said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> She didn’t
answer. After a while, though, she turned
and stood there looking at me. “We paid
her seventy bucks.” She kept looking at
me. I did my best not to react.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> The moon was
up brighter now, and it gave enough light for me to see the rope I thought I
remembered being there, attached high in a sycamore, for swinging out over the
water. The night was muggy and hot. Rhonda said nothing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Try to tell
me what was going on back there.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “You mean
Ghost-woman? Just something completely
insane,” she said. “Kelly gets these
great ideas. Kelly’s mom knows this
nurse up in Champaign who does this stuff—reads palms, all that. I forgot this was the night. That’s why I messed you over. Forgot.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Oh. I thought I was the front man. So you could get out of the house.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> She said
nothing to that. She was sitting on the
riverbank. I sat down next to her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “My mom’s
having an affair with the local veterinarian.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> She looked
downriver into the dark. “Jesus, I’m
coming apart,” she said. She was quiet
for a minute. “I feel so sorry for Dad. I can’t think about it,” she said. Then she was crying, her head down on her
arms, which were resting on her knees.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I sat next
to her. I couldn’t think of a thing to
tell her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“I thought
we might reach Karen,” she said after a while.
“I really loved her. She was my
best friend. My best friend. I’m definitely coming apart.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> There was
nothing to say. I ate a pickle and
regretted it. I rolled a couple of hedge
apples down the bank into the water.
Finally I stood up and kicked my shoes off, dropped my wallet on the
ground next to them. I tested the rope
to see if the limb would hold me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “What if
Karen had talked tonight?” I said. “What
would she say?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Don’t tease
me. It was a nutty idea. Karen would talk to me if she could. You’re going to bust your ass swinging on
that thing. I’ll tell you what, that
woman was a complete fake.” After a
while she said, “Didn’t you think so?”
She didn’t move. “Kelly says a
medium like this one helped her contact her father.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Kelly
wishes,” I said. I swung out over the
river, a warm wind in my ears. “One
thing I know is that Karen and Marie aren’t sad. You are, but they aren’t.” I grabbed a hedge apple, and I swung out over
the river dropping it straight down. It
was hard to tell how far above the water I was.
I told Rhonda, <br /> There’s not anything to say, is why they didn’t talk. They died and that’s all.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Her head was
down. “I just don’t believe your friends
can die like that,” she said. “Not your
friends.” By now it seemed to me like
she’d been crying off and on for hours.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “It’s a real
pretty night, you know it? You ought to
try to relax.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “Ha. Relax,” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> I swung out
again and again on the rope. I realized
it would have been better if she could have been left to herself. “Lucky I’m here to keep you company,” I
said. At the far point of the arch, I
could see all the way to the iron bridge.
Out there, the moon broke through the trees, and I could see the
movement of the water downstream.
Sometimes I could hear a carp break the surface.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “I didn’t want
to go dancing anyway,” I said. When I
swung, I could hear the rope grating on the big limb high above. At one point while I was far out on the rope,
I heard Rhonda slip into the water. I
swung back to the bank, took a run and swung far out again, trying to spot her
in the inky black below. I could hear
her swimming.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> “It’s nice
and cool,” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">At the far
point this time I let go of the rope and dropped. En route to the water, in a moment when I was
anticipating splashing hard into the Black River, in a turning and falling
motion in the dark, I happened to notice Rhonda’s clothes in a little moonlit
pile on the riverbank.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-34383114219888791862015-01-15T06:37:00.002-08:002015-01-16T19:58:17.408-08:00Wild, Cheryl Strayed's Memoir of Walking the Pacific Crest Trail from Mojave to the Columbia River<div style="text-align: center;">
<img src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTwPxlrwJhaqmcIMgBTizYbRFEL5OuBbR8ZxsAVZFoE83vA0QEx" /></div>
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<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 20px;">Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed</span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"> (March 2012)</span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; text-decoration: underline;">Requirements:</span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"> ePUB Reader | 2.3 Mb</span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; text-decoration: underline;">Overview:</span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"> </span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px;">A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an 1100 mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe — and built her back up again</span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;" />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">At 22, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State — and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “</span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; line-height: 20px;">an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise</span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;" />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her. </span><br />
<br style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;" />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 20px;">Genre:</span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #444444; font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"> Non-Fiction, Memoir,</span><br />
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About an hour ago I finished Cheryl Strayed's memoir <i>Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. </i>The book has of course been made into a movie, and I saw that also, but the book, as is the usual case, trumps the movie by some measure. Rarely have I read of such an emotional journey, Strayed walking from the Mojave Desert to the Columbia River mostly alone. That's more than a thousand miles, mostly going up and down in the mountains with a backpack she nicknamed "Monster" because it was spectacularly heavy. I was pumped to write about the experience of reading this book, but right now all I want to say is read it.<br />
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One of the most pleasant aspects of the book is the masterful handling of flashback. As Strayed walks the PCT, she finds herself mesmerized into sorting out the past. This is by no means the most challenging aspect of the long walk, though she thought, as she planned, that there would be plenty of time on the Trail to think about stuff. It turns out that the Trail itself, and its challenges, were the main things Strayed had to confront, from extreme temperature changes (mountains, desert) to rain and snow and 100 degree heat. The Trail forced her to let go of all her idealistic plans for self-reflection and apply herself to maintaining her forward momentum in trail boots that were too small and equipment she was carrying that a professional hiker had to advise her to dump off.<br />
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That summer she was the only woman on the trail hiking alone, and with one exception she found that the men she encountered on the trail were in awe of her--they nicknamed her The Queen of the PCT. They followed her boot tracks, read her short handwritten paragraphs in the trail logs that she spent some time filling out along the way. She also was broke most of the time. She was having boxes of replenishment sent ahead to her to trail stations along the way, but it was that same trail pro who told her that she could get new trail boots free by calling REI and telling them that the boots she bought there were too small and she needed boots a size larger--and where to send them.<br />
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Most of the Trail she traveled in great pain, her feet feeling like they were broken sometimes, her toe nails coming off, blood from the blisters saturating her socks. She carried a first aid kit and had to do work on her feet almost every night. She carried several books, also heavy, that allowed her to escape the pain and the realities of the trail, short stories by Flannery O'Connor, Lolita by Nabokov, poems by Adrienne Rich. She learned to burn the pages of the books as she read them, to lighten the load.<br />
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At the end of the Trail, in Portland, she finds that she is stronger and that her mind has cleared, not because she did obsessive self-reflection on the Trail but because the Trail hike contained so many challenges that occupied her. One challenge was that there was unusual amounts of snow fall in the highland areas, and with some regret she began to mull over detours that would take her around the snow at lower, warmer elevations. Her maps and compass always showed her how to find her way back to the PCT, and since the Trail had engaged and challenged her, she did want back on it.<br />
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I'm sure she kept journals of her trek. The book Wild is chock full of the kinds of specifics that her walking journal might have recorded, including encounters with rattlesnakes, bears, a llama, and numerous other hikers who knew her by reputation on the trail and would finally catch up to her. Many of them had started hiking in Mexico and were on their way to Canada. While she knew she'd most likely never see them again, she was still very happy to sit around a campfire on a picnic table and exchange stories with them. It is amazing how engaging her book is, a masterwork in the memoir genre for sure.Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-36376245226948128842015-01-14T07:52:00.001-08:002015-01-14T07:52:06.309-08:00Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-49432536570693653452014-12-07T12:09:00.000-08:002014-12-08T10:00:49.490-08:00Self Publishing in a World of Literary DemocratizationVanity publishing, it used to be called. It happened because the author of a book was not willing to go through the gauntlet of rejection and revision. I've seen so many self-published books in which the author was not well-served by the publishing outfit that was happy to take the money but not at all willing to provide editorial services to save the author from his or her self. That's the history.<br />
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But in recent years the big house publishers have been overwhelmed by the number of submissions of viable manuscripts. They can't publish them all. Worthy manuscripts are rejected and end up in boxes. Part of this dilemma has been solved by a whole raft of small presses emerging. These presses make beautiful, well-edited books. Authors accessing these presses are not self-publishing, but they are making a tactical decision to get the book out and in front of people, and to begin the next one. My book, <i>Forty Martyrs</i>, soon to be published by Burrow Press of Orlando, FL, has stories in it that are 25 years old, go back to 1986. The stories in the book have been cited in<i> Best American Short Stories</i> and the <i>Pushcart Prize</i> and have to be seen as worthy of print. One of the stories appeared in the <i>Kenyon Review</i>, one the <i>New England Review</i>. One of the happiest of developments with Burrow Press is that they are giving me the opportunity, over a year, to make the manuscript the very best it can be. With the help of Ryan Rivas of Burrow Press, I'm combing over the stories, I'm working to sequence the stories in a proper and defensible way, so that there is a "flow" to the narrative, without impeding each story's ability to stand alone. I'm working with <i>Olive Kitteridge</i> as a model, one of my favorite books ever. This is not vanity publishing. The principles of Burrow Press used to be the principles of the big houses, in the time of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Regrettably, the big houses now are not run by book people. They are corporate, and they have to generate a profit for their stockholders. How many "blockbuster" biographies of Burt Reynolds and the Clintons do we need?<br />
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But there is a place for self-publishing. Authors who are well known format and proof their own work, make their own beautiful book, and put it on the market. They reap the profits straight away. Well known authors are not going to press with manuscripts that are not proofed and are not beautiful books. The big houses no longer market or fund book tours. The promise of publishing by a big house is, like many things in these times, receding. Self-publishing is a tactical option for a career author. It is not a newbie shortcut.Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-58786051100112678732014-01-04T12:53:00.002-08:002014-06-03T11:09:21.564-07:00More on "River," the Final Story in Olive Kitteridge; Anticipating Revisions of Forty Martyrs<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUJPiXovV4F0wsU_huev4uYKDUYhbSm6yGfzNiS6ygpo_PfxkXgbGAQq8j_G5o0H_64YqIVwAI97euUDJJ7pNH1lO4I01v_R52hFSx2m_6iVgDoT4cBRnJm9G2PZoUQgaBgCDeAzdHoU8/s1600/Elizabeth+Strout.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUJPiXovV4F0wsU_huev4uYKDUYhbSm6yGfzNiS6ygpo_PfxkXgbGAQq8j_G5o0H_64YqIVwAI97euUDJJ7pNH1lO4I01v_R52hFSx2m_6iVgDoT4cBRnJm9G2PZoUQgaBgCDeAzdHoU8/s400/Elizabeth+Strout.jpg" height="240" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Elizabeth Strout</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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For a few weeks I've been thinking about "River," the closing story in Elizabeth Strout(pictured above)'s wondrous novel-in-stories <i>Olive Kitteridge</i>. As noted before, my interest is self-interest -- trying to solve a problem in my own novel-in-stories tentatively titled <i>Forty Martyrs.</i><i>.</i> I wrote my novel-in-stories over 25 years. When I won the Flannery O'Connor Award, the series editor, the amazing and wonderful Charles East (RIP), recommended that my long story (40 pages) "Forty Martyrs" come out of the collection because it was the 12th story in the set and would have run the book to over 300 pages. At that time, I thought "Forty Martyrs" was my best story ever (circa 1986), but we agreed it could serve as foundation for another book. In 1994, eight years after its omission from <i>Silent Retreats</i>, the story appeared in the <i>New England Review</i>, thanks to acting editor of the NER David Huddle, and that year was listed in "100 Other Distinguished Short Stories" in the back of <i>Best American Short Stories 1995, </i>affirming, I thought then, that it was my best. Still I've never regretted it being omitted from <i>Silent Retreats</i>. I was, I thought then, banking it for the future. It was the first story that included (in cameo) my second recurring character after the infamous Skidmore of<i> Silent Retreats</i>. His name was Lowell Wagner, a clinical psychologist and college professor, and in a way it could be said that he is the Olive K. of <i>Forty Martyrs</i>, the glue holding the stories together.<br />
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I was a psych minor in undergraduate school, and I met regularly with Jim Kenny, chair of the psych department there, for four years. I count my therapy in undergraduate school as 40% of my liberal arts education, and I embraced social psychology as my minor in my doctoral program at UVa. I have a number of friends, including Jim Kenny of course, who are shrinks, psychologists, and MSWs with whom I check after writing something about Lowell, just to make sure I'm tracking with best practices and worst mistakes of professionals in the field. I have most of the recent diagnostic manuals on my book shelf, well thumbed through and bristling with post-its. The Lowell stories in FMS currently number seven, not counting the closing story "The Kopi" which was a pathological mess and didn't work at all. The stories have all been published in good places. Since publication they've been massaged to click with one another in that interesting way of novels-in-stories. Don't laugh, but when I first started writing <i>Forty Martyrs Suite</i>, I thought I was inventing that form. I thought then that that was the form a short story writer should attempt when writing long work. I had many ideas about it all:<br />
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<br />
<ul>
<li>the stories could be read in any order because they weren't really set down in chronological (it turns out that it's best if they are read in the order in which they appear in the book);</li>
<li>the overall effect of the book would be a series of slices of life, which is how life is experienced (I thought back then);</li>
<li>if read out of order, no harm done except getting a peek at the book's future, what happens, which is of minor interest in a character driven novel;</li>
<li>the final story would not be saddled with the task of pulling things together because in real life nothing pulls everything together -- we just move on (I still think that);</li>
<li>the links between and among the stories are not plot links but character links (the action of the story in a novel-in-stories happens in the mind of the reader as she gets to know the characters and as the characters act).</li>
</ul>
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Chapters in a novel-in-stories are called "stories." The stories are self-standing, can be marketed to journals and magazines. Published alone, they are not excerpts from the novel. They are stories. I pictured a thin vertical line between interconnected story collections and novels-in-stories. My copy of Olive Kitteridge doesn't categorize the book as a novel or a collection. It is, as they say, what it is. Still, readers like a sense of direction in long work, so the publishers will say, but <i>Olive Kitteridge</i> has no sense of direction. We don't actually follow Olive around Crosby watching what she does, nor does the plot thicken. Each story is like a new beginning, and the point of view characters are frequently not Olive or Henry but someone else in the town and Olive just happens by. What the reader can count on in the book, since the plot doesn't really ever tighten down or amp up the tension, is Olive being her rough-hewn, complex, outspoken, sometimes impossible self. We get glee simply from "knowing" Olive and marveling at the consistency with which she behaves in the way we know she will.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Book</td></tr>
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At the opening of "River," we see this one more time. She lives alone now, and has settled into routines and habitual thoughts, such as she doesn't mind dying but wants it to be quick. She is, as usual, fast to judge others, usually uncharitably, negatively. When Jack Kennison wanders into her path as she's backing up one day, she recognizes him and recalls how she and Henry thought Jack was an elitist idiot. This is typical stuff from Olive, and Strout is letting us review her (Olive's) behaviors and malfunctions, all of which make us feel we really do know her as we approach the end of the book. But we have also seen Olive be quite giving in the foregoing stories, how she attempted to counsel a starving girl, how she intervened when she encountered a former student who might have been a few minutes from shooting himself, how she stayed in touch with her husband for years while he lingered in a comprehensive care facility with no ability to communicate.<br />
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Midway, then, in "River," she comes upon Jack laying on the walking path where she takes her routine early morning walks. She hurries to his side and comes out with a prototypical Olive query. She barks, "Are you dead?" He's not. He is recently widowed and depressed. While sitting on the bench he had fainted. Jack is having intimations of mortality. They are a mile from her car (and his), and when she says she's going for help, Jack says, "Don't leave me alone." Just as Olive doesn't want to die slowly, Jack doesn't want to die alone. Somehow she gets him up onto the bench, and she sits with him for a while until he's ready to walk back to the cars. She takes him in her car to a doctor, and waits hours while the doctor runs tests to try to diagnose the problem. Jack sends a nurse messenger to the waiting room to tell her he's worried about her sitting out there all that time, and Olive realizes she has a real purpose being there, and she likes having a purpose, she is more than willing to wait for him and to give him a ride back to his car.<br />
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This begins the soul connection between Olive and Jack. After a couple of political arguments that end in a draw, they settle into each other. Nothing we would have remotely expected from Olive. In former years neither of them would have chosen the other, but at this time they do. Olive figures a few things out about people, how for years she's been driving them off, and Jack's mood levels out. Olive has changed on this journey. The journey has changed her, in the nick of time. That is the reward of the book for the reader. </div>
<div>
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<div>
What tendencies does Lowell have that we are concerned about, and what is the prognosis for him addressing these matters in his remaining years? Is it feasible that there could be signs of his changing in the last story; but first, is the reader really tracking Lowell's malfunctions or does the book design demonstrate them too quietly, like butter on toast spread too thin? That is the puzzle for the revision, and for the last story in <i>Forty Martyrs</i>. Not a capstone, not a pulling together of all the random plotlines. Rather, simply some promise that the book knows what it is about and that there's hope for Lowell, my flawed protagonist.</div>
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<br />Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-88164468736739334672013-12-19T11:58:00.004-08:002014-06-03T11:07:05.393-07:00Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout -- Many Thoughts<br />
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A good way to begin this would be to give you the chance to read the <i>NY Times</i>' review of <i>Olive Kitteridge</i> back in April of 2008, before the Pulitzer, because this blogpost will not be a review, but a review will help as background.<br />
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/books/review/Thomas-t.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/books/review/Thomas-t.html</a><br />
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A couple of years ago I became familiar with <i>Olive Kitteridge</i> because I understood it was a novel in stories, a form I was working in with my set of stories tentatively titled <i>Forty Martyrs Suite,</i> as in a "suite" of stories. I was very interested in how Elizabeth Strout might pull this form off, because I found that I had painted myself into a corner with my effort. I felt compelled to write a capstone story that "pulled it all together." I was all worried about keeping the set not random-seeming--in other words making a novel of a set of short stories but keeping each part of the novel a stand-alone story. This matter didn't concern the author of<i> Olive Kitteridge</i> at all. Her character Olive pulled it all together by her very existence. In the review from the<i> Times</i>, Louise Thomas says that Olive was a big woman and large personality and seems to operate on the book like a planet, influencing all the stories with a gravitational pull to the center.<br />
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In my recent reading of the book, I took a careful look at the last story, "River," which joins Olive (spoiler alert) after the passing of her husband Henry. She frequently thinks to herself that at 74, she doesn't mind dying so long as it is quick. After a stroke, Henry lingered a number of years in a rest home, incapable of communication or of even letting Olive know he was consciously present. She didn't want that for herself, for sure. In the story's opening, she nearly runs over Jack Kennison while backing up, and this sends her into her usual judgmental spiral, calling him an idiot (to herself). People would say of Kennison that he was always happy to let the world know he was well-off and went to Harvard, and Olive couldn't understand why he and his wife would ever have bothered to settle in a house they built that wasn't even on the water. "Idiots!"<br />
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The story in other words gives us, at its opening, the usual Olive, full of opinions about people and almost never generous ones. Circumstances however unfold that place Olive with Jack, the most unlikely of persons for her to be with, and all things being equal, she observes, he probably wouldn't have picked her either. And somehow her recent loneliness helps her understand how she cuts people off, occasionally hurts them, and drives them away (as she'd been doing with her grown-up son ever since he married the wrong woman and moved away), but Jack would not be driven away even by her insults, which he was capable of answering back with equal pointedness, something Olive was not accustomed to and which settled her down. So after this booklength tour of normal human interaction in Crosby, Maine, the story ends up with Olive and Jack together, teaching each other a few things they've been needing to know for most of their lives. It is apparent in "River" that Henry wasn't right for Olive, unable to stand up to her and get her to realize and summon her best self. But Jack, depressed about the loss of his own wife, and worried about being alone to the end (because after the way he treated her, his gay daughter wasn't likely to come back to him), reached out to Olive and touched something in her that hadn't been touched before, yes even at that late stage. <br />
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This story, "River," is most likely why Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer, but we have to read the whole book for the last story to work as it does, for us to see the effect Jack has on Olive, who is, to say the least, a hard case. The story works mysteriously. Not a capstone. Not a culmination. Not a resolution. Rather, a gorgeous display of Elizabeth Strout's uncommon command of how human beings are.<br />
<br />
I wish I could say this story solves my problem in <i>Forty Martyrs;</i> rather it gives indication that I have more work to do so that my last story in this novel-in-stories provides a revelation that makes the journey worth it without presuming to solve anything. It could be I have a couple more stories to write before I arrive at a clear view of the close. Anyway. I am convinced that this form, in fiction, is one of the most satisfying to read. If you haven't, read <i>Olive Kitteridge</i>, and then get back to me here in "comments" so we can talk about it. :-)<br />
<br />Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-29935280321064259542013-06-30T17:18:00.000-07:002013-11-02T11:40:39.299-07:00HEMINGWAY'S BOAT: EVERYTHING HE LOVED IN LIFE, AND LOST (Revised 11/2/13)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg16Gowj3ZBg8KU1ArqR29KxOYxKdjEx-Wlk8kypdlw98njCx1K46lctgxhSed26vk7lsMlALz2zTelKA4BSpUFQ7mApAFgfJLHnJ5mJ6bR6X5C06DssAQTmCPephADLe5LwkzJfb51aj8/s1600/Pilar_(Ernest_Hemingway%27s_boat)_Cuba.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg16Gowj3ZBg8KU1ArqR29KxOYxKdjEx-Wlk8kypdlw98njCx1K46lctgxhSed26vk7lsMlALz2zTelKA4BSpUFQ7mApAFgfJLHnJ5mJ6bR6X5C06DssAQTmCPephADLe5LwkzJfb51aj8/s320/Pilar_(Ernest_Hemingway%27s_boat)_Cuba.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pilar, Hemingway's fishing boat,
built for him in the 1930's, in this picture is completely reconditioned and
displayed on what used to be the tennis courts at Hem's house in Cuba, Finca
Vigia. Pilar now belongs to the Cuban government, along with the old
estate which up until fairly recently (not sure when actually) had been sitting
there undisturbed since Hemingway got outta Dodge in 1960 with the revolution
overtaking the island. I don’t think Hem knew he might never see the
place or the boat again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paul Hendrickson
wrote a book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hemingway's Boat:
Everything He Loved in Life, And Lost</i> covering the Pilar years, 1934-1961. (Skidmore
turned me onto it a few months ago and I have it on Kindle now and am much
enjoying it.) I have read the Hotchner and Baker bios of Hemingway, and
probably, sorry to say, am more drawn to the biography than I am to Papa's
original work. With each biography I read, a new dimension of Hemingway
opens up. I think probably to some extent, short of 100%, each of the
bios is true (and we benefit from the varying angles the writers take), but
Hendrickson's book is different and quite compelling. For one thing, it
is by no means told chronologically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
another, Hendrickson went out and found some of the surviving relatives and the
old friends from the Pilar phase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because
it's ostensibly about the years Hemingway had Pilar, there is a lot of fishing
in it, and many runs from Key West to Cuba and Cuba to Bimini, a lot of
competitions, boxing, trying to catch the biggest blue marlin, and literary stuff
by the bushel (Hemingway and Fitzgerald had the same editor at Scribner's, the
fabulous Max Perkins). Perkins, thus, was the meat in the sandwich
between these two modernist literary giants who also were jealous back-stabbing
drunken jet-setters, one with killer instinct, one not. Guess which is
which. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVjmQPPuGFJ5IhOrM9CCd0a2iZyBETjNhMfwTBN07NzqEQkkBSiMc0Qe8tUU0gkZtebG5bJ4294e632vAx6FHYuYs-L3AJ1An46Xx9BMI3w6ljs5iLWOQ9meq4YtCMq9iyVSb2mSCNuFQ/s350/Hemingway+1950.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVjmQPPuGFJ5IhOrM9CCd0a2iZyBETjNhMfwTBN07NzqEQkkBSiMc0Qe8tUU0gkZtebG5bJ4294e632vAx6FHYuYs-L3AJ1An46Xx9BMI3w6ljs5iLWOQ9meq4YtCMq9iyVSb2mSCNuFQ/s200/Hemingway+1950.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hem aboard Pilar, age 50</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pilar was a beauty, Hemingway's own
little clubhouse for action, fun, flirtation, and taking pot-shots at Nazi
submarines. He actually owned a tommy gun. One of the most interesting comments
Hendrickson makes is about Hemingway's rapid deterioration. He was just shy of
sixty-one when, clad in a red robe, he shot himself with both barrels in the
foyer of his Ketchum, Idaho home. His wife, fourth, Mary, had taken steps
to prevent this, but not very energetic ones considering Papa was determined
and perhaps genetically pre-determined. The guns and the ammo were
separated, the key to the gun cabinet in the basement not very well
hidden. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It was 1954 when
Hemingway was in Africa and he and his wife (Mary) were involved in two
separate plane crashes inside of a week (http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/04/specials/hemingway-safe.htm). Hemingway was terribly burned in
the second one. Hands, legs. And burns like that
affect the entire system. He already had skin cancer, covered with his
famous beard, probably because of all the rays he captured while navigating the
Gulf Stream over 25 years. He drank to excess (putting it mildly),
Hendrickson offers, because he was uncertain, tormented, and packed inside
himself a lifetime ton of Catholic guilt (see the Gertrude Stein quote at the
bottom of this blog). He was self-medicating, Hendrickson theorizes, but whatever
-- <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>all those malfunctions separately let
alone combined aren't good for the brain. I was saying above that
Hendrickson quoted several friends of Hem who said he didn't seem to have a
middle-age, how he was rather robust at 45 and in his fifties was an old
man. The picture of him above was taken at 50, before the plane crashes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For about seven years, Hemingway lived
in a corner suite of the Hotel Ambos Mundos in Havana. This was his
transition period between Key West (and his second wife Pauline) and Finca
Vigia (Cuba) (and his third wife Martha Gellhorn). He was drinking plenty,
and, so he said in letters to his editor, Perkins, he was writing in the
morning and fishing in the afternoon. But we must remember my favorite
observation from the Baker biography, that after 1930 and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sun Also Rises</i>, and certainly after the great <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Farewell to Arms</i>, Hemingway was more
famous in America than Babe Ruth. Check it out: He was a writer (!), more famous than the
Babe. After he got his boat in 1934, celebrities, politicians, movie
stars, rich people of all stripes and genders, converged on him to deep sea
fish, party, and cavort. Writers are of two minds
-- they need more privacy than most and get cranky if they don’t get it, but in
reaction to that they can be party animals when they get away from the
worktable, and in Hem's case, centrifugal force pulled him to his boat and the
life of a jet-setter and gifted self-promoter. Well, so, the Hotel Ambos Mundos
was a sort of writerly hideout where he got work done – probably more work done
than he was accomplishing in the second floor study above the garage in Key
West.. Mornings mostly. In the afternoons he might be hosting
someone on Pilar. In the evenings and very late at night, often by himself,
he cavorted in the seedy back streets of Havana. Hendrickson confesses
that he's not sure when the transition from Pauline and his three sons to the
beautiful Martha Gellhorn actually began. "Ambos Mundos" means
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWgUodubWN_z-EeTEHM6nrVVzN7sLxWCniFgCU4X57nbDUyurxoNh9yLa47DjZBbnHJ4P2lIY0ZHAjZuHv-hi7ACuzDHUa3YyTaKEZmNNonzTq2rjzCKJrxW9WNVbm3HqetOgurW6wpX8/s600/Hemingway+in+the+last+year+or+so.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWgUodubWN_z-EeTEHM6nrVVzN7sLxWCniFgCU4X57nbDUyurxoNh9yLa47DjZBbnHJ4P2lIY0ZHAjZuHv-hi7ACuzDHUa3YyTaKEZmNNonzTq2rjzCKJrxW9WNVbm3HqetOgurW6wpX8/s400/Hemingway+in+the+last+year+or+so.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hemingway in the last year or so, only 59 or 60 years old.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He was born in Oak Park, IL,
suburban Chicago, the son of a doctor. I thought I read in the Hendrickson book that Ernest was raised Catholic, but I couldn't find it when I looked back. Thanks to Rollins College Hemingway scholar Gail Sinclair, I corresponded with Hendrickson and asked about that. He clarified that Hemingway was not raised Catholic but marginally converted in the post-war period and then became only a bit more of a practiciing Catholic when he was married to Pauline and living in Key West. Overall, Hendrickson told me, Hemingway never was particularly religious. This is a revision from my original blog in this space, based on Hendrickson's and Sinclair's input. His father, worried about possible amputations because of the onset
of diabetes (well, who knows what all he was worried about -- he did leave a
letter but I never believe those) shot himself with a pistol in the master
bedroom of the Oak Park house in 1928. Five Hemingways over three generations (email from Gail Sinclair) killed themselves, beginning with Hem's father and ending with his granddaughter Margaux. Few of those suicides were as natural as Ernest's, because for him
life was lived large as a blood sport. At least 8 severe concussions in his
life, including being blown up in WWI at the age of 19 or so, car wrecks, skylights falling on
him, two plane crashes in a week, oh and don't forget the guy loved to box. And then there were the shock treatments. Aboard
Pilar trying to shoot a shark; he once shot himself in both legs with a
pistol. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">While I believe his deterioration
happened because of celebrity, self-medication, concussions, burns, shock
treatments, and probably some genetic inevitability (many signs his father was
bipolar [using a contemporary term]), and began perhaps as late as 1950 (though
Hemingway's book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Moveable Feast</i>,
some of his finest bitchy writing, appeared after his death, a good part of it
was written in the 1940s; in the late 1950s part of his depression had to do
with his mournful realization that he couldn't write anymore). Gertrude Stein,
such a friend and admirer of his, ruthlessly turned on him as a disappointment much
earlier than 1950 and made an enemy for life. She said he abandoned his
best literary self around 1925.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is
she, taken from Hendrickson's book:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When I first met Hemingway he had a
truly sensitive capacity for emotion, and that was the stuff of the first
stories; but he was shy of himself and he began to develop, as a shield, a big
Kansas City-boy brutality about it, and so he was “tough” because he was really
sensitive and ashamed that he was. Then it happened. I saw it happening and
tried to save what was fine there, but it was too late. He went the way so many
other Americans have gone before, the way they are still going. He became
obsessed by sex and violent death</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">.*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*Hendrickson, Paul (2011-09-20).
Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961 (p. 277).
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I strongly recommend Paul
Hendrickson's book about Hemingway and Pilar if you have an interest in the man
himself. As a writer (though I'm not Hemingway of course), an Illinois boy, doctor’s son, and a failed Catholic
myself, I was pulled through it like a man obsessed.</span></div>
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<![endif]-->Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-81932141950541907762013-06-12T13:48:00.004-07:002013-06-12T15:09:12.707-07:00RejectionGrrrrrrrrrrr.<br />
<br />
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
HIM: Damn everything but the circus! (To
himself) And here am I, patiently squeezing fourdimensional ideas into a
twodimensional stage, when all of me that's anyone or anything is in the top of
a circustent... (A pause)</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
ME: I didn't imagine you were leading a double life
-- and right under my nose, too.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
HIM (Unhearing, proceeds contemptuously): The
average "painter" "sculptor" "poet"
"composer" "playwright" is a person who cannot leap through
a hoop from the back of a galloping horse, make people laugh with clown's
mouth, orchestrate twenty lions.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
ME: Indeed.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
HIM (To her): But imagine a human being who
balances three chairs, one on top of another, on a wire, eighty feet in the air
with no net underneath, and then climbs into the top chair, sits down, and
begins to swing...</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
ME (Shudders): I'm glad I never saw that -- makes
me dizzy just to think of it.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
HIM (Quietly): I never saw that either.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
ME: Because nobody can do it.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
HIM: Because I am that. But in another way, it's
all I ever see.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
ME: What is?</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
HIM (Pacing up and down): This: I feel only
one thing, I have only one conviction; it sits on three chairs in Heaven.
Sometimes I look at it, with terror; it is such a perfect acrobat!
The three chairs are three facts -- it will quickly kick them out from
under itself and will stand on air; and in that moment (because everyone will
be disappointed) everyone will applaud. Meanwhile, some thousands of
miles over everyone's head, over a billion empty faces, it rocks carefully and
smilingly on three things, on three facts, on: I am an Artist, I am a
Man, I am a Failure -- it rocks and it swings and it smiles and it does not
collapse tumble or die because it pays no attention to anything except itself.
(Passionately) I feel, I am aware -- every minute, every instant, I watch
this trick, I am this trick, I sway -- selfish and smiling and careful -- above
all the people. (To himself) And always I am repeating a simple and dark
little formula... always myself mutters and remutters a trivial
colourless microscopic idiom -- I breathe, and I swing; and I whisper:
"An artist, a man, a failure, MUST PROCEED."</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
ME: (Timidly, after a short pause): This
thing or person who is you, who does not pay any attention to anyone else, it
will stand on air?</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
HIM: On air. Above the faces, lives, screams
-- suddenly. Easily: alone.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
ME: How about the chairs?</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
HIM: The chairs will all fall by themselves down
from the wire and be caught by anybody, by nobody; by somebody whom I don't see
and who doesn't see me: perhaps by everybody.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
ME: Maybe yourself -- you, away up ever so high --
will hear me applaud?</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
HIM (Looking straight at her, smiles seriously): I
shall see your eyes. I shall hear your heart move.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
ME: Because I shall not be disappointed, like the
others.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
-- from "i six nonlectures"</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
e
e cummings</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
1953</div>
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Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-85525158202867654142013-06-04T06:47:00.002-07:002013-06-05T13:43:19.301-07:00Interview as Part of Promotion for the Creative Writing Institute, June 5-9, Melbourne, FL<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm5jgwYLqK13MlDT4ex5li4pNx5N9Zm2M2VX1Xelx9iTV5naD5Jns2QJGDnFU5v3TerOaBnFiaYK9IkwGYpydCS2AgSoAZOsYuxO45vlxrn3F1BaXhtit8vIcu-cYi7picWWkaagO8s18/s1600/FIT+Poster+Creative+Writing+Institute.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm5jgwYLqK13MlDT4ex5li4pNx5N9Zm2M2VX1Xelx9iTV5naD5Jns2QJGDnFU5v3TerOaBnFiaYK9IkwGYpydCS2AgSoAZOsYuxO45vlxrn3F1BaXhtit8vIcu-cYi7picWWkaagO8s18/s320/FIT+Poster+Creative+Writing+Institute.jpg" width="272" /></a></div>
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Due to space considerations, <i>Florida Today</i> was not able to include the entire <a href="http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20130602/STYLE07/306020014/STYLE-Q-Central-Florida-author-Philip-Deaver-works-inspire-writers" target="_blank">Phil Deaver interview</a> in the printed issue. Here is the full interview, with the full digressive answers in tact. :-) Reminder that that this interview was conducted to promote the great FIT Creative Writing Institute that kicks off Wednesday evening, June 5 and runs to June 9 on the Florida Tech campus in Melbourne. Plenty of space available and you could just show up and sign in!<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">An
Interview with Philip F. Deaver, Writer and Keynote Speaker at the Florida Tech
Writing Institute in June</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What
inspires you?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My past, people I know and have
known, stories they’ve told me that stick in my mind, feelings I’ve had once I
think I have a handle on them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But most
of all what inspires me is writing itself, the act of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For me, the motivation to write arrives separate
from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what</i> to write.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once I’m writing, what I am going to write
about, or who, arrives in about five minutes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Favorite
author? Why?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Hard to name just one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I like Richard Ford and Ann Beattie and Alice
Munro and Geoff Dyer and Robert Stone, Andre Dubus II, Annie Dillard and Karen
Russell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My original inspirations were
Kurt Vonnegut and Mark Twain and Robert Benchley, followed in my college years
by John Updike, John Irving and John Cheever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In poetry Stephen Dunn, Billy Collins, Tony Hoagland, and William
Matthews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All these writers have
distinctive voices that I know well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
embrace their influence because, having read an awful lot of their work, I
think I understand them and their worlds, and as models they represent a high
bar for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poets expanded my sense
of what a poem can be about and the various vectors available.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In all of these writers I appreciate how
humor and dead seriousness can be joined, blended, to create force and
impact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These writers open themselves up
on the page. They take risks, reach deep to tell their own truths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It could be said all successful writers do
that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, not really. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Favorite
fictional character?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I like Yossarian and Billy
Pilgrim and Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield, Molly Bloom, TS Garp. I’m leaving out
many.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I like character-driven stories, that
turn out the way they do because of the unique combination of people in the
story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A different set of characters, a
different outcome. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Great Gatsby</i>
comes to mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ann Beattie’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Love Always</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alice Munro’s story “Passion.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How do
you cope with writer's block?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I deny the very existence of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we make up a malady like this and give it
a name, next thing you know Pfizer and Abbott Labs will concoct a test to show
it’s in our genes and a drug to make it chronic, and then we’re done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A few years ago I borrowed a cabin in the
North Carolina mountains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A friend of
mine came up to visit, and on the first day, we ran a road along a mountain
ridge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He only tried it once, and his
reason for not going on that run anymore was that the hills got him out of
breath.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told him that’s what hills are
for on a run, and that the more one does it, the better it gets. Writing also
is very hard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We do it anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than not doing it and giving a name to
why we don’t.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You
edited <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scoring from Second</i>, so you
must be a fan of America's favorite sport. How do baseball and writing connect?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I am certainly a fan, though I’m
not sure it’s really the favorite sport of America anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can only answer your question in personal
terms, how I as a writer connect with the game.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I played a lot of baseball growing up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Many initiations into adult realities first made themselves known to me
in baseball.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance, the
personality types I encountered among teenagers in baseball were similar and in
full bloom during the twelve years I spent in a consulting firm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The last organized baseball game I played in
was an over 50s league here Orlando.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d
coached my own kids in baseball when they started, and this was the first time
they, as young men, got a chance to see me play an actual game among other
experienced players my age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was
playing center field because I couldn’t seem to break into the infield (where I’d
played in the past).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A fly ball was hit
to me, and I had to run in for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
wasn’t a problem, it was straight to me, just a little short so I had to run
in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the moment the ball hit my glove,
another player, another fielder on my own team, shot by me going for the same
ball and knocked it out of my glove.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
was conscious of my kids watching their dad, from the fence over by first
base.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the inning was over, as I was
jogging past them to the dugout, I rolled my eyes at the idiot who’d knocked
the ball out of my glove.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My oldest son
said, “Dad, you have to call for it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
was something I’d told them over and over when I was teaching them the
game.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If there’s anybody out there who
can imagine the complex wave of feelings I had right then, that person will
also know how I can make stories and find inspiration from the game.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Do any of
the characters you've created keep coming back for more stories? Are there some
characters who are just too good to let go?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A very insightful question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometime a character appears in a story and
“owns” that story and that one alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Probably won’t be resurrected in subsequent stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have a story collection, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Silent Retreats</i>, from long ago, and in
recent years I’ve written a novel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Past
Tense</i> (unpublished), that weaves most of the characters in those stories into
novel form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In that case, I took pleasure
in preserving and extending characters I’d created, pushing them on into the
next phases of life as I myself pass through the phases.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How do
you see social media affecting the business of writing?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The business of writing is
changing by the day, literally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not
sure social media is why, unless you call the internet, Amazon, and the fact
that there are fewer people reading than writing issues connected to social
media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some people will think these new changes
are “opportunities,” rather than “deterioration.” A baseball metaphor perhaps:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What if everyone decided it was more fun to
play baseball than to watch it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would
suddenly become a business to provide everyone with the opportunity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everyone would either play a computer game
called baseball or they’d go to the ballpark on Sunday afternoon, and upon
arrival they’d be issued authentic Yankees and Cardinal or Red Sox uniforms and
equipment, fancy gloves, bats, and spikes, and be allowed to trot triumphantly
onto the field.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Using digital video, a
baseball crowd would welcome them with digital applause.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They could play anywhere they want, which
means there’d be many pitchers in the middle of the diamond, but no catchers so
we could have a digital catcher.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everyone
would want to be a star and get paid a lot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There would be no more major league baseball, just like one of these
days there will be no more Chicago Tribune, Scribner’s or Norton.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If you
could describe yourself in terms of a fictional character, who would that be?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Regrettably, this is very
easy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m Macon Leary in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Accidental Tourist</i>, by Anne Tyler,
played by William Hurt in the fine movie made from that novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can get the film on Netflix or the actual
book in your local library.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> :)</span></span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-35403351337140871572013-06-01T09:40:00.001-07:002013-06-05T13:43:03.151-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This coming week, I'm giving the keynote at the FIT Creative Writing Institute. The topic of the talk is "Why write?" The writers I hang out with don't really see this as an important question because they long ago answered it--not verbally, they didn't ACTUALLY answer the question. They just wrote and wrote. Still write. They read, too, and they like to read but they don't do it to answer the question "Why read?" Not only does the real writer not wonder if he or she should write, the real writer simply tends to write. Writes letters, writes blogs, writes fiction poetry nonfiction writes writes writes. For real writers there have been times when they didn't write, but they went back to it. Writing does something for them that nothing else does. The level of focus required is addictive. There is a tantalizing illusion that something can be stated perfectly in writing, and the writer chases this illusion even if it is a mirage. In fact the writer doesn't care if it's a mirage, because by writing and thus actively aspiring to perfection, the writer creates something fine if not perfect that didn't exist before.<br />
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By the way, a lot of writing will happen at FIT next week, and it would be so great if you'd come over and join us. Bring your tools.Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-47163262378056892122013-01-21T16:11:00.000-08:002013-06-05T13:39:40.490-07:00Stan Musial, 1921-2013<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Harry Caray who, along with Jack Buck and Joe Garagiola, was in the booth for the Cardinals in the fifties, spent a lot of time talking on the radio about Stan Musial's batting stance, and so by the time I was at last at a ball game in St. Louis ('57), I couldn't wait to see Musial bat and to see this stance I'd been hearing about. I was in Little League, and we were all about having a distinctive batting stance. It was a form of self-expression, nevermind that it needed to have some functionality. We were eleven.<br />
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My recollection is that he was the Cards third place hitter, with Boyer hitting cleanup and Blasingame leading off. I don't remember the batting order, but of course it can be readily looked up. This was an MVP year for Musial, who would hit .351. I believe the Cardinals finished second in the National League. He was 36 and would play to the age of 42.<br />
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Anyway, the stance was very interesting and full of functionality. The bat was held way back and pretty high, and he leaned over the plate with his head and shoulders. The position of his feet was almost like dance, his front foot pointing toward the pitcher, the back foot at a right angle to the other. He was a left-handed hitter, hitting for high average, hitting inside out to the opposite field (Keith Hernandez style) or pulling the ball violently down the right field line. We always thought of him as a power hitter but in fact he wasn't Ted Williams. He was a singles and doubles guy, but because he made great contact, it wasn't rare for the ball to leave the park. He was clutch, too -- and thus a hero in many games with key hits year after year. He never played for any other team but the Cardinals. I saw him play right field, left field and first base. I saw him steal bases. I never saw him bunt.<br />
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The year he got his 3000th hit, we were in St. Louis for a Sunday game hoping to see him get it done. He didn't get it done that day, but later in the week did it with a double into the ivy at Wrigley Field. But the day I was there and he didn't get it, his teammates were on the steps of the dugout taking home movies of him each time he batted. To me these guys were all great stars, and it really impressed me that he was so great in their eyes that many of them had their super-eight movie cameras with them at the ball park to try to catch the historic moment.<br />
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In these days with Lance Armstrong and others pulling sports down, it's good remembering Stan the Man. Back in those days, I couldn't wait until he'd come to bat the next time, to listen to how the home crowd respected him. Many times in those last years the crowd stood up when he was batting. When you go to St. Louis to see a game, you'll see his statue outside the park. I think Busch Stadium was the first to have such a statute, and now they are all over the league. This one is big, however, and commemorates the eccentric batting stance that facilitated a mighty, level, smooth as silk rip at the ball. At 92 he was a little guy, his playing days gone by several generations, his greatness all but invisible to the new fans, but when he showed up in Busch Stadium on special occasions, St. Louis stood up to see him.Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-88356846482694815382012-08-14T11:57:00.000-07:002013-06-05T13:41:50.557-07:00On Turning 66<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I wasn't quite five in this picture. We'd gone to Vero Beach from Illinois to hang out with Dad a while before he went into the Army. He'd closed his doctor's office in Tuscola, made all his arrangements to be gone a while. He'd been rejected by the service in WWII because he had a broken back from high school football. But now he was a doc and they needed doctors in Korea. He was about thirty or thirty one -- my sister Maureen is far more exact with the dates and ages.<br />
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This morning, my 66th birthday, I'm meeting my daughter Laura age thirty for coffee in Winter Park. Life is good. A lot of people at about this time are thinking of retirement, but I have a beautiful job at Rollins College and I don't feel old enough to retire (by my definition of old enough). And besides, writers don't actually retire, that I know of -- they might retreat from the work-a-day to make more time to write, or to embark on a big project, I suppose, but I must admit I love to teach writing and good contemporary reading and it keeps my head in the game. I am just returning from a year-long, actually 15 month long, sabbatical. I won't bore you with how good it was. I traveled a good deal, taught three weeks in Shanghai for Rollins, borrowed a cabin in Highlands, NC from wonderful friends, drove straight from there to the Spalding Fall Residency (low res. MFA) where I mentor fiction and some poetry, then after Thanksgiving rendezvoused with my cousin John in Rapid City, SD for a journey to visit with my dad's beloved sisters Virginia and Elaine (a loop that took us across South Dakota and Nebraska), then Dad's beloved brother Father Steve Deaver in Western Nebraska (birthday 8/15/33), then after Christmas drove from Maitland to Bluffton, SC to borrow a beautiful house to write in for a month (thanks so much to Diane and John!) -- my sister came for a week to help settle me in, and that was a great gift --, then in Feb. we joined my lifelong friends Herb and Bonnie in Key West and celebrated Susan's and my anniversary; I was home the month of March for work and cataract surgery, and back on the road to Fairhope, AL to occupy that very literary town's writing cabin (thanks to Roy, Skip, the Fairhope Library committee, and Mona for being great hosts) for all of April. In May, I was a weekend in Tallahassee for a workshop, then Melbourne, FL at the writing workshop at Florida Tech, always a great experience, and went from there directly to the Spring Spalding residency, then home for the summer except for a July trip back the Highlands to do a workshop and then to Hendersonville, NC to hang a few days with my sister and her husband in a great rental house there. In all of it, I'll admit I did relax. I did have solitude and quiet. I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped, but hoping isn't how you write. :-) Self-talk. Oh, yes, a lot of self-talk on the sabbatical. <br />
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I'd still like to shag some fly balls again someday at the Rollins baseball field, and take some infield, maybe get in the cage and take some swings. Need I mention that I have three giant volumes of fiction I want published before I croak. One is a novel in novellas called Past Tense; one is a novel in stories called Forty Martyrs Suite; one is a giant volume of short stories called Dreams of Her. There's another volume of poems coming along. I've long wanted to write a screenplay, have given it a few robust tries but that's still out there ahead of me, oh, and I'd like to make a movie also, in the single camera mode of "Blue Valentine" -- not that story of course but one of my own that is as intimate and stormy as "Blue Valentine" and has as much hope in it. :-) So the future is out there ahead of me with some considerable challenges and still a bit of ambition. <br />
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I am obsessed with current day politics. I'm glad the election is coming up, and we can get that behind us. It is easy to see that the Republicans don't want or need to be in the White House because, being the actual embodiment of the 1%, they can make most things happen or not happen with their current obstructionist strategy in Congress. Meantime, that poor attitude toward the rest of the country and world will give us twelve more years of Democrats in the White House -- including the first African American President, whom we have now, and, next time, the first woman President. Oh yes Tea Party, read the Tea Leaves in the bottom of your cups. It's coming, a renaissance of diversity. I'm glad of it. It is coming surprisingly fast, summoned by the Far Right because of their attitude, their resistance, and their cynical deceptions (voter suppression being one of the most profane).<br />
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I'm not about to digress further about it. I've got a syllabus to write.<br />
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I have been very lucky in my life. Those who know me will agree. It was a lucky start, first-born into the household of a doctor and a nurse. That picture above, that's lucky me at 4.5 years old. I've had good friends along the way, most of whom have remained friends or at least I feel like they have. I'd love to list the names. At the age of 52, after writing since grade school, I got a job in a college as an English professor and teacher of writing. When I got here, they asked me what I'd like as a title, and I said writer-in-residence. It describes me to this day. I've had two sabbaticals since I came, each one worth a million dollars. Sabbatical is so supremely valuable, right, and good that I have to think Rick Scott will stomp it out of existence because it isn't "good business." Well, neither is a greed tumor on Wall Street so advanced it gave a generation a look at what a depression could be like (but didn't impact the purveyors of the damage much at all) -- perhaps that's how "good business" works. Stop. That was a digression. I loved the sabbatical. I wish one for all my friends. And sabbatical is just the tip of my good luck iceberg. The people in my life! The stories that have happened! The whole amazing world breathing, erupting, rocking, around us. At 66 for me the cup runs over.<br />
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This afternoon around 4:30 I'll settle onto the yoga mat, my daughter nearby. Tomorrow I'll run at the gym. Monday, classes will begin again. It will be a writing and teaching year. I'm only five years younger than my mother when she died. My children now are the age I was when I finally woke up to adulthood. Times now, for them, are not as good as the idyllic sixties and seventies when I came through, more Phil good luck. Our families need each other more than ever, I think. This is no time to take my foot off the pedal. <br />
<br />Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-48918646543545504772012-05-08T05:32:00.001-07:002013-04-29T11:38:59.982-07:00Florida Tech Creative Writing Institute, May 13-17, Melbourne, FL!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Starting</b> this coming weekend and running through the 17 of May, Florida Tech over in Melbourne, FL, will be running its annual weeklong <b>Creative Writing Institute</b>. See the banner above. Speaking and holding classes at the institute will be Susan Hubbard, Lynne Barrett, John DuFresne, Michael Lister, and <b>Philip Deaver, your longpinelimited host :-)</b> and in addition special classes will be offered by many of our favorites from the FIT writing faculty.<br />
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This will be my third CWI, and Melbourne has always been a great location for the workshop right at the beginning of summer, the Institute's programs are both unique and targeted to the needs of Florida writers, and Marcia Denius, Jason Harris, and the organizing staff are cordial, dedicated, and welcoming.<br />
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Prize winning Florida writer <b>Lynne Barrett</b> will be delivering the keynote on Sunday, starting us off and setting the tone for the week. You can peruse the entire program here (<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://411.fit.edu/cwi"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">http://411.fit.edu/cwi</span></a></span>) and register if you wish at that site as well, but let me just say, if you've never attended and are interested in a productive writerly escape before summer really cranks up, you'd have to look long and hard to find a better venue to get yourself into the writing mood, mode, way, and rhythm. For writers in the Greater Orlando area, it's just far enough away to be far enough away, and close enough so you're not too far away. Stop it! You know what I mean!<br />
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If you've never worked with <b>John Dufresne</b> and heard him talk about his writing practice (ironic, witty as hell, and you know it's the truth), this alone is a treat and one major reason why I like to participate at the Institute. Many of us in our region are familiar with the work and teaching of <b>Susan Hubbard</b>, and being at the Institute to work with her is a guaranteed, no-fail path to inspiring you to the worktable this summer.<br />
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You'll note that the dates are coming right up. Think fast. Some people like to plan WAY ahead, and this is to those of you who like to act on an impulse, a sudden really good idea. Look over the materials and come on over after Mother's Day brunch. Bring your notes, your laptop, buncha Impact 207 Uniball Signos (for the bold dark line and smooth as silk roller ball), your favorite very precious notebook/writing pad, and hang with some writers for a few days. The link above, and banner above, provide all the contact information (website, phone numbers) you need to decide be there. It's always fun when representatives from our rockin' Greater Orlando writing community shows up. Hope to see you there.<br />
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NOTE: Below I've posted the original press release for the Institute, which should give you all the info you need even though it's bad form in a blog! Have at it.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">CREATIVE
WRITING INSTITUTE OF FLORIDA TECH 2012</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">PRESS
RELEASE</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Registration
is now open for the Fourth Annual Creative Writing Institute of Florida
Institute of Technology, to be held on campus May 13 through 17. This year’s blockbuster line-up of Featured
Writers includes Keynote Speaker, Lynne Barrett, first place winner in General Fiction for this year’s prestigious Florida
Book Award for her recently published book, <i>Magpies.</i> Barrett has authored three short story
collections, is the editor of the <i>Florida
Book Review,</i> and teaches Creative Writing at Florida International
University.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Returning
Featured Writers, all former Keynote Speakers, are Susan Hubbard (<i>The Season of Risks),</i> John Dufresne (<i>Lousiana Power and Light),</i> and Philip
F. Deaver <i>(Silent Retreats).</i> Completing
the roster of Featured Writers is award-winning author, Michael Lister, who has
published six novels and two short story collections.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=957720453833964079" name="_GoBack"></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Free,
open-to-the-public events will be offered throughout the session, the first of
which is the Keynote Speaker’s address, “The Thread of a Story,” on Sunday, May
13 at 2:15 pm in the Denius Student Center on campus. Prior to the address there will be a
reception, registration, and book signing, starting at noon. Other events to which the public is invited
include luncheons and dinners each day with Featured Writers speaking about
their works, a Publishing Panel presented by the Featured Writers (May 14 at 4
pm), an Open Mic poetry session (May 17 at 8:45 pm), and a performance of the
dramatic works of playwright Troy Jones (May 15 at 5 pm). A Media Panel will host a discussion on May
16 at 4 pm, followed by Dr. Terry Cronin presenting an Independent Film Screening
at 8:45 pm. All of these free bonus events
will be held in the Hartley Room of the Denius Student Center.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Classes,
with a focus on the craft of writing, are being offered mornings, afternoons,
and evenings to accommodate registrants’ work and school schedules. Beginning to advanced writers of all ages
have a wide variety of classes from which to choose: Building Strong Fiction;
Songwriting; Flash Fiction; Writing Memoirs; Writing Poems; Writing the Novel;
Writing Short Stories; Writing for Children; Playwriting; The Literary
Thriller; Writers’ Ten Biggest Mistakes; Science Fiction. Both 3-day and 4-day classes (2 hours/class)
are available. This year, public and
private school teachers will receive a 50% discount on enrollment costs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Also being offered are one-time lectures:
History Writing, Literary Journalism, Publishing in the Internet Age, and
Writing for Comics and Film. For
registration and a complete listing of classes, lectures, and bonus events,
please visit our website at </span><a href="http://411.fit.edu/cwi"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">http://411.fit.edu/cwi</span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. Early registration is advised as class size is
limited. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> The
Creative Writing Institute provides a place for writers to feel at home with
other writers, a place where they can find and express their own voices, and
where in workshops, they can receive valuable feedback and insight; also, area
hotels are offering generous discounts for CWI attendees With its bonus events, which are all free and
open to the public, the CWI offers the opportunity for community members to
meet some of the best writers writing today, right here on the beautiful
Florida Tech campus.</span></div>
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Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-35773016017360499332012-01-28T04:40:00.000-08:002012-01-28T12:47:08.473-08:00Party! Burrow Press Rolls Out "15 Views..." in Hard Copy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Look! It's the girl with blue hair! </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Luckily, we can't see the tattoo. This is the cover of Burrow Press's new book, "15 Views of Orlando," constructed from the serial flash fiction online story project local writers whipped up to celebrate the city.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"> Last summer the crew at Urban ReThink/Burrow Press, continued their near obsessive mission to stay deeply connected to the Orlando literary community and really the city-at-large by cooking up an online project, "15 Views of Orlando," an interconnected flash fiction string by 15 very good and not very alike local fiction writers. Among the stipulations to the contributors was a thematic rule to set the individual stories in familiar or exotic or random unknown places across the town. Of course, writers were also to connect somehow with previous writers' story lines and pull at least one of them through. The result was not a story cycle but kind of a story braid.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The drill was that the stories appeared every few weeks on the Burrow Press site. If you were eighth in line, you didn't really begin your contribution until after number seven was posted, because you were to build on what had come before. You wouldn't necessarily build on number seven, the one immediately before. No, no. Tires ain't pretty, and writers ain't linear. You might pull through a plot-line from number three, but use a character from number four, a location from number two, and cook a new plot strand from something you noticed shaping up in number seven. Or whatever. It was best to take everything that had come before into account as you began to cook up your own contribution. You had a week.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">I was number twelve, and in my long life I've never written anything in a week! Trying to do so, in August, just before I left for Shanghai, got me in a giant sweat-down and I was spinning out drafts like a ceiling fan. How Ryan Rivas (Burrow Press Publisher) and Nathan Holic ("15 Views ..." editor) managed to ride herd on 15 random loose-cannon wholesale neurotic lone wolves and get this thing to actually work could probably be another book. But let's not get ahead of myself.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Release Party</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">So Burrow Press made a book of it, the proceeds from which serve their central nonprofit mission of helping Orlando kids. <b>This coming Tuesday, Jan. 31, 6:00 PM at the local literary community's home base, Urban ReThink, 625 E. Central Blvd. in Thornton Park, EVERYBODY will gather</b> for some conviviality, book buying, writerly and readerly getting together, did I mention book-buying, and the opportunity starting at 7:00 PM to hear </span>John King, Jared Silvia, J Bradley, Hunter Choate, and Ashley In<var></var>guanta read from their contributions to the torrid "15 Views . . ." flash fiction braid. Your interest, presence, and book purchase also helps support Burrow Press itself, Orlando's new pivot spot for the next local literary generation. Most important, of course, is buying the book, perhaps two or three. Find out all you need to know at: <a href="http://burrowpress.com/burrowing-into-the-new-year/">http://burrowpress.com/burrowing-into-the-new-year/</a> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Congratulations to all the writers, Burrow Press, and Urban ReThink for a successful collaboration. Astounding.</span></div>Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-9727923709615423252012-01-21T14:39:00.001-08:002012-01-22T03:58:54.631-08:00Silent Retreats is now available on Kindle thru Amazon<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}">I'm pleased to announce that, thanks to my publisher the U. of Georgia Press, Silent Retreats is now available on Kindle. The book contains 11 short stories including "Arcola Girls" which appeared in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards after it was accepted by the New England Review and "Silent Retreats," which was first accepted by Kevin McIlvoy at Puerto del Sol. My anti hero Skidmore first app<span class="text_exposed_show">eared in these stories, in serial cameos that frequently acted to take it up a notch, like adding Jack Daniels to your milk. The stories also contain nostalgia, even more than originally I just noticed, as well as an early take on one of my time-honored themes, <i>What happened to men after what happened to women</i>.</span></span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Retreats-Flannery-OConnor-Fiction-ebook/dp/B005JDZD6O/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1327185498&sr=1-1">Click Here for More Info... </a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-10671685342189565712011-10-31T23:33:00.000-07:002012-01-22T03:50:32.151-08:00Who's Got Obama's Back?<img align="middle" src="http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/6851/occupyprotest7.png" /><br />
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Unike the Tea Party, which was born when the alien/socialist enemy held all three of Washington’s elected redoubts, Occupy Wall Street inhabits a different political world, one whose most prominent figure, the President, has fallen short of not only many Occupiers’ hopes but also his own—in large part because of the Republicans’ conscienceless exploitation of the perverse veto points of the congressional machine.<br />
--Hendrick Herzberg, Nov. 7 New Yorker<br />
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Unlike Herzberg, whose commentary I do follow and highly value, I don’t think it’s as important when the Tea Party was born as why it was born. It was born because a black man became President of the United States. When it was born, the Tea Party was full of low information white people who never even noticed what George Bush and the Republicans did to the economy and didn’t know what a debt ceiling was. And they darn sure never dreamed Barack Obama would win the presidency, especially up against such a powerhouse ticket as John McCain and Sarah Palin. But when he did win, they hit the roof. They wanted to go to presidential rallies carrying a loaded automatic weapon because sometimes the tree of liberty needs to be watered with the blood of tyrants and to them Obama was apparently a tyrant though he hadn’t been in office two months. There were cartoons of a monkey shot by cops. They spit on black congressmen as they entered the capitol building. That was the Tea Party, and more sophisticated right wingers harnessed their racist anger and gave them a code to talk in. Republicans invented that code.<br />
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Why would the Tea Party declare war on the social safety net that we've assembled for the sick, disabled, aging and poor in this country. <br />
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Why would all these Tea Partiers stand for the ruin of the middle class by banks, Wall Street, and the richest 1% (and what proportion of that 1% do you suppose is white?)? Why would they want to cut off all revenue to the government, a completely nutty idea? Why would they oppose health care reform so somebody besides Big Pharma gets well? The reason is the Tea Party is a bunch of low-information disgruntled people who hate people who are different from them, and there is a rope through their nose ring, the other end of which is attached to Karl Rove, George Bush's brain as he was once referred to, and a group of Republican elected officials who never liked democracy anyway. Those elected officials have no plan to say yes to anything. Famously they vote with uniform consistency against bills they know have bipartisan support and that they themselves wrote and proposed.<br />
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They were never this obvious before. A black guy in the White House was the last straw. Senseless primitive racial hate has been harnessed in favor of the Republican agenda. This is the last cornered snake in the big barn. It's been in hiding since Martin Luther King's death and we've made progress. You can't say we haven't made progress. Barack Obama didn't win the Presidency by just a little and that event was unthinkable only a very few years before it happened. His election has flushed out some really bad stuff we collectively still have in us. <img align="right" src="http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/5687/barackh.jpg" /> Nobody in our big world of punditry and opinion expressing says that racism is at the core of our problem today. The very fact it isn't being said let's you know how dark this place is inside us. Barack Obama cannot say he's a victim of racism, and there’s nobody watching his back who will say it for him. Black activists in the US know better than to call a snake a snake. If they do, it's "game on" and they're gonna need more than a pitchfork.<br />
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That is what we're up against. For the country's mental health, it has to be named, it must be said aloud. It will be painful.<br />
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Tonight on Hardball, Chris Matthews was faulting Obama for not reaching out to democratic congressmen and senators. “Why doesn’t he have them over and play cards and have a drink with them and get them to help him?” Chris said, “He needs to be more like Kennedy, skillful at the politics of politics. Why does he try to do all of it by himself?” Chris was selling his book on John Kennedy. Matthews virtually said, “Why doesn’t Barack have a brother right there with him, like Kennedy had Robert kicking ass for him?” Uh-huh. Think about it.<br />
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They both got shot. <br />
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Why does Barack have to have a drink with congressmen and senators in his own party to get them to fight the Republicans as they, the Republicans, dismantle the system and the middle class on a singular, pre-announced mission to bring down the President using parliamentary stunts to stop everything, everything, every single thing? You know, that's actually a threat to the security of the US -- when the depression really hits, that will be obvious. Do you know this has never happened before? The country is being strangled, and the economy is being intentionally crashed by a bunch of flag waving know-nothings and their quite evil leaders. Occupy Wall Street is the beginning of a giant reaction, a revolution. A massive number of people are losing their jobs and houses, states are going broke, taxes are the lowest ever and are off the table for negotiation because NO is the answer, period. We can no longer afford to have America be America, and the black guy is why. Social security, medicare, people’s retirement accounts, it’s all gonna go. And if the Tea Party and the richest one percent don’t stop it with this crap they're pulling, it is for sure gonna get loud. I'd prefer for us to win the next election and get the snakes outta there that way.<br />
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It is shocking how little empathy is being shown to anybody, and I think that is one of OWS's main issues. Republicans are cold. People this cold are very dangerous. It's okay with them if people remain unemployed another couple of years or decades. People in democratic districts all across the country, let alone in Republican districts, are not being represented, their pain isn't pain, it's just discomfort. Wounded veterans home from Bush’s dumb wars will be jobless and desperate and, pretty darn soon, pissed off. Why does Barack Obama have to play cards with senators on his own team so they get behind the jobs act and fixing infrastructure and not killing public schools? Why aren’t the democratic senators and congressmen raising holy hell? Cat got their tongue? Why don’t the democratic senators and congressmen have the President’s back, I mean in a Giant Ted Kennedy way? In fact, if they can’t get by the filibuster, why don’t they just walk out (as happened in the legislature in Wisconsin) -- pull on their jeans and get some earmuffs and flock down to Wall Street themselves? Their usefulness in their elected office seems over. Getting whipped like that by Republicans would make me awful mad, if I were in there. I'd go down and join the protest. But if the democratic elected officials are stumped and can't do anything, including can't raise hell, that pretty much explains why they've left their president swinging in the wind by himself. <br />
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Or, can it be that congressmen and senators in both parties, in significant numbers, are part of the 1%, and/or are inextricably in bed with the rich? Is the system that fucked?<br />
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Occupy Wall Street is positive it is.<br />
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They, therefore, don't want to be co-opted by, associated with, or pigeon-holed by any party. They certainly don’t want to get swallowed by business-as-usual do-nothing politics in Washington and find themselves up against the expressionless dim gaze of Speaker Boehner. They want action and now they will force it. It's getting cold out. They blame Wall Street for the crimes that gave us a brush with a world depression, a close call that is still a close call, but trust me, for a lot of these people it IS a depression, and yes they blame Wall Street but also they blame the Republicans -- they’re basically the same machine, just two different interconnected parts of it. And they do have each others' backs.<br />
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<img align="left" height="266" src="http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/2277/marchonwashingtonaerial.jpg" width="400" />I hope somebody in the Occupy movement realizes that Barack Obama is a very well-placed ally for what they want to accomplish, the best and best-placed ally they could ever have. But divided we cannot stand, and we have been successfully divided. If OWS wants Mitt Romney to be president, and John Boehner and Mitch McConnell to have a victory parade in 2012 which the Occupy movement can watch from a tent city somewhere in a warm climate, they should hurry off and find a third party candidate who in their daydreams can do so much better against congress than Obama has done alone, and we’ll all lose and the country will make Karl Rovian "progress" backwards to the glory days of Calvin Coolidge when human beings and dinosaurs dwelled the earth together.. <br />
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Instead, OWS should meet with Obama this week, play cards with him and have a beer, and they should plan to crush those democracy-hating bastards in 2012 and get us going again -- 99% is a lot of people. Hopefully the Republicans won't be able to stop a significant number of them from expressing their will at the polls, one of their more telling anti-minority, anti-democracy, anti-constitution conspiracies that for some reason nobody can do anything about. Jesus.<br />
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Anyway. We have a fully functioning progressive articulate and ready to move on the issues that brought OWS into the streets. In fact, in his famous September speech to Congress, he invited this uprising, he said get up, get out and express yourselves. It was his only choice, to by-pass congress and call on the people for action. Now, for weeks he's been sending signals to OWS that he wants what they want (he's been working around congress by signing executive orders because nothing can get done at all unless he does). OWS needs to go see him. There is still time. They don't need to distance themselves from him like everyone else has. By no stretch of the imagination is he the problem. OWS should walk a mile in Barack's shoes. Occupy the White House, see what it's like being America's first black president.Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-82368292942494690592011-08-13T08:46:00.000-07:002011-12-19T15:44:34.385-08:00Birthday Poem<span style="color:#cccccc;"><span style="font-size:large;"><strong>The Layers</strong></span><br /><br />I have walked through many lives,<br />some of them my own,<br />and I am not who I was,<br />though some principle of being<br />abides, from which I struggle<br />not to stray.<br />When I look behind,<br />as I am compelled to look<br />before I can gather strength<br />to proceed on my journey,<br />I see the milestones dwindling<br />toward the horizon<br />and the slow fires trailing<br />from the abandoned camp-sites,<br />over which scavenger angels<br />wheel on heavy wings.<br />Oh, I have made myself a tribe<br />out of my true affections,<br />and my tribe is scattered!<br />How shall the heart be reconciled<br />to its feast of losses?<br />In a rising wind<br />the manic dust of my friends,<br />those who fell along the way,<br />bitterly stings my face,<br />Yet I turn, I turn,<br />exulting somewhat,<br />with my will intact to go<br />wherever I need to go,<br />and every stone on the road<br />precious to me.<br />In my darkest night,<br />when the moon was covered<br />and I roamed through wreckage,<br />a nimbus-clouded voice<br />directed me:<br />“Live in the layers,<br />not on the litter.”<br />Though I lack the art<br />to decipher it,<br />no doubt the next chapter<br />in my book of transformations<br />is already written.<br />I am not done with my changes.<br /><br />-Stanley Kunitz<br /><br /><span style="font-size:xx-small;">Stanley Kunitz, "The Layers" from The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz. Copyright © 1978 by Stanley Kunitz.</span></span>Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-87291293124646489382011-08-05T07:06:00.000-07:002011-12-19T15:45:32.711-08:00Paris and Books<img align="left" border="0" height="320" src="http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/3778/abook.png" width="213" />There was one day in Paris when Susan and I took the longest walk, starting where we were staying, on Rue Cler, crossing the Seine on Pont l'Alma, angling up Rue Montaigne and intersecting Champs Elysees, strolling the Tuileries all the way to the Louvre, crossing back on Pont Royal basically threading the needle between the far reaches of the Louvre on the Right Bank and the Musee d'Orsay on the left, proceeding up Rue du Bac (a favorite street during our stay), then bending into the Jardin du Luxembourg, across to the Pantheon, down to Shakespeare and Co. on the river across from Notre Dame. We crossed onto Ile St Louis, and dipped into Le Marais for ice cream which we ate on the bridge, Pont Louis Philippe. From there we contemplated finding Hemingway and Hadley's place on Rue Cardinal Lemoine, which we could see from the bridge receding into the Latin Quarter. A Moveable Feast traced the route. In that book Hemingway, conscious of the fact that he was remembering first hand from the 1950's his days in Paris during the Lost Generation years, that famous literary heyday from back when writers earnestly engaged themselves in writing what we called then "books" (see wikipedia for a definition and an illustration) -- conscious as he was of how one day we would romanticize the literary Paris of the '20's because the romance of writing and books would nosedive, he took special care to write not only the ethereal spirit of Paris but the physical place itself, the beauty and vitality of the streets, of the people, of the language. I have to say, the beauty and vitality have survived.Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-7509508106933101082011-07-10T14:45:00.000-07:002011-12-19T15:47:14.970-08:00Ann Beattie and the Late History of the American Short StoryThis discussion will draw 100% from Ann Beattie's new book, see above. This book reprints in chronological order all 48 stories Beattie has published in the New Yorker since April of 1974. In this single volume we can observe the evolution of one of our master story writers, one who was a prime mover in the late lamented renaissance of the short story. As I read it, and really as I read her work over time, I thought I observed Beattie’s evolution from chronicler of the boomer generation to authentic master adapting to and riding out the storm of time – and it has been a storm. I think this is the kind of evolution and adaptation such committed artists do and how their art changes shape and continues on, growing better and deeper and smarter.<br />
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I arrived in Charlottesville in August of 1974 to begin a Charles Stewart Mott doctoral fellowship at UVa, and there was a rumor that Ann Beattie was in town. She’d already been in the New Yorker once by then, her first appearance, April ’74. Starting in August of that year I was in Charlottesville for a year and eleven months, and by the time I left, she’d been in the New Yorker seven times. People do forget that in those days the New Yorker frequently contained two short stories per issue. But still!<br />
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Here is Ann Beattie’s first New Yorker story opening:<br />
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When Ellen was told that she would be hired as a music teacher at the high school, she decided it did not mean that she would have to look like the other people on the faculty. She would tuck her hair neatly behind her ears, instead of letting it fall free, schoolgirlishly. She had met some of the teachers when she went for her interview, and they all seemed to look like what she was trying to get away from—suburbanites at a shopping center. Casual and airy, the fashion magazines would call it. At least, that’s what they would have called it back when she still read them, when she lived in Chevy Chase and wore her hair long, falling free, the way it had fallen in her high school graduation picture. ‘Your lovely face,’ her mother used to say, “and all covered by hair.” Her graduation picture was still on display in her parents’ house, next to a picture of her on her first birthday.
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</br>It didn’t matter how Ellen looked now; the students laughed at her behind her back. They laughed behind all the teachers’ backs. . . .”</br>
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“A Platonic Relationship” </div>
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April 8, 1974</div>
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I remember enjoying this story. By ’74 I was six years married, I’d taught high school for a year, then been drafted (Germany for some reason, not Vietnam), then paid my compulsory dues to unemployment for a year (because they didn’t hire the vets upon their return), then had gone back to school. I can’t resurrect from memory when it was, but sometime early in the 23 months I was in Charlottesville, I learned from a dependable source exactly where Ann Beattie lived. It was in a nice neighborhood with fairly big houses, the kind that sometimes are turned into law offices. I would walk my big malamute Shadrak in that area sometimes (and with increased frequency once I knew she lived there). A few times in the late evening as I passed by I’d actually rather theatrically genuflect in her front yard. I never saw her there, but I did keep my eyes peeled as I strolled by looking in the windows (kidding), though just being in her neighborhood was really enough. When I first actually met her, in the fall of 2000, I told her all about this, including the bit about genuflecting, and she advised me she didn’t live in that area, that those houses weren’t really residences but had all been converted to law offices. Grrrk. </div>
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In 1974, the whole baby boom was living in college towns getting graduate degrees. Many of us were back from the army, and Watergate was in the news. We all drove Chevy Vegas, Ford Pintos, AMC Gremlins, and VW bugs. We all owned Smith-Coronas and Olympia typewriters, and lusted after IBM Selectrics with a correct key. We still had our guitars from college. We were writing poems, novels and songs, or at least that's what we told each other over beer. People were still getting killed in Southeast Asia, but it was nearly over (it would be years before "The Things They Carried" and writing that had perspective on the war). We were streaming into the U. of Iowa writers workshop. In writing, and a lot of other fields but not teaching, men were still courting the illusion they were in charge. </div>
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In “The Platonic Relationship,” Beattie’s protagonist, Ellen, leaves her husband because at the age of 32 she thought there had to be more to life than being a lawyer’s wife; so she took a teaching job and sank into it the way one really has to to be a good teacher, and she move out on her husband. Probably not knowing what hit him, he helped her move into her own place, and before long she had a roommate, a guy named Sam who was strange but thought she was pretty, and before long Sam had also befriended Ellen’s husband saying he wanted to go to law school, and after a few months of friendship, Sam abruptly left on a new motorcycle bound for California and Ellen’s husband wasn’t able to find his mother’s jewelry box. Ellen was happy to be on her own teaching, and still liked Sam because he thought she was pretty, and the story concludes with neither Ellen nor her husband knowing what hit them. In those days, the youth culture was teeming, everyone in first marriages, with no children quite yet, and the bonds and boundaries of marriage were being stretched every which way. Nixon was in office and people still didn’t trust anyone over thirty even if THEY were over thirty. The women’s movement was on the move, and thus chess pieces on the board were moving differently than they ever had. The generation of the Summer of Love, the War on Poverty, pot, free love, the Civil Rights Movement, and the loud and tumultuous anti-war demonstrations on the moral argument, was careening into adulthood on the skids; there was a moral compass, in theory, but as the pragmatic realities came to bear in their lives and the generation began the entropic journey to becoming their parents only worse, there was also cultural confusion. Twenty five years later, we got two boomers for president, Clinton and Bush, both, like me, a year older than Ann Beattie and representing, at the turn of the century, a baffling exact 50-50 split in the philosophy and political orientation, right and left. 50-50! Beattie’s story fixes a point in time when that split becoming manifest but wasn’t quite showing. Her flat style would not comment on the big picture because our focus was definitely on the trees and not the forest.</div>
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Here’s the first paragraph from Beattie’s second appearance in the New Yorker:</div>
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Silas is afraid of the vacuum cleaner. He stands, looking out the bedroom door, growling at it. He also growls when small children are around. The dog is afraid of them, and they are afraid of him because he growls. His growling always get him in trouble; nobody thinks he is entitled to growl. The dog is also afraid of a log of music. “One Little Story That the Crow Told Me” by the New Lost City Ramblers raises his hackles. Bob Dylan’s “Positively Fourth Street” brings bared teeth and a drooping tail . . . If the dog had his way, he would get Dylan by the leg in a dark alley. Maybe they could take a trip—Michael and the dog—to a recording studio or a concert hall, wherever Dylan was playing, and wait for him to come out. Then Silas could get him. Thoughts like these (“fancy flights,” his foreman called them) were responsible for Michael’s no longer having a job.”
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“Fancy Flights”</div>
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October 21, 1974</div>
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In this selection, Beattie’s signature first person/present tense makes its initial appearance in a story of hers in the New Yorker. Ann Beattie, as I said, appeared in the New Yorker 7 times in two years after she first broke in. The New Yorker had been through a giant John Updike phase in the sixties, Updike being six years older than Ray Carver and fifteen years older than Beattie. Beattie was a genuine boomer, and, think about it, the New Yorker had to transition. A giant generation was coming and college kids didn’t normally subscribe to that magazine; their parents did. I think the giant push with Ann Beattie was brilliant but, if not at all intentional, then certainly fortuitous. In ’74 I already had a Harper’s and Atlantic subscription (thanks to Duke Rank, my first college advisor), but in '74 I was buying the New Yorker off the shelf or we were getting it from my wife’s parents, long time subscribers (and my wife thus a long-time John Updike afficianado). In those days it seemed like Beattie was always in the New Yorker, and her stories about long haired girls and tall skinny boys, rock’n’roll and weed and young people’s angst and malaise, supplied parental units with a study guide and handout on us, their kids. The term minimalism had already been applied to Beattie and Carver and others, though it was never a term Beattie accepted as accurate about her. But the style must have driven the older generation crazy--it would explain nothing, just lay it out there as if to say, "Here it is, folks, what you've created!"</div>
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In 1975 the Pushcart Prize (Best of the Small Presses) was first published. You can be assured this is because the baby boom was writing and submitting and there wasn’t room for everybody in the New Yorker. Writers like Joyce Carol Oates, already well established, became great advocates for the small presses and the rising optimism that one could get published if one was persistent and good. Writers, make no mistake, were modeling on the stories in the New Yorker. As it says in the fly leaf to her new book, there was actually a term "Beattie-esque." I do remember that.</div>
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My favorite story of Beattie’s has long been “Waiting,” which I’m sure I read in the New Yorker when it came out. Ann Beattie told me in 2000 that her favorite story of her own was “The Burning House.” At the time of our first conversation, her big new and selected collection was out, Park City (1998), but the title of her previous collection of stories (1995) was The Burning House, after the story which was first published June 11, 1979 followed immediately by “Waiting” the next week!</div>
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In the story “The Burning House,” Amy is occupied by doing dishes and snatching a moment with her lover, Johnny, on the phone when he calls just to hear her voice, a very loose thing to do that predicts the lid coming off before too long. In the other room, her husband is holding court with his men friends, and in the shreds of conversation that she hears, she knows he too has a shadow life that is pulling at him. In bed, alone together, in the final scene of “The Burning House,” Amy asks for clarity on their situation:</div>
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“I want to know if you’re staying or going.”</br>
“Everything you’ve done is commendable,” he says. “You did the right thing to go back to school. You tried to do the right thing by finding yourself a normal friend like Marilyn. But your whole life you’ve made one mistake—you’ve’ surrounded yourself with men. Let me tell you something. All men—if they’re crazy, like Tucker; if they’re gay ... like Reddy Fox, even if they’re six years old—I’m going to tell you something about them. Men think they’re Spider-Man and Buck Rogers and Superman. You know what we all feel inside that you don’t feel? That we’re going to the stars."</br>
He takes my hand. “I’m looking down on all of this from space,” he whispers. “I’m already gone.”</blockquote>
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“The Burning House”</div>
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June 11, 1979</div>
</blockquote>
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Beattie has often been called the chronicler of the post-counterculture boomer crowd, and in “The Burning House” we can feel the sacrament and legal arrangment called marriage sorting out all crazy as men and women struggled to find a new balance. The pill was a new reality and with it freedom. The human potential movement was driving us all crazy. All things were both possible and not, and the International Year of the Woman had been established in ’75 -- in ’82 the Equal Rights Amendment would fall only three states short of ratification. That was some of the Big Picture change that was causing an earthquake in middle class American boomer marriages.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
In the more ghostly story “Waiting,” the young wife who is the first person protagonist is selling a piece of furniture. People are calling in on the house phone to come over and look at it. One lady has come to buy it. As we track through their negotiations, we understand that the young wife is blue on this day; her husband left a few months ago for no reason that is actually stated, except to play in a band. He was going to take the dog with him, but she stopped that saying the dog wouldn’t survive the trip, so off her husband went alone. Again, we don’t know why. In first person present tense we move forward as if with blinders on, what happens next, what happens next. In this point of view there is no looking around, planning, or even contemplating what’s going on or why. The next thing just happens. The young wife looks down and her dog is not reacting to her. She tries to get him to move, but he won’t. She’s sold this important piece of her life, and now is making lunch and the dog has apparently died in his sleep right there on the linoleum. She goes out on the front porch. Male friends have been looking in on her since her husband left. One of her favorites, Ray, has come over and she’s on the porch and he kindly says he’ll make them both some lunch, and she’s happy about that. As he’s going in, she tells him, “... </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
If there’s anything wrong, just fix it.” In other words, if you happen to spot my deceased dog, please handle it. And here’s the New Yorker ending.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote style="text-align: left;">
I look back at the house. Ray, balancing a tray, opens the door with one hand, and Hugo is beside him—not rushing out, the way he usually does to get through the door, but padding slowly, shaking himself out of sleep. He comes over and lies down next to me, blinking because his eyes are not yet accustomed to sunlight.</br>
Ray sits down with his plate of crackers and cheese and a beer. He looks at the tear streaming down my cheeks and shoves over close to me. He takes a big drink and puts the beer on the grass. He pushes the tray next to the beer can.</br>
“Hey,” Ray says. “Everything’s cool, OK? No right and no wrong. People do what they do. A neutral observer, and friend to all. Same easy advice from Ray all around. Our discretion assured.” He pushes my hair gently off my wet cheeks. “It’s OK,” he says softly, turning and cupping his hands over my forehead. “Just tell me what you’ve done.”</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: right;">
“Waiting”
June 21, 1979
</div>
<br />
I never have been able to understand what this ending establishes. I think there is no definitive answer. Some may find it maddening. Ray, too, is puzzled—what’s going on with this woman and her husband? We can imagine a number of possibilities, and to effectively keep the ending open effectively opens the story to various takes and several biases and orientations. This is realism. There are not always answers to what’s going on, and at the moment of the ending of the story, the young wife isn’t likely to want to or be able to say. But we recognize the family of dilemmas being referenced. And wouldn’t it be the shits if right in the middle of it Hugo croaked? So her crying could be joy. Joy! How often do we see that in an Ann Beattie New Yorker story of the seventies.<br />
<br />
It was these stories of the ‘70s that helped cause a resurgence in the short story, a literal renaissance of the short story, that was much talked about in’80s. The New Yorker helped cause a renaissance and I’m sure caused a renaissance in Harper’s, The Atlantic, and at the New Yorker itself, not to mention the explosion of AWP and the MFA program movement, not to mention the establishment of the Flannery O’Connor Award, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and the blizzard of competitions we see now which replace subscriptions as a way for magazines to raise the cash to continue. In 1986 Ray Carver was the guest editor of Best American Short Stories, and in 1987 it was Ann Beattie. If they ever were minimalists (I think they were), by then they weren’t anymore. By then Raymond Carver was dry and had a hold of his own career and craft—witness his lush story “Errand,” his last one, paying homage to Chekhov and at the same time staring his own death straight in the eye.<br />
<br />
And Ann Beattie was no longer the chronicler of the boomer generation. As one reviewer put it, the generation no longer needed a chronicler to explain them to themselves. Instead, Beattie continued to evolve, continued to write from the perspective of her generation as it moved through its time. In “Find and Replace,” one of the last stories of the 48 in the New Yorker stories volume, the first person protagonist, named “Ann,” travels to Fort Myers to see her mother. It’s the first time she’s seen her mother since her father passed away. During this visit, her mother breaks it to her that she’s moving in with a man who lives next door, a man who was a good friend of Ann’s parents while both were living and who spoke at her father’s funeral. It is clear that her mother continues to desire connection with the world, and full-grown adult Ann feels that as a waft of a double loss and a betrayal. The author of this story is not the long haired hippie girl literary lion of 1974. It is the grown woman who’s kept on with the times, as we see in this paragraph from the first page of “Find and Replace”:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
On a globally warmed July day, I flew into Fort Myers and picked up a rental and set off for my mother’s to observe (her terminology) the occasion of my father’s death, six months after the event. It was actually seven months later, but because I was in Toronto checking out sites for an HBO movie, and there was no way I could make it on June 25, my mother thought the most respectful thing to do would be to wait until the same day, on month later. I don’t ask my mother a lot of questions; when I can, I simply try to keep the peace by doing what she asks. As mothers go, she’s not demanding. Most requests are simple and have to do with her notions of propriety, which often center on the writing of notes . . . </br>
My mother has a million friends. She keeps the greeting card industry in business. She would probably send greetings on Groundhog Day, if the cards existed. Also, no one ever seems to disappear from her life (with the notable exception of my father). She still exchanges notes with a maid who cleaned her room at the Swift House Inn fifteen years ago—and my parents were only there for a weekend . . . </br>
Anyway, all the preliminaries to my story are nothing but that: the almost inevitable five minutes of hard rain midway through the trip; the beautiful bridge; the damned trucks expelling herculean farts. I drove to Venice, singing along with Mick Jagger about beasts of burden. When I got to my mother’s street, which is, it seems, the only quarter mile long stretch of America watched by God, through the eyes of a Florida policeman in a radar equipped car, I set the cruise control for twenty and coasted to her driveway.</blockquote></br>
<div style="text-align: right;">
“Find and Replace”</div>
</blockquote>
The contemporary details, the hectic pulse of travel and urban life, the shelters we seek in good sound systems in the cars, and the realistic depiction of the relationship to our parents once life has gone on—this is not the voice of a chronicler of the generation, rather one of someone who’s in for the ride, who’s writing to digest and understand. (You can hear Ann Beattie read this story aloud at: <a href="http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/winter-2010/find-and-replace" target="_blank">http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/winter-2010/find-and-replace</a>.)<br />
<br />
The reviewers don’t rave much. And the New Yorker has stopped publishing her stories. The New York Times Book Review of the New Yorker stories volume said that the short story is a marginalized form and thus Ann Beattie is a marginalized author. Barely a month later the New York Times listed Beattie’s book one of the five best fiction books in their list of Ten Best Books of 2010. <br />
<br />
Here are the last lines of a review by Nathan Heller of Ann Beattie: The New Yorker Stories in Slate (posted Dec. 10, 2010): . . . <br />
</a><br />
<blockquote style="text-align: left;">
This is formally self-conscious work—as readers, we're forced to study how the story's elements and motifs hang together—but it is also an effort to break past the conventions of literary storytelling, to mimic the disorderly, superstitious process of searching for meaning and direction in the brambles of personal experience. What these recent stories manage to convey is the aesthetics of consciousness: the feeling of being a mind in motion in the world.</br>
Today, those quieter, more subjective portraits have replaced generation-channeling as Beattie's virtuosic skill—in part because the boomer generation has, at this point, been channeled as broadly as the BBC. What's startling in The New Yorker Stories isn't how her work has fallen behind the times. It's how persistently she's kept ahead—first using fiction to bring legibility and emotional direction to a society that needed both, and then, when that goal lost its urgency, turning her attention to interior life and formal innovation on the page. More than perhaps any writer of her generation, Beattie has remained tuned to the literary needs and intimations of middle-class life. Her latest lesson on the boomer zeitgeist is the most poignant one so far: acknowledgement that, even at the moment when we reach our highest point, the world moves on.</blockquote></br>
<div style="text-align: right;">
Nathan Heller</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
Slate</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
Dec. 10, 2010</div>
</span>Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-67117744156891549802011-03-30T21:02:00.000-07:002011-12-19T15:49:02.317-08:00Upcoming Workshop<img align="left" border="0" height="121" src="http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/2984/dzancdayheader.png" width="200" />Hop in. I'm figuring out right now how we might include you from your home if you don't live in the area and want to work along with us in a six hour workshop to write a story by afternoon you didn't know you'd write in the morning. <br />
<br />
Drop me a note at dan81446@gmail.com if you have questions or want to sign up through me instead of the regular system. <br />
<br />
30 dollars. <br />
<br />
It's a benefit for Dzanc Books. <br />
<br />
Spread the word.<br />
<br />
PhilipPhilip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-55898278966567436882011-03-15T19:11:00.000-07:002011-12-19T15:49:59.642-08:00Japan and the Daydream of Good<img align="left" height="265" src="http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/3140/japanv.png" width="400" />I was watching Japan dying today on MSNBC, and in other news, was so very happy to hear the Right Wing champing at the bit to invade Libya. They were mad at the President for inaction. They never saw a war they couldn't afford, these people who are so worried about "entitlements," health care to the less fortunate, and balancing the budget. When it comes to helping people, including Americans but most obviously people in foreign countries, suddenly the old anal retentiveness sets in and they get that addled look my dog gets when I want him to crap and it's raining. We can't quite think what to do when it comes to helping. We send in 74 guys from the elite Task Force 1 from the Fairfax, VA fire department, with rescue and recovery dogs. We send in some ships with some aid, and some helicopters, but ultimately this “help” says more about our inability to conceive of the size of the disaster. Why don't we invade Japan with help, swarm over the debacle, with tents, water, blankets, food, boatloads of medical personnel, soldiers to clear the debris and rebuild. Send the Army Corps of Engineers. Draft people into service to go help. Draft Glen Beck, I’m sure he’d be willing to serve, and I’d serve right beside him. Are there only 50 brave men and women on the planet to pour water on those melting rods, but an unlimited number to play shoot 'em up in selected small dictatorships and kingdoms we've tolerated for years but that now have us in a bad mood? Isn't intervening in this disaster a more important endeavor than kicking the snot out of another tiny country with overwhelming military force? Isn't there a strong argument that saving Japan from a most horrific ruination is more important? Remember "Right to Life"? Remember "Family Values"? Remember "Christianity"? Remember true heroism? Remember international trade and the stock market? Doesn't Japan right now present us with a 21st century opportunity for a new model of global leadership, one that doesn’t include killing people? If we can even contemplate another war, why can't we motivate ourselves to save lives and help an ally with fervor equal to or greater than bombing and shooting? This is our chance to unHiroshima our Karma and square ourselves with modern history. Here's a chance to do something we can all agree on with that untouchable defense budget; here's a chance to do combat with global disaster. We need to start getting good at it, because the disasters are getting bigger and I’m almost certain our national lucky days are numbered. Why can't just once we be an overwhelming force for humanity and the Greater Good like we think we are in our dreams?Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-51057075814526190992011-02-15T20:27:00.000-08:002011-12-19T15:51:07.248-08:00Ann Beattie's New Yorker short stories, collected in a single volume<img align="left" height="320" src="http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/747/newyorkerstories360.jpg" width="213" />In her celebrated new collection Ann Beattie: The New Yorker Stories, I went searching for a couple of stories in particular. In my classes and my own mythology about the past, I thought I remembered that Beattie had begun scoring The New Yorker in the early seventies. Turns out her first one was in the April 8, 1974 issue. I once asked her, this was ten years ago or so, what her favorite story (of her own) was. John Updike had fairly recently edited Best American Short Stories of the Century, and had included in that celebrated volume her story “Janus,” which was in the 1986 Best American Short Stories. And while that selection worked well in Updike’s overall editorial scheme, I had an opinion what her very best story was (don’t we all?) and was curious to see what the master herself would deem her best. As I say, this is old information and has probably changed by now, but she said “The Burning House” was her favorite, and I’ve said on this blog that my traditional favorite is a little beauty titled “Waiting.” The pieces in Beattie’s collection of New Yorker stories are arranged in chronological order, from the April 8, ’74 story "A Platonic Relationship" forward to “The Confidence Decoy” in November of ’06 (she's continued to place stories there since then, but that's the span of this new collection). Surveying the table of contents, what pleasure I got from finding “The Burning House” and “Waiting” back to back, both having appeared in The New Yorker (a week apart) in June of ’79. It was back in the days when Beattie led a school of writing called Minimalism, and two more muscular samples of minimalism would be hard to find. Her famous first person present tense is right there in the first sentence of “The Burning House”: “Freddy Fox is in the kitchen with me.” Using present tense like that, the reader can never see anything coming. There is no anticipating from accumulated evidence. One thing after another happens. Our point of view character is stoned by the bottom of the second page and so is dicey even reporting what we need to know as it happens. A family friend, J.D., is late for the dinner gathering. Our narrator is washing dishes at the sink when J.D. pops up in the kitchen window right over the sink – he’s wearing a goat-head mask and scares crap out of her. It’s two paragraphs later before we learn that she cut her hand when she reacted. It is a characteristic of the social events at this house that her husband’s friends, all male, make the scene, never any other women, and a lot of the interaction in the story is stuff she hears from the kitchen while the men are shooting the shit in the living room. Freddy Fox, her husband’s gay half brother, stays in the kitchen with her. They all seem to be early thirty somethings. They’ve known each other, all these friends, and of course the half brother, many years and history plays through the conversations. Our narrator is lonely; her husband controls most of what goes on. Because of present tense, even though there’s access to the interiority of our narrator, we only feel the relationship of the husband and wife in the story is shaky, we don’t know it. But in bed that night they have a conversation and the reality of the dismal, deteriorating marriage they have rolls over them and us all at once in the last lines.<br />
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In creative writing, teaching dialogue, we try to show students how when people talk the communication is barely communication at all. In “The Burning House,” all of the conversation is loaded with allusions to things we the readers know little about except what we can glean from their literal statements. And two conversations at once are going on, Freddy and our narrator in the kitchen, Frank Wayne, her husband, and his several pals in the living room. The story is finely tuned to spring its trap in the last four lines and suddenly fly open.<br />
<br />
A week later she published “Waiting” in The New Yorker, an entirely different story but using the same superstructure and vector. You have only to read the first line to know you’re in for it again: “’It’s beautiful,’ the woman says. ‘How did you come by this?’ She wiggles her finger in the mousehole.” So deliciously oblique a beginning, so tantalizing the middle. There is an emotional load riding in the sentences, a momentum that's like being hurled forward while blindfolded. In present tense we can’t see the end coming. Suddenly it’s there with that satisfying minimalist one line culmination, pop.Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-65539339217735855122010-11-11T13:27:00.000-08:002011-12-19T15:52:53.244-08:00Carol Frost reads from her new book Honeycomb this coming Tuesday, 6 PM, Galloway Room on the Rollins CampusListen, Carol Frost's new book Honeycomb is out, and on Tuesday, this coming one, 11/16, in the Galloway Room on the Rollins campus, at 6 PM, Carol will read. Come out and let's celebrate this fabulous poet who has come to Central Florida to direct Winter with the Writers, do her good work and teach us all. I first met Carol at Bread Loaf in 1991. That was many Carol Frost books ago, and she's only getting better.<br />
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See you soon, I hope.<br />
<br />
PhilipPhilip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-68599170173047442032010-10-13T16:44:00.000-07:002013-06-05T13:42:23.439-07:00More Dylan: Speaking of Blasts from the PastHerb Budden, my great old friend since seventh grade, rings in on Dylan:<br />
<br />
I have been trying to remember the details of my first Dylan concert, in 1965. There were others I'd been to, but this is the one & only in my estimation. Thank goodness for Google...I found the playlist and the exact date for the concert friend Craig and I saw at the Arie Crown in Chicago that year. Here it is:<br />
<br />
Bob Dylan <br />
McCormick Place <br />
Arie Crown Theater - Chicago, Illinois <br />
November 26, 1965 <br />
<br />
<blockquote>
She Belongs to Me <br />
<br />
To Ramona <br />
<br />
Gates of Eden <br />
<br />
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue <br />
<br />
Desolation Row <br />
<br />
Love Minus Zero/No Limit <br />
<br />
Mr. Tambourine Man <br />
<br />
Tombstone Blues <br />
<br />
I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) <br />
<br />
Baby Let Me Follow You Down <br />
<br />
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues <br />
<br />
Ballad of a Thin Man <br />
<br />
Positively 4th Street<br />
<br />
Like a Rolling Stone</blockquote>
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Forty-five years this Thanksgiving. We went up from Champaign on the train. I have no recollection of staying anywhere, or even how we got to McCormick Place. On a side note, I was there at the Arie Crown this past spring--the first time I'd been there since . . . . It's been refurbished, obviously, but the bones are the same.<br />
<br />
At the concert we sat main floor, ramrod straight in what were possibly reserved seats, like at a symphony, and applauded politely after each song. In those days, before real pandemonium overtook rock concerts (just four years later in May 1969 we saw Hendrix at the Fairgrounds--Led Zeppelin was the warmup--everything was way, way different). I believe in '65 there was still a controversy going on about Dylan's "going electric," and we wondered if there would be boos. There weren't.<br />
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I wish I could remember more about the evening except to recall thinking how cool he behaved & looked & how he never said a word between songs. I don't know if the set list was played through or if there was a break.<br />
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All I know is that a couple of years ago . . . I made my way to the Morgan Library in NY and felt the hair on the back of my head stand up when, while looking at Dylan's rather prosaic Mead notebooks under glass, I saw in his handwriting the words "How does it feel, to be on your own..." among other scribblings & crossouts.<br />
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Listening to him today on XM and reading Chronicles, I know I'd have the letdown-- if I could meet him in person-- that I have had on meeting the few celebs I have in the past.<br />
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He's just a man, and on virtually most counts, an ordinary primate like the rest of us. BUT. The work overtakes the man.<br />
<br />
Listen again to any song on the above set list to have it confirmed, esp. Baby Blue and Tom Thumb's Blues.Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-957720453833964079.post-55854820157404180032010-10-12T09:04:00.000-07:002013-06-05T13:42:09.647-07:00Bob Dylan for the first time<img align="left" height="313" src="http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/8451/dylanorlando.jpg" width="400" />On 10/10/10 evening Susan and I trundled out to the University of Central Florida arena to see Bob Dylan. I thought I should see him since a scene from a 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue concert is central to a story of mine, "Lowell and the Rolling Thunder." I was a follower of Dylan and Baez long, long, long ago, and saw with commentary the scene I describe in the story in the Scorsese film "No Direction Home." Susan had seen Dylan three times over the years, in different stages of his life. <br />
<br />
I'm ashamed to admit that after 45 years of playing the guitar (capitalizing on 1963 lessons at the Green Street Y in Champaign), the one song I can play clear through is "Don't Think Twice," a favorite song of all time for me even now. I'm more ashamed to admit that the concert had just kicked off on Sunday, and we were well into the second song, and I leaned down from my binoculars to ask Susan what song was playing. I couldn't catch the melody, I couldn't come close to catching the words. THAT was the song Dylan was singing! That made me laugh, and then I settled in to listening and did catch a phrase or two. I'm damned in fact if he didn't actually end it on a verse that isn't the published end of the song, but that's sort of how it went, not like anything you'd imagine but wondrous nevertheless if you happen to live in the past as intensely as I do.<br />
<br />
Dylan wore a flat brimmed brilliant white hat, a white shirt with a string tie, as I recall, and a blue blazer with larger than you'd expect gold buttons, matching blue pants with a wide sparkly gold stripe down the side, quite prominent at first because he stood sideways to the audience playing the keyboard for his first song. For "Don't Think Twice" he stood face-on with his guitar. At the keyboard, stage lights, reddish, shined from below and his skin was red brown. Facing the audience at the microphone, brilliant white light forced his eyes to slits. His expression was intense and serious while he was deep in a song but he smiled between songs and during bridges, smiled with his mouth though in his almost closed eyes the expression was plain and flat and giving nothing. The famous harmonica bracket never appeared. Instead, on those songs he let the band handle the guitar and he held in his hand a special mic and his harmonica, and I think I loved those songs the most because there was great familiarity in Dylan's distinctive harmonica riffs. Clearly he'd been standing there all his life, and, apart from my aging ears, one reason I didn't quite pick up "Don't Think Twice" initially was that vocally he wrestles with his best known melodies and reinvents the songs spontaneously. The band was great staying right with him as he went on his way. <br />
<br />
Dylan doesn't say much from the stage. We could say he lets the music speak for itself -- nah, that's not it either. Instead of performing, he's up there evoking himself through all the years, like an abstract painting that refuses to speak in plain language because there's not much else to say but maybe it will remind us of something. That tall shadow on the wall behind, see it? It put me in mind of the icon of Don Quixote in the Sixties when "Man of La Mancha" was playing everywhere and Quixote was an image of naive idealism and a heroic fantasy.<br />
<br />
You've probably seen Bob Dylan in concert. For me it was long awaited. The past, all of those years, was present in the giant arena. Dylan's connection to youth isn't gone, or maybe it was the youth who treasure music including musical history who were there, but it was a great blend of people. As you can see by the picture above, taken with my lame little phone camera, I needed the binoculars. I wanted everyone to have them, because the view was beautiful and the sound was huge and together they hit me with great force in my chest. I wanted my friends from back then to be with me, and I wanted that me to come again and hang out a while. The past is present at a Dylan concert. We can't go back except maybe just a little, and when the music takes off, something very big I can only call (with reverence) the past comes up the tunnel to meet us half-way.<br />
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</div>
Philip Deaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08332104632865537879noreply@blogger.com3