I Picture

I picture a small apartment, in a hundred-year-old building, with architectural features they wouldn't bother with today. Arches and the like. One bedroom. The walls thick with paint. A smell that can’t be eliminated or replicated. And it got hollower, emptier toward the end. It wasn't just the stuff she sold. Everything, the stuff, was useless, pointless, insignificant. It was, then, just her and those walls. And the bottle.

She wasn’t working. Couldn’t. A friend, a former lover, was paying the rent now. The things she sold paid for the booze and boxes of organic rice. And then there was no point in the rice. All she needed was the bottle and a place to drink it alone.

She would have fits of energy that sent her out into the streets. At first it was invigorating, inspiring, all that life. It quickly became too much. She stumbled. The sights, the sounds, the people swam around her. Scared that she’d have to hide in an alcove, lying on the concrete until it passed, something passed, she’d make her way back to the apartment, those soft walls, her hollow home.

And then she didn’t go out anymore. She didn’t get up anymore. Her body gave up, just as she had.

I picture a sunny summer morning, the wind tossing the boat as it idles. The boat’s passengers, including the rented captain, stand with their legs apart for balance. Her mother cannot pour the ashes. She can barely see through her tears, but at least her sobbing has subsided.

The others are surprisingly sad. They think of how they thought they knew her, but they didn’t. They think about how the rest of the day would feel after starting it this way. They want to think that she is somewhere better, somewhere she can be as beautiful as she was. Somewhere she is rewarded for all of her goodness.

The former lover pours the ashes slowly and the others toss sunflowers that float, dip, and dive, in the water. They hoped that she was on to something better. They wondered why her mother was the only one here to have known her more than five years. Would it be like this for them? Where were the other lovers? Everyone else? Why was she this alone? Would they be this alone? Could they still be as beautiful, as loved as she was. As loving as she was. She was.

I picture the old lover, her proclaimed first love, a half a country away. He doesn't know. He still thinks of her fondly, thinks of her ‘out there’, living her life. He is sure that someday their paths will cross again. He thinks that there connection is strong, though they haven’t spoke in years. Her influence still remains over him. The memories of their volatile years together, vital, formative years, are still strong.

He loves another. His life is good, comfortable, complete. And when he thinks of her, he has no idea what has become of her. He has no idea that a part of him has died.

(for Lo)

The Meaning of My Library

I have never counted the books in my personal library. Indeed, the total figure grew within the last few weeks after the library's book sale. I'm nervous, though, that the number of unread outnumber the read.

Maybe this isn't all bad. If I had read them all, where would be the fun of browsing my library for the next book to read? An argument could be made for disposing of all books already read. Save those one might want to return to for reference.

A personal library, though, is so much more than a grouping of books either read or unread. The books are there to tell the observer something about the library's owner. Even if that observer is the owner. I don't get many observers down to my basement office where most of my library is confined, but I still enjoy looking over my books. The various titles, the colored spines, remind me not only of the stories within, but also of the person I was at the time. Various bits of my collection remind me of who I was an who I think I am.

Not my library. You can tell by the Ken Follett and the Janet Evanovich.

To see on my shelf Updike's The Afterlife, I remember the day of waiting for jury duty. To see Celine's Journey to the End of the Night, I'm reminded of two distinct points in my life when I read the novel. The first time makes me recall an early morning after a late night, drinking coffee downtown watching the business world start up its day.  The second time, I was well ensconced in that business world. Or McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, devoured while laying on the couch of my current home.

When visiting someone's house, I am drawn to the books on their shelves. Yes, I am judging them by what they've chosen to put on display. The books there are meant to be a representation of the owner. And if there is a disregard for which books are on the shelves for public display, that tells me something (disappointing) too.

In an article, "Shelf Life", in last week's New Yorker, James Wood explores the meaning and meaninglessness of our libraries. He sums up the sentiment thus:

Libraries are always paradoxical: they are as personal as the collector, and at the same time are an ideal statement of knowledge that is impersonal, because it is universal, abstract, and so much larger than an individual life.

The books on my shelf mean something to me not only because they represent me to myself, but because they represent me to the observer as well. And as personal as the identity that is created can be, it is in the universal that it finds meaning. But, as Wood asks,"Isn't a private library simply a universal legacy pretending to be an individual one?"

A library is a showcase and I've known more than one person who has used bookshelves to demonstrate superiority. Some would likely say I'm guilty of the same. The trashy novels are relegated to a bookshelf in the guest room.

Where, though, does this universality go when all of these titles are contained in a small piece of electronic hardware? Do I care about the representation they form? I would say they mean significantly less.

When books are commoditized, stripped of their physical presence, their abstract value is reduced. They have no presence. They are experiential only. We have the pleasure of reading and the meaning found in the words, but those e-ink letters don't represent me in the same way a book, those same words on paper and bound between covers, does. The electronic list of titles, browsed with a push of a button, does not please me, does not force recall of memories and desire, as much as does a simple glance at my shelves.

The materialism of it is something that probably gives many book owners/collectors worry. There are many books on my shelves that I will never open again. But still they are there to tell me something. They are there, though, to give me pleasure, to help me recall the stories within and the stories of my own life when I read the book. And it real is this pleasure that matters. It is this pleasure that gives my library meaning.

Book Review: Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë 

I had always lumped Jane Eyre in with the books of Jane Austen. These are important works in the canon of English-language literature, but I didn’t figure that I would find too much appealing about them. I would get to them at some point. With a free version of this book for my Kindle, I finally decided it was time.

I chose Jane Eyre primarily because of the previews I’d seen for the movie version released this year. It looked much more dramatic than I would’ve imagined. And I was impressed with the book right away. It felt very comfortable, as if I’d read these pages before. The tale of an orphan left to live with a family that treats her horribly then sends her away to a boarding school where she is also treated horribly before becoming a governess.  I could see Henry James and Anna Kavan in the set up. When, in the first section, Jane is locked up in the red room and believes she is visited by the home’s deceased master, the story takes on a bit of added depth and mystery. It also tells us that Jane is something different. She is susceptible to certain flourishes. And when she finally rails at her mistress before being sent away, we get a glimpse of the will--often irrational--that will guide her later in the novel.

The language of the novel is both difficult and beautiful. While I enjoy the opportunity to ingest syntax that is twisted, words in odd order, atypical word choice, it is difficult to know if this is the work of the age of the novel or the work of the author. I can also imagine that the language could also be a hindrance for someone attempting the novel who is without an appreciation of the particular texture of the text.

When the romance finally arrives in the novel, we are well prepared for the importance Jane places on everything. She is not one to feel an emotion only slightly. But at the novel’s most dramatic moments, she confounds. She does not act as expected. And while this provides purposeful twists, it can frustrate the reader. I found myself speaking out loud to Jane at these moments, shouting the direction she obviously needs.

The novel also suffers from--like many novels--an Act IV lag. She must go through some experiences that should prepare her for the novel’s conclusion. It is, though, a divergence from the central plot line. New characters appear, a new existence established. And all I wanted was to return to the course we were on previously.

I will not offer here any social critique. I don’t think I could properly determine what Bronte is saying about the convention of marriage, or the role of women, or even the distinction of the social classes. She is certainly examining these issues, revealing them, but I can’t say that she was looking to shatter convention or even make a real statement about these issues.

Jane Eyre is compelling in unexpected ways, and worth recommending to those whom think they wouldn’t have an interest.

An Economic Worse-Case Scenario

The other day, a man asked me where I thought the economy was heading. I'd made the mistake of mentioning that I work in finance (it's easier than launching into the long list of what I really do). This man, this stranger, began speaking to me as I sat on one of my writing mornings, despite the earbuds in my ears, the moving pen. He said he was surprised to see someone writing by hand in a journal. "A diary", he called it. So, this bit of small talk led suddenly to the economy. My answer for him? I told him I'm more frightened now than I was six months ago.

I can easily envision a future where things get worse for most Americans, where wealth is harder to attain for most people. Jobs don't come back. At least until workers are so desperate for income that they're willing to accept pay at nearly the same depressed levels as Mexico or Vietnam. Prices for staples continue to rise, squeezing out spending for discretionary items. Government slashes so-called entitlement programs, all sorts of public assistance. State and local governments are in trouble. Basic services disappear. I can envision towns that can't fix roads, that can't ensure public safety. Lawlessness and decay. The middle class disappears, with some ascending to the rich classes and the others falling behind. The housing situation only gets worse. The suburbs drain of life. I can see things getting difficult. (There's a story somewhere in this worse-case scenario.)

The reason for his scenario is politics. All of this nonsensical grandstanding. No one has the will to take a position unless it is opposition to the other side. Real work needs to be done. But any attempt to speed up a flagging recovery has devolved into a fight over the deficit and the debt ceiling. This argument has only made things worse. Everything things that they benefit from holding some righteous position, forgetting that the real work of politics is the crafting of compromise. If we wanted the most radical to govern we would let everything be decided by popular vote.

This man put the whole stalled recovery down to the Administration's energy policy. He was in energy. While he might benefit, it's not like opening up development--drilling--would lower fuel prices or make companies feel like spending money or hiring. And it isn't likely to make the consumer feel like suddenly spending money. He went on to use the words "environmentalists" and "socialism." It was time for me to leave.

The truth is that I'm frightened. I feel like squirrelling away every penny. I don't know that things are likely to turn negative again, but I think that it's more likely today. And in my mind I'm picturing dusty streets, dead grass and hollow, empty buildings.

Keeping the Pen on the Paper

Sometimes the writing comes easily. Most of the time, in fact. With the pen in my hand, the facts and details seem to come right out of the ink. Not always the right word, but that's a discussion for another time. And then there are times when you need a particular scene, to serve a particular purpose.

Right now, I need a fight scene between my protagonists. This is late in the novel and so far we've seen how they are disconnected from each other, off in their individual struggles. But we haven't seen them really clash, not in a significant way. I need to show that they may be close to the end of their marriage than they believed when the novel began.

What, then, do they argue about? What would be so severe that it might show that maybe they shouldn't really be together? I don't want to go so far as to justify their later actions with this blow out. But it can't just be an argument about the house or money. It needs to demonstrate that Darren doubts Nicole's integrity.

I would like it to center around their son, Hunter. They both spend a surprising amount of time not thinking about the boy through the course of this thing. I'd like to show that they do take his upbringing seriously. And somehow I need to get around to the notion of his doubt of her.

Here, though, I should have faith in the writing. Over-thinking, over-planning, can debilitate. A vague notion of where I'm going and a vague objective should be all I need. Put the pen to the paper and see where it goes.

Writing a Philosophical Novel

I hadn't realized until this week that I am writing a philosophical novel. I thought of it as contemplative, meditative, psychological. A wandering quest novel. But, more than any of these, I believe now it is philosophical. Without a doubt, morality is at the center of the novel. Darren and Nicole are both having existential crises, but the book's root is in the question of morals.

Darren believes he has always had a strong moral sense. Some of this may be his nature, but in his adult life it comes out of his father's actions. Of course, one doesn't have morality without responsibility and guilt. Indeed, this is a key question. How does one live with a subjective morality without the guilt? He doesn't understand how his friend can commit what he sees as an immoral act with its accompanying guilt. The lines blur for Darren. What is wrong becomes more subjective. His experiment in the end is to see if he can live with the guilt of his actions. If guilt is part of the immoral act. He is held frozen by the prospect of the freedoms provided when guilt is absent. If he can commit the immoral act, the faithless act, without being held captive by his own guilt, then his future opens up. His morality, his sense of responsibility has locked him into his course in life. One should question if he can return, not only to his wife, but to his work as well. His work in law, in the area of contracts in particular, is rooted in his sense of moral justice. With that center gone, his work will lack meaning.

There is also the question of religion in the novel. Its blows within the text are glancing (and more of a concern for Nicole than Darren), but one cannot discuss morality without at least the undiscussed notion of Christianity. That Darren and Nicole are not religious, are lacking faith, opens them up to the moral questioning we witness. Not that faith, by itself, would wipe away their doubts about the righteousness in morality. But maybe some of Nicole's despair is 'the sickness unto death'.

Nihilism, I think, is also at play in the novel. Darren encounters people along the way who reject the standards by which we live, judge. He sees this as narcissism. An excuse to live by one's independent standards in rejection of one's inherent moral responsibility to others. This moral order is also part of his foundation, and in the end this might be more of a determining factor for him than any sort of inherent right or wrong.

I don't know that I can see Nicole's struggles in the same terms. She lost her notion of morality in her youth. Her feelings toward Darren are not guided by morals. She does not wonder whether her actions are right or wrong. Things for Nicole are more personal, less abstract. More existential and metaphysical. She does have trouble in her perception of the world. She seems to know that she sees the world differently, experiences the world differently. She feels its imposition. This part of what separates her from those around her. This difference.

But her real problem is the sort of void she feels within. There is a hole that, in her twenties, she seeks to fill with drugs and sex, experience. Later she chooses marriage and child-rearing to fill the void. And we come across her she is again realizing her dissatisfaction. Her thinking of life alone is not the end. It is not what she's after. Its a sort of displacement. A way of trying to fill the void with fantasy, another life. The internet itself is part of this alternate existence. It has not taken over her real life. Her cleaning is a way to constantly order her life, seeking to control and contain it. As much as possible. But life is an imposition. The outside world, the suburban city blocks, even the houses and lawns of the neighborhood, are part of an externally imposed order. What philosophical school of thought all of this falls under, I'm not sure.

Of course, some of my favorite novels are philosophical novels. I didn't set out to write one, though. And I certainly don't think I'm trying to forward some sort of treatise. The realization, though, has given me another way to look at what is happening within the pages of text.

Shiverfix: Part II

The Swoon thing was a necessary excursion and it took some time afterward before David and I were playing together again.


Shiverfix in leather, 1997

In 1997, we were reworking old songs, recording demos, and trying to find musicians to fill the lineup. I started playing the guitar full time and we recruited another bassist, Aaron. We recorded with the drum machine. We tried out drummers. There was one who seemed to get what we were doing and we thought it might work out. But then he never came back for his drums. We finally had to call him and threaten to throw them out before he picked them up.

Here's how "Shattered" sounded in 1997:

After some time without progress, Aaron also never came back.

Grace finally came to the newly-dubbed Shiverfix in 1999 in the name of Travis, a loud and loose drummer. He was what we’d looked for for years, quickly learning and improving on the programmed drums, freeing us up to jam, practice harder, and write new songs.



Reworking lyrics in our (unheated) rehearsal space, 1999

As much as David and I wanted to be in control of the music, to direct the sound of the band, neither of us really wanted to sit down and program drums for a new song. With a drummer in tune to what we were after, songs came together, without that programming step. We were able to play through again and again tricky changes, to test out extending or shortening bits, or otherwise change things up.

The rooftop studio


With a live drummer we were determined to lay down some definitive recordings of the songs in the Shiverfix library dating nearly all the way back to its inception. In a rooftop rehearsal space north of Coors Field, brick walls dampened with blankets and quilts, space heaters tripping the breaker, we recorded a set of the old songs under the title The Hardest Trick and another set of new songs called Such is Such and Such.

Here's "Killing Me" from "The Hardest Trick":

From "Such is Such and Such", this is "Miss You Liar":

It was in the late summer of 2001, with another recruited bassist, that Shiverfix finally began to play live. Over ten years since that first disaster of a show, David and I were finally out there, doing our thing, playing Lion’s Lair, Seven South, and even the Iliff Park Saloon. We had songs played on Radio 1190. We did shows with The Lavellas, Sickness, and others.

Shiverfix, live at SevenSouth, 2001

We were not the same people we had been in the early nineties. We were no longer reckless and young. We were adults trying to live adult lives. Our tolerance for late nights was limited. As it was for bandmates with constant excuses.

Sometime the next year, not everyone was making it to rehearsal as planned and Shiverfix stumbled and fell for the last time. We had been getting better, our songwriting maturing. I was bringing in songs I’d written and played acoustically and David layered on heavier guitar, dreamy guitar maybe. We were enjoying what we were doing.

Here's a rehearsal recording as we worked out a new song, "Loaner":




Maybe we never should have stopped. Even if it meant we were on our own again, doing it all ourselves. Maybe we should have kept writing the music we wanted to listen to.

We played together again in a band called Vellocet, with me returning to bass, in 2004-2005. But it wasn’t the same. We wrote well together, but with a different singer, another songwriter, it just wasn’t Shiverfix.

Still, I think about getting the band back together, of working with David on new songs. My mind wanders with thoughts of how we might do this or that, what David would bring to one of my songs, how we would work out a tricky transition. Now that we don’t even have to think about “making it” and the drum machine isn’t an impediment to making good music, maybe it would be worth it to try again.

Shiverfix: Part I

In the end Shiverfix was my band. Through all of the others, this was where my heart was.

It began as far back as 1988 or '89, when my collaborator and best friend David Bliss and I recorded a couple of songs in a small apartment with any one around who was available to play an instrument. David had been taking guitar lessons, blues-oriented, in-the box stuff, while I'd been writing some poetry and imagined becoming a singer, a frontman in the vein of Michael Hutchence or Jim Morrison. We weren't after a certain style, didn't have any real goals. We had our influences (The Cure, Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, etc.) and we hoped they would find their way into the music.

From those first two songs, horrible-sounding songs, recorded in an apartment in Aurora, Colorado, we went to other apartments to record more songs. The drum machine always ticking away, unwavering, in each. Tryin the whole time to recruit our friends into playing with us. Even if they had no muscial experience. This paid off when Lori joined us to play bass.

Unloading gear in the alley at 15th and Blake

By 1990, we were rehearsing in a warehouse at 15th and Blake in Denver, back when the area was full of decrepit buildings and viaducts. The warehouse had been an old sporting goods store and some other sort of retailer before that, and it served as the transient home to an eclectic group of musicians, artists, and other outcasts. Under the name Satori, our rehearsals, with the addition of Becky as our drummer, often seen smacking the snare with a stick in one hand and taking a pull on a cigarette with the other, took place in a large open area. People would walk through, stop for a while to watch, move on. It was like playing in a half-lit store, while people milled about. Except elsewhere in the place people were doing drugs, watching TV, or screwing. It wasn't always conducive to experimentation, to the open innovation that a group of nervous, still-learning, musicians needed. It also forced any personal or personnel issues onto display.

How the warehouse at 15th and Blake appears today (via Google Street View)


The viaduct across the street, how it appeared in 1987 (via denverphotoarchives.com)

Satori played one live gig at the warehouse before the residents got evicted for having open fires during a show. I was twenty, frightened, and lousy. The band before us had broken a hole in the makeshift stage which I nearly fell in. The drums were on a riser behind us, spearated by a partition that more or less prevented them from being heard. Not the best first show. And then Satori was done. Tensions had been high, and without a place to rehearse, the band dissolved.

Here's a raw demo recorded then of a song called "Shattered":


Of course we couldn't stay apart for long and soon, with Becky replaced by the drum machine, we went back to recording in apartments. We wrote better songs, songs we were proud of, and tried out drummers. Many of the songs from this period would become staples for David and I through the years. Eventually, a mmove to Seattle was debated. This was 1991. Everything good was coming out of Seattle. David moved. Lori left to join St. Lucy Altarpiece. I did nothing. Until David moved back to Denver.

Here's a song from that era,"History's Pedestal":

By the end of '92, David and I found brothers John and Guido to play bass and drums and went by the name Scratch. It came from too much time spent at Calvin’s playing pool. We were certainly after something more rock and raw, something that felt like the late nights and the abandon with which we were living then. Because we worked evenings and stayed out late, rehearsals were usually held mornings in the basement of a house at 6th and Sheridan. The tales of the previous night’s exploits were often too much for the good Catholic brothers.

A Scratch-era version of "Flower Dress":

The gigs didn’t come. Despite what we thought were good songs, a good amount of creativity, nothing panned out. David and I were really more interested in living a rock and roll lifestyle than doing the hard work required to get gigs and really make a go of it.

Eventually, one of the brothers got someone pregnant and Scratch came to an end. Then it was just me and David, and that damn drum machine again.

We moved into an old storefront at the corner of 5th and Santa Fe on Cinqo de Mayo 1993. For years we had struggled finding a place to play. You couldn’t have a drummer if you didn’t have a place to put him. You can get away with recording guitars and bass at low volumes in apartments, but the volumes necessary to play with a drummer required dedicated space. Still, though, drummers were hard to come by. I played bass on some recordings, but still we didn’t get anywhere.

In the fall of that year I bumped into two members of the then defunct St. Lucy Altarpiece on the bus. In just a few minutes’ conversation it was agreed that I would come over to play bass with them, to see if I would play in a new band they were putting together. The level of frustration with the lack of progress with the band was high. The decision to leave and join Swoon was easy.

In some ways, David and I cared about the music more than we cared about “making it.” And that was what was so frustrating. To put so much emotion and care into the music and know what we were the only ones enjoying it was demoralizing. To play in a new band, to have a secondary position, was liberating. I could do something different. I could be creative. I could finally play some live shows.

Until Swoon gave me the boot in early 1995.

Shiverfix: Part II coming next week.

Revising Is Less Fun Than Writing

I get the importance of revision and I enjoy the shaping and reshaping, the correcting and embellishing. In no way, though, is it as fun as pure writing, as sitting down at the blank page and letting the writing come.

This week, during my revision work on Another Blade of Grass, I need to add a scene. I needed to dip back into Darren adolescence to lay the ground work for particular attitudes he portrays in the novel's present. And as I began writing, the world around me disappeared and I was sucked in. The words came. I discovered new things. Darren's eyes are hazel. I didn't know that before this week.

It happened again when I wrote an additional scene for one of Nicole's chapters. I needed to go back and establish the strength of her first love. We needed to see them in a way that was more detailed, more illustrative than just seeing her thinking about or remembering how she felt. Then, in creating that scene, winter outside, the two of them holed up in their small apartment devouring poetry, the right words came. Without real conscious effort came the terms to describe the strength of that love and why it still has an effect on her. This probably never would have happened if I were just scrawling with my blue pen in the manuscript's margins. It came from writing, from making my way down the blank page.

It is the creative process, the "creation", that makes me feel like myself. Revising, by itself, leaves me feeling out of sorts. Revision is simply not as fun as pure writing. I have much more of it to do, though. As long as I can mix in this sort of blank-page writing, it will seem less like work.

What Happens When

This morning, as I was leaving for work, giving everyone a kiss, my four-year-old boy was in his usual spot. My spot in the bed. Curious George on the TV. I kissed him hard on the forehead, shook his little torso with my hand, and told him to have a good day. I had turned and was headed out of the room when he spoke.

"Daddy, what happens when you wipe away kisses?"

I looked at him and smiled. "They still count," I said.

He smiled.

I go back to him, kiss him on the side of his head. Not too wet this time.

His smile grows.

Rejection Collection Catch-Up

It's bad enough finding that self-addressed envelope in the mailbox, but now with electronic submissions, I get to be rejected by email too. They keep coming and coming. It means I have to find new markets and toss the stories back out into the world. And now I'll share them with you. Let you share in my rejection. Take some of the sting away.

The first of this group is from the Sewanee Review, rejecting my story "Resting" back in February. I like the third-person reference to the editor here, pretending that he read it and the lackey is only sending you the rejection slip.

Alaska Quarterly Review adds a personal touch by at least touching pen to paper and saying "many thanks" in this rejection of "This Is What He Does" from February.

Extra credit goes to the Georgia Review for using colored paper in the above rejection for "A White Farmhouse" in April.

Apparently my story "Riverside" didn't suit the needs of The Chattahoochee Review, according to this rejection sent in March of this year. But I will feel free to submit again in the future.

I wonder here if the push for me to purchase a subscription, or at least back issues, is to tell me that my story "Deeann" was in no way right for Apalachee Review.

And then the electronic ones. Fugue emailed this nice, simple rejection of "Those Afternoons" back in February.

In March, Indiana Review rejected "Coyote in the Valley" and sent this kind email.

And finally, I received this notice of rejection from Sycamore Review in April for "Mechanisms."

In some way, the electronic rejections seem more kind. You can at least imagine someone sat down, typed this out, and hit send. It might not be true, but the rejection mill is less obvious than when they come as heavily copied, hapazardly cut slips of paper stuffed back into my own envelope.

But now, I have to get myself together and package up another bunch of submissions and get them out the door. And try not to take it all personally, right?

About

I am a writer.

Effectively unpublished. An MFA from Colorado State University. Working on a novel, trying to get an agent interested in another. Trying to find homes for a dozen or so short stories. Published only in my undergrad journal. Plus a piece of journalism in a trade magazine. Trying to write everyday.

I am a professional.

Doing financial planning and analysis. Analyzing results, putting together forecasts. What happened and what’s going to happen. An MBA from the University of Colorado. I read the WSJ, Business Week, Harvard Business Review. I actually care about this stuff. I am a career man, trying to do my best, trying to get ahead.

I am a father.

Three beautiful kids, a loving wife. Want to do my best by them. Offer them all I can. It’s exhausting. Time and energy consuming. Leaving time for little else.

I used to be a musician.

Not so much anymore. Played in bands. Fronted bands. Even played in coffeehouses, just me and my guitar. Not a lot of time of time for it these days. Pick up the guitar once in a while. Think of writing and recording again.

satoriworks is about all of this.

Since 2004. Blogging without focus. From writing and books to business and economics. Personal book reviews. Updates on current writing projects and the rejections slips flowing back in. And it is about doing all of this. Trying to be all of this.

Goon Squad Wins Pulitzer

Last week, Jennifer Egan won the 2011 fiction Pulitzer for A Visit from the Goon Squad. Does this mean I should quit bad-mouthing her second novel Look at Me? Seriously, I didn't like it. But she has received quite a lot of praise for her novel The Keep as well as Goon Squad. The Keep is in my reading queue currently (actually, the audiobook is my exercising MP3 player, but it isn't getting a lot of use these days). So, I'd better add another one to my list.

I will definitely have to read Goon Squad, but it got me thinking about what other Pulitzer winners I have yet to read. Below is the list of fiction winners since 1990--the ones in bold I have actually read:

2010 - The Tinkers by Paul Harding
2009 - Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
2008 - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
2007 - The Road by Cormac McCarthy
2006 - March by Geraldine Brooks
2005 - Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
2004 - The Known World by Edward P. Jones
2003 - Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
2002 - Empire Falls by Richard Russo
2001 - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
2000 - Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
1999 - The Hours by Michael Cunningham
1998 - American Pastoral by Philip Roth
1997 - Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser
1996 - Independence Day by Richard Ford
1995 - The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
1994 - The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
1993 - A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
1992 - A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
1991 - Rabbit At Rest by John Updike
1990 - The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos

Just six in the last twenty years. I'd better get reading.

Poetry Is Good For Business

In Monday's Wall Street Journal, Baton Rouge Advocate columnist Danny Heitman makes the case for poetry in today's business world. He writes,

Although the brevity of Twitter and fleeting attention spans have been widely bemoaned by business professionals who are trying to get their points across, poets throughout the ages have routinely confronted the challenge of saying a lot—and saying it memorably—in small spaces. Read John Keats, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens, and learn how it's done.

I remember learning the biography of Stevens as a working undergraduate and taking heart that someone could be both a poet and a professional. That the two sides could not only coexist but complement. But poetry isn't only good for teaching people to write briefly and with purpose. People need the imagery and abstraction of poetry as well. They need new ways of seeing things, of understanding the impression the world makes on them, despite all of the noise of the day's activities. A little poetry is good for everyone.

Electronic Guilt

I feel so guilty. My poor neglected network. My month’s old Facebook status. Or my disturbingly irrelevant twitter update. And that aging blog, taunting me like a blank page. And then there’s the reading. Newsletters, blogs, my overloaded instapaper account. All of things I am missing. All of the things I am getting wrong. I know. Believe me, I’ve bookmarked or saved all of those articles on how to leverage a network, to build an online community. And I neglect it all.

It’s not as if not an expressive sort. I have plenty to say and think that most of it is worth being heard. It’s just that it all overwhelms. I am writing a novel, you know. While trying to get an agent for the last one and trying still to get a slew of short stories published. Oh, then there’s a career. And three children and a wife. Never mind the looming bookshelf of unread books towering behind me right now as I write this. The newspapers, the weekly and monthly magazine (Call that Print Guilt, I suppose). I might just have a few demands on my time. In all of this, it feels like there are little more than a few minutes available to dabble online.

I know I’m not alone in this. I am not the only one who fantasizes about it all going away. About being in some Montana cabin or seaside shack without the internet, out of cellphone range. Managing all of the demands on us, especially the electronic ones, will always be a challenge. Somewhere there is a way to manage all of it, or at least to feel more like it is all being managed. I see it done. I am always amazed by the people I know who are busy, kids and careers, but still manage keep up, to post the videos of their kids, to make me interested in reading their updates.

So, I ask your forgiveness. Forgive the missed birthday messages, the “likes” of the video you posted, the retweet of your link to the essay on James Salter. Forgive the silences, the disappearances. Forgive me and I will do my best to not let the guilt push me away. Though it overwhelms, I will try to be a better participant in our new electronic era.

First Draft Finished; On to Revision

Two hundred pages and 40,000 words, the first draft is DONE. Actually, I call it the second draft. The first draft is handwritten in three spiral-bound notebooks. It only gets minor revisions when I type it into the computer, but that complete version is "Draft 2." Now, begins the heavy lifting.

Actually, since it was written with the notion of just getting it written, I think it would be a mistake to just dig in to chapter one. I think the first step is to read the thing as a whole so that I can evaluate its form and structure. I need to sort out what is missing, what might need to be moved around.


The novel was written out of sequence. I wrote all of one character's story before writing the other's. So, I know some work may be necessary to link up the stories properly. And 40,000 words is much too short. I know that in the quick pace of writing the first draft, I skipped some moments of high conflict. I passed over the critical scenes, using exposition instead of taking the reader there to that moment or demonstrating something only described. Many, many pages still remain to be written.


What I have, at least for the character of Darren, the male protagonist, is a quest story. Triggered by a sequence of events, he sets out on a journey. I need to evaluate thre trials he encounters along the way. Oh, he's no hero and the decisions he makes throughout should prove it. Nicole, his wife, is on a sort of quest as well, though her story is less conventional. Her arc is not linear. She is dislodged in time and part of her struggle is in trying to find a now, an identity in which to exist today. I need to make sure her dilemmas, and the scenes used to convey then, are as evident to the reader.


It is said that you should really know everything about your characters. "Take him home and sleep with him," one writing teacher instructed me. Know how he does things, know what concerns him, know him intimately. You want to be sure that you give them the depth they need to make them real to the reader. The issue I have now is in differentiating what it is I know and what I've related in the story. If I know this thing happened in her past, I must remember that the reader doesn't know it until I reveal it. And then, I need to consider when I want to withhold information until some later point in the novel.

The first phase of revision, then, will involve rereading the manuscript in total and creating an outline, complete with notes on ideas for revising each chapter. Only then can I begin thrashing my way through the words on the page.

Wanting to Read David Vann's Caribou Island

It seems rare anymore that I can here an interview with an author and read a review of his book and know then that I really want to read the book. This has happened with David Vann's Caribou Island.

I heard Michael Silverblatt's interview with Vann and was extremely interested. And then the reviews kept coming. I even sat down in my local Tattered Cover and read the first chapter just last week.

The story centers on a man who is obsessed on building a house on an island in already-remote-enough Alaska. From the wife's persepctive, the novel deals with dark subject matter--one of its appeals for me--including suicide. The pain and frustration that exists in the story, the desires and obsessions, and the let-downs, all served to make my very interested in the novel.

My reading list, though, is long. And it feels like a shame to cheat on all the unread books on my shelves to bypass them and go out and buy and then read something brand new. What about all of those classics I still need to read? The recent award winners? The Franzen novel I'm trying to get through now? So many things around me are begging to be read, but it won't stop me from pushing, here, a book that sounds to me worth the time--despite everything else in the queue.

Just some of the reviews of Vann's Caribou Island:
LA Times - "Darkness and loneliness in Alaska, woven into a compulsively readable story."
Telegraph UK - "Caribou Island is as bleak as the shoreline of the brooding Skilak Lake"
Guardian UK - "at his best, Vann is a forceful, potent writer"
SF Gate - "gives us a climax as haunting and realized as any in recent fiction."
NY Times - "gets to places other novels can’t touch."
Seattle Times - "won't do much for Alaska tourism."

New Yorker - "The harsh beauty of Alaska is the star turn in Vann's disturbing novel."

And the excerpt you really should read: Browse Inside Caribou Island: A Novel

Why the Paperback Edition Can Have a Very Different Cover

WSJ's Jeffery Trachtenberg looks at the new cover for the paperback edition of Brando Skyhorse's The Madonna's of Echo Park and the changes from the original hardcover edition. The reasoning for the change, in this case, is very sound. I've often wondered how in the world they have gone with covers so dramatically different than the original. Here, though, the publishers still get it wrong. The original had it's issues, but they've made the paperback even more offputting. Maybe they're hoping to capture the book club set, but they've made me less likely to pick it up.

Here are some other cases where they seemed to get it wrong.

Can you tell which one's were the original hardcover dust jackets and which covers graced the paperback?

The original black and white cover of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone was mysterious, trying to convey the bitter cold of the novel. Yet when the book went to paperback, the aesthetic was lighter, emphasizing the young female lead, complete with hanging laundry in the snow to convey they rugged domesticity. It isn't horrible, but a little light for how heavy the book is.

Alice Munro's dust jacket for the hardcover of A View From Castle Rock uses an aged portrait to convey exactly what the book is: a telling of a family history. And I don't know what exactly the publishers were thinking with the paperback cover. Nothing about the text really identifies it as as a ladies' beach read. I understand that we'll use any technique to catch the chick lit audience, but I don't know that we should go so far as to mislead readers.

I am always prepared for the cover change from hardback to paperback, and I'll always be grateful when the cover remains the same.

McCarthy's Sunset Limited Coming to HBO

HBO is set to premiere a film version of Cormac McCarthy's play The Sunset Limited, staring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. I haven't read the play or seen it performed, but this trailer is enough to ensure I'm interested.

First Draft Almost Complete

I'm closing in on the end of my first draft of my current novel, tentatively titled Another Blade of Grass. And it's been an interesting process. Before, I used to get stalled, especially on key scenes, by trying to get it "right". This time, the goal has just been to get it down. More important it was to me this time to get it written and then go back and fill in the gaps, straighten it out. This, of course, takes its own bit of patience. It has been necessary to accept that a just "finished" chapter is a piece of crap. Sure, the elements were there, what happens is supposed to happen, but maybe the tone or the voice is all wrong, maybe a key piece of dialogue was left out, or maybe the writing just stinks. But when the window is open to write, when I have the scheduled or stolen hour to write, I am going to do it.

Because so much remains undone, I am looking forward to revision. I am looking forward to adding that missing exchange, adding the color, the elements of setting that were left out. There are whole chapters, I believe, that need to be rewritten from top to bottom, with a blank piece of paper and the original writing as a guide.

The goal, in a way has been to make revision a more integral part of the writing process. Too often it has been a chore. When the work feels more or less "completed", changes beyond simple line edits can be difficult to do. Now, though, I know changes I want to make, know that much is left to do to make it complete. All of which makes me anticipate the next part of the process.

Barnes County Rejections

An agonizing thing it is to put your hard work out into the world with the great likelihood that it will be rejected. While I've grown used to this (though it is still difficult) with my short fiction, I somehow expected something different with a novel. It is not even a novel--it's just a query letter. Maybe I could believe that it is the letter itself that failed, not the work, not the plot and characters. Of course, agents can be just as callous as literary journals. The "impersonal note" above (it's a rejection; let's not mince words) was sent to me by Barer Literary.

The rejection above came from Ellen Levine at Trident Media Group, the representative of both Daniel Woodrell and Marilynne Robinson. I thought she'd be responsive to the rural setting and the grit in the novel, but I doubt that my letter made it past some intern or assistant.

I know that my lack of a signficant publishing history hurts me. It's one thing to take on a debut novelist, but one without even some success publishing short fiction is a greater risk. I know. I don't think it's important to list the few things I had published in the college's annual lit journal when I was an undergrand. And I didn't include the one, more recent, piece of journalism published in a trade journal. I think these things are more distracting than anything.

So, I need to just buck up and send it out again.