There’s frost on the ground, but I’m below the earth, for a moment. In transit. Twelve years or so ago I did Sarah Selecky’s Story Is a State of Mind intensive. My group was led by the terrific author Jennifer Manuel, who brought Robert Olen Butler’s essay On Yearning to me. I still have that printout somewhere.
I tried, but I couldn’t get into Butler’s fiction back then. Maybe I could now. I’m a way better reader now. But I was into his craft book From Where You Dream, which is a lot about tapping into the unconscious when you write. He also talks about making time to write on a long commute. He rode a train on the northern seaboard. At the time, my commute was a 15 minute bus ride or, best, an 8 minute bike ride.
But like the man says, things have changed. I spend a ridiculous amount of time on trains and buses. Not enough time on my bike. When things go well, I get to sit down and pass the time with books. Mostly, though, I’m a stand up guy. Like now, for instance.
By this paragraph, I’m overground, above freeway, probably. I’m in the accordion part of train, I feel the turns but I can’t see outside. I’m trying to Robert Olen Butler my way through this grind. Easier to thumb out words on my phone than it would be to pen and paper. I can even hold a rail and keep writing through the lurches.
And it’s all lurches these days, isn’t it? Inside the train and outside the train.
Here in the accordion, we have some semblance of personal space. But over by the doors they’re nose to chin to shoulder. No one wants to get too far from the exit. What if we can’t get out when it’s our stop?
Now I’m switching trains, walking above Broadway, passing by the places I’d like to linger. Soon enough I’ll be underground again, ever so briefly.
New train, same plan. Find some elbow room. Stay clear of the doors. If I have to stand, push some words out. Consider it a daily word count. Consider it a warm up. Consider it.
I’m always on the Waterfront train, I’m never on the waterfront.
I finished Alix Hawley’s tremendous Daniel Boone duology this week. I took my time with the first book, All True Not a Lie but devoured My Name Is A Knife. I don’t see why you couldn’t read one without the other, but they are very much two halves of a whole epic. Like I said in my last email, not subject matter I’d necessarily seek out (it took ten years for me to come around!) but the writing is phenomenal. I can’t stop thinking about how much passion and drive it must have taken to write two substantial novels about a fairly niche subject. I think of the novelist with a Russian name in KC Constantine’s Bottom Liner Blues, who gets chewed out by a bartender. Paraphrasing from memory, “hey man, I’m a writer. I don’t make a big deal about everything, I make a big deal about SOME things.”
Ishmael tells us “to produce a mighty book, you need a mighty theme.” Easy for him to say. Daniel Boone certainly has a claim on being a mighty theme, folk hero of early America, immortalized by Disney. But I think a great writer makes their theme great, as Hawley does in these books. I sure hope she’s got more books coming.
If she doesn’t, that’s a shame, but we have a lot of exciting books to look forward to in the coming months.
Library of Brothel from Hot Dog Code fave Anakana Schofield. Schofield is like Kirby to me: don’t ask, just buy it!
The Coffin of Honey from Hot Dog Code fave Geoffrey D. Morrison (Falling Hour), described by the author as “what if Jack Nicholson’s campfire ufo monologue in Easy Rider was real?”
Guns Across the River from Hot Dog Code fave Sam Wiebe (you should be following Sam on the Stack as he shares notes from his upcoming Shot In Vancouver project-his latest is on Hot Dog Code fave The Grey Fox).
