The gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts will not occur until later, when it is discovered that Uncle Octavo has squandered his fortune in recent years
From the monthly archives:
April 2009
When, about ten years ago, I made the decision to begin writing seriously again, the first project I undertook was a juvenile–a story I had imagined many years before and given up on.
I think the decision was tied to an example of foolishness which is worth re-considering: that it would be easier to write a juvenile–to break the ice before getting on to the harder stuff.
The common belief is that childhood is blessed by simplicity. Things were easier then. But this is quite false, of course. We all know that, if we know anything. But we want to believe it for reasons which are themselves complex.
Childhood is the most difficult period of a human life. There is more to learn in less time with fewer skills to use on the way.
A successful childhood is almost a guarantee of a happier adulthood. There…
I have designed at least a thousand homes in my life. None of them built.
The theme of the Hound is the death of the book. It seemed an obvious concept to me at the beginning: to use the lives of individuals faced with this cataclysm as a means of revealing its true magnitude.
I made several false starts before realizing a problem. The simpler the theme, the more difficult the story.
And certainly, writing a book to present such a theme is inherently ironic. But then irony is a part of the human comedy–as it is in the catching of whales, Ahab might have said at the last. More to the point, the game is afoot. The murder is happening now.
I have already mentioned here, in ‘The Hound and its consequences,’ why I chose the mystery genre. However, there is one thing I did not say before on that subject, because I thought it was too provocative to put forward…
As I have noted elsewhere here, my mother’s parents were illiterate. They were the type of mountain people who knew one book only and that by ear, line by line repeated, and knew those stories as they played out in their own lives. Their deep knowledge was hard won and held closely. When advice was given it should be heeded.
My grandfather would have been a good writer if he had been born to the opportunity. He told stories as easily as cutting a plug of tobacco and they usually lasted about as long. The final spit toward the nearest gully was the end of it. He often told stories we had heard before, but we listened and laughed to ourselves at the changes along the way.
My grandmother was a quiet and greathearted woman whose feelings were shared easily in a few words and made clear…
The Christian Science Monitor asked me to write a short piece on bookselling back in 2002. The context at the time was the continuing struggle of our small business to survive the tides and vicissitudes of our age. There were and are hundreds of articles easily findable on the internet about the difficulties of bookselling–even a few I have caused to be written–but at that time I had been working on a poem about the ‘Perfect Bookshop’ and though a poem was not what the newspaper wanted, I decided to rework the effort into a prose statement on the subject. The result can be found here: www.csmonitor.com/2002/1108/p11s01-coop.html (The perfect bookshop weathers the storm).
I have put aside my hopes of re-establishing a bricks and mortar bookshop for the present. Not from a lack of interest or desire. More from the chastening of financial realities and the physical…
I was speaking with a kind gentleman the other day. Reluctant though I was to disagree with him because of his generosity to me, I could not help but contradict his thesis. As I understand it, film music should not be interpreted apart from the context that made it possible. In addition, there is a pervasive use of incidental music in our lives that serves a potentially insidious purpose–which shapes us and moves us.
If I am misunderstanding the thesis, it may be because it borders on many similar ideas rampant in the area of literary criticism. I cannot read music, and have only a small knowledge of musical history. What I understand quite well is what I enjoy hearing. And beyond that, there is a clear and primordial relationship of music to everyday human life that is not difficult to comprehend.
Communication between human beings is an…
