Like a paving stone on a walk at night–no, more like a book left down on the floor where you were reading it while trying to stretch the pain from your back so you could sleep–I stumbled upon a book shop in Derbyshire the other day. I have never much been to Derbyshire, having missed those roads as I drove through England back in 1978. This particular bookshop was there at that time but in no better shape than my own little effort in Boston, right down to trying to survive by selling textbooks on the side. No, I stumbled upon Scarthin books in Cromford because I spend too much time on the internet these days. I was researching what others considered to be the best bookshops.
It’s all very disappointing to a glass-half-empty sort like myself. So many people who love books and want to work for themselves try…
I have been reading mystery and crime fiction since I was twelve and first discovered Mr. Holmes. The contest of good and evil was a fine caution for a teenage mind bent on breaking the rules. I did study the genre briefly in the 1970’s for the purpose of developing a mystery magazine to complement the science fiction monster that was swallowing me then, but that came to naught and in general I do not like to spend my time watching the sausage get made. I just happily eat it. When I made the decision to write a fiction about the death of the book some years ago, I quickly adopted the mystery genre as the right vehicle for the getaway. It was then that I decided to catch up with what had been going on since Travis McGee took permanent retirement.
In short, very few detectives drive…
Filed Under: Essays
July 28, 2009
Modern fiction is, by authority, a literature of anti-heroic impulse, anti-heroes, and the failure of mankind. Most primarily the dramatic action of the modern novel is dependent on a Freudian fallacy which pretends that human behavior is guided by sexuality, and as a subset, by greed as a form of sexual domination. After the misguided suppression of sexual matters in the Victorian age, this sort of ad hominem theorizing once appeared liberating to an intellectual community already estranged from the daily toil of the larger community. Don’t we all have these sexual feelings? Are we all not guilty of the original sin? The ‘hero’ does not save the damsel in distress for reasons of good will and humanity, but to rape her.
We have several generations of this sort of tripe polluting the academic mind at this point. I am 62. I was first introduced to a supposed sexual…
Filed Under: Essays
July 14, 2009
Words have meanings. This is a tautology to some. A word, by definition, has meaning–truly, but not a meaning. Words are used, worn, tattered, mended, soiled, and discarded. Some are harder than others and keep their shape but shatter when abused, others are soft, if not quite clay, at least putty-like.
For instance, as a writer I am very careful of what I see as my inner spirit. I can handle a great deal of worry and stress so long as my eye is on my purpose. And there have been moments in my life when the dimming of this sense of myself has caused despair and made me ill.
I used a word, ‘entelechy’ in Habits of the Heart (the novel posted here) which was misunderstood by someone else and I felt chastened. Much of what I write can be misunderstood if taken out of context, I…
Filed Under: Essays
July 8, 2009
So a friend of mine was telling me about a bit of behaviorist evolutionary theory and I found it very appealing. I have generally found most behaviorism as unscientific as any religion–drawing conclusions from insignificant or incomplete data and thence supposing whole worldviews. Thus the activities of ants might become a modus for human action or the pre-calculated terms of conduct of lab animals in a closed system become rules of human political order.
But all behaviorists are not so insane or inane. Their foundational methods are actually scientific and their discoveries can be enlightening. It is usually when they begin to extrapolate from mice to men that they go terribly wrong. Such pseudo-scientific theory is so 20th Century!
So I listened to my friend and found his proposition very appealing and immediately began to self-consciously wonder why. Why?
The idea was this: people are predisposed to…
When Andrew Wyeth died I found myself reviewing many past thoughts and realizing a few new ones. He was by far the preeminent painter of my time, one of the first living painters I became aware of as a youth. I cannot remember the exact text, but his work was the cause of the first argument I ever had about art, and subsequently many others. His father, the fabulous N.C. Wyeth, had filled the dreams of my childhood with colors that challenged the nature of the ordinary. And that path lead back and beyond to the great Howard Pyle. Andrew Wyeth’s personal life made the national and world news. Books of his work were bestsellers and helped pay my rent during the 1970’s as I started life as a professional bookseller. But his greater importance to me was, from the first, that he made me think.
I should note…
In his curiously bloodless memoir Books, Larry McMurtry says, “A bookman’s love of books is a love of books, not merely the information in them.” This explains as much as the author wanted if taken alone, but seen in the context of a life, it reveals a great deal more.
I say curiously bloodless because I have no doubt of McMurtry’s love, nor his ability to explain it. He is both an accomplished author and a successful bookman. His experience at those vocations is prodigious. Yet, he seems reluctant to bare his soul now in either calling. As if he is speaking to an unfriendly audience.
A few years ago I read McMurtry’s quest, Roads, with even less satisfaction. I love to drive. I was blessed with children who enjoy the journey, and my youthful joy at being on the road to somewhere was carried on through…
Two of the greatest American authors among us today are Tom Wolfe and John McPhee, both of whom are often pigeonholed as part of the New Journalism school that arose in the 1960’s, but are in fact just plain good writers alive by chance at the same time, and both, by the nature of the academic mind, in need of tags so that their work can be more readily handled or dismissed. I am in awe of both men, and have re-read portions of their work to see if an examination of the bones might reveal the source of their magic–on a par with dissecting the golden goose.
My younger brother re-introduced me to McPhee in the early 1990’s. My brother is a geologist and was taken with several of those works which border on that territory, as well as the one on Alaska if I remember correctly.…
BookExpo America (BEA) is the spring fashion show of the printed word. My publisher, Small Beer Press, has cunningly contrived to have my novel Hound available at this annual convention in the bound proofs (‘advance reading copy’ also known as ARCs) to gain some needed attention before the actual publication date in September.
You fall in love. You get married. Your first child is born. Your second child. Your third. These are the common blessings and the greatest thrills of life. I am not saying that this is in that order of magnitude, but still better than your first kiss, first home, or first car. On a par with your first crop perhaps, after a season of struggle and all that comes before that to make the struggle possible.
I have seen the bound ‘advance uncorrected proof’ of the Hound.
On Saturday morning, after a fitful sleep, I…
Now, lets see.
I’m trying to write a series of novels to address some concerns I have, and do so in an entertaining fashion while sharing some intimate awareness of why I think the concerns are very real. Now you’d like me to address some of those key issues outside of those novels.
Hemm.
The quick answer is no.
The almost as quick answer is to tell you to read the Crepuscule, posted elsewhere on this site, and ask you to apply some of your own brain sweat to the issues.
But for the sake of a more catholic awareness, let me draw your attention to a few overarching aspects of these issues that I will probably never get around to specifically writing a book about.
The spirit of a free market in an open society is that capital can be gathered and brought…
