2007 Order Thunderbird! Misc: September 19: University of Houston UH Libraries and Creative Writing Program Series Honor's College 5:30 P.M. This is my first reading in Houston, a chance to expose myself (legally) to the literary community. I’m reading from El Repoman, the first draft of which I’ve just completed. May 2: University of New Hampshire English Department Writing Awards Presentation Location TBA 5 P.M. This is a good-bye to UNH. I’ll briefly read, for the first time, from my new novel El Repoman and then we’ll give the undergraduate and graduate students a bunch of well-deserved writing awards. [Readings]: Printer-friendly version

September 25, 2007: Life on the Horizontal [Part 1 of a few parts] I’m in Houston. You heard right. And I’m married. To a live human being. Plus I’m gainfully employed and just finished the second draft of El Repoman. How did all of this happen? Well, it wouldn’t have been possible without cat tranquilizers or an arm-wrestling challenge from Tom DeLay. He’s a huge fan of the Stallone classic “Over the Top”† and, as only a few people know, I once arm-wrestled on the professional circuit under the nom de guerre El Cobra Spiteando (The Spitting Cobra). I wore a Mexican-style wrestling mask and employed some unorthodox techniques (later outlawed) involving pepper spray and poor hygiene. And vaseline. If I learned anything from watching Le Tour de France, it’s that you gotta do what it takes to win even if this can cause your liver to explode, turn your blood into sludge, or addict you to cat tranquilizers. DeLay is looking for a way back into politics, having decided that life as a highly paid lobbyist is immoral and unethical and, worse, makes him look bad given the guilt-by-association-factor of guys like Jack Abramoff, whom he didn’t know, had nothing to do with, and has never heard of. In any case, his rebranding initiative involves shifting his celebrity equity from the political market to the athletic market, especially now that some room for new opportunities has opened up in the wake of the Michael Vick dogfighting/killing felonies. I’ll keep you posted on how this develops; for now, I’m simply eating steroids like Skittles, lifting weights to speed metal, and gargling with tequila and mace. Plus I’m scheduled to get some intense Maori facial tattoos and have my teeth filed into points and fitted with a titanium grille that reads: I’m Like Mike. Not that I have ever eaten human ears, or children, nor would condone doing so. I spent the lead-up to the summer watching the show “Bridezillas” to gain more insight into my own wedding, a show which was akin to watching a show on fanged carnivorous dinosaurs while being crushed by an anoconda, which is to say it made me feel more or less like, Things could be worse, but this is still really, really painful. The wedding, though, was fantastic. We can debate whether or not it had to be by virtue of the lead-up and financial investment and then move from here to a debate over Schroedinger’s cat, but the point is that Little Crazy did a fantastic amount of work and a great job and I was very pleased to wear my El Cobra mask and a respectable suit and do my part when it came to vows and the photographs of: a) me cradling her in my arms and staggering toward the ocean at sunset (she in her 90-pound diamond-encrusted organza, platinum thread, and genuine-sixteenth-century Venetian lace-once-worn-by-some-hot, martyred-Catholic-saint/ballet-dancer/contessa); b) cradling her in my arms and staggering to the rim of an active volcanic crater; c) cradling her in my arms and staggering through our ranked family members; d) cradling her in my arms as she had a nervous breakdown; and e) her cradling me in her arms while I had a nervous breakdown. In short, posing for the kind of photos that are representative of who we are and how we spend our time. Really! Which was indicative of the whole wedding experience, as anyone who has had a wedding will concur. It’s certainly not the case that, even as one watches money spurt from one’s savings account like blood from a freshly severed artery, the wedding industry, disguised as a version of the friendly health insurance industry/surgeon/serial killer we’ve come to know and love, swoops in to take advantage of the situation by preying on one’s insecurities by comparing your real life to some fairyland absurdity and implying that anything less than a complete evocation and enactment of the latter will legally and socially prove beyond a conclusive doubt that you and your spouse-to-be don’t love each other. The happy side effect? That many young couples divorce due to the post-wedding financial strains. But I digress. My point is, in fact, that Aimee did battle with the fang-toothed Bridezilla Business Consortium and we emerged happily married and only a little light-headed from a figurative blood loss. Plus we got a lot of pink kitchen gear. Which I love. Really! Okay, not really. We did get a cool knife, though. And some whiskey tumblers. Which leads to the relocation. I was offered a great job teaching in the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program, mainly due to a complete breakdown in their hiring process and my Norman Mailer costume. Accepting job necessitated moving across the country, some 2000 miles. With cats. Enter the Big Wiggle and Chainsaw Jim. I was made aware that I would have to travel with the cats, alone, and that it was up to me to see that they arrived none the worse for wear. Now, I have a new car, the Bouge-mobile, with leather seats. Our cats have claws. Our furniture looks like it’s all been cycled through a wood-chipper and Aimee calls me “cutter” when she sees me bleeding after I’ve tried to brush the cats or otherwise approach them (with or without food). In keeping with my credo that says, “Thou shalt not eat of a human ear even if Mike Tyson does” and “Thou shalt not do mean things to dogs even if Michael Vick does,” I don’t condone declawing or defanging cats because, let’s face it, we live in a world with lots of literal and metaphorical dogs. Life is hard. Claws can be necessary. But not in the Booge-mobile. But the great thing about America is this, people: you don’t need a prescription for cat tranquilizers. Not even if you’re a human. Fast forward to Houston, Texas. I arrived well before the furniture with two cranky cats and feeling light-headed from blood loss. Plus I had a scratched eyeball and had used a full reel of high-tensile fishing line to sew up my forearms Rambo-style. Mercifully, I did not smell of cat puke. Also, I had a Deluxe Aero Mattress and a pillow. I was ready for a few comfortably horizontal days. The first night in the new apartment I dreamt I was falling. This turned out to be literal and not metaphorical, which is probably a good thing. Certain fanged creatures had chewed through my finely engineered aero pallet. And while I’d read on Wikipedia that there was a cat shortage in Texas and that the Houston market for undocumented felines was massive, it turns out that this was inaccurate, as I learned after a few demoralizing days spent on a nearby esplanade. I was still stuck with two cats, though I did get a few copies of Joel Osteen’s book from passerby. (They taste like cardboard.) Okay, now a bit ’o literary news: First, my old poker-playing pal Chelsea Cain is now a best-selling author who’s written about a hot, serial-killing chick in Heartsick (visit chelseacain.com; also, I have to note that the whole tithing deal she had with me has been conveniently ignored, as I have yet to receive a single check or fruitcake). Second, Doug Dorst’s novel Alive In Necropolis is coming out this summer from Riverhead Books. I’ve had the pleasure of reading it and it’s excellent. I won’t say it has zombies, but the characters kick butt, even the dead ones. John McLaughlin’s debut novel, Run in the Fam’ly (winner of the 2006 Peter Taylor Prize for Fiction) is out and getting great reviews, too. Don Kurtz, my old friend from southern New Mexico, has written a very fine novel, Churchgoers, which is both ambitious and wonderfully controlled. And, segueying effortlessly to my UH colleagues, Antonya Nelson has written an awesome story, “Or Else”, in the November 19th issue of The New Yorker. Mat Johnson, my new coworker and the biggest fiction writer I know, has a very cool-looking graphic novel, Incognegro, due in February, and rumor has it my longtime literary idol (except for the hair), Robert Boswell, will have a book of craft essays coming out from Graywolf Press in 2008. Finally, I have to note that Norman Mailer has passed away. I won’t say I loved all of his books, but he was a fine writer and an example of a novelist who had a great interest in his culture and was able to make himself a vital part of our national conversations. There aren’t many writers who can say that. I hope his life and work inspire a new generation to aspire to such heights (though I’m not condoning stabbing significant others in the butt with utensils). Coming soon: Alex rides in a paceline (and pukes a little, in his mouth) with the fascinatingly erudite and socially accomplished big oil engineers/triathletes of Houston. He also sees such majestic sites as the Igloo cooler factory and a highway access road. †(Co-directed by Ingmar Bergman and Michael Bay, screenplay by David Mamet and Eminem, if memory serves.) May 15, 2007: Catcrapulent Shopping Coming to a Mall Near You! Mr. Bigglesworth, a.k.a. The Big Wiggle, made a prison break, though I have yet to determine—even after the polygraph and waterboarding—whether this was a crime of circumstance or premeditated. What remains clear is that he fell out of a third-storey window and disappeared. I used my superior tracking skills to find the imprint of his paws punched into the soft, mossy ground in the back of the house, but after this the trail went cold. It’s harder to cat-hunt than I thought and the ferals that I feed acted like a bunch of hardened convicts. They didn’t see nothing, they didn’t know nothing, they didn’t care about nothing. And what was I doing on their turf without bringing some Meow Mix, ese? Meanwhile, The Big Wiggle’s cellmate, Monsieur Jimmy Neutron, suffered an extended bout of cat ennui. He wandered the barren carpet flats of the house meowing forlornly and became suspiciously and insincerely affectionate. The Big Wiggle likes to try and fish stuff out of the garbage disposal, and I suspect that Jimmy suspected that the disposal ate his pal or, worse, that someone had crammed the 35-pound Big Wiggle into it, and thus that he needed any ally he could find, even a human one. Aimee, of course, was not remotely worried. The crying, sleeplessness, peripatetic journeys through the neighborhoods, and extended, detailed what-if scenarios involving Wiggle and Death were purely coincidental. Yep. A relaxing time around the house. And then, two days later, who should arrive at the back door smelling like dirt and seeming alarmed—alarmed!—that he’d been locked out? I present for your consideration the Big Wiggle. In the aftermath, both cats seem content to remain indoors and Jim has returned to his old, “Chainsaw Jim” self. Which is to say that I have fresh claw marks every day and Aimee calls me “Cutter” when not catching up on all the sleep she missed. It’s a sad day when the literary news in my life is limited to Cat Fancy Magazine. Yes, Cat Fancy continues to arrive. Worse, it seems to have put me on a mailing list for expensive cat crap. Need a gold and sapphire cat pendant captioned 'Hang in there!'? How about a kit to dye your cat to look like some goofy purple feline-esque creature out of a bad fantasy novel? Or perhaps a patented cat fence/strato barrier kit? What about a $2400 hand-blown glass cat house? The magazine is fascinating in the way that, say, a massacre at a muppets farm might be. It’s filled with gripping articles: “My cat was outside and I could hear the thunder of a coming storm!” “A profile of Kenny the Wonder Cat!” “Buy a painting of Cat in a Cup!” “Questionnaire: When you are typing does your cat a) sit on the keyboard, b) claw your face, c) crap on your keyboard, d) spray on your monitor, e) claw your face and crap on your keyboard, f) attack your head from behind, or g) cough up a hairball or partially digested mouse?” I consider this magazine a cutsie assault on, well, I’m not sure. Maybe all that is good in the world. And I hate it. It’s a sign of a more general, crapulent replication of dentist-waiting-room-style kitsch, the unholy, Garfield-esque result of poor taste, too much discretionary income, and misused leisure time. What have we come to in this country when people have the time to imagine, market, sell, and buy this crud? (Or write blogs about it.) I would like to state for the record that anyone who buys the aforementioned products or a companion animal passport categorically sucks. Little cat testicles. And in the midst of this decline one of the greatest chroniclers, critics, and writers of our time, Kurt Vonnegut, has died. If there were any justice the staff of Cat Fancy or Jim Davis could have been sacrificed to buy him a few extra years and another book or two. So it goes. With classes over I’ve had a chance to return to El Repoman and begin the exhilaratingly demoralizing tear-down that marks the long march to the end of the first draft. For the record, there are no cats in it. Just a pitbull/basset hound named Owski and a few hyenas. March 14, 2007: Chronic. Feline. Herpes. This will be quick, as it’s the only free time I have for the next two months. And, yes, you ingrates, I’m spending it updating a blog that has come to feel like one of those tasks you’re supposed to do but mainly feel guilty over not doing. (Other tasks: alphabetizing my books; complaining to various credit card companies about their intentionally obfuscatory contractual fine print; learning how to sync email accounts to my crash-prone Treo; training for an upcoming half-marathon; canceling the Evil John Greenman’s “gift” of Cat Fancy Magazine; painting my closet interiors; emptying the strata of miscellany from my car’s trunk.) This parenthetical list, I think you’ll see, points to the fact that I long for an organized life, a life where drinking glasses don’t rattle on the floorboards of the car, where strange colonies of Martian-like molds don’t grow in the veggie bin, and where junk mail is returned to sender duct-taped to bricks in a timely fashion. The reality, though, is that I have a nutty fiancée whose nicknames include—but are not limited to—Little Crazy and Captain Insano, and two cats, Mr. Bigglesworth and Jimmy Neutron, both of whom show a surprising affinity for a) shredding everything I own, from my very flesh to upholstered furniture and assorted plants and b) for violating physics’ conservation of matter principle by reproducing their body mass hourly as measured by the volume of matted hair on aforementioned furniture and the cat crap I have to shovel from the litterboxes. On the subject of Man vs. Nature (a favorite of mine), Captain Insano and I had an ongoing argument about where to get cats, as the Captain wanted some sort of British Bluehair and I thought we should get whatever we could find at the ASPCA. Eventually I won the argument, but as you might expect in a relationship with a former prosecutor, I eventually lost. We picked up the cats after I won a second argument in which I asserted that it was better to get adult cats, as you know what kinds of personalities you are dealing with. So. We brought home said cats, one of whom, Jimmy Neutron, had “a little cold,” to quote the ASPCA cat professionals. Then Jimmy sneezed blood all over my computer while I was trying to compose a bit of fiction. Also, his eyes seemed kind of bulgy. We visited the emergency vet. She tried to give him acupuncture to his nose. Strangely, Jimmy didn’t respond well to this and ran around the room with a big needle waving from his nostril. Then the diagnosis: upper respiratory infection and three words you never want to hear in conjunction with each other: chronic feline herpes. Let me repeat: Chronic. Feline. Herpes. Soon Mr. Bigglesworth’s eyes, too, were bulgy and weeping mucus like he was something escaped from a medieval leper colony. Plus, while energetic, Biggles is clumsy and had managed to sprain his leg while shredding something, possibly my scrotum, but maybe Aimee’s bras or lace doilies sewn by my great-great grandmother during the Potato Famine. So we have blood-sneezing, mucus-eyed, staggering cats limping through the house and a certain housemate maintaining that such a thing would never had happened had we gone to a pet dealer and also adding that the felines were clear evidence of my general incompetence and, further, served as the basis for a strong case for why, in our relationship, I should not be in a position to make any decisions. Ever. But Alex, you ask, surely the advanced state of veterinary medicine in this first world country offered a quick fix to so much suffering? Short answer? No. No it did not. Aside from the browbeating from my lovely fiancée, it turns out that the only way to fix the feline herpes* is to give them eye drops (that burn) every two hours. Does this account for the sleep schedule of the pet owner? No it does not. Does it account for the incredible resistance animals have to having their eyes doused with burning fluid? No it does not. My forearms now bear so many scars that I will probably get taken aside by someone soon to talk about my “cutting” problem and how I should go to therapy so that I can learn to work out my relationship issues without being so self-destructive. But enough on the domestic front. On the subject of things literary, El Repoman, my third novel, is creeping toward completion and the first chapter, “Guerilla Repo” is just out in Columbia College’s journal F Magazine. Also, the writers Ha Jin and Alistair MacLeod both visited UNH this year and did bang-up jobs; on April 2nd Edward P. Jones will visit, so if you’re in the area you should attend his reading. His short fiction is excellent, as is his novel The Known World. Also, my old friend Kevin Brockmeier just won the 2007 Border’s Original Voices Award for his novel The Brief History of the Dead, yet another excellent novel. And in other happy news from old classmates, Ann Williams has published her short story collection The Woman in the Woods (winner of the 2005 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction) and John McLaughlin’s first novel, Run in the Fam’ly (winner of the 2006 Peter Taylor Prize for Fiction) will be out this summer. And my old bud Chelsea Cain, who browbeat me into updating my blog (she hates direct communication), is publishing a thriller, Heartsick in about 73 languages this September. I hope she remembers that, one drunken night long ago, she agreed to tithe 10% of all her literary earnings to me. I will use these earnings to hire more trained chimps to work on my novels, as the current crew of scribes aren’t getting a hell of a lot done. On a more productive note, I’m also happy to report that I will be moving to Houston to join the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program this August, a mere two months after my scheduled wedding to the aforementioned Captain Insano. While I leave UNH with some regret and will miss many fellow writer-types and miscreants, I will now have a chance to heckle Tom Delay in person should I see him at the Jiffy-Lube or loitering in front of a Victoria’s Secret. Plus, the shift from a wildcat mascot to a cougar mascot should not prove to be too conceptually overwhelming. * I should state for the record that I do not have herpes, nor have I ever had relations of a certain kind with a cat. The same cannot be said of a certain John Greenman, purveyor of Cat Fancy Magazine and the walking embodiment of moral turpitude. September 20, 2006: Overcommitted The deal with blogs, particularly ones that have to do with a life as uneventful (yet strangely busy) as mine, is that it’s hard to create content. Since my victory over the squirrels in the walls of my house and the publication of In the Shadows of the Sun, little has happened. I didn’t win the Nobel Prize for Literature (whatever, Harold Pinter; I’m snubbing you at the next league bowling night) and, in fact, felt like taking a break from the more public side of writing. That is, the reading tour left me exhausted and I needed some space to work on the next novel, El Repoman, without distraction. Happily, the paperback of Shadows is in stores and reads even better than the original, maybe because it’s more svelte. Okay, I know you’re not here to read about my books, but rather about those things that happen in my life that are painful to me and distressingly hilarious to you. Jerks. Let me begin with this year’s Tour de France as not everyone who knows me has called to make fun of my favorite sport and sporting event. First, I must state for the record that I have never worn a testosterone patch on my scrotum and that were you to test my blood you would simply find a mighty testosterone level comprised of natural (and sexy) Alex molecules, not exogenous stuff. Unlike Floyd Landis. But having said this, I don’t believe that Floyd is guilty of doping. Well, okay, he may be. But I present here a few compelling facts that indicate to me that Floyd’s badassitude outweighs any inconvenient blood and/or urine chemistry. First, Floyd’s a Mennonite. Second, his name is Floyd.* Third, he’s been biking with osteonecrosis of the hip (it even hurts to say it). Fourth, he kicks ass. I, for one, believe most top-level competitive cyclists are doping because the stress level of racing—the 72% inclines and 500 mile daily stages—would kill people with unadulterated body chemistry. I mean, what are the odds that Lance just happened to have four former lieutenants (Hamilton, Heras, Landis, Andreu) who doped and, further, stood on the podium every year since 1999 with other guys (Ullrich, Basso, Beloki, Rumsas) who doped? I think Lance was a better racer and doper. He’s a champ. And so, too, is Floyd. His win on Stage 17 of the Tour was fantastic and in my opinion he should be awarded the win for the whole Tour based solely on that legendary exhibition of badassitude. Plus, there’s a side benefit to doping: every time I go for a ride I can feel like a stud no matter how slow I am. If I could afford to dope I would have to face the fact that I suck, EPO or no. But because I can’t.... This way of thinking extends to writing, too. If I didn’t have a day job, maybe Harold Pinter would be shining my medal (that’s not a euphemism, pervs). I’m not going to make excuses for not blogging over the past seven months. Priorities change, people. And my priorities reshuffled so that drafting the new novel, autoerotic stimulation, fighting Chuck Norris, and work took precedence. But I will hazard a guess that I’ll be doing more with this site as I work with the UNH creative writing graduate students to start our new online journal. Especially now that I kicked Chuck’s butt. So stay tuned. * Floyd is a pretty bad name and so he should get some credit for lugging it around. I mean, look at all the cool names of the guys he races against: Unai Etxebarria, Marco Velo, Iñaki Isasi, Benoit Salmon, Iker Camaño, Xabier Zandio, Vladimir Karpets, Patxi Vila Errandonea, AxelÊMerckx, Beat Zberg. (The Basques always have the coolest names: Igor, Aitor. Joseba, Iker, Unai, Gorka, Iñigo, Xabier, Haimar. And Gerka.) February 6, 2006: Say what? Okay, okay. Two months without an update is unconscionable even given the fact that I had bionic fists and x-ray vision (left eye) installed under my new health insurance plan. December passed in the way that malaria does in the tropics (Maui, flu) and even prior to hopping on the plane to said tropical paradise I was getting over a terrible sinus infection (next elective surgery: stainless steel sinus passages). The end result is that I staggered back to NH in mid-January with my special ladyfriend and her Texas-sized furniture in tow feeling anything but up to the task of hauling armoires up several flights of stairs. Yes, strange things are afoot at the Circle K, as the saying goes. Is it my destiny to become an adult? To obsess over variable rate mortgages and lawn care? To eagerly anticipate the bloodshed of condo association meetings (hence the bionic fists)? Sadly the answer is Maybe. The big news, however, is that I’ve finally arrived as an author. Yes, I’ve been banned. I got an email the other week about an article in the Baltimore Sun that mentioned that the Maryland High School System had banned Leaving Disneyland from their libraries. The ACLU jumped has jumped in, and now the superintendent of the Carroll County (Md.) Public Schools, Charles I. Ecker (The Eckster to his pals) has reinstated two of the young-adult novels that he banned earlier. But three others remain “pervasively vulgar” and The Eckster’s maintained that he “would not revisit decisions made before he became superintendent in mid-2002.” Which means, of course, that my work’s been banned for about four years and this is the first I’ve heard about it. Still, I’m very flattered. Thank you, Superintendent Eckstermeister. Click here for the ACLU press release, and here for the American Library Association’s article. Also, if anyone wants to do a public book burning with some of my titles, feel free. But be sure to get some media coverage, okay? Other disturbing news: Tonight I was on TV. Yes, television has reached the point where even bumfighting is not enough. And so public television has resorted to airing interviews with writers as a means of stirring up controversy. What we say is generally ignored, but we tend to do okay when it comes to fighting bums. (Attention Fighting Bums: Remember the bionic fists comment earlier before you get any ideas.) The whole process of taping the interview, anticipating the show, and watching it was in fact a lot of fun. My sincere thanks to the Friends of the UNH Library, New Hampshire Public Television, and Becky Rule for putting up with me and making sure that I fought a bum a could handle (he only had one leg and no teeth). You can find the interview here. I think. Charlie Simic, Serbian-American Superpoet, is going to be on the same show April 2nd. It will definitely be worth attending. December 5, 2005: Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris’ tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried. That’s right, kids. Because Mr. Bruce Lee, may he eternally rest in peace, is not around it seems that a mythos is now coalescing around runner-up martial artist Chuck Norris. I feel that it’s my duty as an Internet denizen to relay this developing web event by listing a few of the anonymously authored facts about this bearded dude. Enjoy! And check out Thunderbird! On Nutrition: Chuck Norris recently had the idea to sell his urine as a canned beverage. We know this beverage as Red Bull. On Cancer: To prove it isn’t that big of a deal to beat cancer. Chuck Norris smoked 15 cartons of cigarettes a day for 2 years and aquired 7 different kinds of cancer only to rid them from his body by flexing for 30 minutes. Beat that, Lance Armstrong. On Jesus: Chuck Norris was the fourth Wiseman. He brought baby Jesus the gift of “beard.” Jesus wore it proudly to his dying day. The other Wisemen, jealous of Jesus’ obvious gift favoritism, used their combined influence to have Chuck omitted from the Bible. Shortly after all three died of roundhouse kick related deaths. On the State of International Trade: The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain. On War: After much debate, President Truman decided to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima rather than the alternative of sending Chuck Norris. His reasoning? It was more “humane.” On Trademark Infringement: Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law & Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs. On Creationism: When God said, “Let there be light,” Chuck Norris said, “Say please.” On Children: Chuck Norris frequently signs up for beginner karate classes, just so he can “accidentally” beat the shit out of little kids. On the Sixth Sense: Chuck Norris doesn’t see dead people. He makes people dead. On Sharing: Macguyver can build an airplane out of gum and paper clips, but Chuck Norris can kill him and take it. On the Theory of Relativity: Chuck Norris once roundhouse kicked someone so hard that his foot broke the speed of light, went back in time, and killed Amelia Earhart while she was flying over the Pacific Ocean. On Reading: Chuck Norris doesn’t read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants. On Mortality Rates: Since 1940, the year Chuck Norris was born, roundhouse kick related deaths have increased 13,000 percent. On the Disabled: There are no disabled people. Only people who have met Chuck Norris. On the Infix/Middle Name: Chuck Norris has recently changed his middle name to “Fucking.” My thanks to the brain trust that created these. If only we could harness your powers for Good. November 9, 2005: Thunderbird! The “Thunderbird” chapbook is in and it looks stupendously sweet! The paper is so fine it rivals the caress I get from silk boxers beneath tight pants! Okay, I exaggerate. But I’m a little excited and the chapbook is very cool. It’s a positively sensual experience to read it or just turn the pages. You know you want it. I’m sending out the HTML promotion tomorrow, but you can click on the logo below to view it and get ordering information and links. November 1, 2005: Cliff Notes on Big Brother, Testicles, Migraine Halos, and Necrophilia Bet that got your attention! Admit it. You were thinking, What kind of perv would list these sorts of things? The answer: You! Well, not specifically you, but people who’ve been visiting my site. See, I use this cool Big Brother tool called Statcounter to monitor the number of hits on my site and which pages are most often viewed. Mainly it’s a means of establishing that the spectacle of me wasting my time and energy isn’t completely without witness, but I just discovered this function that lists what people were searching for that led them to alexanderparsons.com. The answer is that at least 20% of the time it is nothing to do with me or my work. Here are some examples of what, exactly, inquiring minds would like to know about: ♦ summary Going After Cacciato ♦ cliff notes Rick Bass’s work ♦ temperature of corpses ♦ migraine halo ♦ lance armstrong lose testicle ♦ I hate John bunnell (yay!) ♦ necrophilia laws ♦ meaning of phrase Vote for Pedro. What was not on that list? ♦ Looking for hot Alex Parsons ♦ Scarlett Johansson avid Parsons reader ♦ Scarlett Johansson affair Parsons verboten love ♦ Parsons exploding fist kung fu best world ♦ Johansson Parsons poligamy Angelina Jolie What can we draw from this? Five things. One, I clearly write about random and somewhat disturbing topics in this journal. Two, this is a godsend for all you weirdos out there. Three, my next book should prominently feature migraine-suffering necrophiliacs, and a death match between John Bunnell and Lance Armstrong in which John Bunnell is killed, though this victory costs Lance a testicle. Fourth, if I’m going to talk about politics in this polarized time I should limit it to the politics of Napoleon Dynamite’s greatness! Fifth, Scarlett Johansson is beautiful, smart, and has a thing for me. Maybe. The Texas Book Festival rocked, by the way. The Writing In Unreaderly Times panel was excellent, mainly because the other writers were smart and agreeable, as was the audience. In the days since I’ve spent some time watching drunk driving videos while working on a scene for a story that features a DUI. I’ve decided that even if literacy is in decline, behavior worth writing about is on the increase. Most recently I listened to a guy slur that his “seasonal” head injury from ten years ago was what accounted for his terrible balance and inability to understand instructions. Oddly, this had never interfered with his acquisition of a driver’s license. And here’s a bit of helpful advice should you find yourself pulled over for DUI: a camera is always running. Including when you get in the car after having failed the drunk-test. That’s right, all the way back to the station! And another thing, if you’re wearing cowboy boots, stiletto heels, a Viking helmet, or something else that makes it hard to balance or see, you can request to remove it before doing the various tests. My sweet chapbook “Thunderbird” is running about a week behind schedule. It is now due to be bound this weekend. Rumor has it that we ran out of squid ink and one of the interns had to go deep-sea diving/squid fighting to get some more. Unfortunately, he was eaten, so now there’s another guy doing the job who’s better armed and has life-insurance. You can still place orders on Amazon, but you might as well wait until I send out the HTML promo in another week. October 12, 2005: Thunderbird valu-pak I’m just back from Las Cruces, NM, where I gave a reading and lecture on Friday to a great crowd of literary types. I also ate enough green chile to destroy the lining of my stomach and may need skin grafts on my tongue. The writing program at NMSU has become a real powerhouse, with students publishing in everything from McSweeney’s to Ploughshares (kudos, Rachel and Casey!), and this made for a lively time even when I wasn’t drinking beer. I also hung out with my favorite 14-year-old and in my honorary uncle role I played about 62 hours of Halo 2 on the X Box. To showcase my geek credentials here, let me say that we beat that damned game on Heroic mode. Let me also say that I am going blind from eye strain and will probably never be able to turn my neck independently of my body. I feel like frickin’ Igor as played by Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein. The news from the literary hinterlands is this: ♦ First, Shadows was nominated for a bunch of awards including the NBA, BBCA, and PEN/Faulkner. I’m not hopeful, but if you know someone on these awards committees, liked the book, and are somewhat unethical, feel free to push for my book. ♦ Second, the paperback of Shadows is scheduled for publication in August of 2006 by Anchor Books. ♦ Third, I’ve finished a redraft of the screenplay Operation Wayne, a comedy about bounty-hunting Quebecois, illegal taxidermy, steroids, and the World’s Powerfulest (sic) Man competition. My conclusion? Spider monkeys are hilarious, especially when clinging to a human character. (On a related note, my favorite ninja/pirate website, realultimatepower.net, has a link to a videoclip that features chimp Kung Fu!) ♦ Fourth, the Texas Book Festival is nigh and should be really cool. Clinton, Eli Wallach, Salman Rushdie and a bunch of others are going to be there. It looks like my panel will be Sunday (Oct. 30) afternoon at 1:45 and will run for an hour, with a booksigning afterward. Still no word on the nature of the panel. Maybe spider monkeys in fiction. ♦ Fifth, my old bro Jon Karp has started a new imprint at Warner Books, Warner Twelve. He plans to publish twelve books a year, with the efforts of the whole imprint focused on each book as it is released. Thusfar he’s contracted works by Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Buckley, and Julie Checkoway. I think this limit on titles is a clever and strategic way to go about running an imprint as it prevents any of the titles from getting buried in the catalogue and maximizes their chance for exposure. It seems to me that the real problems in publishing today have less to do with the general quality of the titles and more to do with garnering enough publicity to insure that these titles reach their intended audiences. (Okay, the whole issue of 15% quarterly profits is the real difficulty, but I’m not getting into that here.) ♦ Sixth, my sweet chapbook “Thunderbird” is coming along and will be released on October 25th. For those of you who are not poets and are thus thinking, WTF? What’s a chapbook?, it’s a small and inexpensive book, usually somewhat brief. Apparently they were sold by chapmen in the 17th century. For those of you thinking WTF?, “chapman” is an archaic term for ye olde itinerant peddler. The deal is that I’m going to sign a limited print-run of 300 of these suckers, which have been designed by the talented Dave McNamara. Each copy features six original woodcuts by Adrian Rodriguez and is hand-stitched by Abigail Uhteg. The covers are hand-set, and the text is printed by letterpress. All for just ten bucks. It is printed on vellum made from albino virgin lambs fed on a diet of pale vegetables (mainly jicama and mashed potatoes, plus some peeled cucumbers) so that the paper is a dazzling white. The ink is harvested from giant squids that live so deep in the ocean that they have never actually been touched by a refracted sunbeam. The combination makes for good contrast so as to show the Caslon Old Style font to best effect. The cover is card-stock red with a silver-gilt image. In other words, people, it looks like the Gutenberg Bible (first edition, not the Cliff Notes). Only shorter. And without that hard-to-read Gothic lettering. But it’s got some Old Testament-style suffering in the text, for which I’m responsible. I initially published “Thunderbird” in the Spring, 2003 issue of the Mid-American Review where it was a finalist for their 2003 Sherwood Anderson Prize for Fiction. Later it turned out that the woman who won had published her story about eighteen times, so my story was informally promoted to winner along with those of the other finalists. So let’s call it the pseudo-winner of the prize. I think it’s the best story I’ve written and this is a chance to give it a new life. The story is set in Las Cruces, NM, and features a homeless, former traffic engineer who suffers debilitating migraines. He meets and travels with a purported schizophrenic nicknamed Valu-pak. It’s darkly comic and if you’ve ever had a migraine or any chronic pain whatsoever, then this is the story for you! Here are two brief excerpts that set the tone: 1) “V.P. had been an Iowa State inside linebacker and often reminded me that ritualized combat ensured cultural vitality. He liked watching boxing and World Wrestling Federation matches. He drank a lot and had conversations with people I couldn’t see. I suspected his imaginary friends had something to do with his nickname. V.P. was short for Valu-pak. His real name was Ulee Kokaletsis. He was third-generation Greek American, twenty-nine years old, and a true hobo, by which I mean he traveled without a cell phone and scanner, without any employment to fall back on, without any affiliation to the National Hobo Association. We were both misfits, escaped to the trestled hinterlands, to back alleys, warehouse districts, highway underpasses. In the following weeks we headed south as the foliage flared and fell away, leaving stands of trees as diminished as if a fire had swept through. Everything began to blur. Sit drinking for days and the rumble of wheels, rattling of boxcars, and hissing wind distill into a silence that fills your head like heavy weight motor oil. V.P. called it catching the drift. It wasn’t that I stopped thinking about unemployment, eviction, destitution and the rest of respectability’s quick dissolution, but that these thoughts slowed so much that they stretched into long, unintelligible notes, like those deep, layered chants of Tibetan monks.” 2) “‘Suck it up, Ray,’ V.P. said. He was wreathed in a radiant glow. This light began to crystallize in my eyes, a jagged halo of white with the colors of the spectrum lining its edges. It was no hallucination. Since the accident the migraines struck randomly, most of them announced by this halo, what the doctors called a scintillating scotoma. Scotoma comes from the Latin word scotma—dim sight—in turn derived from the Greek words for darkness and dizziness. To me it was the very antithesis of the burning light of revelation. It illuminated nothing, just made the surrounding darkness more absolute. The Mesopotamians had it right when they described migraines as an evil spirit. One of their clay tablets reads: Headache roams the desert, blowing like the wind. Flashing like lightning it is loosed above and below. It cuts off like a reed him who fears not his god, this man it has struck, and like one sick of heart he staggers. Like one bereft of reason, he is broken.” I’ll be emailing a promotional HTML (see what a mod chapman I am?) in a few weeks and will try and post some scanned artwork from the project as well. You will soon be able to order the chapbook on Amazon.com (ISBN: 0-9769857-1-3), and as of the 25th of October you can find it at sunnyoutside. August 21, 2005: Cracker Factor Well. A lot has happened in the past two months including the conclusion of my reading tour, the Tour de France, Lance’s retirement, a temporary move to Austin, and as-yet-unparalleled procrastination when it comes to updating this journal. Plus I have successfully climbed the Santa Fe ski basin a number of times on my stupendous road bike and so humiliated John Greenman on our rides that he moved to Jacksonville, Fla., a.k.a. Generic White Guy Land, a.k.a. Home to the Promise Keepers and Guys Who Wear Dockers. But back to the silence. Two months and not a word. And as we all know, if you’re going to compete with the other 50 million narcissistic bloggers you’ve got to provide new content much more regularly than that. But what can I say? Even I tire at the sight of the first person pronoun in these pages and also I (there it is again!) am still feeling tired and cranky after a long year (ever on the academic schedule, things end in June and resume in August, with the in-between days a kind of superheated interim, at least in Austin—talk about spontaneous-combustion weather!). Also, I don’t consider myself a blogger. More a Deep Thinker in the tradition of Jack Handy, may God praise him. Okay, down to business. First, the best thing about the summer has been the biking. This is in spite of being threatened by not one, but two shirtless crackers on the same stretch of road in Austin (Barton Springs Road near Chuy’s). I don’t know what it is about Texas, but the great state that gave us such national treasures as Tom DeLay, Shrub, and the Texas Edition Ford Truck, also seems to harbor a subculture of guys who like to hang out of their trucks and curse and spit at cyclists, especially when said cyclists are happily motoring along in a biking lane. The first guy threatened to kick my ass and, of course, I encouraged him to try. Naturally he was enraged. Poor John Greenman was behind me and seemed puzzled when he caught up to me at the next light. Apparently some shirtless guy had thrown something at him without provocation. I feigned ignorance. Then, a week later, another shirtless guy in a truck screamed at me in exactly the same place. I also saluted him. Naturally, he was enraged. This time, John Greenman and my girlfriend were both behind me. The resultant chaos was described by them like a scene out of The Matrix. Picture Neo on the rooftop with the bullets whizzing by in slo-mo, and then replace this with sweaty cyclists dodging “the biggest loogie ever,” which cuts between them like something fired from a rocket launcher. There you have it. Strangely, I now seem to be doing most of my cycling alone. I’m thinking that it might be time to invest in pepper spray. But then again, it’s so damned hard to drag my carcass up the hills that even this extra bit of weight could cause my heart to burst from my chest. The reading tour was pretty cool in terms of the actual readings, especially the Mississippi leg, which featured Lemuria and Square Books. I had a moment in Lemuria Books where I stood staring at a pallet of my books which were to be signed and, after asking if they’d made a major mistake with the order, felt like a real writer. I even got writer’s cramp while signing them! The reading at the Bataan Memorial Museum in Santa Fe was also excellent and raised close to a thousand dollars for the museum. In truth, it was small moments that made the tour: reconnecting with old friends, getting a cool question from the audience, talking shop with bookstore staff, having a car service swing up to baggage claim when I was staggering from fatigue—all the things that make you feel connected and appreciated. The reviews of the book were mixed, though my friends and family tell me I’m oversensitive to this stuff. The low point was Janet Maslin’s New York Times review that never came out as this seemed to ensure that things fell quiet pretty quickly after the book’s release. I’ve had a chance to think back over the whole experience and have decided that it’s best to enjoy what you can control and keep a distance from what you can’t, which is to say I can enjoy the writing or giving the readings, but that it’s pointless to get angry or feel betrayed or get depressed about whether the book is received in the way that I had hoped. The book’s out there and I can have a good time writing the next one. Process, as my teachers used to say. It’s all about being dedicated to the process of writing, which offers a quiet and pure pleasure. The rest is distraction, whether positive or negative. Yeah, it sounds cheesy and like a defense mechanism for dealing with disappointment, but it’s genuine. Throughout the span of this book’s publication I’ve felt very uncomfortable (though excited) with the public aspects of being a writer. I think that you can’t help but become accustomed to the reflective silence that embodies so much of the work and because of this the noise and sense of exposure when you’re in the public eye, however peripherally, feels disconcerting. As for the Tour de France, a.k.a. The Most Boring Tour Ever, a.k.a. How Many Times Can Phil, Paul, Bob, and Moron Al Trautwig say Lance?, a.k.a. The French Still Suck at Cycling, I was—surprise!—disappointed. Aside from Vinokorov, who attacked every hundred meters or so, every biker in the peloton seemed to have been completely wussified by Lance’s past domination. Telekom remained its managerially challenged self, CSC was cool but not good enough, Gerolsteiner had cool uniforms and was polite buy not pushy, and the rest of the teams pretty much sucked. Only Discovery rolled along like some corporate juggernaut. Everything was efficient and controlled and about as exciting as watching a bunch of engineers on a dance floor. I have this theory that the direction of cycling is pretty lame. I mean, it used to be that guys would drink cognac and hammer out a new set of forks on a forge when their bike frame busted in the middle of the Tour. Talk about drama! But Lance, Chris Carmichael, and Johannes Brunyeel have through their incredible success turned winning into a series of formulas having to do with wattage output and caloric intake. I freely recognize that this is a necessary element in a sport that’s become incredibly competitive and I also freely recognize that I suck at biking and know approximately squat. But I’m glad that Lance has retired and I’m desperately hoping for some crazy trash-talking, temperamental cyclists to take over the sport. Right now it feels like it’s in danger of being taken over by triathlete types. I mean, who likes to go out for a two-hour ride in a fixed position on the bike? That sounds like some masochistic torture to me. Have you ever noticed, by the way, that a huge percentage of serious triathletes seem to be involved in the sciences? What’s the deal with that? Okay, enough ranting. And for all you serious triathletes and racers out there, definitely ignore me. I know I’m one of those dilettante bikers who wears the wrong jerseys and owns a bike that’s too good for me. But can you blame me for wanting a little more excitement? I mean, there was only one good day of racing in the mountains in this year’s Tour, and the flat stages were, as usual, so boring that I could easily have watched NASCAR or curling instead. May 22, 2005: Zombie Critics: They Got Opinions Well, the reviews are coming in and I’m not the happy camper I was, as I’ve discovered that regardless of whether the reviews are positive or negative, they are much more revealing of the reviewer than the book. Maybe this is a kind of unwritten compensation for those who are churning out five paragraph articles for fifty bucks a pop, but it makes for unsettling reading. I think the lesson here is to look to your peers for an accurate and honest assessment of your accomplishments and tune out the rest of the noise. Happily, the readings have been a pleasure. I had an excellent reading at RiverRun Books in Portsmouth (thanks to Tom Holbrook and the many of you who attended), where I discovered that passing around a piece of Trinitite (a chunk of the glassy, fused sand from the first atomic blast at Trinity Site) made some people in the audience a little nervous. I also had a great time at Olsson’s Books in DC, where I caught up with many good friends, and the writers Robert Girardi and Aaron Roy Even (Bob’s book Madeleine’s Ghost and Aaron’s Bloodroot are both outstanding). I also had an incredibly good time at my interview with VOA’s Nancy Beardsley, who is absolutely the best reviewer I’ve encountered. Okay, short rant: My review in The San Francisco Chronicle can best be summarized as insultingly snide, the kind of review that makes you wonder what the reviewer does to puppies and small children when he’s not typing. As I read it, I thought, Do I know this guy? This feels so personal. So I looked around online but, surprise!, he had published little of note. No fiction, a few snide reviews, one or two history articles. But then it all came back to me: Once I was out in San Francisco playing in an ultimate frisbee tourney with Wesleyan’s Nietzch Factor and this hydrocephalic guy on the sidelines kept yelling crap at all the players. He’d say things like, “I suppose that was a good pass. For a pin-headed college boy,” and “I can crush you with my big head!” I thought he was on one of the teams, but this wasn’t the case. He talked smack throughout three of our games and even head-butted one old lady’s pug. I’m not a dog guy (cats are cooler), but when I saw that I had had enough. He was giving hydrocephalics everywhere a bad name! I’m known for my long-distance pass (a.k.a. Thor’s Hammer) and on seeing the pug stagger off and the woman in tears, I reflexively winged the frisbee at Noggin Boy, where it lodged in his forehead like an axe blade. Silence. Then thunderous applause from the crowd as he toppled to the ground. In fact, I had killed him (we won the game, by the way). But now, in this age of unholy science and stem cell research, it seems Hydrocephalic Zombie Critic has returned and he still has Opinions, this time about books. Ah, that felt great! May 7, 2005: Googledoppers! Just back from Iowa City which was, happily, much as I remembered it. Same excellent pedestrian mall, bookstore (Prairie Lights), and Dublin Underground. My friend Devin came down from the arctic barrens of Wisconsin and we celebrated the completion of his PhD and the fact that he won a Bush Fellowship—a particularly fortuitous grant given that I’d written him a recommendation and thus he was obligated to pay for meals and drinks. Plus, he’s so accustomed to isolation that things like, well, buildings and paved roads make him feel ill-at-ease and disoriented. As a result, it fell to me to navigate the mighty metropolis and ridicule him for his inability to orient himself. My way of getting even for the last trip to Wisconsin, in which he taught me the fine art of kayak-ramming and I spent most of my time inhaling brackish riverwater. On reflection, I should have hired someone to mug him. I also saw some old friends from Iowa City (thanks for coming to the reading, Lesanne and Charlie) and visited the Dey House, where the Iowa Writers’ Workshop is now housed. It looked cool, but abandoned—finals week, I guess. I had mixed feelings about the Workshop for a long time after I left, but the return to Iowa City and chance to reflect from a distance put things back in perspective and it was good to feel that, on the whole, the experience was overwhelmingly positive. The reading at Prairie Lights went well, though it was tough to compete with Cinco de Mayo, finals week, and the first nice day in Iowa since 1796. If you missed this stupendous performance, you can download it here: Iowa05Reading. It’s a .ram file which requires RealPlayer to work (30 min. reading, 30 min. Q&A). I’ve been fishing around online to track the book news (nothing big to report at the moment) and after doing a search on my name—a disquietingly narcissistic action, I know—I’ve discovered that there are other Alex Parsonses. I mean, I knew there were, but only abstractly. But Google makes them seem, well, concrete. This awareness of my Googledoppers was slow in coming: a few months ago my friend John McNally (Book of Ralph; forthcoming novel is America’s Reportcard) sent me a hilarious email in which he explained that he had no idea that I’d written a book, What’s Inside?: Boats, but lauded the catchy title. So poking around I’ve discovered that I have a Googledopper (I’ve adopted this from Doppelganger, which means, roughly, doublewalker; it’s a kind of invisible double) who is a writer. What’s great about the Boats Googledopper is that he’s written his book for an ages 4-8 audience but it shows up on Amazon alongside an anthology I contributed to called Men Seeking Women: Love and Sex On-line. While exploring this, though, I discovered that Alexander Parsons is more likely Alexandra Parsons, as she seems to have written many books with similar titles. For example, What’s Inside?: Shells and, along the lines of ironic coincidence, Facts & Phalluses: A Collection of Bizarre & Intriguing Truths, Legends, & Measurements in which, apparently, “the Great Grey Slug is considered the most impressive and acrobatic lover in the animal kingdom,” and it turns out that elephants masturbate. I’d like to think that this is not for the same ages 4-8 audience. May 3, 2005: Arctic Brazilians Still chewing my fingernails and waiting for book reviews. I sent out the emails today (apologies if you got more than one) and discovered that anti-spam seems to be working pretty effectively against me. Yet another quality-of-life improvement provided by those wankers selling everything from erectile-dysfunction pills to mortgages. The problem with too many people is that the losers at the extreme ends of the social spectrum bring everyone down. Lowest common denominator. You have only to look at our political climate to see proof of this. So if you didn’t get the email and are feeling left out don’t blame me—just visit here for the full book promotion experience. On a somewhat related note, the sales numbers on Amazon and B&N remain deeply confusing, but it’s fun to track them. Shadows is veering wildly between 338,469 and 17,336. Of course this means next to nothing—probably it’s an indication that I sold three copies, one of which was returned having been thoroughly chewed by a ferret. But trying to figure it out is great fun. I feel like Quequeg on the Pequod, rattling some bones for a glimpse of the future. Except that I don’t have the tattoos. Or the buffness. Or any business being anywhere near a book as fine as Moby-Dick. (In truth, I don’t love this book. I know I’m supposed to, but the fact is that the damn whale shows up way, way too late. The stuff about rendering the whales is pretty cool, though. And creepy when you think about the fact that rendering is what we euphemistically term the process of outsourcing terrorist suspects to countries known for their strong belief in human rights. Like Syria.) Now an apology to Alistair MacLeod. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I wasn’t taken with his keynote address at AWP, which was less than stellar. But I just read his story “Boats” and it’s exceptional, eh! And people say Canadians can’t write because their passionate nature works against the steady disposition necessary for the literary arts. Canadians, it seems, are unfairly represented as the northern equivalent of Brazilians. In all seriousness, MacLeod is a wonderful writer and his collection, Island: Collected Stories, is well worth buying. Between bouts of insomnia I also read Mitch Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mind, which is about an aging Sherlock Holms at the twilight of his life. It’s very richly textured with a strong mood and voice. April 29, 2005: The Glorious F-word [Warning!] Don’t read this entry if four-letter words offend you, as today’s thoughts are devoted entirely to the king of all four-letter words. Yes, the F-word. [End of Warning!] I’ve been working on a story that features a character who says “fuck.” A lot. And in writing this I came to reflect on the many uses of this wondrously versatile word. Here’s the excerpt from the story that got me started: “Hector was a master of fuck. Like John Henry with a pick, Mohammed Ali with his fists, or Eddie VanHalen with his electric axe, Hector wielded this word with virtuoso control. Drawn out with a sighing fricative—fffffuuuck—it was an expression of loving admiration or, with a dip of the vowel—fffffuuuck—of tired exasperation. Clipped, it was a brick through the bedroom window: Fuck! In quick succession the utterance jerked from a shotgun blast to machine gun rattle: fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck. As an adverb and verb—Let’s fucking fuck already—Hector’s eyebrows up and a little grin as he gauged the reaction of the woman he was asking, it was carnal and forward, the unexpected—and often unwelcome—pressure of a hand in a private place. And in its adjectival, adverbial and noun forms—fucker fuckin’ fuck—it was as indispensable, versatile, and necessary as bullfighter’s cape, sword, and winged hat. There was no facing circumstance without it. ‘Fuck,’ said Hector. And again: ‘Fuck.’” What is the etymology of this amazing term? Good question. I spoke with a linguist in my department about regional variations in its use (she even has a study on its use in New Hampshire), but the basic facts are these: ♦ Fuck: verb—to copulate; to express anger, contempt, or disgust; to deal with harshly or unfairly. (Merriam Webster Dictionary) ♦ It stems from the German flicken, which means “to strike.” ♦ It’s an acronym for “fornication under the consent of the king.” ♦ The earliest recorded usage of the word was in the Northern part of England in 1503. Apparently, I am not alone in my affection for, or profound interest in, this word. Visit here and you’ll get an excellent summation of the word’s many functions while basking to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. And there’s your self-improvement for the day. Have a fan-fucking-tastic weekend, fuckers! April 26, 2005: Publication Day! Today is like a birthday, only better. The book is officially out, no matter that it was printed back in March. In stores everywhere! Surprisingly, my Amazon and B&N sales rankings are pathetic. I expected to be 527,000th on B&N but I was 594,065! What gives? And on Amazon I expected to be way up around 300,000. But no, I’m at 338,469. To give you some perspective, the literary blockbuster Supernanny: How to Get the Best from Your Children is #46! (I suspect this has a lot to do with the inclusion of the Toilet-training Supernanny Solution—something a few of my friends could take a few pointers from. Like Fink and Adam.) And Butkus: Flesh and Blood, the story of Dick Butkus, mean linebacker guy (published in 1997 by Doubleday, no less), is 382,924. So I’m predicting I’m going to sell, well butkus. What does this mean? It means go out and get your multiple copies of In the Shadows of the Sun now! This instant! Buy them in pallets! Otherwise I will have to sell both my kidneys, one lung, and at least an eyeball to buy up the first print run. It’s that or never publish again, people. Help me out here. Dick Butkus would. On a somewhat commercially-related note, I’m working with a graphic designer, Dave McNamara of SunnyOutside Productions to create a limited edition broadside of my short story “Thunderbird.” It was awarded the 2003 Sherwood Anderson Prize for Fiction from the Mid-American Review (initially a runner-up/editor’s choice—long story) and is one of the best things I’ve written. The broadside is essentially a copy of the story on very high-quality paper with a font and illustrations geared to the story (yes, we’ve hired an illustrator for original art). Each copy will be numbered and signed. I’ll sell them for between $5-$10 depending on how much the production of the run costs. If you want to order one, just email me on my website and I’ll save a copy under your name (I can inscribe them if you’d like, as well) and we can work out the billing details (I haven’t yet settled on which Internet service to use). They will also be for sale at some of my readings, probably those after May 20th. Next week I’ll be emailing a promotional graphic of the book with the dates of the readings and weblinks. My editor is looking it over at the moment, likely to be sure that I’m not making any promises about the book that will result in a lawsuit. So be patient if you’ve signed up for my mailing list—a note about happenings will arrive. That said, I’m also trying to make good on my promise not to frivolously make use of my elist—like you, I hate junk mail or even the sight of too many emails in my box. April 25, 2005: Nature 1, Alex 1, Dental surgeon 20 What a weekend. First, I had an old-school, ex-navy dental surgeon rip out my wisdom teeth. I mean, the dude only gave me novocain. No general anesthetic, no nitrous, not even frickin Tylenol. Just a bunch of novocain to the roof of my mouth. Which hurt. A lot. Then, realizing I was going to be exquisitely conscious during the procedure, I mentioned that I was getting nervous. To this he replied—I kid you not—“I just had knee surgery last week, so at least you won’t have to worry about me putting my knee on your chest when I yank these out.” Did I mention that one tooth was impacted? It was like a horror movie! Scalpel, stitches, and there I am thinking Holy crap! Stuff was cracking in my skull! It was so bad and he had so much trouble getting them out (apparently this was my fault for getting old and not having this procedure when I was six, before the teeth even existed) that I was ready for him to bring in a dray horse and hook it to my tooth. It was like a gulag medical camp in there! I’m outraged! And I’m going to be traumatized by the memory of this for a long, long time. The rest of the weekend passed in a Vicodin haze. I ate about 70 popsickles and watched every episode of Futurama ever produced. Bender kicks butt. When I next see the dental surgeon I’m going to tell him, Bite my shiny metal ass! But only after he takes out the stitches. But it gets worse. Much worse. While I was drifting in and out of consciousness on the couch I heard noise in the ceiling. Yes, people, it is far worse than I could ever have imagined: There is still a squirrel in the ceiling. Karl Rove avoided the forcible redistricting that caught Delay. It’s getting serious. At this point I’m ready to use the axe handle or plutonium. I feel like Captain Insano. It’s as if there’s a squirrel in my head and the squirrel-in-the-condo thing is like a, you know, metaphor. Am I going crazy? It’s true that Karl does talk politics a lot... April 21, 2005: Absolutely This is the last blog update for a few days, as tomorrow a dental surgeon is going to take a pneumatic drill and pulverize and extract my wisdom teeth, an experience likely to be so traumatic that I will spend this weekend shivering at the memory while wrapped in an opiate haze. Hopefully I will be recovered by Tuesday, when I have another radio interview (I’ll post details on when it will air). On the other hand, maybe opiates and swollen cheeks will alter my voice and temperament in such a way that I’ll sound like a radio star. Didn’t Rush Limbaugh do something to this effect? I forget. At any rate, I’m posting the recording of the NHPR “The Front Porch” show here for your listening amusement: Aaaaghhh!@NHPR. It’s a .ram file which requires RealPlayer to work. Many thanks to John Walters and his able producers for shaping my answers into a coherent form. Visitors like me are why they are paid professionals. Note: If this download doesn’t work, it’s because I’m still a newby at HTML. April 19, 2005: Can I restate that? Man oh man. I’m definitely not a natural radio personality like Al Franken or Garrison Keillor. I had an interview this morning for NHPR’s “The Front Porch” (it airs tomorrow, people—see the readings deal to your left) down in Concord. So naturally I awoke at 4:30 A.M. completely wigged out and promptly memorized all the facts concerning the Bataan Death March that I had forgotten in the past three years. Then I drank some coffee. Then I drove an hour on a two-lane road and screamed at people doing the speed limit. So I was feeling pretty cool and collected by the time I arrived a half-hour early. And, of course, they could instantly tell that I was a media rube from the backwoods in desperate need of Xanax, lithium, or a sledge-hammer to the forehead. Then, during the interview, I kept thinking that I should talk in a really deep, gravelly voice, like Howard Stern on quaaludes, but instead I kept speeding up and sounding like one of Alvin’s chipmunks. Agh. Self-loathing. But not all was lost. This afternoon I went for a ride on Stupendo-bike. And after only an hour I felt like a superhero from an age when there were no radios and people were not judged for having nasal, Ed Norton voices. Ever. The really big news, of course, is that Lance is retiring and Tyler Hamilton lost his doping appeal. Game over. Maybe Tom Danielson will be the new face of American cycling, but right now it’s a bummer to contemplate having to root for some Lithuanian next year. Perhaps the time is right for me to make my bid for Le Tour, though this would only be possible if they allowed me to be towed by a motorcycle. April 13, 2005: Forcible Relocation My birthday was a few weeks ago and, as is the case as I get older, I reflected on my goals, successes, and failures. Well, mainly failures. But these failures—failure to hook up with Angelina Jolie, failure to destroy my nemesis John Greenman, and failure to win either the Tour de France or the Congressional Medal of Honor—now seem pithy and unimportant. Why? Because, unequivocally, last night I proved I was smarter than a squirrel. That’s right, Tom Delay has been forcibly redistricted. After several disastrous attempts with the Havahart traps which convinced me that I was dealing less with a squirrel than with the rodent world’s Houdini, I managed to catch the little bastard. And lucky for him. Just this weekend I spent a good half-hour eying the axe handles at the local hardware store. I have risked blindness (powdered cayenne pepper in the eyes), deafness (okay, at the upper registers only—rodent sonic bombs), and my life (staggering around my gabled roof with ungainly traps; electrocution as I dismantled the fuse box to get at said squirrel). I feel like frickin’ Hannibal coming down out of the Alps. My friend Devin hikes around Wisconsin in the winter trapping beaver (not a euphemism) and hunting deer armed only with his sharpened canines, but this is nothing compared to capturing a squirrel. You hear me Devin? You’re bush-league, man! I’m ready to wrestle with grizzlies! I eat wild pit bulls for lunch! Though not raw. They’re best with a teriyaki marinade. Ahh. Much better. So now Tom Delay roams the UNH campus, free to vent his outrage. But I don’t have to listen to it. I’ll bet the Supreme Court Justices wish they could do the same. April 11, 2005: My Literary Idol So the A.W.P. Conference was last week in Vancouver. I think the coolest thing about it, and perhaps the most bracing reassurance that all is well with the human race, is that the hotel bar is always the most happening place. This speaks well to our priorities: socializing, killing time, laughing, and getting wobbly. If America wants to improve its global image the State Dept. should probably fund great hotel bars throughout the world where people can go and mix with Americans and see that we are not so different except for our preoccupation with elective surgery. But no American beer should be served, or at least not Miller, Bud Light, and the oh-so-ironically consumed PBR. Vancouver, by the way, kicks butt. I would move there in a heartbeat even if my job was scraping gum from the sidewalks. Where am I going with this paragraph? I have no idea. Suffice it to say that I didn’t meet my literary idol at A.W.P., though I did pick up Alistair MacLeod’s Island: Collected Stories. Alas, his talk on Canadian lit. wasn’t as good as his fiction. I think he, too, had been enjoying the hotel bar. The book update. Okay, I’m terrified. Stuff like radio interviews are starting up and I keep having impostor complex moments, like when I read at A.W.P. for the Mid-American Review and became convinced that somewhere in the room a WWII vet was going to kick my ass because I didn’t live through a Japanese POW camp. I bet it’s this kind of thing that makes John McCain hard to deal with. At the end of every argument he can basically say, I was POW in ’Nam! And that’s pretty much the end of your point. I’ve got to get a grip on the paranoia and remember that most people are cool and do, in fact, like hanging out in hotel bars, rather than heckling authors at readings. I got a good review from Booklist, which is the final of the auto-reviews, I think. It reads: “The brutality of war exerted on its young soldiers and the shocks felt by the families left at home are brought to harrowing life in Parsons’s new novel... [yadda yadda plot summary] ... Parsons, by recounting struggles fought both at home and abroad, shows how indifferent war is to the people who make the most sacrifices, breaking families apart through fissures they didn’t even know existed. A moving, richly textured novel rendered with a poet’s touch.” On the subject of books, I snuck in time for two. The first is Mark Spragg’s The Fruit of the Stone. Pretty solid work. He’s got an incredibly keen eye for detail and a great ear for language. If you like James Galvin’s The Meadow (one of my favorites), you’ll like this book, too. The characters can be pretty frustrating, but everything else is first-rate. But the big news is that I got my hands on an advance reader’s copy of No Country for Old Men. Yep, the new Cormac McCarthy novel and his first in seven years. Was I excited? Yes. I had to change my pants. Twice. How was the book? Was it worth seven years of waiting? Did it live up to his other works, several of which are some of the finest novels penned in the past fifty years? No it did not. It pains me to say this because Cormac is such an awesome talent. It’s not a bad novel. I mean, he’s too good to write poorly. But I think my expectations for him are now so outsized that he doesn’t have a chance. This sucks for both him and me, and I suspect that I’m not alone in this dynamic. The novel starts out with a lot of violence interspersed with first-person narratives by Sheriff Bell, who’s investigating drug-related murders and generally opining on the decay of contemporary American society. It’s the first time I’ve seen McCarthy play with voice this intently, and he has a great grasp of it. Plus, it’s good to see him pushing in new directions. But the whole book feels crotchety. He is also trying to work against convention—the biggest scene in the book is omitted and the ending contradicts expectations—but this, for me, was disappointing even though the final pages and resolution worked to underscore his theme. Ultimately, I’ve grown accustomed to McCarthy taking me to worlds I’d never imagined, but in this novel he fails to do so. The combination of hired killers, drug runners, and Vietnam vets seems a little too dead for even him to revivify. If you’re going to read the Master—and you should—stick with Blood Meridian, The Crossing, All the Pretty Horses—well, stick with anything else he’s written. March 29, 2005: All Quiet on the Western Front First, the book hath arrived. The closest I’ll come to giving birth was the moment I opened the package and saw the novel in all its glory. Sweet. You may say all books look the same, but not so to this proud parent. There’s a special matte finish to the cover, an amazing shininess to the foil title, and a stunningly unique rectangularity to the whole thing. So shapely. So good-looking. And that doesn’t even take into account the words. I better not find any reviewers talking smack about my progeny. Yeah, yeah, you say. But what about the squirrels? Well, I thought that they’d disappeared as I hadn’t heard anything since returning from Austin. But last night I smacked the ceiling a few times and, sure enough, there was some chittering and scratching. A student of mine is bringing me a Havahart trap today, so we’ll see. I’m headed to Vancouver on Wednesday and don’t want to set the trap only to return and find my nemeses a decomposed tangle of bones within the trap. Not for humanitarian reasons, mind you, but because I want to look into their beady rodent eyes and make them understand that no one sublets from me rent-free. Then it’s off to the local park and outdoor living for them. They’ve got fur for a reason. Of course, this supposes that all goes according to plan. In all likelihood, something will go horribly wrong and I’ll need rabies shots. I hear they use a 16-gauge needle for that. ZZ Packer came to read this week at UNH, which was excellent. Her collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is outstanding: it’s a very mature first book that shows great range in terms of character and theme. Definitely worth checking out. I also recently read Ben Power’s The Rope-Eater, which is an adventure-style first novel about arctic exploration in the 19th century. The civil war stuff at the start is a bit weak, but the details of the trip north are excellent; best is the stuff having to do with the title. The end fizzled a bit, but overall the book is strongly plotted. I’m a sucker for arctic lit. Robert Edrich’s The Broken Lands, William Vollman’s The Rifles, Alfred Lansing’s Endurance: Shackelton’s Incredible Voyage, and Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams are all favorites of mine. I think I like the idea of knowing that there’s actually some place marginally colder than New Hampshire. Finally, in poking around while writing my last entry, I discovered that Leaving Disneyland has been remaindered. Yes, another first for this newbie author. Truly the writing life can suck ass. I’m not sure how to feel about it: on one hand I feel that I’ve improved since then and would prefer people to read the new book, an issue remaindering has neatly addressed; but it’s also hard to see my novel disappear after putting years into it. If there’s a truism about writing, it’s that it’s a career filled with many private humiliations. Be warned. March 23, 2005: Totally Sweet! Totally Suck! Re: Totally Sweet!: The books are printed! I should see the first copies of Shadows in two or three days. The duration of pre-production should make this feel anticlimactic, but this isn’t the case. I mean, that moment when you hold the physical object in your hands is one of the finest a writer has. It’s like cupping four, five, or six years of your creative endeavors in your palms. And even better, others can do the same. It’s a sublime pleasure, a moment you daydream about when you’re slogging through the middle chapters of every draft. Re: Totally Suck!: Okay, so you know there’s a market in rare books and first editions and the like. Duh. And in some cases, as with Cormac McCarthy’s early books, you can see the esteem in which the author is held based on the prices such novels command. Yeah. You can see where I’m going here. That’s right, I found a reader’s copy of my book on eBay. Let me say that I’m probably not the only author who trawls online to see what’s up with his work. Remember Paul Theroux getting all bent out of shape when he found an copy of one of his books inscribed to V.S. Naipal up for sale? What do you think he was up to? Probably seeing if any fan groups had set up sites to honor him. At any rate, one of the few ARCs of my book, the rarest commodity in my miniscule body of work, is for sale. The price? $6.99. The price of a panini. The number of bids? Zero. For comparison, McCarthy’s second book, Outer Dark, commands a price of $2000-4000. McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show? $500-650. My first novel, Leaving Disneyland, sells for between $2.05 and $25 (for a signed copy), meaning that the high end is about $1.05 above cover price. Aaahr, Supply and Demand, ye be a harsh mistress! March 20, 2005: Ee’s a Sledgehammer! Okay, I know you’re dying to hear about the bike. But first, bidness. The cover was just finalized for Shadows and it looks awesome. I’m a big fan of foil and it makes the title pop right off the photo. Plus, if you look really close, you can use the lettering to tell if you have a bit of food stuck in your teeth. Unfortunately, the skinflints at Nan A. Talese wouldn’t fund my smell-o-novel idea. Smell-o-novel, you ask? Yep. It goes like this: as you turn the pages you experience the many smells of 40s-era ranch life and war in a tropical climate. And POW camps. But nobody listens to the author when it comes to marketing. They even nixed my idea to have multiple Alex Parsonses read throughout the country on the same dates. Too Andy Kaufmanesque, I guess. And, okay, a little misrepresentative. Publisher’s Weekly just gave Shadows a pretty good review. I’m condensing here because, like Kirkus, they give away all the plot twists during the obligatory plot-summary filler that seems to comprise the bulk of many reviews today. “In this deeply moving second novel, about the struggles of a New Mexico ranching family during World War II, Parsons (Leaving Disneyland) traces the effects of war at home and abroad. Ross Strickland and his brother, Baylis; their wives, Sara and Alida; and their children all live together, tending cattle and working the land. As America prepares for war, Ross and Sara’s headstrong son, Jack, enlists in the army against his stubborn father’s wishes. Soon, the War Department sends the Stricklands an eviction notice—their land is commandeered to provide a test site for the atomic bomb. As the family’s land and livelihood slip away, so do the bonds that hold them together. Jack is reported dead... yadda, yadda... The action alternates between the Philippines and New Mexico, as Jack and his family struggle to survive... more yadda... Parson’s painful portrayal of the war’s hardships offers a fresh and searing take on the dark shadows cast by the atomic bomb.” (March 14, 2005) As for the Sledgehammer, I bought my totally sweet bike down in Austin last week! Needless to say, I brought Greenman with me so that he could suffer major bike envy. The guy who sold it to me, Adam, assured me that not only could I beat an unnamed rival cyclist into a pulp with it, but then I could get back on the bike and ride away without it being the worse for wear. I think, though, that I didn’t treat the purchase with the requisite amount of awe and quivering anticipation. In a lot of ways fancy bike stores are the cathedrals of triathletes and, as we know, triathletes are not renowned for their sense of humor or wider perspective on life, generally because they’re too busy carboloading, doing “bricks” (back-to-back workouts), and applying zinc oxide to their noses and vaseline to their nipples (don’t ask). I mean, anyone who runs in a Speedo/bannana hammock is a little off, particularly if they run, bike, and swim to the point of heat prostration. What I’m saying is that before I even got on the bike I had been marked an outsider. By the end of the sale I felt sure that Adam wanted nothing more than seek legal assurances that I would never, ever be allowed to ride a bike as fine as the titanium Guru Velociti with optional solid-fuel jet propulsion rockets. So the bike arrives in three weeks, at which point I will burn a voodoo doll of Greenman and head out with cousin Evelyn and her pack of tri-nerds and get my butt kicked on the backroads of Newburyport, Mass. Stay tuned. February 26, 2005: Tactical Nuclear Strike That’s right, people. You heard me. I called for estimates on squirrel removal as the chewing on cables and home infrastructure roused me at 5:00 A.M. from my deathbed torpor (I’m getting my butt kicked by a cold). The previous night I had drilled holes in the floor of a closet and dumped cayenne pepper into Karl and Tom’s love den. It’s not that I oppose their life style—God bless them in these not-so-friendly days for, well, anything not in line with sexual bigotry—but rather that they are rambunctious, out-of-control tenants who tend to gnaw on things as if their mouths were buzzsaws. The cost for removal, however, hovers between $600-2000. WTF? It’s not like they’re feral ligers or rabid walruses. This is a massive scam. And it makes me wonder what tax bracket the average pest removal operative is in. I’m guessing they dig the tax cuts like you wouldn’t believe. Given these costs I have come up with two alternative solutions: 1) buy a daisy-cutter bomb or tactical nuke and then rebuild from the resultant crater, or 2) take the yowling, feral cat that’s roaming the property, fix it with fishing line and a harness and tether it on the roof so that when Tom and Karl leave for a snack the yowling cat gets something to eat, quiets down, and I finally get some damned sleep. I’m tired of lurching around like a consumptive Quasimodo. Of course, fitting a feral cat into a harness might be a little tricky. Anybody have some loaner chainmail? Not much up with the book at the moment. I’m still waiting to finalize the reading schedule at which time I’ll send out an email. I’m loath to do so before then because I’m sick of getting junk in my own accounts. How much Cialis, Vicodin, and Viagra can one dude buy? How much weight can a person lose? How many mortgages can they renegotiate? A cultural anthropologist could have a field day with this stuff. I mean, anytime I’m feeling down I just think about all the limp-dick, pained, poor-body image, debtors out there and voilà! Problem solved. And speaking of general health, I’m going to buy the sweetest bike. The sweetest bike probably ever made. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime indulgence and I’ll admit up front that I’m not worthy. I don’t deserve it. I will probably never deserve it. Soooo what? Soooo effing what? I’m going to get it. I’ve been on a trainer most nights for the past month just to prep for the test ride, which will probably be in a parking lot. The one catch is that I have to crush John Greenman when I go riding with him. Given that John is an arthritic thirty-four who belongs on a shuffleboard court, what with the grey hair, pronounced limp, and frankenstein rebuilt shoulder, I should have no worries. But. But. First, John is a notorious trash-talker. On every ride we have ever taken he has consistently defiled the memory of my mother, his denials notwithstanding. It’s as demoralizing and offensive as his b.o. And he’s also a compulsive gymrat. This means that he’s always freaking out about needing to spend three hours a day on the oscillator or nordic track or wuss-velocity-pede or whatever. He’s given up normal social interaction, gainful employment, and self-respect to keep in shape. Why else is he walker-bound at the moment? It’s going to be a tough ride, people. But I’ll fight for self-respect and mothers everywhere. Even John’s momma. Who loves me. February 8, 2005: Book Burnings and Homeland Security I received a wonderful email from the writer Howard Mosher (Waiting for Teddy Williams) who was also kind enough to blurb Shadows. This sort of reaction is probably one of the best aspects of writing (sexy groupies being the other): you write the book, send it out there, and a reader who has a deep understanding of writing and its demands lets you know that your book engrossed them. It’s the kind of interaction that I imagined from time-to-time as I was toiling away. (Okay, I imagined the sexy groupie thing a lot more—in fact, my imagined reader reactions went like this: 1) Nazi-style book-burning, 2) sexy groupies all over me but not actually ripping me limb-from-limb, 3) subway cars filled with people either talking about or reading my book, 4) Homeland Security agents busting down my door and ritualistically breaking all of my writing implements before leading me off in handcuffs to force me to listen to John Ashcroft sing, 5) getting cool emails and letters from people who were not blood relatives saying they liked my book. I know, I know, how narcissistic am I?) At any rate, many thanks to Mr. Mosher. I was surprised that this sort of thing made me feel so good, but I suspect this has to do with my disappointment over Leaving Disneyland which, sadly, was published a few short weeks after 9/11 and disappeared immediately as the entire country was preoccupied with more important issues. Even when I was trying to sell Shadows I was told by one editor that she coulnd’t see publishing it at a time when we were at war. (Which one? Good question. Iraq. Post-Afghani, pre-Iranian, pre-North Korean conflict. You may remember that we’re still there and that about one of every two U.S. tax dollars is going to pay for bunker busters, daisy cutters, and Paul Wolfowitz’s haberdashery. When, by the way, are we not at war?) I guess these experiences have made me think that writing the book you mean to and having it connect with a reader is a much more unlikely prospect than I initially imagined, as there is so much outside the world of letters that can bear down so disruptively and crushingly. Cheery thoughts. So here’s the tentative list of Barnes & Noble’s Discover Series for this summer (fiction). For the record, I wish that I had stolen Mark Estrin’s title. ♦ The Education of Arnold Hitler, Marc Estrin (Unbridled Books) ♦ A Factory of Cunning, Philippa Stockley (Harcourt) ♦ The Harmony Silk Factory, Tash Aw (Riverhead Books) ♦ The History of Love, Nicole Krauss (W.W. Norton) ♦ In the Shadows of the Sun, Alexander Parsons (Doubleday) ♦ A Long Stay in a Distant Land, Chieh Chieng (Bloomsbury) ♦ Metropolis, Elizabeth Gaffney (Random House) ♦ Misfortune, Wesley Stace (Little, Brown) ♦ The Red Carpet, Lavanya Sankaran (Dial Press) ♦ Small Island, Andrea Levy (Picador) ♦ Three Day Road, Joseph Boyden (Viking) ♦ Towelhead, Alicia Erian (Simon & Shuster) ♦ The Transformation, Catherine Chidgey (Henry Holt) January 31, 2005: IEEEEAAAAAHHH!! Everything has finally geared up for the publication of In the Shadows of the Sun. The reading spots and dates are being finalized with the capable help of publicist extraordinaire Nicole Dewey, and I’m already starting to hyperventilate at the thought of public performances. The coolest reading will probably be the one with Rick Bass at BookPeople in Austin (courtesy of Texas Monthly). I have no business being in the same room with Mr. Bass, even as a personal valet. But this is a Big Writer-Little Writer program in which underdeveloped, scrawny, directionless writers get taken under the wing of, well, writers who have their shit together. I’m already in training: I’ve made headway with my debilitating stutter and saliva problem. Beyond this the writer Jeffrey Lent very generously blurbed the novel and Barnes & Noble chose it as one of their 2005 Discover Great New Writers selections. All of which is great news. Not so great was the first review, from the Kirkus Wanks. It read like a book report written by an apathetic student. Not very critical, not very complimentary, not even opinionated or interesting. In fairness, if I were paid 30¢ a review it would be hard for me to invest much time or energy. Still, after careful consideration, some deep breathing exercises, and the dismembering of a Kirkus Wank voodoo doll, I’ve concluded that the whole book reviewing system is fundamentally flawed and therefore future reviews of this book are best ignored unless they’re ecstatically supportive. So judge the book by its cover. Which is awesome. Great new reads: ♦ Jim Shepard’s story collection Love and Hydrogen and his novel, Project X. He’s the man! The closest I’ll ever get to a real, live renaissance dude is reading these stories. Shepard can do it all. ♦ Started Haruki Murakami’s latest, Kafka on the Shore, which is promising; sometimes, though, it feels as if I’ve read it all before. Even genius can get repetitive. ♦ Also rereading Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and some commentary and supporting texts, including T.R. Fehrenbach’s Comanches: The History of a People, which has some very beautiful descriptions. I picture Fehrenbach as an old-school historian, an ex-marine with a poetic bent. From Texas. ♦ Kevin McIlvoy’s collection The Complete History of New Mexico, which is an excellent group of stories and features the coolest state in the Union (in spite of their unfortunate voting record this last election). One of my favorites in here is the story “The People Who Own Pianos.” McIlvoy has a real talent for the musical rhythms of speech. ♦ Frank Water’s Brave Are My People, which is about his 90th. Six essays on great Native American leaders. Karl and Tom are still holed up in their love den in my ceiling; it’s cold out there, so I’m glad they have each other. Come spring, however, I’m evicting them by tactical nuclear strike if necessary. 2004 NEWS [News]: Printer-friendly version