A poem for today:
Aliens
Tired aliens in the backyard,
Sick of anal probes and cattle mutilation,
Breakdown camp and try
to assemble what they’ve learned
Into something more coherent than the truth.
This is a kid’s book that I wrote a long time ago. It is meant to be a 16 page illustrated book. It isn’t really suitable for children. But I do stand by the message. Some people just get away with things. Then the moment you try to get away with the same things you get screwed. Am I right? Stick to your own path.
My Friend Ben
My friend Ben stomped on the flowers in Mrs. Grahusky’s Garden when we walked by it on the way to school.
I said, “Ben, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” And Ben just laughed and said, “I know, but it’s fun. And as long as I don’t get caught then it’s fine.”
I wasn’t sure that that was true, but we didn’t get caught, and nothing seemed to happen so…
* * * *
My friend Ben shot spit balls at the fat kid in math class, and made faces when the teacher turned her back.
I told him, “Ben, its not nice to shoot spit balls, even at the fat kid.” And Ben said, “No way. It’s great fun, and Mrs. Yoyo will never know.”
I wasn’t sure that that was true, but Mrs. Yoyo never did know, and the other kids laughed when Jimmy, the fat kid, complained on the playground after school, so…
* * * *
My friend Ben threw his candy wrappers out of the window on the bus, and they hit an old man on the head as we went by.
I said, “Ben, littering is wrong, and someone else is going to have to clean that up.” And Ben said, “No they don’t, and if they want to, that’s their choice.” I pictured everyone throwing trash out the window and nobody picking any of it up, and then someone picked up Ben’s wrapper, and threw it in the trash. I wasn’t sure if that was okay, but there wasn’t trash all over the streets so…
* * * *
My friend Ben told his mom that he ate all his vegetables, but instead he fed them to the dog under the table.
I said, “Ben, my mom says you won’t grow up big and strong if you don’t eat your veggies.” And Ben said, “Nonsense. I’m bigger than you already, and I haven’t eaten broccoli in a year.” He had a good point, he was much bigger than me, and I really hated broccoli, so…maybe he was right.
* * * *
The next morning Ben and I were walking to school and he stomped on some flowers again.
He said, “Try it. Its not like the flower can do anything to stop you. And it’s fun.”
And I said, “I’m not sure Ben, but I guess, just this once I could give it a try.”
So I walked up and looked at this one big purple flower that was right in the middle of Mrs. Grahusky’s garden.
It had a lot of petals and lines, and looked much too nice to step on,
but then I looked back at Ben, and he said “No big deal.”
So I held my breath, I closed my eyes, I lifted up my foot, and…
(the flower opens its mouth as tall as the boy and swallows him whole.)
The End.
For Christmas I made some art for my friends and family. Each of these was framed in a square black 8×8 frame.
In his recent article on Slate.com, Farhad Manjoo makes a number of good points about why independent local bookstores are maybe not the most streamlined places to buy or sell books.
But I think that he maybe shows his ignorance of the other side of the process, and how the price of books, and the way people buy books effects it.
In his article Don’t Support Your Local Bookseller, Mr. Manjoo approaches books like drills. Drills are cheaper online, you can easily find reviews, and buying them in a local hardware store is silly, because you are paying for a bunch of wasted overhead. From a consumer’s point of view it seems to make sense. Cheaper books means more people buy them, more read them, etc. Good for everyone right?
It is, if what you want is something mainstream or something you already know you like, but if what you want is the next Catcher in the Rye, the English Patient, New York Trilogy, Let the Great World Spin, or any book by Charles Bukowski, then you are fucked.
Books are creative products whether they are biographies or experimental fiction. And while many great books have mass market appeal, many don’t, or didn’t seem to when they were published. The fact is that many of the greatest books in the world are widely read despite a lack of mainstream appeal. For Whom the Bell Tolls does not use clever hooks to pull readers effortlessly through short chapters filled with car chases to a climatic ending.
And this is important in the context of independent bookstores because, what you are paying for when you enter an indie store is not a comfy chair and a cup of coffee while you browse as Mr. Manjoo so condescendingly explains. In fact, Mr. Manjoo shows us just how unfamiliar he is with the indie experience when he tells us this. What you are paying for, and what publishers are paying for when they sell books through indie bookstores is an advocate for quality who knows their consumer well. Mr. Manjoo explains that the way we get recommendations from a local bookstore is through staff pics. But this is not exactly accurate.
Your independent bookstore owner is like a tailor. They get to know you, they see what fits you, and then they keep an eye out for those items in the thousands upon thousands of catalogs they wade through. And then when you walk into their store, they can offer you books that you might have never heard of; books you wouldn’t have searched for, that are not in the same category as the last book you bought, and they may even get you to take a risk on a new author or a new type of book that you have never experienced before.
Great books take big risks to publish and indie bookstore owners are the early adopters and ambassadors that help get the word out about which ones were worth the risk and which weren’t. Without booksellers we are faced with a book world ruled by critics, both professional and recreational, and unlike booksellers, critics have no skin in the game. They are fickle and mercurial, sometimes uneducated, untested, and often wrong about the best work. Independent bookstores need to be right, at least some good percentage of the time, because their business depends on it.
Imagine if someone told you that you should shop at a huge online retailer for paintings. Cut out the middle man. Get rid of the galleries. All they are are throw backs to a time when you couldn’t read user reviews about paintings and get recommendations from a highly complex algorithm that will recommend art to you, right?
If books were pork rinds, or drills, then they wouldn’t have the complex and intricate industry model that they have today, and there wouldn’t be so much hand-wringing about what the future holds, who is right, who is wrong. Books are an essential part of our culture. To simplify them to a commodity is a mistake and one that readers will pay for in the long term if they decide they don’t want to pay cover price now.
Here is a bit more of the story from my previous post. I think, after struggling with it for a long while, that I have come up with a direction and conclusion for the second half of the story. If you didn’t read the last post, you probably should, because then this one will make much more sense.
Fantasies and Daydreams II
The man: He’s an odd sort of man. Fat, not too tall, somewhat hairy, but at the same time not scruffy. There is a certain handsomeness in him too, a sort of certainty. Actually, as I think of it, scratch that. A certain airiness to him. Airiness as well as a strength.
Of course! He is an artist. He has the face of someone who feels the things around him a bit too much. Someone who has made poor choices. He gazes, and he thinks. In fact the most striking thing about him is the look in his eyes that says he has suffered some, but not too much, but that the small amount of suffering has been felt and contemplated deeply.
And then the woman. Such an interesting one. She is. Well. She is beautiful – of course – in her own mousy way. Her hair is a bit messy – but not like someone who doesn’t care about her appearance, rather, like someone who has just made love and smoked a cigarette, something she rarely does, but today she decided to, for today was special. She has thoughtful golden brown eyes that betray more knowledge then she’d like you to know about. She reads long books naked in her bed until the early hours of the morning. She wears loose fitting but revealing clothing. She doesn’t mind that you are noticing her, and at the same time she seems shy. Or not shy, but modest.
The man has thought about her often in the last few months. He noticed her first for her supple dancer’s body and her beautiful breasts which were not so much large, but large for her slight body, and so soft looking, from the few slight glimpses of them he’s had.
After some time he was introduced to her. They spoke about large nothings. What was she reading? What was he working on? What was he writing?
After a while they became sort of friends. Not the kind you’d have beers with, or call when things were on the rocks with your wife. Not that kind of friend. But the kind who goes to the same restaurants you go to on the same nights, the kind of friend who you see at the café on a weekly or more than weekly basis. You say hi, maybe you even pull up a chair and chat for 20 minutes. But never longer.
And then here they are on this day. Sitting on a burnt orange oyster-shell couch discussing books they’d read in high school. She smiles at him. He files away the look to be thought about later, when he is thinking about her, which he sometimes does. He says something funny and she laughs a guarded, beautiful laugh – not something she gives away freely. And just as their conversation is coming to a close, for it had lasted the allotted amount of time, the man says something that he’s obviously been wanting to say for a while. Something imprudent, almost daring.
“I have a fantasy about you,” he says. “Can I tell it to you?”
I told you it could be interesting.
Here is the beginning of a story I’ve been working on for a long time. Admittedly, I hadn’t looked at it in nearly a year when I picked it back up recently, but still. It is meant to be an homage to Italo Calvino whose work has played a relatively pivotal and strange role in my life. Oddly not at all to do with writing. But be that as it may, here is something decidedly Calvinoesque, or at the very least, Calvino inspired. Let me know what you think – too smarmy?
Fantasies and Daydreams
A man and a woman sit on a couch.
Could there be a more benign beginning to a story?
A man.
And a woman.
Sit on a couch.
Maybe with some adjectives, some description that would be interesting. Something like: a seven fingered man and a naked painted woman sat on a couch of alpaca and fur. A little much, I know, but better than what’s there. And yet.
And yet – that is how this story begins. And, agreed – there is practically nothing there to be interested in at all. A couch is often most pedestrian – the most elephant-like piece of furniture – but a man and a woman, while admittedly in need of some embellishment – a man and a woman – well that is just about all you need to start an interesting story.
Right?
Please understand: I don’t mean to disparage couches. There are some couches out there that are works of art – true masterpieces. But in general, with even the nicest couches, say even a burnt orange couch with a deep oyster shell shape, a couch that sort of holds the sitters in a baseball glove embrace – even this sort of couch would not peak your interest on its own. But. Add a man and a woman and now you’ve got yourself a story. It is actually one of the raciest pairings in the world.
Why it is the center of almost all the greatest stories.
Just add a little embellishment, and that small sentence – A man and a woman sit on a couch – can become the basis for something, or many things, amazing.
Picture it with me:
Here is a collection of rejection letters to famous authors. It makes me feel better about the rejections I am receiving for my own book. But not much better.
On Publishing:
Publishers are like the bees, and Amazon is like the window pane. Occupy Amazon guys!
This is a story about how protesters taking part in the Occupy Wall Street movement have been using the Guy Fawkes mask that Alan Moore created for his now 30-year-old comic V for Vendetta. Shepard Fairy has created a poster of a protestor wearing the mask.
This is an interactive feature from the New York Times of protestors on the Day of Action. The best one is the smiling bankers in their offices using their phones to capture some of the clashes
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