That pesky existential terror again....now starting to catch up

I am still planning to announce some positive publishing news, but I have to finalize it before I can talk about it. Meanwhile, I do apologize to the few, the brave, those kindly people who read this blog, for such a long stretch between posts. I have been working many hours per day for laughable reimbursement in an effort to survive. As a novelist I'm used to working for practically nothing, but this is a semblance of a "day job" so I haven't been able to excuse it as "what I did for my art."

I thought I might blog here around March 13, but I couldn't finish the post before I had to return to rowing as fast as I could to keep from submerging in the white water rapids also known as my turbulent finances. I just contributed a guest blog to Body Impolitic so it seemed only fair to start catching up with my posts here.

Ironically 30 years ago I was moving back to San Francisco after a couple of years of exile in West Los Angeles, I was too distracted to read a lot. I picked up several books and never finished them. This Jan-March, well, I've been reading some when I needed to escape the whole occupation, preoccupation and obsession with making a living thing. So far I have survived to write this. Friends and family have helped...we all have treasures in our lives, and they are mine. I'll try to catch up next time, and I hope to deliver some good news then.

January 30 to March 13, 1979 I didn't finish any of the books below (except the Rocky Handbook)

Life Is a Banquet by Rosalind Russell

Nostalgia Isn't What It Used to Be by Simone Signore

Sylvester Stallone' Official Rocky Handbook
(I was a big Rocky fan then)

The Honorable Schoolboy by John Le Carre
I kept getting the characters mixed up in this one.

I DID finish:

Hate Don't Make No Noise, Anatomy of the New Ghetto by Etta Resvey

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

Rolling Thunder Logbook by Sam Shepard
my note: self-indulgent in the extreme
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Thunder_Revue

January 30 to March 13, 2009 I read

Dead to Me by Anton Strout
Not too many paranormal fiction novels are this funny Strout's Amazon blogI couldn't find another and I don't have time to keep looking right now!

Mistral's Kiss by Laurell K. Hamilton
A Lick of Frost by Laurell K. Hamilton
Swallowing Darkness by Laurell K. Hamilton
These are the Meredity Gentry series with more plotting than the Anita Blake series has these days!

Help me find those parts of myself I thought I'd lost forever...

Perhaps we could start by looking under the sofa.

Sorry, but I heard that line in a television movie trailer. I had to write it down because I could not stop laughing. Turns out I got a few words wrong. If you're masochistic enough to watch to the end of this extended trailer you can hear it for yourself. It's from the new Diane Lane, Richard Gere "middle-aged romance" movie, Nights in Rodanthe. The real quote is "You came along and helped me find those parts of myself I thought I'd lost forever."

Anything that makes me laugh is worth the effort, but this is almost the quintessence of the sort of movie I stay away from. Author of the book the movie is is based on is Nicholas Sparks, who also wrote the megahit The Notebook, and he's definitely hit a nerve with many people.

I was also moved, but to laughter rather than tears.

We now return you 1978.

August 19 to September 19, 1978 I read:

You Need Help, Charlie Brown by Charles Schultz

It's a Dog's Life, Charlie Brown by Charles Schultz

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Surprise! surprise!: How the lawmen conned the thieves by Ron Shaffer, Kevin Klose & Alfred E Lewis

Cheap Thrills, History of Pulp Fiction by Ron Goulart

The Wolf Children, by Charles MacLean
Review on feral children.com

Risk by Dick Francis

Scott & Earnest, the Fitzgerald Hemingway Friendship by Matthew J. Bruccoli

The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson

Links by Charles Panati


My Bike & Other Friends, Vol. II of Book of Friends by Henry Miller


Poetry of the Blues by Samuel Charters

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Another sensitive book that didn't do it for me, my comment: "Whyever did she write this banal book?"

Fear of Flying by Eric Jong (a re-read)

Wit's End, Days & Nights of the Algonquin Round Table by James R. Gaines

Dickens of London by Wolf Mankowitz

The Natural Mind by Andrew Weil


August 19 to September 19, 1978 I read:

Brightness Falls from the Air by James Tiptree, Jr.
Crown of Stars by James Tiptree, Jr.
wiki on James Tiptree,Jr

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin

Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich

The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong
I have to comment that while this book offered state-of-the art storytelling, it also had a cliffhanger "to be continued" ending, which I found unethical. Particularly because the book is a hardcover marketed to young adults.

The Devil Inside by Jenna Black
Jenna Black

I liked the concept of a free-lance exorcist in a demon-ridden world, but getting to know the characters and even the plot itself was for me at least, undermined by every-other-chapter graphic sex, beginning with phone sex and progressing to BDSM, dungeons and so on. One blurb called it "early Anita Blake" but it's much closer to more recent of Laurell K. Hamilton's novels. Your mileage may vary, some people read these books for the hot scenes. I find that when you don't know the characters before they are merging their stripper-toned bodies, a book becomes more like actual pornography where the characters are not supposed to have depth. Porn characters like the heroines/heroes of conventional romance and thrillers, are stand-ins for the reader, so they don't exist as individuals in the same way as more rounded characters do. An example of such a narrative problem is when the heroine provides plot complications simply by refusing to cooperate with all the other characters even when it makes no sense and puts everyone's life in danger. Those kinds of crankiness need to be strongly motivated or they just look like a case of perpetual PMS.

And the winner is...Tragedy as usual

On a slightly unusual paying assignment, I spent many hours analyzing Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. Novel writing doesn’t get any better than this, Robinson deserves the Pulitzer Prize she won. I had read the book in the late ‘80s around the same time as I saw the film version with the luminous Christine Lahti. My memory of the film diluted some of the deep sadness of the story of two young girls who lose every caretaker they have until they end up with a mentally ill aunt. In the film, there was a hopefulness about the ending, while in the book it was clearer and more tragic. I've unashamedly confessed before how much I choose comedy over tragedy. But this was one of those rare books so gorgeously written that the lyrical voice of the text overcame the pain of the subject matter—isolation, dysfunction, insanity, suicide—you know all that fun stuff.

Housekeeping won the Pen/Hemingway Award decades before Robinson won the Pulitzer for Gilead, I was left contemplating how literary awards usually go to tales of excruciatingly painful experiences told with exquisite skill.

Tragedy truly is more timeless than comedy. Laughter explodes like fireworks, while the flame of solemn suffering burns on and on. Comedy is also more perishable because it's linked to the era when it was written. Even when freshly presented in its own era, not everyone will laugh. Worse yet, humor's shelf life expires when people stop understanding what's being mocked. Then there’s that irreverent anarchy element of even the mildest comedy that can make some people nervous--too nervous to give it an award.

That said, I don't think we have that much choice what we write. Even if I tried to go tragic, my irreverent brain wouldn't go for it.


June 30 to July 23, 1997 I read (or in many cases re-read):

Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
Persuasion, Jane Austen
Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
Emma, Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen

Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York, Gail Parent

Look Ma, I Am Kool! And Other Casuals, Burton Bernstein, Ed.
Note: read some, not all, mostly Woody Allen

Blood and Money, Thomas Thompson
Here’s an appreciative review of this book

Hope and Fear in Washington (the Early ‘70s), The Story of the Washington Press Corps, Barney Collier
Note: poor dude appears to be coming apart at the seams and writing about it, and seeing it everywhere he looks.

Some kind of Hero, James Kirkwood
Note: Makes you yearn for J.D. Salinger, I really couldn’t stand this book…I did like some of his other stuff but not this one.
web profile

Future World, Mayo Simon and George Schenck
Note: Poorly written but it does have suspense appeal.

Smokescreen, Dick Francis

The Murderers, Emanuel Tanay, M.D., and Lucy Freeman


June 30 to July 23, 2007 I R3,

Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
A modern classic.

Strange Candy, Laurell K. Hamilton
These short stories were polished and fun to read. One, A Lust of Cupids, was a light-hearted paranormal chick lit story, which is not what I think of when I think of Hamilton.

A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599, James Shapiro
a comprehensive review.

This was fun. This historical perspective provided abundant insights for a Shakespeare fiend like myself. For example, Shapiro suggests a probable reason why Shakespeare reneged on his promise at the end of Henry IV, Part 2 to bring back the popular Sir John Falstaff in Henry V. Instead Henry V contains a report of Falstaff's death. Early in 1599 Will Kemp, the comic actor who played Falstaff, left the Chamberlain’s Men. There was likely no other actor equal to the part. Shapiro has some telling evidence to prove his speculation that Shakespeare also wasn’t too keen on wild and wooly Kemp’s famous habit of improvising jokes to get a laugh. During the same year he has Hamlet instruct the Player in Hamlet:

…And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them...” Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2

George S. Kaufman had the same problem with the Marx Brothers:

Kaufman wrote The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, and A Night At the Opera for the Marx Brothers, but hated their improvisations. Once during an Animal Crackers rehearsal, he walked up onstage and said, "Excuse me for interrupting, but I thought for a minute I actually heard a line I wrote."
Gotta love
George S. Kaufman.