Return of A Naked Stranger

Some of you who read these blogs may or may not be aware of a literary hoax perpetuated in 1969 by a Newsday reporter to set out to write a bad book on the sexual mores of the time, and in fact enlisted several writers of the day with each one contributing a chapter based upon a loose snyopsis. The book became wildly successful and nothing has hit literary world quite like it since. I for one beleive it is time for the return of the naked stranger and I want to know if any readers care to join me? I currently open to ideas, though I have serveral of my own to get the book started. Of course we'll write under a pseudonym and there might not be much dough in it but a great deal of satisfaction for anyone who's ever taken a fancy to pulling the wool over the wise eyes of industry. We can pick almost any subect but sex usually works best,, sex and death and power are the top themes.
So anyone out there who wants to give this a go, email me dircet at pen95@yahoo.com and lets see what a shocking and gifted book we can come up with. Remember, you only need to write one chaper each -perhaps two if you're escpecially good.

I'll forgo my usual in lieu of the great adventue!

www,authorbillbrooks.com

James Frey - A Bright Shining Morning -Not So Shining or Bright

Well boys and girls it's been a long lay off but perhaps I'm back. Or, maybe I ain't. Hard to tell lately if I'm alive or dead. Maybe both. Certainly each condition has it's own population of well-wishers.

I'd like to spend today's blog on talking about James Frey's novel, A Bright Shining Morning. For those of you who might not know who James Frey is, he's the guy who wrote A Million Tiny Pieces, supposedly a biographical book that turned out not to be so biographical and as much fiction as fact. For this he got reamed out by our darling, Oprah, because she was among Frey's ardent supporters and had picked the book for whatever it is she's calling it - Book of the Month or Oprah's books or whatever. She wasn't too happy knowing she'd been duped. I'm not too happy with the NY Times rave review of Frey's novel. I feel like I was also duped!

This is a complete waste of any one's reading time. The prose itself is akin to something a high school freshman might write believing himself to be the ghost of Norman Mailer. Oh, only if Morning were even that good.

The novel is rife with repetition for repetition's sake and not as a literary device. Every time Frey repeats himself, generally at the end of each chapter, it's as though he can't think of anything else to write, so he just writes the same word repeatedly.

Then too, his characters are vacuous: a Mexican girl with overly large thighs, a homeless man living in a public bathroom, a handsome married, but gay, actor - can we say, Rock Hudson anyone? A pair of on-the-run teens living in a cheap motel - perhaps the only characters in the book who summon even an ounce of interest from the reader. Each chapter follows one of the characters and their plight while living in Los Angeles.

Obviously Frey wants to impress us with his knowledge, both present and historical, about the City of Angels. He inserts between chapters small historical tidbits about L.A., such as the first guy to buy an automobile and subsequently is killed in L.A.'s first auto crash; this, followed by a similar death of the guy's son. My question to all this is, "Who gives a rat's butt?" If I wanted history lessons I'd have bought a Fodor Travel Guide.

But being keen on history myself, I could have tolerated Frey's attempt to woo us with the unusual inserts if only he could write interesting fiction. I ground my teeth through a couple of hundred pages, hoping, hoping, hoping, (to paraphrase our boy) it would grow into something - and, maybe it does eventually, but I've only been given so many hours, days, weeks, months and years to live and I did not want to die with this book in my hands. Hemingway maybe, or James Salter, but not A Bright Shining Morning. Ye gads, all my ex-lovers, wives and sworn enemies would have a field day with that information. I'd be cast out of the Literary Guild even though I'm not a member and drummed out of Dante's Inferno, even though I probably should be there trying to win Francesca's poor heart.

Save your dough. If you want bad writing, may I recommend something by, oh, let's see ... Me!



I'm almost too distraught to tell you about some things that happened on this day in History, but, I'll give it my best:

Mary Surratt became the first woman executed by the United State Government for her role in the Lincoln conspiracy.

Today is listed as the birthday of Sherlock Holmes' right hand man, Dr. Watson (1852)

Elvis made his radio debut in Memphis, singing "That's All Right."

It's the birthday of Sci-fi writer Robert A Heinlein

And because I've been such a good boy lately, Big Sal allowed me to post the following:


Writing Assignment

Teacher tell me to write.
I say, write what?
She say, Whatever you want.
I say I can’t think of nothing.
She say write about anything.
In my mind, I say, Hell, but
Start to write. Silly shit
At first – something about a
Cat being hit and run over
By a car and a tree and a
Flower. Nothing connected to

Nothing else. I look at the
Clock, everybody’s still
Writing except me. I
Write about a man going

Over a hill by himself.
He comes to this old house
And stops and knocks on
The door and a dog comes out
And bites him on the
Goddamn leg and he yelps and
Kicks at the dog.

Then the man who lives
In the house and obviously
Owns the goddamn dog
Comes out with a gun and says
Don’t kick my dog.

Then this beautiful woman comes
Out dressed all in red with her
Titties half hanging out and
It turns out she’s the daughter of the
Man with the gun.

Next thing he knows he’s out in
Barn with her and they fucking
Even though the man with the gun
Said he could spend the night but not
To fool around with his daughter.

He’s this farmer, see, this man who
Has the gun and the goddamn dog.

But they fuck anyway because she’s
More beautiful than any woman
He’s ever seen and can’t resist the
Temptation and suddenly the
Man comes into the barn with his gun
And he’s mad as hell and the goddamn
Dog is there too, barking his ass

Off and then the teacher says,
Pencils down and that’s all I got
To write but it was turning out
To be a pretty good story.
And I’m wondering what’s
Going to happen next and
Maybe this writing shit ain’t so hard after all.


do well, keep the peace, don't curse and send money whenever you have extra

http://www.authorbillbrooks.com/

Words! Words! A Plague of Words!

Took two books with me on a recent trip to Florida: Louise Erdrich's, A Plague of Doves, and Charles Bukowski's, Pleasures of the Damned so I'd have something to read sitting at poolside instead of having to stare at the walking dead, which Florida has a lot of, me included, it felt like.

I came to determine having read a bit of both books that what's really wrong with much if not most of today's writing and writers is WORDINESS! There, I've said it. The godawful truth is that most contemporary novels are simply as bloated as a dead water buffalo floating in the Ganges. They stink of bloat! You can smell them the minute you open a page and see the density of print, the lack of dialogue, the long, long chapters that meander like a drunk looking for the next bar. No matter how well they're written, nor the notoriety of the author, today's books simply take up too much valuable space and the reader's time, leave too little to the imagination and should be murdered in their infancy.

Needless to say, I ended up reading more of Bukowski than I did of Erdrich - and not for the mere fact that Bukowski is in your face, holds little back - reading him is like talking to a madman - and not because his is poetry and can be read in a much shorter span of time, but because he practically dares you to step outside and go to blows, whereas Erdrich, like so many others takes the easier route, the story-telling route. Reading her is like having tea with your grandmother - sedate, subtle; too subtle for me. Yes, I can smell the wet wool of the story teller's coat who has just come in from the rain, and the woodsmoke and all that, but it's bloodless, much of the words. Tepid as, well, as a cup of tea that's been sitting around too long.

I blame editors and publishers as much for this stinking mess of words as I do writers. Fat books are mere justification for the price's charged for them and to pay a handful of celeb writers good dough to keep churning out more fat books.

That's why I'll take Bukowski or any of the really good poets over a hundred novelists. Sherwood Anderson's, Winesburg Ohio over anything by most of today's best-selling author's. Because Anderson could write a complete story with every chapter, tie them all loosely together and so when you read his most famous work, it was like reading many good novels for the price of one. He let you in the door, let you sit down and observe and come to your own conclusions about whether or not the school teacher was a homosexual and that's why he had to leave his last job and other mysteries that surround his characters.

This plague of words leaves me dead in my tracks, reaching for another jigger of gin, leaves me wishing I was doing anything but trying to wade through the morass. So many words descending on us, stealing our imaginations, even our souls if we're not careful. So many words qualifies us only for joining a book club, but little more. No wonder readership has shrunk. We don't need more words, we need good stories like those told in the posthumous musings of the town's characters in Spoon River Anthology. You want a story to blow your socks off, read Flannery O'Connor's, A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Read any of Hemingway's Short Stories, or the slender beauty, The Great Gatsby, by Fitzgerald and you'll know truly what a novel should be and what it shouldn't be.

Oh yeah, avoid Volusia County Florida at all costs if you can - the speed traps down there are not to be believed and 10 miles over will run you what a good hotel room and a steak dinner would.

Some Stuff that happened this day in History:

Babe Ruth laid down his bat for the final time in 1935.

This is the day that Raymond Carver swore of drinking. I don't know if it helped or hurt his writing but the guy could write!

Thomas Hardy was born on this day (1840)

Allen Ginsburg wrote his first poem - Lysergic Acid (1950)

After an all night love session with Big Sal, I was able to sneak into the vault for this:

The Woman Who Walks Like A Lioness

Have you ever thought
About the possibility
Of us? Oh, not a permanent us,
Of course, there are too many
Years difference in our ages.
But a temporary us, a few hours
Of intimacy that wouldn’t cost
You anything and would be price
Less to me – an hour
Or two is all it would take.

You are beautiful and wise
Beyond your years and the
Hope of all things is still in your eyes as
It used to be in mine.

And while you are planting your seed
In this world, I am weeding my garden
Of thoughts that kill and choke the hope.

You have a way of walking that
Reminds me of a lioness stalking prey.
You take lovers to your bed and
Feed your cat lovely blue bowls of milk.

You read every book twice, and sometimes
Three times, for your appetites are
Voracious, your ribs yet lean
Your sorrows not all counted
Your pleasures not all received.

Well, I shall go and take a nap
Now and wait for death like the
Smartly dressed young businessman
Waiting for his train while idly thinking
Of a woman who walks like a lioness stalking prey.

be of good cheer, stay out of dark places, and be glad you're not the guy standing at the freeway exit with a sign: BROKE NEED HELP!

http://www.authorbillbrooks.com/

Don't Shoot The Book

MY RANT OF THE DAY.

I read the following AP report online this morning: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080520/ts_nm/iraq_bush_apology_dc

reporting that President Bush has apologized to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki because a copy of the Koran filled with bullet holes was found at a shooting base near Baghdad. Apparently the soldier responsible had already been disciplined by his superiors. But, shooting a book in Baghdad apparently is a big deal. The Koran as everyone knows is the Muslim version of the Bible - a book professed to have been written by men inspired directly by God, the same as the Bible in that respect, and the Book of Mormon, and Torah.

Seems that (mere) discipline for shooting up the Koran for this particular soldier wasn't enough. In Bush's direct apology, he promised al-Maliki that he (Bush) would see that the soldier was presented to the courts and expressed his deep concern over the "completely unacceptable conduct of an American soldier."

I guess shooting a book is right up there with rape and murder if they're going to put this soldier on trial. Let's hope that if he is found guilty, he'll be given 90 days of solitary confinement and forced to read Slow Waltz At Cedar Bend (Waller's follow-up to Bridges of Madison County.) Then he'll really become a book-hater and probably spend the rest of his civilian life stalking the woods of Wisconsin looking for poorly written books to slaughter.

If all this weren't so weird and ironic it would be laughable. Since when have we begun to prosecute anyone for shooting up a book? Again, I'd suggest that a book is nothing more than two covers with pages in between on which are written words inspired by the writer's imagination. A book does not shoot back, nor trigger IED's, nor blow up a cafe of innocents. But apparently the book's words can inspire others to do such acts, and so logically it would seem if you kill the book, you basically kill the inspiration?

Not logical you say? I'd like to know what in this shaggy dog tale of the Iraqi War, in which we honor some men for shooting other men and prosecute some men for shooting books, is logical? Like everything else about our involvement in this strange country with its dozens of competing, and often criminal factions, everyday some news comes out of Iraq to cause one to think this is Alice In Wonderland, where everything is upside down. What I think is really weird is that Iraqi's all worship the same god - Allah - even as they murder each other and each other's families. American presence has only given Iraqis more targets to shoot at (God forbid - quite literally - they should shoot each other's books). As for our side, the Iraqis not only all look the same, they all believe the same, to varying degrees of fanaticism. Bush's apology and vow to bring to justice this book-shooting soldier is reflective of how fearful and intolerant we've become of political incorrectness.

Which only supports the arguments laid forth by the writers Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) in that they are spot on about the poisonous aspects of religion and its silly fanaticism.

Meanwhile, I hope the book is recovering, and if not, I hope it was given a decent burial with full honors.

END OF RANT

Now, for some stuff that happened this day in History!

Christopher Columbus died (1506) and some white guy living in Ohio named a town after him.

Writer Mary Lamb died (1847). I can only imagine the standard line the boys who dated her used: "I had a little Lamb," or, "I had a little of Mary's little Lamb." Oh, never mind, if I have to explain it, what's the point?

53 year old Mavis Hutchinson became the first woman to run across the United States - 3,000 miles, (1978) a feat which she accomplished in 69 days - something my old man equaled in his 1948 Packard Clipper with his wife and kids in the car 25 years earlier. I don't mean to brag, but...

Okay, since I bought Big Sal a bag of crinkly potato chips at the grocery yesterday she let me sneak a poem out of the vault. Blame her, not me.

Crossing Bridges

The High Level bridge suspended over the
Maumee River like an arched eyebrow.
From up there you can see the city’s skyline,
The place where Gypsies once ruled
Cherry Street and Pretty Boy Floyd
Escaped from jail. You can almost see where the
Burlesque House once stood and where Casey
Stengel played for the Mud Hens.

I crossed that bridge as a teen in the cold
Winter months of January and February trying to
Escape our little apartment over Drifty’s Bar
Where the nightly music was muted laughter and
Sometimes the sounds of a good fistfight among the
Patrons who found refuge from
Their otherwise mundane lives.

My old man drove truck and my mother
Worked at the glass factory. Sometimes
My old man would go down to have a beer
After supper and stay a couple of hours. My mother
Read romance magazines and looked wistful.

My sister was always running with her
Friends: the ugly girl and the one who stuttered.
They were their own gang and beat up boys
And I sometimes wondered
Where they got their money because I never
Had any. She had a boyfriend
Who wore a leather jacket with

Zippers and never said
More than two words to me all that summer they dated.

I would be nearly frozen by the time I walked across
That bridge, the water below the ice a muted mud, and
All of it just waiting for me to jump, like others already had.
Once or twice a year someone would jump (not that
I never thought about it, I did) and kill themselves – the
Fall alone would do it. I’d read somewhere that when
You jumped from that high up it was like hitting
Cement (even without the ice). I wasn’t that desperate yet.

I was still a virgin that year, and the next one after that.
Then I met a girl my age who would become my
Eventual, and first wife and mother to two of my children.
And ours became a marriage as loveless and cold as any
Winter – and just as long when you stop to count the minutes.

The cold up on that bridge is something I remember
Even more clearly than the first time I had sex
And I still can’t ever think about Toledo
Without remembering crossing the High Level in winter.

The goddamn cold that will led somehow to my ultimate
Demise. But I have never lost my reason
For crossing bridges, in the winter, or otherwise.

do well, shine your shoes, don't dance in the rain unless you're naked...

http://www.authorbillbrooks.com/

James Cain - Hard-Boiled As a Ten Minute Egg

"This was going to be such a lousy murder it wouldn't even be a murder. It was going to be just a regular road accident, with guys drunk, and booze in the car, and all the rest. " (from The Postman Always Rings Twice)


For my dough, when it comes to the hard-boiled noir fiction of the 1940s & 50s, nobody did it better than James Cain. His novels, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and, Mildred Pierce were all successful enough for Hollywood to come calling. You can have your Raymond Chandler and Dash Hammett, I'll take Cain's easy, street-wise style of telling a story not from a private investigator's POV, but from the wary eyes of the lovable loser. Such was his Frank Chambers, the young drifter in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Frank stops at a roadside cafe where me meets the beautiful Cora, wife of the cafe's owner, Nick (the Greek). It's instant sparks between Frank and Cora. And well, as you might guess from this genre, it isn't Frank so much as it is Cora's idea to bump off Nick to gain her freedom and Nick's money. Frank goes along because he's in lust with Cora, but just as in Double Indemnity, things start to go wrong pretty fast, and before Frank knows it, he's already in too deep to pull out. Cain has a way of putting the reader into the head and skin of Frank every bit as much as Dostoevsky made his readers squirm when he put us into the mind of the young student killer, Raskolnikov in Crime And Punishment.

And this really is the writer's obligation, to make his characters and situations truer than true (as Hemingway advocated). What readers identify with most is the universality of a situation, because we've all made wrong choices and regretted them and therefore can or should feel a certain degree of empathy for such characters in novels and on the screen. Nobody could make you feel the passion and panic of his characters the way Cain could. He wrote in a straightforward way with effortless power - like a punch in the mouth or a passionate kiss, his prose was like the weight of a gun in your pocket and imbued you with the highs and lows that lust and greed imposes.

Cain, like many talented writers, was plagued by booze and women but he had a long and productive life and contributed greatly to the American literary landscape. Go raise a little Cain, I recommend him highly.

Some Stuff that Happened on This day in History (why is it never Herstory?)

Emily Dickinson died at the age of 55 of Bright's Disease (1886) - the opening stanza from I Could Not Stop for Death seems especially poignant to me today:

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality

Nylon stockings went on sale for the first time (1940) - ooh-la-la and the world went to hell in a hand basket when some guy invented pantyhose.

Anne Boleyn - 2nd wife of Henry VIII (a rather crazy fellow to say the least) was accused by him of adultery and incest with 4 men of the King's court and her brother George. All were executed, including Anne who wore a dark gray gown of damask trimmed in fur with a red petticoat underneath. Only a woman would bother to dress so fine at her own beheading. A guy would have probably wore a pair of old boxers, flip flops and a torn tee shirt.

...and so it goes

While Big Sal was snoozing on the sofa I stole the vault key and found this:

To All Those Who Go Home Again

I feel sad for those who
Return to the places they’d
Left thinking they were wrong
To have gone in the 1st
Place and now that they’re back
Thank God. For, what

They failed to realize is the
Reason they left in
The 1st place: the great

Disdain that rose like
Bile in their throats from
Walking the same streets
& eating in the same cafes
& falling in and out of love
& fucking the same people
and dreaming the same dreams
over and over and over again

to the point they felt they
had no choice but to leave
and start over someplace
New, live on different streets,
eat in new cafes, meet new people to
fuck and fall in love with. & now
They’re back to the beginning

And surely they will realize at some point
Why they left and will
soon enough want to leave again.

be well, do right, never bathe with your shoes on.

http://www.authorbillbrooks.com/

Writing A Novel Is Easy - Making Love to The Garbini Sisters is Hard

When some people learn I'm a writer of books (you're only considered a "novelist" if you write books that win awards and a hack if you don't) they want to know what it takes to write a novel. Generally the first thing they say is, "Oh, I should write a book." Or, "I've been thinking of writing a novel."
I usually say, "Good luck." Then when I show little or no interest in what sort of novel or book they have been thinking about writing, they quite often ask me for free advice. I'm not so callous or mercenary to ignore them, especially if they are adorable, petite, flirtatious, or leggy and Amazonian.
So here is the quick and dirty lesson I hand out to aspiring novelists on the fly:
Buy a ream of paper. Put it in your typewriter (if you're old fashioned) or the printer to your computer if you're not and start typing.
"Oh, but surely there is more to it than that," they say.
Okay, so you need to have a hero or heroine - better these days if you have a heroine since women buy most of the fiction. And if you're confused about what a novel is, trust me a novel is fiction, not your memoirs or a book on how to survive post-partum depression or surviving a love affair with a married person, or how to raise a horse. A novel is stuff you make up in your head - though granted it is getting harder and harder to do with all the really weird shit you read about in the news these days.
Then you need an anti-hero, someone who tries to prevent your heroine from getting too easily what she wants. This is called conflict and you should do it all in the opening chapter - unless you're aiming to win some literary award, then it doesn't matter if you ever do it.
A book should have 3 parts: Beginning, middle, and end.
This is the beginning.
The middle is all about conflict, guys with guns, being chased, hiding, jumping out windows, weeping at the kitchen table, having your spouse die on you right in the middle of making love just before you can tell him you've been cheating on him with your brother-in-law, getting rebuffed at the DMV while trying to track down the liscence plate of the car that ran over your mama, et al.
Then of course you need at some point to wrap it all up, having the heroine find the killer, or get the guy she's really in love with, finding a miracle drug to revive your dead husband so you can confess your sins and start over again - or, if you are trying to write a 19th century classic - having her throw throw herself under a train.
So there you have it, beginning, middle and end. But I'd forgo having your heroine throw herself under the train because first off this is not the 19th century, hell, it's not even the 20th century. No, she has to either live happily ever after, or at least her sister does if you plan on having her die tragically from a head cold the day before her wedding. Readers still like happy endings. They like to cry and feel all lovey-dovey and see themselves as your heroine. They don't want to end up under a train.
Oh yeah, one more thing: keep those denouments short less they become anti-climatic. Need I explain what anti-climatic is? We've all been there.
That's it, you've written a book. Now you just need to find somebody to read it. Trust me, this last part is the hardest part of all.
So what does making love to the Garbini Sisters have to do with writing a book? Nothing. They pay me for brand placement is all.

Now for some stuff that happened this day in History.

Lewis and Clark left to find the Pacific Ocean. No, not Jerry Lewis and Dick Clark - the other guys from history.

Vaseline was first sold as petroleum jelly in 1878 and immediately people started figuring out uses for it.

It hit 10 below zero in Climax, Colorado (1896). It is reported that even the Vaseline froze.

Judge Florence Allen was the first woman to sentence a man to death (1921). All the others just killed them outright.

A "We Want Beer" march was held in New York City. I guess it worked.

And now from Big Sal's locker next to her skivvies and tennis shoes, this:

What The Old Bum Knew About Eggs

Each morning the old bum would eat
At the same restaurant – the Sunshine Café
and order the same thing: two fried
Eggs, wheat toast, two strips of bacon.

One morning when the cook, a guy named
Robert, who had a tattoo of a girl sitting in the
Crook of an anchor on his left bicep, brought
The old bum his egg, the old bum said
“This is what I know about eggs:

The shell has about
7,000 pores, the
hen’s temperature when she lays
is around 106 degrees, there
is a small white spot
on the yolk called the germinal
disc; it’s where
the female’s genetic material is found.
There are
Eight parts to an egg not
counting the yolk itself.

That’s what I know about eggs.”

The cook was
impressed at how
much the old bum knew about eggs.

"But what I really know about
Eggs is this," the old bum said.

"I like eating them very, very much."

be of good cheer, don't drink alcohol before 8 A.M., change the bedsheets once a month.

http://www.authorbillbrooks.com/

Edna St. Vincent Millay & The Power of Love & Death

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell. -Edna St. Vincent Millay


I'm writing this sitting in a coffeeshop in downtown Asheville. And to paraphrase Cicero: "Times are bad, everybody's writing a book, and there is always a parent with a squalling infant." Well, he said 2 of three of those things, I'll let you guess which. Plus, there is some sort of Argentine music on the speaker system and business guys in blue jeans. Coffee is $1.35 and there is a warning sign on the front door that if you don't park in the right lot your vehicle will be towed (toed? tolled? told?)... Alas the woman with the shrieking infant has left and perhaps I can finish this without going out back and sliting my own throat.


What I really wanted to write about today was the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay whose sonnets were often of fractured hearts and death, but the gal sure could say in a few lines what most of us cannot express about those two subjects in a three-volume set of leather bound books.


There is much debate about who originally said, "The only things worth writing about are love and death." (Please, if anyone can point me to the original source, I'd really appreciate it, as well if someone can tell me who said, "The devil's in the details." An oft quoted phrase but without a source.).


But getting back to writing about love & death, I think whether it was Ezra Pound or Woody Allen, whoever said it was right. And when you think about it, almost every notable work of fiction, including the Bible, deals extensively with those two subjects. And "Vincent" as she insisted her friends call her, wrote about Love & Death extremely well, by which I mean, she made you feel the bitter sadness of both. She was in fact, the first woman to recieve the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. That's how freaking good she was.


In fact she was so good that a listener hearing Vincent reciting her poetry offered to pay her tuition to Vassar College, which she gladly accepted.


She was so good that both men and women fell in love with her and she with them. She was openly bisexual and perhaps that gave her a much better perspective on human sexuality than your average poet. Is there such a thing as an average poet? She eventually married Eugen Jan Boissevain, a much older man and a widower and they lived on a farm in New York. Theirs was an "open" marriage with both taking a variety of lovers. (Who said those farmers are boring?) They were married 26 years and over that time Boissevain took care of Vincent's domestic needs. While married to him, Vincent's most notable affair was with George Dillon, editor and poet 14 years her junior, whom she collaborated with on translating Charles Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil.


But no matter the affairs Vincent or Eugen had, nothing could or did seperate them but death. Eguen died of lung cancer in 1949 and the following year Vincent was found dead at the bottom of her stairs the following year. It is believed she died of a sudden heart attack, but there is also speculation she may have been pushed.


But what matter of death any more than what matter of love? Both are profound and alter our universe, just as do the words of poets, the hearts of lovers, the deaths of each of us. Vaya con dios, dear Vincent.


Some stuff that happened this day in History:

The FDA approved the use of the birth control pill (1960). I just wish more people would use it!

L. Ron Hubbard founder of the Church of Scientology published his book Dianetics (1950). According to at least one of his NY writing pals who claims he was there that night Hubbard wrote the work, claims that Hubbard had been a struggling science fiction hack who declared he was tired of writing for peanuts and getting nowhwhere and was going to write a bestseller and sat up all night writing the book that would lead to founding of the Scientology Church. This pal claims hubbard had a roll of butcher paper he fed into his typewriter so he wouldn't have to slow down in his writing and finished the entire first draft in one sitting. True or not, it would be no stranger story than how Joseph Smith started the Church of Latter Day Saints.

Dante Alighieri, Italian poet and author of Dante's Inferno was born (1265).

Picadilly Circus was first lit by electricity (1932)

President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamtion (1914) asking Americans to express reverence for their mothers and the greeting card industry cheered, and so to did Applebees and the florists. I'm still waiting for someone to declare: Eternally Struggling Writer's Day. That's who is going to get my vote.

Okay, they're kicking me out of the coffee shop - a big ol' barista with a dirty loin cloth and facial piercings who says a dollar cup of coffee don't buy me the right to sit in the uncomfortable chair all day listening to squalling brats, and I either have to buy a fifty dollar bagel or get the hell out!

I leave you with one of my favorite Vincent poems

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

do well, don't make fun of writers, give a sucker an even break...

www.authorbillbrooks.com

Harry Crews & "Ma Can You Send More Money?"

"What the artist owes the world is his work; not a model for living.” - Harry Crews

I want to tell you about a favorite writer of mine that I first read in the 70's, a real tough guy named Harry Crews, but before I share him with you, I want to release a little head steam after reading about the 75 San Diego State University students who were busted yesterday for drugs and drug dealing operations after a 5 month undercover investigation.

This wasn't about some pot party, this was about a group of students - quite a large group that involved 7 fraternities - who were actively involved in the drug trade, using, among other things, their cell phones to openly advertise the sale of cocaine via text messages. You know, that add-on the phone companies push to kids like drugs, so that the kids can text while like, driving their sleek automobiles they crash into each other, killing themselves and other drivers. Yes, you're right, I'm on a rant here, but I told you that already.

It obviously was not enough for these spoiled little monsters to have mommy and daddy pay their tuition (oh, I know some of you are going to say maybe some of them paid their own way -yeah, right. A kid who works and pays her own way through college is probably not likely to blow it all being part of a drug ring. She might dance topless or work at Wendy's. I know this because I always had to work and pay my way when I went to college and I knew other young people who did too, and none of us were about to piss it away engaging in major illegal activities).

Nope, for this bunch of yahoos, having everything just wasn't enough, they just had to become dope dealers on a large enough scale that the DEA ran a 5 month long investigation before busting them. One report quoted: "Profits may have been used to finance fraternity operations. Those arrested included a student who was about to receive a criminal justice degree and another who was to receive a master's degree in homeland security."

Oh, joy. I feel a lot safer knowing these kids are going to run the world in a few years. One of the lads even dumbly inquired whether or not his arrest and incarceration would have an effect on him becoming a federal law enforcement officer. Duh! And what's really sad in all this is that the investigation was prompted by the drug overdose death of another student.

I personally find myself at times unable to summon up an ounce of compassion for certain people (even though I know I probably should). Such is the case with this group of pampered juveniles, most of which I'm guessing, rightly or wrongly, have had the world handed to them and that the toughest part of their day is figuring out where they're going to party this weekend. Well, now 75 of them will hopefully be partying at the county jail and maybe having some reality slapped upside their empty skulls.

Rant over. Now for Crews.

First of all, Harry Crews is now 72 or 73 years old and his body, if not his soul, is breaking down to the point where he no longer does book tours and all that foolishness, but he can still whip the ass of just about every writer out there and I wouldn't want to tangle with him even if I had a loyal pit-bull I'd raised from puppyhood.

Crews is one of those writers who, ever since his early pieces in the 70's for Playboy and Esquire, has developed a cult following, probably because his themes of brutality, snake-handlers, sexual perverts, and all manner of southern blood and gore, isn't exactly everyone's beach reading. It's a verifiable fact too, that women buy most of the fiction today - that men, young men most especially, would prefer to play video games, drink beer and chase pussy and have no time or inclination to read. Oh, if these lads only knew that there are writers out there who write about the very things that turn a young man's fancy (with the exception of video games) maybe more of them would read guys like Harry Crews and then go on to read others too. I fear it is asking too much, however.

What I admire about Crews is he is a man's man and he writes that way and always has, without apology for who he is or what he writes about. But even in his most lustful, heartbreaking novels, he is at times almost lyrical in exposing a man's heart, be it black or otherwise, and brings humanity to its knees, in either prayer or defeat, but he always brings an electric prose. I still recall most vividly the scene in one of his essays in Blood & Grits, of him and a pal and fat waitress rolling into Johnson City, Tennessee. A must read for anyone who wants to be introduced to Crews, the deep south, and drinking and whoring and trying to keep it all between the lines. Crews should be read by everyone who admires a writer spilling his own blood on the page and holding nothing back. Too much fiction today is tepid and uninteresting and plays it overly safe. Too much of today's fiction has no soul or backbone or heart. Too much of today's fiction is like dancing with a three-day old corpse. Give me a writer who's characters will punch my lights out (Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock is just such a book) and screw me in the back of a 10X40 singlewide trailer and share their last beer with me and make me end up crying over their miserable ordinary and fantastic lives. This is what every reader of fiction should demand.

Crews' titles alone are worth the price of admission: Searching for The Wrong-Eyed Jesus, A Feast of Snakes, Scar Lover, and his latest (2006), An American Family: The Baby with the Curious Markings.

Crews's work is often labeled as Southern Gothic, for it's locations and darkness, but someone more aptly described it as GritLit - The best grit lit is filled with ornery, deranged, and desperate characters who are fueled by violence, sex, and alcohol.

Yup, that's Harry.

He's old now, limps around on bad knees somewhere in Florida and by reputation won't turn away a young writer from his door. But if you're a young or aspiring writer, just make sure you have the grit to knock on his door because he may be banging out his next book and in the middle of something that's stolen his mind. Keep on writing Harry, outlast all of us if you can.

STUFF THAT HAPPENED ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

The American Medical Association was founded in Philly (1847) and right after that my doctor's visit bill doubled.

This is the birthdays of Gabby Hayes and Robert Browning. They say Gabby was so ugly the doctor slapped his mama.

Big Sal says I should use this poem today in keeping with the most dire nature of the rest of the post. I never argue with Big Sal when she's in one of her moods, so here it is:

Wrong Headed

Something went wrong in his head
This smiling cherub boy. Somewhere
Between the birthing cry and his
Teens, he got whacky notions about
Love and sex and women, how
They scorned him, except for the worst
Of them and he sort of went nuts, he
Would later describe it as to a reporter.

And began to search them out
The bad ones, like rotten fruit in
Lovely bowls that painters might
Be seduced to paint, their lips
Bright red like apples, their eyes
The color of grapes, the fuzz
On their cheeks like peaches of course.

He would find them at night
Standing on the city corners where
The light is always diffused as
If in a film noir starring Humphrey
Bogart, under street lights.

The passing cars whose beams
Would light them up like bright
Objects at a carnival and he would
Stop and one would lean in and
Begin the negotiations: “Blow job
Twenty dollars, all the way, fifty,
What’re you looking for, hon?”

And then they would drive off and
Never been seen or heard from again
Until some guy walking his dog
Or some kids riding their bikes went
Off into the bushes to smoke daddy’s
Cigarettes and discover them.

This went on for years and when the
Police finally caught him, as they say
Dead to rights, their blood on his
Hands he admitted to all the others
They did not know about – these missing
Women whom no one missed and
Where he left them and so on. It was

All true, they found the bones where he

Said they’d find them, and they found
The cheap jewelry and plastic shoes
And so on and so forth, exactly as he
Described. Then convicted, they put him on
Death row and he waited out his days

Reading the Bible and so on and so forth
Until it came the night he was to take
That final walk dressed all in white
Like some Jesus, only his hair cut short
His face shaven, his teeth brushed.

And as he lay there upon the gurney
In the same position as if they’d nailed
Him to a cross, his arms straight out to
The side, his ankles strapped down so the
Only thing he could move was his head
And waited for the first of the needles
To enter his vein, he thought of a
Happy childhood, of playing with the
Other kids, war and cowboys and so forth

Of the little blonde girl who lived next
Store who first raised in him the suspicion
That he was somehow different. A man

Walked in and spoke his name and
Nothing more, except, “You are going
To feel a poke” – like the time his
Mother had taken him to the doctor.

And all the faces of all the women
Their lips painted so brightly red
Their eyes dark as grapes came
To him in that last moment before

His life began to evaporate and like
So many others he is forgotten
And they are forgotten except on
Rare occasions when they are remembered.

be well, don't be like those you detest, feed a hungry man, woman or child, or better still, all three, and don't sleep with the fishes.

www.authorbillbrooks.com

Shaking a Ketsup Bottle & Neanderthals

RANTS & RAVES

There's just a few things I have to comment on today - my apologies to anyone who enjoys reading my blithe and extraordinary blogs about writers and other fools.

But today when perusing the news I came across two items that made me wonder if writers aren't the only fools in today's world. It seems like the more technologically advanced we've become, the more our idiocy is revealed. 1st Example:

The brainiacs at NASA just had to find out why when you shake a bottle of ketchup it goes from a paste to a liquid so they sent some up with the ill-fated Columbia and lo and behold - now years later, after finding the damaged hard drive scattered somewhere across Texas where the Columbia broke apart killing all 7 astronauts - they have their answer. I won't go into all the gory detail of how they know - you can read it for yourself if you're curious enough. The point is, who gives a rat's butt why ketchup turns to liquid when you shake it? And why are we spending a gazillion dollars (that's a lot of money in Gazill, by the way) to find something like this out when there are a lot bigger problems facing us - like poverty, disease, broken bridges, lost jobs and the price of fuel?

But I'm not surprised that NASA is spending their time researching such inane things; hell, they want to spend more millions (these the same guys who just got caught using their government credit cards to buy iPods et al) - er, gazillions - crashing space crafts into Mars to find out if there is ever been water there! Water! Is knowing if there has ever been water on Mars, or that there might have once been some form of life there, or could be, like in a gazillion (again, a lot of numbers in a gazillion) years really important in the scheme of things - like the crazy mullahs in Iran getting nuclear weapons? And, Hello! Like haven't we already sent up rovers that have shown that there's nothing on Mars but red rocks. Got news for you boys, you can go to Northern Arizona or Southern Utah and find all the damn red rocks you want. Personally I think NASA is one of the most wasteful government programs ever created and now with this latest scandal, it sort of renews my faith about them being nothing more than a huge money-pit of pure waste.

Okay, enough of that rant, now for the next one: Neanderthals.

Anthropologists in Argentina - sort of has a nice alliterative ring doesn't it? - have come up with some sort of flow chart to prove that we humans are not directly related to Neanderthals - they're like some sort of cousin or ours. Well, hell, again I could have saved those boys a lot of time and research dollars by telling them about my cousin Vinnie - who the whole damn family knows is a Neanderthal, and not one of them claim to be directly related to him. But the point is, again, who gives a big rat's ass, and how does this piece of knowlege affect any of our lives to know this? Isn't anybody working on cures for AIDs, MS, MD, Cancer? I mean we've got all these computers and shit, let's put them to some good use instead of this folly that will garner headlines in Yahoo - whose stock by the way tumbled this morning after Microsoft withdrew it's bid, and who I predict will crash and burn due to the greed of whatever dudes are making the decisions over there. Glad I didn't have any stock in that company, ain't you? Well, I don't have any stock in any company anymore after the brainiac at Edward Jones talked me into losing 10% of my life's savings.

Who knows, maybe there is a research group out there right now trying to figure out why men and women have different body parts. Let's hope so. I mean, Christ, my life's in the toilet as it is since I found out from reading God is Not Great, and, The God Delusion - a couple of depressing manifestos declaring that there can't be any God, or if there is, he's a pretty capricious cat that stands by and lets innocents be slaughtered, and old men marry teens and a whole lot of other stuff they put people in jail for. I'm screwed!

Okay, now on to some Stuff that happened on this day in History.

The first of the Marx brothers - Karl - was born this day in 1818. His mother wasn't sure she wanted anymore kids after Karl, who was always complaining about "the system" - but later she had Groucho, Harpo, Gummo, Zeppo and Chico.

It is also the birthday of Howard "Butch" Komives, who played in the NBA for several teams after being a high school phenom and a classmate of mine at Woodward High School in Toledo, Ohio.

The first train robbery took place in North Bend, Ohio (1865)

John Scopes was arrested for teaching evolution in Tennessee (1925)

Sinclair Lewis refused the Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith (1926)

Today is Cinco de Mayo - which has nothing to do with mayonnaise but with a Mexican victory over the French in Puebla Mexico in 1862.

Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile. It is widely believed that the reason he suffered his famous defeat at the battle of Waterloo (not the place in Iowa) was because he suffered from hemorrhoids and could not sit a horse for too long at a time and thus could not properly survey the battlefields and command his troops. Shoulda used Preparation H (all that itching and burning)...

And now from the vault whose keeper of the key - Big Sal - let me have at my own collection of loosely called "poems" -

Let’s Go Down To the Lake Today

Let’s go down to the lake today and
Rent a boat and row out to the center
Of the universe and pretend we are on a
Long journey across the ocean returning
Again to our ancestral home, going as
Our grandfathers and mothers did, full
Of hope and heart and bravery as they
Pushed against the tide of their fate.

Let’s go down to the lake today and
Rent a boat and row out to where the
Ducks paddle silently one following the
Other, all in a line and toss them bread
Crumbs and pretend we are on a lake
Somewhere in Paris, or perhaps Italy.

Let’s go down to the lake today and
Rent a boat and row and row and row
Until we fall off the edge of the earth
And into unknown void of imagination.
Just you and I, let’s go down to the lake today.

do well, kiss whoever will let you, drink no more than you must and read the Desiderata at least once in your life.

http://www.authorbillbrooks.com/

Ambrose Bierce - Still A Cold Case File

Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale. - Gabriel Garcia Marquez


For my money, no writer's life is more intriguing than that of Ambrose Bierce. First off, he was a cynic and a cynicism is always good for a writer's bone and blood structure. His The Devil's Dictionary is not only a hoot to read, but also proves that humor is merely the exaggeration of the truth!
He was one of 13 children (which for those numerologists might prove intriguing) and his father gave all 13 of his children names that stared with A. So anyone knowing the family just had to know some of those kids were going to turn out different with an old man like Marcus Bierce. After all, what else is there to do in southern Ohio but fornicate and name your kids. Trust me, I've been there.

Ambrose joined the Civil War and fought, in several major battles including Shiloh and received a serious head wound at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia.

He married Mary Day on Christmas 1871 and they had two sons and one daughter. Both of his sons died before he did - one was shot in a fight and the other died from pneumonia. Bierce himself suffered from asthma as well as continuing physical problems from his war wounds. After resigning from the Army he went on to live in London and San Fransisco, contributed and edited for several newspapers. But Bierce was also a restless dude and travelled all over the country looking for new adventures, dropping in and out of his journalistic pursuits and eventually ended up as a regular columnist for The San Francisco Examiner.

Bierce went on to write novels and short stories, including probably his most well known one, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge (read the story here), and also published several volumes of poetry and his much quoted, The Devil's Dictionary - which quite clearly displays his cynicism.
But perhaps the most intriguing thing about Ambrose Bierce is his fate. Nobody knows for certain about where and when he died, for he simply disappeared, although it is highly believed he was killed one way or another in the Mexican Revolution. That he went down there to either write about or join Pancho Villa's forces - the subject of Carlos Fuentes' novel, The Old Gringo.

One of the main reasons most historians believe Bierce died in the revolution was because of a line in a letter he wrote to his niece wherein he stated: "Good-bye — if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico — ah, that is euthanasia!" Bierce was somewhere in his 70's when he disappeared. Adios amigo - we should all check out this way and let the speculation begin.

Some stuff that happened on this day in History:

Leonardo da Vinci died (1519) and has now officially been dead longer than he had been alive.

Good Housekeeping made its debut in 1885 - as if women didn't already know how to keep a good house.

Cat on A Hot Tin Roof won the Pulitzer Prize for Tennessee Williams (1955)

This is Casanova's birthday (1725) who when he wasn't writing he was doing that other thing - which is pretty good advice for any writer.

It is also the birthday of George McDonald Fraser - author of the Flashman series of novels.

...other stuff happened too, but you'll have to look it up for yourself.

I've just been passed a piece of paper by Big Sal which reads:

Conversations Overheard In Coffee Shops

Young men and women with unwashed
Hair drinking expensive coffee and Chai Tea
Discuss Bush, City Hall, Tantra Sex, etc., while

Two 30 something women, one blonde, one
Brunette, eat sandwiches with cheese and
Salami on Pennie bread and spoon the soup
Of the day into their mouths. One tells the other
About her divorce. What a bastard he was.

A new-age preacher at the next table
Counsels a couple with long hair and various
Tattoos (suppose to point out their individuality)
Planning their upcoming wedding.

They come and they go – they marry and
Divorce and end up dead like everybody else
Who’s gone before them in all time every
Where as surely as if they were struck and
Killed by a city bus or murdered by Huns.

Oh well.

Advice from Grampa Genius Brooks:

live well, dream big, don't let your mouth write any checks your ass can't cash.

http://www.authorbillbrooks/

Colette, The Novelist as Sexual Creature

I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer. - The Last of Cheri - Colette.

One has to admire the French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette - simply known for her pen name as Colette. She was born in the Burgundy region of France in 1873 and obviously was one of those rare creatures who knew herself better than most. When she was twenty she married Henri Gauthier-Villars a rascal 15 years her senior and known as Willy. And it was under his name she published her series of novels about a self-assured French girl who becomes a charismatic woman. Of course they are believed to be autobiographical and were "shocking" at the time, even to the liberal French. Willy himself was a faithless reprobate by all accounts and by 1906 she left him and moved in with American writer Natalie Barney with whom she had a short affair that ultimately became a friendship.

After Natalie, Colette took up with another woman, Mathilde de Morny, whom she called Sissy, and the two took to performing a pantomime entitled Rêve d'Égypte. wherin they had an onstage kiss that nearly caused a riot in the Moulin Rouge and were banned from further performances. And even though they continued their affair, they were no longer able to openly live together.

But fear not for Colette's sake, she was also having a affair during the same time with male Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio.

In 1912 she married newspaper editor Henri de Jouvenel with whom she had a daughter whose primary care she turned over to a nanny, probably because Colette was more absorbed with her writing and art than with motherhood. By 1924 she and Henri divorced. It was rumored that the split was caused by her having an affair with her stepson, Bertrand.

In 1935 she married her third husband Maurice Goudeket. Maurice later published a book about his her and their life together.

Colette went on to publish 50 novels, many of them about the struggles and darker side of love relationships - a subject she was intimately familiar with from her own life. One, Cheri (1920), tells the story of an affair between the aged courtesan, Lea, and her pretty and pampered younger man, Cheri. In the novel, Colette casts Cheri as feminine in the way he dresses and acts, and Lea as masculine in her resourcefulness and skills.

By the end of the 1920's Colette was considered France's greatest woman writer. Her most popular novel, Gigi was later turned into a a play and a movie.

Colette died in Paris in 1954 but not before having truly lived life to its fullest as woman, lover, novelist, actress, playwright and poet. Je soulève mon verre à vous Colette, vous ai vécu la bonne vie.

Some stuff that happened on this day in History:

After just one day of marriage, Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide. Need more be said?

The first commercial television set was introduced at the 1939 World's Fair in New York and bought by a guy named Albert Foils who became the world's first couch potato.

Tennis pro Monica Seles is stabbed by a hooligan who was obviously pissed when he learned the ticket the bought wasn't to a soccer game.

It is the birthday of writer Annie Dillard and singer Willie Nelson - and probably several other people.

And now from Ye olde Vault to which Big Sal keeps the key between her ample bosoms the following poem by a cat named Billy, and in keeping with today's racy theme:

Johnnie D’s Pecker

Killer walks into a coffee bar and says, “Give me
2 guns and a latte. The barista looks at him and
Says, “Hey, what’s that thing hanging out of your
pants?” Killer looks down and says, “Oh, I forgot to zip
Up.” Barista says, “Why you must be John Dillinger.”
The thing is as fat and slick as a river eel.
Later, after Johnnie D is gunned down outside the
Biograph in Chicago, J. Edgar orders his pecker whacked
Off and sent to the Smithsonian where it is to
This day in a glass jar alongside Geronimo’s
hat, Billy the Kid’s trigger finger, Mario Lanza’s
Toenails, Ernest Hemingway’s computer, Clark Gable’s
False teeth, Hitler’s busted skull, a piece of
Marie Antoinette’s cake, Lincoln’s lucky rabbit’s foot,
And other items of distinction kept in good order by a guy named Fred
(no last names please).

Like a white eel, just floating in that jar of amber
Liquid, like something you might find in some cheap
Deli: Special, Pickled Eel - $4.99 a pound!
Johnnie D’s pecker.

There is still one lady left from the old days living in
A blue trailer down in Florida who remembers when
Johnnie D used it on her one night in a Chicago
Nightclub parking lot in the back of a black Packard
Sedan. “Johnnie, oh Johnnie,” she cried. The thing was
Alive and fatal, could ruin a girl for life and did. No
Man could ever satisfy them once Johnnie D. got done
Doing his business. Christ, she thinks,
I’d like to go see it just once more before I die!

sleep well, do right by others and live like there's no tomorrow - because there may not be...

www.authorbillbrooks.com

Spoon River Anthology - the Bittersweet veiw of Edgar Lee Masters

Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer--and if so, why? - Bennett Cerf

Edgar Lee Masters was a lawyer, cum poet, novelist and playwright whose most famous work - Spoon River Anthology - is a series of auto-epithets (voices from the grave) done in free verse of the mythological prairie town of Spoon River. It is a work filled with the pathos and humor and irony of any small town where the lives of its citizens interact and intersect for the better and the worse. To wit:

Amelia Garrick

Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush

In a forgotten place near the fence

Where the thickets from Siever's woods

Have crept over, growing sparsely.

And you, you are a leader in New York,

The wife of a noted millionaire,

A name in the society columns,

Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps

By the mirage of distance.

You have succeeded,

I have failed

In the eyes of the world.

You are alive, I am dead.

Yet I know that I vanquished your spirit;

And I know that lying here far from you,

Unheard of among your great friends

In the brilliant world where you move,

I am really the unconquerable power over your life

That robs it of complete triumph.

And like so many gifted and talented writers - Masters proved successful in his professional life but less so in his personal one. He married Helen Jenkins in 1898 and had a son the following year. From 1903-1908 he had a law partnership with the famous Clarence Darrow. He went on to write plays and have two more children. In 1909 he had a torrid (is there any other kind?) affair with the artist Tennessee Mitchell who later married Sherwood Anderson. Masters' wife learned of the affair but would not divorce him. Spoon River Anthology came out in 1915 and two years later he left his wife and family. In 1926 he married Ellen Coyne a woman 36 years younger. He went on to write many more poems and biographies and novels - none of which received or garnered him the attention that Spoon River did. His health began failing in the 1940's and he passed away in 1950. In the end, his works both celebrated and satirized the lives of small town folks. It is not uncommon for most writers, poets or otherwise to have a love hate relationship with their subjects. What better to write about than that which stirs your soul? All writers - especially aspiring ones - should require of themselves to read Spoon River Anthology.

Stuff that happened on this day in History:

Alfred Hitchcock bit the dust.

First edition of Roget's Thesaurus was published (1852)

Rubber was given a patent in 1812 - enough said already about its impact on birthrates and all that.

Henry James, Transatlantic Sketches is published (1875) - another page turner from the old master!

Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst was born (1863) - only he didn't know he was a tycoon at the time. He just knew he was hungry and his diaper needed changing. So in that regard he was just like the rest of us - until he became very rich of course, then he stopped being like the rest of us.

Rodney King is acquitted of bashing his skull against the batons of several L.A. police officers.

From ye olde vault whose key is tied around the neck of Big Sal, the following poem:

Easy Rider

The first time I saw
Easy Rider, I wept.

The woman with me
Looked at me strangely

& later we went to her
place and made love

And I felt like Peter
Fonda when he got

Shot off his motorcycle

...do well, be kind, kiss someone like you mean it.

www.authorbillbrooks.com

Flannery O'Conner

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. - Flannery O'Connor


Today is the birthday of one of my favorite writers, Flannery O'Conner. She was an only child, and when she was just five years old she taught a pet chicken to walk backwards. Gotta love a dame like that. She earned a degree in Social Sciences then got accepted into the Iowa Writer's Workshop where she became friends with the poet Robert Fitzgerald and his wife Sally. In 1951 she was diagnosed with Lupus and given just five years to live. She returned to her home in Andalusia Georgia, raised peafowl and wrote, often including peacock's in her essays and stories. She never married and died at the age of 39. Her career as a writer produced 2 novels and 32 short stories, the most famous of which was "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" - a blow your socks off kind of story. The first time I read it I was delightfully stunned by its subtle brutality and for the first time truly understood the term "southern Gothic." If you've ever lived in the South, as I have, and a place where my paternal ancestors date back to the early 1800's, then you know a thing or two about the type of southern men in O'Conner's work, their volatility just there under the surface. Such was the subject of James Dickey's Deliverance as well. Southern men have always been noted for their "action over words" approach to many of life's most difficult problems. Moonshine and poverty didn't help any either. The lyrics of Country Music - at least the way it was before it became Country Rock Music - often reflected the life of Southern men, and women, with its poetry of hard times, drinking, cheating spouses, broken hearts and broken dreams. This is not to paint Southern men with the broad brush of brutality and violence to the exclusion of men everywhere given similar circumstances, but to simply say that Southern men are different from other men in my estimation. I think Flannery knew this and was able to write about it with the same stealth and explosive surprise as some ol' boy sitting on his barstool trying to get his mind right while some fool is yammering in his ear about his brand new Cadillac. You just know it's going to lead to a fistfight that will be quick and brutal. And that's why I read Flannery O'Conner and Cormac McCarthy as well. They understand this thing about the southern male. McCarthy writes of such men his "Appalachian" novels, Child of God and Outer Dark. I think to fully understand and appreciate the true southern character you have to live in the South and get to know the people here, the place's past and its present. And, you have to be of these same bloodstock to write accurately about what drives these men to do what they do as is always imperative in fiction, if not always in life.

So I say: "Bartender, I'll have another and put a quarter in the jukebox because I got some things I need to think about before the sun comes up tomorrow."

Some Stuff that happened in this day in History.

A patent was given for the thimble (1684)

The French outlaw Nicolas Jacques Pelletier became the first criminal to die by guillotine in 1792 (later Ron Popeil another Frenchman would take this idea and invent the "Veg-O-Matic" which would make him very rich.)

Journalist Edward R. Murrow was born in Polecat, N.C. which, as a child, every night when he'd ask his daddy if they were going to survive the hard times he was given the same answer: "Goodnight and good luck" - which became his signature at sign-off time on his television show.

There was other stuff too, but all boring. What can I say, as history goes, this wasn't one of its better days.

Time for a poem from my jewel box I keep under the bed:

It’s One of Those Days

One of those days
When everything’s working out
One of those sweet days
When there are no aches or
Pains, no sadness. One of
Those days when you find
You got a little extra money
In the bank you didn’t know
You had, when the weather
Is warm enough to drive

With the top down and you
Found a really good book to
Read and an old friend you
Haven’t heard from in a long
Time calls you to see how you
Are and lets you know they’ve
Been thinking of you – like
That, out of the blue. One of

Those days when you catch
All the green lights and everybody
Smiles and nobody gets killed in the
War you hate so much. One of
Those days when the words come

Out in a rush and they’re all good,
Better than you could have hoped for.

It’s one of those perfect perfect
Days and you wonder how many
More you’re going to have and the,
Reality is, not that many.

...do well, be well and be glad someone loves you.

http://www.authorbillbrooks.com/