As my upper mind digests my unconscious mind in search of the next right story, my curiosity throws me full-tilt into some music to latch onto. I know my new novel is going to involve music so my guitar has been dusted off and I’m practicing as if I will soon get back on stage to torture the ears of Cambridge. I am also searching for the inspiration in a female character to feature in the plot. I think I’ve found her. She is Nina Diaz of Girl in a Coma. Her new album with the band is called “Exits and All the Rest” and is just out. If you hurry over to NPR site here, you’ll get a listen to the whole album. It should still be us for a few days. After that, you could buy it or search on YouTube. I’ve heard it several times now, and am learning to play and sing “Smart,” a cut from the album. She writes: “And do you ever start to wonder / what’s it like to be alone / to sit and stare and ponder / living a life that’s not your own?” That’s a good question to hang a song upon—and perhaps one appropriate for a novel. We shall see. Enjoy—and keep bugging me to start and finish the novel.
Swimming to the Cambodia Inside his Readers
In “Swimming to Cambodia,” the monologue theater piece that became a popular movie, Spalding Gray plays Woody Allen’s oft-portrayed, anxiety-stifled character better than Allen ever could. The audience’s fascination may come from the conviction that Spalding Gray is not acting, but telling the truth, and he is. Although the genesis of his story may be seem spontaneous, the monologue is indeed as well-written as it is truthful.
The deeper fascination for the audience is the realization that we see through the character and the actor into the naked mind of the man called Gray with both dread and sympathy. Though we see that a person who is seriously neurotic or depressed is not us, the fascination grows because his character draws a picture so completely. In “Cambodia” Gray’s acting is equal to his writing ability.
Now, in ‘The Journals of Spalding Gray’ a review by Ron Rosenbaum of Gray’s previously unpublished personal story, we find the truth of it. Rosenbaum says: “It’s distressing to read the way happiness generates sadness and terror in Gray’s psyche, because his work could be the source of so much pleasure to his audiences.” Not that Bob Dylan ever accomplished any success as a poet, but he once said “A poet is a naked man.” I think that applies to Spalding Gray in his journals. See for yourself in this excerpt from the book which is now available for us to read: here.
Was It Christopher Fry, and Not Shakespeare, Who Wrote the Plays?
How was it that Christopher Fry, and not the man called Shakespeare, wrote the plays? Did he time-shift himself back in time to the year 1600 and compose the plays in retrospect? If so, how did he become so literate in theatre without a former Shakespeare to teach him thus? How is this a good premise for a movie?
I mean, not even Shakespeare himself knew who he was: you can tell by the scripts. “To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows / . . . For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.” This writer had no idea who he was—that’s why he wrote the plays. He wrote them to find out. Every writer is a huge mystery to himself and that’s why he writes. The spark of human imagination is only touched off when imagination and hands come together in the act of writing. The imagination sparks words which sparks memory which sparks more words which sparks dreams which sparks more words which sparks imagination again and again until a writer has a whole bonfire going. And like a bonfire, he does not have control over it, as much as he might hope to. In one sense a writer is merely a man or a woman like any other. In another sense he or she is the entire sum of the imagination and dreams and the experience of writing which is captured by his fingers.
As you can see, the premise matters little: the play is the only thing! Is it a good story? If it is, readers or movie-goers will find it. Will they be entertained? Perhaps. Will they learn anything about the real Shakespeare? No!
New Directions for Writers and Publishers: a Debate
Thomas Glave (“Whose Song? and Other Stories,” “The Torturer’s Wife,” and “Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent” from City Lights Books) is optimistic about the changes in publishing and states that they are an opportunity for writers to grow, experiment, and take advantage of new ways of expression and working with others. He is, however, fearful that Amazon’s entry into publishing will not favor the art of writing and the collaboration of writers and editors, or even writers and other writers. Other publishing voices in the debate are: Dennis Johnson, publisher of Melville House; Michael Wolf, vice president of research, GigaOM: and Laurel Saville, author, “Unraveling Anne.”
Check out Thomas Glave and the others here:
Bob Dylan for a Nobel Prize? It’s “crazy speculation”
I think Dylan’s got a bucketful of awards and approbation, he doesn’t need a Nobel. He’s a great songwriter, an average writer of memoir, and a mediocre poet. There are many writers don’t get to perform before huge crowds who deserve it. If Woody Guthrie were alive he’d laugh to think a songwriter should get a prize like that. At least Woody did finish and publish a novel.
“Dylan blew it by reminding everyone he’s a plagiarist,” said Joni Mitchell. “Bob is not authentic at all,” she said. “He’s a plagiarist and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.”
Why “The Cats Table,” by Michael Ondaatje Is Not an Interesting Novel
When I read about this novel, I struck by some of its similarities to my own most recent works, Tardy Son and Tesora. I read an excerpt from his latest novel to find out. But I found that it’s all written from a remote adult’s POV with indulgent explanations about the boy with very little emotional or psychological understanding of him. That may have been all right with The English Patient, but not with this one. Instead of the writing being alive like a teenaged boy is, it’s petrified and dusty and conclusive. Life for a boy of that age might be dangerous in this situation, but it is not boring. He doesn’t seek out answers ontologically. A boy looks for gold and squished bugs and is obsessively optimistic.
It seems the closer a subject is to mine, the further the writing is apart from my style. Here’s a link to a NYTimes review of his new novel.
The Boston Book Festival: Copley Square, Saturday Oct 15. It’s free.
There are many events including a Flash Fiction Open Mic at 2:00pm, Old South Church, Mary Norton Hall, 645 Boylston Street. For other events, check out the site:
Read your very, very short story out loud for an eager audience. The Drum, an audio literary magazine, will be recording each story, choosing the best ones for publication in the magazine. Each piece must be no longer than three minutes. Emceed by Henriette Lazaridis Power, editor of The Drum. (The Drum is a made-up one-time literary magazine created for this event, but the readings should be fun.)
Syrian poet, Adonis, Does Not Win The Nobel Prize
The Syrian poet, Adonis, or Ali Ahmad Said Asbar, who might have won the Nobel Prize this year, wrote this below. I imagine the Nobel Committee thought it would be too political to choose a Syrian writer in this political climate of The Arab Spring. It’s from the title poem of the book, Desire Moving Through Maps of Matter:
I summon angels and ambulances—
I turn into water and flow in the pool of my sorrows
or
I become a horizon and climb the heights of desire.
I know that we die only once and are many times reborn
And I know that death is only useful if we live it through.
I know that the hereafter is this rose
this woman
and that a human face is the other side of the sky.
Tomas Transtromer, Poet, wins the Nobel Prize
Tomas Tranströmer, a Swedish poet, won the Nobel Prize for literature today. Here’s a bit of one poem below and six others here. Enjoy.
Allegro
After a black day, I play Haydn,
and feel a little warmth in my hands.
The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall.
The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.
The sound says that freedom exists
and someone pays no tax to Caesar.
Requiem for Steve Jobs
R.I.P. Steve Jobs. All of my novels have been typed on Macintosh computers. I’ve been using them since the first Mac 128 came out. The following excerpt is from a speech given by Steve Jobs in 2005. It says a lot about creativity.
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life,” Jobs said. “Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
davidkrancher.com 