Cover Me
categories: Cocktail Hour
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The other day I got the cover for my new book, The Tarball Chronicles. Here it is–over there. I hope you like it. I do. I’m actually very pleased. I think those of you who followed last summer’s posts from the Gulf will agree that it gets across some of the sheer strangeness of the experience, of the tragic aspect of the BP spill but the black humor, too. At least I think it does. If you don’t agree, please don’t write me about it. I’m too fragile at the moment. Somewhat close to cracking up in fact…..
There is this anxious time in the life of a writer (um, when isn’t an anxious time?), when you are done with a book but before it comes out. You await the Day of Judgment, fearing, not so much being consigned to hell–hell at least is active and participatory–as nothingness. Here is Ed Abbey, for instance, describing his book, The Monkey Wrench Gang, and the quiet reaction he imagined: “Another drop down the well of oblivion.” (Of course, Abbey’s worries proved wrong and any writer would like to have their book attain the level of non-oblivion that Monkey Wrench did.)
A Few Pictures from my visit to Henry Beston’s beach with John Hay
categories: Reading Under the Influence
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Henry Beston's beach
A visit to Beston's with John
Another Night at the Opera
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Mario Lanza as Pinkerton
[update, 6/5: got a note the other day from an opera singer named David Weaver, as follows: “Hello Bill, A friend, Kate Fox, sent me your piece about “Another Night at the Opera.” As it happens, I have done a number of roles with Opera Columbus. I was not in the 2000 Madame Butterfly you referenced – but I do know that the Pinkerton in that production was tenor David Corman. You were close about David being from Nebraska – he is actually from Kansas. He is now teaching music and leading the choral program at Odessa College in Odessa, Texas.”]
In the spring of 2000 a grad student in one of my workshops at Ohio State asked if she could bring her cousin to class–he was to visit Columbus soon. (I can’t for the life of me call up her name, and would like the help of any of you who were in that class.)[Update: it was Ellen Seusy, and credit goes to Jim Fox, whose face makes me remember quite a few others in the room]. I was like, well, I’m not sure. Because in the workshop we’d developed a level of trust and frankness that wasn’t like other classes. Maybe we should ask the group. And she said, “He’s a tenor. He’s going to be here to sing Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly for Opera Columbus.” I knew about the production, all right, already had my tickets, not great ones because the house was Continue reading →
The Poster Biz Part II: Attack on Reagan’s Head
categories: Cocktail Hour
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After our poster of the Trickle Down Theory flopped (see my earlier blog) my friend Dave and I continued undeterred. We next created something called “Ronald Reagan: A Physical Examination.” This was a drawing I’d made of Reagan naked except for his presidential seal boxer shorts and a dozen arrows slanting in from the sides (like the one pointing at his groin that said “gender gap” or the one pointing at his pompadour that said “nuclear warhead.”) It was intentionally dumbed down in hopes of sales, tamer than our first effort, but I still wanted to make the drawing great. Though I had been a political cartoonist for three years, and already had a set caricature of the President that I drew, I vowed that I would start over and create the perfect Reagan, and so avenge the failure of our first poster.
I worked on the poster in an attic study of a room on Cape Cod, looking out at the steely blue ocean and the last of the gold leaves peeling off a post oak. I listened over and over to a tape of Bach’s Brandenburg concertos and drank black coffee, and drew Reagan after Reagan. It was early Continue reading →
categories: Reading Under the Influence
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Sam Tanenhaus reviews Harold Bloom in the NYTBR. Here is my take in Ecotone on Bloom and Walter Jackson Bate. Also two former students who done good: Patricia Bjorklund has an excerpt of her funny and moving memoir in The Missouri Review. And Darren Dean, who works for the University of Missouri Press, is blogging brilliantly at Pale Blogger.
Wednesday is Bad Advice Day: Finding Time to Write
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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Two missives this week, one from WriterMom, the other from Jean Witlow in Corvallis, Oregon, with very close to the same question. WriterMom: “I teach four sections of composition at two different colleges, and have three kids, 6-8-12. My husband is deceased. I write an infrequent column for the local paper. But that’s it for writing. I want to know how to get my book written when I have no time and never will.” She goes on to describe the book (almost a pitch—first advice: don’t do that—you come off like an infomercial or a flight attendant). And it sounds good, a memoir of her husband and the risk taking that finally killed him. Next, with as little punctuation as possible, Jean Witlow says, “Here I am finally with my MFA and my book basically written it was my thesis but needs some work and I’m going Continue reading →
Twelve Random Reading Observations
categories: Reading Under the Influence
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1. Just read This Won’t Take But a Minute Honey, a small collection of essays and stories by Steve Almond. I liked the stories a lot, especially the one about Fenway Park, but loved the little essays. If you enjoy the writing advice that Bill sometimes doles out on this website, then you’ll really enjoy the same from Almond, who writes about writing with similar wit, panache and common sense.
2. Not long ago I posted a picture here of a pile of books sitting on the desk of my writing shack and got a little healthy hell about many of the author in that pile being dead and male. A few perceptive (and kind) viewers came to my defense and pointed out that they had discovered Mary Oliver, Joan Didion, and Annie Dillard in the pile. But one they missed was May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude. Does anybody else still read Sarton? I used Continue reading →
Our Mutual Brain Damage (Special Guest Star: Clyde Edgerton)
categories: Cocktail Hour
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I was on our creative writing hallway yesterday chatting with my colleague Clyde Edgerton. We both like to talk, and we’re not terrible listeners either (able to mimic the appropriate facial expressions: all the head bobs, nods, and laughs that indicate interest) and sometimes a brief stop by his door can last upwards of half an hour. We also share a similar rambling not-entirely logical style of talking and, as it happened, this time we may have hit upon the roots of that mutual style. As it turns out, we both have brain damage.
I’m serious. At different points of our life we both had our oxygen supplies cut off (could this have something to do with our career choices?). Anyway, I’ll let Clyde tell his story first:
Wednesday is Bad Advice Day: Rejection as Biofuel, or, Showing the Bastards
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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Why do we choose to do this writing thing? Let’s start there.
I had a critical father, a man who, as I described recently in a post called Kid of the Year, would reply when I got a 98 on a test with: “What happened to the other two points?” I developed a self-deprecating sense of humor in large part as a defense against his sarcastic attacks. I hated nothing more than criticism and rejection.
So of course I dedicated myself to a career that would guarantee a lifetime of criticism and rejection.
Leaving Dr. Freud aside, I think it was a great decision. It has toughened me up enough so that I can occasionally laugh outright—ha!—at rejection. Occasionally. Of course it still stings, but I know that that sting is part of my writing life, my overall writing ecosystem. I was at a writing conference a few years ago when a young writer said he didn’t want to go to a particular party because it would be full of people from a journal that had rejected him. An older, well-respected writer overheard this and said: “If I did that, I wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone at the whole conference.” Continue reading →
Facebook Etiquette? Or: Bill and Dave’s is Starting a Fan Page (Hit “Like”!)
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Dave and his Bridesmaids: Perfect Manners
I came to Facebook as a visitor to a foreign planet, an American visitor, with little sensitivity to the mores of the natives. It was a planet I had disparaged at length in boozy diatribes and probably in print. Imagine my surprise when someone told me they’d friended me and liked seeing my picture after all these years. Next time we spoke she was mad at me, leaving her unfriended! Which I didn’t know what meant! It turned out some mysterious person had started what’s called a fan page, something I still don’t understand. And not only that, but had started speaking for me, posting status dealies. I use the word dealies to show my age, because my age is a large factor in Continue reading →
