It really has been time for a lot of us to upgrade our blogs and websites. I finally bit the bullet and bought a new theme, then spent the next 10 hours trying to recover from my own stupidity. Things are looking better, but we’re still under construction. One coffee break. Two potty breaks. Brunch with my family. That’s it.
So pardon our appearance. Page down, though, and check out how things are looking.
My best to you this holiday season.
I finally finished Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666 last month (912 pages in English; 1,136 in Spanish). It represents a year of reading for me (with some other stuff thrown in, but nothing I stayed with or finished). The beauty of books, as opposed to TV and movies, is that you can take your time and just tackle two or three pages a night for fifteen to twenty minutes at a shot. TV and movies make us think we have to eat whole stories quickly. If you can disavow that habit, and feel comfortable with the slow pace of reading, you will probably extend your life by at least eight years, maybe ten. Besides, 2666 is considered one of the most important novels of the early 21st century. It probably can’t be read quickly no matter who you think you are.
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I want to share some thoughts on what I read this summer, just so you know what writers do with all that spare time they have. At the end of this essay I also report on some of the stuff I have been working on.
This was my first summer being an empty nest writer. For the record, half of what writers do is read each other’s work. That’s probably why the job seems so great every once in a while.
My goodness, there is so much brilliant literature coming out these days — particularly by women. Beginning in July, I stumbled into all sorts of work by Renata Adler, Joy Williams, Cesar Aira, Shirley Jackson, Elena Ferrante, Mat Johnson, Lucia Berlin, Roxane Gay, and Clarice Lispector (she who barks at God, see photo above). All of these folks are pushing language and literature forward. We worry, right?, about the notion that fiction is coming to rest on the surface of the toilet waters of the world. Not so. You just have to keep looking for them that knows how to float around the room. They’re out there. I was smitten in particular with Aira, Lispector, and Renata Adler.
Today marks the 44th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s death. He left this world when he was just 27. Thanks to my good friend Derrick Baldwin for reminding me of this. Derrick is one helluva keyboardist and I love it when his band gets him to sing.
Some people think you’re pathetic if you gush even just a smidge about Jimi. Those people don’t know shit and probably think people on “America’s Got Talent” are artists to follow for life. There’s more to art, though, than standing on stage and having yourself electrified into people’s homes.
Watch the video below and listen to what Jimi says about practicing. What separates Continue reading
Below is the first clip I want to offer. It starts out with a Joni Mitchell interview and ends with a weird video rendition of “Voodoo Chile.” Note how “Mitch” appears to know Italian. That’s impressive as hell.
Joni and Jimi were both on the rise in the late 1960s when they met. We all know how much Jimi revered the Beatles and Bob Dylan. It’s likely he respected a lot of the other innovators of that era as well. And there were many. Certainly by the time Jimi and Joni met, it was clear that Joni’s ability to mix complex melodies with real poetry (not just lyrics) was worthy of Hendrix’s attention.
Joni says that Jimi recorded her concert using a big reel-to-reel tape recorder and Continue reading
Amazon’s truly living up to her name. She’s a Big Badass Woman in the jungle. She thinks she’s learned a lot watching Walmart beat the crap out of their suppliers so she’s doing the same thing.
If you pay attention even a little to the publishing world, you probably know that I’m talking about Amazon’s harsh tactics directed at publishing conglomerate Hachette. Hachette doesn’t want to use the pricing and marketing scheme Amazon is offering. Amazon wants to have ultimate control Continue reading
My novel, Beyond the Will of God, is now posted at NoiseTrade.com, an amazing website that lets artists offer their music and books to people for free. You can find all sorts of weird and amazing leading edge work at that site offered by everyone from 17-year-old guitar geniuses to hard-to-categorize 56-year-old psychedelic novelists writing for uncompromising lovers of music and weird ideas.
Beyond the Will of God was published on July 4, 2012. It’s been downloaded over 10,000 times from Amazon and even won the Indie Book-of-the-Month Award at WriteReadRate.com (sadly, now defunct). If you go to the NoiseTrade page for the book you’ll find some excellent quotes by respected reviewers. BWG Continue reading
We had a huge cold front come in right around 9:00 last night. The temperature dropped fast from 52-degrees Fahrenheit to 20-degrees Fahrenheit, and by our 10:30 bedtime the wind was blowing hard. Our bedroom wall is northwest facing and somewhat unprotected, with no wind-block trees or shrubs or walls. The property backs onto a college campus with a good five acre field that lets the wind streak across unobstructed whenever weather spins out of the northwest. Our bedroom wall gets pummeled by roaring air, our windows rattle and shake like something is trying to get in.
So I awoke at 12:30 to howling gusts that had to be hitting 50-60 mph. I could not sleep for nearly an hour until Marla woke up too and began immediately to chat with me about the howling wind-toads. She could have been a scientist so matter-of-fact is she about the things she brings up out of sleep.
I said, “Wind toes?” She said, “No. Toads.”
I said, “Really? Toads flying on the wind?” She said, “Nope. Just wind-toads…half wind, half toad.”
I asked if that meant we would have toast in the morning.
She said “Nope. Toads! We’re going to have toads for breakfast but we’re going to have to get the wind part out of them first.” I pointed out it might be easier to get the toads to jump off the wind.
We left it at that and snuggled in the dark with the wind howling like wild toads deep in a forest. But as I drifted into sleep, knowing how much I loved her, I wondered if wind-toads even knew that human beings existed. Maybe they were just doing what they’re supposed to do and would feel bad if they understood that they were scaring a couple of middle aged people out of sleep on a lonely late winter Wednesday night.
Last night we watched an extraordinary story on 60 Minutes called “Sex Matters: Drugs Can Affect Sexes Differently” by Lesley Stahl. If you didn’t see it, you need to follow the link at the end of this post to watch it. Everyone who has gone through 7th grade biology in America needs to be aware of the implications of this story.
In a nutshell, it turns out that men and women metabolize drugs differently. Stahl’s story focuses on Ambien the sleep medication. In the past few years researchers have learned that women only need a dose half as strong as men to achieve the same sleep effect. In essence, women have been prescribed overdose quantities of Ambien since it hit the market … because scientists didn’t know any better.
The story also touches on the fact that men and women have different heart disease issues and that a dose of aspirin for men is indeed helpful as a prophylactic, but for women not so much.
What’s important here is that it points to a huge set of research assumptions that have Continue reading