The Twin Towers

Duke decides to join Mutt in a parallel exploration of one of America's "essential" writers

Inspired by Mutt's recent post "Which Writers Are Indispensable?," I've decided to take the challenge/opportunity inadvertently presented by my esteemed co-blogger here and embark on a sort of "parallel journey" to his upcoming (and highly anticipated) Melvillepalooza reading binge.

As Mutt knows, American literature has been a subject of increasing fascination for me in recent years. I'm very interested in exploring the ongoing evolution of a distinctly "American voice" in fiction, and to that end have gone back and explored some of the early and less-known works in the American canon - everything from Washington Irving (maybe the first identifiably "American" storyteller?) to Sarah Orne Jewett, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Booth Tarkington, Ambrose Bierce, Frank Norris, Jack London and Sherwood Anderson. Hell, I've even sought out obscure stuff like Harold Frederic's The Damnation of Theron Ware and Norris' Epic of the Wheat trilogy - books no even knows about any more, let alone still reads (and I haven't yet either to be honest- full disclosure! Though I have the books and plan to...).

In a post going back a few years now, I proposed my own Top Ten Most Essential American Novels... this was the list I came up with at that time, and I think it holds up pretty well:

1. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
3. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
4. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
5. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
6. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
7. Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
8. The Violent Bear it Away, Flannery O’Connor
9. Main Street, Sinclair Lewis
10. The Sketch Book, Washington Irving (contains American folk tales of enduring popularity such as ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ and ‘Rip van Winkle’)

Now, I didn't say then and I can't say now that I've read every single one of these (though I have most of them now), but for my money if you had to choose only 10 to represent the finest of American fiction, this list would more than suffice. Obviously there are personal preferences embedded into it. I've long said that by my rendering, the greatest writers America has produced are Herman Melville, William Faulkner and Mark Twain, in that order. To that list I personally would also include two others: Flannery O'Connor and Nathaniel Hawthorne. A very, very close second tier would include our first Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis, John Steinbeck, and finally, the writer of what is probably my favorite underappreciated American work of all time, Sherwood Anderson (of course I refer to his incredibly powerful Winesburg, Ohio).

Another criminally underappreciated writer (these days anyway) who I want to at least mention because I admire his stuff so much is Thorton Wilder.

But back to Mutt's challenge... knowing Mutt the way I do, I know that he likes to embark on these incredibly ambitious, long journeys of reading one author's works in succession, or committing to read one major work from a guy like Charles Dickens per year (his groundbreaking Dickensfest series, well documented on these pages). Normally I don't go along with him on these literary treks because I've got my own reading agenda to follow, but I have always admired and observed them from the sidelines. But this year, in tandem with his Melvillepalooza extravaganza, I have decided to try a "reading festival" of my own to also deepen my knowledge of an essential American writer... only in my case, it won't be Melville. It's going to be William Faulkner.

And in the spirit of the game here, I'm calling it Duke Altum's Faulknerama Festival 2008.

I've read some Faulkner of course, but I have always wanted to dive deeper into his work, and for some reason have not visited his canon in four years. The last book of his I read was the magnificent As I Lay Dying, but that was back in the Fall of 2004, when we were waiting for the arrival of our third son - now three and a half! So I thought, here's a chance to not only follow along with Mutt on a parallel reading series of my own, but it also gives us both a chance to circle back and compare our experiences with both writers (I've read a little more Melville than Mutt; he's read far more Faulkner) and maybe even examine the work of a writer we've compared to both (Cormac McCarthy) to see whether or not he really deserves to be mentioned as in league with America's undisputed Twin Towers.

I happen to be reading McCarthy's Blood Meridian now, and I think I can hear echoes of Faulkner's prose in his own - certainly the scope and scale of the book mirrors those of some of Faulkner's most ambitious novels, though with far more violence. But it will be very interesting to explore further the genius of Faulkner and think about whether they had any common concerns, and whether one modern writer's talents truly do match up to his predecessor's.

To me, Melville is indeed the Greatest of them all. But Faulkner seems to be a close second, and I would like to know whether any kind of line from Herman to William to Cormac can truly be drawn. The rest of 2008 will give me the chance to try and find out.

Oh, and the lineup? Here's what I plan to be reading from ol' Billy soon (in this order) - though I think I may throw in shorter, contemporary works in between, just to make sure my eyes don't glaze over and my brain shrink into a raisin from imbibing too much Faulkner:

Sanctuary

If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem

Absalom, Absalom!

The Reivers

And by the beginning of 2009, if either Mutt or I are still standing and speaking beyond an incoherent babble, we may have the beginnings of a pretty interesting discussion indeeed on what truly defines great American literature... the Swedish Academy, which apparently thinks American writers are "too ignorant" to be considered for the Nobel Prize these days, can kiss our big ol' red white n' blue butts!!!

(Oh and one last word to the Academy that will tie up this post nicely: hey fellas, there wouldn't be no Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a guy you honored if you can think back that far, without one William Faulkner. I'm just sayin'...)

Which Writers Are Indispensible?

I am not even going to pretend that this post will be coherent, but I mean to touch on a subject I have been thinking about recently. You may notice – ‘you’ meaning ‘person reading this blog’, which I think may amount to maybe 3 people at the most – that I have added a slight modification to the “What We’re Reading” section on the left there, where we indicate which books we have ‘on deck’. The ones we are planning to read, for those of you who don’t know baseball. If you have noticed this, you may read through it and ask: what the hell is ‘Melvillepalooza’?!?

(Actually, your first reaction was probably closer to ‘Man, what friggin’ DORKS these guys are!’ But then again, what are you doing reading this blog in the first place if you do not have at least some symptoms of the same disease? If this is you, and you’re still not down with it, go back to your ‘Friends’ list on Facebook and leave the literary discussion to the big dogs.)

The thought occurred to me at some point this year, I can’t say when, that one thing I almost never do is read two books in a row by the same author. It happens sometimes, but it’s rare; it’s not something that I really enjoy for one simple reason: variety. I don’t want to read too much of the same sort of thing in a row. And I find that even if an author’s novels are all very different from one another – someone like Ron Hansen, or Michael Chabon, to cite just two examples – you can still tell it was written by the same guy (or woman), and more often than not some of the same broader themes will emerge in one way or another.

But others sometimes tell me that once they find a writer they like, they go out and find everything by that person and blow through it all in one long shot. My wife does this sometimes, if it’s a writer whose work she really finds compelling. I have never done this, as I said before; I guess it just goes against my impulses as a reader, and there are always so many other books out there I am longing to get to. Yet I had heard it enough times that I finally had the idea to ask myself, ‘If I was going to read several books in a row by the same writer, which writer would I select?’ This is the question that I have been considering off and on for several months now.

If I was ever going to entertain this idea, I thought, I would have to choose a writer that to me was indispensable. I would have to be certain that all of that time reading [SELECTED WRITER]’s books was time well spent. One has to remember that for however long it would take to read a number of one individual writer’s books in a row, that is time you would not spend reading novels by other talented writers. But which writers are indispensable? Everyone has to decide that for themselves. As soon as I started to think about which ones were to me personally, the list was short, and I discovered that I had already read many of those writers’ works. Not all of them of course, but most of them. I had to branch out: I was interested in finding a writer that would probably be considered ‘indispensable’ reading by any ‘objective’ account, that I had not read before, or had not read much of.

So which writers are really indispensible? Meaning you can’t check out of this life without having read them, if you are interested in literature? Although I am always interested in literature from other countries – indeed, world literature is some of the most satisfying reading for me, because it allows me to ‘travel’ when I cannot afford to do it for real! – I wanted to start with the literary tradition of my own country. Which whittled the list down considerably. So then: which American writers are really, genuinely, indispensible reading?

William Faulkner? Without a doubt: but I have read a lot of his books. There are enough more than I haven’t read that I could easily have used him as my guinea pig for this project, but for some reason I wanted this to be more of a journey of discovery, and I know more about Faulkner than I do about many other great American writers. I have read a major biography of him as well. It seemed too safe and too obvious to choose him.

John Steinbeck? Probably, but he is already one of my all-time favorites. I’ve read a great deal of Steinbeck and have thought about his work endlessly. He is clearly not the writer I want for a journey of discovery. I also have read a very big biography of Steinbeck.

Flannery O’Connor? A strong early possibility. But I am also very, very familiar with her work. I have read all of her fiction, but not her letters (yet). She would be a fine prospect for this idea, but again, I feel too familiar with her writing. Not that reading her more and again would not be a good idea. But it was starting to feel to me like I almost wanted to use this as a chance to correct some oversight, to read someone I really should be a lot more familiar with, but am not.

Mark Twain? A very, very good choice. I know very little of his work. Embarrassingly, I have never read Huckleberry Finn OR Tom Sawyer. (Huckleberry Finn is on my shelf, waiting its turn, as are several other Twain books.) In fact, aside from some stories, the only book of his I have read, if I am not mistaken, is his obscure historical work Joan of Arc. This did seem to be that oversight I had been thinking of fixing. Or one of them. And yet…..I didn’t choose Twain. I don’t know if it has to do with the fact that he wrote a lot of satirical and comical stuff that I don’t always gravitate to as much as more dramatic material. But my gut told me to press on with the search.

And that’s about when it hit me. The only possible choice for this experiment of reading several books in a row by the same writer has to be the man who wrote what for me is the most legitimate and best claim to the elusive title of the “great American novel”. That writer, of course, is Herman Melville.

It all seemed to fit. I have read Moby Dick, but only once, and it was several years ago. It is, needless to say, an absolutely astonishing book, and I still tell people that for me, it is the one novel I can think of that grants the reader the greatest payoff for their effort with its electrifying, terrifying, stunning conclusion. The pursuit of the great white whale is probably the single most powerful literary metaphor ever conceived, for my money (as a depiction of man vs. God). The character of Captain Ahab is an immortal creation that has so embedded itself into the culture that anyone knows what we mean if we refer to some one as being obsessed as Ahab, even though many Americans have never read the novel. It is also true that almost everyone is familiar with its world-famous first line: “Call me Ishmael.”

Yet Moby Dick is merely one of numerous Melville novels that illustrate and define Americans, their culture and their beliefs, all written in a time when the country was raw enough to still be in the process of formation and self-definition. And up until this year, it was the only one of Melville’s famous novels that I had read. Earlier this year I returned to the beginning of his work and read his first book, Typee, which is one of two early novels that are set in the distant lands of Polynesia, but concern themselves with the clash of American sailors and those faraway cultures. I have limited familiarity with his other sea-faring novels, or later works that are set in our country itself like The Confidence-Man or the classic short story (which I have read, once) called “Bartleby, The Scrivener”, set on Wall Street in New York City. To me, once I thought of this great writer, this literary behemoth not unlike a white whale for would-be novelists, my search was over. Melville was the guy.

To conclude, I draw your attention to a memory I have from about seven or eight years ago, around the time of the turn of the millennium. This memory didn’t come back to me in the context of this project until later, but when it again returned to my mind, I used it as a kind of strange confirmation that Herman Melville was the only choice for this Fall’s extensive reading experiment. This occurred before I was a father or even married, back when I was just a young single man without a real direction in the world but for the idea that I wanted to some day write my own novels, a dream I am still trying to drag into existence.

I happened to be in lower Manhattan one day, adjacent to Battery Park, sitting on a wooden bench in a suit and tie, writing in a small journal. I was only there because I was scheduled to have a job interview for a financial newspaper called The Bond Buyer, and they were located almost at the very tip of southern Manhattan. As has always been my custom, I was there ridiculously early for the interview, for I am always paranoid of showing up late. To kill time I sat on the bench, and I think I had brought a book to read and the journal. While I was sitting there, I looked up at the building next to the bench, for some unknown reason, and there I saw a tiny metal plate, drilled into the wall.

I cannot remember the exact wording on the plate. Perhaps the journal, which I still have somewhere, records the text verbatim. But the gist of the plaque was this: This is the place where the great writer Herman Melville was born in the year 1819, author of the classic novel Moby Dick. At that time I had not yet read that book, but I still felt a great burst of inspiration then, something I had never forgotten. There I was, trying to get a writing job in some financial periodical as a means to support myself until I could someday write my own books. And right there, too, in that very spot, had been born a man who also worked in the financial markets, long ago, to support himself. A man who would persist and endure, and eventually even triumph. A man who would write one of the greatest novels ever written, in America or anywhere. It was a great coincidence and a happy occasion and I was thankful for it.

Incidentally, I did not get that job. Sometimes I wonder if the real reason I was there on that day had nothing to do with getting a job, but had a lot more to do with just sitting in that spot and seeing Herman Melville’s birthplace and knowing that that’s what it was.

I don’t know. It will go down as one of these unanswered questions. But I know that Melville is an indispensible American writer, and he is the writer I will be reading in my forthcoming literary experiment, “Melvillepalooza”. I plan to read two novels, one book of his stories, and a well-received critical study of his work written by Andrew Delbanco called Melville: His World and His Work. I am looking forward to it. I might do it again next year, to read some of his other works.

The question anyone reading this must now ask themselves, of course, is: which writer do you think is indispensible? Whoever that is, go out and reward their labor by reading their books. For those hard-working men and women didn’t write those books for themselves. They wrote them for you.

The Family Plot

The following is an exclusive excerpt from Chapter VI of my novel in progress, Only the Dying.

It had been a family ritual since before their son Jonas Wittenburg was even born, in the fall of 1919. Even when they had performed it the first time, in the spring of that year, on the first anniversary of their loss, Cal and Ella Wittenburg thought of it as a family event. For their daughter was with them, they believed.

The ritual was conducted twice a year, in the spring and in the fall, early in November, and they had never failed to observe it yet. Always on the Sabbath. They would choose the Sunday in April that fell the closest to Liesel’s birthday; not to her death, which had only been five weeks later in that first wondrous and terrible spring.

After coming home from Mass on April 4, 1930, the Wittenburg family convened in the kitchen of their farmhouse, all five of them. Jonas was now a short, rail-thin but energetic boy of ten; his other two siblings, Jane and little brother Micah, were nine and three respectively. All of them knew what to do, even little Micah, who was always very proud to help.

The preparations were conducted in a kind of subconscious ceremonial manner, but they were by no means sorrowful or somber. Cal and Ella made sure of that, and were determined to keep it that way. It was meant to be a celebration, not a second funeral. Thus the children were taught to laugh and talk and joke and ask questions. The Wittenburgs simply refused to let the occasion become an opportunity for self-pity or bitterness. This was not to say that, for either of the parents, it was a day they found easy to navigate through.

Jane Wittenburg, her father’s sun-kissed doll with strawberry blonde hair and red cheeks, helped Ella prepare the wicker picnic basket. She fetched a large blue and white flannel table cloth from the top drawer of the curio in their dining room as Ella removed a bowl of cold fried chicken from the icebox. Ella stacked the pieces of chicken high on one side of the basket, and on the other side she added in thick slices of homemade bread, a jar of apple jam, a small ceramic crock full of potato salad, a cluster of grapes, and a few tin mugs, all piled up on top of five chipped plates. She handed a Thermos filled with black coffee to her husband as he passed by, heading for the back door of the house, having changed into a pair of ‘overhauls’, as he called them. Wittenburg plucked a straw hat from a peg near the door and put it on his head. Jonas trailed behind his father en route to the barn.

Their first job was to gather the cleaning materials. Wittenburg stowed the Thermos in the side cargo pocket of his denim garment and secured two metal buckets from the side wall of the barn. He left one pail with Jonas and took the other to a cast iron storage tank located outside along the eastern wall of the structure. The tank was connected by a pipe about one foot underground that led approximately 150 meters away to the farm’s single windmill, standing at a higher elevation than the barn. The windmill harnessed the gusts to pump water up from below ground into the storage tank. Wittenburg filled his bucket just over halfway, to be used for both drinking and washing.

Inside the barn, Jonas collected a small box of cornstarch, a hand-held trowel, a short-handled sledge with a heavy steel head, a pair of pliers, a scrubbing brush, and a few dirty rags from a jumble of them cut from old shirts. He stowed all of these things in the second bucket, and with his other hand secured his favorite item: a small scythe, hanging from two nails on the barn wall near the horses’ stables. He took these things out to join up with his father in the yard.

Just then the sun began to peek out from behind a large wall of atmospheric debris. It had been overcast most of that morning, with occasional patches of intermittent sunshine. Wittenburg wasn’t expecting rain: he could not smell it on the wind, and the cloud formations didn’t bear the correct signs. Staring up into the sky while waiting on Ella and the other children, he felt his oldest son come to his side. Jonas didn’t speak. Wittenburg knew that Jonas understood that on these occasions, no matter what kind of show of normalcy and strength he made, his father would require some silence. Wittenburg felt conflicted about this. He knew it was best to keep talking, to engage the children, and not dwell too long on the feelings of grief that this day inevitably uncovered. But it was difficult.

The brief shaft of sunlight made him smile. It was already gone almost as soon as it had arrived, which seemed appropriate. Wittenburg would never have been able to articulate the nature of his emotions on these occasions. These were the times when he felt the most confused, the most unsure of himself somehow, the most conscious not only of his failure to keep one of his own children alive, but of all of his multitude of failings as a man, father, husband … and yet, he also felt small bolts of happiness, here and there, every time they went on these special outings, electrical shocks of fleeting but potent joy. He sometimes wondered, in more lucid moments when he was feeling more like himself, if these spontaneous impulses were not simply pride over the constantly-overlooked accomplishment that all parents can claim of having collaborated successfully with God in the creation of a single, everlasting soul. I can take a small amount of credit for her, he would observe to himself only, for she is now one among the heavenly multitude for whom Ella and I are at least partially responsible.

He believed in the innermost chamber of his heart that a day would arrive in which he, Cal Wittenburg, would see his eldest daughter again, and sometimes this thought alone sustained him through periods of extreme darkness and sorrow.

But here now was the remainder of his family, the living, coming out into the yard. Ella had the wicker basket looped over one robust forearm, laden with its appetizing quarry, and was also holding the small hand of Micah Wittenburg, whose ragged one-piece denim outfit and still-paunchy legs made him resemble his father in miniature. Jane followed, blue gingham dress fluttering around her thin white legs, which shocked Wittenburg every time he saw them. Not for their shape or their color, but for the way in which they inexplicably seemed to lengthen almost daily. His second daughter was nine now, but in two or three short, short years she would already begin to blossom like the yellow daffodil that at that moment she was still little girl enough to twirl in her slender fingers. Wittenburg would never be prepared for that when it came.

Ella Wittenburg smiled at her husband, who met her eyes and held them. The two of them had learned long before, from the most merciless of instructors, that the only way to navigate down a path of grief that has no terminus was to do so in synchronicity. You simply could not go it alone. The parents of a dead child must alternately pull one another along. Ella let go of Micah’s hand, reached into a pocket within the folds of her skirt, and took out two small leather packages that resembled coin purses. She handed one of them to Wittenburg and returned the other to the same pocket.

Thus assembled, they all strode together down a series of dirt trails that led through the wheatfield towards the large oak tree near the crick, the location of the Wittenburg family plot.

Wittenburg could not remember who it was in his past who took it upon himself (probably at the request of one of the Wittenburg wives, more likely) to erect the black wrought iron fence around the small gathering of gravestones. It was a detail he wasn’t sure he had ever learned. Most likely it had been his father. The fence, which only reached to mid-thigh on a man of average height, had been surrounding the graves for as long as he could remember, that was for certain. His best guess was that it had been there for about fifty years. It was built to include the large oak tree inside its confines and was rectangular in shape. The long sides of the rectangle faced east and west, and the short ends were on the north and south. The eastern side of the graveyard, facing the farmhouse and the barn, had been outfitted with a small gate that could be secured with a latch, protection against God knew what.

A handful of rooks circled overhead, expressing annoyance at the human invasion, as the Wittenburg family once again passed through the gate. The sun had again ducked behind a flimsy wall of clouds. There was a slender dirt path leading right down the center of the graveyard that followed straight back to the oak tree opposite the iron gate. The five of them proceeded past the two complete rows of graves dating back to 1866, when the grandfather Wittenburg only knew about through family lore was the first to be buried. Eleven other gravestones came after that, including those of his own mother and father, and a number of aunts, uncles, cousins, great aunts and great uncles. Wittenburg was pretty sure there was at least one dog somewhere in there as well, but the canine graves were not marked.

There was a third row, began in the year 1918, which consisted of only one tiny marker so far. The thirteenth gravestone. Its occupant, however, had not been the most recently buried in the small cemetery. That distinction belonged to Susannah Wittenburg, who survived until 1927 before dying very suddenly of heart failure at the age of 62. But her resting place had already been set aside her husband’s in the second row, waiting for the day she would join him. Thus, when her granddaughter was taken away after only five weeks, nine years before her own passing, a new row was initiated in the graveyard, where the tiny remains had been in repose, all alone in death, ever since.

They filed past all the graves without pausing and without commentary. A subdued but not downtrodden silence settled down over them, but the mood was not altogether unpleasant. Everyone was used to it by now. A short time later, once they were eating their picnic lunch and passing chicken and potato salad between one another, the conversation would begin, and before too long they would be telling stories and laughing at silly jokes the way they always did when they ate as a family.

The early moments of the ritual were the closest they got to sadness, at least outwardly. It was hard to enter that tiny graveyard for anyone in the family, including the children, and not be overcome at first by the grief and the ghosts that lingered within the confines of that wrought iron fence. It took some time for Cal or Ella to even be able to look in the direction of the lone grave marker in what they formally called ‘the Third Row’. Each time they made a supreme effort to endure those first few moments, so they had learned that the best way to do so was to go in, file to the back, spread out the cloth under the comforting branches of that large tree, and dig in. Everything seemed to get a little better with a good meal; one supposes that the same principle is in play when people gather for a large meal immediately after a funeral service.

So they all set to the quick preparations, laying out the cloth, unloading the basket, passing around the plates, and soon enough every last Wittenburg, young and not-so-young, was chomping happily, and experiencing the odd comfort born out of solidarity with their ancestors. (Technically, they were not Ella’s ancestors; but her daughter was there, and that was all she needed.) Cal and his eldest son entered into a discussion about the Chicago Cubs, who had gone over two decades now without winning a World Series title. ‘That’s a travesty!’ Brogan declared. When would that unhappy losing streak come to an end?

Ella, meanwhile, had demonstrated to Micah how he might toss, from a short distance, a few grapes to see if he could land them inside the wicker basket. A poor idea, because he now horded the entire cluster and refused to let it go. The boy now sat, legs curled in front of him, entranced by the game; his fingers were smeared with apple jam, which made his handling of the grapes cumbersome. But at least it had him occupied for the moment, which was one of the hardest jobs inherent to the ritual. Jane had eaten a few pieces of bread with jam on it and a small handful of the same grapes, and little else, before standing up and strolling around the inside of the fenced-in yard plucking dandelions from the grass. This was one of her jobs, exclusively, and she got a jump on it in order to make sure no one stole it from her, and, possibly, to get out of eating more lunch, being the pickiest eater in the family by far.

As for Wittenburg and his ten-year-old, they certainly didn’t have that problem, wolfing down fried chicken and potato salad like it was somehow going to vanish at the top of the next hour if they didn’t. They took care of most of the chicken between the two of them alone. Afterwards Wittenburg wiped his fingers with a cloth napkin, kissed Ella and thanked her for preparing the meal, something he tried to do after every single meal his wife made, and moved over to the large oak tree. He called to his family to gather around him. The older two children groaned quietly: they knew what was coming next. No matter what the motive, it was universally difficult to get young children to stay seated and quiet for what they were about to do. Let alone to pay attention and actively participate, which, one has to admit, would be almost impossible to expect out of children who were ten, nine, and almost four. But they knew their father expected them to sit through it anyway, to get into the habit of it, and to show respect not only to who they were doing it for – their deceased sister – but also to the practice itself.

Wittenburg took the small leather pouch out of his trouser pocket and removed a rosary, made out of ebony beads and an old piece of leather cord. He had received it as a gift from his grandmother on his mother’s side over 35 years before for receiving his first Holy Eucharist. He glanced over at his wife, who had seated herself opposite him with legs folded up under her and with Micah on her lap. For the moment Micah complied, for he too knew what to expect; he curled himself onto his mother’s lap and put his thumb in his mouth, a habit he still fell back on when he was growing sleepy. Jonas and Jane sat down Indian-style on either side of their father beneath the tree, and stayed quiet.

Cal Wittenburg removed his hat and laid it face up on the ground. He rubbed his face with his hands, the beads dangling from his knuckles. The rest of the family waited. The 46-year-old father felt moisture seep into his eyes, in the corners, and squinted a few times. This was the moment that always, always socked him in the gut. He looked again at Ella across the small distance between them, over the three children that had lived. Her eyes smiled at him, a measure of encouragement. Her eyes were not glossy. She was a tougher soul than he was at the core.

Few people knew about Cal Wittenburg that he was far softer emotionally than she. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel the same grief. The years did not deaden the pain, and by now they had given up expecting them to. But Ella Wittenburg had a greater capacity to buck up her strength under duress than her husband did. There was no use pretending that this was not so. They had been through plenty of difficult times in the years since Liesel’s death, some of them so despairing that Wittenburg was ready to give up on everything and admit his catastrophic failure. But it was Ella who refused to break. She wouldn’t allow him to give up. And she definitely would not allow their child’s life and death to be an occasion for wallowing in that despair. To do so would be to dishonor God, Who had given them the child in the first place, and had seen fit to take her away again. Worse than that, it would dishonor Liesel herself. And as long as Ella Wittenburg was alive, she would allow no one – especially not Cal Wittenburg – to do that.

Wittenburg recovered himself. ‘All right then,’ he said. Then, because it was a Sunday in Lent, not because of the fact that Liesel was dead, he added: ‘Just the one decade, the Sorrowful Mysteries. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, amen.

‘I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth …’

As they prayed the rosary together, or ‘just the one decade’ of it – the whole thing would take too long, the children would never make it through, plus there was the small matter of the cleaning duties still ahead of them – Wittenburg found himself thinking not about what he could remember of the pale-faced little baby, Liesel, but about his old paternal grandfather, Jeremiah, uttering the same prayers in the tongue of the Fatherland. Wittenburg’s father used to tell him stories about Jeremiah droning through the rosary on a regular basis, praying in German. He pointed out to his father a long time before that he couldn’t have been more than five and a half years old when he picked up that memory; could he be certain of it? Cal Wittenburg Senior replied that our religious practices, or maybe the lack thereof, were often the things that made the deepest and the earliest impressions on our own children. When Wittenburg glanced at the healthy faces of his own three that had survived, the smallest of them near sleep, the older two with features drooping in boredom, but too cognizant of the sensitive nature of this tradition to complain, he earnestly hoped that his father’s observation had been correct.

They didn’t dawdle on the prayers. They didn’t dawdle period, as a matter of general family practice. Wittenburg finished up by invoking the name of Saint Nicholas, protector of children, and everyone answered, ‘Pray for us’, except Micah, who by now was asleep. Ella Wittenburg stood up and laid the little boy carefully on his side on the blanket, where he did not even stir. She took her husband’s hand, he picked up the metal pail with the supplies, and they walked together up the trails to the ‘Third Row’, stopping in front of the stone. Wittenburg found he could never get accustomed to the markings, which shocked him anew every time he saw them.

LIESEL MARIE WITTENBURG
b. 1918 d. 1918
CARRIED BY AN ANGEL TO HER ETERNAL REST

Although they had never had occasion to consider the matter before 1918, and God willing would not need to again before they died themselves, Cal and Ella both remembered when they had chosen unequivocally to foot the additional expense – money they scarcely had – for the extra words on her gravestone. The loss was really far beyond any measure of words or human language, but there was still a perception between them that more was needed to mark the passing of a baby girl who had literally had no chance of becoming. All they could think of was the sweetest, most loving means of transportation from the land of the living to the Dominion of Heaven, something even more beautiful and profound than the spectacle of a ladder to Heaven, or a fiery chariot. So the two of them had settled on the image of an angel carrying Liesel to the foot of God’s throne in its arms the way one would cradle a baby. And somehow this insufficient gesture did provide them with a small measure of consolation.

Having stood before their daughter’s grave and shared a few moments of unspeakable silence, they set to work. Wittenburg gave Jonas the scrub brush and the box of cornstarch. His primary duty now was to use the cornstarch to clean the gravestones, an old method. He started with his sister’s, sprinkling the cornstarch on his brush and scrubbing the stone down, front and back, without water. Ella followed behind him with a rag, wiping the stones clean behind him, for they did not stop with just Liesel’s grave; they merely began there.

Jane continued the task she had started before. She skipped from stone to stone, pulling out dandelions and other weeds, making small piles in front of each grave that she would come back to collect. They would gather up the clippings and later toss them, dry, into the woodstove back at home. If there was any piece of the overall job at hand that Jane Wittenburg was born to do, this was it.

That left Cal Wittenburg, standing alone at the headstone of his baby girl, his daughter, a child he barely remembered. Only a few times did he ever hear her laugh, and he never heard her speak a word except in the unintelligible language of innocence. He stared again at the words carved into the limestone. What did her very name even mean? What did any words mean? Certainly, there was nothing he could, or would want to, express aloud just then. He both hated and dearly loved this time of year. The crows languished in the tree branches, chattering noisily.

A little while later, he would straighten the errant poles of iron with the sledge, repair any damaged hinges with the pliers and some wire, whisk away any dust and debris, and generally police the graveyard. But for this moment, right now, he had one function, which was to reap.

He picked up the short scythe, tainted here and there with small patches of rust, and thereupon commenced swinging the blade hither and yon through the obstructive grass, individual leaves flying everywhere, henceforth to be collected and cast into the flames.

Journal of a 'Novel'-Entry 48

Meanwhile, Back on the Farm…..

As of today, the writing is underway for Chapter VI of the novel, tentatively titled “The Black Giant, Obeisance to Mammon”. I am pretty motivated about it right now for at least two reasons. The first reason is a simple one: it did not take me anywhere near as long to begin with Chapter VI after finishing Chapter V as it did to begin Chapter V after writing Chapter IV. Between Chapters IV and V there was a spirit-crushing 6-month interval. The interval between finishing Chapter V and starting this one is more like 6 weeks. Readers, this is progress! With an infant and two other children in my house, it feels worthwhile to celebrate whatever little victories I can achieve in this long, long haul.

The second reason I am excited about getting into this chapter is that it allows me to dig further into the stories I am creating around a few of the “secondary” characters for this novel. Why is this exciting? Well, it mixes it up, for one thing – I won’t be writing exclusively about Walter Brogan’s auto station or P.G. Heinricks’ business endeavors or about Greta Heinricks’ state of mind. All of these things are critical components of my story, and I don’t mean I don’t like writing about them; but like anyone trying to gut their way through a particularly long and difficult task, it is nice to have some variety. And hopefully the same thing will apply for whatever readers this novel may or may not find in the future. Also, on perhaps a deeper level, writing about the stories of other characters in the book expands and broadens the horizons of the fictional universe I am creating. It provides a larger canvas for me, a wider playing field, and given that extra space, my imagination can further stretch out its muscles and plumb its limitations, as it were. A novel, from the writer’s point of view, is partially about new discoveries. It’s about testing how far my mind can take itself and gauging the strength and endurance of my creative abilities. It is an exciting time, I am finding out. You begin to learn that your greatest obstacles are within. It’s one of those things that everyone knows, but going through a process like this bears the adage out.

Also, I must state for the record that this is the ONLY kind of “OJT” or “on the job training” I ever really enjoyed in my life, unless you count parenting.

The first “secondary” character that will be encountered in the opening of Chapter VI, which moves ahead only briefly from the end of Ch. V to the Spring of 1930, is the farmer Cal Wittenburg, who had a significant role in the story in Chapters III and IV, and will certainly have a more prominent role in events as the story rolls on. He will become a pivotal figure in Walter Brogan’s own story, because of the friendship they will continue to forge as Brogan transitions from a gas station manager to a fuel oil distributor and thus Wittenburg’s fuel delivery man. Brogan will soon enough be making regular visits to the Wittenburg farm to conduct his duties in this capacity, and that in turn will allow him to make observations of the farmer’s way of life as the Depression rolls into full swing across the land. Therefore, I think it is important for the reader to see some of that lifestyle ahead of time, and learn some more information about Cal Wittenburg and his story.

In order to gain inspiration and information, I have been reading about farm life in the early 30s, and I just completed a book that might as well have been Heaven-sent for this purpose: a book called Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish, which is nothing more than a memoir of daily life in a farm in rural Iowa during the Depression. The book is a nostalgic but unsentimental look back in time to an era that is now gone forever, as no one realizes more than the septuagenarian author. It was recognized as one of the Top Ten Books of 2007 by the New York Times and the Washington Post, and one can see how it garnered this sort of acclaim. It is literally jammed with details about this fascinating, long-forgotten but much simpler and, arguably, healthier way of life. I am lucky to have found the book, which contains colorful anecdotes about almost everything you can imagine, from farming procedures to cooking to saving money to church life to animals to flora to getting an education, in more ways than one. Reading Kalish’s priceless memoir has given me plenty of ideas for fleshing out my own vision of what life must have been like in and around the Wittenburg household, which I must now work into compelling scenes that also advance the story I am telling. A hard task, but let’s keep things in perspective: it’s not as hard as raising an entire family on somewhere around $300-$400 a year’s earnings.

Right now I am putting together a sequence, for lack of a better word, which will present the reader with some up-til-now lacking information on Cal Wittenburg’s back history and will also reveal Wittenburg and his wife and children engaging in a family ritual which will hopefully reveal a lot about their collective character and priorities. Who is Cal Wittenburg? Where did he come from? How long has his family occupied the land he lives on? What sorts of measures will he have to take just to provide for his family? These questions will be answered. Wittenburg for me is a stand-in for legions of faceless men and women from this era who kept America fed while shouldering the crushing burden of some of the worst economic conditions in the history of our country. For these farmers, the Depression started long before some stock market crash. Wittenburg is the sort of man whose indomitable will and unshakeable fidelity to his family, his land and his values will naturally draw Walter Brogan and inspire him to act in certain ways later in the novel which may or may not have a dramatic effect on his own fate – and his family’s as well.


Boom! Like That

Another storyline I am looking to unpack in this next chapter, to an extent that even I am not sure of yet, concerns P.G. Heinricks’ son, Peter, and his adventures in Texas with Pops Wheeler, oil man/con artist extraordinaire. Peter Heinricks hooked up with Wheeler in Chapter I of this story, and has been with him ever since, from around 1924 through 1930, when this chapter begins. For the most part he has been weaving briefly in and out of the narrative only in letter format, sending correspondence the one member of his family he still feels closeness with, his elder sister Greta. To this point his letter have been rambling explanations of the various measures Wheeler and his team have been taking, in vain, to locate and drill for deposits of oil that Wheeler insists must exist underneath the topsoil in the eastern plains of rural Texas. Needless to say, Peter’s letters have been noticeably free of details of however else he might be spending his time, or whatever money he can rustle up, while detached from his family and any other close relations over that slow, meandering six-year stretch.

But things are about to change for Peter. For Pops Wheeler is on the verge of a discovery that will prove all the naysayers were wrong and he was right after all. And this will make Peter, at least for the near future, a rich man. In real life, the “Black Giant” – a more than 1,500 mile reservoir of raw petroleum – was discovered on October 3, 1930, in eastern Texas, causing a major oil boom. Hangers-on, hungry migrants, businesses, executives, scientists – they all came running, and those who discovered the oil and sold it became insanely wealthy almost overnight. This chapter attempts to re-imagine that boom scenario, a windfall at first for Peter Heinricks. But with the boom comes temptations and debauchery and other forms of excess, and the question will be whether Peter can manage these additional pressures while living far away from the shadow of his entrepreneurial father, without restraints.

Soon, he will be driven to other measures to stop his losses and feed his own greedy frenzy for more of everything, measures that may be illegal and dangerous…..


It’s all going to make for some interesting writing experiences for the guy making the attempt to bring it all off. Hopefully the end result will be some arresting and entertaining moments for future readers.

She Who Must Be Read

Reflections on Rowling’s Harry Potter Series, at the Halfway Point, by a Luddite Muggle
It seems impossible, or maybe magic was involved, but somehow I managed to completely avoid the entire Harry Potter phenomenon up until about a year or so ago when the film version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released. By ‘avoid’, of course, all I mean is that I didn’t personally read the books or watch the films. There IS no magic that could make any citizen of the Western world avoid this incredibly popular creative explosion entirely. The simple fact that there’s no need to even expand on their popularity, because everyone already knows all about it, says it all.

But, like just about everyone else who is a part of civilization, I eventually fell under its spell. I think I may have the most backward entry into the series ever, though. I entered the Harry Potter universe through the film just mentioned above. That’s right, I STARTED with the film version of the fifth novel. Huh?? Before then I just wasn’t convinced that the books would hold my interest. It’s not that I thought they weren’t good books. I didn’t really know how they would measure up in terms of literary quality, because I had never cracked one open. But I just didn’t take much of an interest in fantasy, wizards, spells, sorcery, wands, and all of that. I never even made it through the Narnia series. It just hasn’t really been my thing. It still isn’t.

So how did I decide to enter the story, and at the fifth movie? More or less by accident. I was going to the movies with a friend, and he is a huge fan of the series. Neither one of us ever get to go to the movies too often, and at that time Phoenix was just hitting theaters. He’d read all the books to date (the world was still waiting for Book Seven) and was saying that he really wanted to see the newest film, but he knew we couldn’t go because I hadn’t read the book or seen the other films. ‘So what?’ I said. I like going to the movies, and can usually find at least something to enjoy in almost any movie. I was curious to see what sort of job they were doing on the films. I suggested I would go to the movie with him if, over a burger beforehand, he would give me the world’s quickest primer on the first four Harry Potter novels. He did, and off we went.

Most of the films are wonderful, I think, and Phoenix was no exception. But this post is about the novels. You see, in the first few scenes of the fifth film, I knew I was going to have to go back and read every one of the books. In deciding I would not like the Harry Potter series because I wasn’t into wizardry-type stories, I had forgotten the simple power of stories themselves. A good story is a good story. It can be about anything, as long as its creator draws you into the unique world of it through believable characters that you care about. And it became clear to me – after it had already been clear to hundreds of millions of other people – that the entire Harry Potter universe boils down to one great, great story. It drew me right in.

Once I got into the novels, I learned what most others knew – that there is no getting out until you go all the way through. It’s a fantastic story set in a vivid and fully-realized fictional universe. The overarching concept of the orphaned boy with special abilities he doesn’t fully understand trying to get to the heart of the mystery of his own curious existence is certainly nothing new, it’s in everything from Oliver Twist to Star Wars. But it’s still a brilliant conceit, because it hooks our sympathies from the very beginning of the series, and never affords us the opportunity to lose our compassion for Harry Potter. Are you going to lose your sympathy for a kid that’s merely trying to find out why someone murdered both of his parents and what it means? Me neither.

For me, the funny thing about it all is that once I was drawn in to the story, by the circumstances and for the reasons I just explained, I could find, and continue to find, plenty of my own personal motives for continuing to unpack it. Of course I find the storyline compelling, but I find other aspects of this fictional series even more intriguing. Such as the amazing tale of how it got started in the first place, the well-known story of author Joanne Rowling’s fateful 1990 ride on a London train in which she conceived of the entire saga in one tremendous windfall of inspiration. Or the totally unpredictable phenomenon of its worldwide domination as the most popular fictional story in literary history. Or the absolute genius of Rowling’s plotting skills, something I think no one has even approached since Charles Dickens (more comparisons to Dickens come to mind which I may have to explore at greater length in a future installment).

Or, there are the more voluminous but equally interesting questions the series inevitably raises, such as: Is the whole series really unique, or just the cleverest-yet rehashing of old archetypes and myths? But aren't all novels like that? Are plot and story really superior to aesthetic quality? Does its British-ness make any difference? Does the fact that it was written by a woman have significance in terms of what the books know and and are concerned with? Why is the series THIS popular, when similarly-themed stories have been floating around for centuries? Does the story really have any religious implications, dangerous or otherwise?

All of these are fascinating ‘riddles’ to consider, and are freshly evoked every time this series of books comes back into the news, as it will again next year with the release of the film version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

I can’t hope to answer them now. But here I stand, at the half-way point through the series, having just completed the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It was published in 2000 to near-universal acclaim. I remember when it came out: I was working in New York City at the time, right across from what used to be the World Trade Center. If I’m not mistaken, it was the first time they had built up such a frenzy for the Potter books that they did midnight sales parties and people dressed like wizards to go get an early copy of the book. After it was published (not at midnight!) I went across the street to the Borders book shop that only months later would be buried in the rubble. I can vividly recall being astonished at the sheer GIRTH of the book. I knew next to nothing about the series, but it was hard to believe that young kids would go nuts over a book that could also be a door stop. At 734 pages, Goblet of Fire was just about twice as long as any previous Potter tome.

But read it the kids did, and so did everybody else, and by this time even the critics were talking about the books being classics. Recall these remarkable superlatives from the New York Times book critic Janet Maslin in her review in July 2000:

Ms. Rowling, a kindred spirit to both Lewis Carroll and the pre-Jar Jar Binks George Lucas, turns out to be a fantasist who lives inside a thrillingly fertile imagination, mines it ingeniously and plays entirely by her own rules. Talk about supernatural tricks: she has turned this odds-defying new book into everything it promised to be. As the midpoint in a projected seven-book series, ''Goblet of Fire'' is exactly the big, clever, vibrant, tremendously assured installment that gives shape and direction to the whole undertaking and still somehow preserves the material's enchanting innocence. [….] This time she achieves her most lucid, well-plotted and exciting conclusion, complete with a spectacular wand-on-wand confrontation to recall Luke, Darth and their light sabers, enhanced by the identity-twisting tricks in which Ms. Rowling specializes. The book ends on a mournful note with the loss of one character, and with ominous, cliff-hanging hints of a next installment. Two things seem certain: it will involve giants and be awaited with justifiably bated breath.

I have been nothing short of amazed at my response to these books. For a very long time I didn’t have much interest, as I said before. But here at just over the halfway point to the end – three novels wait for me to read, the last two of which I know virtually nothing about save their titles – I am engrossed by them and fascinated by Rowling’s accomplishment.

It’s not the literary quality of the books. Rowling’s prose is serviceable at best. It’s clean, and can be occasionally elegant, but it’s not groundbreaking or beautiful or even particularly interesting, on its own. It gets the job done. It seems to me that Rowling has a novelist’s gift for details, but I wouldn’t even say she has great skills in writing dialogue.

Furthermore, some of the side characters are cardboard-stiff. Draco Malfoy, Harry’s foil, has been using the same twittering harrassment techniques since the first novel. He fails to evolve much as a character, unlike Harry, who is growing and learning and entering further into his own personal darkness with each new year, and finding the realities of life not as enticing or rewarding as he once may have thought. Malfoy’s no real threat to Harry; he’s not up to the job. Perhaps Rowling didn’t intend him to be a truly meaningful character, since we all know Harry has a REAL enemy, Lord Voldemort. This is to say nothing of Malfoy’s two cronies, identified as Crabbe and Goyle, who are nothing but thugs. They may as well be made of cardboard and propped up in the scenes they appear in next to Malfoy. In fact, they usually are. At least that is the case through Book Four. Professor Gilderoy Lockheart from Chamber of Secrets is a recognizable caricature of the egotistical fraud whose bark is far worse than his bite when things start to get a little messy. Rita Skeeter from Goblet is a thinly-veiled stand-in for the paparrazzi, and an easy target at whom someone like Rowling can gleefully hurl her bolts of lightning. Not that I can necessarily begrudge her the fun of doing so, but it doesn’t make the character any more genuine.

However, in terms of characterization, there is a noticable upgrade when it comes to the main cast. It might make for an uneven literary performance by English course textbook standards, but it is still to the books’ gain that Harry himself, Ron Weasley and his entire hardluck family, Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape, Hermione Granger, and even Voldemort are all engagingly drawn and capable of inspiring strong feelings in us, one way or the other. Voldemort, to this point, has been seen little, and what we know of him reveals him to be more or less a purely evil spawn of Hell with a snake’s nose and terrible claws. Needless to say this gives him little in common with anyone or anything save a really, really awful mother-in-law. But once you’re done with Goblet of Fire, and particularly if you’ve seen Ralph Fiennes’ film-stealing cameo in the film version of same, at least you know you’re dealing with a genuine badass. Voldemort was cast off for dead and literally disembodied for thirteen years. When he finally arrives back in flesh in the conclusion of Goblet, he is not interested in putzing around. It may be ridiculous, but it is shockingly good fun to watch Fiennes scream, “I’M GONNA KILL YOU, HARRY POTTER!!!” One believes him!

But characters, prose, and suspension of disbelief aside - (wait, can you cast those things aside?? it's part of the debate) - it’s clear to me by the fourth novel that Rowling’s books deserve their tremendous success. That’s because they are sheer genius in the only game that really matters: storytelling. The plotting in these stories is magnificent. As I mentioned before, no one since Dickens has created stories that are so complexly plotted and deliver so much satisfaction as these plots come to their resolution. They can get very heady: The Prisoner of Azkaban gets particularly convoluted near its end. But so far, Rowling has managed to keep all of the balls in the air and she makes all the pieces come together exactly enough to keep you asking questions after reading each book, while giving you a satisfactory measure of thrills. Her command of the Potter universe is total and supreme. You never doubt the writer for a moment. This is amazing, when you consider the fact that everything in the stories is utterly unbelievable. As soon as you read that a cat has transformed into a witch in the opening chapter of Sorcerer’s Stone, all plausibility goes out the window. But at that same moment Rowling’s extraordinary imagination takes you prisoner. And she never releases you.

I think the reason for Rowling’s success in crafting these stories, which must have taken such a tremendous jolt of inspiration, only to be followed by years of hard literary labor – for writing novels, as some of us are learning, is very hard work – may be able to be traced back to the circumstances from which she brought the entire saga forth. Once upon a time, Rowling was a single mother on public assistance who had a dream and at least one other mouth to feed. She’d seen hardship in her own life, and even more hardship in the lives of others as an employee of Amnesty International as a young woman. She had a tremendous hunger to write stories and a terrific responsibility to find a way to improve the quality of her life for her child’s sake. I think somewhere in the midst of all that she must have made a firm decision: it’s now or never. My imagination is my only way out of this, and to fail is unacceptable. So she settled on the only course of action a writer can turn to in the end: to get to work.

As for what happened after that, I guess you might call it magic.

On Beauty, part 2

[SCROLL DOWN FOR PART 1]

Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, when it appeared in 2000, was a remarkable debut, a literary sensation. This British wunderkind, the daughter of a white Englishman and a black mother, wrote the novel while still an undergraduate at Cambridge University, and it was published to wide acclaim. Though not perfect, the novel’s flaws were overpowered by its bravado and comic sophistication. It had a bevvy of multi-racial, international characters, witty dialogue, a Dickensian scope, and a zany, madcap conclusion which bordered on overkill but was also impressive for its sheer audacity. White Teeth was the quintessential bellowed announcement of a bold new talent in contemporary literature.

Smith’s second novel, The Autograph Man, was not as well received critically. I have not read it, so I can’t comment on it directly. From what I can glean about it, however, though it may have tried and failed on some levels, it doesn’t appear to be any less confident or ambitious than White Teeth. It must be very difficult to be hailed as a new sensation with one’s first book – you would be under enormous pressure with your second. Inasmuch as The Autograph Man seemed to tackle broad cultural subjects like the nature of celebrity and the influence of popular culture on one’s identity, I can only conclude that Smith was not cowed by high expectations. However successful that novel may or may not have been, it wasn’t timid, and seemed to demonstrate Smith’s confidence in her own abilities.

Then came On Beauty, her third novel, published in 2005. I am late to the party on this by a wide margin, but I’ve had my eye on it since it was hailed by some critics as a near-masterpiece. Sometimes it just takes me a long time to get to the books I want to read. But I am now finally reading it for the first time and I wanted to offer a few reflections on the novel. The book deserves some thought. It is hard for me to imagine another young novelist (Smith is younger than I am) who is as talented and as advanced in her understanding of craft and literature as Zadie Smith, on any side of the Atlantic, and irrespective of gender. There are a lot talented young writers in the world today, both male and female; Smith stands up against, and more than likely surpasses, any of them. I must admit that I am fairly devouring On Beauty, not only making my way through it rapidly, but doing so with relish and the pure joy that comes with reading very good fiction. I feel compelled to examine why I find the book so pleasurable.

The plot has been rehashed and condensed in so many available reviews that it doesn’t make much sense to go into it in detail. Let’s just say the novel is set in New England and in London, and concerns the intertwining destinies of two familes whose patriarchs, both academics, are arch rivals. One family is headed by Howard Belsey, a white Englishman and a liberal professor with a cynical and disappointed view of the world. The other belongs to Sir Monty Kipps, a black intellectual and a conservative Christian. They both have multiple children of various ages. The event that sets the novel in motion is that Kipps agrees to take a position in America at the same small New England college where Belsey teaches art history, and so the two families suddenly find themselves in close quarters with one another.

Smith taught for a year at Harvard while composing On Beauty and clearly has a lot of fun sending up academic life, American culture, and other easy targets such as the Creative Writing workshop. She has the intelligence to approximate the language of such environments and the cultural awareness to be able to contrast it with urban dialect, rap music, and the cynical, information-saturated outlook of college students today. Possessing both a wonderful ear and a wicked sense of humor, Smith demonstrates these to ample effect throughout the novel in exchanges of sharp and often hilarious dialogue. The result is crackling comedy, but I think it’s her concerns with deeper themes that elevate her novel above most others.

The title of the book comes from an essay by Elaine Scarry, and Smith takes on the daunting topic of beauty in a few different ways, exploring everything from body image and female psychology to fine art and specifically the study of Rembrandt. It’s also clear that Smith has compassion for all of her characters and wants to do more than just create a plethora of different voices. As she has said in interviews, she is interested in the souls of these people. She uses the relationship of these characters to the ideal of beauty, as found in both objects of art and in human beings, as a means of discovering what is true about both art and humanity.

These concerns bring the novel a certain heft that it would be lacking without them. It is like the difference between picking up a piece of gold-plated metal and a piece of solid gold. The weight of the thing is evidence of its quality. One gets a similar sensation while reading On Beauty. It may not be flawless, but it has gravity, purity, and grace. A good reader can perceive this a short distance in. But it takes a very talented writer indeed to be able to give a novel that sort of weight to begin with. And it’s doubly unusual in a writer who is still under 35 but whose words bear testimony to a surplus of insight and sophistication.

Of course, it frustrates me as a person who aspires to write novels that I am still scrapping for increased quantities of both, and that it will probably take me many more years to acquire them, if it’s even possible. But I can’t hold that against Zadie Smith, who is blessed with prodigious talent, but has also obviously put in the necessary work to take full advantage of it.

On Beauty, part 1

It's a pleasure to post this message with the news of the arrival of TST founder Duke Altum's fourth child and first-ever daughter, Susannah Micheline. Reader(s), this little girl is beautiful and precious!!!! Born August 7 at 3:05 am, she is unfortunately suffering from a few treatable complications and is currently under observation at a University hospital in Baltimore. I talked to Duke yesterday - he and his wife are in the middle of an exhausting emotional journey, but are taking it all on with great faith and love for their daughter. It goes without saying that Duke and his family have all of my prayers and support. I've seen some early pictures, and his family has truly been blessed - she is a teeny, rosy little girl with a ton of dark hair. After 3 sons, it is fascinating and wonderful to see Duke with a little daughter, and a beautiful one at that. God Bless You and welcome, Susannah!!

Journal of a 'Novel'-Entry 47

Journey to the Center of the Novel

I finished writing Chapter IV of my novel in progress in November 2007, right before my 37th birthday. I finished writing Chapter V about two weeks ago. There was a seven-month interval in between there that I’ve already lamented was too long, although not entirely unproductive. I did manage to write a few other things, including an essay that is headed for publication in The Other Journal called “Hope on the Wing: Encounters with The Innocence Mission”. But I did a lot of stumbling around and not getting a whole lot of writing done. (Also had the small matter of the arrival of my third child, to be fair to myself, so it wasn’t entirely procrastination.) I started to have a number of other ideas for writing projects large and small, fiction and nonfiction, and while I was grateful to be having ideas, the time came when I felt like the motivation and commitment to the novel I am writing was starting to slip away from me. So I vowed to make a ‘massive attack’ on the manuscript. I went back to Chapter V and finished it up. After all that struggle, I must admit that, at least for now, I was pretty pleased with the way the chapter turned out. Now it’s time for me to move on with the story.

That means starting on Chapter VI. I only have some vague ideas of what sort of material is going to populate the chapter. That’s all right, because they all start out the same way. Vague, nebulous, like a vapor.

Entering into the drafting of a chapter, I feel like I’m almost floating in a kind of pre-creative state. In a very miniscule but also significant way, it sort of feels to me like the state of things in the beginning, before God created the earth, as described in Genesis 1:2: “The earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” I realize how pretentious and ridiculous this may sound, but I don’t think it is. If you consider the artistic impulse in terms of a fallible human being’s honest, if insignificant, attempt to imitate his Father, who “created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1), you can see why this feeling may occur in some way inside of me or anyone else who attempts to create something.

Before putting down one’s story, there is a kind of dark place you must go to, your creative pool. Even Stephen King realizes this, and sort of gave it a different and a lot more simplistic form in his novel Lisey’s Story where he developed the concept of a mysterious dream place called “Boo’ya Moon”, the main physical characteristic of which was a big pool of water. Say what you want about Stephen King, but the man is not lacking creativity, nor a well-wrought knowledge of the process. He may well feel that darkness upon the face of the deep just before he concocts his own creations. Of course, the novel also contains more words than have ever been necessary about everyone’s favorite prepared food product, Hamburger Helper – so you might take it all with a grain of salt. Hamburger Helper may be a great metaphor for King’s novels, but I won’t go there; I respect Stephen King.

(If you’re wondering how any single piece of prose could go from the Book of Genesis to Stephen King to Hamburger Helper in just a few paragraphs, well, that’s the beauty of journaling.)

Anyway, now it is on to Chapter VI, and in terms of timeline, the story is now moving into the Great Depression era of history. I remember early on, we’re talking years ago, I always pictured this novel to be a ‘Depression’ novel. Never would I have dreamed that I might have been required to work on writing it for two years before even cracking into the 1930s! That’s a first novel for you – a labor that keeps growing even as you learn how to do the job. But now that I am finally entering into the Depression period of my novel, I understand that it is only at this stage that I really entering into the heart of it – or as William H. Gass might say, “the heart of the heart” of the novel I am writing.

I have my work cut out for me. This novel will not work if it does not effectively bring the Great Depression to some kind of recognizable and hopefully potent life. This country has seen many writers bring the era alive in novels far more accomplished than anything I could write – Steinbeck, Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, etc. – but not a lot of people are writing novels set in the Depression today. Time is marching forward, and those who actually lived through the Depression are now dying off. My Dad is one of those who still survive who can tell about what living in that time period was like. For people like him, who were only kids when their family was struggling through those times, it was a social and cultural event that marked their lives forever, indelibly. My novel is being written as an attempt to restore that time and all of those struggles to the fore of my own and hopefully to readers’ attention, in order to better understand why it left such a mark.

It’s all very daunting, and this could be the time, more than any other that has gone before, for me to be afraid – very afraid. There must be a million reasons I can think of for why I am not the guy for the job. Yet if I want to be a novelist, it’s my charge to ignore them on and charge ahead. Thus, while it might be a time for fear, it’s really a time for wonder and excitement. THIS is the heart of the struggle. I find myself approaching the center of the novel and what I really feel more than anything else is the thrill of the hunt. It is a ridiculously daunting challenge to think that I might finish this story, revise it, craft it to my satisfaction, send it out, and have someone read it, buy it, and put it on the shelf. But then again, if you told me two years ago I’d have written a total of six chapters and would still be very much alive in the hunt for a first novel, I would have thought even that was insane. So we’ll see.

In spite of the fact that I am not sure where it will go, Chapter VI does have a working title, which is ‘The Black Giant, Obeisance to Mammon’. It will focus somewhat on advancing Walter Brogan’s story into the early Depression, but will also place unusually heavy emphasis on some of the ‘outsider’ characters in the novel – people like Myron Devreaux, Peter Heinricks, and in particular Cal Wittenburg. Witternburg will emerge, if he has not already, as a driving force in the story, for he represents the farming community, and provides a window into that world where Walter Brogan will find his sympathies and his compassion inexorably drawn.

Duke Altum's POTM #64: Ask Me Why I Love Poetry...

...and a poem like this provides the best answer. This short offering from the British poet Ted Hughes (great friend and sometime mentor to Seamus Heaney) is a perfect example, to my anyway, of what makes poetry fascinating and powerful and worth reading. Here you have a simple little observation about a flower, and not even a very pretty one at that. And yet, through that mysterious alchemy that only a very small number of gifted people seem to be able to conjure up and harness, Hughes somehow summarizes the entire history of a people (in this case, the fighting Scots - as most everyone knows, the thistle is a national symbol of Scotland) in a few short lines. (Could any verse seem to sum up the tragic history of this country and its constant, futile struggle for independence better than these?: "Their sons appear/Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.")

He manages to convey menace and violence and bloodshed and turmoil all while describing a miniscule purple flower. So much complexity packed into such simple lines. This is what truly captivates and fascinates me, this power of the poet to say so much with so little. To observe the smallest and most seemingly inconsequential detail and somehow squeeze out of it some kind of clue, or at least insight, to the mystery of our existence here on the third rock from the sun. THAT'S why I love poetry, when it is done well - like this.

*******

Thistles

Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
Thistles spike the summer air
And crackle open under a blue-black pressure.

Every one a revengeful burst
Of resurrection, a grasped fistful
Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up

From the underground stain of a decayed Viking.
They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects.
Every one manages a plume of blood.

Then they grow grey like men.
Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear
Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.

Say You'll Read These Stories

When I heard several months ago that there was a book of short stories coming out about Africa that was written by a Jesuit priest, a product of an American M.F.A. program in fiction writing, I was astonished. I never thought I would see a book of contemporary short stories by a Catholic priest emerge from a major U.S. publishing house. But that is what we have in Say You’re One Of Them, which was published last month by Little, Brown & Company. The author is Uwem Akpan, S.J., from Nigeria.

The book has generated a lot of attention in literary circles, and has received exceptionally strong reviews in almost every major publication I have seen. Indeed, I have yet to find a negative review for it. As Duke and I are Roman Catholics interested in literature and the spiritual life, I remember showing him a news item saying that this book was forthcoming, and commenting on how ideal it was to receive some attention on this blog. I would have liked to have rushed right out and bought the book, which I did not do for budgetary reasons, so I did the next best thing: I asked my local library if they had it. They did not, but ordered it specially upon my request, and it was in house in about a week. Man, you have got to love libraries. The poor artist’s best friend!

This post is no book review, as I have just finished reading the book, and it is still resonating in my mind to a large extent – which is another way of saying that since I am not writing a review, I am not yet completely sure of precisely how I feel about it. One of the reasons I enjoy writing reviews is to fully articulate my response to a book. That is not what I am doing here. I just wanted to write some impressions down.

I am not sure how many people I would even recommend this book to. That statement has nothing to do with the book’s literary quality and elegance of execution, which are both of the highest order, and especially stuning in a first work of fiction from a writer who happens to be almost exactly my age. This is a hell of a book. That phrase can have more than one meaning as well, as I will attempt to explain.

There’s no question that Fr. Akpan is a gifted writer with a flair for language, an ear for interesting dialogue, and eyes with which to see the terribly vivd colors spayed around a tortured and troubled contintent. In a very interesting story in the New York Times, the writer-priest attributed some of his literary success to his religious training, an idea which I found utterly fascinating:

A great help to him, he said, was his order’s tradition of Ignatian spirituality, which encourages the visualization of certain biblical scenes — the Sermon on the Mount, say. “You try to imagine Jesus 2,000 years ago. You try to see the faces, picture the scenery. I used to really get into it, and I thought if I could imagine 2,000 years ago, surely I could do it for the contemporary world.”

Fr. Akpan has certainly done that in this book, which is closer to a collection of three short stories and two longer novellas.

If the book is so good, so well executed, why wouldn’t I recommend it? The answer is that I would – I just don’t know how many people would want to read it or would enjoy it. For ‘enjoy’ is not the best way to describe one’s experience with these stories, unless you are like me and you take pleasure in watching a skilled artist intelligently and beautifully work their magic. The problem is that the stories in Say You’re One Of Them depict unthinkable evils – abusive acts, mob violence, tribal warfare, starvation, prostitution, drug use, religious tyranny, persecution, corruption, even unmitigated slaughter – and they do so forcefully, so that you have trouble forgetting what you’ve ‘seen’ in your mind’s eye.

But that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that all of the stories are written from the point of view of children. Which means that the children Fr. Akpan creates in his intense fictions are eye-witnesses to the horror, and frequently victims themselves. If you have your own children or even if you don’t, this is the hardest part of the book to contend with. The images will stay with you, all right. It’s a troubling, moving, difficult reading experience.

Now, in my opinion, this makes Fr. Akpan’s achievement all the more laudable. What he has done is give voices to the ones that have no voice, and through the power of his stories – a power that stories only can generate, as opposed to journalism or memoir – he forces the reader to listen to them. Skillfully drawn characters are easy to recognize; the litmus test is whether or not, when you read their stories, you feel like you know them yourself. When you do you’ll know it because, if something terrible happens to them, you’ll feel it. That’s what happens in this book. You get to know these frightened, maligned children, and you fear for what seems inevitable. So that when you reach the utterly terrifying moment when something horrific happens, as in the story “My Parents’ Bedroom”, where a young girl watches her father murder her mother in front of her with a machete, you recoil with stultifying shock.

I know a lot of people though, avid readers all, who would not want to read a story like the one just described no matter how well written it was. No matter how moving it was. It’s a question of why a person reads. So many people I know might say something like, “I barely ever get the chance to pick up a book, and when I do, I want to be entertained, not depressed. I care about what happens to people in less fortunate countries, but I don’t want to read stories about violence, child abuse, murder and poverty.” This isn’t turning a blind eye to the problems of the world; the same person may go on a missionary trip to Africa or Latin American before you ever do. It’s just that this person knows why they read – for entertainment. Who can argue with that?

For me, though, the whole idea of fiction writing is such a source of inspiration and fascination that the act of reading is every bit as much about my own artistc education as it is about entertainment. I want to read anything that genuinely moves me on an emotional level, and I want to see if I can figure out how they did it. I want to write as well as I can, so I should read writers who write well. If I pick up Father Akpan’s book knowing it’s about Africa’s victimized children, I’m not saying to the writer off-handedly, “Don’t go there” as I begin the book. I want him to go there, and since I’m not going there anytime soon, I want him to take me with him. If he succeeds, as this remarkable writer does, he will make me feel as though I have seen the horrors of Africa myself. That’s incredible considering I have never been to Africa, have no prospects of going there, and doubt I will have the opportunity in the future. (You never know.) It should be noted that Say You’re One Of Them’s five stories are all set in different countries, a clever way for Fr. Akpan to demonstrate that these evil forces at play are not simply confined to one nation but to much of Africa.

The title of this collection comes from a piece of advice that the doomed mother gives to one of her children in the story referred to above. She knew she was in peril, and so she told her daughter that if anyone in the civil war-torn nation of Rwanda asked her to state her business, she should say she is “one of them”, meaning a member of whichever tribal group is represented by her questioner. Given the context, is that phrase alone not extraordinarily powerful?

Congratulations to Father Uwem Akpan, who has succeeded in creating an unforgettable testament to the power of literature and in so doing has simultaneously taken a bold stand for those who cannot stand up for themselves. I urge any reader who takes an interest in what is happening in other corners of the world to seek out this book, to read it, feel it, and gain a broader sense of compassion and understanding.

A Latecomer's Thoughts on 'The Kite Runner'

I must say it feels strange to be posting some thoughts today on a book that has been so wildly popular for at least four years now, and has been talked and raved about all over the world continuously since its release… talk about being behind the curve! But as they say, better to show up late to the party than never arrive at all…

Regardless of my poor sense of timing, I wanted to offer up some thoughts about a book that has obviously struck a chord with millions of readers and continues to be digested and discussed to this day: Khaled Hosseini’s debut novel, The Kite Runner. Now that I’ve finally read it, the book’s overwhelming popularity is an interesting (and somewhat perplexing) phenomenon to me. I realize how that sounds, and I don’t mean to say it’s not a good book worth reading – I think it is, though in my opinion it is not without its flaws either. Rather, what surprises me is the degree of its popular appeal relative to its subject matter. I also find it interesting and worth exploring that the book seems to appeal in particular to women. I have no idea why this would be so, but in my own experience, many people told me I should read this book, and for whatever reason, they were ALL women. Obviously this is purely anecdotal evidence and nothing even remotely scientific, but still, I can’t think of another example of that happening.

At any rate, on to the novel itself. As just about everyone in the free world knows at this point, The Kite Runner is the story of a privileged young boy growing up in the Kabul area of Afghanistan in the 1970’s, just before the Russians occupied the country and everything went to hell. He is from a well-off family and his best friend is the son of the servant who serves (and lives in a small shed on) his father’s estate. A tragic event occurs that permanently mars their friendship and leaves the protagonist, Amir, wracked with guilt. They two boys are separated, the country becomes a war zone, old neighborhoods crumble and Amir escapes to America with his father, with whom he longs to connect emotionally but can never seem to. As an adult, Amir returns home to see what’s left of his old country, and learns that his former best friend has been murdered along with his wife – leaving their only son orphaned and alone. The rest of the book entails Amir’s struggle to rescue the boy from the country and adopt him as his own, which he feels would help him to at least somewhat atone for sins committed against his old friend that led to their painful separation and, at least in Amir’s mind, the friend’s tragic death.

Plot-wise, The Kite Runner is an engaging, albeit somewhat familiar, tale of a man trying to atone for wrongs he has committed in his youth to a childhood friend, with healthy doses of class struggle and father-son difficulties mixed in to magnify his sense of guilt and provide the requisite need for personal redemption and meaningful love. I did not think the storyline was anything particularly original, nor did I find the prose to be remarkable in any way – it’s solid and unadorned, but not especially interesting. Some of the plot twists near the end border on the implausible to me, and there seemed to be plenty more opportunities to directly confront demons of the past than real life would naturally afford. (I was also honestly surprised a bit at some of the clichés that were allowed to be kept in the narrative – things like commonly-used phrases or metaphors, or dream sequences in which Amir relives horrific events he witnessed in the past, only to see the man committing the act turn around and reveal his own face!!)

So yes, I did have some issues with the book – but there is much to recommend about it too. What helps it to if not quite overcome, then at least counterbalance, the problems listed above is its setting - both physical and within the context of recent geopolitical history. I don’t think Hosseini was capitalizing on recent events in his home country with this book either, because as he makes clear in the story he’s telling (and herein lies so much of its value and importance), the cultural and political problems ravaging Afghanistan have been going on for decades now – a long and bloody battle for the soul of a nation crippled by rampant poverty, sectarianism and religious zealotry. First the Russians, then the warlords, from whom rose the ugly specter of the Taliban – regardless of who’s been in power, basic life necessities have been cut off, neighborhoods allowed to descend into chaos and destruction, and women suppressed and abused. In short, it’s immediately clear that Hosseini’s not making this up, he’s lived through it – a fact which lends crucial credibility and weight to the narrative, and makes his earnest desire to share the plight of his people through story both admirable and significant.

I say this in part because I recently listened to an interview with Hosseini in which he explained where the impetus to write both this novel and its much-anticipated follow-up, A Thousand Splendid Suns, came from. I was impressed with how articulate and intelligent Hosseini obviously is, his passion for his people and homeland and his humility in the face of the worldwide popular appeal of his work. He makes clear that while his first and foremost priority is to tell stories that human beings of all stripes and backgrounds will be able to relate to, the fact that he can open peoples’ eyes and minds to what is going on in modern Afghanistan while doing so is an added bonus – and an opportunity that he wants to make the most of. From what he was saying, it sounds like his second novel is particularly valuable in this regard, since Afghan women have been enduring repressions and indignities that modern Westerners can barely comprehend, let alone imagine, for centuries. If A Thousand Splendid Suns succeeds in bringing their plight to the fore of readers’ minds in vivid and accurate detail, as I suspect it does, that alone makes it a book worth sharing, reading and discussing.

But The Kite Runner is the topic of this rambling essay, and I’ll conclude with a few thoughts about a question raised earlier: why has this novel proven to be so incredibly popular over the course of the past four years? It’s not a question that lends itself to any one facile explanation, of course. Trying to explain the ebb and flow of popular appeal is like trying to explain why the wind blows where it will. But it is interesting to speculate on why the story of a man looking back on his half-idyllic, half-nightmarish upbringing in Afghanistan and trying to find healing from wounds he has carried since would capture the attention and imagination of so many people around the globe.

The story has so much to do with past regrets, guilt and remorse over the sufferings of those less fortunate, that I wonder if the same overarching themes/instincts, as human as the tendency towards violence (also vividly on display here), are themselves a key to the riddle of the novel’s enormous and enduring impact. In other words, the near-universal embrace of Hosseini and his anguished characters may say a lot about our feelings as Westerners (and, more specifically, Americans) as the violence and heartbreak of this war-torn corner of the world has now hit home for us in a new and frighteningly personal way. Our recent appearance on the stage in this theater of pain has perhaps awakened in us a new and, one can only hope, enduring sympathy for those asphyxiating in the crushing grip of tyranny, injustice and persecution. Any story that holds out the possibility of hope and escape from such horrible conditions is a sure bet to find purchase in the hearts of people of good will everywhere, who look forward to a day when “all the colors bleed into one," and peace will "flow like a river."

Journal of a 'Novel'-Entry 46

Massive Attack

The day of reckoning is fast approaching for my ‘first novel’. I was really worried about keeping the project going once my third child arrived. The fact is that the novel was crippled under its own weight weeks in advance of this event. The hiatus between chapters has grown to exceed even the previous record, the 6-month snag I had in producing Chapter III in the Summer of 2007, but at least in that case we had a whole move of my house and home in there to blame it on. Now I have been languishing on producing the fifth chapter of the novel for nearly seven months and counting. I wrote an introductory scene for it, then stalled; later I gained some momentum as the last few journal entries reveal, but now have stalled again. I am trying to make it through to the end of Part I of the novel because I still have two other large Parts planned out and they will probably include 4-5 chapters each, so there is a long road to travel down before this novel is anywhere close to being finished.

The questions creep into your brain. Your confidence falters. Maybe I don’t have what it takes to do this. Maybe I never have. How long have I been writing creatively? I trace my start of ‘serious’ creative writing back to 1990. That’s eighteen years. What do I have to show for it? A 5-figure student loan with a locked interest rate. Payment to last into my 50s or 60s. Six or seven published essays or reviews in relatively small magazines. Zero published stories after around 12 years of sending out short fiction. Why keep at it? Even if I can get a draft of a novel done the odds against getting it published are so long it becomes a laugher when compared to the amount of time it is taking me to write it.

In the dead of night or the silence of the pre-dawn morning, facing a blank page or scrawling away to fill one up in more fortunate moments, a writer really doesn’t know why they persist. Why tell stories? For what? For who? Because some of us must. Perhaps God has called us to this sort of eccentricity. We move through the world thinking about odd connections, interesting tidbits of seemingly useless information, random story ideas or character sketches, and other such stuff that if we really told the people we loved about in all possible detail we’d probably end up institutionalized.

People who don’t write cannot realize how much writers obsess over ideas and possible outlets for their creative impulses. I will give you a taste of some of my own musings:

Maybe this one article I read randomly on Kenyan witch hunts can become fodder for a story some day. Who the hell cares that I’ve never set foot in Africa and don’t know the first thing about Kenya? Maybe I will read a couple books about Africa to see if I can stimulate something. Why do I keep thinking about Thomas Merton and this one guy I met 12 years ago at a retreat who was briefly a novice while Merton was the Master of Novices at Gesthemani monastery in rural Kentucky. I have not forgotten that guy ever in all this time. Answer: there is a story there somewhere. Maybe someday I will tell it. Why have I been thinking so much about Bono lately and the nature of our popular culture’s obsession with this guy? What do I have to say about this topic that has not already been said? By the way, the Swahili word “Uhuru” means ‘freedom’. Maybe Bono and Africa could be in the same story. I could call it “U2ru”. Hey, I never realized this before but my idea about crafting a climactic scene around the old Corn Festivals in Indiana reminds me a lot of the one scene in Madame Bovary where a guy attempts to seduce the title character while an Agricultural Festival is going on in the Provincial French village. Come to think of it, the old Corn Festivals they used to have in the late 30s and early 40s in Indiana are a lot like the festival that is described in Madame Bovary. There are striking similarities. And didn’t my father tell me that when he was growing up in rural Indiana many of the people he knew had French names????

See what I mean? Am I mental? Who knows. But writers are like this, or at least this one is, and I really doubt I am so different from others, except in terms of success!

I’ll tell you what I do know. The day of reckoning is at hand, like I said. My novel is foundering. I cannot allow that! How can I?! I have been at work on this thing for almost 2 ½ YEARS. The lack of faster progress is frustrating.

********

Now here I am again, three days later. I decided I am going to initiate a massive attack on my manuscript. I have to keep writing it no matter how poorly it has gone in the past. There are probably a million reasons to continue, but the one that is hitting me so hard at the moment is simply this. If I do not press on with my novel now, I will never find out for sure if I have what it takes to write one. And writing a novel is something I have dreamed about for almost 20 years. It would be a terrible tragedy to hold on to a dream for that long and then give it up after so much time just because I have some earthly struggles and may have hit a few rough patches here and there.

My brother and the co-founder of this blog, “Duke Altum”, had the audacity to suggest to me that I may be focusing too much on reviews, essays, and even short story ideas right now rather than putting all of my focus on moving the novel along. I explained to him that at certain times in the last two years when I hit a blockage in writing the novel but still wanted to keep fresh creatively, I have written essays and a story or two just to keep my muscles limber. Then I try to sell them; I figure if I’m not going to be writing the novel at least I can see if anyone will publish some smaller pieces in an attempt to ‘make a name for myself’. It’s a nice idea, and a hell of a rationalization for delaying any further work on the novel. The problem, though, is that Duke was dead right. I should be forcing myself to work on the novel and muscle through my problems with it. You’re either a novelist or you aren’t one. You are either going to tell the story, or stop pretending that you’re going to.

My attack is already underway. I picked up the manuscript and blew the dust off of it. I started writing on a scene in which the main character’s son is born – and now, I am able to draw on my own experience from the recent past, since my own son is now five weeks old, even though I was still waiting to experience it when I began the scene. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

As soon as I started writing again it became obvious to me that I am trying to do much in my fifth chapter and must therefore close this chapter off and write a sixth, which will be included in Part I. There’s no reason why Part I has to have only 5 chapters, and I don’t want the final chapter of the first part to be an arduous slog that no one can make it through. Thus, suddenly I am close to the end of Chapter V, or at least the draft of it, and that, friends, can be considered progress. The chapter has a new title: “Spinning the Golden Wheel, Before the Crash”. I will finish the chapter, edit it, type it up, add it to the other four, and continue planning and drafting Chapter VI, in the hopes of rounding out Part I of the novel. So the first part of the book will be as follows:

Prologue
Part I
Chapter I: Sweet Music, Pretty Flowers
Chapter II: A Premature Death, New Experiences
Chapter III: The Fiery Cross, Revelations
Chapter IV: A Lawyer’s Return, Life After Death
Chapter V: Spinning The Golden Wheel, Before The Crash
Chapter VI: ??

And in this way the dream clings to life.