Duke Altum's Poetry Workshop (Poem of the Week #47)

Nothing like putting yourself out on a limb... well, for this week's Poem of the Week I've decided to try something different. The author of the poem featured is none other than yours truly. I'll pause politely to allow time for laughter...

...thank you. Seriously, by now it's no surprise to readers of this blog that I've got a deep interest in poetry, both as a reader and, in my more confident/foolish moments, a writer. I enjoy the process and the challenge of writing poetry -- whether or not I meet that challenge is something I am certainly not qualified, nor sufficiently objective, to judge. But it's almost besides the point. I say 'almost' because no one who writes poetry sets out to write bad poetry -- if one were to be satisfied with that, one has no business writing or expressing anything! And yet, I honestly don't find myself worrying about whether or not my poems reach an audience beyond myself and maybe a few of those I am close to. For me, at least in this stage in my life, the challenge of writing a few decent lines -- and the thrill that comes along with the suspicion that you might, just might, have actually done so -- is enough to keep me coming back to the pen and the paper (actually, the keyboard, if we're telling the truth... but somehow that doesn't sound as, well, poetic).

Whether I've done so or not with this poem, I can't say... but then that's one of the reasons why I wanted to post it. My idea here is to throw it up here as a "work in progress," much like Mutt's unedited novel excerpts (notice the glaring lack of quotes there Mutt!), and see if I can't elicit some free constructive feedback from TST's legion of faithful readers.

So without further ado or annoying commentary, here is the raw first draft of a new poem I've been composing in my head, and then on paper, for the last few days. It originates from a very tragic accident that occurred in a town just down the road from ours over the past weekend. I don't want to say anything more about it, by way of introduction, than that. With any luck, the poem itself will say what it has to say (although its subject is, by nature, pretty opaque!).

I invite comments, constructive criticism, questions or suggestions for improvement from whoever's interested...

*******

Theodicy

The very properties of the ice
that failed to support the small boys,
whose combined final tally of years
barely stretched across two decades,
seem to apply to the arguments
claiming that the same God
Whose breath buffets the sparrow’s wing
wasn’t somehow looking away
when the younger brother
(ignoring his mother’s explicit warning)
stepped out onto the water’s beckoning surface
on that ashen afternoon.

Painfully brittle.
Shockingly cold.
Human reasoning, like pond ice,
shatters easily under the slightest pressure.

Whatever praises we might express
for the foolhardy bravery
of the older brother’s attempted rescue
are instantly numbed silent
as hope’s tenuous structure shatters
and the hyperborean flood of death
engulfs the heart, stopping it cold in mid-beat.

I have sons too, and I know
my faith in that same God
Whose breath buffets the sparrow’s wing
offers me, just as it offered
these precious boys’ hapless parents,
no blessed assurances
that the world’s ubiquitous sufferings
will spare them.
Yet their very presence scintillates
my life with miracle every day,
bearing witness to transcendent graces.
As surely the Robinson brothers' did
for those who knew and loved them --
whether it was acknowledged or
(God forbid)
realized only in hindsight,
in a winter morning’s awful clarity.

(For Jarris Robinson, age 8, who drowned on 2/11/07 in Cambridge, MD, after falling through thin ice on a pond -- and Aaron Robinson, age 12, who also drowned when he tried to rescue his brother. Recquiescat in pace Dei. And for their parents.)

Journal of a "Novel"-Entry 32

Teaser: Chapter 3, "A Secret Revealed, Letter from Texas"

What follows is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of the novel, in draft, unrevised format. Hope the reader enjoys!

Greta rose at six o’clock exactly, the alarm jarring her from a fitful sleep swollen with incoherent dreams, dark forms, unspoken fears. She glanced over at the rumpled bedclothes where her husband of five months had slept, rising at 5:15 or so and taking consideration not to wake her. Greta had heard him when he first pulled himself out of bed and hunted around for his things in the dark, but quickly fell back asleep. Having grown up in the house in relatively close quarters, she was accustomed to blotting out its noises until it was actually time for her day to begin.
The first thing she heard after the alarm’s bells saved her from her dreams’ fogginess – only to replace it with a physical fatigue – was the low growl of her father’s gravelly voice already expressing indignation over something to her mother. A sigh escaped from Greta’s lips. How many of her days had started out in a similar fashion? What would it take to make her father into a happy, satisfied person? She’d been asking herself this question for a long time, so there was no reason to think there might be an answer forthcoming. The only question to which there might be an answer was that of what he was railing about on this particular morning. It could have been any number of things – the financial status of his two businesses, The Golden Room and the new auto service station, for example. Or the election results from earlier in the week, which certainly troubled everyone in the house, with the possible exception of her younger sisters. But something about the tone of his voice even as it came up through the stairway and the framework of the house told her right away it was even more serious – serious enough to make those other considerations seem trivial.
She rose then, quickly, and without bothering to turn on the lamp on the bedside table – the eastern sky was lightening from black to a bruised gray, and Greta always preferred the use of whatever natural light was available. She pulled some clothing out from their dresser and a tiny closet, and padded into the bathroom. She washed her face, showered, and brushed her teeth with a firm sense of purpose, preparing herself ardently for a day she knew would require little of her. This was one of the numerous things in her new life that it was taking time to get used to: she was back in her parents’ home, and they ran it. Her mother, of course, had the maintenance of the daily routine firmly in hand. Greta was no longer supporting herself, she had no job, there were no children yet – in fact, she had no particular or specific function in terms of the domestic operation in which she found herself. Yet Greta Brogan was not one to lay around and remain idle. She began every day early, at 6 a.m., as though there was much to be done – she would make herself useful one way or another.
So this was how each day always began in the Heinricks household – her father ranting, holding court in his business suit with his coffee and sometimes his King James Bible as a prop if the matter was of a moral nature and he needed visual reinforcement. Her mother at work already, cooking, grinding coffee beans, washing dishes, clothes, meat, vegetables, anything. Things had almost always been like this – but not quite. Greta could remember a time – was haunted by it, in fact – before her family lived in this house, maybe even before her sisters were born, when they lived in the tiny, ramshackle farmhouse she was born in, and the tone of mornings was different. This would have been in 1906, 1907. She would wake up in her own room in her own bed, frequently shivering in the poorly-heated home and her threadbare blankets, but her ears would be met with a masculine voice accompanied by music. Her parents would be talking and laughing with one another most mornings, her mother preparing a breakfast, her father reading the newspaper, while in the background melodies by Liszt or Beethoven would drift throughout the house warmly from that old Victrola that Heinricks had bought one year for Ilse for Christmas. Greta would come down wrapped in her blanket to sit by the fire in that miniscule living room while her parents spoke to one another and her mother served biscuits with fresh preserves she had made herself …. they had so much less then, Greta seemed to recall, but seemed much more contented than they ever had been later, as her father’s business endeavors became more successful, demanding more and more of his time …. it was an ironic truth that Greta always held inside of herself afterwards.
Now Greta descended the creaking stairs to the kitchen as she heard the water pipes in the house creaking and moaning, indicating that her twin sisters were also beginning to rise. They were still in their last year at the high school, and had to be off by 7:30 at the latest. Greta walked in to find her mother and father both seated at the table with their hands touching cups of coffee, her father gazing out the window at some fixed location in the backyard, her mother looking at the floor. A familiar tension hovered in the room, lingering like a scent. Greta recognized this immediately: a matter of shared concern, but disparate opinions over how it should best be handled. On the table in front of her father was an envelope. She knew who it was from without being able to see the writing on it. Now she understood the tone in her father’s ranting voice earlier that had assaulted her ears as she rose to meet the morning.
‘Good morning,’ Greta said to her parents politely, attempting to partially temper the mood with conviviality and good manners.
‘Good morning, dear,’ said her mother, because that’s how one responded to such things. Her father turned his eyes towards his eldest, saying nothing. Greta saw the heat in them, knew what was coming, but she was ready for it. If one allowed him to, her father could scowl a morning into a fetal position in the corner before it ever got the chance to decide if it was going to be a pleasant day or not. God knew Greta had seen so many days in their house begin this way when she was younger, by virtue of the simple fact that her father was frustrated or angry about something. The trick was not to allow him to sabotage the mood of a day so completely and so early. The way to do it was to take his indignation – whatever the cause – in stride, casually, calmly. This helped put whatever was bothering him into some sort of perspective, and often he would react accordingly, whether he was conscious of it or not, by calming down. As a girl and a young teenager, Greta could not accomplish this herself, but after so many years of watching her mother do it, she learned the same skill, and by her early adulthood, much to her father’s annoyance, she had it down. It was useful enough, sometimes, with her own husband as well. It was one of the numerous ways a wise wife could rescue a whole day from the clutches of a husband’s nervousness or despair, simply by refusing to let a morning be derailed. And yet it was always the women whom the men called hysterical and emotionally unbalanced.
She met her father’s gaze momentarily, but for long enough to show him that she was prepared for whatever it was he might throw at her. She did not know if he was upset about the letter or if the very presence of it had brought him back to a subject that caused him embarrassment and pain. Greta glanced over at her mother again, who had her own eyes now fixated on her husband, waiting to hear whatever he was going to say.
No one said anything more, however, so Greta moved over to the counter and pulled down a white ceramic coffee mug from the cabinet. She picked up the carafe of coffee that her mother set out daily for them all and, moving towards her parents, offered to fill their cups first. Both refused silently: her father with a flash of his withered hand, her mother with a simple shake of the head. Greta returned to the counter and poured into her own cup, leaving some for her younger sisters. Everyone in their household loved coffee, especially the way Ilse made it.
Suddenly Heinricks broke the silence.
‘It’s for you.’
Greta turned and saw that he was holding out the envelope in her direction. It was sealed. She reached up after a moment and took it from him, and put it on the counter next to her.
‘You didn’t open it this time,’ she said evenly. The previous letter to arrive for her from Peter had reached her with its contents already scrutinized, several weeks before. It had led to extended arguments between father and daughter, with occasional intervention by Ilse to dampen the intensity of certain exchanges concerning the moral validity of someone – a father or not – reading someone else’s mail.
‘You can thank your husband for that,’ Heinricks answered, with no small degree of bitterness.
‘He told you not to?’ Greta asked him, surprised.
Heinricks drained his cup and stood, his eyes not moving from his daughter’s, the grooves in the aging skin around them seeing to deepen more from one moment to the next. Standing in front of one another, their eyes nearly met. Ilse watched them from her chair, marveling once again over the fact that her daughter had grown to more or less match her father’s height, rather than her own more diminished stance. Yet it was the way their respective wills, their passions, aligned – and therefore constantly collided – that was far more mysterious and, on certain occasions, jarring to Ilse Heinricks.
‘He found a way to express his point of view,’ he said. He stood before Greta for another moment, and his expression was something close to an accusation. Greta resented this: that he seemed to be ‘blaming’ her for the fact that Walter had expressed a point of view – and she doubted he had done so in a direct, offensive manner – that didn’t suit him. Furthermore, she thought, is he had tried to point out to her father that he shouldn’t open up the letter himself, not only was he not out of line, he was right. She said this much to her father.
After this she watched the familiar blaze flare up one again in the blue eyes that aligned so closely with her own.
‘I don’t much take to people who try to tell me how to run my family life in my own house,’ Heinricks intoned steadily, his tone its own warrant – not loud, only clear and cold. ‘Just as I don’t take to a son of mine not having the guts to tell me himself exactly what the devil he is doing with his life. I much prefer to confront problems directly. But you can damn well be sure that if my own son lacks the courage to keep me informed of his intentions, but can confide in his sister, I am going to find them out any way I can. I have a right to know.’
Greta listened to this, watching him, feeling the pressure of his indignation almost physically, like something or someone pushing on her shoulders. It was a familiar sensation. She thought for a moment, gripping the coffee cup with her slender hands, feeling its warmth.
Then she said, ‘Since you feel that way, why didn’t you open it?’
There was a long silence. Then her father simply said to her, ‘Just tell me what he is doing, if he has told you. Can you manage that?’ And with that, he strode out of the room. Within moments Greta and Ilse heard the front door open and slam shut.
The kitchen was now filled with the ashen light of the dreary morning, and the air seemed to have grown colder. Then twin voices of Greta’s younger sisters, prattling about something relevant only to seventeen-year-olds still in school, carried into the room from above. At any moment one or both of them would burst into the room in all of their quaint ignorance.
‘Heaven save us, but one of you is someday going to strangle the other.’
This was Ilse’s comment, sitting compactly in her chair, looking at her daughter as if she were someone she didn’t know.
Greta chuckled wryly. Some of the tension she had been feeling without realizing it seemed to ease slightly upon hearing her mother speak. But she still felt weight, pressure. Her father was a difficult man to make happy, and a difficult man to go up against in anything. She knew.
‘Walter was right, and he knows it.’
Ilse paused for a moment, and took one more glance out the back window. Greta saw the deep furrows around her eyes and forehead watched her rough, unfeminine hands grip one another on the surface of the table. They did not fidget. They simply lay in wait for whatever job the day would require of them next.
‘Of course he does,’ her mother said. Then she stood up and went to the counter next to her eldest child. Without speaking again she pulled a large iron skillet from one of the lower cabinets and placed it on the range. She turned the dial for the gas, lit the flame with a wooden match, and withdrew a side of bacon from the refrigerator while the iron surface gradually conducted the heat from the blue fire.

Journal of a "Novel"-Entry 31

Mutt's Output Taking a Beating

Looking at the blog history I can see it's been over two months now since I have posted in this journal. Unfortunately, right now I am having trouble keeping pace with not only the journal but with working on the novel itself at the level I hoped, but it's no surprise, and to some extent I expected to be working slowly right now. This is due to a series of rapid-fire changes of great magnitude in my personal life, including the departure from one full-time job, the initiation of another in another state, and the process of searching for a home. Later on, God willing, my family and I will have purchased said home and will be enduring the long and painful moving process, from New Jersey into Pennsylvania. All this adds up to a serious hiatus in any kind of steady effort on the novel I am attempting to write, and my main fear is losing momentum or not being able to recover my pace after all of these major life changes have taken place and are in the past. I am attempting to revisit the novel from time to time, either to work on the writing a little bit here and there or review portions that I have already written. Right now, I am working on the third chapter of the novel, which I originally thought was only part of the way completed in draft. But as I will explain below, I have been considering some structural changes that may make this chapter a shorter one, which means I may be able to get Chapter 3 done sooner and be able to move on to a fourth chapter.

Chapter 3 Almost Complete?

I began writing Chapter 3 in early Deceember of the immediate past year. I did manage to get a handful of 'scenes' completed before my progress hit a snag, or a series of snags, mentioned above. Somewhere I may have mentioned an early tentative title for the chapter, but I think it has changed since then, and I can now reveal with relative certainty, at least for the moment, that the chapter's title is "A Secret Revealed, Letter from Texas". My early plan for the chapter was to fit in many major sequences that carried on the storyline on several fronts. But as I worked on the first few scenes, it started to dawn on me that I was possibly trying to cram too much into one chapter and that I might need to break up what I had originally envisioned for chapter 3 into Chapters 3 and 4. The downside to that approach is that because there is a lot I want to write about in these chapters, enough to divide them into two, the story will remain fixed around the first half of the 1920s for two more chapters before moving ahead in time to 1927 or so, probably in Chapter 5. My concern is that I want to make my way eventually through not only the rest of the 1920s, but also the 1930s and early 40s before the novel is done, and I don't want to take too much time getting there. Also I don't want the story to seem 'bunched up' in the 20s to begin with, only to give the appearance of impatience later on by rushing through the subsequent years more rapidly. Nonetheless, I do feel that there are important scenes and ideas that I want to flesh out at this stage that will require more than one chapter. Hence the decision to split Chapter 3 into Chapters 3 and 4. I don't know if any of this makes sense to anyone else, but it does to me.

Hints on Chapter 3 and Even More Nebulous Hints on Chapter 4

What will happen in Chapters 3 and 4? I can give a better picture of Chapter 3 right now, obviously, but I don't want to give too much away. And Chapter 4 is sort of loosely forming in my mind but would be subject to a lot of changes as I begin writing it later on. Having said all that, here are some hints on what will go down in the story. In Chapter 3 we are brought forward to November 1924, immediately after the presidential election and also the gubernatorial election in Indiana. In a frightening development, the Ku Klux Klan's hand-picked candidate, Edward Jackson, has won the governor's seat. The Klan is at the height of its power in Indiana and many other places. Walter Brogan feels increased internal pressure to do something or tell someone about his personal encounter with the Klan on his wedding night as revealed in Chapter 1. Then an instrusion at his workplace of a more subtle nature compels him into revealing his secret for the first time, but to a party the reader might not necessarily expect. A new character is introduced here. Meanwhile, the Heinricks family is dealing with the startling revelation that their son/brother Peter has taken himself off the career path his father has envisioned and is pursuing a risky career opportunity in the Texas oil fields. This is the area of Texas that later on will become what was known as 'The Black Giant".

In Chapter 4, Walter Brogan, having confided his story to a trusted party, begins to contemplate cources of action. Greta Brogan adjusts more to life back under her parents' roof and will have a run-in with her old suitor turned lawyer, Myron Devreaux, who is trying to position himself for a grab for political power at a young age. Finally, we will see Walter Brogan consult his father-in-law for advice on the whole Klan matter, and the counsel he receives will be something of a surprise to him and, perhaps, to the reader.

All will be revealed as the story progresses - unfortunately, that progress will probably continue to be hampered by the instrusions of 'real life' - but I am determined to keep the novel alive and moving forward, however slowly. Stay tuned!

Literaturubersicht (or, Some Thoughts on German Literature from a Totally Unqualified, but Interested, Consumer)

Literaturubersicht means "literature survey" in German. And yes, I did have to look it up.

What the heck is this post all about? It's simple really. It just so happens (if you look at the right hand column, you'll see) that, as sheer chance would have it, Mutt and I both happen to be reading novels from German writers at the same time. (For the record, some may think that we consult each other first about what we're reading, or try to synchronize it somehow... and though we are definitely book-dorks enough to do that, we usually don't. Each of us are on our own separate reading trajectories, and rarely if ever consciously try to have them intersect. Occasionally it does happen on its own though, obviously.) Anyway, we got to talking about German writers -- which ones are important to read for anyone interesting in world literature, what they might be getting at, what the common themes are, etc. -- and I thought it might make an interesting topic for a post, even though I (as my title indicates) have actually not read much of it.

The most famous and celebrated German writer of our time is unquestionably the Nobel laureate Gunter Grass. Mutt is reading one of his lesser-known novels right now, Local Anaesthetic. I'll let him comment on that particular book if he'd like to, maybe in response to this post or in his own posting. But it sounds on a general level like another surreal-type novel in which Grass uses symbolism and fantasy to explore the political and cultural confusion in post-Nazi Germany. Mutt and I have talked about Grass' work before, after I picked up a used copof his short novel The Meeting at Telgte for him and he promptly burned through it. I think way back when this blog first started he posted about it, if memory serves. And since we're both very interesting in world literature in general and the work of Nobel laureates in particular, we've also talked about a few more books of his, most notably the novel he is most famous for, The Tin Drum. I have both of these books on my shelves and plan to read them at some point before I exit the stage...

But for my own right, I thought it might be interesting, before reading Grass, to go back and read some of the significant works of German literature from earlier periods, in part so that I would know something of the books that must have had at least some influence on the great Nobel laureate's body of work. I've explored literature from other countries and cultures before, but curiously, not the German one. I say "curiously" because I myself am half-German, and while I've read plenty of literature and other writing from Ireland (the other half), I know almost nothing about German creative writing. This seems like sort of a gaping and conspicuous hole in my own reading, and it's one I aim to patch up. As part of that effort, I decided to try my hand at another German Nobel laureate, Thomas Mann, and am currently working my way through one of his recognized masterpieces (he has a few of them, depending on who you ask!), The Magic Mountain.

A few years ago I read a book that was about educating oneself through the reading of classics (for the record, the book was Susan Wise Bauer's The Well-Educated Mind). One of the points Wise Bauer made in that book, that has stayed with me ever since, was the importance of reading chronologically. In other words, she thinks that, if you want to read the classics in order to educate yourself, it's best to start with the ancient writers, such as the Greek and Roman playwrights and poets, and work your way up the timeline. The reason for this is pretty simple and makes a lot of sense: picking up on a theme she learned from the noted literary critic Mortimer Adler, Wise Bauer points out that all truly great writers are aware of the literary tradition that precedes them, and in most cases they are reacting in some way to it, or are conscious of it enough to allude to it directly and indirectly in their own work. And you can't fully understand a work of a writer unless you know something of the work that inspired him, or her. Anyone can read and get a lot out of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, but imagine how much more informed one's reading of it would be if they were at least somewhat familiar with the writings of his own literary hero (both within and outside of the epic poem!), Virgil? For one obvious thing, it might clear up that nagging question that most modern readers are confronted with from pretty much the second canto on: why is Virgil his guide? Anyway, this is a digression... but the point is, reading the classics is in some sense, or should be (according to this view), a cumulative enterprise -- each period's work informs the next, even as it comments on the previous one.

Now I don't think most people have the time or inclination to adhere to such a rigorous programme strictly (unless they're in some kind of formal classics program or something), and I know I certainly don't... in one sense it takes the fun out of "reading all over the map," a favorite pastime of Mutt's and mine... but the concept has stayed with me, and I have found myself trying to go back and read some of the earlier works first, or, if I know I'm interested in reading a MAJOR classic and want to understand it better, I might go and read some of the books that might have influenced its author first. Case in point: one of the reasons I wanted to read Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is that I know it was an important work for, and was very much in the mind of, Cervantes during the composition of Don Quixote de la Mancha (which of course in itself is a hugely influencial work... see the accumulation?).

It may seem like I'm veering way off-topic here, but stay with me... this is the thinking that, in part, went into my picking up Mann's weighty philosophical novel. (Another reason, again speaking of writers influencing writers influencing readers, is that I knew it was a favorite book of Walker Percy's, who is in turn a favorite of mine... whew! this gets you dizzy after a while...) I knew I was interested in reading Grass, and also the work of another modern German writer and Nobel Prize-winner (Heinrich Boll), but I just felt I had no real understanding at all of, for the lack of a better way to put it, the German literary soul.

So it gets me to thinking, what are some of the other indispensable works of German literature that any halfway-serious student of world literature could not avoid reading? A few obvious choices jumped into my mind at this question, but only a scant few: the works of Goethe (most notably Faust, but also The Sorrows of Young Werther and maybe some of his poetry as well), Thomas Mann of course, the famous playwright Berthold Brecht, and of course everyone's favorite God-denying, half-insane intellectual, Frederich Nietzche. Around the time I started thinking about this, Mutt had lent me an issue of The New Yorker, and in it there was an article by the noted Czech writer Milan Kundera in which he, in speaking of world literature, points out that Franz Kafka identified himself also as a German writer, even though he was from another country altogether (obviously he wrote in the German tongue). I thought that was an interesting bit of information, but it also struck me how knowing that would have to color and shape one's understanding of Kafka's mysterious and magnificent work.

After thinking about it a little more, I realized that there were other German works and writers that would seem to be indispensable in any survey of the literary works emerging from that culture. Hermann Hesse would have to be added to the list, although I think (I haven't confirmed it) that he was of Swiss origin... but certainly books like Siddhartha and Steppenwolf have to be considered modern classics of the German language. And then there are the philosophers (yes, Nietzche ought to be in this category too, but some of his works border on philosophic literature -- Thus Spake Zarathustra, for example, or even Ecce Homo, his memoir-of-sorts) -- Germany is so well-known for its philosophical, analytical mind that it would be virtually impossible to exclude the writings of the Schopenhauer, Kant and Heidegger, among others. (I know for a fact that Mann's writings were profoundly influenced by the philosophy of Schopenhauer.)

And of course, there is one other towering giant of German literature, someone whose shadow looms hugely and profoundly over the landscape of modern poetry: Rainer Maria Rilke. Other than maybe Goethe, I think one would be hard-pressed to name a better candidate for the title of "greatest German poet." Forget "German" -- I think Rilke is among the greatest poets the world has ever produced!

I would love to one day be able to say that I have read at least something from every one of these authors mentioned... to do so would be to gain some kind of knowledge of German literary culture, which, when you look at the big picture, is among the most profound and creative humankind has produced. It would also, possibly, help me to understand something about my own soul/heritage!

Mutt and I were reflecting on the interesting fact that each culture seems to have something unique and fascinating to contribute to world literature, and that while of course themes repeat and overlap, there is a certain spirit and mood in, say, Icelandic or Russian or African literature that you simply will not find elsewhere. And each culture is wrestling with its own particular demons (Mutt knows, mostly through reading Grass, something about Germany's ghosts and goblins!), which is fascinating also. I think about how my life and my knowledge/awareness of the range and scope of human experience (so much greater than the limited scope of my own will ever be) would be enhanced and enriched through the literature of foreign cultures, and it makes me want to plunder the Alexandrian library of the world, and partake of its riches before they too blow away as ashes in the wind.

The Curtain Falls: Mutt Ploughman on "Dickensfest V", Part II

"But I am thinking like a lover, or like an ass: which I suppose is pretty nearly the same." - Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens

Having just knocked off this year's installment of my annual Dickensfest, I now take the time to post my second and concluding commentary on the novel Nicholas Nickleby and to reaffirm my faith in the worthiness and great aesthetic pleasures to be found in reading the work of the master novelist of the English language, Charles Dickens.

The above quote is a fine example of the humorous tone and recognizable insights into human folly that Charles Dickens laced throughout most of his novels, and certainly in Nickleby. This is one of the many qualities of his work that makes it a great joy to read. The comment above may have been written some time in the 1830s, but does anyone not recognize that it applies today, tomorrow, and to any other time in history? One of the great things about reading Dickens' great novels is to see how much does not change over the course of history or across the boundaries between different countries. I suppose one could get a greater sense of this by reading the literature of nations which are not as closely linked to our own as England was and still is, but there is no one who illuminates these things in quite the same way Dickens did in his novels, which is why they have always been popular throughout the world since they were written and published.

This novel was stronger than I thought it would be. As I mentioned before, there was something that made me slightly reluctant to try Nickleby because of the reference to its 'theatrical' qualities and the fact that it seemed to be a little more light-hearted than his later novels. For some reason, the older, darker and more cynical Dickens novels, written later in his career, have more appeal to me on the surface than some of his earlier and breezier works. And I would say that there is little in this novel which is very dark or even all that serious. Nonetheless, this did nothing to diminish my enthusiasm for the story and the characters once I got into the novel. Dickens remains unmatched for drawing long, complex, and stimulating plots and throwing in multiple twists and turns to keep the reader interested in all events. This novel was no exception. In fact, as I proceeded towards the end of the story, I got the sense that with this novel, Dickens' third, he must have been just coming into his own as a storyteller. You can almost feel his confidence as a novelist expanding as this long story unfolds. I wonder if that sense would be any less refined if I read, for example, his first novel, The Pickwick Papers. Time will tell as I will get to that one too, one of these years.

The story more or less carries us through the adventures of the title character and his lovely sister and his mother as they try to make their fortunes in the world up against the negative forces of poverty, injustice and their ruthless and cold relative, Ralph Nickleby, Nicholas' uncle. Early in the novel Ralph ships off the young Nicholas to a boarding school run by the cruel Wackford Squeers in order to be rid of him, and sets up his sister and mother in an empty, run-down building he owns just to keep him out of his hair as well. Nicholas is miserable at the horrid school, where Squeers physically abuses the young boys and ridicules everyone else. After Nicholas witnesses a horrid act of violence against a slow-minded youth named Smike, he cracks, beats Squeers to within an inch of his life, and escapes from the school with Smike to pursue another future any way he can. This sets up the central conflict of the novel, which contrasts the youthful Nicholas' determination to make his way on his own terms and care for his new companion, Smike, no matter what happens, against the calculating, self-indulgent business practices of his older relative, whose only interest is making money for himself at the expense and neglect of all others.

Along the way, Nicholas works in an acting troupe, for a politician (briefly), and finally establishes himself as a clerk in the offices of two twin brothers who are also business partners, and who are kind-hearted and generous with Nicholas and his relations. Meanwhile, his sister Kate attempts to care for herself and her mother while working in a dress-maker's shop and fending off the unwanted attentions of higher-class gentlemen who she comes in contact with through her job and who think they can have their way with her because of her lower position in life. Both Nicholas and his sister suffer through numerous indignities and injustices as they attempt to preserve their dignity and protect those who are important to them in a world where they have been given very little. We see as the novel progresses the strength and determination of both characters, Kate through her quiet pride and physical and inner beauty, and Nicholas with his refusal to back down against seemingly more powerful men who try to push him around because of who he is and who he is not. Nicholas uses his brain and his fists in various episodes, but remains a kind-hearted soul, which is most clearly revealed in his life-long devotion to his doomed friend, Smike, who he saved from the boarding school, and through his love for his sister and his mother.

Dickens' side characters are numerous and multi-colored, and the subplots range from the hilarious to the intensely dramatic: one involves a man living next door to Nicholas and Kate's mother who develops an inexplicable fancy for her, and expresses this by chucking vegetables from his garden over the wall of his yard into theirs as his way of literally showering her with gifts; while another relates a bitter rivalry between two buffoonish upper-class lords who end up settling their dispute with pistols in an open field. Here we find hilarious and ridiculous dinner parties, colorful depictions of stage performances, dramatic death scenes, a terrible and dismal suicide, descriptions of urban squalor and lush country scenes, and warm, feel-good family reunions. And, of course, by the end of the novel, more than one wedding.

To illustrate Dickens' descriptive powers, I offer these two passages as examples. The first depicts the teeming, pre-electric streets of downtown London circa 1838:

"They rattled on through the noisy, bustling, crowded streets of London, now displaying long double-rows of brightly burning lamps, dotted here and there with the chemists' glaring lights, and illuminated besides with the brilliant flood that streamed through the windows of the shops, where sparkling jewelry, silks and velvets of the richest colors, the most inviting delicacies, and the most sumptuous articles of luxurious ornament, succeeded each other in rich and glittering profusion. Streams of people apparently without end poured on and on, jostling each other in the crowd and then hurrying forward, scarcely seeming to notice the riches that surrounded them on every side."

The second, here, is a very different tone, and describes a graveyard:

"He had to pass a poor, mean burial ground - a dismal place, raised a few feet above the level of the street, and parted from it by a low parapet-wall and an iron railing; a rank, unwholesome, rotten spot, where the very grass and weeds seemed, in their frowsy growth, to tell that they had sprung from paupers' bodies, and had struck their roots in the graves of men, sodden, while alive, in streaming courts and hungry drunken dens. And here, in truth, they lay, parted from the living by a little earth and a board or two - lay thick and close - corrupting in body as they had in mind - a dense and squalid crowd. Here they lay, cheek by jowl with life: no deeper down than the feet of the throng that passed there, every day, and piled high as their throats."

The hope here is that between these vivid descriptions and the account of the plot summarized above, anyone who reads this will be compelled to pay attention to the works of Charles Dickens, whose novels provide one of the high points of my reading year in and year out, and who will always remain important to readers and to novelists, both novice and veteran, as long as the English language stays alive and well on this Earth.

See you next year for Dickenfest VI!!!!!

Duke Altum's Poem of the Week #46

This installment of the POTW feature is dedicated to a special family member of the blog founders, who is celebrating a big birthday today. She's hitting the double digits -- the big 1-0!

The poem itself, from Billy Collins, is kind of bleak (though interesting too), but that's not the point... it's meant to be humorous anyway... we just want to acknowledge the special day, that's the main thing!

So to J.T., happy birthday and much love from your uncles!

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On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.B
ut now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

The Inner Limits

Mutt Ploughman Reviews Philip K. Dick's novel "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" (1965)

AFTER DECADES OF GRASS-ROOTS DEVOTION, and beatification by a gradually expanding college of periodicals and arts organizations, the literary canonization of the science fiction master Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) has finally come to pass. This summer the Library of America, whose function is to preserve the work of this nation’s greatest writers, is publishing a volume of four of Dick’s best science fiction novels, one of which is 1965’s brilliant and fascinating The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

In Palmer Eldritch, Dick warns of an overcrowded earth (he also prophesies on global warming convincingly) in which human beings are ‘drafted’ by the government to mine other planets for resources. Life both on the slowly baking Earth and on these colonies has become increasingly pointless and empty for most people, which accounts for the tremendous popularity of a substance called Can-D, a hallucinatory drug.

In a Dickian splash of creativity and weirdness, the users of this drug, instead of floating off into some nameless void, inhabit tiny dolls that are placed inside miniature models with buildings, towns, and natural features called ‘layouts’. Can-D users gather around one of these layouts (like the board in a board game), ingest the drug through the mouth, and play out alternate-world adventures while their corporeal bodies remain in a semi-conscious trance.

Dick’s hero is the hapless Barney Mayerson, a low-level salesman of these layouts who suffers from a predisposition towards fundamentally theological questions. He is dispatched by his employer to investigate a rumor that a once-famous explorer, Palmer Eldritch, has returned from a decade-long venture to the outer reaches of space, and that he has brought something extraordinary back with him.

Palmer Eldritch – or something greater – has indeed returned, Mayerson learns, and his booty is a new substance, the hallucinatory effects of which make Can-D seem like mere titillation. As Eldritch himself explains to the existentially strung-out Mayerson, ‘God promises eternal life. I can do better. I can deliver it.’ Is redemption actually possible?

What follows is the sort of bleak, thrilling, and incisive tale that made Philip K. Dick a sui generis fantast, a kind of literary Palmer Eldritch. Like Barney Mayerson, however, the spoils for Dick’s trouble and his courage were few, and came too late.

What distinguishes Dicks’ novels from his contemporaries’ work is an insatiable appetite for the ultimate Reality, the Truth behind the lie of the modern world, and the brutally honest accounting of the disappointments and pitfalls man can encounter in the pursuit of same. ‘Isn’t a miserable reality better than the most interesting illusion?’ asks Mayerson. If that question had a clear answer, we might all be better off, but there would be no Philip K. Dick novels to trip through.

Orhan Pamuk on Writing

If ever there was material suitable for this blog, Orhan Pamuk's wonderful speech in acceptance of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature is it. The speech is an inspiring paean to the gift of literature -- both the reading and the writing of it -- and ought to be widely read and savored for its warmth, wit and wisdom.

I have yet to read Pamuk and Mutt has only recently dipped into his work with My Name is Red, but I can guarantee our readers that this is not the last time his name will appear in these pages.

Here is an excerpt that is representative of the exuberance and deep insight of Pamuk's extraordinary speech. Enjoy.

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For me, to be a writer is to acknowledge the secret wounds that we carry inside us, wounds so secret that we ourselves are barely aware of them, and to patiently explore them, know them, illuminate them, own them, and make them a conscious part of our spirit and our writing...

All writers who have devoted their lives to their work know this reality: whatever our original purpose, the world that we create after years and years of hopeful writing will, in the end, take us to other, very different places. It will take us far from the table at which we have worked in sadness or in anger; it will take us to the other side of that sadness and anger, into another world.

The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.

Report from London: Mutt Ploughman on "Dickensfest V"

In what is quickly becoming an annual feature of The Secret Thread (well, ok, I started it last year), and in lieu of the fact that there's not much to report on the novel-writing front (I'm in a writing hiatus, for numerous complicated reasons, but I hasten to add that I am still conducting research in the interim), I now devote some time to a mid-novel report from my yearly endeavor to read one major work from the canon of the great, great English novelist Charles Dickens. This is my fifth annual "Dickensfest" venture (technically, the sixth in the last seven years). For posterity, here are the previous installments in the history of Mutt Ploughman's "Dickensfest":

2000 - A Tale of Two Cities
2001 - (year of ignorance/terror)
2002 - Our Mutual Friend
2003 - Bleak House
2004 - Dombey and Son
2005 - Martin Chuzzlewit

And now, as you can see on the right, I am immersed in the third novel in Dickens' catalogue, Nicholas Nickelby.

Right now, I am about 1/2 of the way through the novel. A little less, technically, but close enough. The first thing I'd say about this novel is that I confess to not really having had a great desire to read it, at least compared to other Dickens novels. I chose to, however, because I wanted to see if my gut was wrong (so far, it is!), because I have committed to reading all of his works anyway, and because, the most practical reason, I happened to have a copy of the novel on hand. I did have other Dickens works on hand too, but in the end I chose to see what it is that was making me less than compelled to explore this work, and whether those feelings were unfounded.

It may be that I felt this way about the novel beforehand because of the way it's described on the back of the Bantam version I have: the synopsis touts it as 'the most gorgeously theatrical' of Dickens' novels. I didn't know what the heck that meant, and I don't really know who would, since it sounds like one of those high literary-critic catch phrases that mean more or less nothing except demonstrate how creative the critic can be with his or her words. But it did indicate that the novel concerned itself more with the stage/theater world more than other Dickens novels, and that isn't a particular interest of mine. I enjoy the theater as much as anyone else but that is a world I have never been involved with nor cared a whole lot about. But I knew, as is fairly common knowledge about Dickens, that the theater was a tremendous source of inspiration and joy for Dickens, so it was not surprising that he would write about that world. It's not surprising either that he felt this way about it either; it was more or less the motion picture industry of Dickens' time (and all ages before then), and one can see why he felt so strongly about it as a form of entertainment. But I've never been that interested in the theater myself.

Furthermore, the story of a down-on-his-luck young man making his way in the world certainly seems to be rather commonplace in Dickens' work, and I guess I wondered how much different of an experience this novel would be than some of his others. Dombey and Son had a similar vein running through it, and Martin Chuzzlewit also contained plot lines with young, ambitious, but disadvantaged men, and women, with firm moral qualities, trying to make headway in a society that disdains them in favor of people with more 'advantages'.

All this being said, I know enough about Dickens now to know that his novels are always worthwhile, and although they all do contain similar elements, they are by no means all the same. Each Dickens story is different, each cast of characters particularly striking and memorable. But those casts are always remarkable, always finely drawn, and always most impressive in their scope and variety. In Nickelby, so far I have run into the virtuous title character and his beautiful and good-hearted sister; their woebegone, constantly lamenting mother; their miserly, cold uncle; a colorful manager of a theater troupe; a chattery and warm female painter; a number of buffoon-ish young men with high social positions but little else to recommend them; a scheming, whiny young woman who sees herself as entitled to become Nicholas' wife and becomes devilish when rejected by him; and a cruel, tyrannical, abusive boarding school master who gives new meaning to the term 'child abuse'. (Dickens was always a stong voice for disadvantaged, poor children - he experienced poverty in his youth, and always remembered it and preserved his experience of it in his novels and in his public life.)

With Dickens the enjoyment is always found in the accurate, humorous, and insightful exhibition of human nature, with all of its foibles, as embodied in these wide casts of characters. What was true of men and women in all casts of society in London in the early to mid-19th century is in many ways still true. Thus in Nicholas Nickelby, we recognize the ways men & women jostle and parry for social positioning, and although the constraints for women were far more prevalent at that time, their ends, and those of men, seemed to be nonetheless the same. We recognize how ridiculous humans can act when we concern ourselves with how we look to others, how to get ourselves 'ahead' in society, and what the consequences are of placing our priorities on things that are transitory. Ralph Nickelby, Nicholas' distant and self-concerned uncle, is more than willing to place his niece and nephew into unhappy circumstances simply in order to maintain business relationships that benefit his own financial well-being. Many of those same contacts consider themselves entitled to the hand and attentions of Kate Nickelby, Nicholas' sister, simply because of their titles and her lower position in life. The reader sees how preposterous this is, but also witnesses the devastating consequences for the virtuous character of Kate, who ends up suffering despite her constant effort to have her voice be heard and her own individual rights respected.

Nicholas, meanwhile, makes his way to the nearby town of Portsmouth on his own force of will and ingenuity, and at this point in the novel has found himself in an acting troupe there, where he discovers he has an immense amount of natural talent. He has not disclosed to his mother and sister yet how he is making his fortune, but when he is paid for his increasingly lauded performances on the stage, he sends his money to his mother and sister back in London. He vows that, after having been shipped off by his uncaring uncle to the dungeon-like boarding school to wither away under the cruel Wackford Squeers early in the story, he will make his own fortune in the world, and when he does he will return to care permanently for his mother and sister. No one else in the world will.

Dickens was not a subtle writer, and every character is an exaggerated version of what we encounter in life. The good are noble, true, and eternally kind-hearted; the evil are eternally scheming and devising ways to defeat their enemies with the blackest of hearts. But his characterizations bring out the truths and folly of humanity, and probably do so better than any novelist has done again or will do. Add that to the tremendous descriptive ability Dickens possessed, a man who used to wander the streets of London for hours at night taking note of every detail, every dirty corner, vagabond outcast, noisy tavern, windswept sky and cold rainy landscape, his penchant for humor, and his unmatched ability to craft long, twisted plots that always coalesce in the end into something satisfying and good for the soul, and you have the Charles Dickens experience. It will never go out of style. His novels will stand forever as the gift of a superb writer to the world of literature.

See the second installment for my commentary on the second half of Nicholas Nickelby.

Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory": An Appreciation

Recently I was greatly rewarded by reading Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" on the enthusiastic recommendation of a friend of mine. We're just past the official Christmas season so I guess my timing is a bit off; nevertheless I wanted to share a few comments about it because I found it to be a beautiful, heartbreaking piece that I heartily recommend to all who enjoy good reading (and good writing!).

By sheer coincidence, I received in the mail via NetFlix (the greatest thing going since sliced bread) the film Capote just after I finished reading this famous short story/memoir, so as of late I've had Truman Capote haunting my mind... which is something unusual for me, having only read In Cold Blood a few years back and knowing hardly anything about him or his life. At some point I will write up a brief review of the film for the side column over there, since I definitely want to make a point of recommending that as well.

As I just said, Capote's "nonfiction novel" was my only previous experience with his writing, so I really didn't have much by way of expectations for reading "A Christmas Memory." All I knew about it was that it was some kind of reminiscence about his childhood, that people have tended to like it, and that my friend, who is an avid reader and film-watcher like me, was deeply moved by it. As a matter of fact, he told me that he and his wife re-read the story every year around Christmastime, which intrigued me on a number of levels, not the least of which that he doesn't believe in nor celebrate the tradition Christmas holiday (i.e., the birth of Jesus)... so I wondered what it was about this particular story that gave it enough weight and value to be read anew each year.

I can't speak for my friend, so I can't answer that question here. There are more than likely deeply personal reasons for why the story moves him as much as he does. He holds some things in common with Capote in terms of upbringing (raised in a "country" state, mostly by women, father out of the picture, etc.), so I can only guess that has something to do with his opinion of the story.

As for me, I found it to be a masterful piece of writing. I think I say that primarily because of the power of the prose: the power to immerse you into a specific time and place, but also the power to make you feel some of the heartbreak, the loneliness, and the pain of lost innocence that Capote is expressing in the story. "Lost innocence" is a very common theme for a writer to pick up on, especially in a memoir or piece remembering one's childhood; however, I've read very few things that express it as perfectly and as beautifully as this. But the story doesn't only make you feel a very real pain for the loss of that all-important quality -- it also reinforces how utterly important and valuable it is, how it is a source of genuine wisdom. For although Capote is lamenting its loss in his own life, he's also recalling and celebrating its central presence in the life of someone very dear to him, someone who taught him the meaning of real love and friendship. Someone whom he can now only reach out to in his memory.

The story itself is simple: just a memory of one particular Christmas season from Capote's childhood, and the sights, smells, sensations, etc. that accompanied it. It's quite short, and related in a straightforward style, with just enough author commentary to know that he's looking back on it from a distance of both time and space. Like most childhood memories, it is elegiac in mood, but somehow this one achieves a perfect mixture of wonder and melancholy. It's hard to put into words, but what really makes this little memory remarkable is the way it is written: it is just so vivid and heartfelt that anyone with a pulse can't help but feel some of Capote's joy for the small graces of his childhood, as well as the pain for the absences and misunderstandings.

Imagine a morning in late November, it begins. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is it main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.

A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched, Her face is remarkable -- not unlike Lincoln's; craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. "Oh my," she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "it's fruitcake weather!"

The person to whom she is speaking is myself. I am seven; she is sixty-something. We are cousins, very distant ones, and we have lived together -- well, as long as I can remember. Other people inhabit the house, relatives; and though they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them. We are each other's best friend. She calls me Buddy, in memory of a boy who was formerly her best friend. The other Buddy died in the 1880's, when she was still a child. She is still a child.

Something about those opening paragraphs of this remarkable reminiscence set the tone beautifully for the rest of the piece. They almost contain all that you need to know about the whole story. Capote had a famously difficult childhood; his parents divorced bitterly and engaged themselves in a long, hard custody battle over him. And then, when his mother, a real Southern belle apparently, gained custody of Truman, she promptly abandoned him, leaving him with relatives in the Middle of Nowhere, Alabama, while she went off to seek brighter, shinier things in New York. (Later he went to live with her and her second husband, Joe Capote, there, which gave him a pen name to use, if nothing else.) Yet he seems to have lived some of the happiest years of his life in that Alabama country town, thanks primarily to the love of his misfit spinster cousin, Miss Sook Faulk, who he calls his "best friend" or simply "my friend" in this story -- almost as if she were the one and only true friend he ever had. In some ways, that may have been the case... for she apparently loved him unconditionally, for who he was, his child's mind and hers seeing understanding the world in more or less the same innocent way.

Miss Sook had an annual ritual during the Christmas season, and that was to bake as many of her famous fruitcakes as possible and give them away as gifts to family and friends and total strangers. "Buddy" would help her in this annual task, and it seems that throughout his life, when he holidays would roll around again, his mind would always return to these memories of baking fruitcakes with her, with their devilish secret ingredient: homemade moonshine from the owner of the town's "fish fry and dancing cafe," Mr. Haha Jones. "They call him Haha because he's so gloomy, a man who never laughs," Capote remembers through a child's eyes. The way he relates how they would go about getting this "sinful" concoction, and their use of (and occasional partaking in) the spirit, is both hilarious and poignant. The whole tale puts a laugh in your throat in one line, and then replaces it with a big ol' lump in the next.

I know well that these scattered comments and thoughts can't possibly do justice to such a poetic and moving account. But I hope some of my enthusiasm for Capote's memoir, and admiration for the art of the thing, is somehow getting through. Trust me when I say that this is a profoundly moving meditation on how simple acts of kindness, compassion and companionship can stay with a soul for a lifetime -- and not just stay with one, but inform and inspire one as well. Truman Capote led a confused and difficult life, that's well known; yet one wonders what it might have been had his "best friend" Miss Sook not taken up the responsibilities his parents discarded, and given him the TLC every child deserves and yearns for. (Every adult too, for that matter.) One thing's certain: his name probably wouldn't be showing up on literary blogs, in films, and on the pages of great works of literature... a boat can't get anywhere without a little helpful breeze filling up its sails.

People found Miss Sook to be simpleminded, eccentric and slow... yet her wisdom has endured, not just for Capote, but for millions of grateful readers besides, thanks to his beautiful and expressive love-letter to her. So to conclude, here she is, channeled through the inspired pen of a great writer, Truman Capote:

The wind is blowing, and nothing will do till we've run to a pasture below the house where Queenie has scooted to bury her bone (and where, a winter hence, Queenie will be buried, too). There, plunging through the healthy waist-high grass, we unreel our kites, feel them twitching at the string like sky fish as they swim into the wind...

"How foolish I am!" my friend cries, suddenly alert, like a woman remembering too late she has biscuits in the oven. "You know what I've always thought?" she asks in a tone of discovery, and not smiling at me but at a point beyond. "I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away the spooky feeling. But I'll wager it never happens. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes that the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are" -- her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone -- "just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes."

Here's hoping that we all leave the world with the beauty of the present moment in our own eyes... and with the wisdom we sometimes call innocence returning, when we need it most, to our hearts.

Duke Altum's Poem of the Week #45

What better way to ring in a new year of poetry (among many other things) here at The Secret Thread than with this classic by one of my all-time favorite poets, R. S. Thomas.

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Song at the Year's Turning

Shelley dreamed it. Now the dream decays.
The props crumble; the familiar ways
Are stale with tears trodden underfoot.
The heart's flower withers at the root.
Bury it then, in history's sterile dust.
The slow years shall tame your tawny lust.

Love deceived him; what is there to say
The mind brought you by a better way
To this despair? Lost in the world's wood
You cannot stanch the bright menstrual blood.
The earth sickens; under naked boughs
The frost comes to barb your broken vows.

Is there blessing? Light's peculiar grace
In cold splendour robes this tortured place
For strange marriage. Voices in the wind
Weave a garland where a mortal sinned.
Winter rots you; who is there to blame?
The new grass shall purge you in its flame.

DUKE ALTUM'S NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2006

As has become the tradition on this blog, here is my annual "Notable Books" list, in which the ten books that impacted me the most during the year are described. As usual, comments welcome!

*******

The Fall, Albert Camus – This bleak but fascinating meditation on the human condition and the nature of justice, in the form of a long monologue from a Parisian lawyer in a seedy bar in Amsterdam, penetrates deep beneath the skin and lingers in the mind long after it’s over. It was a stroke of brilliance for Camus, a writer of rare genius indeed, to set the story in this notorious city, in which the winding canals purposely echo the descending levels of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. Who’s ultimately to blame for this mess we’re all in? Is it God? Is it ourselves? And will the accounts be reconciled in the end? The Fall wrestles with these Big Questions as hauntingly as anything I’ve ever read.

Testimony of Hope, Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan – These written texts of the Lenten spiritual exercises Cardinal Thuan preached to Pope John Paul II and the Vatican staff in the Jubilee Year 2000 are among the most unique and moving meditations on the subject of hope you will ever come across. Drawing heavily from his experiences while in prison for 13 years (9 of them in solitary confinement) under various Communist governments in Vietnam, Cardinal Thuan gently but powerful urges us to grow deeper in our relationship with Jesus in the midst of our personal sufferings. A shattering, perspective-changing book that both challenged and rewarded my faith.

The Bridge on the Drina, Ivo Andric – This epic novel of war-torn Bosnia, told in the form of a history of the villages surrounding a massive stone bridge from the sixteenth century through World War I, vividly depicts a suffering that transcends both race and culture. But it also is a moving and rewarding meditation on the value of community and tradition, as a means of preserving hope in the midst of calamity. It’s the sort of book that makes you feel idealistic about the abilities of art to cross the chasm between races and cultures and be a force for peace in the world. Andric’s crie de coeur for his shattered homeland ought to be required reading not just for literature students, but for anyone studying diplomacy and/or foreign relations as well.

Pastoralia, George Saunders – This year brought me into contact with the hilarious and bizarre work of George Saunders, and trust me when I say that alone is worth celebrating. Saunders’ second collection of stories is strange, satirical, bleak and, at times, surprisingly moving. A writer of remarkable wit and compassion, Saunders can make you laugh out loud at any point, but can also turn around and give you a chill down your spine. This is one of the most memorable collections I’ve read in a long time. Characters wrestle with boring office jobs, morbid reality TV shows and sarcastic, rotting messengers from the underworld, but there’s a deep-seated longing within them, and you recognize it as something common to us all. Each story puts its finger on it somehow, and refuses to let go.

City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America, Donald L. Miller – Of course I’m not qualified to properly rate this book as social history, but it was a meaningful and memorable read for me this year, as it cast my home city in an entirely new and different light. This fascinating account of the founding of the city of Chicago and its emergence as a central force of American capitalism and tenacity (especially following the Great Fire of 1871) kept me engaged through its 600+ pages, with interesting anecdotes and vivid portraits of the city’s major characters – and there have been many! It’s often been said that the story of Chicago’s rise from the central plains is the story of America itself in microcosm, and with Chicago’s complex brew of courage and corruption, brutality and bravery, I can certainly understand the claim.

Gitanjali, Rabidranath Tagore – What the heck is this, and what is it doing on this list? Well, what it is is a book of poetry-in-prose form from the first non-Westerner to ever win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Why it’s here is simply this: it’s like nothing I’ve ever read before, nor am I likely to again. These fascinating, beautiful meditations on the Divine, the natural world and human longing absolutely bowled me over, not just for their deep wisdom and the stunning beauty of the language, but for how they spoke to my Western heart despite their obvious Eastern origin. Reading them as a Christian, I was completely shocked at how this Hindu writer could connect with my heart, speaking as a fellow man doing his best to understand the mysteries of life. Thomas Merton took a lot of heat from other Christians for seeking to find common threads between Eastern and Western religious traditions, as Tagore was trying to do long before… but reading something like this reveals quite clearly that such threads exist, and are worth exploring.

Prince of Darkness, J. F. Powers – After years of putting off reading him for reasons I can’t quite fathom, I finally picked up a used copy of Powers’ debut collection of stories (he only had three, I was surprised to learn, and just two novels in his lifetime), and immediately regretted the delay. These funny, deeply insightful stories contain some of the most brilliant writing I’ve read all year. Powers is of course most famous for his satiric fiction about all-too-human priests, and indeed his best stories are the ones in which these men of God wrestle with fallen humanity, in either themselves or others, in amusing and often poignant ways. But in the final story, when a priest fully expecting to be named a pastor of his own parish learns he is instead being re-assigned to serve as an associate once again, his superior’s words in a hand-written note remind us of the profound spiritual import of these earthly struggles: “…and when you get there, I expect that you will find not peace, but a sword.”

The Border Trilogy, Cormac McCarthy – Of course I understand this is cheating since we’re talking about three books here; however, as I read them – perhaps unwisely, I’m still not sure – all in one shot (my copy of the novels includes them all in one volume), I figure I can get away with it. I might not have put any one of the three novels on this list (with the exception of The Crossing), but taken together they amass a weight and a cumulative power unsurpassed in recent literature. All three novels focus on young men embarking on long and painful journeys that take them across the U.S.-Mexico border and back again, during which blood is shed, hearts are broken, and souls struggle to come to grips with a God that would allow for so much evil and pain in the world. All written in prose as starkly beautiful as poetry, and as muscular and free-ranging as philosophy. McCarthy’s fiction is on another level entirely from that of his contemporaries.

The Toilers of the Sea, Victor Hugo – This is surely the strangest, most obscure of the books on the list this year… but it’s also one of the greatest man vs. nature classics you’ll ever read. Here’s some trivia for your next party: Hugo wrote three huge books in a kind of trilogy that was meant to expound upon man’s most important “contentions”: Les Miserables was a tale to explore man’s struggles with God; Notre-Dame de Paris man’s struggles with Law; and this one, man’s struggles with Nature. In it, a humble fisherman ventures out alone to the wide open sea to recover the engines of a wrecked steamship, and there he wrestles with the elements, himself and, climactically, a giant octopus (“devil-fish,” as Hugo puts it). As wild and unruly as the ocean itself, the book could have used serious editing, but is nevertheless a fascinating, rambling treatise on the physical and spiritual struggles of the human animal. And by the way: if you want to write a huge, sprawling, philosophical novel, you almost have to set it upon the open sea, as both Hugo and Herman Melville seemed to realize instinctively…

Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, Christopher Dawson – This important and insightful book surveys the formative impact that religion, most notably Christianity, has had on the common culture we have to come to know as “Western civilization.” I say “important” because in our time, as the European Union seeks to draft a new constitution that denies its own religious heritage, it is more important than ever to recognize and seek the meaning of Christianity’s influence on our understanding of human life, society, and culture. Dawson artfully lays out how Christian beliefs led directly to the institutions we, until very recently, had always taken for granted, such as the university, the courts, marriage and the family. And in a provocative last chapter of particular interest to readers of this blog, he demonstrates how one literary work, William Langland’s Piers Plowman, could have changed the course of history if its profound insights on the relationship between religion and society were taken more seriously.

BONUS ROUND -- Books that I would have put on the list if it were not limited to 10: District and Circle, Seamus Heaney; The Harafish, Naguib Mahfouz; Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter; The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer; The Amalgamation Polka, Stephen Wright; The Collected Poems of Richard Wilbur

MUTT PLOUGHMAN’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF 2006

This year-end top ten list reveals my ten favorite books that I read in 2006, presented this year in order of merit.

10. A Quire of Seven, Halldor Laxness. Seven short, rare tales from the Icelandic Nobel laureate which testify to the quixotic intensity of his fertile imagination and also demonstrate his concern with and insights on the mysteries of the human soul.

9. One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner, Jay Parini. This biography of Faulkner apparently got mixed reviews and may not surpass Joseph Blotner’s two-volume definitive work on the subject, but for my purposes this was one of the most illuminating and insightful books I’ve read in a long time about a writer whose brilliance will remain uncontested for all time.

8. The Stranger, Albert Camus. The French Nobel Prize-winner’s famous short novel about the existential angst of a man on trial for murdering another man for no apparent reason is as powerful and intellectually arresting as I’ve always heard it was.

7. Seeing, José Saramago. This allegorical sequel to Saramago’s well known Blindness is a blistering critique of modern democracy that surpasses its predecessor. Written with his singular wry humor and rife with his unsettling ability to powerfully illuminate the absurdities of life in ‘civilized’ nations.

6. Beloved, Toni Morrison. Devastating novel about a horrific choice made by a black woman to prevent her child from living a life in bondage, this novel is beautifully written, ingeniously structured and emotionally shattering.

5. My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk. Winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature, this novel was my doorway into Pamuk’s writing, and is one of the most challenging and original novels I’ve read in a long time, a composite of a murder-mystery, a treatise on art and creativity, a history primer on the Ottoman Empire of Turkey, a literary history of that nation, and a fascinating window into Islamic culture all wrapped up in one novel. Furthermore it is fascinatingly structured and written with obvious boldness and originality.

4. The War of the End of the World, Mario Vargas Llosa. A feast for the senses, this epic novel tells a spawling but riveting story of a religious community led by a charismatic prophet named The Counselor in late 19th century Brazil that comes together to form an insurrection against a totalitarian government.

3. Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow. This famous novel about the turn of the 20th century in America is one of the most flawlessly written novels I’ve read in a long time. Every single page of this powerful story that intertwines an upper-class white family, a black family and a poor Jewish family is interesting. This is a modern classic.

2. Suite Francaise, Iréne Nemirovsky. Two small novels of a planned five written by an extraordinarily talented Russian-born Jewish woman about the devastating events of the Second World War. The most amazing thing about this book is not the truly incredible tale of its discovery by her daughter after sixty years, nor is it that the writer, who died in Auschwitz after composing the novels in hiding, had the courage and skill to write about these events as they were happening – it is the extraordinary literary quality of the writing itself.

1. The Road, Cormac McCarthy. This nearly perfect post-apocalyptic masterpiece by one of the greatest American writers working today permanently cements his status as such. It is a stunning novel about the capacity of love to endure over even the most horrific evils and is without question the best novel I read all year. (See my blog post of October 2006 in the “Archives” section for more details.)

Duke Altum's Poem of the Week #44

Just about everyone would agree that one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, in any genre, was the famous Chilean poet and 1971 Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda. No less a writer than Gabriel Garcia Marquez called him "the greatest poet of the century, in any language." And few poets have ever had a broader appeal and readership than Neruda: he was tremendously popular all over the world (one of his first collections, Twenty Love Poems, made him an international name), which is astonishing when you think he began his life in an obscure village in the rainforests of southern Chile, far from anything you might consider "modern" or "cosmopolitan." He also, interestingly, enjoyed a long and successful career as a diplomat, serving at posts in eastern and western Europe, as well as the Far East. When he heard about his selection for the Nobel, he was in Paris, serving as the Chilean ambassador to France.

I am only just starting to get to know some of Neruda's work, and I can say that he is one of these rare poets in which, upon your very first readings of his work, you realize you are dealing with a genius, a visionary gifted with the power to transport his audience to another place through the power and beauty of language. Usually when I notice this quality in a poet's work, my head finds the work itself to be difficult to understand, even though my heart is responding to the music of the verses. That's certainly the case here -- it is the same thing I experience when reading the work of Rainer Maria Rilke, for example, or T. S. Eliot. I don't pretend to understand it yet (and likely never will fully), but I can certainly appreciate it and enjoy the unique reading experience. In this way, to me anyway, reading the truly great poets is like reading the mystics of the Church: you never fully grasp what they are getting at, but there is more than enough truth, beauty and wisdom to, in Seamus Heaney's immortal words, "catch the heart off-guard, and blow it open."

Here is a poem from Neruda that, I think, captures the astonishing visual, even cinematic, power of his language... it describes a place I guarantee you have never been to and most likely never will, and yet when you read it, it takes form within your mind's eye in all its terrifying and beautiful splendor. I don't pretend for a second to know exactly what this poem is saying, but whatever that is, it sure is saying in it in a striking and original way. I was particularly struck by his comparison of that frozen, craggy landscape to a cathedral. Stunning work!

*******

Antarctic

Antarctic, austral crown, cluster
of frozen lights, cinerarium
of ice broken off
the terrestrial fabric, cathedral rent
by purity, nave brought down
over the basilica of whiteness,
immolator of shattered glass,
hurricane dashed against the walls
of nocturnal snow,
give me your double breast stirred
by the invader solitude, channel
of the terrifying wind masked
behind all the corollas of an ermine,
behind all the klaxons of the shipwreck
and the white scuttling of the worlds,
or your breast of peace polished by the wind
like a pure rectangle of quartz,
and the un-breathed, the infinite
transparent material, the opened air,
the solitude without earth or poverty.
Kingdom of strictest meridian,
whispering ice-harp, immobile,
close to the enemy stars.

All seas are your circular sea.
All the resistances of Ocean
concentrated in you their transparency,
and salt settled you with castles,
the ice raised high cities
over a crystal spire, the wind
swept along your briny paroxysm
like a tiger burnt by the ice.
Your cupolas gave birth to danger
from the vessel of the glaciers,
and life lies in your dorsal desert
like a vineyard underwater, burning
without consuming, preserving the fire
for the springtime of the ice.

Celebrating a True Christian Classic

Recently, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of but have learned it's always better not to question, several people close to me have been reading a book that has been one of my favorites for many, many years. If "Christian fantasy" is a legitimate literary category (and I would argue that it not only is, but enjoys a long and distinguished history, from early classics such as the anonymous Anglo-Saxon epic The Dream of the Rood to Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Hawthorne's The Celestial Railroad, Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and beyond), certainly C. S. Lewis' short but vivid tale The Great Divorce stands as a classic of the genre. I know for a fact that he wrote it with many of these older classics very much in mind, but as with all fiction that he produced, he also wrote it to explore his own thinking on theological and philosophical questions that were important to him.

If you look at all of Lewis' "fantasties" and fictional writings, and are familiar with his more "serious" non-fiction works (I put that in quotes because he himself would scoff at the assumption that a work is more "serious" simply because it is non-fiction... in reality, I am almost sure he would argue for the opposite position), you will come to realize that all of his fictions were simply the manifestations of the ideas and questions he had been grappling with his entire life. It's been well-documented by far more capable and wiser minds than my own that his Chronicles of Narnia, for example, represents the "fleshing out" in story form of most of his own theological beliefs and hopes. His rich, mythic novel Till We Have Faces does the same thing, only this time was intended for adults and is far more complex and melancholic in tone (taking as one of its primary themes the necessity of suffering as a path to genuine redemption). In The Screwtape Letters, quite possibly the wisest book I have ever read (excepting the Bible), he famously mused on the battle between sin and grace raging underneath the surface of every human life (as observed from the point of view of one of the devil's master tempters). And he memorably and poignantly, in his last years, mused on thorny questions about prayer in an imaginary correspondence with a friend he called "Malcolm" in Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer.

The Great Divorce would seem to be his musings on the nature of the afterlife, as in, what it might be like and how we live once we're there. But those who have read the book will tell you that that's really not what it is at all. For despite its fantastic premise of a bus trip from Hell to Heaven and back again, the tale is much more concerned with how we live our lives before we die than after. And of course in this it is only continuing very much in the tradition I described above: the idea of writing a parable of the afterlife in order to spur readers' hearts to face tough questions about our present lives is a very old one indeed. Heck, Jesus did it himself (think of the parable of Lazarus and the rich man).

Through a series of ingenious dialogs between passengers on the bus and residents of Heaven/Hell, Lewis illuminates our reasons for believing what we do, or for refusing to believe, as the case may be. I can't remember if this exact quote comes from the book or not, but this story is certainly the manifestation of Lewis' profound insight that "the doors of Hell are locked from the inside." Meaning, if there is indeed a Hell, we will only go there if we choose to: God, because He is all-loving according to His very nature, does not condemn anyone to Hell. He does, however, allow us to make the free choice to be separated from Him forever, because He knows that all geuine love must be free. Here Lewis memorably depicts for us the residents of Hell who are only there because their pride is preventing them from accepting the grace and mercy of God.

My wife and my sister, as well as my partner in crime on this blog, have all read The Great Divorce recently, so they would be much more able to comment on it than I am at the moment, my memory of it being far foggier than I'd like (sucks to admit that, but it's true -- obviously I'm due for a re-read!). Therefore if any of them read this, I invite their comments on this wise and witty story. In the meantime, if anyone else reading this has not read Lewis' little classic, I strongly urge you to rectify this as soon as possible! I think I can safely say that, like all great literature (hence the entire point of this blog), diving into this book can only be good for your soul...

Journal of a "Novel"-Entry 30

MY (LITERARY) YEAR IN REVIEW-2006

"For at least the first three months of 2006, I decided I am going to embark on a 'reading experiment' unlike anything I have tried before. I am going to spend the first quarter of the year doing what I guess I am going to call 'research reading' in preparation for a writing project I plan to attempt." - Mutt Ploughman, December 6, 2005


'Tis the season for year-end reviews, so I am going to devote this edition of the Journal to a retrospective of the first year of progress on the writing of what, let's hope, will become my first novel, tentatively titled "Only The Dying".

On the publication front, aside from working on the novel, I have made a number of attempts to get published again this year, but most of them fell short. My lone success this year was the publication of my book review "Freedom's Warriors" in America magazine, on May 10. I sent out at least four short stories, two more reviews, and a number of queries, and I also entered one short story writing contest, but none of them worked out. So be it, that's the writer's life. I STILL have not made it into the ranks of published fiction writers, after at least ten years of trying. But I will, eventually. I guarantee that. I do have one story still out for review so I guess there is the remote possibility that it could be accepted for publication, but it won't happen in 2006.

Back to my main focus for the year, my novel in progress, set in Indiana between 1924 and roughly 1960. As you can see from my post of almost exactly one year ago, I started the year conducting research with the intention of hopefully starting a novel. I wanted to limit the period of time I allowed myself to research: so I decided I would read exclusively about the time and places I was interested for a period of 3-4 months. I read numerous books about the Depression, the oil industry, and the State of Indiana between December '05 and March of this year. This was the first time I had ever read a series of books with the specific intent to research a writing project, and it was a really interesting and informative learning experience. I feel like I gained a great deal of background information, but it was no where near comprehensive. I didn't want to overload myself on the research. I only wanted to do enough to get myself to a starting point, following the model once famously put forth by the novelist E.R. Doctorow.

Since I actually begin to write the Prologue to the novel in March, I think the research worked well for me in this regard. Sooner or later, you have to just dive in. I had only done 3 months' worth of 'hard' reading for the novel, but I knew that I had been mulling over themes and potential storylines for years. Then an idea for a way to begin (and eventually end) the novel came to me in the form of the character of Father Luke Brogan, S.J., the son of Walter Brogan, the protagonist of the novel I was intending to write. So I just picked up the ol' automatic pencil and started knocking out a Prologue, set in the present day. So curiously enough, after all the period-oriented reading I had been doing for over three months, when I actually started writing the novel I placed my character in the present day. But this character had been raised and his character formed during the period I had just spent three months researching, and my hope was that whatever knowledge I the writer had gained about that time would somehow be translated into the appropriate voice for the elderly priest I was creating. That was the idea. I don't know how successful it was.

In the eight months that have passed between March and early December, I have written and revised a Prologue and the first two Chapters of Part I of the novel. I don't write at a fast pace, obviously, but I think I've gained more ground than I might have hoped in the first year of effort. I try to set long-term goals for my writing life, and this novel is no exception. But I also try to keep them attainable and realistic. I always knew that if I ever started writing a novel - especially one that was set in a time that I did not live in - I was going to need a lot of time to stumble my way through it. First novelists, in one sense, having no name and no contract, no pressures from anyone other than themselves, have all the time in the world. The only deadlines are self-imposed. I try to keep mine reasonable. At one point in my life I had the goal of obtaining a Master's degree before I turned 30. I just got that in under the wire, finishing my graduate thesis in May 2000 (my 30th birthday was in November). [Note: that "thesis" was supposed to be my first "novel", a story about soliders called "The Faith and Fire Within". But it never quite got itself together; I think it was too soon for me to make a serious attempt. Although at the time I was very serious about it. I wrote about 300 longhand pages, which I still have, but they're painful.]

Now, my next longterm goal is simple: finish this novel before I turn 40. I am currently 36. As you can see, I am giving myself a lot of time. But I know myself and my work ethic; I also know the time constraints I have working against me and how my lack of experience will cause me to take more time. But in light of this timeframe, I think that the fact that I have 3 chapter-sized portions of the book written in draft means I am making pretty decent progress. I have a Prologue and two chapters, and I just started working on a third. Since I envision the book to have maybe somewhere between 12-15 chapters, I think I am off to a pretty decent start. So I have to note here for the record that I am pleased with the progress I have made so far. This is without a doubt the most serious attempt I've made at a dream I've had for at least 16 years: to write a novel. If you have a dream and you stick at it for 16 years or more, you're either dedicated, stubborn as hell, or just plain crazy. Most writers would probably tell you that it takes all three of those to get a novel done. I am certainly learning that myself. But I'm proud of what I've written so far, and I am proud that I am sticking to my vision for the book.

Am I writing a good novel? Can I do this for another 3 or 4 YEARS? Will anyone publish it? Will anyone want to read it if someone does? Does anyone give a damn besides me one way or another? Who knows. Those aren't questions I am interested in right now. All I want to do is write the story that's been brewing in me for a long time.

Thus, I make my pledge for 2007: 3-4 more chapters. As I see it, if I succeed with this goal, by this time next year the novel will be halfway done, more or less. I advise all readers to get in on the ground floor now. Start throwing your support my way and then brag to all your friends later that you were behind the book from the beginning. (Just kidding.) But seriously, there it is: my goal for 2007. Write more of the novel, non-stop.