The jury voted 11 to 2 to toss The Veterinarian into the river,
hands and feet bound but gag removed so it could be recorded if she
admitted her crimes before drowning.
As a further humiliation, the judge ordered she be stripped before
her execution and, so she didn’t come bubbling to the surface, a
knapsack full of rocks was to be affixed to her back.
Your honour, The Veterinarian’s attorney called. We have no quarrels
with the death sentence. We understand that you could have chosen a
harsher method of execution. That waterway—she pointed to the river—is
our lifeforce and birthright as Riverbabies. However, I respectfully
request that you allow my client to die clothed and with dignity for the
sake—
Counsel, he replied. Don’t test my patience. You’re lucky I didn’t
order her stoned to death. Remember, there are no appeals. No take
backs. And all decisions are final as you and your organization have
agreed upon. Bailiff, please strip the defendant.
—From my story, “Wolfkin/Wolfkind (Gun Court)” over at Chimurenga: PowerMoneySex Reader read the rest here.
So I sat down to write this novel, Wolf Tickets--that's where I been, writing this book or as I like to call it selling wolf tickets. At first, it began as a writing exercise. Short bursts of narrative I could draft while my son slept or something. I actually wrote the first one (I think) in the hospital on the day of his birth. I started off very disconnected from it and then it began taking its own shape and I followed where I thought it was going and in the process something really exciting emerged. One day maybe you'll read it and possibly share my excitement?
It's about a wolf hunt that gets way out of control.
Up there at the top of this blog, there is a new link titled "Wolf Stories." It features all of my wolf stories that are out in lit journals all together in one place. (Peace to the editors who believed enough in the stories to accept them). Would mean a lot to me if you read them. I'll update the page as more stories become accepted and as more stories go online.
This is what's on the page above:
I wrote a book. It’s called Wolf Tickets: A Novel. I’m
really proud of it. I hope you get to read it in full some day.
Meanwhile, you can read parts of it at the links below. Thanks to the
editors who have accepted these works.
“Bitches” (PANK)
“Snitches” (Bluestem Magazine)
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?” (Emprise Review)
“Teen Wolf Too” (Used Furniture Review)
“Women Who Run With Wolves” (Fractured West)
“Cochise vs. 32 Large” (Linden Avenue)
One night this week--I think it was Wednesday--I sat down to read a story from Edward P. Jones's Lost in the City. It was very late--past 1 a.m.--and the story was "A New Man." It's about a father who deals rather harshly with his daughter and she splits, just disappears.
The thing about this story is that you can feel the passage of time and the weight of this disappearance as the story goes on. As the pages drew close to the story's end, it became clear that she wasn't coming back. Was she dead? I don't know. And neither did her father and mother and you get a sense that they will never know.
This, for some reason, shook me. Maybe because I'm a father. I don't have the luxury of reading this story as a non-father so I don't know if I would be so moved. Perhaps it's because it was very late at night when I finished reading. Whatever it was I had a a real creeping sense of dread. Was she now a prostitute? In someone's sex dungeon? Trapped in prison? Happily married somewhere?
I couldn't go to sleep like that. All that not knowing. It was very, very late, but I remembered that some of the stories in Jones's next collection, All Aunt Hagar's Children are connected to stories in the first book. A little more research and I learned that just about all the stories are connected and both books are structured the same way: 14 stories in order from the youngest protagonist to the oldest. The first story in Lost is linked to the first in Hagar and the second stories are linked and on and on. I found the sequel, "A Rich Man" and settled myself enough to sleep.
There is something about linked narratives that really drives me crazy. I'm not sure what I love about the idea of discreet fictional worlds colliding. I'm not sure I want to look into it too deeply. I construct my work with such connections. From time to time I pick up Joyce's Dubliners and look for the subtle connections and that's fun. I also do that with August Wilson's 10-play cycle. In an interview, Jones touches on establishing such connections. He even says if he writes a third collection, he will continue this format and says that even his novel may be connected to these narratives.
I really wish I knew about these connections the whole time. It would have opened up a whole new way to read these books--first the opening salvo in Lost and then the continuation of that story in Hagar as if the stories are parts of the same book. That way it feels as if Jones is edging up on a new genre. Something wholly different than the short story. He's not, but his world is so expansive it often feels like a 3D picture is passing all around me. Much more so in Hagar than in Lost.
When I'm done with these books I plan to go back to the beginning and read them together so I can get lost in the genius of it all because I really love what Eddie P. is doing. I love it a whole lot.
Strangely, I feel renewed in my day job as well as in this writing thing. This is the end of the first week of classes. Over the winter break I finished a draft of a novella I've been working on. I can honestly say I'm happy with what I turned out with. Now the challenge is to maintain the renewed feeling and the writing output as the semester snaps down on my neck. And you probably notice that I have trouble maintaining the blog when I'm teaching. I also have a hard time maintaining when I'm knee deep in a project as I was with the novella.
That brings me to this blog. I used to post stupid cartoons on Saturday and music on Mondays and I even started a labor-intensive link thing on Sundays. Yeah, I don't do that anymore. I've taken all that kind of ephemera to my Tumblr: Forgotten Tunnel TV (another blog name I'll have to sort of explain later).
Here at the Flambe, I'm going to go further in chronicling my grind. Once a week I'm going to write about the progress of what I'm working on. That's the new focus. No cartoons. No music. Or if I post that stuff it will be to underscore the sentiment I'm expressing.
And below is the contents of the newest page on this blog, the one titled: "What? What in the Hell is a Datsun Flambe."
Peace.
What? What in the Hell is a Datsun Flambe?
Not quite a Datsun, but the picture is Flambe hot.
Ever read that Ralph Ellison's short story, "Cadillac Flambe?" Yeah, I named my blog after that.
Datsun Flambe is my weekly chronicle of my writing grind. Journey with
me as I write these novels, short stories, humor pieces and whatever
else I'm writing. Whatever part of the struggle that is fascinating and
perplexing me during the week is what I'm posting about.
Blog is updated at least once a week.
As always, I maintain a list of published stories and the like on the
right-hand side of this site. Consider browsing them. They get lonely.
Show them love.
Want pictures and videos and other stuff like that? Check out my Tumblr: Forgotten Tunnel TV and consider following.
There's no
backstory as to why we've decided to focus on Hip-Hop. No narrative to
share, no personal enlightenment to explain. I love hip-hop; I love
literature: I want to see my two creative joys intersect here at Specter
Magazine.
Submissions for Specter's first theme issue, The Hip-Hop Issue, are
now open. We're looking for fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and
art/photography which embodies a hip-hop aesthetic.
The Hip-Hop issue is scheduled for a June 4th, 2012 release (subject to change).
Submissions will be selected by guest editor Rion Amilcar Scott, who
appeared in previous issues of Specter, including his Pushcart Prize
nominated story, "A Friendly Game." Rion has contributed to PANK,
Fiction International and Confrontation, among others. Raised in Silver
Spring, Maryland, he earned an MFA at George Mason University and
presently teaches English at Bowie State University.
I'm thrilled to have Rion on board to edit this issue. Hip-Hop has
infiltrated almost every part of the globe, from music (obviously) to
dance to fashion to--now--literature.
"I read more books in 2011 than this clown and I have a country to run. Wanker."
I set forth as a goal in the beginning of 2011 to read 100 books. I read 48 books. I'm sure I'm forgetting a book or two, but damn, I didn't even get halfway toward my goal.
So I'll be doing this again in 2012, until I make it.Then it's 100 movies.
Here is a list of the books I read in no particular order, with brief, perhaps meaningless commentary if I felt like providing it while typing.
My Infamous Life by Prodigy of Mobb Deep
Ever talked to someone who's been through a lot, but seems to have learned nothing from all those troubles. Yeah, this book is like that. Entertaining though. Very, very violent. What I learned was that even when the stupidity of Prodigy and his crew cause them to be shot up, Prodigy is a hero. Still one of the greatest rappers on the '90s. Disconcerting to hear some of the actual violence behind the violent lyrics. Makes it less of a fantasy. More menacing and ultimately senseless.
Backsass by Fred Chappell
Owned this book for a long time. Always read the title as Backass.
Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
Brilliant book by a brilliant writer. So much narrative tension. There's a lot to learn in here about the craft (creating sharp characters, plotting) and if you don't want to learn about craft and you just want to keep turning pages, yeah, Ms. Jones Brings it. I gave this as a Christmas gift to my sister-in-law. I hope she's as blown away as I was.
True Love by Thich Nhat Hanh
Very short book with a lot of depth. Barely 100 pages, but it took me a while to read. So much to ponder. I read it originally a few years ago before my girlfriend (now wife) and I broke up briefly. We were supposed to read it to understand our relationship. She accused me of taking all the lessons and applying them to my writing life instead of to the relationship and you know what? I was. Never finished it back then. It belonged to her and I left with her. And then we got back together.
Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson
What a dick.
Mailer: A Biography* by Hilary Mills
God, another fucking dick.
*I have an asterisk by this one because I couldn't finish it on account of the fact that my copy was defective. Instead of the last 30 or so pages, it just repeats the previous two chapters. Pissed me off.
Quantum Lyrics by A. Van Jordan
Briefs by John Edgar Wideman
Abstraktion Und Einfuhlung by Percival Everett
Fist Stick Knife Gun by Geoffrey Canada
I taught this book in English 101. Very insightful. Made me reflect on the violence of my youth. I think the students got a lot out of it.
So You Know It's Me by Brian Oliu
No Sleep Till Brooklyn by Kevin Powell
My God these poems are bad. His dialect poems appear to have been ghostwritten by the woman who wrote The Help. If he were white, I would be offended. The rest of the poems are no good either.
Demo vol. 2 by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan
Mediocre follow up diminishes the brilliance of Vol. 1
The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson
Some ideas here are dated, but a lot to think about as an educator who's trying to teach people to think for themselves instead of parroting. Most kids come in with very low critical thinking skills. I'll probably need to re-read it at some point. I'm trying to do a lot of reading on education to sharpen what at time feels like a losing battle. This was to be the first of a bunch of books on educating the mis-educated, but I lost the thread of that and need to return to it.
Seven Guitars Two Trains Running The Piano Lesson Radio Golf Joe Turner's Come and Gone Fences Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Jitney King Hedley Gem of the Ocean
All of the above are by my hero August Wilson. It constitutes the most significant works of his oevure. This go-through Wilson's work, I read them in the order they were published (which is not the order above). Great to see his development. I took away a lot about the use of dialogue and how it needs to represent the essence of how we speak, "the sound of it" and not necessarily be exactly how we speak. Beautiful work.
Missing You, Metropolis by Gary Jackson
Ayiti by Roxane Gay
Special book. Special person. Check the last story, "A Cool, Dry Place." Mindblowing.
B Jenkins by Fred Moten
Grim Tales by Norman Lock
The Glen Rock Book of the Dead by Marion Wink
During my Nervous Breakdown I Want to Have a Biographer Present by Brandon Scott Gorrell Felt annoyed by the lack of page numbers or interesting imagery. Bored most of the time. Some interesting moments, insights.
Please Don't be Upset by Brandi Wells
A really visceral writer. Though at times it seems forced. Enjoyed it overall.
Donald by Eric Martin and Stephen Elliot
Fuck this book. It made me feel sympathy for a (fictional) Donald Rumsfeld.
Two Minutes of Light by Nancy K. Pearson
Limestone by Anthony Kellman
An uneven epic poem. The opening section is the strongest.
Babyfucker by Urs Allmen
Look past the title. Past the premise (if the premise is even the premise). You'll learn a lot about language. And it's a translation!
Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni
What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves us by Laura van den Berg
Amazing set of stories. Seems like a lot of thought went into the order of stories so it pays off as a book, rather than just a grouping of stories. Each story features a women in the midst of some sort of transition. They are all involved in the sciences in some way. The first and last stories are showstoppers. I picked it up just to skim it and in a day or two I was done with it. Nice work.
The Weather Stations by Ryan Call
Another really special set of stories. Many ways to read this. As a collection? Linked stories? A novel? The world these stories take place in is so far from our world, but it the work is all about our world and is very, very urgent. And the guy just won an award for the book!
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I talk about it in this interview. And I make fun of this misguided guy's efforts to sanitize it here. Love it.
God Hates us All
This is the oddest pop culture tie-in I've ever seen. On the show CalifornicationFox MulderDavid Duchovny plays a sex addicted writer who wrote a classic novel and now goes around having sex with young hot women instead of writing. He fucks up his family and hurts his daughter in his pursuit of P. The novel he wrote is called God Hates us All. I resolved to stop watching this show many times. In the first season, I said I would stop and then one of the later episodes in the season was one of the best hours of television I've ever seen. Then the show got ridiculous again and I figured I was done and then all the dumb shit he'd done throughout the past couple seasons came back to haunt him and I had to keep watching to see how it would play out and to figure out how I could make my writing life like his. Actually, my wife probably wouldn't let me. Bummer. But then at the end of the season everything was back to normal and the consequences of his thoughtlessness turned out to be not that deep. Anyway, this book is supposedly the "literary classic" the fictional character, Hank Moody, wrote. It's not a classic. It's kind of entertaining. Does not feature any of the characters of the show or nod to any of the plot points. It barely advertises the show on the book cover (just a circle in the top left hand corner and a picture of the characters on the back). You even have to do some digging around to find out who actually wrote it (some guy who wrote some books on poker). So it fails as a vehicle to promote the show. It just looks like any other book. It fails as a novel. I was mildly entertained, I guess. It's not the classic they speak of on the show. Things like this are best left imaginary. Now every time I watch the show I think, This clown wrote a silly book, why should I care about him? I bought the thing on a whim. The guy behind the counter nearly had a heart attack looking at the title. Then he tried to sell me some atheist books.
An American Requiem by James Carroll
Looks like I read one two memoirs all year. It's a sharp one. It's about a guy who leaves the priesthood to become poet. Some Stephen Daedelus shit. But not only that, his father was a high ranking FBI spook. They clashed over Vietnam. Very poetic and honest. A view on society that you rarely get. The fact that it's good literature is a bonus!
