November 4, 2010
from the comments
For me it is often more a matter of rhythm than anything else. If the emotional tone is not quite right I can’t turn it loose until it is. It has to have a combination of sound and content (whatever one might mean by “content”) that opens the whole range of feeling one might hope to have by way of a story. It’s that thing that overwhelms me in a way that suggests others might be similarly overwhelmed. Sometimes it’s just me feeling it — but what else do I have to go by? In the end, trust is in there too. Or maybe it’s hope. Hope that I can look at a person in a certain context, and know what will rise when the end comes.
comments
Leave a Reply
Daryl
I understand what you say about rhythm in a piece of writing. I know it is true for me, seeking it, when I write. The words must tumble out at a rate I sense in my inner ear, or in my mind, or in my gut. I am experiencing this reading Bass’s Nashville Chrome. He weaves a mist, a spell. Whatever newsy news, he delivers is delivered from within that mist. A universe unfolding at the level of one word to the next. Honestly sometimes a sentence is a string of firecrackers going off at once. A series of words, each with letters exploding to rearrange themselves into the next word. The words arranging in a sentence carrying the tale forward. There are moments I nearly faint. I’ll post an example out of context. See if it does what I describe if one hasn’t had all the before that brings one to that moment.
Somehow, I don’t think Bass would mind. The publisher might. (But all news about it might be considered good news, mightn’t it?) I’m going to risk it.
If I can find it on the iPad again, the sentence I dwelt over. I just spent a half-hour paging back, thinking I would see it again right away. I should have notated it the minute I saw it. If I were reading the actual book I might have flagged it.
If you find it, and feel up to it, just do an excerpt as a review with a link to Amazon.
That would be my goal, Deron. Thank you.
Yes, Rick. Do. This is something that resonates for many of us.
In any case, I intend to read Nashville Chrome.
Deron, do I remember correctly that you met Rick Bass at U.T.? Daryl and I both admire his work. I loved his fiction way back in The Quarterly days, and I’ve come to especially enjoy his works of nonfiction. I just realized that I still think of him as a kid. I guess he’s my age.
Rick, please do post. If it’s a review, it’s legal–nobody will object.
Did I ever tell y’all about the time Daryl and I went to a reading by Mark Richard? It was in Dallas at the Border’s at Preston/Royal, and he was doing a tour for Fishboy. I remember being beside myself that we were going to hear him read. Only six or seven people were there–I couldn’t believe it. Anyway, the reading was great, and he took questions, and someone asked whether there was a story behind his writing of “Happiness of the Garden Variety.” And he said, well, he and his friend, Steve, were living in this place where they did work in change for rent, and there was this horse named Buster, and they really did pull it out into the bay after it died of bloat in the tomato patch. But when it washed up at the motel, it wasn’t really at the Armada Inn, like in the story. It was at the Ramada Inn. He’d changed that part.
Cindy, I talked with him briefly in the elevator after a reading at UT. I mentioned knowing Daryl and he said he loved The Oracle and to let him know it. I think I mentioned that a long time ago. I saw Richard read at UT as well, but didn’t get a chance to talk to him. I think Renner was there as well.
I’m too old–I can’t remember anything. I do remember that Mark Richard read his own work very well. When we met him, I told him that I thought he was the best writer of short fiction in the United States. I don’t think he cared, but I was glad to get the chance to tell him.
I’m envious of Rick getting to hear Rick Bass. We have a recording of him reading “The Hermit’s Story.” Just wonderful. The only other noted short story writer we heard read was Larry Brown. He was not entirely pleasant, but he read well, and he had great taste–we talked about a wide range of writers, from William Vollman to Mary Hood. Damn, I miss those days when it seemed that any minute a new story was going to appear that would shake me to the bone. Much of that was Gordon Lish’s doing. Those were great times.
Daryl and I heard Carlos Fuentes read/speak at UT Dallas. He was an asshole.
Oh–and in the fall of 1980 in New York, I was in a little bookstore I frequented (on Madison, I think?). I was really happy because everyone who was coming in was going upstairs, so I had the entire lower floor to myself to browse the new fiction. An employee came up to me and told me that Joyce Carol Oates was upstairs and was about to begin reading. I said no, thank you.
I liked some of Larry Brown’s stories (“Samaritans,” for example), but that guy was a little shit. We listened to him read and talked to him, but he was all hot for Cindy in that massive ego way that ignores everybody but the “target.” I wasn’t worried because I had inside knowledge: Cindy would never take to a sawed off heavy smoker who wore an ID bracelet. Also, I knew a quick uppercut to the point of the chin would have dropped him in an instant, and while I was running to call paramedics for the guy having a heart attack we could have all removed ourselves forthwith. But, he managed to die soon after without my help. He shouldn’t have gotten famous in a way that caused him to divorce his wife when she had supported his dumb ass all along the way.
God, y’all. Your stories are delicious. Wish I could have been there. I once went to hear Barry Hannah read in Minneapolis, shortly after Bats Out of Hell came out. I am so shy in such situations. My friend Stephen attended Ole Miss, working on an MBA he didn’t finish. His younger brother Mark and sister Angela went there, too. Angela had a writing class under Hannah. I told of these friends, talking to Hannah, as he signed my copy of the book. Hannah said, “I remember Angela.”
I am, again, weakly remembering brushes with fame.
So sorry to hear that Carlos Fuentes was an asshole when you heard him in Dallas, Cindy. When was that?
When I heard him speak in Madison in 1977 or 1978 or so, I was just spellbound, and when he finished, I made a little gasping expression of astonishment.
Sheila, we heard him in late 1980 or early ’81. He immediately let the packed house know that he didn’t expect people in Dallas to understand much of what he was about to say. Unfortunately, that made such an impression that I remember nothing else of the evening.
Ooh, that was rude.
[...] Cindy S.: Did I ever tell y’all about the time Daryl and I went to a reading by Mark Richard? It was in Dallas at the Border’s at Preston/Royal, and he was doing a tour for Fishboy. I remember being beside myself that we were going to hear him read. Only six or seven people were there — I couldn’t believe it. Anyway, the reading was great, and he took questions, and someone asked whether there was a story behind his writing of “Happiness of the Garden Variety.” And he said, well, he and his friend, Steve, were living in this place where they did work in change for rent, and there was this horse named Buster, and they really did pull it out into the bay after it died of bloat in the tomato patch. But when it washed up at the motel, it wasn’t really at the Armada Inn, like in the story. It was at the Ramada Inn. He’d changed that part. posted by Deron Bauman in adventure, animals, books, from the comments, gardening, how to, vegetables, writing | * | comment [...]