Letter from Thomas Pynchon

Joseph Campbell on the Meaning of Life

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."

Joseph Campbell 

Jessica Amanda Salmonson Once Wrote Me a Letter

 Jessica Amanda Salmonson, discussing transcendent fantasy in a 1994 letter to the blogger:

"Many other writers 'in the field' look pretty damned good compared to the field as a whole. But it's like comparing a healthy compost to fresh shit. All too often, the most highly prized of 'genre' fantasy pales alongside work that is transcendent. It seems no one really wants to make their intended goal anything as extraordinary as Gogol's "The Overcoat" or Fuentes' "Aura" or Vernon Lee's "Legend of Saint Julian" or Yorucenar's legend of "Our Lady of Swallows" or Cynthia Ozick's "The Shawl", and such like tales and authors. Who can deny that it is unfair to contrast f/sf's "best" writers to the world's actual works of genius? 'Not as good as The Overcoat' would indeed be unfair; for all owe our existence as short story writers to "The Overcoat" and are embraced in its fabric. Yet too many critics, having decided to overlook true greatness, go one step farther and begin to find greatness where mere goodness barely exists."

Hello All

"The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
                                                                                                            Mark Twain

Books. It doesn't matter how you read them... old dusty tomes with missing dust jackets, Kindle e-books, tattered garage sale paperbacks or brand new crisp hardbacks straight from the bookstore... books speak to us. I've been a book lover and a writer my entire life, and if you enjoy reading as much as I do, I hope you enjoy the time you spend with this blog. Together I'm sure we'll discover some interesting stories.  

‘Altogether,’ Kafka wrote in 1904 to his friend Oskar Pollak, ‘I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow on the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we’d be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, at a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.’ -From The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka by Ernst Pawel

In an Octopus's Garden...

A new year. 

Beth and I are taking the kids to the Newport Aquarium today, and her mother is coming with us. Should be a fun day -- the kids are really into fish right now, so we're looking forward to it.

Didn't get much work done yesterday. Beth wasn't feeling well and slept in. We took the kids to Waffle House once she was up, and then I ran to Dollar Tree for a minute. Did some laundry. Domestic duties.

[Watching "History of the Eagles" on Netflix. Reading parts of "The Pale King" by David Foster Wallace. Listening to "A Stack of the Blues" compilation.]

I Fought The Law, But the Law Won

Beth, my wife, got pulled over today by the Yellow Springs Police. She was coming home from work and a policeman noticed that her license plate bulb was out, so he pulled her over. No ticket, just a warning, but I still feel responsible -- I should have noticed that it was out and replaced it before something like this happened.

I got nothing at all accomplished today. Hendrix is still off on his winter break, and so he was home playing with Stormy all day. I got up around 8, made Beth some coffee, then went to the bank and got the flat tire on the Pontiac replaced so that I could drive the kids up to the bowling alley in Huber Heights in the afternoon while Beth worked. They bowled a game and had a lot of fun -- Hendrix bowled a 63, Storm a 60 -- and our friend Jim Chrissis stopped by to say hello and chat a bit.

We're going bowling with some friends there tomorrow to celebrate New Year's Eve, so I made our reservations for that. Should be fun - if I can find a babysitter.

Got no writing at all done today. Read a good chunk of Norman Spinrad's "An Experiment in Autobiography" and a bit of David Foster Wallace's "The Pale King" before I had to go to work at 9 tonight.

More tomorrow.

[Trading Places and Jackie Brown. The Pale King. "I Got It" by Gorilla Zoe] 

"The Years Grow Shorter, Not Longer..."

I find it hard to believe that 2014 is almost over. It's true that the years pass by more quickly as you get older - I didn't believe that when I was first informed, but by God it's true. And, end of the year or not, I'm not much for resolutions, but this is the time of year everyone seems to be making them. I'm going to try and resist.

I've also never been much of a diarist, to be honest. I have good intentions... I think to myself that "I know... I'll start a blog!" or "I'll keep a journal!" and my updates last usually three days or so and then just sort of die on the vine.

But I am getting older... tempus keeps fugiting and all that. In 2015 I'll be 50 years old. Half a century. A long way since Huntington WV on an early Sunday morning in the summer of '65. Beth and I have been together now for over 20 years, which is mind-boggling. Hendrix is 7 and in school... Storm is 3 and will be starting preschool next year.

I have more writing projects than I know what to do with, and none of them near completion. Make of that what you want. 

Look for more updates in this space as time and my (admittedly short) attention span allow.