Midnight blogging; book titles; "The Changing Light" by Vincent Craig Wright
It's actually well past midnight now. The little clock in the lower right hand corner says 1:15. I got off from the "day job" at midnight. And while I should be in bed--I'm due back at the day job in 10 hours--I have that "not quite wound down" feeling.
So I blog.
And it's way overdue.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I've noticed a couple of book titles that seemed silly or sent my mind down a silly path. So I share the silliness.
The first one is self-explanatory, no path to follow. It was something like: Fix It Quick Slow Cooker Recipes.
The other one, a home decorating book, was called something like: How to Get that Country Look. Now, as a former farmboy (and it's true I've lost most of my "country look," although it wasn't entirely intentional), I've always been fascinated by those darling "country kitchen" sort of decorations you see in some catalogs. My mother's kitchen looked nothing like any of those pictures and so I've come to think of all that gingham and decorated Mason jar nonsense as a city person's idea of what a country kitchen might look like. For the record, we didn't decorate Mason jars on our farm--we used them to can peaches, tomatoes, pickles, green beans, grape juice . . . I'm sure a few other things. But we didn't decorate them. I can't imagine it ever occurring to us to do so. But that's a bit beside the point, too. How to Get that Country Look? You get up very early in the morning, go take care of livestock (pigs, cows, chickens, in our case), then have breakfast and then spend a long day doing really hard work. Fixing fence. Hauling hay. Loading grain to take to the mill to be ground into cow or pig feed. Working the cattle (which may mean vaccinating them or separating calves from cows for weaning or loading them up for the auction barn or slaughter house). I've probably forgotten more about how to get that country look than the authors of that interior design book every knew. But then I doubt they were thinking of farmer tans and smelly boots out by the back door . . .
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FINALLY, I get around to posting some thoughts on Vincent Craig Wright's story, "The Changing Light." This story is the final one in Able to... for a reason. Let me see if I can put into words.
Like Becky Haigler's stories, I received "The Changing Light" very early in the game, and like Becky's stories, I loved it immediately and knew I wanted it. Unlike Becky's flower-speaking girl, Craig's resurrecting protagonist didn't surprise me so much as Craig's language did. He has a way of taking a fairly ordinary phrase and reinventing it and then using the same construction over and over, turning it over and inside out, making it mean something different while retaining the echo of the first use. There's also a rhythm to the language he uses, which is one of those really hard-to-define things--it's possibly due to his other career as a musician and songwriter or maybe it's why he's a musician and songwriter. It's stream of consciousness in a way that isn't immediately noticeable. The opening scene, for example, is a car wreck. This accident is played out in super-slow motion with all the crazy thoughts that go through a person's mind in 4 seconds or less. This car wreck goes on for 4 or 5 pages and it is full of story and backstory and foreshadowing and all these tricks that I saw only on the second reading. I was surprised to notice after the first reading how many words he used to get us through this car wreck. It never felt wordy, never felt over-wrought. It is, in fact, beautiful.
But this is a collection of well-written stories (if I do say so myself--I mean, why would I have published them otherwise?). This story gets the final slot for another reason (and I come from the school of thought that the first and last story of a collection holds very powerful positions). If, as I opine in the book's introduction, this is a collection of "adult power fantasies" (in contrast to the adolescent power fantasies of super-hero comics), then it seems to me that there are few powers that might resonate so strongly as the desire to come back to life. Of course, we have in this collection a woman who resurrects the dead, which is maybe a stronger desire, but in this story, the protagonist does it not just to exercise power, but to save someone grief. He seems not entirely comfortable with his power, but he uses it because he wants to save a loved one grief. There's something very lovely about that to me, something slightly self-sacrificing in it. To bring someone else back to life could be selfish--and certainly not dying permantly could be also. But that's not how it's played here.
Ah, you need to read this story. You need to read this collection.
Oh, there is one more reason this story is the final one in the collection. It's the final line. I won't quote it here because I don't want to ruin it out of context. I also don't want to build it up to something more than it is. It's a quiet ending and a lovely way to end a book. There's something existential in it's most positive sense, it seems to me. After all the flowers spoken and realities altered, the subtle scents smelled and the emotions manipulated, after all the music and miracles and talking frogs--Craig gave me a line that summed it all up for me.
Even after you read it, you may not get what I mean by that. So maybe the story is the final one in the collection for completely idiosyncratic reasons. I hope not, but there it is.
I know I'm here to sell this book, Able to..., and I know there's supposed to be some salesman hyperbole involved with that. But I'm also a terrible salesman and move given to understatement than bombast. This is a book of stories I'm very pleased to present to the world. If you haven't given it a try yet, I hope you will.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
So finally, a month after the release party, I get through the book, story by story.
I'll get back to my more rambly thoughts on things I'm reading and other art I'm seeing. There's quite a bit going on with the promotion of this book and getting busy with putting together the next book (a collection of short plays by Christopher Ellis, Chicago playwright). Other things in the pot I'm stirring.
And now that it's after 2am, I think it's time I stopped stirring. More soon.
So I blog.
And it's way overdue.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I've noticed a couple of book titles that seemed silly or sent my mind down a silly path. So I share the silliness.
The first one is self-explanatory, no path to follow. It was something like: Fix It Quick Slow Cooker Recipes.
The other one, a home decorating book, was called something like: How to Get that Country Look. Now, as a former farmboy (and it's true I've lost most of my "country look," although it wasn't entirely intentional), I've always been fascinated by those darling "country kitchen" sort of decorations you see in some catalogs. My mother's kitchen looked nothing like any of those pictures and so I've come to think of all that gingham and decorated Mason jar nonsense as a city person's idea of what a country kitchen might look like. For the record, we didn't decorate Mason jars on our farm--we used them to can peaches, tomatoes, pickles, green beans, grape juice . . . I'm sure a few other things. But we didn't decorate them. I can't imagine it ever occurring to us to do so. But that's a bit beside the point, too. How to Get that Country Look? You get up very early in the morning, go take care of livestock (pigs, cows, chickens, in our case), then have breakfast and then spend a long day doing really hard work. Fixing fence. Hauling hay. Loading grain to take to the mill to be ground into cow or pig feed. Working the cattle (which may mean vaccinating them or separating calves from cows for weaning or loading them up for the auction barn or slaughter house). I've probably forgotten more about how to get that country look than the authors of that interior design book every knew. But then I doubt they were thinking of farmer tans and smelly boots out by the back door . . .
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FINALLY, I get around to posting some thoughts on Vincent Craig Wright's story, "The Changing Light." This story is the final one in Able to... for a reason. Let me see if I can put into words.
Like Becky Haigler's stories, I received "The Changing Light" very early in the game, and like Becky's stories, I loved it immediately and knew I wanted it. Unlike Becky's flower-speaking girl, Craig's resurrecting protagonist didn't surprise me so much as Craig's language did. He has a way of taking a fairly ordinary phrase and reinventing it and then using the same construction over and over, turning it over and inside out, making it mean something different while retaining the echo of the first use. There's also a rhythm to the language he uses, which is one of those really hard-to-define things--it's possibly due to his other career as a musician and songwriter or maybe it's why he's a musician and songwriter. It's stream of consciousness in a way that isn't immediately noticeable. The opening scene, for example, is a car wreck. This accident is played out in super-slow motion with all the crazy thoughts that go through a person's mind in 4 seconds or less. This car wreck goes on for 4 or 5 pages and it is full of story and backstory and foreshadowing and all these tricks that I saw only on the second reading. I was surprised to notice after the first reading how many words he used to get us through this car wreck. It never felt wordy, never felt over-wrought. It is, in fact, beautiful.
But this is a collection of well-written stories (if I do say so myself--I mean, why would I have published them otherwise?). This story gets the final slot for another reason (and I come from the school of thought that the first and last story of a collection holds very powerful positions). If, as I opine in the book's introduction, this is a collection of "adult power fantasies" (in contrast to the adolescent power fantasies of super-hero comics), then it seems to me that there are few powers that might resonate so strongly as the desire to come back to life. Of course, we have in this collection a woman who resurrects the dead, which is maybe a stronger desire, but in this story, the protagonist does it not just to exercise power, but to save someone grief. He seems not entirely comfortable with his power, but he uses it because he wants to save a loved one grief. There's something very lovely about that to me, something slightly self-sacrificing in it. To bring someone else back to life could be selfish--and certainly not dying permantly could be also. But that's not how it's played here.
Ah, you need to read this story. You need to read this collection.
Oh, there is one more reason this story is the final one in the collection. It's the final line. I won't quote it here because I don't want to ruin it out of context. I also don't want to build it up to something more than it is. It's a quiet ending and a lovely way to end a book. There's something existential in it's most positive sense, it seems to me. After all the flowers spoken and realities altered, the subtle scents smelled and the emotions manipulated, after all the music and miracles and talking frogs--Craig gave me a line that summed it all up for me.
Even after you read it, you may not get what I mean by that. So maybe the story is the final one in the collection for completely idiosyncratic reasons. I hope not, but there it is.
I know I'm here to sell this book, Able to..., and I know there's supposed to be some salesman hyperbole involved with that. But I'm also a terrible salesman and move given to understatement than bombast. This is a book of stories I'm very pleased to present to the world. If you haven't given it a try yet, I hope you will.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
So finally, a month after the release party, I get through the book, story by story.
I'll get back to my more rambly thoughts on things I'm reading and other art I'm seeing. There's quite a bit going on with the promotion of this book and getting busy with putting together the next book (a collection of short plays by Christopher Ellis, Chicago playwright). Other things in the pot I'm stirring.
And now that it's after 2am, I think it's time I stopped stirring. More soon.
posted by Neil Ellis Orts at 11:17 PM
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