A Whole of Nothing - Spartans, Life in Muncie, eBooks

 Sunday and I do not go to church. My ride took the week off. Instead, I do a little writing at home and then head over to BSU. There I spend 6 hours working on the post below and deleting emails. Not enough done. I am getting tired of coming over here, it feels like it takes too much time.

Judy Garland does not interest me, and I almost deleted the notice of Pitchfork's review of Judy at Carnegie Hall. Then I wondered why are they reviewing that?

The mystique of Carnegie Hall was only enhanced by the success of its recording. Judy at Carnegie Hall spent 95 weeks on the charts and 13 of them at the No. 1 spot. It won several top awards at the 1962 Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, the first ever awarded to a woman. It was a record that lived up to the hyperbole of its liner notes and soon was widely known as “the greatest night in show business history.” After a sometimes rocky 1950s, it once again reaffirmed the star power Garland had always possessed, marking the moment when the singer and her audience were in perfect sync with one another; when the peak of her powers as an artist was met with the kind of sustained and unconditional recognition she’d always sought.

***

But even as the cult of Garland dipped, it laid the seeds for powerful new affinities to develop between performers and their audiences. In Judy at Carnegie Hall, one can hear the genesis of contemporary queer fandom, in all of its relatability and complicated emotional grappling. Judy’s precipitous highs and lows have gradually been given a cleaner shape by the artists who succeeded her, smoothing out the turbulence in favor of a much more manageable approach to pop as a way of life, whether that be narrativizing a fully-rounded approach to sex and romance (Madonna), sharing moments of shattering vulnerability (Janet Jackson), or performing jazz standards while taking on A Star Is Born (Lady Gaga). Even when the going is rougher, she remains the benchmark for preternaturally gifted performers who persevere despite unthinkable odds: just look at how often her name comes up in discussions of Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston, or Britney Spears.

Huh, Well, learn something new - and get reminded of something old. You do not have like something, or someone, but we should all respect the qualities of that thing or person. If nothing else, because we all want that kind of respect.

I got distracted while reading this in As the Strands Come Together, Patterns Arise: A Conversation with Carolyn Kuebler from the L.A Review of Books:

The format of your novel is unusual. The very short paragraphs, usually only one or two sentences, forced me to slow down and read more like one would read the stanzas of a poem. What led you to make this stylistic decision?

I knew what I wanted this novel to be about, and who the people were, long before I figured out how to write it. I tried writing it backwards in time, then with a single first-person POV, then as a “once upon a time long ago” omniscient kind of thing, then in large elliptical paragraphs, and so forth. It just kept getting bigger and bigger, and I got lost in the details. It wasn’t until I slowed down to writing one sentence, then taking a breath, then writing one more, over and over, that something clicked. It started to finally sound how I wanted it to sound, to feel like the right container for the rhythm and the interiority that I was after. The first scene I wrote that way turned out to be the first scene of the novel, and it was when I came to the mallards shaking out their wings, and Leonard casting out his line in the sun, that I thought yes, this is how it can be done. I was terrified that it would only work for me, with the rhythm of my own mind, and was so relieved when I showed the first few sections to a writer friend and she got it, and said yes, keep going.

Such a style reminds me of a book I read in high school, and here I admit one of the books most influential to me: The DADA Caper by Ross H. Spencer. For an actual example, see Forgotten Books: The DADA Caper by Ross H. Spencer. (Frankly, Davy Crockett's Almanac almost turned into its own diversion —  old movies, pulp fiction, yummy!)

Back to the LARB interview, this warmed the cockles of my heart while reminding me I have been stalled for a month with my fiction.

I appreciate this description of your writing and revising process. The first part of your process, the bursts of writing, attempting many approaches to structure or points of view, and so on, feels familiar to me, but I especially like your metaphor of weaving different strips of color (so appropriate, given your character Sarah’s expertise as a weaver), observing the patterns that arise and the ways images repeat to guide the writer in finding the deeper story and how it should be told. It’s a wonderful illustration of the deeply mysterious, organic work of revision. It sounds like you discovered how to write this book as you were writing it. Is that true? Based on what you’ve learned, do you have any advice for those writers who are thinking about writing a novel?

Given how long it took for me to find my way, I’m probably not a good giver of advice, except to say, be patient with yourself. Novel writing is such a personal and idiosyncratic thing, and there’s rarely a good reason to do it apart from fulfilling some serious internal nagging. I wish I could have discovered how to write this based on my reading, going off the model of so many books I love, but it really did take a lot of starting over, learning as I went along. And then, once I had the general shape of the thing, revising was a very intricate process. But also a real joy. 

Part of my difficulty was that, while I admire all kinds of writing, the stuff I click with most deeply and personally usually does something unexpected with form that can’t be replicated. Maybe because it knocks me off-kilter in a way that makes me more receptive, somewhere in my unconscious. I’ll never forget the sense of recognition and deep thrill I got from reading The Waves (1931) by Virginia Woolf, and that’s a really bad example to follow if you’re a young writer trying to find your way. For some writers, the more traditional rules of craft suit them just fine—and some really great work comes out of that craft. But Freytag’s pyramid or the apex-denouement narrative arc doesn’t always contain what you’re trying to do, just like not every poem wants to be a sonnet, even though these are incredibly rich and varied forms.

I’d also say, don’t be afraid to share work in progress with someone you trust, and don’t hold out for perfection—either in the writing or in the response. Let some light in on the process.

I walked over to Jimmy Johns around 3 pm. The computer was getting cranky, and I needed to stretch my legs.

Now onto the email! 

I succumbed to Antigone's flirting - AGESILAUS: THE GREATEST OF THE SPARTANS? and THE MYSTERIOUS DEMETRIOS MOSCHOS: RENAISSANCE SCRIBE, POET, SCHOLAR.

I found this site, Faded Page, while searching for any new points on Raintree County.

Faded Page is an archive of eBooks that are provided completely free to everyone. The books are produced by volunteers all over the world, and we believe they are amongst the highest quality eBooks anywhere. Every one has been scanned, run through OCR software, proofed, formatted and assembled extremely carefully, using hundreds of volunteer hours. These books are public domain in Canada (because we follow the Canadian copyright laws), but if you are in another country, you should satisfy yourself that you are not breaking the copyright laws of your own country by downloading them. You are free to do whatever you like with these books, but we hope that mainly...you will enjoy reading them.

If I did everything right, I have Hamlet, from PBS' Great Perfomances to watch. 

Driftwood Press's 2023 Anthology is online - and free!

I am back sending out "Problem Solving", the one publisher never actually put it into print. First victim was Two Hawks Quarterly.

5-22-2024

I have 30 minutes to get my stuff together and get to BSU to use their Wi-Fi. Three days away and the email has to be overflowing.

I barely remember Monday. Memory comes only when I force it. There was walking over to the laundry after work, and I talked to Paul S. while I was there. Then I went down to the bank. CC needs to get a truck, so I am giving her money for that. She was supposed to come over Monday night. Of course, she got too tangled up with the nonsense that makes up most of her life. I know when I leave here, I leave her behind. This time I will give her a proper goodbye, but if ever I could help her, it was decades ago. Like I was, she is a hamster caught on wheel. Unlike me, she has never seen any alternatives.

I need to check on the next vespers at St. Photoni. This I will try to get CC to attend.

Tuesday, CC picked up the money at work. She got worked up, and I do not know how to bring her down. She says let her vent, only it seems to me she only knows certain ways to vent. It does not get her anything.

I woke about 3 am and went to work on this new story. It came to me while reading an article on Machivelli and English theater. It was actually started on Monday night, or so it seems.

The heat got to me. I got home around 2 pm and was asleep by 2:30. I stayed asleep until 7:30, then I decided to get up and fix some food and write for a while. The proeprty management compnay was to replace my stove. They did not show up. I went back to bed after 11 pm.

I may have gone to the Village Pantry around 4 am. If so, it was the only place I have been since Sunday.

I went there again this morning for a Coke Zero, before I left for work. Caffeine being really needed then.

Work was a bit screwy – I kept dropping things or knocking them over. I am glad to be leaving nowadays. So much so, I keep leaving some pork pieces behind. And I just remembered this.

Too bloody hot today. I am not keen to be walking back from BSU tonight. That means catching the 6:15 #2 bus. I hope the student center is open. That will make logistics so much simpler.

I am getting so tired of logistics being a problem. That is, getting myself around is a pain. I could not reach CC today. I hope she is working on her rummage sale. I did call my landlord, let them know they still need to fix the stove. I want to bake brownies. I got this idea in prison.

It is 2:45, I will close now.

Now, I am leaving BSU.

I got into a conversation about Hemingway, deleted most of my email, and finished off this post. I am tired, sticky from the humidity, and want to catch the bus home.

I have decided to get a new phone. A two year contract gets me a free phone; I think this is calleed indntured servitude.

sch