Confession Time: Rachel Kushner; Frankie Miller; Texting; Submitting

 I have not read Rachel Kushner. I really want to read her. Every review says I should be reading her. The latest, from The Guardian, Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner review – double dealing in deepest France.

Radical politics, mixed-up heroines and the threat of violence are staple ingredients in the fiction of Rachel Kushner, who began to be spoken of as one of the century’s great American novelists with her second book, The Flamethrowers (2013), about a biker in the art world of 70s New York and Italy during the “years of lead”. But even though her third novel, The Mars Room, set among women serving life in a California prison, was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2018, I’m not convinced she’s truly on the radar of most readers this side of the Atlantic, where we’re warier of the vast, chiselled, ideas-packed tales ambitious American writers are less likely to shy away from.

I had to rest my eyes. WTF is it with my lack of energy?

I have heard of Frankie Miller from the old days. I think Seger covered one of his songs. He is on the list of guys who wrote great songs but never made it big himself. This morning I ran across him on YouTube and spent time listening. Yeah, his lack of success is a surprise, but maybe a different album cover?

I do not trust text messaging. Jerry called a little while ago. I did not see his texts, he didn't see mine. He is going to church. I had already sent a message to CC that I would be around to help with the rummage sale that she is always threatening to get started. And here I am, thinking she will not call.

End of this morning's confessions. 

8:47

I gave up on CC calling. She is spinning out of control - things for her rummage sale have been damaged by persons unknown. I have been trying to get her to get this thing off the ground so this would not happen. I broke off the call.

I started working on submissions. After getting more RC Cola from the convenience store. Holding off on actually cooking anything for lunch.

To Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Competition went "Only The Dead and The Dying".

"Getting What You Asked For" went to River and South Review and Clockhouse

 Salem State University Soundings East and AGNI got "No Ordinary Word"

Solstice: a Magazine of Diverse Voices, Roanoke Review, and Swamp Pink,  got "Problem Solving"

Speaking of "Problem Solving", this came in a few days ago:

Thank you for sending us your work. We appreciate the opportunity to read it. While this piece is not right for us, our decision is not indicative of its quality by any means. These things are entirely subjective, as you know.

Thanks again, and best of luck with this.

Sincerely,

Danny Judge | Editor

Wallstrait: A Literary Journal of Hard-to-Define Fiction

Visit: www.Wallstrait.com

Follow: www.x.com/Wallstrait

That rejection ought to give me second thoughts about pursuing this writing thing: if I cannot find a place in the Journal of Hard-to-Define Fiction, where will I find a home?

The Rumen also rejected "Problem Solving".

I read You Dirty Beasts by Simon Lee from the LA Review of Books. I might read the book, even though I get the gist from the review.

As it happens, Biles’s sequel speaks to a trend in recent publishing: a drive to revisit and sustain Orwell’s concerns. For instance, in the 2023 reboot of Nineteen Eighty-Four titled Julia, Sandra Newman retells the dystopian classic from the perspective of Winston Smith’s love interest, suggesting a need to reconsider the novel’s gender politics from a contemporary angle. Last year also saw the release of two new biographies—D. J. Taylor’s Orwell: The New Life and Anna Funder’s Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell’s Invisible Life—offering critical insights into the author’s past while reframing his enduring legacy. Biles’s novel builds on Orwell’s work in similar ways by bringing the author’s past concerns into the present. Although this influx of new writing is likely coincidental, it does speak to Orwell’s significance as a literary figure, the vexed nature of the term Orwellian, and the need to engage with his topics and ideas in our own turbulent times. Beasts of England effectively picks up where the original left off and follows the same structural logic of sounding alarms about authoritarian control.

When I saw the headline, The hidden darkness that lies at the heart of Impressionism, I suspected the darkness.

“Over polarising political rhetoric, they were choosing to show a shared, promiscuously intertwined and authentic reality,” according to Smee. The rejection of authority of any kind as toxic was manifest in the way the Impressionists made their art. “That absence of hierarchy extended even to technical considerations: the Impressionists painted straight onto the canvas rather than with varnish layered over glazes layered over paint layered over drawing.”

Well, art is not going to do that for us now, is it?  I doubt our parents even had a shared reality; too many of us are rushing to kiss the feet of authority; and our tech addiction has created a hierarchy with more power over us than any politician.

Meet the Appalachian Apple Hunter Who Rescued 1,000 ‘Lost’ Varieties reminds me I need to get to the Minnetrista Orchard this Fall.

I finished off the night with my submissions. I think I will see what movies I can watch.

sch 

9:17 PM