You can see why I write a lot of drafts: they don’t improve very much from one to the next.

Kristen McHenry has made a list of her fears. One of them is fear of someone reading my first draft. By this, I must assume that either her second drafts are final, or she is not afraid of someone reading her second drafts, or—and most troubling, she simply forgot to list the drafts that she fears someone reading. This last one bothers me so much because, other than this blog, I write many drafts of my work—upwards of 100 drafts for a piece of work. I don’t know about Ms. McHenry; maybe it’s plop, spell check, publish. But I doubt this. Thus, I wonder: does she fear someone reading any draft other than her final draft? Is it just certain drafts—say, 2,3 5, and 11? Or perhaps just the even drafts? Perhaps the prime numbers? Maybe it is even a mathematical sequence, like: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on. Perhaps it is a more interesting sequence? One that I couldn’t even figure out and I am rather good at these kinds of things.

I understand the desire to withhold a work of art until it is finished. I have, for example, never let anyone read my first novel Kamping on Asphalt—not that people were tripping over themselves to get a copy. The truth is that the very idea of a draft is not clear to me in the sense that it usually takes an enormous amount of writing to get to something that one might call a first draft. I find the process goes something like this: crap, crap, crap, crap, crap with an interesting idea, crap, crap, crap with that interesting idea turned into a major dorky part of it, dorky crap, dorky, dorky, something readable but bad. The final result: the “first” draft.

Let me explain with the current draft of the first chapter of my second novel Treading Asphalt. I decided that because KOA was written in limited third-person, I would like to do TA in first person. That’s what Joseph Heller did, so how hard could it be? It was a bitch. It took me two years to find the voice of the narrator (and he was a major character in KOA, so I had a running start at it). And so here is what I would call my first draft of the first chapter of TA (note my fearlessness):

Okay. Okay. It is genre crap, but I’m trying to make a living here. I would show you my second draft, but I fear people reading my second drafts. No, just kidding. But I won’t show you my second draft anyway—I can’t find it. Here’s my third (or maybe fourth), however:

So I say, free yourself Ms. McHenry! Free yourself from this first draft fear! I have never met a writer whose work didn’t suck 99% of the time. Hell, I can show you writers whose published work sucks 99% of the time! Embrace your ineptitude; accept your ignorance; relish your double commas and similar typos; proudly right, “Theirs know perphection end da whirled.”

I have so much to do, especially finish my article and interview with Pow Wow (Wayne Poehlman), but I just ran into an old friend Yana Bogosian who I wrote a song with about eleven years ago. Actually, we didn’t write it together. She had written a little nursery rhyme about a pipe that was leaking behind the wall in her apartment. She wrote more than I’m going to quote, but I don’t remember the rest, because I didn’t rip that part off. Here’s what I remember:

There’s a leak, but we can’t find it
There’s a bust hiding behind it

I was struck with this. For her it was a poem/song that was concrete: it was about her life. But it started in me a creative explosion. And never being one to shy away from ripping off other people’s lives (and I gave her lead songwriting credit even though I wrote all of it except for those two line), I went with it. I thought it would be really surreal if a leaky pipe caused a whole town to flood. Hence the song.

I will get my little studio hooked up shortly and provide an MP3, but for now, here are the lyrics:

There’s a leak but we can’t find it
There’s a bust hiding behind it
And it’s spraying you can’t hind
Turning indoors to outside.

And my friendly next door neighbor
Turning angry into labor
He knows something isn’t clear
In my house it’s very queer.

The Police come, they’re not grinning
‘Though my friends are now all swimming
There’s a beach ball flying high
Hits a cop right in the eye.

Now it’s seeping out the doorway
And I’m mute ’cause no more to say
And the streets are filling up
Watch the floating coffee cups.

So the ‘copters come to save us
And we try hard to behave, must
Tell them all we didn’t know
‘Bout the pipe before it broke.

There’s a leak but we can’t find it
There’s a bust hiding behind it
And it’s spraying you can’t hind
Turning indoors to outside.

There’s a leak but we can’t find it
There’s a leak but we can’t find it
There’s a leak.

Great art? Perhaps not. But the songs that I have written like this tend to be among my favorites. Things like: “My Suitcase and a Clown” and “You Make me Want to be a Meat Inspector”; things that share much with Shel Silverstein, but which are far more adult in content—silly on the surface, but troubling below (e.g. “My Suitcase and a Clown” is explicitly about a violent contract negotiation between a ventriloquist and his “dummy” but is implicitly about the American class system). And musically far more adventurous than the late great Mr. Silverstein.

But it was great to see Yana again.

I have three translations of Gargantua & Pantagruel, and the best by far is the one in Complete Works of Rabelais, translated by Jacques Le Clercq. If you are up for it, it is worth a read; it pre-dates Don Quixote by roughly 70 years.

It is surprising that the death of J. D. Salinger should get so much press this week when he died over 45 years ago—on the publication of his last short story in The New Yorker.

Okay; so maybe his heart was still beating and maybe he was continuing to be an asshole to his wife, but as far as I’m concerned, he died that day, and I don’t give a fuck if it took another 44 years, 7 months, and 8 days for his heart to stop beating. I don’t get it, and for that matter, I don’t get the reverence that people show towards him and The Catcher in the Rye. It just isn’t that good a book. I think of it like Jack Kerouac‘s On the Road. Neither are good, but both are held in high regard.

I suppose it has something to do with the fact that both books speak to young people who don’t know much about literature. It is like kids who heard Pat Boone singing Ain’t That a Shame who thought that it was rock-n-roll until they heard the Fats Domino’s original. They just don’t know no better. I will grant you that Salinger was an extremely gifted writer and I would much rather read him than I would Kerouac; but Kerouac was the real deal; Salinger was the poser and I think that is why he didn’t publish anything after his literary death: he knew if he kept writing, people would realize that his early work was more style than substance and that he would suffer the same fate that later befell Susan Eloise Hinton.

But why not just admit that you are a Truman Capote? Why not admit that you are a fine writer, not a prophet. As it is, Tolstoy left us only two great books (with almost 25 more years and many fewer distractions) because he was too wrapped up in being a Great Man. Both Salinger and Tolstoy will go down in history as great men, while Capote will go down in history as an asshole. But what does that matter? Capote provided me with more pleasure than those other two combined.

So I’m not sad that J. D. stopped breathing yesterday. I am sad that he stopped publishing 45 years ago. I’m sad that I didn’t think Catcher in the Rye was a good book when I read it as a young man. And most of all, I’m sad that I’ll have to go out tomorrow and buy it (because my copy has inexplicitly disappeared) and read the damned thing again to see if maybe I was wrong about it.

The Onion

The Onion has written more eloquently about J. D. Salinger than I ever could. Understanding that there has been a lot of Salinger fan fiction written will make the following article particularly funny:

New Terminator Movie Brings J.D. Salinger Out Of Hiding

Understanding that Holden Caulfield (the main character of The Catcher in the Rye) calls people “phony” will make the following article particularly funny:

Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger

It was not the Bible that I was reading: it was Gary Taylor’s exquisitely fun Reinventing Shakespeare. I will be writing about it soon; I had to re-supply my stock of book darts because of this book. (I don’t get any money for that link; I just think that book darts are one of the greatest inventions ever.)

When I was in Mexico recently a few people asked me if I was a padre—”a priest” one helpful questioner translated for me. I like the idea of people thinking that I’m a man of the Word. Yes, it is true that my spiritual beliefs are what people charitably called atheistic. Yes, I am a hopeless moral relativist. Yes indeed, when my friends speak kindly of me, they say, “But he’s our nihilist.” All these things are true, but I have one thing that qualifies me to be a prophet: I am a man of the word—and most people don’t pay enough attention to notice issues of capitalization.

I believe people thought that I was a priest for three reasons. First, I am a gringo and I saw no other in my time down in the southern part of Mexico. Why would a sober white man be slumming it as I was? Second, I wear almost exclusively black. They seemed to associate that more with the clergy than with the Beat Generation. And third, I was studying a big, hard-cover book. They thought it might be a bible.

In these post-modern times, it does seem to be the case that adults do not read books. Those who do usually read relatively thin, paperback books. Large, hardback books are not read; they are studied. And in general, that is the case. There is usually a reason I am reading any given book—it isn’t just for pleasure.

For example, let’s look at today’s loot:

The Chicago Manual of Style 15th Edition This is definitely not light reading, but it is highly pleasurable—because I’m weird that way. I plan to wax poetic about it in my next blog entry.

The Works of Rabelais I am working on an article about anal cleansing, so of course I have to read Gargantua and Pantagruel. You do see that, don’t you?

Don Quixote (translated by Edith Grossman) and Don Quixote (translated by Charles Jarvis) In addition to these two translations, I have ordered four more. This all has something to do with something that ends in my reading Don Quixote in Spanish. That is to say that there will be more than one article involving this reading.

There is (more than?) an element of religious zealotry about all of this. I do want to bring the Word of Cervantes (indirectly via his translators) to the masses—or some subset. People ought to be warned, and if they mistake me for a man of the Word rather than a man of the word, that’s probably good enough.

More Don Quixote

Want to know more about Don Quixote and other 16th and 17th century literature? Check out my Don Quixote Page!

Yes, I know. But I like the asphalt metaphor; what can I say?

I am of two thoughts about the word “snarky”, and apparently everyone else is too. First, it seems like it used to mean testy. Second, it seems like it is now mostly used to mean sarcastically pithy. Dictionary.com states that it is, “Testy or irritable; short.” And the Urban Dictionary says that it is, “A witty mannerism, personality, or behavior that is a combination of sarcasm and cynicism. Usually accepted as a complimentary term.”

Personally, I would not use the word “snarky” to describe something I approved of—at least publicly. I might use it to indicate a bit of hidden delight, however.

To be continued…

In Greek mythology, Philomel (Usually: Philomela.) and Procne are sisters. Procne’s husband, King Tereus agrees to escort Philomel to Thrace on vacation. But you know how it is with Greek men: Tereus can’t control himself. He kidnaps and rapes Philomel. But you know how it is with Greek women: Philomel can’t keep her big mouth shut. So she tells him that she has no intention of hiding his misdeed out of some sense of shame; she is going to tell everyone. But you know Greek men: Tereus cuts out her tongue so she can’t rat him out. But you know Greek women: Philomel weaves a tapestry that tells the whole story. But you know Greek wives: when Procne finds out, she kills Tereus’ only son and then feeds the body to him. But you know Greek men: he eats it. But you know Greek myths: Zeus and company change Philomel, Tereus, and Procne into birds.

I have no idea what the point of the story is, except maybe that you shouldn’t trust your husband with your sister. This is good advice.