On Reading New Writing

Finished reading Rivers Solomon’s “An Unkindness of Ghosts.” This is a different read from most if not all of my previous books. Its style might be called “gender vague.” The story is not new but takes a different twist because without sometimes having gender identities as a given the characters surprise the reader. It’s not easy to do well and Solomon is to be commended. Most the time it seems to me such attempts are done badly and I think it might be that an author tries to control the character too much from the start. We should also understand “gender vague” is not “gender neutral.” The author uses gender as part of the character’s attributes but attempts to steer those attributes into the corner. There is always the possibility that such style backfires. From a writing perspective we usually need to crawl before we can walk. To be novel in a novel world takes some practice. We must remember that the “new” is usually an extension of the old via experimentation. And sometimes very disappointingly, the novel becomes so common it soon is labelled and tagged like some animal skin and no longer very exciting. But the experimentation can go wrong another way, too. Solomon uses a bit of “misspelled dialect.” Once the author starts using street spellings where does it end and how am I supposed to read something that my brain sees as a foreign language. (James McBride goes in deep with local dialects and seems to pull it off.) The rationale is this is how people speak. I agree. And I’ll be the first to admit when people speak in a very localized accent I have to work at paying attention to what they say. And interpret what I am hearing which interrupts my listening. Every region has its own accent but your reader base is national. Something has go to give. In this text, I would stumble across a misspelled word that I thought was a thought by the protagonist stopped me for a long moment and forced me to figure out what I’d just read. This is a pit into which readers fall (not the writer) and affords an opportunity to quit reading the novel (which almost happened). Beware, then once the reader stops, it takes a compelling pull from the work to start up again. And any reason will do to help derail the reader (gotta mow the yard, gotta eat, bathroom break, Internet message). It’s tough. ###

A thought or two on writing

Finished reading Rivers Solomon’s “An Unkindness of Ghosts.” This is a different read from most if not all of my previous books. Its style might be called “gender vague.” The story is not new but takes a different twist because without sometimes having gender identities as a given the characters surprise the reader. It’s not easy to do well and Solomon is to be commended. Most the time it seems to me such attempts are done badly and I think it might be that an author tries to control the character too much from the start. We should also understand “gender vague” is not “gender neutral.” The author uses gender as part of the character’s attributes but attempts to steer those attributes into the corner. There is always the possibility that such style backfires. From a writing perspective we usually need to crawl before we can walk. To be novel in a novel world takes some practice. We must remember that the “new” is usually an extension of the old via experimentation. And sometimes very disappointingly, the novel becomes so common it soon is labelled and tagged like some animal skin and no longer very exciting. But the experimentation can go wrong another way, too. Solomon uses a bit of “misspelled dialect.” Once the author starts using street spellings where does it end and how am I supposed to read something that my brain sees as a foreign language. (James McBride goes in deep with local dialects and seems to pull it off.) The rationale is this is how people speak. I agree. And I’ll be the first to admit when people speak in a very localized accent I have to work at paying attention to what they say. And interpret what I am hearing which interrupts my listening. Every region has its own accent but your reader base is national. Something has go to give. In this text, I would stumble across a misspelled word that I thought was a thought by the protagonist stopped me for a long moment and forced me to figure out what I’d just read. This is a pit into which readers fall (not the writer) and affords an opportunity to quit reading the novel (which almost happened). Beware, then once the reader stops, it takes a compelling pull from the work to start up again. And any reason will do to help derail the reader (gotta mow the yard, gotta eat, bathroom break, Internet message). It’s tough. But done well, and Solomon does it well, then that is a good read. ###

Works of Art

I’ve been enjoying a recent spate of sunshine and warmth to stroll downtown Johnson City to photograph the “wildabout walkabout” statues. There are 15 statues and I guess it took me four afternoons to finally find them all. I think my Dan’l Boone Frontier Training days are over. The statues were made by a group of art students at ETSU. They seem like a pretty talented bunch. Bronze is poured in a mold and it would seem to me to be a lot of work. But the finished product is quite nice! I would always worry that my mold would crumble and I’d have a lump of pop-art that was supposed to resemble a fish. My few attempts at working in clay ended pretty much junk. I’d hate to think how much patience it would take for me to work in bronze. At least with writing and photography you can easily delete something incredibly beyond help and start over. But there was a lesson, once upon a time, in pottery class. Some of us had finished a simple vase. The instructor then asked us if we felt we were good or lucky. If we felt lucky, then destroy the piece and make another. Sadly, the second attempt never did see the heat of the oven. I’m glad someone has stuck with it and produced some nice pieces of art. Johnson City has, I think, tended towards the right idea of making attempts to inject life into the downtown. Now that we might see the end of the shutdown, of course, things will liven up. A bit. But don’t get in a hurry. There have been great attempts at treasure hunts for kids (and parents) but I have no idea of their success. But I think this is a step in the right direction. There are some interesting little corners to the downtown and if you are one to take pictures with your cell phone I think the wildabout is “just-about” right. ###

Road Noises

My favorite route for walking (which I need to do more of) is a lap around the Post Office-Franklin Woods Hospital-Knob Creek Road complex in the Med-tech Corridor. My pedometer says I am 1/16 of a mile short of two miles. Three uphill portions and some refreshing downhills of course. First thing in the morning, lots of street traffic.

But today I got to noticing what I might hear instead of road noise and air conditioning units. From over by the Wellness Center I could hear the whine of the lift gate. At the eye surgery I could hear the greetings of the people stationed at their entrance to check in patients. They instituted a one-way drive pattern to help enforce rules about patients coming to the clinic.

Along this corridor, cars and light trucks zoom by. That noise for a moment tends to overshadow all others and only when the cars are not present do other sounds sneak into your hearing. If you’re listening.

I can hear a woman’s voice and notice she is speaking to someone in a car in the parking lot at the bank. I don’t hear the other person. A few bird calls make it from across the street to my side.

I think a lot of us do not attempt to discriminate about what we hear, or see, or say. We talk in generalities--some of them good and some of them mean--but we do that because taking in details of everything living, breathing, or noisy would be too much for the brain to handle. You don’t pay much attention to the sidewalk (unless you suspect it’ll trip you) so that its grey goes into your eyes but your brain doesn’t worry too much about it. In that one example we also don’t appreciate our extraordinary sense of balance and timing that keeps us from sprawling so gracefully. Same lack of definition is how we sense the trees and clouds. Or bird songs. Or people, sometimes. Sadly.

We pay attention to dogs because they pay attention to us.

If all we did was concentrate on our hearing we’d walk into a fire hydrant. If we paid attention only to the clouds we’d probably get run over. I’ve read that the euphoria of smoking dope concentrates your brain on one general background, making it special, at the risk of running your hand through the saw. Too much trash talk is why we change channels when a campaign ad comes on the television.

I can hear the chatter of some birds in the quiet times. Then another growl of a diesel on the uphill grade. Some cars really are quiet. There is concern that the electric cars will be so quiet pedestrians will be a some further risk by not hearing the car approach. The answer to this will be interesting.

On the short chute along Knob Creek there is much too much traffic for anything else to filter through. That section along there gets really busy at times and as the Med-tech opens for business in the mornings there are plenty of cars squeezed into a short stretch of street. The set-back from North State of Franklin to the Med-tech corridor street is as short as Tennessee Street from Walnut to South State of Franklin. And I suspect for drivers just as frustrating. Maybe this is a sign our little town is growing up.

Out on the long straightaway that parallels North State of Franklin, heading towards the post-office turn, I can hear a dumpster being emptied at one of the restaurants across the road. I wondered for a second about what its decibel rating would be for that lid to clang closed if I can hear it so far away but only at a moment when the traffic is lighter.

You can certainly tell the difference between a Harley and a crotch-rocket where State of Franklin rises up towards Indian Ridge, without regard to direction. The turbo bikes really scream. They like this long stretch of roadway. This is not new to any of us, of course, but it’s fun to listen rather than watch. Diesel pickup trucks like to show off their prowess along here, too, and are successful if only because the semi-driver has nothing to prove and so little open road to prove it on.

Back along the corridor from the post office to Franklin Woods the road is rougher and suspensions squish. There seems to be a slight variation in the sound the car makes as its suspension travels. As if the traction to the pavement also changes ever so slightly which makes for a momentary change in its sound.

No one is mowing right now. Few people are out this morning. A couple of “good mornings” is about it. Our part of the world can be very noisy which makes me wonder how people respond to the quiet up on Roan Mountain? Do they notice? I have at times here at my house when the appliances are off, the mowing is done, everyone is someplace else, noticed a bit of almost unnatural quiet settling in.

I’m lucky.
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At The Coffee Shop

At my favorite coffee house, an older couple was sitting on a bench in the corner, she on the inside, having a coffee or tea and something to eat. They had been enjoying, I hope, a time of quiet despite all the hectic of the holidays, although they’ve been married long enough they probably don’t need more quiet moments together, this diversion being a date night on a Friday morning, perhaps before going to visit the doctor or a shut-in friend.

While the shop is warm and busy and noisy, full of people engrossed with each other, this couple has to be careful moving about because the floor is a bit uneven. We are in an old building and it is coming apart mostly because of age and traffic. The place can be packed full at times! The vibrance of a coffee house, a cozy, gabby place, is not used to the quiet love, the mature love, the aged love, I see in the corner, away from the maelstrom of busy lives.

I have to move out of the way so she can get by me. The tables and chairs are invitingly close which makes for a narrow lane for her to navigate, and she almost forgets her cane. She is a pleasant person, as are most people, of course, when you stand or move out of their way, or smile at them. She has to go slow, ever careful with the cane and cautious of table legs and human legs and back packs and purse straps and things that stick out in the way that might elude her eyesight. She doesn’t want to plod. It’s an indignity to act old, to walk old, in public. We respond to her chance to act normal and maybe in my zeal to be sure she is safe I also rob her of her independence. Perhaps I signal exactly what she doesn’t want emphasized.

Her husband, quite a bit more mobile, waits at the counter. He knows she’ll be along soon enough. They know each other down to the last atom. Neither takes the other for granted but instead gives room to exercise movement in this large world. We should all be so lucky to have a companion in our later years who’ll go out for coffee or an errand or just be glad to say “Hello” and greet us with a smile.

It has become easy to be superficial. There is a pressure nowadays of being polite only because we have to be and then only minimally. Sort of a passive/aggressive romanticism?

Encounters like this I think go a long ways to making us more than barely civil. As I roam around town I sometimes see genuine acts of kindness and I would hope that we are all willing and able to look after each other if only in the moment.

The husband left a tip at the table. Like many modern small food shops you pay a full price at the counter and then a tip in the tip jar, in this case a water pitcher. He left a tip of a bill and a pile of change as if he has riffled his pockets to give as much as he could. It was a polite, old-fashioned way of complimenting the business.

They’re gone soon enough. I hoped they have a good day. I was glad to have witnessed this small proof the world has not gone entirely crazy.
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New Normal?

What with the Corvid-19 virus practically turning thriving communities into ghost towns there ought to be a lot to write about. Except, of course, none of this is make believe.  It is real that our downtown is fairly quiet on Friday and Saturday nights. It is real that all of my clubs I belong to and weekly activities  are cancelled. It is real that people are dying. It is real that people are practically huddling in fear. It is real that panic can make us do some crazy things. A good mystery writer would use panic buying as a coverup to murder! Or they might use Corvid-19 as a murder weapon as someone tried to do years ago with HIV/AIDS. A good novelist, thinking along Gothic lines, uses this as a major character/ backdrop to the drama of the conditions of human-kind.

Our photo club is tasked with documenting the “new normal” which is going to be interesting. I am starting a list of ideas for shooting and it in itself is interesting. For example, at the city all they’re blocking out the waiting line to pay bills with red-duct tape. At Rotary Park there is a sign with the six-foot separation instructions. Not unusual? Of course it is not unusual. That is what makes it the new normal. With enough of us working on this we should come up with a decent portfolio.

If nothing else, keeping a diary of this part of our lives is a good writing habit. We have some stories retained from the days of Spanish Flu and the Plague which sometimes helps us see and understand what other generations have gone through. What we have today is a much better way to publish and keep such records. It is worth a try.
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2019 Best Reads (Maybe?)

On the subject of reading, I cannot brag. I only read 34 books this year. I don’t know that the number is above average, below average, or average. I don’t keep track of average. One of my friends made it to 52 novels this year.

There were some first-time authors that didn’t make the cut for 2019 Moore’s Best Reads and some oldies that did and other that didn’t make the cut. I like to peruse the new-book shelf at the Johnson City Public Library before going to my waiting list. And some of my more favorites were choices for the book groups at the library.

Something of a proviso: I stop reading anything that doesn’t interest me, without regard to recommendations or stars or likes. There is no telling the number of false starts in a year.

In no particular order in the fiction category: “Ordinary Grace” by William Kent Krueger (very good), “The Spaceship Next Door” by Gene Doucette (inventive), “Paradise Sky” by Joe Lansdale (rivals McCarthy?), “1984” by George Orwell (spooky scary), “The Fighter” by Michael Farris Smith (out-of-the-blue good!), “Slaughterhouse 5” by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (strangely entertaining), “The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter” by Malcolm Mackay (top notch noir).

I read non-fiction partly to steer away from the sometimes overwhelming crush of crummy beach-read fiction. For non-fiction, these stood out: “Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick” by Les Standiford, “Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft…” by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Both excellent works and so very much appropriate in the current discourse. I was certainly influenced to read Goodwin after her visit to Johnson City as I imagine were the other one-thousand people at her presentation.

Just making it in under the year-end deadline was the very good non-fiction, “I Heard You Paint Houses…” by Charles Brandt. If you enjoyed “The Irishman” you might like this but it helps to be as old as I am to remember some of this stuff. Brandt uses the Irishman’s taped interviews to provide the bulk of the book.

Got to plug JCPL, still the best place to start your reading for 2020.
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