Garbage Disposal

For the past several days, I've been dreading the problem with our garbage disposal. Flipping it on, I could hear the motor straining, but the mechanism was jammed and wouldn't spin. If I left the switch on, the disposal would pop its reset button. A quick look with the flashlight didn't turn up any tiny pebbles in the teeth -- just slicks of half-masticated rotting noodles and other unidentifiable globs of food.

Here's what I decided: I would need an entire day to fix the thing. I mean, I didn't know how to detach it, or what breaker it was on, or how to open the thing up so I could get to the problem. In my head, too, I knew that the whole thing would be beyond my repair level, and I would have to go buy a new one (around $100). From there, I imagined none of the new parts lining up with the old parts, etc. In short, I imagined an entire day shot -- spent in a cramped, damp space under the kitchen sink.

I set that day aside for today: Friday.

Then, my in-laws called and said that they were heading to their cabin up north a day early for Labor Day Weekend. They wanted us to come. First, I was angry because of my plans for the disposal, but then I saw another opportunity to put things off. Still, I couldn't. The damn thing was starting to stink.

So, I told my wife that we might be able to go, but only after I fixed the disposal. I imagined us leaving for the cabin around 5 p.m. at the earliest -- and that was if I worked fast.

In any case, the thing slid right off. I didn't even have to turn off the breaker to disconnect the power. I brought the disposal down to my workshop. On the underside, there was a hex female end. I found the right male end hex for my drill. I set the hex in, hit the drill . . . and, boom, the drill's tough little motor spun the jam right out.

Ten minutes later, I had the disposal reconnected and working! The entire operation took a half hour. I do this all the time with home repairs. Usually, I underestimate the time a job will take. But, sometimes -- as with the disposal -- I build up the repair into something much more terrifying and time-consuming than it is. When that happens, I'm always reminded of the following Gary Snyder haiku. (Don't look for strict haiku rules here -- you ain't going to find them.)

After weeks of watching the roof leak
I fixed it tonight
by moving a single board.


I love that haiku. True art. Simple, but undeniably true.

I Liked this Mini-Review of Some Book I Won't Say

Yet another story collection from the current crop of young writers who seem to be taking their literary cues from short, formless indie rock songs rather than hunkering down to learn the real business of plot, pacing and structure. And it shows. Basically, these stories go absolutely nowhere. Calling them "magic realism" just because they are strange and kinda daft is to totally overlook the fact that the roots of magic realism (ala Gabriel Garcia Marquez, say, or Bruno Schulz) go deep into the history, geography, social mores, religion, etc. of a community -- whereas here, the magic is texture only, it never really goes beneath the surface. Perhaps that particular quality is supposed to be indicative of the shallow uncertainty of our era -- but I still say it's the writer's job to tell us a story, which [ . . .] seems too lazy or hesitant or immature or solipsistic to do here.

I wonder how many writers are saying, "I wonder if he's talking about my book!"

Milestone

Well, it finally happened. I've sold 425 copies of my novel, Into the Desperate Country. I only need to sell 75 more and I'll have reached one of my goals. Of course, I'll set a new goal after that. Maybe 1,000 copies. I'll be sixty, but it could happen.

I think writers give up on books too quickly -- like they have an expiration date or something. Writers seems to give up pushing their books after a year, which is ridiculous. What happens? Is the book no longer good after that first year? It's all part of our block buster mentality. It has to splash big, and if it doesn't, forget it. Well, that's just stupid.

If you have a book out, keep pushing it. Contact book clubs, do readings . . . don't shamefully tuck it away because it's three or four years old.

I can think of many great books that more people should be reading. For instance, I think of Josh Maday and Matt Bell's debut book, Dancing on Fly Ash. The book contained over sixty stories that were one hundred words in length. Now that's a daring and fantastic debut book. As I understand, hard copies of the book are hard to come by, but they are keeping it available as a Kindle book. Check it out:

http://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Ash%253a-Hundred-Word-Stories/dp/B0010K6TW2

This is a debut book from Matt Bell and Josh Maday that shouldn't be forgotten. You won't be disappointed if you order a copy!

Without Wax and sad, sad, sad Week 34

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I had another zero dollar week. No profits from writing.

Oh well.

I did read another great book worth checking out. It’s called Without Wax.

The real magic of William Walsh’s Without Wax (Casperian Books) is Walsh’s ability to make the reader have so much empathy and sympathy for the protagonist, Wax Williams – a man with an eighteen-inch (flaccid) penis. I like Wax. I just do. It didn’t feel like Walsh beat me over the head with attempts to reveal Wax’s character, but from the opening pages I found myself rooting for the guy. He seemed vulnerable to me . . . and human.

Two big sources leave us vulnerable according to Without Wax. What leaves us vulnerable? Well, sex and money. Both play a role in making Wax the unhappy man he becomes. Because sex is so taboo in our culture, most of us stumble into it and its mysteries on our own -- without guides. Guessing that everybody does it, Wax shaves his pubic hair as a young boy. This simple misunderstanding leads to fears by adults of his underdevelopment, which eventually leads to his overdevelopment. If he’d had someone to mentor him, maybe he never would have shaved – though, sadly, then we wouldn’t have Without Wax.

It’s the mystification and demonization of sex which fuels the porn industry, which is prevalent in the novel, but also prevalent in the real world. Without Wax examines how our relationship to sex has left most of us creeping around the subject – and sometimes creeping into peep booths or locking the doors to our rooms and watching porn. We have few healthy outlets for our curiosities and fantasies, so we have to turn to this seedy industry.

Of course, money plays into this, too. Wax’s endowment leaves him ripe for exploitation -- by his parents, by his manager, and by nearly everybody who sees his gardenhose-length member.

Though I wouldn’t have thought it at first, this novel says a lot about our society. Our relationship to money and our relationship to sex put Wax in the predicament he finds himself in. It puts many of us in the odd and sometimes unnecessarily shameful positions we find ourselves in.

In any case, this is a book that centers on a porn star and the porn industry, and it left me more intellectually stimulated than it did sexually stimulated. That’s pretty cool.

(I’ll admit, though, that there were some passages that raced my heart a little bit.)

I guess this isn’t really a review – it’s just me rambling after having finished the book. I did really like this book, though. I read it in a weekend – which is pretty darn fast for me. It’s rendered in an interesting way, which includes interviews with characters, second-person narratives, a complete movie screenplay, and court depositions. A very cool read to say the least, and another unique feather in the cap of Casperian Books. Motor City Blues, The Tea House, End Credits, and Without Wax are each very different from the other, and yet all four have their own strengths. You should go over to Casperian Books and buy one. You’ll be supporting a small (but up and coming) press. That’s always a good thing.

http://www.casperianbooks.com/catalog/shop.html

The Snowfly: A Preview

The Snowfly (Lyons Press), by Joseph Heywood, follows the fishing and UPI reporting life of Bowie Rhodes. As Bowie's life unfolds, so do the mysteries of the snowfly, a mythical fly of such rarity and size that when it hatches (about once every ten years) it brings monstrous trout to the surface. Bowie's reporting life takes him to Vietnam, England, Russia, Canada and then back to the U.S. (including Michigan and its Upper Peninsula), and at each destination he gets a little more ensnared in the allure of the snowfly. Chasing the snowfly becomes an addiction for some, and keeping from getting addicted himself becomes one of Rhode's great fights. Questions rise throughout the book. Why are both the U.S. and Soviet governments so interested in M.J. Key's unpublished manuscript, The Legend of The Snowfly? When will Bowie find a woman that meets his every need? Why does Raina Chickerman, childhood friend of Bowie, keep surfacing and seems somehow connected to the snowfly mystery?

At one point, while in Canada, Bowie finds himself in a Native American spirit hole:

"Night passed to day. I went from cold to sweltering. At midday the sun was overhead and I couldn't escape it. More sleep. Confusion. I tried to jump out, smacked my face on the wall, bled from the nose, got giddy. Then night finally came. Then day. Then something else. I imagined sin, drowning in every one committed. I fought for air, imagined sin could raise me up, but the sin was heavy and had no buoyancy. Snakes came, black shapes with heads shaped like trowels. They had bright red, yellow, and green stripes and dropped heavily, thudding on me. Not real, I told myself. Then they struck and I screamed. I went from fire to ice. The flames did not heat and the ice did not cool. My flesh became loose, like a robe, and sluffed off my bones. A raven came and took my eyes and told me they were only dressings for humans who were born and lived blind and since I was in darkness and had no need to see, he had hunger and he apologized for taking my eyes and when he had flown away I could see sockets where my eyes had been. There was no pain. If this was death, it was soothing. Life had never been so serene."

No existential whining here . . . Heywood wants to tell a big tale where big things happen, even if those things sometimes challenge us to believe them.

Untitled

Well, things are looking up a bit. A book club in Midland has decided to read my novel and have me join them as a visiting author. As a result, I sold a few books and turned in a profit of $18 for this week (Week 33). That brings my total for the year to $818.88.

I guess that's starting to look respectable . . . by D-list standards.

In reading news . . . I had intended to start reading William Walsh's book Without Wax




but, I got sidetracked and started reading The Snowfly . . .



I do intend to come back to Without Wax very soon. Do some googling of it, and you'll find very supportive reviews. A book worth checking out. Handsomely designed. As I understand, the main character is a male porn star -- and yet treated by the author as a human being.

The Snowfly is an addictive thing. 464 pages, and I'm flying through it. It's got mystery, violence, sex and . . . fly fishing! As I read it, I wonder if this is how reading a Grisham novel feels. It's not very cerebral at all and, when it gets heavier, it gets heavy about fishing. It will most likely become a fly fishing book in the fly fishing literature canon -- though much less literary than River Runs Through It or Big Two-Hearted River. If you like fly fishing or books set in Michigan, this one is for you.

On a final note, www.amazon.com still has a copy of my novel left. Won't someone go buy it?

Sleepwalker -- the Short Film

A few years back, I had a story published in the Adirondack Review entitled "Sleepwalker". You can read the story here:

http://adirondackreview.homestead.com/vandezande.html

Since then, I've taken a screenwriting class, and I adapted the story into a screenplay. Budding film maker, Michael Randolph, then shot and directed the film. It stars Rick McGaw as Martin Frost.

Check it out. It's only 13 minutes long or so.


Sleepwalker - A Short Film from Michael Randolph on Vimeo.

Its and It's

Since some people have asked . . . and some people need to know.

Its means possesive. For example: I have a dog. There's its house.

Its is like his or hers. The his or hers means possesive, so no apostrophe is necessary.

On the other hand, it's is a contraction of it is. For example: I have a dog. It's a fine animal.

If you can change it to it is and the sentence still makes sense, then you mean, it's.

If you change it to it is and the sentence doesn't make sense (e.g. I have a dog. There it is house.) then you mean its.

Have a nice day!

If I Were to Write a Blurb

Fausto's Afternoon, a collection of short stories by Jarda Cervenka is unlike anything else I've read this year. Where Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately, Cervenka goes to the world. He unveils characters and situations that few Americans will ever experience -- especially since so many of us are caught up in trying to get "a grip on things" . . . meaning things that can be bought. Returning from Africa to American suburbs, many of his characters experience what Cervenka calls mal d'afrique -- a longing so strong to go back to Africa that it feels almost like a sickness. Closing Cervenka's book, I can only call what I'm feeling a slight case of mal d'faustoique.

This is one to buy and, as I've said before, it supports a small press.

This is Just Sad: Week 32

Well, I made money this week from my writing. Yes, I did. I made seventy-seven cents. Ah, yes, my life on the D list of writing.

My total for the year: $800.88.

The climb to nine hundred dollars is going VERY slowly. August is a bad month.

I'm still really enjoying Fausto's Afternoon by Jarda Cervenka. He actually writes stories that are stories and have characters that do things! It's a very counter-culture approach to fiction. Plus, I really enjoy how the stories take the reader to many countries of the world.

If anyone wants to order a book (one of mine, not Cervenka's), just drop me an email. We'll work out a deal.

jcvandez@delta.edu

Say Abra Cadabra

I see that Amazon still has a copy of my novel.

Please someone make it disappear.

Blake Butler's Open Node Theory

I was over on Matt Bell's site, and he linked to a post on Blake Butler's site in which Mr. Butler listed some things writers and editors can do to support each other. Dan Wickett tossed in some thoughts, too, as did Matt.

Check it out: http://www.mdbell.com/blog/2008/8/2/blake-butler-and-dan-wickett-on-being-an-open-node.html

I would add this thought. Writers could support magazines by doing the following. Yes, of course, they should subscribe to magazines. But, they can do more. We all have people in our lives who have birthdays. Buy them gift subscriptions. Buy them books. My sister-in-law had a birthday in June. I bought her Paul Elwork's The Tea House. She's reading it and liking it. That's pretty cool. She would never have been exposed to it otherwise.

If you're an instructor, offer extra credit to your students for subscribing to lit mags. I do this with my fiction writers. They can earn ten points for subscribing to Hobart. Ten points can make up a missed quiz or a couple of journals. Many of my students go after these points, and I would say that Hobart probably has received nearly 50 subscriptions from this over the years.

This past winter semester, I ran into one of my fiction students at Meijers. As we talked, she mentioned that she had renewed (!) her subscription to Hobart because she liked it so much.

Now, that's really cool. I think Aaron Burch would agree.

As writers, we can do more to bring contemporary writing into the lives of people we know. We have obligatory gifts to give anyway . . . why not make them books and magazines -- especially books from small presses and obscure lit mags.

Write Previews, not Reviews

Why can't book reviewers write reviews in which they leave their opinion out? Let's call them previews. Don't use any words that pass judgement. Don't be an arbiter. I mean, really, why do you think your opinion on the book matters? Plus, come on, you know you're lying a little. You didn't like that book that much, but the writing world is a small world and, sadly, back scratching does go a long way. So, you throw in words like "strong," "impressive," "haunting," or some other adjective. Leave opinion out, and you don't risk being dishonest or, worse -- like with a bad review -- being a self-important poison.

Keep your opinion to yourself. Just preview the book.

What’s the point of book reviews? At their most basic level, they should give readers an idea as to what the book is about. They should give readers a taste of the kind of sentences they might be reading. Readers should leave with an idea of theme and quality of writing.

A book review should do the following things.

Give the title, author, and publisher of the book. In general, say what the writer writes about. Don’t give an opinion. Just let the reader know what to expect. Provide a sample. Give ten random (not hand-picked) sentences from the piece to give the reader some idea as to how this writer expresses herself. Again, keep your opinion to yourself. If you have to give your opinion, give some opinion as to what you think the writer hopes to express with their writing.

Okay, so here’s how a brief preview of a book might read.

Fausto’s Afternoon (Whistling Shade Press) is a collection of short stories by Jarda Cervenka. Cervenka’s are stories of the world. He writes stories that take place in South America, Russia, Africa, Europe and even Minnesota. His main characters, mostly Americans, often are jarred into a different understanding of the world by their non-American experiences. Cervenka seems to suggest that we, as Americans, get too locked into one way of viewing the world. Cervenka’s writing brings the reader into the world, not just the American world, but the world at large.

In “Celebrated Navigation,” Cervenka writes of Ivanek, a homeless man in the Czech Republic who finds himself briefly in the limelight when the local river floods:

“People started to run away, pushing and shouting, pointing at their feet, stepping high. The hungry, wild river spilled over the sidewalk. The flood arrived onto the street and everybody was on the move. At that moment, the Old Town became the edge of a swimming pool for feces, rats, and butts.

Ivanek found himself alone, his bare feet ankle high in the flowing dirt. A pair of soaked unused cigarettes floated by his feet, one lonely used condom, this ever present whitefish of Vltava, following behind. Because he still saw her copper hair and her face, he could comprehend only a little of what was happening around him. It took some time before he turned around to survey the river, but he did not worry. He had arrived with the flood. While stooping in dejection at this moment he was not a hopeless homeless, no, not Ivanek, the man with friends.”

In Fausto’s Afternoon, Cervenka seems to want to shake his American reader into seeing the world for all of its mystery – and seeing that exposure to such mystery can be life-giving.

Week 31

Okay, it hasn't happened since Week 2, but it happened again this week -- $0.00 dollars in profit for my writing. Oh well, it was bound to happen again.

The deal still stands (though slightly altered). You can buy my novel, my short story collection, or my full-length poetry collection for $12.50 (this will include shipping). Or, you can buy all three for $32.00 (which also includes shipping). Just send me an email: jcvandez@delta.edu, and we'll work out the details.

Amazon still has a copy of my novel. Feel free to buy it.

Soul of Wood

I just finished reading Soul of Wood and Other Stories by Jakov Lind. It was published in the early 60's and was left to me, along with the rest of his books, when my father died. It's actually a book of fiction that has as its setting the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. I've never read fiction about the Holocaust before. Lind does a powerful job of recreating the times and, as one would have to, uses a great deal of surrealism to capture the insanity and inhumanity of the times.

What really surprised was when I googled Lind and found out that he was quite a literary marvel. Maybe this speaks to my stupidity, or maybe it speaks to the shelf-life of writers. Lind's book is powerful, unique, and necessary -- as I imagine are his many other books. Is anybody reading him anymore? Will anybody?

The sales rank of his books at Amazon (I know, not a perfect gauge) suggests that nobody is reading him.

Odd. Shouldn't people be reading fiction by a writer who actually experienced aspects of the Holocaust? (actually, it'd be pretty dishonest and appalling to write fiction about the Holocaust if one hadn't experienced it)

We still read Tim O'Brien for his Vietnam fiction.

Why has Jakov Lind fallen off the literary map?

Or has he? I really don't know, but I'd never heard of him until I perused my shelf of books in the basement and the title Soul of Wood jumped out at me.

In any case, I recommend this book, especially for those interested in the Holocaust.