It’s been quite a while since I updated this blog with what’s been going on vis-a-vis writing, so this is as much for readers as it is myself to put everything in perspective since January 1st.
I completed the first draft of a 14,000 word “longish” short called “Breathe,” a retrospective of a man in late middle age. Some life experiences never fade with age and the protagonist, Jon, shares the story of his early life as a champion swimmer and what event changed him forever. I expect to have this piece edited by March 31st and posted in this blog or on my website by mid-April.
I just finished an even longer “short” story that is tentatively entitled “A Grand Delusion” (originally a much shorter work called “An Interesting Exchange”). I wrote this story in response to a competition to have a piece featured in Sevastian Winters’ anthology called Bonfire Stories, which is scheduled to be released in e-book format on March 17th. The challenge: write a story with the following introductory sentence: “Jake Everson woke up one day in St. Bart's and picked up the newspaper to discover he'd died that morning in Spain.” As it turns out, he liked my entry along with two others, so we three finalists are waiting to find out which of our stories will be selected. While it would be nice to have a piece published in another anthology, I really just entered for the challenge - though, of course, I’m not going to decline should I win. More on this soon . . .
Another piece I just wrote and published to my website is called “The Packet,” a bit of historical fiction mixed in with a touch of conspiracy theory. I admit, the rumor that inspired the story is difficult for me to believe, but I put that aside to write this story, a tale set during the early 1900’s about man struggling to excise the sins of the past.
Besides these short stories, there are many other works-in progress, including several more short stories, my fourth spec feature-length screenplay and a novel. Thankfully, I’ve been on a creative juggernaut as of late; the down side of that, of course, is there just doesn’t seem to be enough time to do it all. However, I’m not complaining!
May your Muse be kind,
Michael
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Ode to a Recluse: Thoughts on Salinger
As many other readers (and writers) did this week, I mourned the death of Jerome David Salinger at 91 years old. On Twitter, I posted that he was one of my primary literary influences, but perhaps not for the reasons a writer growing up in the 60's and 70's would typically have. After a Saturday morning of reading the musings of others about Salinger in various blogs, I thought I'd throw my offering into the collection plate of public opinion on this subject.
I was never really moved by The Catcher in the Rye as so many of my contemporaries were. It was mandatory reading for me in high school honors English and I'm sure I thought I wrote a good book report, even though I didn't share Holden Caulfield's rebellious spirit or cynicism and couldn’t relate to him on any level. How could a Catholic school-educated, first-born son ever hope to rebel and not break the hearts of kith and kin? One may think by virtue of that one-line description alone, I would have plenty of reason to raise hell, run away, commit acts of unkindness or even hate the world. Nope; I was destined to be a good boy, leaving for later the "acting out" phase of my life.
When I got older and began to buy the classics for fun instead of obligation, I read some of Salinger's best short works and was finally seduced into believing the somewhat mythic hype about him that had grown during his self-imposed exile from the publishing world. I was convinced that Franny and Zooey was one of the best pieces of literature I ever read up to then (and still insist on that today). Because of Salinger’s new influence on me, I hungered for something that went beyond mere love of his prose: I wanted to be able to move people with words like his work did to me.
When I took those early tentative steps, first writing for myself and later for others, I would take note of the occasional news story that mentioned Salinger and his (even then) famous reclusiveness. The thought disturbed me at the time because while I was striving to find my literary voice, one that others would want to hear, there was Salinger, shunning the world, claiming to enjoy being out of the maelstrom, only writing for his enjoyment alone. How could anybody with such a gift do that? The idea that an artist would almost willfully mute himself, leaving his readers to wait and wonder, seemed almost cruel.
And yet, even in his reclusiveness, Salinger was a genius. Regardless of his reasons for becoming a hermit, his fans always remained hopeful that something new from his pen would someday hit the bookstores. Certain to be his final work, it would be the most magnum of all opuses, a swan song that couldn't be scripted any more dramatically. To my eternal sadness, though, every teasing suggestion that he would publish again was quickly snuffed out. Thus, for many, his reclusiveness became a bigger story than the art he produced. Not for me; in the end, the man became less important than the oeuvre he gave us.
The truth is this: while unlikely to happen in my lifetime, to be able to read a new work from one whose craft was honed over years of being out of the public spotlight would be like hearing a lost symphony by Mozart or viewing a never-seen Van Gogh masterpiece. I suspect Salinger would call that assertion hogwash (or worse), but I would hope he would still be pleased with the comparison.
RIP, J.D.
I was never really moved by The Catcher in the Rye as so many of my contemporaries were. It was mandatory reading for me in high school honors English and I'm sure I thought I wrote a good book report, even though I didn't share Holden Caulfield's rebellious spirit or cynicism and couldn’t relate to him on any level. How could a Catholic school-educated, first-born son ever hope to rebel and not break the hearts of kith and kin? One may think by virtue of that one-line description alone, I would have plenty of reason to raise hell, run away, commit acts of unkindness or even hate the world. Nope; I was destined to be a good boy, leaving for later the "acting out" phase of my life.
When I got older and began to buy the classics for fun instead of obligation, I read some of Salinger's best short works and was finally seduced into believing the somewhat mythic hype about him that had grown during his self-imposed exile from the publishing world. I was convinced that Franny and Zooey was one of the best pieces of literature I ever read up to then (and still insist on that today). Because of Salinger’s new influence on me, I hungered for something that went beyond mere love of his prose: I wanted to be able to move people with words like his work did to me.
When I took those early tentative steps, first writing for myself and later for others, I would take note of the occasional news story that mentioned Salinger and his (even then) famous reclusiveness. The thought disturbed me at the time because while I was striving to find my literary voice, one that others would want to hear, there was Salinger, shunning the world, claiming to enjoy being out of the maelstrom, only writing for his enjoyment alone. How could anybody with such a gift do that? The idea that an artist would almost willfully mute himself, leaving his readers to wait and wonder, seemed almost cruel.
And yet, even in his reclusiveness, Salinger was a genius. Regardless of his reasons for becoming a hermit, his fans always remained hopeful that something new from his pen would someday hit the bookstores. Certain to be his final work, it would be the most magnum of all opuses, a swan song that couldn't be scripted any more dramatically. To my eternal sadness, though, every teasing suggestion that he would publish again was quickly snuffed out. Thus, for many, his reclusiveness became a bigger story than the art he produced. Not for me; in the end, the man became less important than the oeuvre he gave us.
The truth is this: while unlikely to happen in my lifetime, to be able to read a new work from one whose craft was honed over years of being out of the public spotlight would be like hearing a lost symphony by Mozart or viewing a never-seen Van Gogh masterpiece. I suspect Salinger would call that assertion hogwash (or worse), but I would hope he would still be pleased with the comparison.
RIP, J.D.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)