Small earthquake

We had a rumbling earthquake of no account a little after 8 pm. It was all vibration and no jolting. The duration was a little longer than most minor earthquakes but it never got serious and I remained sitting on the couch watching "Help!" on the Sundance Channel.

Apparently it was a little more startling in San Jose near the epicenter.

technorati: earthquake

Another bad retail experience

Cris wanted some photo paper, the kind you put in your desktop color printer, so I drove to the Walgreens at 24th and Potrero to get it. You can really tell the character of a neighborhood by evaluating the quality of the Walgreens at the center of it. There was exactly one (1) employee visible behind the cash registers at the front, and none other in the whole store, aside from the pharmacy. Because it's a ghetto Walgreens, all the expensive stuff is behind the counter, and that includes the photo paper. But the one guy at the cash register constantly had a line and there's no way he could help me... I finally had to drive to another Walgreens, this one on 30th and Mission. It's really no difference in the neighborhood, but at least there were more employees working there. When I got my receipt it had a long text printed on it about calling their 800 number and commenting on their service, you could win a $3000 prize. Unfortunately I didn't get a receipt at the first store where I was able to buy nothing at all.

technorati: Walgreens

Another sunny day

Here's another sunny day I'm spending indoors working on my book. In years past I used to hike all day long on Mount Tam on days like this. Especially in the fall, it's beautiful out there. Oh well, I also used to wonder why I wasn't writing. Now I am.

Focus on the Fundies: Swinging pendulum hits foamers

This NYT magazine article on the changing political winds among evangelical (formerly hard-right-wing) Christian churches is fascinating. Finally disenchanted with the Karl Roves and Dick Cheneys and perhaps becoming more sensitive to what their religion actually says about caring for poor people and the earth, the denizens of meagachurches can no longer be counted on to vote straight Republican. The more politicized see no presidential candidate to vote for; the less politicized realize they've sold their silk purse for a sow's ear.

Important milestones in the disillusionment include the fall of Ted Haggard and David Kuo's book about Rove's manipulation of Christians for political gain.

technorati: Republicans, fundamentalists, politics, churches

Deep autumn

End of another day of writing. I got a very late start, but once I got going it went well, and I wrote the scene I wanted to, about 2600 words. Now I think I'm going to do some thinking about what needs to be in the next chapter, so I can sleep on it and then get started tomorrow with a little more alacrity.

Last night we went to the symphony and I actually got an idea for the book's ending. It was generally not a fantastic night at the symphony but I was able to jot down a note and that felt really worth it.

Writing about where you're not

He often makes final revisions to his books on the veranda of his French home, with only oak forests, vineyards and sunflower fields to distract him. It's difficult to imagine a place farther from the pulsating streets of Bangkok.

"The distance forces the imagination to work," Mr. Burdett said. "It becomes an imaginative exercise rather than a factual research exercise. It's a good mental trick to play if you can."

--from a profile of author John Burdett,
whose mystery thrillers are set in Thailand but who owns a "villa" in France.

I guess that helps explain why it's easier for me, and perhaps most people, to write about an experience long after it's happened. For example, when I was in Japan teaching English, I found myself writing copiously about San Francisco. After I got back to SF, I found myself setting stories in Japan.

technorati: writers, John Burdett, writing

Flannery never liked digging too deeply

Here's Flannery O'Connor, writing to her correspondent "A" on why the bull had to gore a character in her story "Greenleaf":

What personal problems are worked out in the story must be unconscious. My preoccupations are technical. My preoccupation is how I am going to get the bull's horns into this woman's ribs. Of course why his horns belong in her ribs is something more fundamental but I can say I give [sic] it much thought. Perhaps you are able to see things in these stories that I can't see because if I did see I would be too frightened to write them. I have always insisted that there is a fine grain of stupidity required in the fiction writer.

Previously: Another instance in which O'Connor resisted interpretation of one of her stories.

technorati: Flannery O'Connor, fiction, literary criticism

Joan of Arc 23 years later

Twenty three years ago I did a performance art piece with my friends who had come from France the year before from Paris, Catherine (seen here) and Betty. It was a musical piece with songs and it was all about Joan of Arc, the fear of nuclear war, and my brother, who was a fighter pilot at the time.

Now tonight I'm going to see another musical theater piece about Joan of Arc with Catherine, and with Cris, who hasn't known me as long, that's how long I've known Catherine.

technorati: theater, performance art, Amanda Moody

R.I.P. Joey Bishop

Joey Bishop, last surviving core member of the Rat Pack and eternal symbol of the fifth wheel, finally died Wednesday at age 89.

My first novel Make Nice was largely about a fictionalized Joey Bishop, a man who became a huge star in the early 60s on Frank Sinatra's coat tails but who failed to make the transition to the cool comedy of the late 60s and 1970s. He was known as a very decent person, a teetotaler, someone who stayed married to the same woman for decades. I can't think of a Hollywood figure who is today's Joey Bishop. I don't think there's a place for one.

It's Bad Behavior Monday™! -- wanton acts of destruction edition

In the UK, a famous candy maker was forced to resign after being discovered ruining competitors' chocolates. Barry Colenso, the master chocolatier at Thornton's, was caught pressing his thumb into truffles being sold by a competitor in what was called "an extraordinary act of truffle-squishing."

It doesn't say whether he then licked his thumb.

Unilever, which makes soap and stuff, has been running a "real beauty" campaign for its Dove soap celebrating "women of all shapes and sizes, urging girls to reject the underfed and oversexualized images of women that dominate advertising." The same company is also advertising its Axe scented men's products with images of a fake rock band made up of girls dressed as strippers singing lyrics like "If you have that aroma on, you can have our whole band."

Axe is that stuff which, according to its ads, makes girls in your co-ed dorm swoon as you walk down the hall after a shower. Guys, you don't need products to have that effect. Just move to San Francisco. The ratio of straight women to straight men is intensely favorable to men. (In LA, apparently, the opposite is true, or at least rumored.)

In Tampa, Fla., a shoplifter was jailed for nearly two months for possession of methamphetamine that turned out to be powdered cat urine she said had purchased for her child's school science project. I guess if you spend your money on stuff like that, then you have to shoplift to make ends meet.

In the Southern California town of Pacific Beach, a driver who honked at a man crossing the street in front of him was dragged from his car and beaten. The 6'2" 190 pound pedestrian remains at large, while the driver was hospitalized with severe head trauma. That'll teach him to lock his car doors.

A new CBS horror/crime TV series suggests zombies are, basically, "ready to go all the time, heh heh." (Courtesy BoingBoing.)

Members of the Rolling Stones once pulled guns on each other backstage after Keith Richards started nagging Ron Wood for doing too many drugs. The revelation is in Woods' recently released memoir "Ronnie."

The Los Angeles Daily News had a six-part series on the San Fernando Valley's porn industry, a classic case of eating your cake and having it too, where a "scandalous" issue is "exposed" at length to boost sales and subscriptions.

Another progress report

I slogged through another weekend of working on my novel. I wasn't very inspired this weekend so I only managed about 4600 words for the two days, instead of the six or seven thousand I wish I had. At this rate it's going to be a little bit tight with the deadline, but on the other hand, I think the whole plot thing has settled into a groove. I hope.

Never letting go

I've always been fascinated with unusual jobs, and the NYT Magazine feature from tomorrow's issue, with portraits of those who cater to the very wealthy, is chock full of doozies. My favorite is the nutritionist who "'go(es) over the menus of restaurants they're expected to attend, say, in the upcoming week and tell them what to order,' says Klauer, also known as the Park Avenue Nutritionist. 'That way, there's no guesswork. Before they even step foot inside a restaurant, they know what they're going to eat.'"

One of the things I like about this is her weirdly inflated use of the passive tense: not "restaurants they plan to go to" but "restaurants they're expected to attend," as if a meal at a restaurant is, for the super-rich, always a matter of obligation. I also like this idea that being super-rich means paying someone to look over your shoulder and play the part of a superego, telling you what you are and are not allowed to do.

technorati: nutritionist, restaurants, rich people

What novels are about these days

I have a certain fascination with plot summaries and what they show about the presumed subjects that people want to read about -- presumed by publishers, that is. Here is a list of plot summaries from the New York Times bestseller list, with titles, authors and publishers removed.

A Colombian poet's love for a woman is tested.

A young man -- and an elephant -- save a Depression-era circus.

An Afghan-American returns to Kabul to learn how a childhood friend has fared under the Taliban.

An epic story about three generations of Greek-Americans, told by a hermaphrodite.

A doctor's decision to secretly send his newborn daughter, who has Down syndrome, to an institution haunts everyone involved.

Privileged 30-somethings try to make their way in literary New York just before 9/11.

A rift in an Amish community threatens to keep a courting couple apart.

A Spanish shepherd boy travels to Egypt in search of treasure.

A father and son travel in post-apocalypse America.

Politics and treachery in the court of Henry VIII.

The lives of two women in 19th-century China.

An unlikely romance between a soldier and an idealistic young woman is tested in the aftermath of 9/11.

A girl sues her parents after learning they want her to donate a kidney to her sibling.

An Amish teenager goes on trial, accused of having a baby, then smothering it to death.

A team is dispatched to investigate the wreckage of a Soviet bomber that crashed 50 years ago, loaded with weaponized anthrax.

Romance blooms between a widower and a woman who's been teaching his brother, who has Down syndrome, to live independently.

The story, set mainly in northern India, of characters united by the legacy of colonialism.

A cafe manager falls for a Cary Grant-like charmer, then learns he has an 11-year-old daughter.

An American third-string quarterback joins the Italian National Football League's Parma Panthers.

How the choices made by a North Carolina man and the neighbor with whom he falls in love play out in their lives

Virgil Flowers investigates three murders in a small Minnesota town.

A friendship between two women in Afghanistan against the backdrop of 30 years of war.

An aspiring photographer working as a nanny has terrible visions.

The entangled lives of an upstate New York couple and their best friend.

Two young black men, adopted in childhood by the former mayor of Boston, encounter their birth mother and sister

Stone Barrington, the New York cop turned lawyer, tracks a rogue C.I.A. agent on a Caribbean island.

The dark elf Drizzt Do'Urden seeks vengeance against the orcs.

Someone is out to destroy a young chef's New market restaurant, poisoning food and setting off a bomb.

A woman finds a skull in her garden, while in the 1830s, a medical student tracks a killer.

Nathan Zuckerman grapples with aging and desire.

In Lake Wobegon, a daughter learns about her mother's secret life.

Two sisters overcome their differences and claim their heritage when one returns to their North Carolina home.

Another Christmas story featuring the angels Shirley, Goodness and Mercy.

Note several themes:

• A large dose of wonderfulness, some of it seen in magical realism, some of it in mere exoticism.
• A fascination with Asia.
• Two different stories about Amish characters; I can tell you they're by different authors.
• Several stories emphasizing the vulnerability of babies.

technorati: books, novels, plots

Spam subject line of the month

Busty Wife Swinging glass earth

It came to the end sooner than expected

National Book Award nominees were announced today:

Fiction
Mischa Berlinski, Fieldwork (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End (Little, Brown & Company)
Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Jim Shepard, Like You'd Understand, Anyway (Alfred A. Knopf)

Nonfiction
Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I'm Dying (Alfred A. Knopf)
Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great (Twelve/Hachette Book Group USA)
Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Arnold Rampersad, Ralph Ellison: A Biography (Alfred A. Knopf)
Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (Doubleday)

When I was in a Barnes and Noble last week I saw And Then We Came to the End on the remainders table. That's pretty bad if your novel is remaindered even before it gets a chance to be nominated for the National Book Award.

technorati: THIS, THAT, TOTHER

A weekend to concentrate

After returning to the city, I had a whole weekend in which to work on my book, and I happily wrote over 6000 words. Today I wrote about one of the strangest and most ironic sexual experiences of my life: The time when I went to bed with my girlfriend Stephanie and one of her co-workers from the Lusty Lady. I already wrote about this experience in a short autobiographical essay published in Best Sex Writing 2006, but in that essay I left out the most ironic part of the experience because it didn't reflect on the main point of the essay, which was about Stephanie. So I'm writing about it again in a work of fiction, but the description of the event is actually more complete, because I include the ironic part of the evening.

But I'll leave it at that, to whet the appetite of anyone who might be reading this.

Train ride

Thursday I drove with Cris down to Ojai, a little resort town in the mountains near Santa Barbara. Friday I came home, leaving her there with the car, by means of a taxi to Ventura, one train from Ventura to Santa Barbara, Amtrak's main line Coast Starlight to Oakland, the Amtrak bus from the remote Oakland train station to San Francisco's Ferry Building, and a short walk to a final taxi ride home. Total time in transit, about 14 hours. But it was a sparkling clear day and a beautiful ride, at least until the sun set. Then the slow poking through the South Bay and up to Oakland got a little interminable. I can imagine how much nicer it would have been in a sleeper car "suite," which is probably about the size of a handicap stall of a restroom but would have allowed some privacy from people's incessant cell phone calls. Even the seat-to-seat conversation got to be a little much. But on the plus side, you do see some gorgeous seaside views and then some absolutely beautiful coastal hills around San Luis Obispo when the train cuts inland. (See Google map and notice the twisty railroad.)

Today, instead of going to my office to write, I'll stay at home to write, because Cris isn't here to distract me, I'm going out this evening, and it's just easier.

technorati: Amtrak, train

Today's peak experience not so isolated

Today's NYT has a prominent feature on one of the dwindling corps of human (as opposed to robot) fire lookouts. It carefully catalogues the firewatch tower, one of thousands built in the 1930s by WPA workers, and name-checks the most famous fire watchman ever, Jack Kerouac.

Kerouac chronicled his summer of 1956 atop Desolation Peak in his novel Desolation Angels, which has become my favorite of his books. (He published a shorter description in "The Dharma Bums," a more widely read book.) A few years ago, an absolutely beautiful companion book, Poets on the Peaks by John Suiter, revisited Kerouac's outpost, along with those of fellow Beat writers Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen, who also served as fire watchers during the 1950s and whose understanding of Zen Buddhism was greatly enhanced by their experience of solitude.

One of the most vivid passages in "Desolation Angels" is the anxious scene in which Kerouac, whose only pair of shoes had fallen to pieces during the summer, hastily descends the mountain with bleeding feet to a lake cove where a Forest Service boat would pick him up. The sequence makes clear how isolated the Desolation Peak outpost was -- reachable only on foot by a steep trail after a boat ride up a lake. (The trip to the isolated Holden Village retreat center, where I spent six weeks in 2003, is somewhat comparable, though you don't have to hike into it on foot.)

The writer of the Times article seems to suggest the lookout he visited is similarly isolated:

One travels back in time, road-wise, going from asphalt to dirt to a treacherous stone-filled path that acts as the lookout's driveway. And then you hike. Up past an outhouse, up past the spot where rattlesnakes like to sun themselves and up two flights of metal stairs...

But a close look at the photograph published with the NYT piece shows a truck parked only a couple hundred yards away:



The article doesn't say, but I'd bet that's one reason that particular lookout cabin has survived as a human-staffed lookout: its accessibility.