Like all great story-telling, John Lee Hooker’s “House Rent Boogie” can make you feel much better about yourself, if you’re willing to meet Hooker half way. In a country filled more and more with what Noam Chomsky calls the “precariat,” or economically disadvantaged folks who live paycheck to paycheck, dwelling to dwelling, meal to meal, buzz to buzz, never knowing, as Henry Miller put it, when the chair will be yanked out from under their rear ends, and they will be tossed out into the street again, Hooker’s “House Rent Boogie,” also known as “House Rent Blues,” can offer solace and encouragement to many of us. This kind of story-telling shows what story-telling is really for, which is helping the human species to make its way in this world while we struggle to survive our allotment of days here on the rapidly warming earth.
“House Rent Boogie” comes in different versions. Bob Dylan is famously, and rightly, known for reinventing his and other people’s songs as he travels the world like a modern-day Homer, the great Greek poet, but the great blues players and singers were doing this very same thing quite a while before Dylan came along, as he readily acknowledges. An original version of this story-song appeared some time in the early 1950s.
But the most entertaining, complete, and enduring version of the song, absolutely, one hundred percent, is the one that lasts for six minutes and twenty-four seconds, recorded in 1970, when Hooker was in his 50s. (He was born in 1912 or 1917 and lived until 2001.) This is, truly, one of the greatest blues performances of all time that we have a recording of. J.L.H. is the peer of the best of the best, from Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday to Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy, and B.B. King.
(Buddy once followed my wife-at-the-time into the Ladies’ Room at a show in central Kansas in the 1990s while continuing to play his electric guitar the entire time, giving her his big smile in there before modestly retreating. I saw B.B. front row in central Illinois in the 1980s, and was blown away not just by his playing and voice, but by his PRESENCE. For some reason, I kept being reminded of Eisenhower pushing forward the Civil Rights Movement after Louis Armstrong called him a coward, which speaks very well of both men.)
“Precariat” is a combination of the words “precarious” and “proletariat.” “Boogie” means many things, including a fast, strong style of piano blues, a dancing to such music, a dancing to other music, and a way of escaping, literally or figuratively. Hooker’s complex story-telling uses the term in all of the above senses, as he explores and explodes what it’s like to be a part of the precariat in America or any other land, but especially in America, Land of the Almighty Dollar and Home of the Greedy.
The first line of the song is “I’m gonna tell you a story.” This is the talking blues, backed by electric guitar, harmonica, piano, bass, and drums. Hooker’s deep, mellow, profound, strong, confident, masterful, laughing, lamenting voice tells the tale of a man who’s lost his job. While he was employed and had a full wallet, the world was his friend and so were all the people in it. Now that he’s become down-and-out and busted, everyone has suddenly turned dismissive, sarcastic or apologetic as they resolutely turn away. It’s a tale that illustrates Scottish thinker Adam Smith’s “vile maxim,” which was that you shall care for, and worry about, no one but yourself.
Smith is one of the most misunderstood philosophers in the Western world, and he was virulently against adopting this maxim, but he saw how outrageously prevalent it was, especially in commercial and mercantile countries like Great Britain and America. In the Land of the Scam and the Home of the Selfish. John Lee Hooker, no less a philosopher, one who boils down his sense and experience of the world into a personal, satiric, universal narrative, gives the heartless human sphere the solid drubbing it deserves in this eternal song. As a black man in America who was in his 40s before the Civil Rights Movement came along, and who once worked as a factory janitor in Detroit, Michigan, among other such jobs, Hooker knows deeply about what he speaks and sings of.
Charles Mingus called his experimental autobiography, which he spent twenty years on and off writing, “Beneath the Underdog.” This phrase gives a taste of Hooker’s point of view in “House Rent Boogie.” Once your wallet goes in good old America, and you’re thrown back on nothing else but yourself and your wits, things can go bad very quickly, in the land where “the masters of man,” as Adam Smith called them, are perhaps more ruthless than in any other land before or since, or at least just as ruthless.
In 350 or so Hemingwayesque words, including realistic dialogue which Hooker acts out with his voice and punctuates, undercuts, and dramatizes with his electric guitar, his piano player, and his other musicians, who’s chiming, banging, bumping, and ringing away along with him is like the supporting characters in a Shakespeare play, this parable about being down-and-out says so much about the way we live now that it could have been created yesterday, instead of fifty-four years ago.
A recent story on the radio described the United States as a place where it’s “expensive to live and hard to get a job.” And the majority of jobs that are available are so crushingly boring and meaningless for many of us that it’s damn near deadly; or just plain deadly. In America, vast Tower of Babel, where language itself, humanity’s greatest invention, has been stolen and perverted by the politicians, preachers, mass media, ad people, and snake oil sales folks on tv and everywhere.
In the Land of the Avaricious and the Home of the Homeless, where real art and artists, and real thinking and thinkers, are not just rejected, ignored, mocked, and spat upon, they are sometimes even downright crucified, and certainly laughed right out of town. Henry Miller called his own version of this story “The Rosy Crucifixion.” Charles Bukowski wrote about it in almost every line he ever typed. Hooker too is rosy about his busted story, when he switches point of view and comments on himself, the main character, “He rocked on.” He rocked on, and kept going somehow, no matter what. Because this, thank God, is another strong strain in the American character. Perhaps the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s showed this strain as well as, or better than, anything else in our history.
In 1980, Hooker appeared in the Blues Brothers movie alongside the white black brothers, Belushi and Akroyd. He was in the Chicago street with his band in front of the Soul Food Café playing “Boom Boom Boom,” and his appearance lends the film the aura of an American reality that’s still ringing true like a bell forty-four years later, maybe more than ever now. And I seem to remember Hooker in the ‘80s and/or early ‘90s in music videos on MTV, wearing his shades with Pete Townshend and being the epitome of cool as much as Miles Davis himself ever was.
Some people in America know what cool is, and some don’t, as Norman Mailer pointed out in his essay “The White Negro” from 1957, originally published in “Dissent” magazine. Mailer’s essay was and is intensely controversial and provocative, probably wildly mistaken in many of its points, but also profound and utterly ground-breaking, praised by the likes of Eldridge Cleaver, and intensely engaged with by James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison. The average Soccer/football Mom, Soccer/football Dad, or Corporate Mom, Corporate Dad are a few who do not know what cool is, according to Mailer. Anyone who’s ever been on the street and all real artists are some of the ones who do know. Mailer’s hipster from the essay is an absolute precursor of hip-hop to the level of being prophetic, except for the crucial point that Mailer’s hipster wants NOTHING at all to do with the so-called American Dream, which Hunter S. Thompson rightly claimed was dead anyway no later than the mid-1970s, ushered out by none other than Tricky Dick himself, the sly old alcoholic precursor of all current want-to-be American dictators and authoritarians.
If Hooker, with his wide range, deep knowledge, and tales of American experience in over 100 albums recorded, is a kind of fragmentary or experimental novelist, as the great Chicago radio host and writer Studs Terkel told me the one and only time I ever met him for ten minutes in the early 2000s, then “House Rent Boogie” is one of his best chapters. Play it loud, and over and over and over. Play it loud, and don’t just listen. Study it.
Scottish farmer-poet, song master, and exciseman Robert Burns, up there right after Shakespeare as one of the most quoted and known writers in the world, is a precursor for all of the American blues poets, story-tellers and singers. Burns’ social justice sympathy extended even unto a mouse whose house, or nest, was wrecked by the plow. His heart and mind went out to the under-mouse as well as the underdog. In similar fashion, John Lee Hooker’s “House Rent Boogie” extends a hand to everyone who’s ever lost a job, lost a friend, lost a romantic partner, or been on the outside in any way. His song title “Teachin’ the Blues” tells us much about his intentions. He was a professor of life, like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.
Hooker also has an album called “The Healer.”
Hooker was the Mississippi son of a popular sharecropping minister who thought the blues was the devil’s music. As such, he wouldn’t let his son play his guitar in the house. But Jesus of Nazareth himself was thought to be a devilish demon-conjurer by most of the leaders in his own society. A bunch of townspeople tried to throw him off a cliff one time long before he was finally crucified by the Romans. JC is the first and most profound precursor of the blues. Not only did he have sympathy for the underdog, he knew very much what it was like to be one. Just like John Lee Hooker.
literally stories 
Dale
You once again score with something that is both intellectual and accessible. Yes, the best philosophers are the ones who must live the lives they have to live. As I draw near the close of a half century of essentially mindless employment I can relate to this on many levels. Still, it doesn’t excuse people from trying. Just giving up is not an option and it shows no imagination.
Rich kids never sing the blues, they just wear Ray-Bans, snap their fingers and pretend. Lots of great blues giants, Leadbelly, Hooker, Waters, Johnson were philosophers. Also liked BB King, but he was more of an instrumentalist than the others.
Excellent as always!
Leila
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Leila
Thank you!!
It’s my belief that many among us need to re-learn, or learn, the lesson which Dostoevsky and Jesus both taught, which is that suffering and struggle can and do lead to a kind of redemption: IF you stick with them long enough.
There was never any great blues poet and philosopher who felt sorry for themselves. They never hid in their mother’s basement being overfed and too comfy and distracting themselves with endless video games while b-tching endlessly about the one percent. They were aware, very very very aware, of how UNFAIR this world is, of course. Yet they never let that fact stop them. These are among the real and true American heroes who we ignore at our own peril, which is to say, the destruction of our own unique personalities.
Hemingway knew the lesson well, too. That’s why his Santiago has his dream of the lions at the end of his tale of failure in The Old Man and the Sea. It’s because Santiago IS a lion, all alone in his tiny, dirt-floor shack with no fish, and zero flat-screen TVs and fancy vacations to fry his brain with from now until Kingdom come.
It’s well worth considering Leonard Cohen’s phrase “BEAUTIFUL LOSERS” again and again and again. Sometimes being so-called “successful” in this life is the worst thing you can do – for your own soul.
Thank you Leila!!
Dale
PS
Intellectual AND accessible is exactly what I’m aiming for so thanks for highlighting this attempt of mine…
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Thanks for this Dale! Read it and went straight to youtube for a listen. Perfect. Had only heard George Thorogood’s version before, which is memorable enough, but JLH tells it PERFECTLY.
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Hi Mick!
Great to hear from you!
Absolutely yes, there really is something perfect about the long version. Maybe it’s a matter of he’d told the tale before and knew exactly what he was doing now, along with still being energetic and fresh enough to get everything JUST RIGHT this time.
Thanks for reading and listening, totally appreciate it!
Dale
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Dale
I found this very edgy and compelling. It brought up a lot of rebellious feelings–anger! The mention of “jobs so boring they were deadly” resonated with me. I’ve had those thoughts working on the mindless line, droning through the day. The mind can turn on itself, and the bar is the promised land.
The mention of James Baldwin was really cool. I’ve read a few of his short stories. “Sonny’s Blues” was a good one. I think he moved to France, because of the hostile treatment of blacks in the U.S. Shame.
I want to read “The White Negro,” by N. Mailer. Now a PDF is downloaded ready to roll!
One thing I like about Stephen King is the blue collar employment he did before he scored with “Carrie.” He worked in an industrial laundry just like his mother had. And he worked as a school janitor living in a rental house with his wife Tabitha and two little boys, maybe three unless his daughter came later after the money, lol. I think he could relate to “House Rent Boogie.” He’s a guitarist, too.
Adam Smith’s words and philosophy on this greed driven species of the western world was a really solid historical note. And I think you are right that he is probably misunderstood. I only got the basics on A. Smith in a bland economics class (actually to be fair the instructor made it fun). The instructor happened to be black. I don’t know why so many things are racial, but the division is more like a great chasm.
There is so much in this essay to investigate. That’s what I really like about your work! It sparks the imagination of the reader. I’m compelled to learn more about John Lee Hooker.
Louis Armstrong calling Eisenhower a coward is pretty strong. But what do I know about those times of segregation from the black person’s perspective. Jim Crow!
Sometimes I feel insulted by being lumped into “White Privilege.” after all I’m not racist. I’m an enlightened person, right. Other times I think this is a valid point, even for poor whites such as myself. The low rent trailer trash class that the rich scoff at (White and Black–Mostly White). That I scoff at myself. The hypocrisy runs deep in the land of plenty. The land of the ain’t got shit. And ain’t, ain’t a word, but it should be. (PS: that’s up for discussion.)
And the suckers elected the Anti-Christ of the poor! Because they couldn’t handle a good descent black lady for their president. Eggs and milk my ass. Shame!
A good dose of sociology helped me. And my father who was a Union Delegate and fervent democrat. Here we go again.Why does everything have to be political. Because the Republicans are against the poor! The last good one was Lincoln! The best president of them all!
Nixon was a rat that let our youth die for nothing so he could get reelected. “Dick we can’t bring the boys home before ’72, says Kissinger, (and girls).
The only way out is education. Educating oneself against what the fuck is really going on! Like this essay does so well! Great job! As always!
Christopher
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Christopher
Thanks for your commentary! Our dialogue and correspondence is a continuous joy and inspiration at every level.
Raymond Carver also worked as a janitor at one point. I’m pretty sure it was in a hospital. So did Bukowski. I myself used to have a job picking up the trash in the forest preserves. Most of what I did during that job, however, was ride around with this cool old black dude who drove the truck. We spent more time passing the joints between us in the truck, or disappearing into the woods together to smoke more ganja, than we did actually picking up the trash. That kind of resistance is a revolutionary act, in my humble opinion. Take that, One Percent and all you ambitious ass-kissing bosses who always try to keep the rabblement in line for no other reason than your own sorry advancement!
The way they run my kids’ high school is obnoxious and utterly abominable. They run the place like it’s an f-ing prison, almost. Everyone has to follow the rules and there are so many rules only the most timid, or monetarily ambitious, among them can follow all of them. My daughters are not among the ones who can follow all the rules, and far, far from it. Good, strong kids, and also rebellious artists at every level just like their dear old dad. And they have lots of independent-minded, rebellious friends too, some black, some white. Most of their friends are black.
I taught Advanced Creative Nonfiction at the University of Illinois Chicago for a number of years and during that time I read, discussed, and reread and studied many, many essays, from the students, and from the classics which I used as examples. I don’t like the term creative nonfiction because it’s overused. I much prefer Leila’s reinvention of it: Fictional Essay.
Henry David Thoreau is, I suppose, one of my very favorite and most important models as essayist. “Civil Disobedience” is of course a vast classic essay that influenced, very, very deeply, everyone from Leo Tolstoy to Gandhi to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.
But Thoreau also has other essays that are just as good, “Walking” is one of them. Also “Life Without Principle.” And I love his essay on John Brown.
He wrote an essay supporting John Brown, then went around giving that essay as a public lecture. That was in the days when giving public lectures supporting John Brown could get you killed, thrown in jail, or at least beaten to a pulp. Thoreau didn’t care. Very often that kind of fearless confidence happens to keep the wolves at bay, because “the wolves” in this case are really timid herd-loving cowards…
James Baldwin is one of my favorite essayists. The man is a genius at every level. There’s a lot of great Baldwin material on you tube, interviews with him. Watching Baldwin is akin to watching Frederick Douglass on you tube if they’d had you tube when Douglass was around.
Thanks again, glad you liked my description of Burroughs’ cut-ups from yesterday, too!
Dale
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Hey Dale
Yes sir it’s always great to hear from you too, and your excellent views on writing!
I’m playing catch-up. I wanted to comment on your earlier post about Dostoevsky BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. I’m going to check out his work. Everything you wrote about him sounds really interesting. Glad to be onto a new author.
Pretty awful about the serfs killing D’s father– waterboarding him in vodka (lol), and how creepy he was, grabbin some daughter-in-law ass. lol. On a roll…
A lot of murder in that Dostoevsky family. I love the Russians authors. They are pretty terrific. Chekhov!
Nabakov’s “Signs and Symbols” is one of my all time favorite short stories. I guess he was a Russian transplant to Germany.
I think that’s why we need the short story to examine the personal histories that repeat ad-infinitum. Not sure what we can learn, or refuse to learn, but it’s all very entertaining and soulful in a lot of sad cases. We are all the same in different packages tied to the mortal coil.
That’s cool about seeing Melllencamp. Always wanted to see John. Been down to Seymour a few times. “Small town” just like he sang.
Seems that my writing is at an impasse sometimes I’m almost high on it and at other times a feeling of dejection hits. It really is a bi-polar experience. lol. It does affect my mood, though, for real. I think I write mostly to escape the anxiety that never really ceases. I live the sober life but I don’t have the serenity of the AA guru, lol. But I do work on gratitude and humor because they both will save your ass.
And the only close attention I have been reading lately are your comments! I did take a stab at “The White Negro” and “In the Prison Colony. ” Spring is loaded with outside work. I guess that’s my excuse.
Send a few more thoughts later.
Christopher
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Christopher
Yes indeed, writing and art are definitely a bipolar kind of experience for many of us, then again, life itself is a bipolar experience for many of us.
On a typical day, this is how it often goes with me. I’m “in the zone” much of the time, with plenty of focus and inspiration, and sometimes even so much inspiration that it feels akin to a mystical experience (or IS a mystical experience). And the ideas and the words keep flowing or the images keep creating themselves and I’m the happiest person in the world and nothing is wrong on any level and nothing can touch me.
However, all of the above tends to wear off eventually, at least on the “average” day. I think the basic term for this is “getting tired.” The words stop coming and the ideas stop flowing or if they still keep coming they’re wrong and not any good. So the mind switches to replaying all the things that were created earlier, which is very much a part of writing itself because one needs to think about what one has written after one has written it, too. And this very deeply.
Stage Three on an “average” day is when exhaustion sets in. These are the hours when fatigue and a depressed kinda feeling come along. The kind of depression I get in this stage of writing also involves a lot of low-level PARANOIA. I read a great description of depressive paranoia which said something to the effect that: “YOU FEEL GUILTY, OR EVEN LIKE YOU HAVE COMMITTED A CRIME.”
So yeah, that it’s for me. After writing a lot, I often end up feeling like I’ve committed a crime. Fear of rejection also sets in, also replaying lots of past rejections, too. Writing is NOT all fun. Often, it’s the opposite of fun: it’s pain instead. But still well worth it at every level because what else is there on this Planet and in this Society.
Freud said it was the POETS AND WRITERS who invented psychoanalysis, not him. He especially name-checked Shakespeare and Dostoevsky in that regard, but also all other good poets and writers who came before him.
That brings me to Dostoevsky and feeling like you’ve committed a crime.
RASKOLNIKOV is, hands down, Dostoevsky’s greatest creation by far. Raskolnikov is the main character of Dostoevsky’s novel CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. It’s my belief that the one indispensable novel by Dosto is CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV is also very, very great, but very, very long. NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND is also massively great, a novella. Those three are his best for sure.
But CRIME AND PUNISHMENT is it. RASKOLNIKOV is so well-known world-wide that people write his name on the walls in the subway in India and other Eastern nations as well.
RASKOLNIKOV goes from the paranoid, solitary guilt of feeling like he’s committed a crime, to actually COMMITTING A CRIME (and a doozie, a double murder with an axe), to suffering the guilt of having committed that crime. And he NEVER lets himself off the hook. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, once you get into it, is such a riveting novel that it’s probably my favorite novel OF ALL TIME, except for Cervantes’ DON QUIXOTE, which is very much and definitely my very favorite novel of all time.
Other than Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s sidekick, there has never, ever been a greater character created in the novel than RASKOLNIKOV.
Another person who LOVED Dostoevsky and Raskolnikov was named none other than ALBERT EINSTEIN. Kurt Vonnegut also loved Raskolnikov. Nietzsche loved Raskolnikov. Bukowski loved Raskolnikov. He’s a very, very, VERY, very great character, literally almost as profound as Shakespeare’s Hamlet in many ways.
And your characters, it seems to me, have very much in common with Raskolnikov on every level too, and that’s massively cool!
More later…
Dale
PS, Kafka also loved Raskolnikov…Raskolnikov influenced probably ALL of Kafka’s best stories…
PPS, A lot of the time, Norman Mailer’s prose is kind of bloated and wordy, I find that I have to skip around a lot, and SKIP a lot, when reading him, but he’s worth the effort usually….
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Dale
Yes writing can be a series of ups and downs. I’m not sure how I got so hooked on it.
This feeling of guilt like in “Crime and Punishment” (not that I know exactly) is a good description of depression.
I ventured into “Crime and Punishment” like most alcoholics on some level. Also having spent some time on the novel. My attention span is wandering more frequently…
Right away I could relate to Raskolnikov’s avoidance of people. I was little shocked to find that the girl Sonia was prostituting herself by proxy for her drunken lay-about father.
Now I’ve switched gears onto a play by Sam Shepard “The True West.” Also back on “Tree of Smoke” by Denis J. I suspect “Crime and Punishment” will be followed along with these stories.
Got a story coming out at the end of this month. Then nothing until July.
Hope you are doing well up in the big city!
Christopher
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Christopher
Once again your brilliance has nailed it because TRUE WEST by Sam Shepard is one of the best American plays ever, right up there with the best of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill’s LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT.
Also fascinating that Shepard, Williams, and O’Neill were also massive alcoholics who gave up the bottle, not so much Williams in terms of giving it up (it gave him up) but the other two did get sober.
You tube has an AWESOME version of True West that was filmed at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago starring John Malkovich and Gary Sinise, I believe Sinise also directed and Malkovich is UNCANNILY GOOD and creepily and hilariously and heartbreakingly awesome in his role as the wild brother, the Prodigal Son brother so to speak.
I wonder if you’re busy thinking about collecting your stories as a book. This is what I know.
For a collection of short stories, it should be forty thousand words minimum or so (40,000), and if you have a handful of masterpieces in there, which I know you already do cuz I’ve read them, every piece doesn’t need to be a masterpiece, although as good as you can get it is always best, of course.
The way that you can market such a book, if you’re so inclined, is by using personal experience. Substance Use Disorder histories, especially when coupled with significant jail time, can very much so be turned into a marketing tool for fiction. Everything has to be political these days, you’re right. Since you’re a cis white man, your political angle can be your history with incarceration as a youth. Literary agents, academic fiction publishers, other publishers, will all look on this as a qualifying personal experience that might gain you an entry into the world of publishing fiction books.
Of course, you will still have to find EXACTLY the right person, and that may take a while, or MAYBE it would happen right away, depending.
I’d say, focus on crafting a short story collection that’s anywhere between forty and fifty thousand words long. My guess is you’re already doing this or something along these lines, so I’m just throwing out there what I know and giving the straight talk as best I can.
Hard-hitting fiction like yours often takes a while to break through, especially in America. Such was the case with Raymond Carver, and Dennis Johnson, too, as well as Larry Brown and William Gay and a lot of other names I could name.
PATIENCE is always the name of the game in writing, especially now. First you need that awesome 40,000-plus words. Once that’s finished, and there’s no hurry, move on to trying to find a publisher for this work in book form. Be patient and be unrelenting at the same time, while also giving yourself all the breaks you need whenever you need them. In this world, almost all good writers develop “late,” because of the nightmare culture we’re facing. Things are very different than they were when Carver and King got their big breaks in the 1970s, or even Dennis Johnson in the ’90s. But I do believe that work like yours can and will break through; it’s only a matter of when, once you get that 40,000 finished. Do it but be patient!
Would love to hear your thoughts on this whenever you can…
Dale
PS, I’m sure you know that there are a lot of “fakers” out there posing as agents and publishers, so the rule is….you never pay them, THEY pay you….or no money is exchanged until later. But you NEVER pay them…..good agents or publishers pay you or do it for free, you don’t pay them, ever, etc etc etc….Unless you decide to self-publish, and that’s another story.
(This is another thing that’s changed in publishing, there have always been bad actors on the scene but never to this level ever…and it’s another thing that can make it incredibly difficult to find the right person but it doesn’t mean it can’t and won’t happen…..)
(….and just keep telling yourself that you’re in this for the long haul and it can never be rushed…etc etc etc)
PPS, Use Hemingway’s IN OUR TIME as the model for what a short story collection should look like…That and, of course, JESUS’ SON….
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Dale
Thanks for the vote of confidence on my stories!
The version of “True West,” I listened to had the wayward son played by Alfred Molina. He was great. A radio production.
I want see the one with Gary S. and John M. Thanks! I loved them in “Of Mice and Men.” I could see J.M playing the desert Nomad and thief, lol.
Eugene O’Neill’s LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. sounds great too. These alcoholics can really write. Too bad about Tennessee W. and the bottle.
Sam Shepard was an amazing person. He was probably an even greater writer than his movie stardom. But he was a great movie star too! I liked him right up there with all the greats.
I did try to collect some of my stories, but I haven’t really put together much. Switching between two laptops made it more difficult.
40000 sounds like a good target and maybe even doable. I have a lot of stories. Not really sure how many or how many are good.
Yes indeed when they want money on any online thing that’s when I’m out. Then you know they’re full of shit.
I listened to “Big Two Hearted River” last night. I think this story of trout fishing in the UP Michigan was inspiration for “A River Runs Through It,” by Norman McLean.
Christopher
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Hi Dale
I saw where you will be featured in LS every other Sunday until next January. Awesome!
Congratulations!
Christopher
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Christopher
Yes, you’re absolutely right, Sam Shepard was and is a fascinating character all around, as a personality, as a playwright, as a short story writer, as a musician, as an actor, too.
One cool thing he did was follow around Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour in the mid-’70s and write a kind of brilliant journal about it, in which he described Dylan’s mad antics on the tour, behind the scenes, in a very brilliant and impressionistic way. Shepard was also a rock drummer in bands of his own when he was younger.
As an actor, he was in some bad movies, but he was very much like Kris Kristofferson in the sense that even when they were in BAD movies, they made those movies GOOD by their presence in them…at least for the time/s that they were on screen.
I think Shepard split himself in two in TRUE WEST. It seems to me that he himself was the inspiration for BOTH of the brothers in that play. That’s an act of uncanny true gen (genius).
I can see, totally see, the connection you’re making between A River Runs Through It and Big Two-Hearted River. Both those pieces of writing are so great they take one’s breath away.
There’s a great movie called MUD. Sam Shepard has a great role in it. And Matthew McConaughey plays the most REALISTIC homeless drifter in a movie that I’ve ever seen, perhaps, while also looking as cool as Marlon Brando the entire time. The two teen actors in this film are also awesome. MUD. Great movie from 2012 set on the Mississippi River and environs!
I have no doubt that your stories will appear between two covers, they’re absolutely that good and more at every level, it’s only a matter of when….and the things you’re doing now are just as important as the stories appearing in book form whenever that happens, too….Book publication is a kind of ultimate goal; but periodical publication is just as important, and in some ways MORE important, at every level, in every way.
For one example, literary scholars today study the things Edgar Allan Poe did in periodical publications more than they study what he did in book publications…and I don’t mean just me, I mean ALL Poe scholars….
Dale
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Dale
Thanks! I keep at the work. It would be pretty neat if something were to come of it.
I think Sam Shepard might be a cross between a leading man and a character actor. I like character actors a lot.
I’ve been watching “True West” with Gary S. and John M. on YouTube. Thanks for the tip! You’re right J.M. is a wild man in that. They’re both so young and intense! The copy I’m watching is blurry, but I can follow it. (1984). I think a new version of “True West ” with Ethan Hawk is coming out. Also I think there’s another older one with Philip Seymour Hoffman (RIP). He was great.
I saw “Mud” and I should watch it again. Matthew M. is a very unusual actor. He was great in the first season of “True Detective,” with Woody Harrelson (great too). About the Louisiana State Police. I watched it 3-4 times it’s that good–on HBO Max.
That’s an interesting fact how they study Poe’s periodical publications more than in book form. A literary giant!
Christopher
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Hi Christopher!
One thing I do know for sure: your stories DESERVE to be collected in a book when they’re ready. The artist is only responsible for CREATION, and what “the world” chooses to do after that is up to the world. Van Gogh learned that lesson the hard way, which is one important reason why so many of us look up to him today. On the other hand: A. He probably couldn’t help himself (couldn’t curb his own shattering creativity even if he tried); and B. Even though it ended “badly” for him in a moment of complete exhaustion, after all, he got to BE VINCENT VAN GOGH for his entire life! What better gift could there have ever been but that, despite all the pain and suffering it caused him?
Other writers whose periodical publications now get studied more than their book publications include two other very, very big ones, besides Poe: A. Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes. And B. Anton Chekhov.
A copy of a magazine that first published one of the early Holmes stories was recently sold for $30,000 or so, if I’m not mistaken. Also, Chekhov’s publication history took place more in periodicals than it did in book form, for the most part. Charles Bukowski – also at least equally well known for all the little mag’s he appeared in as for his later books.
Glad you like Malkovitch and Sinese as THE BROTHERS. Their performances in True West in Chicago mid-80s are LEGENDARY in the theater world, while not too well known in the world at large. Those performances are so great, they should be a lot better known than they are.
But so it goes in America, The Land of Amnesia that is so famous for ignoring and neglecting many – or most – of its best artists at every level! Then again, “success” can be THE END of a writer, and “neglect” can spur one on to an endless series of greater and greater artistic conquests and accomplishments – and THAT is the REAL SUCCESS (not the money and fame, which fade with the wind).
And, of course, there is Someone watching over all of us – and He knows what’s best for each and every one of us – even if we DO NOT KNOW IT at the time.
As Carson McCullers, a tormented and tortured (and mostly happy) writer, said, “Job never cursed God, and neither have I.”
Rock on!
Dale
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Hi Dale
Thanks! I hope someday the stories will make it into a book.
The odds of this feels dauntingly dim, but then again I’m sure a lot of artists felt this way. SK’s wife fished “Carrie” out of the trash when he had enough.
VINCENT VAN GOGH is a tremendous example. Such a sad ending. I like your perspective on Vincent being himself his whole life. Good way to look at it.
I haven’t read any of A, C. Doyle’s work. I like how the detective story started with Poe and “Dupin.” ACD (not C lol) was at odds with Houdini over spiritualism. Fraudulent psychics that Houdini exposed and Doyle’s wife supported. Strange how Houdini himself was such a great magician and escape artist that he seemed supernatural.
It’s too bad about this “land of Amnesia.” Sometimes I think I write and submit stories so there might be a shred of my life left for someone to pick up and either toss it or say hum…
Job is a great book of the Bible. The Devil couldn’t turn him.
Christopher
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Hi Christopher!
I’ve got something I NEED to let you know about, which is: that next week, the inimitable and incredibly generous Author and Editor LEILA ALLISON will be publishing FIVE of my Very Best POEMS on her website (in her alternative Universe, in other words): SARAGUN SPRINGS.
The first poem will appear on Memorial Day, and one per day after that on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
A few of these poems have been in the works LITERALLY for YEARS (very much off and on), and all of them are very much among my best writing ever done, as I said.
Each poem will be accompanied by: an original illustration also created by yours truly; an autobiographical prose preface; and a special “bio” section.
I’ve probably said this before, but I consider myself a POET first, and a prose writer second. Actually, a visual artist second, and a prose writer third. Though actually, probably a LETTER WRITER first (like Paul), a poet second, a visual artist third, etc etc….
Either way, my poetry is extremely important to not just my writing life but my entire life and how it’s lived overall; and it’s incredibly awesome of LEILA to be hosting these poems in this way.
No hurry; but check it all out whenever ya can! I know you’ll: A. Dig it. And B. Understand it. So thanks for that in advance, more than I can really say in words.
Hope you’re having a good holiday weekend,
Dale
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Hi Dale
Wow that sounds really cool! Yes indeed I’ll check those out for sure!
I like that name SARAGUN SPRINGS. These poems sound really important and awe inspiring.
Letter writing is art. Paul’s epistles are so famous and interesting. “Acts” is great. Paul might be my patron-saint. Because he said “He was chief among sinners.” I figure with all of his persecutions of the followers of Christ and he found redemption–maybe I can too. And there was Ananias on the road to Damascus. That might help the cause.
People often bring up the Ananias’s that lied to the holy ghost. but I remind them of the other one. lol.
Things are going pretty well. Hope all is well up in the Windy City.
Christopher
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Ananias
Greetings!
It’s true that there are 3 Ananias people in the book of Acts, and that 2 of them are bad seeds, one of them being a greedy person who wants (along with his partner in crime, his greedy wife) to get lots of credit for things he isn’t really doing, and another of whom is just an all-around bad seed, completely focused on the things of this world, like his own sexuality, his own bank account, and his own stomach, and little, or nothing, else.
And yet the third Ananias, who appears in the middle, is the most known and the most remembered. He, as you know, is the one who opens Paul’s eyes (literally cures him of blindness) and gives Paul HIS VOICE thereby, which turns Paul into the greatest Christian who ever lived, or ever will live, save two (those being: A. Jesus. And B. Mary, his mother. The number Four greatest Christian of all time is: Mary Magdalene, then Peter, then the disciples and evangelists, etc etc etc…). This central Ananias has lots of good qualities as a character, like bravery (Paul has a nasty reputation when Ananias goes to him). And an ability to see beyond the surface level of life. And the inherent knowledge of when the time is right to retreat and be heard from no more (but be remembered forever).
I think the GOOD Ananias in the Book of Acts is showing us all the BEST of the human character, while the two BAD Ananias folks (much less memorable) are showing the Dark Side, the battle and the wages of Sin, the fact that this place (Planet Earth) is a world of Spiritual Warfare. (Just look for two seconds at everything that’s going on in the world right now, including the rape and desecration of Nature herself.)
Because for me, EVERYTHING IN THE BIBLE IS SYMBOLIC, which doesn’t make it NOT TRUE; on the contrary, the fact that it’s all so deeply SYMBOLIC is EXACTLY the thing which MAKES it SO TRUE. True beyond the surface level appearance of things. TRUE, right down deep unto the very deepest core and possible level of all things.
It’s kind of like how Numbers get used in The Gospel According to Saint John (the name for this book in the King James Bible version).
These numbers: 7; 2; 5; 12; 3; and 1…in the Gospel of John, are NEVER “just themselves,” they are always something else above and beyond themselves, ALWAYS.
EVERYTHING that humanity has ever discovered, uncovered, or created, including all the greatest scientific discoveries, is already contained in The Bible. That’s why it’s the greatest book ever written, and there is no second. The closest is Shakespeare, probably. But even he pales in comparison; and he himself knew that very well. Shakespeare himself wrote the words that would appear on his own tombstone. And these words were (and are) are a direct reference to Jesus. Shakespeare himself was one of the people who started making me give Jesus a second look (even though I’d never forgotten him, never would have and never could have, either). Shakespeare, and Socrates (who was a precursor of Jesus) and Plato, who helped show The Way.
Nietzsche, the great German (NOT a Nazi, that was a perversion of his teaching) said: “There was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.” That single line is a challenge to us all to try and live up to (if we can) even a fraction of the Truth Jesus was trying to get across.
You, my friend Ananias, have a level of understanding that is extremely rare and extremely unusual in this world, this brutal, hate-filled world. Can’t say thank you enough for everything you do! Also, thanks for checking out my upcoming stuff this week (starting tomorrow) on Leila’s site, Saragun Springs, you will dig it (and understand it)! Don’t forget the images too, they’re a huge part of the whole process, in some ways (not all the ways) the most important part, not unlike in my short story “The Ghost of Van Gogh.”
Thank you!!
Dale
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Hi Dale
Fabulous and flawless! Truly impressive comments on the deepest well, of all. The Bible.
The way you contrasted the good Ananias versus the other two (sort of tragic in their fool hardiness) is profound. It’s easy to be selfish. What the Bible refers to as “The natural man.” Much harder to be selfless like God’s instrument of conversion—The righteous Ananias.
I totally agree with your take on spiritual warfare and two seconds is all you need. I went to church today and that was the topic. Putting on the “Full Armor of God.” Sometimes church is a true reality check. We have an enemy and our souls are hanging the balance.
I am always disturbed by the destruction of nature. People on all levels want to destroy it for their lousy gold or for the so-called beatification.
I’m not too familiar with Numbers, but it sounds awesome the way you explained it.
I prefer the King James Bible over the modern Bibles. The Bible is the sword of truth.
Thanks!
Christopher
PS. I have a story coming out tomorrow.
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Part history lesson, part contemporary commentary, and part love letter to Hooker and the blues. You have a real knack for revealing connections that aren’t always obvious. Thanks for reminding us to listen—not just hear.
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Dear David
Hello!
I really like how you broke this essay down into its separate component parts, then nailed the main theme with a perfect description of my intentions. This helps explain it all, even to me, the hapless author. Of course, the original meaning of “essai,” from Montaigne, means “an attempt,” and that’s all I can claim to have done here. Glad the connections came through though.
Thank you!
Dale
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Hi Dale,
I scribbled down some observations as I read this so it may not seem logical.
I did however decide to listen to the track before I commented. I listen to a lot of Blues but am in no way an expert – I love the tone and the authenticity but so much of it I miss. Just found Taj Mahal (Sp??) a few years back. Gary Moore did an album late eighties (I think) called ‘Still Got The Blues For You’ and I loved it – It was commercial shite but I reckoned it DID crossover!!
The thing about the Blues is I can’t listen to it without wanting a cigar (I don’t really smoke…Tobacco products!!!) and a bottle of Jack!!
The weird thing about this type of music, is it is the same type of story / poetry telling that the Beatnicks did early sixties. However the Blues are good…The Beatnicks should be shot!!!!!!!!!!!
Regarding the story of the song – Yep, we are all only three paychecks away from being in the same boat. (We lost around sixty grand on our last house simply because we were a month away from hitting the streets. HAH! And most of that sale went onto business debt…The rest took us eleven years to pay off!!!!)
Adam Smith’s ideas / ideals / observations are towards the insular. And if we all have the balls to admit – That’s where most of us go!
Dale – Please check out Fred Foote’s work. He is getting close to being only the fourth member of the ‘One Hundred Club’ (Tom Sheehan, me and Leila are the other three.) I think his work will interest you.
I know of the homeless problem in Scotland and the reasons but I would never dare to pass comment on any other country. All I will say is no matter where you are, in this day and age, surely you should have a roof over your head and food in your belly!!
As far as I’m concerned, cool is being an individual and not giving a fuck about it!!
Burns – Well he was close to travelling over-sees to become a slave-hand (Some man of the people!!!) But my problem with him is he rhymed Beastie with Breastie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
However – John Barleycorn is a belter of a poem!!!!!
Brilliant as always and you enhance the site – Thanks for that!!!
Hugh
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Hi Hugh!
I like to think about the term “the blues” when thinking about The Blues. It’s fascinating how someone (probably some unknown genius) took a very common term that had been around for centuries (feeling blue, the blues, meaning sad, dejected, rejected, anxious, cast out, depressed, distressed, woebegone, bummed out, etc etc, all of which it still means today, of course) and elevated it to the name of an art form that would go on to have worldwide significance. There’s a song that Emmylou Harris sings which has the lines: “He could take the blues / right outa you / and put ’em in a song” (“Me and Willie”). That’s a perfect 14-word description of the meaning and the purpose of The Blues and why they’re so popular.
For me, something Robert Burns BRIEFLY considered doing, but DID NOT do, and he considered doing it when he himself was poverty-stricken and in desperate circumstances, and had the blues, does not diminish his accomplishments as a world-wide poet quoted more than anyone else except Shakespeare who was also a definite freedom fighter and brother and friend to both man, and woman, as well as all the animal creatures on the planet who he also wrote about with great and profound sympathy. It sounds ironic and impossible now, but back then being a slave hand was not what it sounds like today in the sense that Burns, at the time he briefly considered doing it, was being put under immense pressure and strain himself and forced to consider this horrible option as his only way out. Yes it sounds bad now, and horrible too, but the circumstances were way different then, and I do blame the Society that was pressuring him and holding him down, more than I blame him. I never judge artists of the past from the political perspective of today simply because it doesn’t quite add up on that level. For me, anyway, all the good he did is not undermined or negated by one really bad decision he briefly considered making, and didn’t make. Also, Burns was an alcoholic and it’s my guess that he was both depressed and drunk from the poverty and NEGLECT he was suffering at the time he considered making that really bad decision, and didn’t make it. In the long run, his poetry and democratic spirit and freedom fighting definitely DID help end slavery itself, if for no other reason than the fact that it massively inspired the man who actually did end slavery, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had two favorite writers, one Shakespeare, the other, Robert Burns. Lincoln was inspired by Burns to end slavery itself, and that speaks pretty well for Burns’ overall Scottish spirit, I do believe. Anyway, all of the above is just my opinion. I feel a deep kinship with Burns so I have this urge to defend him, but it’s probably just me.
Thanks for all your great reading, writing, thinking, editing, and commentary!
Dale
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It used to be said of Samuel Taylor Coleridge that he was the “last man to have read everything”. Not so: there’s Dale. And it hit me earlier: there is, to all your essays, Dale, that same scope & depth & energy that used to be called ‘Coleridgean’. As always a superb blend of colloquial & scholarly, richly descriptive & not a false note struck. I imagine the likes of Nick Cave would warm to this kind of writing, its biblical edge, its humane observations – & the ‘devils’s vaudeville’ (Dostoevsky) of luminaries who pass through – from Billie Holiday & Charlie Mingus to Montainge & Dostoevsky & Yeshua ben Yusef. Wonderful too, that brief twinning of Eisenhower & Armstrong.
Geraint
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Hi Geraint!
I read your comments a few days ago and was so blown away by them that I was silenced for a while. To have my style called “Coleridgean” is very high on the list among the greatest compliments I could ever receive, since he is very high on the list among my favorite writers of all time for a million different reasons.
The fact that you could both perceive, and so eloquently state, such an inspiring connection means everything to me, literally everything. Thank you on every level, this is so deeply appreciated I can’t truly put it into words, literally!
Also, Nick Cave. He has been an influence on me as well, especially the way he’s taken religious and specifically Christian imagery and transmogrified it into a kind of secular art that’s still religious on some level, or perhaps a kind of religious art for the unbeliever and stoical skeptic. For me, Cave’s very best work can easily be mentioned in the same breath with Bob Dylan, an artist he was massively influenced by, and that says it all, I do believe.
Your Coleridge connection also blew me away because two days before I received it, I had been doing none other than writing part of an essay about Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The literary synchronicity in that really blew my mind, so thanks again for this inspiring connection and how well you worded it, too.
Dale
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John Lee’s playing for his rent, he’s not going to compromise, he’s going to play his own way and he’s going to make it. The rhythm says as much about the message as the lyrics. America is where you can make it or break it, and the myth says you do it on your own. That’s why everyone wants to come here, to experience and live that dream. The upside and downside of the blues. Dylan said “You gotta serve somebody,” and John Lee’s with the gods of music. Thanks for the article, Dale!
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Hi Harrison!
For me it’s sad that all those millions of people around the world want to come here so they can live the Empty Consumerist Dream that has little left to offer anyone any more except a Plastic Lifestyle dominated by tiny computers that follow you everywhere and swallow your brains, and your SOUL, if you let them! I say stay home and live your own best life where God already put you, no need to come here and try to get involved in this ruin of a dying empire whose culture is made up of trash and trash piled upon more plastic trash, and we’ll soon be busy cutting down all the rest of the trees as well!
On the other hand, if you’re being threatened by murderous gang or political violence or you’re starving where you are, I believe it’s the absolute right DUTY and moral obligation for the wealthiest nation on the face of the Planet to help you out. Offering a helping hand to those in need, no matter their skin color or religious beliefs, is called LOVE and even if there isn’t a hereafter such behavior always sends karmic points back on the people who are doing it at every level. Stop shooting rockets into the sky that keep blowing up and start helping out the poor human souls who are here on Planet Earth at the moment and could use a helping hand, it will turn you from Satanic into Saintly almost immediately.
I love the Dylan quote you used! As always, thanks so much for reading, and commenting, it’s deeply appreciated…
Dale
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I adore how you write about these subjects, with a clear enthusiasm and passion that doesn’t spill into rhetoric or polemic, but is informative, engaging, and incredibly knowledgeable and smart. I’ll be queuing up versions of this song on my Spotify later for sure. Thank you Dale.
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Hi Paul!
Thanks for reading and commenting. It’s extremely heartening and inspiring to know how well you understand what I’m trying to do in these essays. Deeply appreciated!
Thanks, also, very much, for letting me know in an earlier comment about the passing on of Paul Auster. I agree with you, he had a stripped-down, poetic way of composing an English sentence that was often infectious in the way it held the gaze of the reader.
He was a writer I had once followed pretty closely, but had somewhat lost track of over the years, so that I was unaware he had passed on into the Great Beyond.
I remember his novel THE LOCKED ROOM as a kind of masterpiece.
My favorite book of his is called THE ART OF HUNGER.
This book has a great essay on the novel HUNGER by Knut Hamsun. HUNGER itself, by Hamsun, is a very great novel about a starving artist/writer (literally starving), and Auster’s essay about this book does justice to it and can be placed beside it quite nicely. The book THE ART OF HUNGER by Auster also contains a bunch of other really great essays, mostly on poetry and poets. Auster focuses on extremely good poets who are not very well known to the world at large (but are well known in the world of poetry), and as such, he does a very great favor to the world of poetry in his essay collection THE ART OF HUNGER.
I was/am also a big fan of his book HAND TO MOUTH, which talks about his own days as a starving artist/writer who was struggling hard to keep it together. I even used this book in creative writing classes a few times when I made all the students by copies of it.
Thanks again, Paul!
Dale
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