Week 591: Natural Born Quillers

Birthday Well Wishes

Happy 250th Independence Day to America! (and to everyone also born on this date, Eva Marie Saint at a whopping 102 and Elliott the Header Pigeon who is attending the Extreme Cigarette Butt Eating Contest in Philadelphia this holiday weekend ). It may not be in season for some to say nice things about and to America, but the U.S.A., like most places is far more good than bad and is a collection of people–not just one person. To all who sneer, I suggest you read what J.C. had to say on the subject of stone casting. And although it is further ironic that the UK should wish the former colonies happy birthday, just think how chaotic things would be if the Revolutionary War had gone the other way. PM Trump anyone?

Now, On with the Show

Asking writers why they write is pointless. It’s the same reason why kleptos steal and killers kill; it is a mental compulsion, sometimes good sometimes bad and always somewhere along the borders of insanity. Some people have the writing disease way worse than most. The bad off will cut words into their skin if they have no other way of getting the job done (and for the visual artist, Van Gogh’s ear-ectomy definitely got a lot more than a thousand words across). Most of us can control ourselves to the extent we can wait until a saner method is handy. But the answer is always the same. Writers write because they are writers. Birds bird. Lizards lizard. Maggots get compared to unsavory people. Writers can go through long periods of inactivity (for some that may be weeks, for me not even a day), but there will always come a time when it must happen, or (to quote Hemingway) we state: “I feel fucked inside.”

I do not believe that the physical compulsion to write, hypergraphic, is necessary nor even common amongst people who need to create. I’m hypergraphic (very much so as a child), but so was the Unibomber and the first well known school shooter in the 1960s, Charles Whitman. Hypergraphia (if not a word before it is now) wore down with me the older I got, and now that we have keyboards and I have arthritis my relationship with pen and paper has dwindled to almost nothing and I’m just fine with the development.

And although many people I know disagree with me, I do not think it is easy to tell a sincere artist from a pretend one; not right away. A lot of fiction and opinion over the years have taught us to believe that. I honestly believe that there have been a great many popular books written by people who do not have much of a compulsion or none at all. Even though that shows later, the truly clever pretenders are usually cozy in their graves long before any one can ask them about it. Bret Harte, a contemporary and enemy of Samuel Clemens (in both his real and pen names) is a fair example of that. Harte was a big time literary icon in his day, but nowadays more people know the name as that of a professional wrestler from a few years back.

In The Autobiography of Mark Twain (a very natural born quiller), which you may recall was not published (by the author’s instruction) until a hundred years after Clemens’ death, old Sam was pretty rough on Harte. Some of that had to do with Harte being rude to Mrs. Clemens, and for all his admitted fault of temper, no one loved his wife and family more than Samuel Clemens. But he also spoke of Harte’s cynicism and his remarks that the readers were suckers who more fell for stuff like The Luck of Roaring Camp if you knew how to play them. After reading some of Harte’s work, with its rough-hewn sentimentality and calculated edges, it is easy to believe what Sam had to say.

L. Ron Hubbard is another.There’s a tale that has been going around for ages. It features Harlan Ellison (a real writer) conversing with L. Ron. Hubbard wanted to figure out a way to make money beyond the penny per word gig. Ellison is supposed to have said “Start a religion.”

Now, I do not know enough about Scientology to slam on it. But I feel that I can say that there is something unsettling about the serenity on the faces of people like John Travolta and Tom Cruise. There’s something in their eyes that reminds me of those of the Heaven’s Gate guy. But, hey, if they are happy, whatever. My only brush with scientologists was in the late seventies when I was a teen fresh out of high school and living on the edge of downtown Seattle. I recall there being a scientology center down by the monorail, just a block west of where Eric Clapton once was involved in a car accident. And the scientologists would pass out pamphlets and such. At eighteen I was already way too worldly to do anything but silently take the pamphlet then dump it in the trash a block later. Couldn’t shake a Moonie as easily. But telling someone in a toga to fuck off came awfully natural to me.

Anyway, with all that considered, I have a tough time believing that L. Ron was a natural born quiller. He quit producing fiction when the Scientology Horse came in. Of course it is too easy to scorn writers who make money. Too easy to shout “sell out!” “coporate blowboy!” But the fact remains, a bit of the Awful Truth, that most people who make money are as good as you are, but they just happened to walk into the right room at the right time. They are good writers, but a lot of what is termed genius is actually winning a pot with a pair of wired twos. Not to overwork Stephen King as an example, but he is no “better” than anyone who appeared on the site this week, but he capitalized on finding a perfect tone that made what really is old fashioned horror new and invigorating. He also worked as hard as hell and he honestly made his fortune, and I do not believe that anyone could have had his success without being a natural born quiller. But even he (a man whose humility has noticeably shrunk over the years) has confessed that good old luck has been on his side. The man has nothing to bitch about, but he still does. We are all like that–human to our own malleable content.

I’m all for someone who means what they write. I really cannot define how we can know that about someone. I mean there are perfectly groomed, tweedy, pipe smoking, human cliches who mean the hell out of what they do (or did), and there are the grubbiest human dirt under the nails types who are phonies–guys who heard that an physically hideous ogre like Bukowski got girls because he could write. I really hate the pretend poor boys, those fools who shred rhymes on the bus like anyone cares. They remind me of the guys who swore they believed anything the politicized hippy chick they wanted to bed told them. And shame on those girls for letting their egos get in the way of common sense.

Of course “meant” writing, the sincere stuff is often pretty shitty writing until the author understands that a forlorn bleat of loneliness or a prolonged at the top of her/his voice testament of rage wears itself out with the reader long before it tires the creator. This is where simple techniques, which are not secret tricks, come into play. Use of the active language, staying away from sounding like an explosion at the Thesaurus Factory, avoiding fifty-word long sentences and striving to convey objectivity and restraint without becoming wishy-washy and flat out dull are fine things to consider. Actually, the way to do that does not involve a list, but is served by drafting sentences and paragraphs over and over. I’m no great thinker, but I can advise you that when a sentence that is supposed to say something you really want to get over feels wrong, well, it is because (usually) it is too long. Breaking it in half as either two sentences or with a semi colon can do wonderful things for a writer caught in that fix. And something as simple as a that-ectomy or “which hunt” often makes the work sturdier.

That brings to mind another paradox about writers. Something that might aid one to winnow the shit from the shine. Bad writers make truth sound like a lie while natural born quillers can tell you one whopper after another, and although you know that’s what they are doing, you want to hear more.

Oh, and one more thing. Although it is only my feeling, writing has recently experienced an asteroid drop similar to what happened to the Dinosaurs. The internet and social media is teeming with a blast furnace of bad writing that is not writing at all but is clickbait, regurgitated AI backwash, soft-skull politics and good old fashioned bitching and accusing–and heaven help anyone who first explores then shares what they really think and fails to pick a side; anything else is bad for business. Fortunately, the Natural Born Quillers know where to hide until the idiots blow themselves out. And although I might be dead before the storm finally subsides, I see no need to wait a hundred years to let my feelings be known. So, to be clear–to the witless purveyors of trash, Google, Facebook, Instagram, X and the once honest publications who now wear a red dress and drop to their knees in front of God and everybody in the Starbucks, fancy old whores, like The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Rolling Stone–”Ben Dover” publications that used to not take shit but now deal it for clicks and likes–a hearty and sincere Fuck You! From Irene Leila Allison, just another frustrated voice in the gathering cloud of obscurity, yet damn happy to lead a knee-pad free existence.

Now it is time to venture into The Week That Was. My semi-precious attempts at segues come out like verbal Rube Goldberg devices (please see the clip), therefore I admit I’m usually out of fuel for further thought by the time we hit the middle of the wrap, so, let’s bring the writers out for a bow. It is always a lucky thing that there are six writers present to give flagging work the miracle of CPR.

I should have said five, but I did not remember that I was up last Sunday with an Auld Author segment regarding The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. This was a strange one for me because the book, still good, has dropped some in my estimation. It came out in 2003 and was quite the spectacle, winning a Booker and all that. There’s always a Water Walker in the arts, and this one got that job…for a while. But really, the politics of the time gave it a boost, therefore, as a work of writing, looking at it as objectively as possible, it is not a great book but a good one. It relies too much on coincidence (and at one point, with the one-eyed former professor, it shamelessly sold one) and if there was a worthwhile female character in it, I must have missed her–which would be all right, but doesn’t that underscore some of the problems in that part of the world in a rather ironic way? Still, though a fall (with me), “good” is plenty given the amount of shitty books there are to suffer. In some minds, that might make me a bad person. To those minds, two things: 1.) Have I ever claimed to be a good one? ; 2.) Go two paragraphs up and take every syllable personally.

The real business of the week began with the latest, The Cold Baby, by dynamic Christopher J Ananias, whose site canon is piling faster and higher than Charlie Sheehan’s sins. “CJA” is a far better writer than Bret Harte and L Ron Hubbard and I think he has the goods on Mr. Hosseini as well. Not that it is likely to do him a damn bit of good in the financial sense, but he did get himself called “dynamic”, which is something superior to a sharp stick in the eye. Don’t think I’ve ever called anyone that before. And for those who read this somehow whimsical yet disturbing work, I think the assessment will agree. Goddam strange and wondrous.

Only someone as good as Geraint Jonathan can follow CJA onto the stage and hold his own. Geraint is a master of flexible language and irony. And what is more ironic than our sudden heartfelt pleadings to a Supreme Being we knock the rest of the time, like the other stuff we say is always forgiven? Prayers Do Not Always Reach the One Prayed To brings a fresh approach to a frayed topic. God must love irony as much as She loves pain and poverty–there’s sure enough of it all.

We were happy to publish The Crying Story by talented T.A. Young on Wednesday. Your basic flim-flam writer cannot produce works of humanity and quality. That’s a good litmus for AI “spooking” as well (I can’t say why, but spooking is the word for that for me). Just compare the shit to good stuff, like what T.A. wrote and the shadow will know itself as pointless, drop the “something” viz and poof to nothing. T.A. ‘s well conceived dramatic and even comic “Ornella Splice” could never come out of equations; you see it from T.A. or after an act of theft, which is another task for the Natural Born Quillers to prevent. You want the best for Ornella, but she needs to get out of her own way first.

Thursday’s A Cup of Flour by site newcomer Tim Boiteau got the drop on Thursday and like Cohen he knew to shoot who outdrew him. Hellword tales are only scarce in matters of quality. I think we should blame the otherwise fine Terminator for that. The film inspired people to write, but most of those people were thinking box office over story. Not Tim, this is truly suspenseful and disturbingly possible writing.

Boots and Cats by John Tregoning finished the week off in high style. It’s a fourth of July weekend in the US this year, which causes a lot of noise, so it is harder for me to hear than normal, but John’s clear and confident voice blew away the blather of bottle rocket and M-80’s (which for the sake of animals need to go the hell away and stay there). This work involves the steady th-thump of the DJ, and yet again the writer got the thoughts across.

There’s so much mental clay over what should be the topsoil in the world, thus it again falls to Natural Born Quillers to get the stratifications in order. We had a fine run of original stuff by five NBQ’s (which I should have begun using sooner) that proves the situation is not completely hopeless.

My list this week has a negative title, but the object is to look at the why of the thing and hope for an optimistic end result.

I present

Ten Popular Books I Dislike Written by Writers I Like (Well, Like Most of the Time)

For the most part these are fine books and the fault lies with the reader, the same Irene Leila Allison who took on evil forces earlier in the article. And although there are a couple on the list I do not feel at all bad about giving a bad notice for, there are many I wish I could feel better about. But, whatever, if we agreed on everything there wouldn’t be much to talk about.

• The Shining (1977) by Stephen King (I did not discover King until the 80’s, therefore I did not read his early stuff in the order of publication. After first reading his short collection Night Shift I followed it with Firestarter, Salem’s Lot, The Dead Zone and The Stand ( I read the preferable short version). I think The Shining predated most of that stuff, and I was glad I didn’t read it first. I simply did not care for anyone in it and his dialogue for the Black character was pure Amos and Andy. Then again lots of people love it–just the way it goes).
• Go Set a Watchman (2015, though written many many years earlier, likely the late fifties) by Harper Lee (not her fault). (This one makes me angry because although it is brilliantly written, it is obvious that Lee much preferred to publish To Kill a Mockingbird instead. She was in her thirties when she made that choice for intelligent reasons. I so wish she felt the need to write more–but she had the weird bad luck of starting on top and enough money from Mockingbird to not have to do so. But someone just had to approach her when she was nearing ninety and perhaps was in a decreased frame of mind. Pisses me off because she knew what she wanted and whoever convinced her to agree to the project had dollar signs instead of retinas in her/his eyes. Not a bad book, but I can see where she chose not to go through with it–even at three hundred pages. That’s integrity.)
• The Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison (When I was a sixteen year-old high school junior, a husband and wife team of English Teachers joined the South Kitsap High School faculty. They were forward thinking Hippies. (That is what they called themselves). How they got History of American Black Literature on the curriculum of a school in a very white military town of Port Orchard, Washington remains a surprise–keeping that it was 1975 in mind. Port Orchard was not a knuckle dragger place, but it was hardly what you’d call progressive (the only race involved jokers told by the great grandchildren of thenSwede and Norwegian immigrants who’d settled in the area). Anyway, I took the class and was able to read Native Son, The Invisible Man, Manchild in the Promised Land and a bunch of city shorts by the brilliant James Baldwin during the “trimester.” Instead of four semesters we had three (duh) trimesters. Three novels and a short collection was a heaping pile of reading for me. I liked all of it except Ellison’s lauded work. For whatever reason it failed to connect, but I still encourage young people to add the aforementioned materials, and it, to their reading list. It will involve less phone time but it will be worth the effort.)
• Lord Jim (1899-1900 in a serialized form) by Joseph Conrad. (I admire the hell out of Conrad. The Heart of Darkness is as good as writing English gets–and English was his third tongue. Yet I am unsure if I will ever reach the level of reader maturity one needs to effectively know Lord Jim. Regardless, there are fantastic acts throughout the work–but, for me, maybe there were too many. Still, it deserves to be a classic although I struggled mightily with it.)
• The World According to Garp. (1978) by John Irving (The problem here involves my reading The Hotel New Hampshire and A Prayer For Owen Meany before attempting this novel. And you got to be in a fine reading mettle when approaching Mr. Irving. Moreover, I had seen the film version of this book multiple times back when I may or may not have been pirating Showtime in the 80’s, when the selections were not plentiful. Hampshire and Meany–the latter being one of the best books I’ve ever read–removed any sense of new fancy from Garp–except early on when the Nurse “unzipped” a grabby soldier’s arm. If I had read Garp before I think it would have worked out better. Still, I might try Garp again soon. Always got a big pile of books, including Kindle, where it is stored, half read–hey, you never know.)
• The Executioner’s Song (1979) by Norman Mailer (This is a great book when the focus is on Gilmore, who was a brighter than average punk, but still a punk, and the object of his affection. He had been in prison for ages and even at thirty his idea of romance and love was not even up to High School, and the end result was two vicious murders of persons unrelated to Gilmore’s life. Funny what can set a person off. And this would be a great book overall if hundreds of pages were not spent on the showbiz angle. I understood the presence but I disagree with the amount of stage time it got. This made the book needlessly over long)
• Tortilla Flat (1935) by John Steinbeck ( I admire Steinbeck and this is the only thing I’ve read by him that didn’t work for me. I’m all for humor, but I felt that it was contrived in this piece. Somewhat dated by the time I got to it)
• Tender is the Night (1934) by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Fitzgerald was a great writer and the ending sentence of Gatsby might be the best ever. But I just do not like this book. I have no real reason for it, nothing valid, I just don’t like it. Must be a reason but I do not care enough to explore for it)
• Trick Entry–(I was assigned The Scarlet Letter to read when I was either fourteen or fifteen years old. The crazy circumstances of my far from secure childhood made me somewhat worldlier than your basic young teen, but there was no way in hell for me to relate to what I read and I hated the thing with all my passion and anger–of which I’ve always had/have plenty. But ten more years of living changed my outlook and I now consider the book one of the top fifty I’ve ever read and I’ve read lots and lots of books; so, as it goes, nothing is always, even though the plates have been melted down)
• All Yours

The Word of the Bi-Week: Sonder (n) For regular folk it is the understanding that other people are as important as you are. For PMs, Kings and Presidents: “Crazy talk.”

Leila

Well looky here– a Rube Goldberg device

And wise words from the Birthday Girl