What Do Women Want?

And I mean in a novel.

We have been to several author talks here-all of them save one by women authors and successful ones-- and almost universally attended by women. And what these large groups of women seem to want are novels that 1) instruct us in life 2) offer multiple opportunities to cry 3) confront a topical issue 4) work well for book groups 5) skip any fancy prose and instead tell a straight forward story 6) have the sort of humor I find too cliched to be funny. The words I heard over and over again:  I cried.

It was depressing to see how far these audiences drifted from any notion of a well-written novel. Or one that was not didactic and obvious. The sad thing is since women do most of the reading, the demand by publishers to give them what they want will only grow.

What do you want from a novel? Do you want to be taught something about life? Is that the job of a novelist? Do you want to confront life issues such as assisted suicide, school bullying, children with physical troubles in every novel you read? When did this trend begin?

Opening Credits: Chinatown

Flash Fiction Challenge: THE WHITE VAN

I sit at a window every day here in La Jolla where I look out on the ocean. But I also see a street. On many of the days I have been here, a white van pulls up early in the morning to grab one of the few empty spots. The van contains an expensive bike, a motorbike, a surfboard, multiple coolers, and changes of clothes, a beach chair. And, of course, a man. A man who seems to nearly live in this van because he eats lunch in there, changes his clothes in there and so on. I He seems to have too many expensive things to be homeless, but he is sinister. I watch him enter and exit his van. Does he watch me at the window?

Don't regard any of these details relevant to your story necessarily.

CHALLENGE: Write a story about a man in a white van. What is his story? 1000 words and a finish date of March 13th. Let me know if you're in.

Tuesday Night Music: Bobby Darin

Sexing Up a Scene

Occasionally I cheat by putting a scene with sex in a story, which I know should be played out and I don't play it out. I find writing about sex of any sort very difficult. I guess I am from the old school that liked seeing the bedroom doors close in a movie. Or even dozens of doors if there was real ardor. Remember that.

But right now I am reworking a story where the editor said, "You got to show not tell this." He's right because a lot hinges on what happens.

Writers: do you find this difficult? What kind of scenes are hardest for you to write.

Readers: do you feel cheated if a sex scene never really is described?

Not Forgottten By Me: THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW

I read an interview with Van Dyke recently and he said that when making the show they had 28 minutes out of 30 to tell the story, which allowed them to develop an idea more fully than today's sit-coms which only have 20 minutes. Most of today's shows consequently go for fractured storylines telling that features jokes rather than plots. I think there are a few exceptions to this new format-THE BIG BANG THEORY being one, but on the whole I hate most of them. I think they could shuffle most scenes around and and no one would notice that no, this was not the one about gastro-intestinal problems. Perhaps SEINFELD led the way with this sort of story telling.It certainly comes out of standup comedy.

Anyway Dick Van Dyke  was the epitome of sophistication to me as a young teenager. There are so many great episodes that it is hard to pick a favorite. Dick's favorites were mine too. The one where Ritchie was born and Dick became convinced he was not their son. And the one where Laura outs Alan Brady's baldness on a radio show. Or the one about the walnuts above.

What was yours?

Movie Theme Music: INTOUCHABLES

Maxine Clark Memorial

Note for writers and people who remember Maxine Clark (Petrona). Margot Kinberg is soliciting stories for an anthology devoted to Maxine Clark. She is also looking for remembrances or pieces that somehow capture Ms. Clark's interests/talents/blog. For more information, go here.

How I Came to Write This Book: Ed Lynskey

                                 How I Came to Write Smoking on Mount Rushmore

One Sunday morning last autumn, I was grocery shopping with my wife at Shoppers Food Warehouse when the idea hit me. Why not put together a collection of my best published short stories as a Kindle or e-book release? I’d already published a collection of my P.I. Frank Johnson stories (Out Of Town A Few Days) in 2004. I didn’t believe I had enough material to fill out another new collection. So, after we got home and put away the groceries, I began poking around on my laptop in my “Published Short Stories” folder. I’ve been working exclusively on my novels for the past several years, so I’d forgotten about many of the stories. I also checked out my Publishing Bibliography I’d kept updated for some ideas on which stories to use.

I saw my crime short fiction had first appeared in venues like Shots, Thuglit, Mississippi Review Online, and Crime Scene Scotland. The editors selecting the short stories included Sarah Weinman, Allan Guthrie, Anthony Neil Smith, Todd Robinson, and Russel D. McLean. None of that seemed too shabby to me, so I decided to keep on pressing ahead with my project. After a lot of mental wrangling, I selected 13 stories and called them my “best of,” completely based on my opinion, of course.

After I did some online research about assembling short story collections, I read where the author is expected to offer the reader something new besides the previously published stories. That struck me as a reasonable deal, and it sent me scurrying to my “Unpublished Short Stories” folder. Fortunately, I culled out three unpublished stories, one of them a longer tale. They weren’t half-bad either. I spent a few weeks polishing those three stories before I read the other 13 stories. Their quality just didn’t leave me feeling happy at all.

            I’d also read online that short story writers often have to do major edits on their work before it’s ready to be included in a collection. That made me feel a little better. Off I went and tackled the edit job on each of the 13 published stories. That effort to do it the way I wanted to took longer than what I’d originally estimated it would. Sometimes edits seem like they’ll go on forever, but I finally reached a place of enough peace to end my revising.

Smoking on Mount Rushmore rounded out to 55,000 words, and the stories range in tone from soft-boiled to hard-boiled and noirish. Smoking on Mount Rushmore is for sale as a Kindle release on U.S. Amazon for $2.99 and U.K. Amazon for £1.91.

            I’d like to thank Patti for having me do a guest blog post.

U.S. Amazon link:  http://is.gd/8qaWbz

U.K. Amazon link: http://is.gd/FKk97J

Sunday Night Poetry

Quicksand

The local library here showed this movie yesterday. The audience was small, mostly homeless guys and us. But the film was free and they even provided popcorn.

I didn't expect to like QUICKSAND because I have never been a great Mickey Rooney fan. But he did a fine job of portraying a guy who borrows $20 from his boss' cash register and finds himself in a world of trouble as this kind of movie likes to say. The first sixty minutes were classic noir: Peter Lorre is fantastic as the owner of a beachside arcade. The femme fatale (Cagney) is perfect. The good girl's casted well too.

But then it's as if someone said, "Wait, this is Mickey Rooney. We can't have him hung." So the plot begins to unravel as the writers try to find a way to get him off the hook. Couldn't be clunkier either. And we are left with a very unsatisfying ending. Lots of pluses with atmosphere though.  Great scenes of a small California town and beach community circa 1950. One strange thing: the cops in this film all seem to be in their sixties. Watching them run on the docks made me dizzy.

Anyone out there seen this one?

Say Good Things About Pacific Beach, CA

Jim Mullen

Pacific Beach is the town next to ours in California. It is a down to earth community that we have grown fond of. (They also have a great used bookstore called PennySaver).

So imagine our delight when a local newspaper informed us that Alex's Brown Bag, ten minutes away, made the best Philly Cheese-steaks west of...Philly.

We have heard this many times in our lives and gone to seek out such places. But Jim Mullen the owner of Alex's Brown Bag was the real deal. Born in Norristown, PA, just outside of Philly, he knows a cheesesteak and has gone to tremendous lengths to serve a perfect one. He is now able to get the meat and rolls from a company in Philly. The roll is as important as the meat-hard to describe why. It is not a hard roll but it has some crunch to it. It is definitely not the soft midwest rolls, Michiganders favor. Even bagels are soft in Michigan.But the meat, cheese, onions and peppers for those who like it hot are first-class too.

Jim sells other east coast favorites like hoagies, meatball hoagies and Tastykakes. We are in heaven thanks to Alex's Brown Bag. It is located at 5019 Cass St. in Pacific Beach and was recently voted the best sandwish in the San Diego area.

Take that fish tacos.

Saturday Night Music: Gram Parsons and Emmy Lou Harris

Fallen Star

Do Ho Suh

Fallen Star

2012

Do Ho Suh’s Fallen Star is the 18th permanent sculpture commissioned by UCSD’s Stuart Collection. It reflects Suh’s on-going exploration of themes around the idea of home, cultural displacement, the perception of our surroundings, and how one constructs a memory of a space. His own feelings of displacement when he arrived in the U.S. from Seoul, Korea in 1991 to study led him to measure spaces in order to establish relationships with his new surroundings. He had to physically and mentally readjust.
Suh’s small “home” has perhaps been picked up by some mysterious force and appears to have landed or crashed onto the seventh floor of Jacobs Hall at the Jacobs School of Engineering. The roof garden is part of his design and the whole creates a space with panoramic views for small groups to gather and readjust.
Do Ho Suh graduated from Seoul National University. He received a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in sculpture from Yale University. He represented Korea at the Venice Biennale in 2001. Suh has exhibited around the world and is represented in numerous museum collections. He lives and works in New York, London and Seoul.
Funding has been made possible through private donations and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts’ program for Access to Artistic Excellence.

This is quite a thrilling piece of sculpture to discover inadvertently. Amazing. 

Hard Case Crime's New Publication

New York, NY; London, UK (February 7, 2013) – Hard Case Crime, the award-winning line of crime fiction from editor Charles Ardai and publisher Titan Books, announced today that it will publish the first new book in 12 years from Elissa Wald, author of Meeting the Master and Holding Fire and a celebrated chronicler of the world of dominance and submission. 

Junot Diaz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, called Wald “a writer whose prose I’ve long admired,” adding, “Wald’s vision of the world has much to teach us about the brevity of desire and the longevity of pain.”  Pat Conroy, the best-selling author of Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, wrote, “Elissa Wald is a brave, disturbing new voice in American fiction. She works all the margins of the wild side and brings us news from those frontiers that very few writers have dared approach.” And Time Out New York wrote, “Elissa Wald, a veteran of what vanilla reviewers call ‘the S/M scene,’ brings new meaning to the term ‘literary submission.’ If you’re looking for a good erotic read, cuff yourself to this book. And don’t unlock the cuffs until you’re told.”

Scheduled for publication in October 2013, The Secret Lives of Married Women tells the story of two identical twin sisters – one a former libertine now living in suburbia, the other a sexually repressed defense attorney working in New York City – who confront the dark side of desire when men in their lives show themselves capable of violence.

“Elissa Wald is an extraordinarily gifted writer, equally capable of making you shiver with suspense or arousal,” said Charles Ardai.  “Her prose is haunting, her characters unforgettable, her storytelling masterful – and she proves that even in our jaded era some things still have the power to shock. This book will leave scorch marks on bedside tables all across America.”

Wald is only the second female author ever to write a book for Hard Case Crime, and The Secret Lives of Married Women will be the imprint’s first new book after publishing Stephen King’s novel Joyland in the summer. A stunning cover painting by Glen Orbik in the style of the classic paperback era completes the package – and for those who might find the cover too steamy to carry on the subway or leave out in their home, the novel will also be released in a discreet e-book edition.

 

Friday's Forgotten Books, Friday, Febuary 8, 2013

Repeat of a Review by Phil Abbott

Readers should note I can count the number of Western novels I have read on three fingers: Portis’s True Grit; Clark’s The Oxbow Incident and Proux’s Brokeback Mountain. My interest was piqued by recently watching Deadwood. Kelton’s The Time It Never Rained was recommended to me as perhaps the best contemporary novel about the American West.

Kelton struggled to find a publisher. He wrote a draft in the later fifties. Unable to find a press, he re-wrote the novel in the early sixties only to fail again. Only after receiving positive reviews of The Day the Cowboys Quit, was The Time It Never Rained published in 1973. From the today’s perspective the novel is hardly innovative. The narrative is linear. There are no picaresque characters. Exploration of racial tension (which Kelton expanded in each draft) is relatively limited. The Time It Never Rained is a family saga about the drought that plagued West Texas in the 1950s. Before the drought began, Rio Seco was a relatively prosperous community of proud and independent ranchers. When the rains finally returned in 1957, the town has all features of The Last Picture Show. Young people have left; ranches have been auctioned; those remaining are angry and dispirited.

Despite its narrative and stylist simplicity, however, Kelton’s The Time It Never Rained is an engrossing novel. The central character, Charlie Flagg, a cattle and sheep rancher, is a figure who exemplifies all the features of a lost masculinity, and by implication, a lost West. Scrupulously honest and hard working, his loyalties are simple. His family and the land are the primary source of his affections. There are some cracks even in this lost world. Flagg’s marriage shows subtle signs of disintegration and one wonders if his wayward son’s behavior is the result of a silent but demanding father. His relationships with the Mexican workers on his ranch are correct and cordial and on occasions affectionate, but as one young Mexican explained to a loyal employee they are also “patriarchal.” The young women on the ranch, both Anglo and Mexican, are treated with exceptional respect by Flagg, but also with a chivalrous manner that is only possible for one who has defined gender relationships on permanently unequal terms. 

Perhaps the defining aspect of Flagg’s character is a ferociously protected independence. His refusal to accept government aid indirectly leads to the loss of almost all of his land and stock. On the other hand, Flagg’s resistance to the new economy in which ranchers and the government are partners is for the most part justified. When federal bureaucrats are not incompetent, they are predatory. Thus the tragedy of the West Kelton depicts is one in which the lone rancher’s fate is failure. He will be destroyed by nature or the government. At the close of the novel, the rains finally come but Flagg’s last remaining livestock, a herd of goats, are destroyed in a stampede. Flagg’s reaction to his crestfallen spouse is a classic reiteration of the American Dream: “There is still the Land. A man can always start gain. A man always has to.” This engendering of American enterprise has both a conservative and a revisionist aspect. American greatness is dependent upon the maintenance of masculine values. These values also lead to excess and disaster.

One of the pleasures of novice reader of a genre is simply informational. How a ranch economy works, how sheep are sheared, how coyote predation is managed are all carefully delineated by Kelton. Finally, in terms of the forgotten book theme, The Time It Never Rained illustrates another lost world in addition to Charlie Flagg’s. The conventional novel still has the capacity to transport a reader to another time and place.

You can find more review links on Todd Mason's blog. 

My Life in the Theater: Clybourne Park

We saw this at the San Diego Repertory Theater last week. It was an outstanding production of a thoughtful, funny, sad, truthful play about racism. Hard to think of a better play in the last five years and the acting by the company here was sublime. Local theater can be such an enriching experience.

How I Came to Write This Story: Hoodwinked by Nigel Bird

Hoodwinked came to me with the collision of ideas, as is often the case.

2 years ago, just over, I was to get married in the summer.  There was talk of a Stag-do, but I had no intention of painting any town any colour.  Thankfully, a good friend of mine understood my feelings and was also keen to mark the event.

His choice of celebration?  An afternoon at the Edinburgh Film Festival to see Winter’s Bone.  He couldn’t have made a wiser choice.

Better still, there was a Q and A with the director and the main actress afterwards where we found out about some of the thoughts that went into the film and the way they’d used local people from the mountains on screen.

It got me thinking about how that might have affected a rural community, the arrival of a film crew and all its associated bits and bobs.

The question must have formed a seed and that seed was planted somewhere in my brain.

Part two came at a safari park in Scotland called Blair Drummond.

To finish our day, we went to the birds of prey exhibition.  There’s something very moving about watching a bird in flight.  Match that wonder with sharp claws, huge wing spans and frighteningly shaped beaks and it would be hard not to be impressed.

So taken was I by their prowess that the idea of such a beast picking up a child from the ground was formed.  It certainly seemed possible the way the birds swooped towards the lure.

When the show was over, I went over to the bird-handler and asked the question.  Could a bird of prey steal a baby?

There was an awkward silence and I’m not sure how we filled it.

Perhaps he saw the harmless creature that lives inside of me, or the way I am with my own children.  Whatever it was, he must have decided that it was a safe piece of information to be dishing out.

His answer was that, yes, it could happen.  No doubt about it.  Especially if it were an Indian Eagle.

This was like the water for the seed that was planted earlier.

Imagine a mountain man forced into a position where he felt he needed to take revenge.  Take it a step further and make that man a bird-handler who could train his bird to do pretty much whatever he wanted. 

All I needed was to create the need for revenge, and who better to plant that at the door of than the film star of a movie such as Winter’s Bone. 

The chemistry was there, all I needed to do was to breathe life into it.  In other words, the difficult part.

Whether I manage to pull off the sense of place or the right tone in the speech is another matter – being a Brit didn’t make that particularly easy – and I’ll leave that for you to judge.

Thing is, it was accepted at All Due Respect, and that meant a lot to me.  Still does. 

You can check Hoodwinked out in the ADR anthology that’s just come out.  There’s a collection of talent there that is screaming out to be read.  I recommend it highly and hope that this has tickled something in you that will take you over to the page.

Thanks here to Alec Cizak and to Chris Rhatigan for their support and their unselfish sharing of their talents.

Madeline Sherry

http://madelinesherrypaintings.com/

Love the little film on this clip but Madeline Sherry had moves on to a new subject in her recent show. The abstracts are gone and in their place-ones like this.

As you might expect, we have gone to a lot of museums and galleries while in southern California. One of my favorite gallery shows took place at the Pulse Gallery in San Diego where recent work of Madeline Sherry was being displayed. These are huge canvasses that knocked me out.

It's in a cool area where lots of galleries have taken over spaces used by the military in earlier years. On the first Friday of each month, the galleries are open at night and have wine and cheese to make it more fun. We saw a fabulous quilt show there as well.

Most of the huge Sherry canvasses depicted scenes from post WW 2 magazines. But my favorite was a very evocative one of Lizbeth Scott from the film THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVES. In this film, Scott, depicted in Sherry's painting is the femme fatale-Lizabeth Scott. 


If you're in the area, stopping in this area is great fun.

From the Gallery: On Feb 9th, 2013 Pulse Gallery will host “Talk and Tea” with Madeline Sherry. Madeline’s series “The Times” was inspired by images and articles from a Times Magazine printed and published in 1944, the year of her birth. Her large format oil paintings capture both nostalgia and the reality of everyday life in the 40’s.


 

Opening Credits: FNL

EIGHTIES FICTION

I went into a self-named eighties dinner in Oceanside, CA today. The walls were filled with movie posters (DIRTY DANCING, FERRIS BUELLER, etc) CD covers, and TV shows playing on monitors (COSBY, CHEERS, DALLAS). But nowhere was there any mention of books.

What eighties book covers would you tack on those walls. What eighties novels defined that decade?

Loved GORKY PARK in 1981.

And for mainstream fiction, how about HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE by John Irving.

 

A few of my other favorite books from the 1980s

The Handmaid's Tale, The Color Purple, Beloved, The Remains of the Day, The Joy Luck Club, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Love in the Time of Cholera, Lonesome Dove, A Confederacy of Dunces, The Bean Trees, The Shawshank Redemption, Presumed Innocent, Housekeeping, Love Medicine, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, The Lover, What We Talk About When We Take About Love, Cathedral, various Alice Munro collections, The Sportswriter, Witches of Eastwick, Crossing to Safety, What's Bred in the Bone, Continental Drift, Flaubert's Parrot, Too Far to Go

First Wednesdays Book Review CLub

Although you will find this in the mystery/crime section, it is hardly a mystery at all. Oh, yes, there is a crime solved by Edinburgh Detective, Fin Macleod, on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. But is is more the story of his childhood there and how the events of his last years there affected his life forever. No character is either black or white-not one.

This beautiful book excels in creating a place, a time, and memorable characters. If you are looking for a high body count, or countless interviews between MacLeod and suspects, there is little of that. But if you seek a book full of atmosphere, lovely writing and an introduction to a very different place, you will enjoy this as much as I did.  Highly recommended. Check out Barrie Summy for more reviews.

Tuesday Night Music: Eva Cassidy

My Ten Favorite Quirky Forgotten Movies

1980-Gloria, directed by John Cassavetes, starring Gene Rowlands-A mobster's widow protects a orphaned boy. Love this one.

1994 Shallow Graves-directed by Danny Boyle, Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston, Ian McGregor, three roommates need a fourth and don't bargain for what they get.

1977-Three Woman-directed by Robert Altman. Sissy Spacek, Shelly Duval, Janice Rule-Three women exchange personas as they forge a family.

1981-Cutter's Way-directed by Ivan Passer-great novel and movie. Jeff Bridges and John Heard. Bridges witnesses a murder and goes after the killer.

1996-Hard Eight, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly, A newly minted gambler runs afoul of a femme fatale

1996 Day Trippers-directed by Greg Mottola -A family takes a road trip into the city when a rogue love letter falls into a wife's hands.

2009 Cairo Time. directed by Ruba Madda Patricial Clarkson plays a woman alone in Cairo who has a whirlwind romance.

2003 The Station Agent, directed by Thomas McCarthy-Patricia Clarkson, Peter Dinklage, Bobby Cannevale-Three lonely people connect in the desert.

2007 Lars and the Real Girl-Directed by Craug Gillespie. Ryan Gosling. A young man cannot be dissuaded from his love for a blowup doll.

1974-CockFighter-directed by Monte Hellman-Warren Oates, Harry Dean Stanton-a man years to be the world's greatest cock fighter.

Movie Themes: OLD BOY

A Sense of Place

What book evokes the best sense of place you can remember. What author took you to a city or country or suburbia and made you feel like you had walked the streets?

I am choosing THE BLACKHOUSE by Peter May. He takes us to the Outer Hebrides in an extremely memorable way. Other suggestions include ROGUE MALE (Household) and Charles Todd's THE CONFESSION in Essex' marsh country. And finally Graham Swift WATERLAND in the fens.
These are all British settings. What are some other setting that are especially well evoked. 

Say Somthing Good About Detroit: Emagine Theaters

The Emagine Theaters is a small chain of five luxury theaters in the Detroit area. The one in Royal Oak just outside Detroit features very comfortable state of the art theaters, a restaurant, a bowling alley, a bar, and the normal movie stand treats. Emagine are far more glamorous than theaters have been since my childhood in downtown Philly. When you go to an Imagine Theater you feel like you are out for the night. In cold, cold Michigan it is nice to be able to cross the lobby to enjoy a meal or a drink after the show.

Paul Glantz, a Detroit native and Wayne State University graduate, considered developing other sorts of businesses in the Detroit area before hitting on this one. Rather than setting his theaters out in the boonies, Glantz is inserting them cleverly in already vibrant areas. The Royal Oak Theater is at the most dynamic intersection in the trendy suburb and actually shares its lot with an art theater. I am hoping for one nearer me soon.

Sunday Night Poetry: Joyce Carol Oates

Sunday: How I Came to Write This Story: Gary Clifton

Genesis of the Last Ambassador to Pushmataha:  Like much of what I write, forty years with a badge provides for a deep bucket of wild yarns.  The villain, who claimed to be a hunted, wrongly deposed Middle Eastern royal family member was in reality an illegal-alien dime bag dope dealer from Mexico.  He managed to ignite a black powder bomb beneath the men's urinal while the joint was full of drunks. The blast caught an unemployed window washer from Wisconsin in the ready position, blowing his right hand out through the roof with his pride and joy firmly in its grasp. The dancer/girlfriend was a skinny blond topless dancer whose brain had been consumed by substance ingestion, i.e. probably acid.

 

We did in fact allow the toad to get away from us once, but he was too dumb to quit while clear.  He returned to the club with another black powder pipe bomb (see exploded pirate ships, other nasty accidents, etal throughout the history of black powder), managed to have a slight timing accident and lost both arms just above the elbow, prompting yours truly to make the observation at Parkland he was doomed to the Texas Department of Corrections with no way to jerk off.  I heard he was murdered - shanked - in the shower the next year.  Another case of an unjust society dooming an unarmed man to prison - pun is intended.  It's all so damned unfair.

 

And the chick may or may not have run away with the spoon.

 

Note, the written yarn deviates somewhat from the true hard facts.

 

Gary Clifton

Saturday Night Music: Eddie Vedder

My review of 56 UP is on Crimespree Cinema.
 

How I Came to Write This Story: Mike Monson

My story Criminal Love started out the same way as most of my fiction: with a ‘what if’ moment.

There is a couple I’ve known about for at least 10 years. The wife works full time. The husband, as far as I know, has never worked and is often in the county jail for up to 12 months. This man looks like a criminal and is, basically, a total asshole. I suspect he abuses his wife. He spends all his wife’s money on himself while not working any kind of job on his own, and, what is worse, he acts like he is something special.

So one day I just thought, what would this guy do if someone at a party or a bar asked him, innocently, “What do you do for a living?” What would his answer be? And, further, how would he react if someone challenged him on it and tried to make him admit he was a bum?

So I started writing a story from those questions. Once the main tension was established I just kept writing and writing blindly until an actual fiction story emerged somehow. Then, I went back and changed the beginning to go with this new story.

What came out as I typed, of course, is completely different from the real-life couple.

My site:  mikemonson.org

Friday's Forgotten Books

Patti Abbott

EAST OF EDEN, John Steinbeck

I was a freshman in college when I read this book. I realized as I reached its end that the feverish pitch of the novel was probably at least partially based on the fact that I was feverish myself—sick in the way that kids that age and away from home get sick. I lay on my narrow dormitory bed, skipping classes, skipping meals, and reading EAST OF EDEN. When I was finished, I read four or five more Steinbecks in succession, enjoying them all but not perhaps as much as this one.

It was exactly the kind of book that appealed to me then: a family saga that was long, complicated, sad, over the top perhaps. When I reread it a few years ago, I still enjoyed it but felt a red pencil might have strengthened it.

EAST OF EDEN was published in 1962 and its title refers to the place where the biblical Cain goes after murdering his brother, Abel. The novel begins in Connecticut where Adam Trask and his older brother, Charles, live on a farm owned by their father, Cyrus, whom we later learn he has stolen money. Much of the first half of the novel concerns their relationship with the kindly and noble Hamilton family. After Cyrus’ death, Adam enters the army while his brother Charles stays on the farm and grows rich.

After his release Adam marries Cathy Trask and the couple move to Salinas, California, where she becomes pregnant. She gives birth to Cal and Aron but deserts the boys, shooting Adam while running away to live in a whorehouse. Cathy has few redemptive qualities and seems determined to debase herself and destroy everyone around her.

Adam and his servant, Lee, raise the two boys. One night Cal takes Aron to the house of prostitution owned by Cathy, showing him his mother for what she is. Like their father and uncle before the, the brothers resemble the biblical Cain and Abel. Aron is killed in combat (World War 1) and Cal falls in love with his brother’s longtime girl friend, Abra Bacon. Adam who has suffered a stroke following the shocking death of Aron forgives Cal for his sins.

This is certainly one of Steinbeck’s best novels and a classic for me. Despite its rigid notion of good and evil—people are mostly one or the other—its rich storyline, the beauty of the writing and its compelling nature, still make it a favorite.

For more forgotten books, see Evan Lewis right here.

ALL DUE RESPECT: THE ANTHOLOGY

Check that bad boy out here Only $.99 for now. Great writers, great stories, great editor. My story is called "Wheels on a Bus."

My Life in the Theater" MAN OF LA MANCHA

This was the very first Broadway musical I ever saw-and probably the first professional play of any kind. We took the train up to New York from New Brunswick and I think returned after it. It was fabulous and Richard Kiley was terrific in his Tony-award winning role.

Opening Credits: Monsters, Inc

When your grandson says, "I love this song" how can you not love it too.