An Artist Should Work

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

It’s An Arty Job, But Somebody’s Got To Do It

I’m pretty certain somewhere else Andy Warhol stated that the job of an artist is art. If not, he should have said it. Or maybe that’s only a figment ...?

Artists should work! Andy Warhol was a great example of that ethic, and Woody Allen is another. Get the stuff out there, then start on the next project. Don’t rely on the critics to tell you what you’re doing. For one thing, they’ll nominate your worst movies for Oscars and ignore your best work. Maybe it’s not all wonderful, but it’ll never have the chance to try if you don’t do it.

I got into a similar discussion some years ago with a visual artist I knew. We were both at our day job. Which, as any artist will tell you, is necessary to put food on the table and heat the house, but also eats up an enormous amount of art producing hours and creative energy. She told me she felt guilty when she took time out of her day to do art. I told her I felt guilty when I didn’t.

There were other things I was good at that actually earned money over the years, but on the whole, the only thing I’m happy at is writing. If I can write, I can do without a lot of other things. Now that I’m in a position in life where I can devote more time to writing than at any other point in my existence, I am running with it. We’re almost at the end of 2013. Let’s tally up what I wrote this year ...

Spent most of January checking out the publishing industry in Canada. What a waste of time. Send your manuscript to us and no one else at the same time, and someone might get back to you in six months to tell you we can’t afford to publish you. But in February, I really started moving the pen over the scribbler. The results?

First, I handwrote the manuscript for Reality Fiction Too! The Oddball Edition. 900 plus pages. It will be over a thousand by the time its entirely typed into the computer. The largest project I’ve ever written. Followed that up by handwriting the manuscript for Thirty-One Across, about 135 pages, the novel/novella featuring the winner of RealFic Too. Followed that up by finally completing The Veridical Corridor (about 275 handwritten and rewritten pages), which required reworking of old material and a lot of new composition. Took a break from writing new material at the end of October.

In the spring, I also crammed in editing Reality Fiction Too! and beginning to enter it into the computer. A job I may just finish this week. In November, I began the final edit on The Twitchy Gal, a 350 page novel I wrote in 2012. Still a few chapters left to go in that.

Wrote the entire My Favorite Authors Tournament blog, and every entry to appear so far in this, the Sundog Rising blog.

Started writing a new poetry collection (see last week), and I’ve done substantial research and note taking on the next new novel, Sticks, Stones and Broken Bones, which I expect to start drafting probably the end of January 2014 or the beginning of February. And I’ve made substantial development notes for (dare I say it) Reality Fiction Three: The Guest Star Edition ... Plus I’ve still got the manuscript for the Jason Midnight novel The Big Mosquito sitting on my desk waiting to process.

Too much? Never enough, I say.

I admire artists who produce. Who know that their job is just that, to produce art. People who get the job done. I watched the series Naked Vegas on the Space channel over the last few months, about a company of body painters working out of Las Vegas. Besides the obvious appeal, what I found myself coming back to the show for was the fact that this was a group of people who got the job done. Imaginatively, creatively, often on the fly, intelligently and beautifully. I’m delighted and inspired by their work ethic. Just so their models can wash the art off at the end of the day after making their big pop.

Literally all the painters have to show for themselves the next day is another blank canvas. And they’re happy with that!

So no matter how many books, poems, blogs, whatever I turn out in a year, the fact is, when I take Andy’s advice, all I’ve really got to look forward to tomorrow is another blank page.

And I couldn’t be more thrilled or eager to fill it!

*******

REALITY FICTION UPDATE!

And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?

Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.

But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...

What’s happening now? 

Benny Dredful’s trying to raise the sensibilities a little by choosing Poetry as the theme for the next Episode. Unfortunately, he’s met with a fairly unanimous chorus from the other Contestants of “But I don’t get Poetry!” Everyone’s attention is substantially diverted however, when certain individuals interrupt the proceedings for a thrilling raid on the Intruders’ citadel.

Continuing Friday at:  realficone.blogspot.ca

REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE

EPISODE SIXTEEN:     SILLY EUROPEAN SPY SPOOF (DUBBED)

“Diet Ray of the Stars!”

EPISODE FIFTEEN:     EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE     

“The Shadow of Her Passion”

EPISODE FOURTEEN:     FLYING:

“Sky Calling”

EPISODE THIRTEEN:     SLAPSTICK:

“The Phantom of the Werewolf”

EPISODE TWELVE:     DAIRY FARMING:

“Early One Morning”

EPISODE ELEVEN:     BURROUGHS:

“Chapter Nine”

EPISODE TEN:     WEREWOLVES:

“The Silver Solution”

EPISODE NINE:     WRESTLING:

“Suckerslam XIV”

EPISODE EIGHT:     JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:

“The Proud and the Senseless”

EPISODE SEVEN:     THE JAZZ AGE:

“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”

EPISODE SIX:     SUBMISSION:

“Re-Org”

EPISODE FIVE:     MASQUERADE:

“The Eyes Behind the Mask”

EPISODE FOUR:     SELF HELP:

“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:

Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”

EPISODE THREE:     NUDIST:

“If You Have To Ask ...”

EPISODE TWO:     FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:

“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”

EPISODE ONE:     STEAMPUNK:

“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”

A J.H.B. Original!

Poetry and Photography Part Two

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

When Is A Poem Not A Photograph? Vice Verse

So last time I wrote about how both a photographer and a poet can be inspired by a mutual motivating scene, event, or moment to create their art. I went over my simplistic views on what made for good photographs, and how those ideas did or did not apply to poetry.

But then I started thinking about it some more ...

The fact is I’ve been taking a lot more pictures than writing poetry over the last year. Poetry comes and goes for me. Sometimes it pours out, other times, it’s better to give it a rest. But as my wife and I were taking pictures on our holiday back in September, I found myself increasingly putting the camera away for a moment and scribbling some notes down for poems inspired by the same vistas I just took photographs of. Looking back over the photos I’ve acquired over the last year or so, I found others I thought I could turn into some worthwhile writing as well.

But I needed a hook ...

Because even though a poem might be inspired by the same scene I just took a photograph of, I don’t see the point of writing something that only describes something I just took a picture of. The photograph says all there needs to be said, in one sense. If I’m going to write about the scene as well, then I better find some other sense to approach it from.

When we got back from our holidays, I spent a considerable amount of time processing the photographs I took. Then I got involved in a new photography project, making a study of trees. I put the notes I made for the poems I wanted to write on my dresser where I’d have to look at them everyday. So I wouldn’t forget about them. But I didn’t do anything with them. I vaguely thought I might spend a couple of afternoons drafting full poems from the notes (an intensely pleasant way to spend a day, I must say). But I never actually sat down and picked up a pen.

I kept on thinking, especially after writing the piece on photography and poetry, I need a new approach to really make those poems pop. Otherwise, I might just as well keep going back and looking at the pictures.

Then as I was madly typing Reality Fiction Too! into the computer one morning, as I have to do every morning to get the full piece processed and edited on time to put on the blog, a phrase from a totally different context leaped out at me.

“We might have been up to little somethings ...”

Whoa! Keystone moment!

When I go on holiday, I take photographs of things I think are beautiful. As I’ve mentioned, it’s redundant to write a poem afterwards saying, look at this (again), isn’t it beautiful? But what if you combine that description of something beautiful with something ... sinister? But make the intentional obscurity of poetic language work for you. So ... maybe I’m writing about some unnamed young man and woman traveling around the countryside murdering, raping, and kidnapping. Or maybe I’m just describing a couple taking a tour through scenic Manitoba? Set it up so the reader has to decide.

The fact is, as soon as I tried drafting a couple of these pieces, the contrast of the beauty in the scene against the chilling “what if” of what the couple might really be up to provided quite pleasingly that “extra” sense I had decided poems inspired by the same moments as the photographs needed to have. So the poem stands on its own right, as a unique piece of artistry other than the photograph taken at the same moment the writing was engendered.

Plus, it’s fun ...

I may have been predisposed towards leaning to a darker view of life in poetry already due to the fact I’m rereading Lou Reed’s Pass Thru Fire: The Collected Lyrics. See how all the blogs I’ve written lately come together? Lou Reed, photography and poetry, keystone moment ... 

I didn’t plan things that way, and this isn’t so much a joke as a commentary on how the creative process works. Everything contributes. If you’re working at it like you should, everything is fair game. And having it lead you places you never anticipate when the pieces first appear is the main part of the magic.

Whether you take a picture of it, make a note for a poem, or merely have your eye caught by a fleeting moment never seen otherwise in passing ... 

Photo by Renee Beaubien

*******

REALITY FICTION UPDATE!

And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?

Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.

But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...

What’s happening now? 

The spies have it! Reaction to Episode Sixteen: Silly Euro Spy Spoof (Dubbed) has been quite positive. The second instalment of the Episode ran this Monday, and the results will come out on Friday. Starting off the second half of the Contest with a bang.

Continuing Friday at:  realficone.blogspot.ca

On the processing end of things, the entire Contest has been written -- by hand. And I started typing Episode Twenty-Nine into the computer this morning. The piece has been edited and processed for blogging through to the end of Episode Twenty-Six. An end (on my end) is actually in sight. The Contest blog will continue to run at least until next May before the grand finale appears.

REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE

EPISODE SIXTEEN:     SILLY EUROPEAN SPY SPOOF (DUBBED)

“Diet Ray of the Stars!”

EPISODE FIFTEEN:     EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE     

“The Shadow of Her Passion”

EPISODE FOURTEEN:     FLYING:

“Sky Calling”

EPISODE THIRTEEN:     SLAPSTICK:

“The Phantom of the Werewolf”

EPISODE TWELVE:     DAIRY FARMING:

“Early One Morning”

EPISODE ELEVEN:     BURROUGHS:

“Chapter Nine”

EPISODE TEN:     WEREWOLVES:

“The Silver Solution”

EPISODE NINE:     WRESTLING:

“Suckerslam XIV”

EPISODE EIGHT:     JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:

“The Proud and the Senseless”

EPISODE SEVEN:     THE JAZZ AGE:

“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”

EPISODE SIX:     SUBMISSION:

“Re-Org”

EPISODE FIVE:     MASQUERADE:

“The Eyes Behind the Mask”

EPISODE FOUR:     SELF HELP:

“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:

Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”

EPISODE THREE:     NUDIST:

“If You Have To Ask ...”

EPISODE TWO:     FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:

“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”

EPISODE ONE:     STEAMPUNK:

“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”

A J.H.B. Original!

The Creative Process: Photography and Poetry

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

When Is A Photograph Not A Poem? And Vice Versa

(photo by JHB)

My son is the video artist in the family, and my wife is the photographer. When my wife and I go on holiday, I take a camera too. So I’m not standing around bored stiff while she composes endless pictures. I take pictures too, but the camera I’m using isn’t as good as hers, and I don’t take shots as good as hers because I’m not as serious about it.

But I do write poetry. And I get ideas for poems looking at the same things she’s taking photographs of.

We have endless interesting discussions concerning the nature of the two arts. We’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter if your photos or poems are really any good, at least pursuing the two disciplines makes you look at the world around you differently. So you discover more depth and wonder than you might have caught otherwise. And that’s a good thing. Our planet’s a very rich place to be, once you get your nose away from your computer screen. Go! Go look at it, right now.

But as the person who sometimes does both, take photographs and write poems, I’m intrigued by the fact there can be a moment of mutual inspiration for each art form. Is the effect of that really special photograph the same as that well composed poem describing the same moment? Where do the two approaches converge? Where do they veer apart?

I haven’t read much theory behind photography and don’t pretend to be an expert, any more than I hold my photographs to be anything special. Although occasionally I do pull off a good one. Even just using a point and shoot.

But as I mentioned, my wife and I do talk about this a lot. And from my own thinking, I’ve put together a list of five facets of photography I perceive as making for good photos. An utterly amateur effort, but sufficient unto my argument for today. The five points are:

    Your subject matter is so inherently beautiful or interesting, you can’t go wrong. Literally, just point and shoot.

    The photographer is such an expert craftsperson, her inherent sense of how to compose a photograph makes even dull subject matter interesting. Dynamic equilibrium of elements within the picture.

    The photographer has a highly developed aesthetic sense. She can shoot a common place subject in such a way people see it as they never have before. Imposing an artistic vision on the picture.

    The photographer is in the right moment at the right time to capture something so fleeting it might have been missed otherwise.

    Technology. Even the seven year old point and shoot I use is capable of taking outstanding quality photographs despite its user’s limitations. In fact, the camera takes pictures which more clearly depict scenes I witness visually than I am actually capable of seeing in person. It has better eyesight than I do. Really good cameras are available to anyone for reasonable prices.

Taking the technology issue one step further, even casual photographers have computer enhancing software available to them also these days. To the point where photographic images can be deconstructed and recomposed within the machine, for an utterly different effect. I don’t propose to take my discussion that far today. I don’t have anything against photoshopping things into new life, but that’s beyond my current range of personal experience playing with pictures. So I’m not getting into it. But I’m not against my wife straightening one of my photos on the computer so it looks more horizontal, or removing red eye, or sharpening up the colours so it looks more like I remember it, or doing a little cropping ... But I still work in the arena of making the image look more like what I remember taking the picture of, rather than creating a new aesthetic experience altogether.

So now let’s take a look at those five points as they may or may not relate to poetry.

    Your subject matter is so inherently beautiful or interesting, you can’t go wrong. Literally, just point and shoot.

If you wander out in front of Lake Louise and start indiscriminately snapping, you’re still going to take some mighty fine pictures. I know. I did that. But if you start writing down any old general impressions of the same scene, you’re not going to automatically turn out a fine poem. Doesn’t matter how magnificent your subject matter is. A readable poem still requires work.

(Photo by JHB)

    The photographer is such an expert craftsperson, her inherent sense of how to compose a photograph makes even dull subject matter interesting. Dynamic equilibrium of elements within the picture.

This one works the same. Someone good with words will make even a dull subject interesting. Likewise a good photographic craftsperson. The poem or picture may not fly as high as efforts with a more truly aesthetic aim, but you probably won’t regret the time you spend on either. Because then again, they might.

(Photo by Renee Beaubien)

    The photographer has a highly developed aesthetic sense, and can shoot a common place subject in such a way people see it as they never have before. Imposing an artistic vision on the picture.

This is probably the height of both experiences for me. An artistic vision, an artistic voice. The kind of things that make you see and think, while still appreciating the sheer beauty of the composition in both cases as well.

(Photo by Renee Beaubien)

    The photographer is in the right moment at the right time to capture something so fleeting it might have been missed otherwise.

There is an excitement in both forms trying to do this, I think. But I might give photography the edge. For one thing, it requires much more of a heightened aesthetic instinct to know to shoot that shot at the right moment. A poet can always make you see something in an event that you might not have seen passing by so quickly, but they have the leisure to sit back and craft exactly how they want to tell you about it. The photographer only ever has the actual moment. And what a wonderful philosophical discussion that could spin off to.

 (Photo by Brian Beaubien)

    Technology. Even the seven year old point and shoot I use is capable of taking outstanding quality photographs despite its user’s limitations.

The photographer has a much easier time of it here. The technology currently available can compensate for so much. But it doesn’t matter if a poet uses the latest word processing software or a pencil on the back of an envelope. The machine itself will never make your poem read as well as the camera will make even your bad photographs look good.

(Photo by JHB)

At the end of the day though, I have to give the nod to photography as the quickest and probably the best way to reach the greatest amount of people. I know I can post twenty-one poems and not get anywhere near the response putting up one photo grabs.

And just in case anyone’s counting, there was a situation a year or so ago when I sent a 700 page manuscript by e-mail to my brother-in-law Brian to check out, and he sent me one of his photographs in return. In terms of computer storage space, one picture is now worth more than 205,000 words.

(Photo by JHB)

*******

REALITY FICTION UPDATE!

And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?

Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.

But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...

What’s happening now? 

Anybody remember Woody Allen’s second movie, What’s Up, Tigerlily? He took a Japanese action film and dubbed it with English voiceovers, telling a different sort of story than the images would have you believe you were actually viewing. Anyone ever watch a really badly dubbed Italian spy movie from the 1960s? I tell you, getting it wrong so fantastically was an art! One which I attempt to translate into the written word in Episode Sixteen: Silly European Spy Spoof (Dubbed).

You’ll have to read it out loud to believe it.

Starts Friday at:  realficone.blogspot.ca

REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE

EPISODE FIFTEEN:     EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE     

“The Shadow of Her Passion”

EPISODE FOURTEEN:     FLYING:

“Sky Calling”

EPISODE THIRTEEN:     SLAPSTICK:

“The Phantom of the Werewolf”

EPISODE TWELVE:     DAIRY FARMING:

“Early One Morning”

EPISODE ELEVEN:     BURROUGHS:

“Chapter Nine”

EPISODE TEN:     WEREWOLVES:

“The Silver Solution”

EPISODE NINE:     WRESTLING:

“Suckerslam XIV”

EPISODE EIGHT:     JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:

“The Proud and the Senseless”

EPISODE SEVEN:     THE JAZZ AGE:

“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”

EPISODE SIX:     SUBMISSION:

“Re-Org”

EPISODE FIVE:     MASQUERADE:

“The Eyes Behind the Mask”

EPISODE FOUR:     SELF HELP:

“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:

Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”

EPISODE THREE:     NUDIST:

“If You Have To Ask ...”

EPISODE TWO:     FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:

“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”

EPISODE ONE:          STEAMPUNK:

“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”

A J.H.B. Original!

Academics ...

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Non-Academics Prefer Aggression

I enjoy reading Edith Wharton.

I think she’s one of them ladies what really gets it. There’s nothing so archaically noble about her characters that can’t be simply undone by an entirely modern yet timeless petty moment of selfishness. But they’re essentially good people, and occasionally rise to inspiring actions in their behaviour that make you wish you could be certain you’d act the same way in a similar situation.

But beyond that, the woman has an eye for social detail, critique and commentary that is honest and again can speak across the decades to make points we can stand to hear now. I read The House of Mirth recently, and found this piece in particular to be a startling example of that sort of clarity of thought.

To the point that I immediately thought other people must have realized this -- I’d like to hear what other people have to say about this book and its issues these days! Searching the Library, I was able to locate a relatively recent (2001) collection of essays on The House of Mirth. Always up for an intelligent discussion of a good book, I checked it out immediately. Oddly, there wasn’t a waiting list for the book.

There were four essays in the book. I could read the first one. Enjoyed might be too strong a word. It wasn’t really getting at what I thought was there in the source material. The second essay managed to take up a high percentage of the pages of the total book with endless digressions on other novels which at least the writer of the essay had read even if no one else has, but did say the odd thing here and there I could at least recognize as concerning The House of Mirth. But again, seemed to miss the obvious points.

The last two essays were unreadable.

I find the general idea worthwhile of someone making the argument that as demonstrated in House of Mirth, when a person makes a negotiable item out of her social persona, as the only way a woman like her can get ahead in the world is to broker the most profitable marriage for herself, that person is faced with a demeaning approach to life. But the society as portrayed in House of Mirth is so out of date, it can’t really be held up as a cautionary example regarding such behaviour today.

What I object to is that same argument being expressed like this:

“The commodification of persons, the sex/gender economy, the radical capitalism of human relations presented by the text and amplified by subsequent readers remain as reminders of the power of materialism in its attempt to render society commensurable and exchangeable all the way to its most constituent parts, the human in the person and sociality in society. However, heightened awareness of our own production and perpetuation of this economy does not seem to have altered our behavior terribly much for the better. One could argue that we have rather complexified the processes completely out of hand, achieving for the system a kind of ubiquity that has an inuring effect on consciousness. When coercive agents and personal complicity get multiplied at every point, the task of critique and repair looms too monumental to mount. ... (The House of Mirth) wants us to identify with its version of a captivity narrative, but we may well be past the point at which this text can really scare us about what the commodification of human relations produces.”

(“Beyond Her Self”, Thomas Loebel, from New Essays on The House of Mirth, edited by Deborah Esch, Cambridge University Press, 2001 -- because I’m betting all of you are just chomping at the bit now to get out there and read the rest of that essay.)

Say what!?

“Amplified by subsequent readers”? “The human in the person and sociality in society”? “We have rather complexified the processes”? Guess what -- “complexified” isn’t a real word. “The task of critique and repair looms too monumental to mount”? “Captivity narrative”? Am I the only one who thinks that although the point the fellow is trying to make is valid, the way he expresses the paragraph is utterly ridiculous?

Here’s a shorter quote from the second essay, the one I thought had a point or two to make. Unfortunately in the midst of thousands of others I didn’t think needed to be there.

“All three novels express something of the aggressivity of Wollstonecraft’s Vindication in plotting to reduce their rakish heroines to tears. In part, as we’ve seen, this aggressivity is directed against femininity’s narcissistic love of pleasure.”

(“Determining Influences: Resistance and Mentorship in The House of Mirth and the Anglo-American Realist Tradition”, Mary Nyquist)

Once again, “aggressivity” isn’t a real word. Non-Academics prefer aggression. Which is a line I am reserving for the title of a new Jason Midnight story. If I read many more of these essays, I have a feeling that story should write itself.

Another thing I find fascinating is the utter contempt many academic writers express for emotions evoked by a writer in his or her work. No dismissal is more haughtily disdainful than the observation that the author only weakened for a moment from her higher pursuit to include a bit of writing only for “emotional effect”. Which is apparently an academic synonym for “melodrama”. Or should I say “melodrassivity”?

Oddly enough, that annoyance matches the reaction I have when what should be an intelligent discussion spills over into the cloying clichés of academic incomprehensibility. A misuse of clear language in the unwarranted pursuit of trying to sound authoritative and above most “complexifications” because of the weirdly based opinion the critic has about his or her qualifications to expound sententiously upon a subject can lead to conclusions and rhetoric both grandiose and ill-founded. Something like the sentence you just read.

My favourite example of that was in an academic study I mistakenly read of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan books, where the critic was moved to wonder three quarters of the way through if the stories were not perhaps completely about incest. Since there was a complete absence of any evidence to draw that conclusion from in the writing itself. Burroughs was clearly trying to hide something.

None of this is to say that there isn’t some very intelligent writing coming out of academic settings well worth reading. I am a huge fan of the Popular Culture and Philosophy and the Blackwell Philosophy and Popculture series of books. Some of the most intelligent, entertaining, thoughtful, and amusing nonfiction writing I’ve read in the last ten years came out of those books. And the writers usually are to a person from the academic world. Sorry -- of course I really meant to say milieu. The only complaint I have here is that it doesn’t seem too likely an Edith Wharton and Philosophy title will be coming forth from either company soon.

Maybe philosophers are simply more likely to get it right than the “literary elite”.

I find it interesting that the blurb at the front of the book of essays on Edith Wharton I scored from the Library stated that each volume in its series begins with an introduction to the topic by “a distinguished authority on the text”. How does one go about becoming a distinguished authority on somebody else’s writing, I have to wonder? For example, is someone some day going to become a distinguished authority on my use of the utterly degenerate Iron Clown in Reality Fiction Too? The Oddball Edition? The actual essays included in the Wharton critical volume come from “senior scholars of established reputation and from outstanding younger critics”. You’d think then they’d be able to find someone who knew the difference between “aggressivity” and “aggression” and “complexified” and “complicated”.

I can’t help but think Edith Wharton herself would have had something to say about this sort of thing. A terminology being used to create an upper class of elite readers since they have more education, as in relation to say, a relatively vacuous and pretentious group of people setting the social standards for others based on the sole fact that they have more money? As I mentioned at the beginning, Edith was one of them ladies what really got it.

Here’s another overblown quotation I read somewhere else I had to laugh at -- “If the writer’s goal is to interpret the world, one eye looking back, the other forward, [sounds painful] the most intimate manifestation of this goal is to draw meaning from a life on the edge of death; to read the map of our life, as Borges would have us, written in the creases of ...”  Whoops. That one’s about me. From the distinguished scholar writing the intro to my poetry book.

And brilliantly insightful it is, too.

*******

REALITY FICTION UPDATE!

And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?

Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.

But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...

What’s happening now? 

Well, a few more people checked in to see what the hot sex was all about last week in the first instalment of Erotic Supernatural Romance, but I have to say, the numbers weren’t up that significantly from the poetic fantasy of the Flying Episode. So we’ll go back to plain ol’ violence in instalment two and see what happens. Solitude lashed out at everybody on Monday. See how he made out. (As opposed to those other characters who were only ... You know what I mean.)

Results Friday at:  realficone.blogspot.ca

REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE

EPISODE FIFTEEN:     EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE:     

“The Shadow of Her Passion”

EPISODE FOURTEEN:     FLYING:

“Sky Calling”

EPISODE THIRTEEN:     SLAPSTICK:

“The Phantom of the Werewolf”

EPISODE TWELVE:     DAIRY FARMING:

“Early One Morning”

EPISODE ELEVEN:     BURROUGHS:

“Chapter Nine”

EPISODE TEN:     WEREWOLVES:

“The Silver Solution”

EPISODE NINE:     WRESTLING:

“Suckerslam XIV”

EPISODE EIGHT:     JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:

“The Proud and the Senseless”

EPISODE SEVEN:     THE JAZZ AGE:

“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”

EPISODE SIX:     SUBMISSION:

“Re-Org”

EPISODE FIVE:     MASQUERADE:

“The Eyes Behind the Mask”

EPISODE FOUR:     SELF HELP:

“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:

Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”

EPISODE THREE:     NUDIST:

“If You Have To Ask ...”

EPISODE TWO:     FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:

“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”

EPISODE ONE:          STEAMPUNK:

“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”

A J.H.B. Original!

Secondhand Books

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

If It’s Secondhand, It Must Be Good

I love shopping for secondhand books. Or third hand, fourth hand, I’m not particular.

Now this pursuit takes in a wider range of experience than you might at first think. There are a few different sources of good secondhand material.

My favorite is the Thrift Shop/Value Village/Salvation Army experience. We did a lot of every bit of our shopping at Value Village once, when our son was first born. To the extent that we couldn’t fool him with any of those “the stork brought you” stories. Oh no. He was convinced at an early age that we got him at Value Village. The experience was also the source of one of his first jokes. “Where does the one-armed man shop?” The second hand store, obviously.

However, as much as I enjoy still shopping for books in such venues these days, my brother-in-law Brian from Saskatchewan is the acknowledged master. In a whirlwind tour this summer, over a couple of weeks he scored well over a hundred books (mostly children’s) for less than a hundred bucks, scouring Saskatoon, Regina and Winnipeg. The two of us hit six venues in one notable day in July.

The selection you discover in these places is what thrills me the most. Sure, you have to push your way through the badly sorted copies of Waterfowl in Iowa and Table Saw Techniques (actual titles) to discover the real prizes, but the hunt is worth it. A number of years ago I decided I was going to read all the Hugo and Nebula Science Fiction Award winners. I didn’t do badly finding most of my missing titles in the Library and actual Secondhand Bookstores, but there were a couple of titles that just would not appear. It seems winning an internationally recognized Science Fiction book award doesn’t automatically guarantee your work unlimited availability.

For five years I searched for a copy of 1955’s The Forever Machine, by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, the second book ever to win the Hugo award. Could only find it online, at a cost of about five dollars for the book and sixteen dollars for shipping and handling. Which did not appeal. I had completely given up, when my wife dragged me to the Salvation Army on St. James Street one night so she could look for clothes. Naturally, I gravitated to their tiny assortment of books. And there it was. The Forever Machine, a steal at fifty cents. Practically mint condition.

If anyone has any hot tips, I’m still looking for 1977’s Where the Sweet Birds Sang, by Kate Wilhelm.

The next step up from thrift shops is the legitimate Secondhand Book Store, where you can expect to pay maybe five bucks for a paperback that came out originally at twelve or fourteen these days. My all time favorite in Winnipeg of course has to be the classic Red River Books, downtown in the Artspace building in the Exchange. Shopping in Red River is like embarking on an archeological dig. Quite literally. The floors are stacked high with piles of loosely sorted books. But again the finds are always worth it. Especially if some son or daughter clearing out their recently deceased parent’s collection of late fifties/early sixties UFO and paranormal nonfiction classics has recently been by. Red River sells videos, CDs, records and comics as well. There might even be an eight-track or two if you dig deep enough.

Moving on from there however, there is the odd establishment that insists that if a book is being sold secondhand it should cost more than the original list price, as it must be a collectible. I’m convinced these places must be a front for illegal drug money laundering. I can’t understand how they stay in business otherwise. Sort of like Christian knick-knack shops in malls.

Finally of course there is the wonderful Internet. I’ve found this hit and miss. I didn’t have any luck finding The Forever Machine at a reasonable price, but my sister had no trouble scoring a vintage hard-covered Peanuts anthology for five dollars. As always the trick seems to be shopping from a source within your own country, to cut down on shipping and handling. And once again, it’s amazing what you find available online.

For instance, at one point some kid in Japan was trying to sell a copy of my poetry book, Destination Mutable, on Amazon for fifty bucks. If he pulls it off, he’ll make more money on the damn book than I did. And according to the Internet, my collection of Jason Midnight stories, Midnight’s Delight, was once a recommended read on a Chinese airline.

Further to Midnight’s Delight and Amazon: considering that I can practically identify everyone who bought a hard copy of that book by name, you can bet my suspicions surged when I discovered no less than five secondhand copies available for re-sale on the Internet. I have a list of likely suspects ...

Which of course also leads to the obvious question. As a writer myself how do I feel about any venue selling my work secondhand? Since I barely got a cut out of the primary sales of my two published books, not that bad really. I remember feeling quite chuffed actually when I walked into some thrift store and found a copy of an anthology that had a story by me in it. That meant someone actually bought the book in the first place!

I take my books inevitably being dropped off at the thrift store as being part of the entire weird writing experience. There’s getting the idea. There’s getting the words down. There’s revising and editing. There’s trying to get a publisher interested. There’s the endless rejections. There’s waiting two years after you finally get a publisher interested for the damn thing to come out. There’s the book launch. There’s the thrill of seeing your work in a real bookstore, lost among tens of thousands of other titles. Maybe you even get a review or two. Five months later there’s the thunderous annoyance of having to store two hundred remaindered copies in your basement and front porch. And then ...

Resurrection! Fifty-five years after you win the Hugo Award, your book reappears on the shelves of the Salvation Army Thrift Store! Immortality, at last!

And if you’re lucky, at only fifty cents a copy.

*******

REALITY FICTION UPDATE!

And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?

Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.

But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...

What’s happening now? As I mentioned last time, I keep thinking one certain story is going to make this thing explode. Flying turned out not to be that story. In fact, I must admit I think the numbers were down a little bit from usual. However, when I announced the Episode starting this week on Facebook as being Erotic Supernatural Romance, the interest shown there was four times as high as usual. Sex sells, right? We’ll see. I’ve hinted at trying that before, but this time I actually deliver the goods. I’m even putting on a content warning. Will telling people they might not want to enter the site really draw them in in droves? I’ll let you know next time. Story-wise, the Contestants have to be warned as well. There’s one nasty-minded Vampire out to get the rest of them still at large.

Starts Friday at:  realficone.blogspot.ca

REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE

EPISODE FOURTEEN:     FLYING:     “Sky Calling”

EPISODE THIRTEEN:     SLAPSTICK:     “The Phantom of the Werewolf”

EPISODE TWELVE:     DAIRY FARMING:     “Early One Morning”

EPISODE ELEVEN:     BURROUGHS:     “Chapter Nine”

EPISODE TEN:     WEREWOLVES:   “The Silver Solution”

EPISODE NINE:     WRESTLING:   “Suckerslam XIV”

EPISODE EIGHT:     JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:   “The Proud and the Senseless”

EPISODE SEVEN:     THE JAZZ AGE:   “The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”

EPISODE SIX:     SUBMISSION:   “Re-Org”

EPISODE FIVE:     MASQUERADE:   “The Eyes Behind the Mask”

EPISODE FOUR:     SELF HELP:   “Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:

Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”

EPISODE THREE:     NUDIST:   “If You Have To Ask ...”

EPISODE TWO:     FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:   “Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”

EPISODE ONE:          STEAMPUNK:   “The Chase of the Purple Squid!”

A J.H.B. Original!