Sherron and I each take a unique approach to our respective disciplines.
She employs found objects, invented mythologies, and sheer whimsy to concoct fairy tales exploring the magical aspects of the natural world, the spirits infusing boreal forests, ancient river valleys and the place where the ice meets the sea.
As for me, well, I’ve never put much stock in consensual reality, my writing set in grey areas, (sub)liminal zones, the vast, unbridgeable chasms that can suddenly yawn beneath us, threatening everything we hold most dear.
“Between the idea and the reality…falls the shadow”, as Eliot succinctly stated.
That’s me: Keeper of the Shadowland.
I think it’s safe to say both Sherron and I are artistic unicorns, one-offs, and this piece I’ve written (and recorded) celebrates our distinctive approach to our art and the way our minds work while creating.
I’ve provided both print and audio versions so tuck in.
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
Jamie MacGillivray by John Sayles
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
My Name is Yip by Paddy Crewe
White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty
Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis
The Mountain and the Sea by Ray Naylor
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
Universal Love (stories) by Alexander Weinstein
Honorable Mention:
Sell Us the Rope by Stephen May
Love and Hate: Stories and Essays by Hanif Kureishi
Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman
Telluria by Vladimir Sorokin
Dark Town by Thomas Mullen
Poetry
Kindest Regards: New and Selected Poems by Ted Kooser
Musical Tables by Billy Collins
Darkness Sticks to Everything by Tom Hennen
Non-Fiction
Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker
G-Man: A Biography of J. Edgar Hoover by Beverly Gage
To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild
A World Transformed by James Walvin
Hymns of the Republic by S.C. Gwynne
American Midnight by Adam Hochschild
City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s by Otto Friedrich
Is That Kafka? by Reiner Stach (Trans. Kurt Beals)
His Majesty’s Airship by S.C. Gwynne
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier
The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka Edited by Reiner Stach (Trans. Shelley Frisch)
Honorable Mention
Late Fragments by Charles Baudelaire (Edited & Translated by Richard Sieburth)
Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies by Michael Parenti
Humans: A Brief History of How We Fucked Things Up by Tom Phillips
On Writing and Failure by Stephen Marche
Socialist Manifesto by Bhaskar Sunkara
Nobody’s Looking At You by Janet Malcolm
The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield
Haven’t done this for awhile: posting a short ambient piece I rediscovered when I was cleaning out my GarageBand files this afternoon. Tweaked it a bit and now think it would make a cool opening theme for some Michael Mann-like techno thriller, set in a glittering, lethal near future.
I call it “Damage Collector”.
Soundtrack of a weird and terrifying tomorrow (and please use earphones so you get the full effect):
What is difficult for some to understand is that art can be intensely personal and self-revelatory without having a scintilla of truth to it.
I’m talking about a story or novel or poem that seems incredibly intimate, suffused with detail that makes it appear absolutely authentic and heartbreaking.
But it’s straight up fiction, not one word of it autobiographical or recreated from living memory.
Completely invented.
I think of a tale like “Strange Music” (from Sex & Other Acts of the Imagination), which has a distinctly documentary-like feel to it. It’s like you’re right inside the car with those three characters, enduring each uncomfortable moment. I’m guessing many of us have been unwilling witnesses to conflicts between our parents, those tense car rides or awkward silences at the dinner table, no one daring to look up or meet anyone’s eye.
I can tell you without fear of contradiction that that particular story is entirely a product of my imagination. It never happened. However, it contains an emotional truth, that ecstatic truth Werner Herzog alludes to, beyond mere facts, best approached from a perspective that doesn’t claim to be definitive. None of that fly-on-the-wall realism, more like a face pressed to a window, trying to divine what’s going on between the people inside that room: interpreting gestures, decoding and translating their strange language, conceiving and shaping some kind of coherent narrative.
“Truth” has nothing to do with reality, just as facts and information shouldn’t be mistaken for wisdom.
No point of view is sacrosanct…and the stories and myths that persist, helping define our culture and fundamental beliefs, are the ones that strive for universality without ever once claiming veracity or omnipotence.
Shauna Powers hosts CBC Radio’s “Saskatchewan Weekend” and, in my view, is one of the best interviewers out there.
This past weekend we chatted about my speech “The Art of Failure” (which you can listen to for FREE on Podbean) and our conversation should be excellent food for thought for artists of every discipline…or even just folks who think life has left them behind or they’ve never been able to make their mark in their chosen field.
Can you fail over and over again and still enjoy a fulfilling career and feel like you are contributing to society?
You can find that “Saskatchewan Weekend” interview here.
I’d worked on my speech for weeks, trying to make it as personal and honest as possible. You don’t often get the opportunity to sum up your life and calling, reflect on sixty (60) years of existing, drawing breath, putting one foot ahead of the other, day after day.
We’d done as much promo as we could—I’d even written an article for our local newspaper—but, really, the number of folks attending the event in person was of little concern. I also intended to record my presentation and post it as a bonus episode of my podcast, ensuring a much larger audience for what amounted to as a very public airing of the trials and tribulations of my writing life: the good (rare), the bad (frequent) and the ugly (more often than I care to think about).
My presentation, “The Art of Failure”, was well-received, people expressing very emotional responses to a speech that talked about the disappointments and humiliations endemic to artists, the total lack of appreciation and approbation one must learn to expect, the indifference of the rest of the world.
And it doesn’t get any better.
I’ve been a professional author since 1985 and in all that time have acquired, at best, a small but loyal cult following of enthusiasts willing to put up with my aesthetic eccentricities, most notably that I never repeat myself, each of my offerings utterly different and distinct from the ones that preceded it.
My message was that if one enters the arts for the purpose of being rich and famous, they are deluding themselves. It is a lonely, soul-crushing profession, a cruel and demanding mistress. The amount of effort required in order to become even a competent crafts-person should deter anyone in their right mind—achieving any kind of mastery requires an expenditure of time and energy of a whole other order of magnitude.
Talent carries you only so far, luck an arbitrary, intangible factor. Perseverance is what wins the day…but even that doesn’t guarantee you’ll gain any stature in your chosen field. All those years of work will likely avail you nought…especially when you consider that millions of other people are posting or publishing their “art” every year. Honestly, there is no effective strategy I know of (even after 3+ decades in the biz) whereby you can separate yourself from all that chaff—you are a pearl buried deep in a dung heap and the chances of anyone discovering you are just about nil.
But the good news is, real artists don’t require applause and rewards, they will continue to strive to express themselves regardless, and no amount of anonymity or obscurity will dissuade them.
Those were the folks I was addressing the night of October 20th, 2023.
If that sounds like you, pop over to Podbean, download “The Art of Failure” (or get it through Spotify, Amazon, etc.) and listen to it at your leisure.
It’s a powerful and compelling call to arms for people who are determined to pursue a life in the arts, even if that means putting up with the indignities and misery inflicted on them by a world that, as I say at one point during the speech, “is increasingly image-driven, superficial and intellectually incontinent”.
As previously noted, since the beginning of 2023 I’ve devoted most of my time to researching, writing, hosting and producing a podcast dedicated to, as the tag line puts it, “books, literature and the writing life”.
I called said podcast “Standing At an Angle to the Universe” and that perfectly sums up what went wrong with the whole venture. You see, the original notion was to create a short series of programs that were funny, articulate and, most importantly, would help draw people to my novels and short stories. But instead of serving as a platform that promoted and celebrated my work, somewhere along the way I made a wrong turn and ended up with a podcast that is controversial, combative and sure to alienate significant portions of my potential audience.
I was supposed to devise a program that drew people in and instead I went rogue and concocted a witch’s brew of snarky comments, rants and pointed barbs at contemporary culture and the mediocre minds proliferating there like blowflies on a three-day old carcass.
Sigh.
I guess no one should be surprised—it’s the kind of self-sabotage that has marred my career and prevented the kind of artistic and commercial breakthrough people were predicting three decades ago. You remember the parable of the scorpion and the frog, made famous by Orson Welles? Well, I can’t help being the scorpion, stinging anyone endeavoring to assist me, even if it means my own doom and almost certainly guarantees literary obscurity.
Listen, this thing isn’t a total write-off. The ten episodes I produced might be fun listening…to a certain, very small segment of the population. The kind of people who giggle when they imagine a mime squashed by a falling grand piano or a yappy Pekinese accidentally falling into a wood-chipper.
And I learned a lot in terms of production, mixing the audio tracks, blending in incidental and linking music. It turns out Garageband is the perfect software for a technical incompetent like me and, really, once I figured out a few of its tricks and acquired myself a decent microphone (an AKG model), I was pretty much on my way. No need to employ a state-of-the-art sound studio—I recorded the show in my home office and the final result turned out, if I may say so, very professional, as tight and glitch-free as any other program out there.
And I was fortunate because as a hobby I like to concoct spacey bleeps and blobs with my MIDI keyboard, so I was able to supply my own musical accompaniment, saving me a lot of time and money (and copyright issues). Everything you hear, from the opening theme to the extro music, is mine, no other hands on the controls, no other input allowed.
That turned out to have its good and bad points. I’m delighted with the final result, but I fear not a few people will take exception to “Standing At an Angle to the Universe” right from its first episode and tune out after that. The part of me that would like to expand my readership, draw new folks to a body of work that includes sixteen books and stretches back over thirty-five years, is sorely disappointed…but my inner scorpion vigorously approves of my anarchic spirit and applauds my determination to fail, as long as it’s on my own terms.
You know what they say: to thine own self be true.
But as my wife likes to respond: and how’s that working out for you?
Well, what do you know, I’m back, in the flesh, filled with excuses and rationalizations for not posting in freakin’ ages, a grievous act of negligence I know you find hard to forgive.
But…the podcast? Remember the podcast? “Standing At an Angle to the Universe”?
Eight months of my life that sucker cost me–researching, writing and recording the damn thing. I described the process here, in an article for our regional paper. A cautionary account, to say the least, trying to let aspiring types know what to expect.
But now it’s done, wrapped, all ten episodes, and it’s time to sit back and take stock.
First, a quick pat on the back, if you don’t mind. There is nothing like my podcast out there, it’s as unique as an albino unicorn and unstintingly honest and frank. Every word carefully considered (and scripted), incredible effort expended to make it as enjoyable and competently produced as any show you care to name. I never take my foot off the throttle, there’s not a single episode that’s weaker than the others, my respect for listeners always front and center.
It seemed only fitting that the final installment would deal with my love for the work of Franz Kafka. We’re very different writers and yet…there are resonations, affinities, common chords we both pluck. That show was very, very special to me.
If you haven’t tuned in, you can find “Standing At An Angle to the Universe” on Spotify, Amazon, Podbean and numerous other platforms. I promise, you definitely won’t be bored. And did I mention it’s FREE?
Now that the podcast is fading in the rearview mirror I can finally turn my attention to the four or five full-length projects I had to put on hold while I was producing “Standing At an Angle…”. Which should I tackle first?
Short stories? Poetry? Novellas?
And I have to catch up on my reading too. No way am I gonna make it to a hundred books this year. Seventy-five, if I’m lucky. Right now, I’m 2/3 of the way through Beverly Gage’s Pulitzer-Prize winning G-Man, a biography of longtime F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover. A beefy tome more than deserving of all the plaudits it’s received.
I’ll honestly try to be more diligent about posting, especially now that the podcast isn’t dangling over my head, suspended by a single strand of horsehair.
But you know me: once I sink my chops into a new book project I don’t often come up for air.
For now, I’ll merely promise to do my best…but while I’m away at least know I’m undoubtedly bent to some task, nose to the grindstone, imagining whole other universes and doing my best to describe what I’m seeing.
Beautiful Desolation 