Just wanted to throw in the link to Harry Jr’s whiney explanation of why he’s quitting the senate race he hadn’t officially entered. It’s Palinesque (and not in the good Michael Palin way). You can read my blog about it if you haven’t already.
Also you might want to take a look at the “literary work” page here. Just updated with new samples and links to work in progress, a podcast and more!
Here’s a podcast of a story I told on WBAI on the Next Hour in January 2009. I had developed the story in a workshop I took through Narativ and was invited to tell it as part of their “storytelling circle.” The story is true and follows the rules of Narativ’s techniques.
So have a listen. It’s probably safe for work, but kind of sad.
Spring 2004, they told him the cancer was back, hiding in places it hadn’t been before. Inoperable but treatable, the doctor said.
“No, thanks,” he replied. “I’m eighty-six. I’m not looking to draw things out.”
Three to six months without chemo, he was told.
Nine months later, winter 2005, despite the prognosis, he had only slowed down, a little. The ache in his leg kept him up some nights though he wasn’t sure if it was the pain itself or the knowledge of what it meant. The waiting was harder than he’d expected. He’d read obituaries of people who died in their sleep and feel a twinge of envy.
One afternoon the sun was bright, and he was restless.
“I’m going for a walk,” he announced.
“A what?” his wife said grappling with the concept. “It’s freezing. There’s ice.”
“I’m going.”
“But we don’t need anything,” she shouted.
He dressed warmly and stepped outside, moving slowly at first. Then realizing the streets were dry, he quickened the pace. His lungs were clear and he’d learned to live with the dull throbbing in his thigh. He said hello to a neighbor who asked after his wife. He passed the playground and wondered when he’d last been inside. Could his oldest really be pushing sixty?
He walked by stores, mostly new in buildings mostly old, not as old as he was, though many had been up when he’d moved to the neighborhood half a century before.
Half a century. He remembered a parade he’d seen as a child, men as old he was now, civil war veterans. How was that possible?
He was not in denial, but it seemed hard to fathom that he could feel so physically well while his body was in the process of shutting down.
He found himself in the industrial area of L.I.C. on a quiet block as yet undiscovered by artists or developers. Facing southwest, before him was the lower Manhattan skyline — that gap between buildings filled by the sun. He stopped for a moment and took a deep breath, suddenly aware of the beating of his heart and the realization of when he had last stood on that spot. Fall, 2001. There had been an acrid smell, and all he could see across the river was smoke.
A voice said, “This too shall pass.”
No one was there. A life-long agnostic, he did not believe it was the voice of God. Still, it was something.
As he walked home he noted everything as though seeing it all for the first and final time.
When he returned, his youngest daughter was waiting. She’d stopped by after work as she often did in those days.
Lately, even she, who dealt with suffering on a professional basis, had developed a catch in her voice when speaking to him.
“How are you, Dad?” she asked.
“Great,” he replied, without a touch of irony.
I’ve just invented a word although that seems very unlikely. If you can prove a usage prior to mine, let me know. The word is: ghostpuppet.
You may know about sockpuppets . Here’s the definition from Wikipedia:
“A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception within an online community. In its earliest usage, a sockpuppet was a false identity through which a member of an Internet community speaks with or about himself or herself, pretending to be a different person,[1] like a ventriloquist manipulating a hand puppet.”
You may have also heard of meatpuppets. Meatpuppets are other people, friends, relatives, employees, slaves whom we get to promote us online while they keep their relationship to us secret.
Ghostpuppets are different. Say you find yourself spending too much time online at a “social networking” site. Someplace like authonomy maybe. And finally you break away and leave. Only the real world is a cold and lonely place where no one wants to hear your theories about literature and speculation about publishing. So you go back. Only you tell yourself it’s just to play, just to forumcate a bit. But you’re not quite out, not quite yourself. Some people know who you are. Some don’t recognize you. You’ve got a new screen name and a gender neutral avatar. You are in some ways a shadow of your previous self. Not a sockpuppet as you have nothing to promote and no other identity. A ghost.
Like it?
Also do I get bonus points for forumcate? The noun form is forumcation. The definition is “to spend endless hours on a forum posting shit.” Or as my British friends say “shite.”
Larry Harrison’s dark and dazzling first novel, Glimpses of a Floating World takes its title from the phrase used to describe the red-light district of 18th century Edo, now known as Tokyo. The Japanese term alludes to the Buddhist concept for “the transient nature and suffering that defines our earthly existence.” Edo’s floating world was a haven of pleasure and illusion, filled with kabuki actors, geishas and courtesans. Harrison’s work is set in London’s Soho, 1963, its denizens — anarchists, mods, rockers, beats, and others, among them our protagonist, seventeen year-old Ronnie “Fizz” Jarvis who loves feeling that he is part of “the scene.”
The novel opens with two heroin addicts on their way to a fix. The griminess of the dialogue is pitch perfect in its rhythm and authenticity. Ronnie, one of the fortunate few with a prescription for heroin and cocaine is eighteen minutes away from his chemist’s and would gladly die sooner to make up the time.
Our “hero”, the son of an abusive, alcoholic, upwardly mobile Scotland Yard officer, survives by staying in squats and selling small amounts of his excess stock on the black market.
Harrison skillfully makes it easy for the reader to identify with Ronnie despite the character’s being vain, selfish and occasionally cowardly. He is, after all, an adolescent trying to understand the world and his place in it. Ronnie, fiercely intelligent, tells himself that he is not constricted by his addiction but enhanced by it. He is a self-proclaimed rationalist and anarchist, identifying with the beats. Since age twelve, he has “collected extreme experiences in a conscious attempt to destroy childishness.”
Ronnie reminds us of other young, unreliable characters on the precipice of manhood in an imperfect world. The reader is immediately aware that no matter what else happens, Ronnie will either grow and change, or he will not. We root for Ronnie’s potential, hoping he will live to tell the tale.
Harrison’s Soho is not a land of flower children and love beads. There’s still a sense of post-war deprivation. Ruth Ellis has recently been executed. Political scandals involving naughty politicians and call girls are in the news, while on the streets police corruption is endemic and gangsters have celebrity status. Heroin addiction, however, is relatively rare. While addicts like Ronnie scam the system, which allows him to walk away drugs in hand for easy resale, the black market in illegal drugs is small.
Early in our story, Ronnie is caught shooting up in a restroom. While his heroin and cocaine are legal, he has a small amount of opium that isn’t. In jail, he is interviewed by an elderly (at least to his adolescent eyes) prison doctor. When she tells him that he’ll be dead soon if he keeps going, he replies, “We’re all going to die… You’re going to die a lot sooner than I am.”
She believes she’s been threatened, classifies him as a psychopath, and Ronnie is sent to a mental hospital that reminded this reader of a cross between a Dickensian workhouse and a Ken Kesey nightmare. Ronnie overhears the nurses discussing how easy psychosurgery will make their jobs and soon escapes.
Several chapters are told from different points of view. We see both the war and early post-war years through the eyes of Ronnie’s parents. Freddy’s drinking, jealousy and violence eventually drive Flo to leave and return to her hometown of Swindon — a place Ronnie will always deny being from. Freddy has managed to rise to become a senior officer, but his son has been out of his life for years.
While the atmosphere and depth of characterization is strong, so is the pacing and plot development. Ronnie’s initial arrest, psychiatric diagnosis, escapes and recaptures all lead to a situation where he is forced to turn informant even though he knows nothing about any large scale narcotics dealers and does not believe that any exist. The shifting points of view allow the reader to know more than the characters, and the last quarter of the novel is a compulsively addictive page-turner in which Ronnie’s fate is anything but certain.
Harrison who has written nonfiction books on alcohol and drug issues, seamlessly weaves in the growing panic over narcotics. While the world was on the brink of nuclear Armageddon and scandal reigned, Britain — influenced by the US — was changing its policies, moving from treating addiction as a public health issue to criminalizing addicts. Ronnie is as much a victim of these changes as he is of his abusive father and his own self-destructiveness.
Glimpses of a Floating World is described on its back cover as “a lyrical and triumphant elegy to a seedy, vice-ridden London of the 1960’s. ” It is that, but also a tale of familial tragedy, a history lesson, a novel that offers much more than simple glimpses.
Glimpses may not be easy to find in your local bookstore though you can order it online as a paperback or download FOR FREE as an ebook through the link provided. It’s from Year Zero, a writers’ collective dedicated to creating a new relationship between readers and writers without the filter of the publishing industry. Agreed, there are many skeptics who still won’t touch books not given the imprimatur of even a small publishing house. This novel puts lie to the myth that important literature can only be found on store shelves. In addition to reading like a lost classic, it’s polished, proofed and edited. If you’re a serious reader, skeptical about anything that sounds like self-publishing, I urge you to rise to the challenge and sample it online for free. Believe me, it’ll be a more rewarding experience than a trip to Border’s to browse through the latest Jane Austen with zombies tome.