Events Spiral Out of Control

What's a typical day like for me, you ask? What? You didn't ask? Who are you? Where am I? Most days I sit around looking up stuff like how many calories in an apple. Yesterday was different. I went out to see Beth Ann Fennelly onstage at the launch event for her latest book THE IRISH GOODBYE. I got into town a little bit early because the tradition is to have a quick drink at City Grocery Bar before the reading, at least that has always been my personal understanding. And look, I don't make it out to the bar as much since the famous unpleasantness of almost two years ago. So I was disinclined to miss out on my special treat. But get this! City Grocery Bar was closed for a private party! That happens from time to time, enraging me. It can strike at any moment! The private party, not the rage. Although that can also strike at any moment. There is no warning for either one. Anyway, Bill Boyle arrived early as well, so, with a little more than half an hour to go, we departed the venue (Off Square Books) and walked around the corner to Proud Larry's, which even the bartender there referred to as the "backup" for literary whatever the hell it is. Life? Bill didn't want a drink. He was just keeping me company and keeping tradition alive. So important! That's what I said to the golden-brown liquid in my glass so it would know it was not being consumed in vain. Anyway, we had a nice talk (Bill and I, that is, not the glass and I, though we got along great too) and then we moseyed back over at 5:31 PM, just one minute after the event's official start time. And let me tell you something: we couldn't even get in! Not only was every chair occupied, the rear of the store was packed with a standing-room-only crowd AND there were people kind of smushed up in the doorway and spilling out onto the sidewalk. Well! I wasn't really surprised by the turnout, especially for Beth Ann, though I have long assumed that literature is dead. An unsuspecting Dr. Theresa, meanwhile, was on her way, having just finished teaching a class, and I had to tell her to come pick me up at Proud Larry's instead. Please be assured I had already purchased my copy of THE IRISH GOODBYE upon my arrival. Anyway, back around the corner we went and I sat at the bar with Bill again and ordered some to-go food for Dr. Theresa and myself... our go-to order at Proud Larry's, yes, our to-go go-to, that's right, or our go-to to-go would probably be a more proper way to put it, two grilled chicken salads with the lemon-red wine vinaigrette. And, if we're really feeling daring, we cheat and split a quesadilla. And boy were we feeling daring last night! And look, you're not going to believe this incredible tale, but I had already ordered the quesadilla before looking at my phone to discover that Dr. Theresa had texted her request for a quesadilla. Yes, you read that right! That's the kind of magic that thirty years of marriage will get for you. What a night. What a world. What times we live in.

The History of Literature

Never thought I'd run across the phrase "She was going to turn me into an owl one time" in an Elmore Leonard novel, but I did... twice! The second time, it's "gonna" instead of "going to," the kind of distinction you notice only if you've wasted a good portion of your life cataloging every time a book has an owl in it. Anyway, after I read that (in KILLSHOT), I got in bed and came by coincidence to the part of THE ODYSSEY where the guys get turned into pigs. That's the history of literature for you, from THE ODYSSEY to Elmore Leonard: people getting turned into owls or pigs. What else have I been reading lately? Some Jack Kerouac journals that McNeil gave me for my birthday. He (Kerouac, not McNeil) is struggling to finish writing his novel THE TOWN AND THE CITY... which made me recall one of Dr. Theresa's former bosses, who told me that her favorite Kerouac novel was THE TOWN AND THE CITY, so I marched right down to Square Books and bought a paperback of it and stuck it on a shelf and never read it. Well, after reading some of those journal entries, I took THE TOWN AND THE CITY off the shelf, opened it, and the receipt fell out... May 27, 2013. And the pages of the book had turned brown with age! Look. That's not necessary. Once, when Dr. Theresa was still just an undergrad, we went to her Latin teacher's house, where fruit punch was served! And her Latin teacher brought out a book from the 15th century for us to pass around, and the pages were as white as snow! So my guess is that the people at Harcourt were like, "What are we going to do with this cheap paper we have lying around? Let's give it to the beatniks, they like that kind of crap." Related: there's a blurb from Johnny Depp on the back cover - ?! - in which the word "Kerouac" is misspelled... with two c's! "Yeah, I saw it. The beatniks won't care." (See also: the cheap glue used by Scribner.)

Memory Tricks

So, a little while ago, I was at Square Books and they had different books by Susan Minot stacked everywhere. I asked Richard, who owns the joint, what gives! Richard says to me, he says, Susan Minot is coming to town. Now, I did a little research, which I'm generally against, and this must have happened way back in October, though my guess would have been sooner, like March. Bear in mind for the remainder of the "post" how bad my memory is. Anyway, I picked up a book of Minot's called MONKEYS, a title I have always liked. There used to be a lot more monkey content on the "blog." What happened? When did monkeys lose their magic? Answer: they didn't. Maybe it was you! What was I saying? Oh! So I had been meaning to read a Susan Minot book for about 40 years. The way I remembered it... and I texted Tom Franklin to make sure... to make sure he was there, first of all. I was wondering if his presence in my memory was hallucinatory, as I recalled him playing an advisory role much like Elvis does in the film TRUE ROMANCE. Anyway! It was some time in the 1980s, and Tom Franklin and I were looking at Susan Minot's author photo in a magazine. Newspaper? Magazine. And we - aspiring writers at the time, to put it mildly - got in our heads that her book looked interesting and she looked nice and we could very probably be best friends with her if we drove several hours to wherever the article said she was reading. Jackson? New Orleans? I'm going to guess Jackson, Mississippi, because New Orleans would have been too easy, as I picture us standing in downtown Mobile at the time. Jackson would have been more of a quest. Jackson, Mississippi! The mere name sparks the imagination. No it doesn't. The end of the story is that we didn't go. And forty years later, here I am, finally reading a Susan Minot book. And I'm only on page 60, and there have already been, I would say, 10-14 owls in it. That sounds like a lot, doesn't it? It sure sounds like Susan Minot must have beaten the previous owl record, a tie between Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather. But not so fast! Hold it right there, chum! So, there is an "owl room" in this book. And some kids go in there and play an owl game of their own creation, which counts as one owl. A couple of pages later, there is a cake of brown soap shaped as an owl. That's two. Here's where it gets complicated! Are you getting excited? So, in this "owl room" are various kinds of owls. Some are described as being singular: "a hollow brass owl," for example. Other owls are multiple: "two china owls with flowers" or... and here's where you have to pay attention... "owl engravings." But how many owl engravings? And how many owls are represented in each owl engraving? Nobody knows! Possibly, not even Susan Minot herself knows! In any case, the owl room contains, at a bare mininum, eight owls. Oh boy, this is just the kind of "post" I love! However! By my usual method of counting "how many owls there are in a book," I would say there are 1. The owl figures in the owl room. 2. The owl game. 3. The soap shaped like an owl. That brings Susan Minot in at three owls! Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather remain undefeated! Wow, I'm just thinking of all the controversy this "post" is going to generate among people who enjoy counting owls as much as I do!

McNeil's Li'l Bible Bits

I guess we're assuming that McNeil has abandoned that 700-hundred-page biography of Humphrey Bogart by which he erstwhile so enchantingly sprinkled our humble undertaking with gossamer fancies. As you know, he's reading the Bible now instead - specifically, the New Testament. His thoughts on the matter, while jaunty, are certainly not blasphemous! "The New Testament is a lot different after a library full of literature and UFO videos," he remarks, for example. "It's funny if you read it the right way," he goes on. Now, before you make an objection, cut McNeil some slack! You'll recall that the lofty scholar Diarmaid MacCulloch pointed out some good jokes and zingers from Jesus and friends in his massive history of Christianity. Certainly you'll recall that! And though I have nothing to back this up, because I don't care, I recall reading a Kurt Vonnegut essay, oh, about 40 years ago, in which Mr. Vonnegut praises what he considers a good joke made by Jesus. But let's get back to McNeil, according to whose observations, Jesus "barely puts up with these dumb-ass disciples he's saddled with." McNeil claims also that Jesus sighs a lot. This is my own extrapolation, but in McNeil's portrait of Jesus, the Savior comes off somewhat like Charlie Brown in the PEANUTS comics. And we all remember, don't we, that Charles Schulz was a famous Christian? I rest my case. In conclusion, I must admit that McNeil and I exchanged heated words - maybe even with some light cussing! - over my preference for the King James Version versus McNeil's special all-time fave the NIV. Who would have ever thought the Bible could cause people to fight with each other? Now I've heard everything! McNeil charmingly refers to the NIV as "The Hep Cat's Old Testament." Somehow I doubt this is the last we've heard from McNeil about the Good Book!

The Cry of the Pork Vendor

Okay, Gadda keeps hitting me with sandwiches. It hurts. "A sandwich with a slice of pork. Big enough to last two days." Couple of pages later there's "a kind of hamburger swollen with papers more than a generous salami sandwich"... okay, that one... there's a lot to "unpack" as a scholar might say, or scholars used to say, or did they ever say that? The latter is not a real sandwich. It's a wallet as metaphorical sandwich. It is, per the translator William Weaver, a "rotten wallet." And look, I don't want to eat a wallet. I don't even want to eat a hamburger swollen with papers, or anything rotten at all. Now, I wouldn't turn up my nose at a generous salami sandwich, although I am no longer allowed to have generous salami sandwiches under the constant hectoring threats of a well-meaning physician. But Gadda includes the cry of the pork vendor, "Get you [sic] roast pork here! Nice roast pork... golden brown." Golden brown! Dear Lord, how much of this can I take?

Rich in Ideas

Okay, in THAT AWFUL MESS ON THE VIA MERULANA, Gadda also mentions a "decoy owl on a stick," by which he means, I think, the same object to which both Charles Portis and Sam Shepard referred as a "dummy owl" ("click" here and here for details) and Larry Brown called an "owl decoy" (subtle difference). I don't know exactly what Stephen King called it because I didn't directly quote him regarding that aspect when the occasion arose. Most of all, I feel sure you will want to know that while King, Portis, Shepard, and Brown are talking about literal, physical decoy owls, Gadda's decoy owl is figurative, a way of describing the actions of a certain kind of person. You must take all of these factors into consideration when contemplating owls and plastic owls! When you think about it, Gadda has used owls three different ways. That's what we like to call real old-fashioned owl versatility. But the main thing I am noticing is the sandwiches. As you may recall, Dr. Theresa and I get distracted lately - haunted, really - by the sandwiches presented to us in arts and entertainment. I am going to describe some of Gadda's sandwiches from memory now, because the book is downstairs and I'm extremely lazy. One sandwich has three slabs of prime rib on it as big as terra cotta roof tiles, on a roll of bread "like a carpet slipper" might be a quotation. Well, it's close, if not. Another sandwich has alternating slices of mortadella and roast beef. As I lay in bed reading, I offered the sandwich descriptions aloud to Dr. Theresa. I thought about the sandwiches a lot! I kept picturing a roast beef sandwich I could have sworn we used to get at Alon's Bakery in Atlanta, but I looked it up... that's just how sad I am! And I am not sure it's the same sandwich. Well! I had a doctor's appointment today, so I brought along QUINCAS BORBA, which I have taken out of regular rotation - just temporarily! - because of pressing Million Dollar Book Club business. Let me first say that I was correct! De Assis has attempted no further reflections from a dog's point of view. But! As I sat there in the waiting room, it so happened that the author started a couple of roses talking to each other. Talking roses! But he did it in a way that lets us know he's just pulling our legs... whereas William Maxwell's dog stuff groaned (howled?) with a pathos that would have made Charlie Chaplin himself die of embarrassment. Besides, de Assis once again provides a wonderful justification: "a stretch of wall, a bench, a carpet, an umbrella, are all rich in ideas and feelings, when, that is, we are, too, and this exchange of ideas between men and things is one of the most interesting phenomena on earth."

Out of the Murk

Well, I've had this copy of MERCIER AND CAMIER on the shelf for 20 years, at least, I bet, without opening it. Probably more like 30! Did I read in a Samuel Beckett biography that he didn't like it much? I don't know. Maybe not. Something kept me away from it. I don't know what. It was on just the shelf where I thought it might be, though. The pages are brown with age. A sticker on the front tells me I bought it used at A Cappella Books. Six dollars! Which seems like a lot. The back cover claims that it is "the first paperback edition" of the work. I knew an owl would be too on the nose, and I was right. I did not find an owl. For a while, the dual protagonists... and that's how I ended up reading it. Tom Franklin texted me, asking about novels with "dual protagonists" (of which he has written a couple himself). That's how MERCIER AND CAMIER popped into my old noggin. Anyhow, Mercier and Camier are stumbling around in the dark for a long time, out in the middle of nowhere, perfect place for an owl... too perfect. "Strange animals loom, giant horses and cows, out of the murk do you but raise your head." Then, on the next-to-last page, as if to taunt me, "We did not meet many animals, said Camier."

Le Bits de Boyer

Don't worry, your mind isn't freaking out on you! We're preempting "McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits" for some bits about ginchy French heartthrob Charles Boyer. Our tale begins with some of McNeil's li'l bogie bits. He was telling me how after the Boyer/Bacall movie CONFIDENTIAL AGENT turned out to be a dud, they went back and... well, let's see. I need to consult McNeil's email. They "had Hawks/Bogart/Bacall and a few others get together and film several new scenes to punch up The Big Sleep even more to give Bacall more 'ooompf.'" McNeil goes on to explain that "ooompf" is his own paraphrasing of whatever they were giving Bacall more of, not that she needed it. So he was telling me this and I was like, WHAT! I just recorded CONFIDENTIAL AGENT from a TCM showing, because Dr. Theresa and I had enjoyed Charles Boyer so much in a recent viewing of CLUNY BROWN, which I had also recorded off of TCM. And then McNeil came back at me saying THAT was weird because he had recently conducted a small, informal poll about the handsomeness of Charles Boyer. I don't wish to venture into McNeil's private life, but suffice to say, in McNeil's words, "a man has to know where he stands!!!" (Triple exclamation points are McNeil's.) One will no doubt be reminded of the time that Dr. Theresa blew my mind by saying that she might well prefer the charms of Fredric March over those of Gary Cooper. That was eight years ago and I still don't believe it. I think about it every night as I toss and turn in bed!

Speaking of Fox Mulder

I wanted to “post” this earlier, but the AT&T “internet” stopped working over and over. Anyway, here’s what you’ve been waiting for. I got one of those junk headlines that you get on your phone, something like “The Queen’s Favorite Sandwich That She Ate Every Day Since She Was Five – And It’s So Basic!” So I took a screen grab of it and sent it to Ace. That’s all we do all day every day, grab stupid things that appear on our phones and text them to each other. Then I texted the same screen grab, with its accompanying photo of Queen Elizabeth II, to Sara, along with my own humorous commentary: “The answer? A foot-long chili dog.” Sara’s reply was something like (a close paraphrase here): “OMG, really???” So I sadly had to reply that no, Queen Elizabeth II did not, as far as I know, eat a foot-long chili dog every day for 90 years. As Sara expressed it in a subsequent text, her tragedy – ha ha! she didn’t say tragedy – is that she “wants to believe.” Just like Fox Mulder from the X-Files! I added that part. Speaking of Fox Mulder, I was reading another old comic book about The Atom, and he was fighting these tiny guys who lived in a cave and rode around on the backs of bats. The editor interrupted the story to announce that tiny people of a proper size for riding small flying rodents into battle most likely really existed at some point! He insisted, in the capital letters typical of old comic books: “THE ELVES, THE BROWNIES, THE LEPRECHAUNS, THE FAIRIES, ALL MAY BE FANCIFUL RECOLLECTIONS OF A RACE OF TINY HUMANS! CHARLES FORT WRITES OF THEM.” Naturally, I was interested to run across this use of Charles Fort's captivating ramblings as evidence. I always thought Charles Fort would be a big deal on the “blog,” though he has never ended up in even 10 “posts” so far, after all the “blog’s” horrible countless years of thankless and unwanted existence. You remember Charles Fort, of whom it was once recorded on a book flap that he "collected and published reliable accounts of colored rains, living things falling to earth, unknown objects in space and in the oceans, people who have mysteriously appeared and disappeared." Charles Fort, to whom Tom Wolfe casually alluded: "Cassady began fibrillating the vocal cords, going faster and faster until by dawn if he had gone any faster, he would have vibrated off, as old Charles Fort said, and gone instantly into the positive absolute. It was a nice weird party." Charles Fort, whose glowing owls inspired the owls in my own second book. Charles Fort! That’s what I wanted to say. I wanted to say Charles Fort. Oh! In conclusion – and you will have to pardon me in advance for blue language on a level such as never, in my memory, has been attempted on the “blog” before – I watched THE DISORDERLY ORDERLY again, and as I was looking it up afterward in Fujiwara’s excellent monograph, I ran across Jerry Lewis’s defense of the puppet sequence from THE ERRAND BOY, which, having grown wise over the years, I now welcome with arms open wide. In fact, I’m ashamed of some of my earlier “posts” in which I seemingly apologize for Jerry. Back in those days, I just wanted everybody to like me! Now I don’t care anymore. So, Fujiwara interviews Jerry, who says of the part of the movie in which he, Jerry, cavorts tenderly with (if I recall correctly) a flirtatious, languorous ostrich puppet and enjoys maudlin interactions with a little finger-puppet clown… Jerry, who says of himself, actually, “We call that a director with steel balls.” And I was like, you know what? He’s right!

Pelicans Are Not Owls

Undoubtedly you recall with a complex admixture of emotions the uncanny raccoon coincidence I personally shared with the narrator of a book I was reading in the waiting room of a doctor. Well, hold onto your hat(s)! We happened to be driving across the bridge to Dauphin Island the other day, a bridge I had not crossed in at least 45 years - though, when we reached a certain part of it, I recalled a recurring nightmare the bridge had given me in my youth... and that night, after we had crossed the bridge in the "present day," I had the terrible dream again! For the first time in many decades. But that is not what I meant to tell you. Don't trouble yourself about my tortured mind! What I meant to say is that as we crossed the bridge I took note of several pelicans, marveling at how weird they were, and remarking upon said weirdness to my beloved helpmeet, and then! Then, when we got where we were going, I opened up the book I had last cracked in the doctor's office and immediately came to this sentence: "Li looked at pelicans on the pier and remembered how weird they were, with their handbag-like beaks." Now I should name the book, because I have quoted a sentence. It's LEAVE SOCIETY by Tao Lin. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking two things. One of them is "Does Jack Pendarvis, chiefly known for his interest in the owls of literature, realize that pelicans are not owls?" Well, now I do! Thanks! The other question you have is whether or not I considered that taking my book clearly designated for medical emergencies, and deciding willy-nilly that it could serve double duty as the book I take along when I am visiting my parents, might bring down an avalanche of bad luck to crush my body and soul. Once again, now I have. Too late! In a possibly related matter, Dad told us that Dauphin Island was originally called Massacre Island by the French explorers who landed there, because they found a big pile of mysterious bones. My brother confirmed as much on his phone. He didn't trust our father, I guess! Dr. Theresa and I described a weird animal we had seen doing an eerie, serpentine lope across the road in Coden, Alabama, and Dad told us we had seen a mink. Following my brother's bad example, I looked up a mink on my phone and confirmed its minkiness. Later, at a separate gathering, after we had told our mink story afresh, my brother-in-law and I had a discussion about the plural of mink, and HE looked up the answer on HIS phone! What a weekend. I said I had never seen a mink before and Dr. Theresa boasted that she had seen plenty of mink (an acceptable plural) being cruelly mistreated in the film GORKY PARK. (Note that Dr. Theresa, with her tender heart, ceased her viewing at that juncture.) I said it didn't count, that I meant seeing mink in person. Everybody ran out of the room as we got in a big screaming match about it, ha ha, not really! I just wanted to make sure you were still riveted by the tale, because a very important part is coming up. A few days after the mink, Dr. Theresa and I saw a pig run across the road just about 2 miles away from my parents' house! Now, this was an adorable little brown farm pig, not a hairy, scary wild pig with giant-ass teeth for goring and chomping. Reading back over the "post," I changed "giant" to "giant-ass" for extra emphasis. To anyone I have offended with my cavalier use of dirty language, I apologize. A bittersweet coda indeed: I looked it up on the "internet" in the course of "researching" this "post," and am now debating whether or not to tell Dr. Theresa that the animal in GORKY PARK is a sable.

Enjoyable Captions

I got a book of Donald Judd interviews that Square Books delivered to me in our strange modern times! What I really like are the captions. I've already tweeted about this and nobody cared, so I thought I would "blog" about it, in which case at least I know in advance that no one will care. The captions are like "Hot-rolled steel and turquoise pebble acrylic sheets." The captions are like "Brown enamel on hot-rolled steel." They are like "Clear anodized aluminum and green acrylic sheets"... "Perforated 12-gauge cold-rolled steel"... "Brass and blue lacquer on galvanized iron"... "Maroon enamel on recto and cadmium red light oil on verso of wire-enforced glass"... !

This And That

Speaking of cigarette lighters, as I was some weeks ago, I should mention that this Larry Brown novel spends a solid four pages on the lighting of a cigarette, culminating in the double entendre, "Honey, you can flick my Bic all day long." Brown's four pages, I should say, cut a veritable swath through numerous subjects covered in my book CIGARETTE LIGHTER. If only I had read this before writing that.

Owl Decoy

Lee Durkee gave me a copy of A MIRACLE OF CATFISH by Larry Brown. I started reading it just now and right away I thought, "Well, I bet there's an owl in this pretty soon!" And I was right. Page three. Well, an "owl decoy," as previously seen in BAG OF BONES by Stephen King and GRINGOS by Charles Portis. It counts!

Drunken Owl Butler

Laura Lippman recommended JUNIOR MISS by Sally Benson, a slim collection of understated, warm short stories about a girl and her family. So last night I read the one in which our protagonist, Judy Graves, appears in an all-girl junior-high production of THE TEMPEST as Stephano, a character described in the program notes as "a drunken butler." So... "She reeled onto the stage, a bottle in her hand. Her smooth, dark-brown hair was covered with a straw-colored wig, the tip of her nose was painted a bright red. Her clothes were awry and she looked as tight as an owl." We come again, then, to the notion that owls are drunk or appear to be drunk, catalogued here for your convenience.

Encounter

I don't "blog" anymore. You may think I do but I assure you that I do not. Sometimes you need an update, though, don't you? I know how you worry! So the other evening I was at Ace Atkins's office and I thought I'd see if he had a copy of THE GREEN RIPPER. He said he probably had several. THE GREEN RIPPER is a novel by John D. MacDonald. You will recall that I gave up on John D. MacDonald. I don't get the appeal of John D. MacDonald. If you "click" here you can read some of the reasons why. But I know you won't. What is wrong with you? You beg me to "blog" but you can't take the time to "click" on the "links." Well! It is really none of my business. But John Hodgman was saying all these nice things about John D. MacDonald in the New York Times some weeks ago, and in particular THE GREEN RIPPER, and although this did not change my feelings about John D. MacDonald I was made sufficiently curious for the actions related above to be the result. Anyhow, Ace contacted me yesterday to say he had located THE GREEN RIPPER and I could come by to fetch it. So I did. Now I took Ace's copy of THE GREEN RIPPER with me across the street from his office to Square Books. As I made a purchase there, I remarked to the cashier that this was Ace's copy of THE GREEN RIPPER and not part of my haul. We got into a little discussion (Bill C. wondered whether it might be a first edition of THE GREEN RIPPER) and it was at this time that I opened the book and discovered it to be, if not a first edition, at least an edition signed by the author. I couldn't imagine that Ace wanted me to drag this copy around town with me! You may recall, though I doubt you will "click" on it to refresh your memory, the time I spilled rye all over Ace's copy of LA BRAVA. So I went back over to Ace's office and returned the signed copy of THE GREEN RIPPER. He was surprised! He had no idea it had been signed, but he looked at the signature and confirmed it - thanks to his expertise - as John D. MacDonald's very own. Ace quickly produced yet another copy of THE GREEN RIPPER to replace the one I had brought back. Copies of THE GREEN RIPPER are just scattered around Ace's office like so many throw pillows in a film by Nancy Meyers. Okay! Now it was time for me to go back to Square Books and meet my pal McKay McFadden, whom I had not seen in the flesh in some years. Before McKay arrived I had time to note that Travis McGee (hero of the John D. MacDonald novels) refers to fat people as "fatties" on the second page of THE GREEN RIPPER, not raising my hopes. (A few pages later, though I did not make it this far at the time, McGee's girlfriend boards his famous houseboat and announces, "Today I jogged with four sets of fatties." There are shady goings-on at her place of employment, which makes me think she will be dead shortly. As Ace once revealed the key to the Travis McGee novels: "The woman always dies." [Further along: "Last week I had a batch of fatties down by the barns" - ed.]) I also read (in another book entirely) about the time U. S. Grant wanted to give his coach driver a Christmas present, so he hurried back down the steps and fell and experienced the debilitating leg injury that was just the start of all the troubles and misfortunes shortly to snowball on him, culminating in his death. Then McKay appeared on the stairs! We greeted one another warmly and McKay said, "I'm sorry I'm late. I just had an encounter with a pig in the woods." I can quote her accurately because I immediately leapt up to borrow a napkin and a pen from the Square Books coffee counter, as seen here:

She went on to describe the "encounter," which was much more horrific, grisly, tragic, and bloody than anything I would call an "encounter," and I shan't disturb you with it on this festive occasion. Conversation moved on to pleasanter subjects and we found before we knew it that we had spent some number of hours catching up, a sufficient number of hours for me to happily inform McKay that it was just about time for John T. Edge's yearly ritualistic dispersal of sausage balls at the City Grocery Bar on the occasion of his birthday. McKay and I, having arrived perhaps five minutes before the party officially began, were, I believe, the first to retrieve sausage balls from the traditional brown paper bag, pellucid as it was with delicious grease. (It occurs to me that I have used the phrase "pellucid with grease" in my "professional" writing at some point - perhaps on more than one occasion; I know it has assaulted my brain repeatedly, in any case - and I apologize for the lazy repetition. I must think it's quite the literary turn of phrase! How I sicken myself.) "I miss my Oxford life," said McKay. I replied with some observation about the many charms of San Francisco, where McKay now finds herself most days. "Oh, it's DAZZLING," she replied, employing a theatrical hand gesture to indicate bedazzlement. And yet her tone belied her adjective! I have never heard the word "dazzling" to drip with such venom, nor seen it accompanied by such bitterly flashing eyes! Not long thereafter, Dr. Theresa arrived, arrayed in silver.

We were able to boast to Tom Franklin (another recent arrival) that we had taken his picture off the TV screen. You see, he was once an extra in DEADWOOD, a show that Dr. Theresa and I are currently watching for the very first time. We proudly described the scene in which Dr. Theresa spotted Tom with her eagle eye and the pains we took to catch his fleeting image, and it was his sad duty to inform us that - although he indeed appears as an extra on the show - the person we thought was him was not him. Later at home we realized that the extra we thought was Tom had long hair and a graying beard, both of which Tom has at the present moment, but neither of which he would have had during the physical production of DEADWOOD. This is not Tom Franklin.

Birds of Subterranean Habit

Both Dr. Theresa and Bill Boyle love the novel MY ANTONIA, but neither has been able to persuade me to read it until Bill happened to mention the other night that there is "good owl stuff" in it. All right! But the problem is that Megan Abbott and I are on a strict diet of "movie people" biographies and autobiographies. We have read several in a row! Including some I have not told you about because there are no owls in them. We just finished Howard Hughes - very depressing - and on Monday we're set to take up Angela Carter. Wait! I know what you are thinking. Angela Carter is not a "movie person." But our reasoning, if I recall it correctly, is that they made a movie based on her works - THE COMPANY OF WOLVES - so we're going to let her slide by on that account. And I peeked at the first paragraph of the bio and it all starts with Little Red Riding Hood, which ties right in, so I think we're good. So in the meantime I have a couple of days to read MY ANTONIA and I was like, "Please, God, let me hurry up and get to the owls." And there they were! Our narrator and his pal Antonia "watch the brown earth-owls fly home in the late afternoon and go down to their nests underground with the [prairie] dogs." I was like, my word! What manner of owls are these? And as I sat and pondered it, I realized they were none other than the selfsame burrowing owls I heard about at Off Square Books one time, when the author bragged and boasted of stalking them with a shirtless George Plimpton. Go to bookstores, you'll learn something! "We felt sorry for the owls," says Cather's narrator. That's because rattlesnakes slither around and eat their eggs! Easy pickings! And "we used to wonder a great deal about these birds of subterranean habit." And "It was always mournful to see them come flying home at sunset and disappear under the earth."

The Original Skeeky Kid

Megan Abbott and I have been reading lots of books about movie people together. We read some books about Orson Welles, then we read about Walt Disney, then Bunuel's autobiography (first recommended to me by Bill Taft), which, to my astonishment, did not have an owl in it, though there were rats and spiders and one or two bats and hair growing out of cracked-open tombs. And those were just his childhood memories! As you know, I don't "blog" anymore unless I read a book with an owl in it, and that brings us to MY SIDE by Ruth Gordon, which Megan and I are reading now, in which a certain Miss Jerome is described as a "five-foot, brown-haired, brown-eyed, parchment-skinned ninety-pound replica of a hoot owl." And that's Ruth Gordon just getting warmed up! I'll tell you one mysterious word she likes to employ: "skeeky." Even Megan, who loves to do research (remember when she found out all about "friendship clubs"?), had trouble tracking down examples. I looked in my GREEN'S DICTIONARY OF SLANG, VOL. 3, P-Z, and found only "skeek," with examples drawn from the early twenty-first century, which seems to be directly opposed to the way Ruth Gordon uses "skeeky." Skeekiness, in Ruth Gordon's usage, is a condition to be desired. The only helpful example Megan could find comes from a magazine short story from 1915: "he spilled a line of bunk about her being the only and original skeeky kid." This fits nicely within the time period that Ruth Gordon is writing about when she uses "skeeky." So! Now that I've got you here and I read a book with an owl in it, I can tell you about an unrelated matter that has been on my mind. I watched the Welles version of THE TRIAL, and it pretty much ended with - SPOILER! - Anthony Perkins alone on a desolate shore with a lit bundle of dynamite. And that reminded me of PIERROT LE FOU, which also ended with its isolated protagonist standing in a lonely spot with a lit bundle of dynamite. And then BANG! Is this a genre? I think I need to find a third example before I can say it's a genre. Oh! While I was watching THE TRIAL, Megan happened to tweet - not knowing that I was watching THE TRIAL - that it was Jeanne Moreau's birthday. And then there she was in THE TRIAL! Jeanne Moreau, I mean. And there I was not knowing it was her birthday. And just about the first line she has in THE TRIAL is, "If you're stuck for something to say, try happy birthday." Isn't that a weird coincidence? Well, I thought it was a weird coincidence. Okay, I'll see you next time I read a book with an owl in it!

Superstructure vs. The Loved Brown Owl

Thumbing through Schoenbaum's "compact documentary life" of Shakespeare I come upon a description quoted from another book: "Because of its associations, the house has not wanted fanciful appreciation. 'Shadows and weird noises are in the rafters, the wind is in the chimneys, crickets are on the hearth, fairies glisten in the light of the dying fire, through leaded windows shines the moon, without is the to-wit to-whoo of the loved brown owl.'" Schoenbaum makes me laugh by drily adding "However this may be" - ha ha ha! - "the dwelling consists of a stone groundsill, or low foundation wall, upon which rests a sturdy oak superstructure." Though I have ceased "blogging" I still have to tell you every time I read a book with an owl in it, and every book I read has an owl in it so we'll be seeing each other a lot, I guess.

Flickering Existence

Not by any plan, I have been watching and enjoying a number of John Huston movies lately: UNDER THE VOLCANO, MOBY-DICK and the one he made about Toulouse-Lautrec. So last night I watched THE DEAD. I didn't even consider that today would be St. Patrick's day! No, I just live by the seat of my pants, free and easy. I liked THE DEAD much better than the first time I saw it, back when it came out. Then I was a young punk who was very offended about the way they chopped up the last paragraph of James Joyce's short story, which I probably called "my favorite paragraph" at the time. This time I knew it was coming, so I was all right. Here's a funny fact. I don't think it's a spoiler or will get me in any kind of trouble because it was nipped in the bud. But not long ago I got the urgent idea to end an ADVENTURE TIME outline with Princess Bubblegum reading the last paragraph of "The Dead" to Finn and Jake. Ha ha! I knew it would never get into the show. It didn't make much sense, even. But I convinced myself that it flowed naturally from what had come before. Not the whole last paragraph! I'm not totally crazy! I had Princess Bubblegum starting with "Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland." I probably used to call that "one of my favorite sentences in literature" when I was a young smarty, and I probably still feel that way. Adam was very nice about it. He made the note "I'm not deleting this" on the document. Ha ha! But he did go on to provide some reasonable notes about why this particular episode we were working on should possibly not end with Princess Bubblegum reciting the conclusion of "The Dead." Dr. Theresa didn't watch THE DEAD with me last night, but she told me a funny story about going to see it when it came out. She was just a teenager at the time and saw the title THE DEAD on a marquee and assumed it was a horror movie. You know how she likes horror movies! So she went in expecting a good scare. Ha ha! Well, the short story does have these lines in it, which sound fairly Lovecraftian out of context: "His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence." Scary! So after I watched THE DEAD I wanted to read the short story again. So I got out my paperback of DUBLINERS. And I was like, this is a neat old paperback from the 1950s with a crease in the cover. I know I didn't have this paperback originally. I think I bought it to replace my first copy of DUBLINERS, which I gave away. And then I remembered the circumstances. I was in my 20s and a French girl came to visit Mobile, Alabama. I don't say "girl" condescendingly - I mean to express that we were naive boys and girls then. So three of us boys were keen to escort her around all the time. And we were so jealous of one another that all three of us took her everywhere. Like, if we went to a restaurant, it was a table for four: her and three guys, frantically jostling for position at the table. I recall the restaurant: The Ivory Chopstick. I remember that we all ordered two desserts. Two desserts apiece, I mean. We were so thin in those days. The Ivory Chopstick didn't have a liquor license and they got around it by offering strawberries floating in red wine and an obscenely soaked baba au rhum after dinner. I remember that we took her to a party on the water at Jimmy Buffett's mother's house (!?!). Long story. We all knew Jimmy Buffett's mother in those days. Tom Franklin was at that party and we delighted in strutting around the dock with our new French friend in front of him. I remember that we took her to somebody's house and showed her THE AFRICAN QUEEN on a tiny TV such as poor people like us had in those days. We thought she'd be impressed! (Strange coincidence! Another John Huston movie.) I remember that after the movie she said, "It was not so good." Ha ha! Thus we failed American culture. But I did get to drive her out to my hometown of Bayou La Batre without the other two guys coming along. And that's where I gave her my copy of DUBLINERS. And that's the exciting story of why I eventually purchased this strange but attractive 1950s edition of DUBLINERS instead of that one Penguin paperback everybody else has. So! After watching the movie last night, I wanted to read the story again. But I wanted a little noise on in the background. Don't you ever want just a little noise in the background while you're reading? So I turned on TCM, and because it was Jerry Lewis's birthday, they were showing CRACKING UP! And I thought: this is perfect. I just watched CRACKING UP the other night, so it won't be distracting. But I kept pausing in my reading of "The Dead" to laugh at CRACKING UP. For example, I'd happen to glance up and Jerry would be staring at me, straight into the camera. He does that a lot in CRACKING UP. Or he'd grunt or yelp or do what I can only call his "vocalise." And that was "cracking me up" especially last night. And then there was the scene when a server in a restaurant offers him a choice of many different kinds of salad dressing, including "bleu cheese" and "brown cheese." The phrase "brown cheese" really got me! Was it Joycean, "brown cheese," or that impossibly long and incantatory list of salad dressings, was THAT Joycean? Have I called Jerry "Joycean" before? I'll check. Yes, "click" here!

I Didn't Do That Thing I Do

Hey remember when I "live-blogged" the movie STRIKING DISTANCE (1993) and then I "live-blogged" another movie from 1993? Don't worry, I'm not going to do that again! First of all, MIXED NUTS is from 1994. Also, my heart's just not in it anymore. I perked up when I saw it coming on. Not with delight. I saw it at the theater when it came out, which is something you say a lot as you get older and older, and nobody cares, but you keep saying it: "I saw this in the theater when it came out!" It starts with Steve Martin riding a bicycle. He has brown hair. Does that spell trouble? Sometimes Steve Martin has brown hair in movies. I can't nail down what it portends, exactly, unlike Dr. Theresa and her observation about Burt Reynolds's vanishing moustache. But I can say that I prefer prematurely white-haired Steve Martin. So as Steve Martin was bicycling around, I said, "I am NOT going to 'live-blog' this." The cast list is crazy, as befitting a movie called MIXED NUTS. But I only really got electrified when I saw Jon Stewart's name pop up. "Weird! I AM going to 'live-blog' this!" I briefly lied to myself. But then I got bored again. A pregnant Juliette Lewis chases a guy dressed like Santa into the street. He tumbles into a couple of roller skaters who are carrying a Christmas tree between them. Whilst succumbing to a deadly lethargy I recognized one of the skaters as Parker Posey. Then Garry Shandling showed up in his second unbilled role as a sleazeball in a movie I thought about "live-blogging"! "It's an omen!" I shouted into the abyss of my being. "I guess I better 'live-blog' this after all... no, I'm going to bed."