Around the Horn
No, not that horn. Not the Cape of Good Hope, not the Straights of Magellan. The literary horn. We got Rita in the Gulf. Cleveland in contention. Late September crackles with tension. Right now your reporter is face down in the mud, working on a new manuscript. Eventually he believes this will pay off and everyone will be sorry when he’s dead. Well, not everyone. The novel I’m working on just broke through to where it can continue. No more doubling back, false starts, doors closing. It’s beginning to work.
I blog to burn off excess prose. Like a thermal cracking unit at a refinery blows fire. That’s why the results are sometimes sketchy, sometimes strange, often paced in such a way to indicate wanton excess. No offense is intended, no harm, no foul. Free verse. That’s why we insist on free range chicken, this is the land of the free, and, when the moment comes, I want to stand tall like Regis Philbin’s hair. I want to able to tell Kelly Ripa what the book is about free range chicken, the Late Sixties, your father’s mustache, the Knapp Commission, Joey and Kid Blast, all your favorite New York Post cartoon characters. Coffee at The Peacock, stuff like that. How it was, how it could be, where we’re going from here. Yes, Kelly, it is thematically right up your alley, despite a now deleted scene featuring rebar.
Where we’re going is around the horn. The Lit Blog Co-op. Wendi Kaufman has an article about Mutual Life and Casualty a novel in stories. Alarm bells sound. No central story. I’ll pass. Elizabeth Crane has spoiled me for stories, interlinked, interwoven. All This Heavenly Glory is a much better choice. So far, I haven’t read anything the LBC has recommended. That’s good for you, bad for me. I like the way they’ve decided to discuss their nominees, much better than last time when it was all on the QT, very hush-hush. Wendi makes her case for choice very well, but it just isn’t for me.