David Thayer

Wellington Leg: As the towne slowly merges with the Sea of Japan it is time to take stock of Week One in the parallel universe Nano event undertaken by your reporter at the beginning of November. I didn’t register for Nano, preferring a kinder gentler approach. Here’s what has happened so far.

Black Forest has grown by 11,000 words. Some of those words have gathered together in complete sentences while others have set their own course and speed for Parts Unknown. Still others want to go to Maui. I’ve borrowed the earl’s Writer’s Blocke Insurance Policy and read the fine print: “The wordes must cohere together in some recognizable way.” Now they tell me.

I can no longer spell. But the novel has an opening now, ninety pages of front story. That’s good. It no longer reads like a narrative outline and that’s good too. As to setting, 1964 was an interesting year, still the Fifties in many ways, but the Beatles landed and the Rolling Stones played the New York Academy of Music on 14th Street. The New York World’s Fair opened in April a month after Kitty Genovese was murdered, a killing that rattled the Big Apple like no other.

The Mets left the Polo Grounds ( Coogan’s Bluff) for Shea Stadium. Marvelous Marv Thornberry covered first base and Al Downing went 6-19 and pitched well. Idlewild became JFK. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution set the stage for massive involvement in Vietnam, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade discrimination based on race, gender, creed, color or national origin. The fuse was lit. The final year of the Pax Americana was anything but tranquil. RFK went after the Mob and Malcolm X made his speech The Black Revolution.

Louie Louie was on the charts. Scholars still parse the lyrics searching for hidden meaning.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 13th, 2006 at 7:55 am and is filed under Working Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.