I’d like to mention a few recent reviews which are making me feel quite light-headed. See http://thefix-online.com/reviews/down-to-a-sunless-sea/ for a story by story analysis; quite impressive. Aeron Hick’s review is at http://metamorphosesonline.blogspot.com/2008/07/aerons-review-down-to-sunless-sea-by.html and is generous in nature. Harry Markov lives in Bulgaria and is only nineteen and his review is at http://templelibraryreviews.blogspot.com/ And today Maureen Nixon writes a rave at http://randomdistractions.blogapot.com/2008/07/down-to-a-sunless-sea-review.html. All in all, I feel enriched by these reviews, not agreeing with some judgments, agreeing with a few others. Only Maureen Nixon in all these reviews realized that the mother in “Herbie” is a prick. (if the sites don’t click on, as I am not proficient in this idiocy, you can google the .com names.)
Today Jane and I will go over Sojourner again; I will rewrite at points that Jane feels are unclear, et al. And then she writes her introduction. The genesis of this novel was a short story I wrote between 1969 and 1972 which I later expanded into a novel, my very first. Gruffworld, which I am now “editing,” is become tedious — not a good sign. I may hire an editor to clean out the deadwood and quicken the pace, although I feel it has a lot of merit to it, greased as it is with Freud and Krishnamurti. It contains some of my best descriptions. So publication of Sojourner first and then I will follow up with Gruffworld.
While I’m at it, if you wish to have me review a book of yours take a look a few days back to my announcement of a litblog. Details and requirements are listed. By now, if you have returned to my blog here and there, you sense that I am from another era and another sensibility. I am serious about my own work and I will approach yours with due diligence.
I would like to end my years on earth with a shelf laden with several books that complete my story here on the third planet from the sun. I write for me and my family. In this way I am not contaminated by the teat of materialism and authorial avarice. In September I will attend the yearly Society of Southwestern Authors Conference. It runs for two days and has many workshops given by pros. Other than the usual human behaviors at conferences like these, one sees the neediness and the angst to be published at any cost by some attendants. It is more sad than pathetic. And grist for my own mill. As far as I am concerned, the only task for a writer is to be free and if he or she is free, what they write is free as well — authentic and real and passionate.
For a take on me which reflects my general attitude, see http://www.gvnews.com/articles/2008/07/12/columns/columns04.txt which apeared in a local paper on 12 July. I was at play with the reporter.
As I reflect, given the two books now out, Sojourner is a departure, although it was written years before. The short stories were written over a period of 30 years. I learned my craft while writing short stories. I became terse and concise, something which I am on occasion criticized for. Go know. As I’ve written before, I write, let us say, 20 pages knowing that I will cut back to 10. I allow my unconscious to spew, to erupt and then the superego kicks in to censor and restrict. If i hadn’t been through my own therapy and had not gone on to be a shrink, I don’t think I would have attained that self-liberating quality. You know as well as I do a writer is very lucky if he or she has a sentence or paragraph in his or her book that is solely the creation of the unconscious. When I trust the unconscious I am free, like the prometheus Djinn in The Thief of Bagdad.”
I am moving from editing Sojourner and Gruffworld, to scouring for bloggers to review my book, to reading about n-scale model trains as I am returning to an interest from childhood, to reading, to riding my Dahon, a folding bike. While working as a shrink I remember a story I would tell clients who became fixated on only one thing and so were stuck. I would ask them to describe the ocean at a beach. I would ask that they describe the waves as the broke upon the beach. At last not a few realized that water came upon the beach at different places and with different energies, so that some water ran into the dry sands and other water just lisped upon wet sands. And then I’d asked them to comment on all that, and then with a little help by me we reached the understanding that much of life was like that; that water does not come upon the beach in a horizontal and perfect line; that while you are waiting to make coffee, you break the eggs, you put in the bread for toasting, you take your morning vitamins. And thus I was trying to educate them to be flexible, varied and to exercise all kinds of options while they go about living. And thus the sage ends this blog.
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