Overdid it yesterday cleaning the garage and my dust allergies have laid me low today. Nonetheless, we took one of the grandsons to the pool, where my wife and son swim and play with the kid, while I read Camus on the side. This time it was Lyrical and Critical Essays loaned to me by a person at work who saw me reading The Rebel, and who has been accosting me with literary interjections ever since. He is a strange, gnome-like little fellow, who has a bad hip and walks with a cane and who could not finish The Red and the Black because Julien’s scheming at seduction upset his sensitive nature, and who refuses to read either of my books (he admittedly does not know they are mine) because he believes them to be science fiction?!?!
The pool we are at is one very near our house and is a quaint tree-lined resort where people park their campers and trailers and spend part of the summer, or even perhaps the whole summer simply relaxing in the sun and shade. The people at the pool generally seemed to all know each other and seem to be in preparation of a large lunch celebration together. Not exactly friendly, they are not hostile either, but rather indifferent to an invasion of “townies,” and strangely, they all seemed to be moulded by the same untalented artist out of a similar batch of earthy, leaden clay. Mostly misshapen, middle-aged or older with short, dumpy, lumpy bodies complete with sagging bulges of flesh, wrinkles and scars, they form quite the contrast to usual youthful G-string and Speedo, bikini-clad exhibitionists you see at the popular swimming/tanning pools or on television in the movies. This rag-tag group even contains a mentally-disabled woman and a fellow with one leg riding around in a motorized wheelchair. It is quite the sight, and many would find it repulsive, but I feel quite at home and comfortable in these surroundings.
For you know, I love the sun and have taken every opportunity to get out in it before the season changes to winter far too soon. Others have been complaining about the humidity, but I find the air conditioning inside bothers me much worse. Instead, I have been spending as much time as I can in the sun and then moving to the shade and back, taking in equal proportions of warmth on my creaky bones and the fresh breeze under the trees, or in this case, beach umbrella, and I find that Camus’ reflections on life and death suit my current temperament nicely.
Not all is placid and at peace; I have tangles I must sort out: I have a possibility of a move to a different job that would mean less stress and more opportunity, but possibly less freedom and more of a “corporate” structure and atmosphere. I don’t believe there is much of a decision to make here as my current position has become quite untenable due to many reasons, and I have few, if any friends left among coworkers. Meanwhile, my book promotion ideas are being forced to evolve, and I have had some recent disappointment regarding friends, who wield some influence in social media, who have reacted positively to Crystal Falls, but who did not take the next step of even mentioning it to their followers, leaving me to wonder whether they really liked it, or of they just kind of liked it to be nice to me. Maybe they are unaware that a simple notice online could do much good, but I find that unlikely, and I am left to ponder the nature of friendship and my future as a writer.
Maybe, I think, I need to just KISS — kept it simple stupid. Maybe I need to dumb my writing down even for the smartest of my friends and associates? One of my best friends and his wife recently touted All The Light We Cannot See for its genius — not for the story and writing, but for the fact that every chapter is exactly two pages long. And while I had already read and enjoyed the Pulitzer Prize-winning ATLWCS (as much as one can “enjoy” a novel of unrelenting sadness), and I felt that it dealt with many of the same issues that Crystal Falls dealt with (man’s inhumanity to man, the nature of evil, life and death, etc…), in the end I thought my book was better. Better story, more interesting story, more complete characters, more twists, more interconnections and dare I say it, better writing (and even some humor in its sad tragedy). OK, I’m prejudiced, but… the jewel in the sea vs the buried treasure? You decide. The prize-winner was just built on a grander scale (Europe in WWII) — which was what the Pulitzer Committee said they were looking for. Apparently, none of these small town tales need apply, despite the universality of the story.
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Just finished re-reading Hardy’s “Return of the Native” (re-reading your favorite books every decade is a real treat that I highly suggest, as you never read them the same way) and took a peek at his chapter lengths. Despite writing for serialization, Hardy’s chapter lengths are all over the place, with the appropriate length for the appropriate subject. Hardy also goes into great detail and use beautiful language in describing the heath, something many modern readers would find boring. I used a similar strategy in three brief segments and was told I should follow the lead of a great new writer he had heard of — Ernest Hemingway and write with more brevity (the person with the suggestion was the aforementioned friend, who is admittedly a hater of most fiction). Obviously you can’t please anyone and have to please yourself (thank you Ricky Nelson) but it would be nice to receive some appreciation somewhere, somehow. (What, you think you’re better than Van Gogh? Right.)
Well, I must quit writing this blog now, My nose and eyes will not stop running and I often launch into violent bouts of sneezing. Camus says illness is a preparation for death that both reminds us of our love of life, of both sunshine and shade, while making us more willing to accept to painlessness of nonexistence. Sitting in the shade of the umbrella and watching the grotesque, yet satisfying parade of life unfold and go limping by, I cannot agree more.