What do you know?

I got into a voice working on a short piece. A friend and I are working on some writing exercises together. Our first item is a short, tight piece involving a man and woman who have some relationship -- either family or sexual.

I floundered around for ideas, but the one I couldn't keep out of my head was simple and straightforward. I think it'll become part of a larger piece I put together. It's about a guy who comes back to Iowa because his Dad's been missing for months, and he needs to put his Dad's things in order. I'm still working on even the very short vignette, but I surprised myself with some details:

The refrigerator thrummed needlessly. Mitch stood, scratching his torso beneath his wrinkled white tee, staring at the empty wire racks. Only a paper plate sprinkled with baking soda remained. His sister Julia had cleaned the house in the summer, when the rotten things within had shriveled, forgotten and neglected in those strange weeks when everyone they knew trekked through the spring mud expecting any moment to find Charlie Hammond’s dead body. When they all stopped looking Mitch went back to work and Julia spent a day throwing out her father’s foil-covered Tupperware filled with mold and muck and pouring out a slush of milk that curled in her nostrils and reached down to yank at her insides. She drank one of her daddy’s last beers -- a Michelob Light --  alone, sobbing on the kitchen floor until school let out for the day.

Goodbye Blue Monday

One of my favorite authors died tonight. Kurt Vonnegut was 84.

Loving his goofy, bleakly humored novels seems like some guilty pleasure to me. I remember once when I went back to visit my favorite English professor at the University of Iowa years after graduation, he asked me what I was reading. Already embarrassed that I hadn't been reading much at all, I told him the only thing that was true. "Some Vonnegut. Breakfast of Champions."

I get the feeling he bit his tongue to keep from revealing some displeasure. "Oh that," I could almost hear him say, like I was reading stuff that's too damn easy! Maybe I was wrong. Hell, at least he got me to read some Jonathan Lethem. Good ol' Brooks.

It's just whenever someone asks me my favorite authors, I keep thinking saying Vonnegut is like saying "Well, I read this book in high school and it was funny and good the end." I'm supposed to say clever bullshit like "So-and-so has such incredible structure!"

Breakfast of Champions is probably my favorite novel. I mean, the guy draws a picture of his asshole for crissakes, which makes me laugh. Yet, every time I read it -- it's among the very few books I'll read over and over again -- I just about die inside for ol' Kilgore Trout. Poor bastard. Today, I think I know how he feels.

Make me young. Make me young. Make me young.

Nothing?

So it goes.

Reading list

The Iowa weather's turned cold again. We had wonderful weather, spring waking up the ground and the trees. Now, there are lazy fat flakes in the morning sky, just enough to remind me that April likes to tease.

I got used to the warmth, actually. Seven days in the Carribbean will do that, extreme sunburn or not! We spent St. Patty's day drinking with the Irish, and days after slurping down enough rum to make us forget the sunscreen. Somehow, along the way, I managed to shed enough stress to actually look forward to coming back.

Back home now, things are mostly the same. Still no movement on any moving, which is to say that our real estate saga continues.

Canada gets all the good stuff! She's just wrapping up her master's degree; next weekend is her final class. And, just yesterday she received the work transfer she requested to return teaching at the city's academy high school. She's thrilled, and I'm proud.

For years, I've been so busily distracted on a number of personal projects that I've neglected reading. But, I'm happy to say I've been reading a lot lately. I read Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons (A-), which is a wonderfully troubling book, despite appearances to the contrary. I also read John Scalzi's Old Man's War (C+), which was a quick and dirty read, and that about sums up it's quality, too. Entertaining, but not terribly so.

I've got a stack of ten books, and my goal is to read all of them before year's end. Given my slow pace, that may be quite a feat! I snuck in the Scalzi book as well as Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. But, otherwise, the books are:

• Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier (Read! A-)


• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (Read! B+)


• The Road by Cormac MacCarthy (Read: A-)


• Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (Read! A-)


• White Noise by Don Delillo (Read! C+)


• The Wizard by Gene Wolfe


• Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides


• Snow by Orhan Pamuk


• Pattern Recognition by William Gibson


• Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

I've also got The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester sitting around somewhere. The rest of my (many) books are packed away for a move that never happened. I can always unpack them and come up with several more lists of ten!

Edited to add November 13, 2007:
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (Read! A)

Edited to add September 5, 2008:
A Gentleman's Game by Greg Rucka (Read! A)
Private Wars by Greg Rucka (Read! B-)
Captain Alatriste by Arturo Perez-Reverte (Read! B+, No blog review)
The Alchemist by Paul Coelho (Read! D)
White Noise by Don Delillo (Read! C+)

Edited to add October 14, 2008:
On Writing by Stephen King (Read! B+, No blog review)
The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte (Read! B-)