I created these people but I can’t control their votes!
 | THAT DEMON LIFE
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 | NORMAL SCHOOL
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My next book, Burnt House, will be coming out June 20 or thereabouts. It's a novel-in-stories set in a small town in central West Virginia. What's it about? “Tragedies," principal narrator Jackie Stalnaker says. “Screw-ups. Cruelties. Bad, bad, sad things that nobody ever forgot, things people never talked about openly but only sometimes related in whispered hinting half-stories after dark." Get ready to do some reading.  I was sadly and stupidly ill over Christmas break—got sick right as Fall final grading was beginning (try grading when you’re sick sometime—it’s unpleasant) and I stayed sick through the New Year. A fitting way, maybe, to end wretched 2017—worn down, with a weird and seemingly endless cold. A fucking uncommon cold. But I survived. Helping greatly with my healing were the three Cass Neary novels by Elizabeth Hand: Generation Loss, Available Dark, and Hard Light. Cass Neary is the greatest character of 21st Century American Literature—a damaged human, knowing and cynical and resourceful and funny. One of the great pleasures of reading a novel is identifying with a character who’s about to do something you know they shouldn’t do—and you’re yelling aloud—“NO! DON’T DO IT!”—and then of course they do do it. Cass does it—whatever the it is she shouldn’t do—over and over again. Fun. Read them.
So—I finally finished the first draft of the sequel to Professed. Now what? Well, revision, obviously. Which I will document on Twitter and Instagram. Then—my plans will be a little different. As of now, I think I am going to serialize the novel on a website throughout 2018—fifty installments, beginning (tentatively) January 6th. Then, when the serialization is over, I’ll pull the website down and publish the book as a paperback and Kindle. I’m inspired here by the example of Tom Wolfe, who serialized Bonfire of the Vanities in Rolling Stone in 27 installments beginning in July 1984. A difference here is that Wolfe actually wrote the novel as it was being serialized—incredible pressure on a writer who’s seen as stonecutter-slow. (Another difference is that, uh, obviously—I’m not Tom Wolfe). So I will have the advantage of presenting a work that will be in pretty good shape—though I’m also seeing the serialization itself as a form of revision and extended workshopping. Now the fun begins….  Tropes Themes Things Stuff  A pile of stories At the end of Fall Semester 2015 I was reading student creative writing portfolios when I noticed a surge—a spate—of stories about young people getting engaged. The stories were all pretty much the same—girl and guy out for dinner, then they take a walk around the neighborhood, and then the guy suddenly drops to his knees and offers the girl a ring, and the girl cries. The end. There were six of them out of one class. I realized I had noticed similar spates of stories over the years, and so I was inspired to start keeping track of what I was reading. Just a simple list of whatever the writer appears to think is important to their story. And—I love it. All of it—all of the stuff my students write about, good or bad or whatever. Some of what I notice is thematic (boring engagment stories), and some of it is just stuff—things—that gets repeated in multiple stories. I’m aware that it’s a highly subjective list, that a different reader might well notice different things, or classify the things differently. Yet I just find the list fascinating and wonderful. I wish I had been keeping records like this for the past 15 years or so….. Anyway—here is the list, based on approximately 251 stories my students have written this last year…. (Listed as (ranking): (thing) | (number of examples)) 1: real place | 88 2: student | 56 3: love/misc | 52 4: drugs/drinking | 49 5: violence/misc | 44 6: cell phone | 35 7: meet cute | 32 8: job | 31 9: driving | 30 10: eating | 29 11: sex/lust | 28 12: kid focal | 27 13: texting | 27 14: depression | 26 15: weather |25 16: waking up | 24 17: non-pet critters | 24 18: car wreck | 22 19: kids | 22 20: waking up/beginning | 22 21: memory | 18 22: grief | 16 23: pet | 14 24: social media |14 25: breakup | 14 26: death/parent | 12 27: dream | 12 28: music | 12 29: friendship | 11 30: murder | 11 31: death/misc | 11 32: death/self | 10 33: ghost | 10 34: religion | 10 35: war/military 10 36: gltbq | 10 37: light out for territories | 10 38: nature | 10 39: cancer/illness/injury | 9 40: sexual assault | 9 41: sports | 9 42: start with dialogue | 9 43: knocked on head/Pippen | 8 44: death/spouse-fiancé | 8 45: divorce | 8 46: death/child | 7 47: magic realism | 7 48: psycho | 7 49: stalker |7 50: aging | 7 51: games | 6 52: kidnapping | 6 53: mental illness | 6 54: death/friend | 5 55: death/grandparent | 5 56: getting engaged | 5
57: reading | 5 58: tv | 5 59: theft/robbery | 5 60: computer | 4 61: death/sibling | 4 62: death/suicide | 4 63: fantasy | 4 64: vomit | 4 65: farming/ranching | 4 66: amnesia | 3 67: jail | 3 68: infidelity | 3 69: motherhood | 3 70: cadaver | 2 71: jewel thieves | 2 72: politics | 2 73: pregnancy | 2 74: race/ethnicity | 2 75: shopping | 2 76: western | 2 77: travel | 2 78: writing | 2 79: visual art | 1 80: birth | 1 81: coma | 1 82: drowning | 1 83: dystopia | 1 84: fairy tale | 1 85: funeral | 1 86: psychic | 1 87: reincarnation | 1 88: torture | 1 89: trains | 1 90: homelessness |1 91: generations | 1  New Edition of Long Time Ago Good coming Spring 2016! This week: out of context with Long Time Ago Good....
...an old fat man in a gray jumpsuit came out of the store. He leaned on his cane, looking at me in the cab, then walked over to the Cadillac parked next to me and opened the door. He looked at me again. No one else was in the parking lot—it was as if the streets had emptied and everyone had gone home. No cars, no people, no nothing except the fat old man who was staring at me. I stared back at him. Finally he walked around his car—slowly, slowly—and came over to the cab. I rolled down the window. “You know, you’re parked in a handicap parking space,” he said. He had a big bald head and round glasses. “Yeah?” I asked. “And you don’t have handicap plates, or a sticker.” “No,” I said. “I guess I don’t.” He planted his cane carefully and leaned over, smiling. He had a huge round head. “Well, you know, I’m kind of an activist for handicap parking rights—my friends call me the Ralph Nader of handicap parking rights.” He chuckled and looked at me—proud, I guess, of being the Ralph Nader of handicap parking rights—but I didn’t say anything. After a moment, he said, “So, I guess I’ll have to ask you to move.” “I’m just waiting for a customer,” I said. I looked away at the store. “It’ll only be a minute or so.” “Well, then, I’m afraid I’ll have to call the police. I’m going to have you arrested.” He slowly started to turn away, pivoting on his cane. “Wha-aaat?” I couldn’t believe it. I drive some maniac albino around for an hour, and then I get threatened by an old bald man. “You’re parked in a handicap zone! And you don’t have authorization!” The old man took a step back toward me. He wasn’t chuckling now—his face was turning red with anger, or madness, and spit flew out of his mouth when he said the word authorization. “I worked for years for handicap rights in this city and I’m not going to have my rights taken away by some damn—cab driver!” “Hey, pal,” I said, and stopped. When did I start calling people ‘pal?’ Miller. Jesus, you drive riff-raff around all day, you become riff-raff—and it doesn’t take very long, either. I said, “I’m just waiting for my customer, okay?” “I don’t give a damn about your customer. I’m not going to have my rights taken away by some sleazy cab driver!” I remembered another driver once telling me that cabs could park in handicap spaces if they were waiting for a customer. So I said, “Ah, fuck you, call the cops.” “What did you say?” “Call the cops.” The old man’s bald head was turning redder and redder. “No,” he said, “before that.” “Fuck you, I said, call the fucking cops.” The old man staggered backwards with a shocked look on his face. I hit the window button and the glass rose quickly, and I looked hopefully toward the door, willing Miller to appear. That’s how bad my day had turned—I was praying for some goddamn weirdo to get in my cab! As for the old man, let him call the cops. The worst that would happen would be that the cops would write me a ticket that I would stick in the glove box and forget about. But then there was a bang on the rear of the car—and another. I looked around and the old man was beating on my left rear fender with his damn cane. Bang! Bang! I pulled my big, black flashlight from beneath the seat and got out of the car. |
Lowell Mick White
Author of the novels Normal School and Burnt House and Professed and That Demon Life and the story collections Long Time Ago Good and The Messes We Make of Our Lives. Categories
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