A Portrait of the Artist as a Self-Absorbed Asshole

I've been reading Alfonso Zapico's James Joyce: Portrait of a Dubliner this morning.  I'm only about 1/5th of the way through it, so there's plenty of time for my opinion to change, I suppose, but at the moment I am consumed by one thought:  James Joyce was a complete asshole.  A totally self-absorbed and cruel asshole.  

And that made me wonder, "What if you had a choice between being a great writer (and a complete asshole) and being a decent human being?"

And that made me think about some of the great writers . . . and I started thinking, "You know, most of the ones I can think of were complete assholes.  Maybe even all of them--depending on how you define 'great writer.'"  

And that made me think, "Maybe in order to be great at anything you have to be an asshole . . . because in order to be great, you have to devote all of your energy to that thing."

Of course, that might just be jealousy speaking.  I would like to be a great writer and I'm not, so categorizing most / all great writers as assholes gives me some spiritual leverage.  Or it might just be that I haven't read the biographies of enough great writers.  

Still . . . James Joyce certainly was an asshole.  Unless Alfonso Zapico just made a lot of shit up.  I guess I shouldn't discount that possibility, either.  Anyway, interesting book.  I think I'll go back and read some more of it.

57 Bunnies. Maybe 58.

The Willow by Braden Urevick

I'm always amazed when a young person does a song (poem, story, novel, play, etc.) which seems to come from a place that's full of sorrow and pain and aching and wisdom.  It's a good argument for the whole reincarnation thing.  And Braden Urevick's four songs 

1.  What Are You Thinkin  (3:05)

2.  Appalachian Mountain High  (4:01)

3.  Somewhere Down the Road  (4:30)

4.  Over the Hill  (3:26)

on The Willow EP sure are full of sorrow and pain and aching and wisdom.  And some joy, too.  All of which can be yours for a mere $4 if you go HERE.  Well, actually you can listen to them for free there, but don't you think it would be nicer to throw down $4 . . . and maybe leave a nice little note for Braden as well?  Sure you do. Let's do this.

Writing, Reason, Mom, & Sand

I have a new goal in life. I'm still determined to keep at least one work (poem, play, short story, novel, song) "out there" at all times --and I've keep that promise to myself since 9/7/2014, so not too shabby. And pretty fucking frustrating, too. 11 rejection slips in that time. And even more frustrating, actually, is the fact that McSweeney's has had "Tamas" since 12/11/2014, and when I emailed to check in with them about that I got back "We're slow." No shit. 

When I was young . . . teenager young . . . I sent a story to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I didn't hear back from them for a couple of months, so I wrote asking about it. I didn't get an answer, so I wrote back again. No answer, so I wrote back again and asked them to send my short story back. It came back. Now, maybe they wouldn't have published it. But maybe they would have if I had been a little more patient and a little less of a pain in the ass. (I do recall using the phrase, "then just send the damned thing back.") And I have to think about how different my life might have been if they had published that story. Not that a first sale means you've made it . . . not at all. But it does mean that your foot is in the door. 

Okay, I officially don't want to think about that anymore. But lesson learned. I may politely inquire how it's going if I haven't heard from McSweeney's at the two year mark, but if they don't respond or if they just give me another "We're slow," then I won't make a peep. Hell . . . didn't I just write about F&SF holding onto a Ray Nelson story for Four Fucking Years before they got around to publishing it? So yes, no more "give me the damned thing back" shit from moi.

But I'm also now determined to put as much of my old work (1) as is fitting (quality-wise) & (2) as is possible online via Amazon Kindle Publishing. Which is why I put "Davey" up a little while ago. I may die unknown, but I don't want my words to die with me. Even if there's only a slim chance that anyone will ever see them. It's a better chance than they have sitting in a box in my closet. And 

I've just finished typing up a novel, A Matter of Reason. I still have to proofread the thing, so it's going to take a little while yet, but as I was proofreading I ran across this line: “What are we going to do?” the old woman asks him, and she seems to sink into herself, like a lump of sand touched by the edge of a wave." That really caught my soul. I wrote this novel long before my mom died. Long before she was confined to her bed and losing touch with the world. In fact, she read and loved this novel. And one of the most heart-rending moments of her last months was when she looked at me and said, "I feel like I'm made of sand, and the waves are washing me away." Maybe she had tucked this line from my novel away in her consciousness. Maybe it was just a coincidence. But it sure was a shock to see my mom's words peering at me from the pages of a novel I wrote before she had said those same words. Oh, I think this is going to be the cover:

The image is from a picture I took in Baltimore, Ireland.  I manipulated it quite a bit . . . and doubled it and flipped the second one, making it kind of ink-blotty in structure . . . so it's unlikely that anyone could recognize the image . . . but it's a fitting one for the novel.  And I'm thinking of putting an unaltered image on the last page.  

Kind of a visual metaphor for the whole process of The Novel, in that you first encounter it as something vague and abstract, but after going through it it attains--at least for a moment--the clarity of reality.