Elegance Schmelegance

In one of my online writing groups, we were discussing whether a particular tense or person is being favored among editors or agents these days. This is my own opinion and what I posted.


No editor should judge by tense or person, but my experience has been (and as you know I am 87 years old) that most editors do have prejudices, some of which are their own peccadilloes and others which reflect the zeitgeist. For example, it seems to me that minimalist prose is most in favor. How many times have I read reviews of new writers in the last few years that used the literary buzz words "clean," "elegant," or "understated." Milan Kundera noted in an interview not too long ago that very few, if any, of the writers accorded historical greatness (Shakespeare, Dante, Proust, Joyce, Faulkner, Woolf, etc.) wrote clean, elegant, or understated prose. I have to admit it pisses me off when I read that some writer's prose is elegant. What does that even mean? I don't think anyone knows--it's just one of those words that rings like a bell but doesn't have a gong. Call me a silly savage, but I like gongs. I mean, I know what the dictionary definition of elegant is, and when I think of elegance I think of either movement or behavior; Fred Astaire or Rudolph Nureyev, Cary Grant or Audrey Hepburn, Tony Bennett or Ella Fitzgerald--artists who use their bodies and voices in visual art forms where the social parameters were or are much more defined (and therefore, conservative, natch)and connected to the expression. For example, I believe in popular dance James Cagney or Sammy Davis, jr. were just as accomplished as Astaire or Nureyev, or in song Ray Charles and Billie Holiday easily match up with Bennett and Fitzgerald, yet the latter mentioned fantastic artists would never have elegance applied to their creations. The reason being, of course, because they use not just the mythic or romantic, but also the not elegant modes high mimetic, low mimetic, and ironic. You feel me?

I don't know, I may be full of horse sh*t (well, I probably am, regardless, but it's made from good meadow grass) but I know I don't ever want my prose to be called "elegant." I'd much rather be dirty, bluesy, profane, hilarious, obscene, raw, soulful, raging, fearsome, raucous, absurd, deviantichristical, frolicsome, effervescent (but not like champagne bubbles), inspiring (but not wimpy), cathartic for sure, and...well, I'm tired of making this list, but we can't leave out heartbreaking. I could be wrong, and I hope I am, but I don't think many editors these days are looking for those qualities. Keep in mind it was only a couple of years ago that a guy submitted manuscripts of Faulkner's writing to several differnt book editors and agents, only with a phony name on it, and if memory serves me (and it better serve me, my derangement refuses to be discriminated against!), only one or two recognized Faulkner's writing. All of the others rejected the manuscripts! Amazing and dispiriting, to say the least.

Network this, %#*&^!!!

I'm a flop at Facebook, spaced out at MySpace, and burned out on every workshop and writer's site I've joined in the ten years since I've been online. I've asked myself why I'm such a failure at networking and its obnoxious offspring, self promotion, and what I've decided is cyberspace confabulation affects me akin to a primitive tribesman having his picture taken. Sometimes it feels like my years online have robbed bytes of my soul. Of course, the only way you would get my computer away from me is by prying my cold, dead fingers from my keyboard. All I'm saying is that as a means of communication it is sometimes like having a phone conversation where instead of words the two parties exchange sequences of zeros and ones--and of course a dozen lols. Communication is a tricky business anyway; else why is there a list of self-help books a mile long on how to get head...I mean, get ahead on just a smile and a shoeshine. Oh, wait, that's Willy Loman (which reminds me, I dassent buy that set of snake knives). For me, eye contact and body language are essential for the nuances required for meaningful human communication. Anyone who has posted or perused a discussion board knows how quickly a wrongly interpreted post can ignite a flame that soon escalates to a five alarm blaze. On the internet, any pipsqueak with verbal dexterity is capable of being a bully, any keyboard-tied bully is potentially yo bee-atch, yo. Of course, there is a sense of satisfaction in seeing the tables turned, but unfortunately, write doesn't always make right.

More musing on this later. A roast beef sandwich awaits.

Filthy Lucre

During my time in NYC I touched elbows (didn't have a chance to rub) with some wealthy art patrons--old money, new money, soon to inherit money--and it reinforced what Hemingway said in reaction to Fitzgerald's famous, "The rich are different from you and me." Hemingway said, "Yes, they have more money." There are other differences, of course, but they all flow from the green spring. Maybe the favorite myth in American life is the Horatio Alger tale of rags to riches through hard work, virtue, and savvy. Anyone who believes those ingredients make success inevitable is what P.T. Barnum would call a "sucker," but there's more than one born every minute, there are hundreds, or even thousands.

Does any human being have a right to millions or billions of dollars when a majority of the world's inhabitants never have the opportunity to acquire even a comfortable living? Does Bill Gates deserve more money than, say Albert Einstein? Does the U.S. have the right to consume 70 percent of the world's energy? Does might make right?

What a mad, cringing old world we live in.

One final note: Will work for diapers

Automatic Transfiguration Conquistadorian

Automatic Transfiguration Conquistadorian Loves His Kitty

Buster the cat is almost twenty years old. His yellow hair is matted and thin. His flesh is dwindling and his bones rising. His hind legs will barely hold him up now and he's making the most plaintive cries day and night. I'm afraid he's suffering. I don't have any money for a vet. I guess I'll have to put a bullet in his head. I don't want to do that. Several years ago his brother Catsup became very ill and was suffering so I took him out in the backyard and put a nine mil. hollowpoint in his ear. To my great anguish it didn't kill him instantly so I shot him again and then again. The highway patrolman next door came to the fence and asked me what I was doing. I had tears in my eyes. I looked at the gruff, crew-cut, scowling trooper his buddies called "Niggerchaser" and shook my head. He left me alone. I'd always made sure that he thought I was crazy. I learned the hard way that's the best way to handle cops.

When you put your own pets to sleepy bye bye you have to hurriedly dig a deep hole and cover them in lime. You don't dig the hole beforehand because you can't stand to think about what you're about to do. While you're digging, your eyes burn from the tears and you ask yourself why such creatures have to put up with a world full of humans. When you're through filling the grave with dirt you have to put a little cross there for your kids. Then you think about what it means to live with animals who speak a different language. Animals who have lived with you and slept with you and shared moments great and small. Who have helped calm you during those times of turmoil and stress. Animals who have stayed the same even when the whole goddamned world seems to be crumbling.

Buster wasn't even a friendly cat for the first several years. It was like he was autistic. Try to play with him and he'd dig his claws into you so deep he'd bring blood. I don't know what happened but he changed all of a sudden. I can't explain it and don't give a damn if no one believes it, but when Rita got sick and my mother had a stroke and I couldn't sleep to save my life, to save anyone's life, and I was strung out and thought I was going to lose my mind, Buster must have sensed how cast down I was because he did something he'd never done before. He started sleeping on my pillow. He'd never even slept in the bedroom before and he never got up on the bed. The first time he did it it really startled me. I thought, what the fuck is this crazy cat going to do, shit on my head? But he just curled around my head and purred. And since Rita was in such bad shape at the time she couldn't stand to be cuddled, Buster was the only creature contact I had. And just like that my heartbeat slowed, my anxiety diminished, and I slept for the first time since those traumatic events occurred. Every night for the next twelve or thirteen years, at bedtime Buster would hop up on the bed and curl around my pillow. Usually, after he knew I was asleep he would get down and take care of his other responsibilites. I never told Buster I was allergic to cat dander. My pharmacist knew.

Last year when we were still in Oklahoma, Buster started having trouble jumping up on the bed. When he couldn't make it he would sleep on the floor on my side. I had to be careful not to step on him when I had to get up to piss. Now that he's sixteen hundred miles and almost twenty years away from his birthplace, his legs are failing and he is surely announcing his death with those agonizing pleas for mercy. Rita is better now and we can cuddle again like we did the first night we spent together thirty seven years ago after I persuaded her to leave home and embark on a great adventure. Along the way we have had many animal friends but none I love so much as this loving old cat. He is worth more to me than most of the humans I've met in my life. And now I have to kill him and it's killing me.

Automatic Transfiguration Conquistadorian

Automatic Transfiguration Conquistadorian Blues

What do you do
when your heart turns
against
you?

And your eyes can't see
in the dark
anymore

And your feet sit
still in waiting rooms
that used to make
you squirm

And wrapped up in your bed at night
you dream and toss and
dream and turn dreams
that cause you to wake crying
and you can't understand
why

those fucked up years in junior high
are suddenly so
goddamned important

Feels like treachery creeping
in, some cellular kamikazes
of karma, dying for
your demise

You can't say you weren't
forewarned

My grandparents on my father's side (both of whom were dead before I was born) and two of my aunts. The strange looking little girl who looks more like a ghost is a mystery. No one remembers her. My grandmother died having my father. My grandfather was an itinerant preacher, a cook, a carny, and all-around hellraiser.  

The Wichita Mountains, the second oldest mountains in the western hemisphere, holy place to the Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache Indians, and home to the largest herd of buffalo in North America. Geronimo is buried only a few miles away at Fort Sill. The wonderful writer, N. Scott Momaday, wrote of the Wichitas in The Way To Rainy Mountain. The hawk in the picture could have ridden the wind to any of the places I grew up in a matter of minutes.  

My amazing half-Cherokee, half English royalty descended mother, with dogs. This place was where a road dead-ended. We considered ourselves lucky to have electricity, but there was no telephone lines, no running water (until we dug a well), no indoor plumbing, and the house was a shack so run-down most people probably thought only ghosts occupied it.Big Beaver Creek was only a mile away and it used to rage with a big rain, sometimes washing away our wheat or cotton crops that we depended on for our meagre living. 

From left to right: My brother, Wayne, my father, Henry A. Norsworthy, my second doggie, Roscoe, and me. The time was 1958.  

My first dog, Ole Boy, the best dog who ever lived 

Review of my critically acclaimed story collection, Indiahoma