To plot or not to plot

In talking about writing, William Saroyan once remarked: "What difference does it make what you call it, just so it breathes?"

Following this thread, novelist Richard Brautigan, wrote a raft of novels that reviewers sometimes called Brautigans rather than novels.

The old rules fall away, but one seems to stick.

The importance of plot. Somehow you can't get away from it. For plot is -- if not everything -- all but the kitchen sink. Come to think of it, we shouldn't leave out the kitchen sink either. Especially if it's doing some gruesome gurgling. We may need that gurgle to further the plot.

Which brings me to Trent Zelazny's new novel, Too Late To Call Texas.

Trent is a plotter not a plodder, and his novels breathe, as Saroyan said they should.

What makes this novelist's stories gripping is that the plot is "everyman in trouble" compounded with what has been called the "irrelevant detail."

Example: a guy driving on a lonely New Mexico road at night finds a cowboy hat on a fence. Curious, (as are we all) the driver stops to check it out. The hat has a hole in the crown. There is a sticky something there, too. Blood? Yes.

One question after another comes up, one after another, in this hell-and-gone masterpiece that might have been called a "yarn" in another era.

I call his novels Trents. Because they all have this similar ring of truth. Something obscure is happening and we don't know what it is, but we want to find out, and do. By then we're at the end of the novel, ka-ching.

Trents thrive on curiosity. The same that killed the cat. His cats are characters, and they do sometimes die for curiosity. But often, the irrelevant details mount up, and one little thing leads to another larger thing, all of them coming down to a greedy, sneaky, dangerous, leaky, eeky thing.

Don't read Trents on an empty stomach -- or a too-full one. When I read them, I tend to eat the same things his characters eat. Huevos rancheros yesterday while I finished Too Late To Call Texas.

If you're a writer, you need to take a look at a whole bunch of Trents.

If you're a reader, you should read them all, eating as you go, but look out for that unforeseen low ledge because it'll knock you off your horse.

Unusual Friends

We recently did a column on unusual animal friends -- our parrot, George and our Great Dane, Zora. They are reluctant friends, really, because Zora accepts George's parrot affection but does not return it so much as permit it.

In the story of Cat and Crow by Lisa Fleming, it's different. 

Moses the crow saves the life of Cassie the kitten -- not once but several times.

True story, well-told, showing how very different creatures overcome their differences -- or perhaps they didn't know they had any. If humans could be more like this we wouldn't have two-party poltical systems. But that is another story . . . .

It's not uncommon to find odd-fellow friends in nature. Animal moms frequently adopt babies from other species. We have seen feral kittens with raccoon babies, and the moms treat the cats as kits. And the kitties end up as cats that wash their food in water.

We once witnessed a very unusual friendship between an 11-year old boy and a newborn fly. They became, one beautiful summer day, "best friends."  But here's the unusual part: the fly refused to leave the boy's forearm. The boy fed the fly sugar water and such and the fly might leave the boy for a second or two, but it always came back and settled on his arm.

This unusual friendship lasted one week. Whereupon the fly got old and died.

There was, in fact, a fly-in funeral. According to the boy, other flies dropped by to pay their last respects.

What is most amazing is that we, as humans, somehow manage to believe that cats and crows and boys and flies live on different planets and have nothing in common.

Floating Stone: 21 Thoughts of Miyazawa Kenji

Just available on Amazon.com.

Kenji Miyazawa, one of the greatest modern Zen poets is now considered, "the poet of the Tsunami recovery" by the Japanese. The color photgraphs of Miyazawa country are as remarkable as the poetry itself. Kenji Okuhira traveled all around capturing the visual homeland of Miyazawa. The result is a lovely walk in time and in the mind of one of the most unusual thinkers of the last one hundred years.

This book was a combined effort over many years. Kenji Okuhira's translations and my selection of same began in 1999 and continued off and on until just a year ago when we decided to finally publish the book.

Mina Yamashita, one of the best designers we have ever known, created the eye-catching page layout. Kenji Okuhira's flawless eye for detail, natural landscapes and, most importantly, the mystical way Miyazawa looked at things make this book an unusual visual experience. The text is in English and Japanese with field notes and comments by Kenji Okuhira.

Look for this book on Amazon, Ingram, Barnes and Noble, and your favorite indie bookstore.

Jan Wiener's Own Story

It has been 44 years since Jan handed me a copy of his newly published book, The Assassination of Heydrich.

In the months before, I had seen him writing in longhand in a school notebook and when I asked him what he was writing, he answered, "My life in Europe during World War 2 and the death of Reinhard Heydrich who was known as Hitler's Hangman." I had to admit I had never heard of Heydrich -- but I read Jan's book on the night he gave it to me. I couldn't put it down. It was chillingly brave, noble, painful, eerie, ironic, and sometimes, sparely poetic, just like Jan himself.

Knowing Jan -- for many of us who lived at The Windsor Mountain School in Lenox, Massachusetts -- was a great honor. Equally great is the honor of working on this reprint and update of his classic book. We did very little to it. Zuzana, Jan's wife, added a timeline.
I added a small memoir.

The story of Jan's escape from the Nazis, his amazing railway adventure getting to Italy, and his subsequent imprisonment there all seem like fiction. That he lived to tell the tale and was a navigator for more than thirty R.A.F. missions over Berlin is yet another spellbinding story, one that I heard little by little, and one night at a time, at a bar in Lenox during the 1970s. "This should be a film," I told him. And so it was, later on.

When I read The Assassination of Heydrich today, I am struck by the insistent, soft cadence of Jan's spoken voice. It's in his every statement. Those who took his Modern European History course know that voice well, and will hear it again in his prose. For me, it brings back one hundred nights at Heritage House on Housatonic St., Lenox, Massachusetts.

Here's to an incredible storyteller and devoted friend. 

Even if you have already done so, I suggest that you read what he wrote again.

We need to hear it now more than ever.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Assassination-Heydrich-Hitlers-Resistance/dp/1617203726/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1344538385&sr=8-2&keywords=the+assassination+of+heydrich+Wiener

George the Horse

This horse with no name is a roper's horse, a sweet-tempered show animal used to rodeos and working with calves. He's not built large enough to hold a steer. He crow hops sometimes. He has the roughest, bumpiest trot I've ever encountered, but it quickly slides into the the smoothest lope I've ever felt.

I breathe his warm breath into my lungs, and return it. Circular breathing.

I call him George because Jim does but also because I have a lifelong friend, a parrot named George. And now I have an 80 year old writer friend named George and a literary agent named George, and I am thinking of calling myself George instead of Gerald just to confuse everyone. Just kidding.

It starts raining on our ride in the high timber above Sapello Canyon. George wiggles his muzzle at the drizzle. I watch his unshod hooves clomping in the red earth heading down into the draw where the tall grass grows. George gets a little dancy at the sight of so much lushness and goes into his famous lope, so easy that you could hold a beer glass in hand and not spill a drop.

I could have him for a month's pay at the writer's trade, but back in Florida where we live, George would be out of work, and if there's anything this horse loves it's working.

On the way back to the barn he sees a funny-looking stump, sidesteps, crowhops once, then the easy canter. I understand why my mother was a rider at age five, my wife, too. My brother's all horseman. I ride when I can and dream the ride when I cannot.

Time Capsule

My father used to say: "Where does the time go? Into a little dark hole in the ground."

Yesterday I looked at my grandmother's writing desk built before 1900. For nine years now the drawers have been swollen shut, but with the AC the ancient walnut cabinetry shrunk just enough for me to get into the desk and see what was there.

Our granddaughter was staying with us in 2004 and she'd taken over the old desk, and made it hers. All her stuff was in it. She's in college now and I didn't think she'd mind if I took a peek at her "secret things." This is what I found in the cubbies and drawers:

A deck of playing cards whittled at by silverfish
A bunch of bird feathers
Some stones in a plastic bag
A container of Elmer's Washable Glue, still soft and gooey
A set of Batman and Robin cards

And then the real time capsule treasure!

A Numi box inside of which was a nine year old's note to her grandparents on the day she went home to Miami with her mom. Summer was over. Inside the box was a nine year old, unread note that said:

Take this little box
to remember
while I'm gone.
Love,
Shai

Some things don't go into that little dark hole in the ground.

Snorting Debby at High Tide

Debby, second storm of the season, was big and fat and sat over us, dark and gray for one whole week. She's on her way out now, but still blowing foam and little bits of mad spittle. I confess to loving storms but I never want to see another bad boy like Charley. He hurt us. I've written about him before, but Debby's another matter. She's, well . . . let me tell you.

Before a named storm comes to our barrier island, I always ask Lorry if we know anyone by that name who's caused us trouble. We've always loved Charleys, so he took us by surprise, tearing the island a new one for several hours before he squashed the town of Punta Gorda flat.

Debby? "We don't know any bad Deb's," Lorry said. She proved to be rather mild -- a good storm to sleep through with the odd pelt of sporadic rain -- the sudden rush followed by the weaker flutter of pelter drops. I like to swim in stormy weather and I like drinking Dark and Stormies -- ginger beer and rum with a twist of angostura bitters. But what is it about storms?

I like listening to the rain drum on the metal roof of the lanai. I like listening to the rain toads squeak like mice under the shefelera trees. I don't mind the lights going out once or twice. And to tell the truth, a full outtage for a spell isn't bad either. I cook on the grill by lantern light. How long is a spell? Could be eight hours or more. On occasion, a week or two. I don't like those much. But when push comes to shove, we bathe in the lily pond. Lorry and I amuse our tribe of soft-shelled turtles who bite the bubbles of goat's milk soap.

Debby brought more rain than we'd seen in ten months. I caught up on a little reading. Then Debby got rough and snorted down our chimney. That brought a family of chimney swifts into the kitchen. We put them back where they belonged. The rain stopped. The heat came on. The bees swarmed at the front of the house. An armadillo herd glittered and dug worms in back of the house.

We ate fried mullet for lunch and watched live mullet move in the canal. Mullets have faces like angelic puppies. I've never wanted to kiss one. But then I've never known a snorting Debby. "It's all good," my dad used to say, "if you like it." He also said, "I like to hit myself over the head with a hammer, now and then, because it feels so good when I stop." That explains why we like storms in Florida.