Back in Black

Oh, man, I rolled back into town in a rented P.T. Cruiser just in time to teach about Mary Gaitskill and Alexie Sherman and the "elements of fiction." Great stuff, especially when you're not quite fully awake! I also teach Raymond Carver, though not to the extent that full-timers can and do. As far as "symbols" and all that appearing in a nearby blog,* all I can note is that I agree with the people who say most symbols come to life in an organic or holistic, perhaps subconscious way. I suppose there are some artists who deliberately create symbols and symbol systems, but I can't think of too many in the modern writing world. Nathaniel Hawthorne, maybe; in more recent times, maybe Vladimir Nabokov and a few other tortured authors -- I wouldn't be surprised with Mary Gaitskill, either, but there's a difference between images and imagery and symbols and tropes, isn't there? The darkly funny image of the "tiny, smiling Daddy" that gave Gaitskill a story title is an image, isn't it? Anyway, it's too esoteric and academic a subject to fight that one out with any gusto.

Instead, how about more music? I listened to quite a mix coming and going, mostly to stay awake and alert for eleven or twelve hour jaunts. Waylon Jennings live is always a treat! His "outlaw" style reminds me of Wichita-Lineman's thoughts about how mainstream country tends to bind up into sappy, easy (to some ears) listening formulas -- Waylon was rarely like that, even as he aged and slowed down some, and I'm glad there's Hank Williams III now fighting the good fight. I was really sad the day Waylon died, not much before June Carter and Johnny Cash. Got to see him play in North Carolina and he was fabulous. Love that deep voice, his what-you-see-is-what-you-get rambling man attitude. The time he and Johnny lived together must have been something else.

On the way back from New Britain, I stopped for fuel along I-80 near mile marker 185 and had to get out of the way of three Amish buggies -- followed by twelve motorcycles. For a minute I thought I'd stumbled across a remake of Easy Rider, the scene where one guy is shoeing a horse and the other is fixing his hog! Or that surreal bit in The Man Who Fell to Earth where the Bowie alien can see a horse and buggy in the past while driving on a modern road (something about being able to see through the time barrier). It was weird -- plus throw in a Civil War monument and lavish cemetery in the middle of nowhere and you have quite an interesting crossroads, a town with no name that I could see, though there was a St. Patrick's church across from the graveyard.

Life seems more precarious on the road than I'd normally like to think it is. At a stop in Ohio, a frazzled young woman ran up to me and asked what to do when she got to the next toll booth -- her ticket had flown out the window on the highway and she was worried they'd arrest her. Homeless people in small towns and big cities, chats with various people worried about the next merger or downsizing, the price of fuel and food and everything else, made clear the tenuous socio-economic status of many people out there, paycheck to paycheck at best and no paycheck at worst and often no health insurance or any other insurance, either. It all blended together with my little driving soundtrack, Roger Miller's "King of the Road," Johnny Cash and "Busted" and "rich folk probably drinking coffee and smoking big cigars" and Johnny Lee Hooker's "No Shoes" (one of the most pitiful songs about a family's destitution I've ever heard) and his hilarious yet heartbeaking -- beacause so on the money -- song, "House Rent Boogie." My neighbors were apparently so unable to meet their bills, they packed up and took off for parts unknown just the other day right before I left. House rent and "electric bill" parties might make a comeback before we know it. Come to think of it, Stephen Graham Jones has an excellent story about an "abortion sale" in his recent Bleed Into Me collection, and I don't think he's making it up. Raymond Carver, of course, is another king of the down and out. I'm not one to rank stories or any other kind of art forms, but here are some of my faves (I love his poetry, too, found in All of Us):

What's in Alaska?
Are These Actual Miles?
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
So Much Water So Close to Home
Vitamins
Where I'm Calling From
Feathers
Cathedral
Boxes
Intimacy
Menudo

As for Gordon Lish's role as editor and mentor, yadda yadda yadda. I'm an editor (i.e., I edit things), and I see the role as mostly like brushing off lint from a beautiful dress or a snappy suit. The writers and the poets -- they do the really hard part, the Bataan Death March, the delivery, the creation. Even with Lish, a coach-athlete comparison is going too far, I suspect. Either way, maybe we'll learn more when Maryann Buck Carver's What It Used to Be Like : A Portrait of My Marriage to Raymond Carver is on the shelves on or around July 11, 2006. Can't wait!

Coming in off I-75, Detroit sparkled from a distance. I felt like gliding in on a magic carpet, but the P.T. Cruiser did just fine. Back on the ground, back in black, Ciao, Detroit!

(* www.michellespells.blogspot.com )