Tough Jobs

May 14

Not much of note has happened this week, which is why the lack of entries. I've garnered a couple of rejection letters, written a bit, done lots of revision on the novel I wrote last August... see, this is hardly scintillating stuff. I thought I'd spare you a repetition of the daily grind (which is a pleasant enough grind, but not good theater). Now, onward:

At Clarion, Tim Powers and Karen Fowler gave each of us a reading assignment. We're supposed to read the book(s) and reflect on why Tim and Karen thought it important that we do so. They told me to read A Dozen Tough Jobs by Howard Waldrop. I read just about anything by Waldrop I can get my hands on anyway. Sometimes I don't like his stuff, but when one of his stories does work for me, it works all the way through.

So last week I found a copy online that I could afford (Waldrop's stuff can be tricky to track down if price is an issue, though over the years I've managed to get just about everything of his), and ordered it. Then I read it one day (it's a short novel).

Essentially (and this isn't really a spoiler), the novel re-tells the twelve labors of Hercules in the context of Mississippi in 1926. The novel works beautifully on every level-- it's a dark-ages-of-the-south story about race and class hatred, with pitch-perfect details; it's hilarious in the way that Faulkner and Welty and O'Conner can sometiems be; and it's a faithful (if sometimes twisted) retelling of Hercules' life.

So I loved the book-- but why was it important that I read it? Well, it's southern, and so am I, and so are my stories, sometimes. Also, at Clarion I wrote a story called "Cassie" which was a contemporary fantasy dealing with Cassandra (the prophet nobody ever believed), and that's another connection-- bringing the old myths up to date and seeing how they still bear on our lives (which is something any contemporary fantasist had better learn to do)(not that Tough Jobs was contemporary, but compared to ancient Rome, it was). The book combined humor with serious issues, something I do a lot, and not always successfully (going back to the Inappropriate Tone problem I talked about before). I think I have a lot to learn from this novel... it successfully does many of the things I often try to do.

Well, I'll reflect on it more. Those are just preliminary thoughts...

I got my tax return a couple of days ago. While most of it is earmarked to pay for my plane ticket to Arkansas next month, some of it is free money to spend with reckless abandon. So I took my girlfriend out to a nice dinner, and yesterday I bought some shoes (I now own 4 pairs of shoes! Hiking boots, sandals, athletic shoes, and dress shoes! No one needs so much footwear!) and lots of used books. Mmmm. I love used books. My girlfriend and I drove down to Foscoe (where there are more antique stores than people) and hit The Reader's Den, a used bookstore I'd never been to before (it's a bit beyond my usual roaming radius). They had some lovely stuff, including some Sturgeon collections I didn't have, a Lisa Goldstein book I'd been looking for, some Lucius Shepard... I loaded up. It's a nice store, too. Kindly proprietors, and dogs roaming around...

For Wholesome Entertainment, my girlfriend and I have been reading to each other a lot. I like to read aloud for people, but I also like to be read to, something that doesn't happen nearly often enough... We're mostly reading Charles de Lint stories right now...

Well, I'm off to read some of the lovely new books I purchased. Ta!