(past imperfect)
I’ve got an essay appearing in a special mid-summer bonus edition of Brevity 27. This is a companion piece to my Modern Love essay from earlier this week. The Modern Love essay examines my relationship with my son, while the Brevity piece explores my relationship with Dad.
The Brevity piece also appears on the Brevity blog, a great place to discuss creative non-fiction, truth in memoir, or the concept of a mid-summer pick me up.
I have an essay appearing in the New York Times this weekend. I wrote this one right after Timmy graduated high school, and we took all the kids to New York City that summer (that’s Timmy in Central Park).
Earlier this year I came across the essay on my thumb drive, cleaned it up, and sent it to my writing group, who then helped me hammer out the rough edges. I’m still a little amazed Modern Love picked it up.
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More love shark, compliments of Coca Cola Zero at Qt3.
Becuase it’s funny (and I love 70s movies), the header for this post was shamlessly stolen from Brad Grenz.
Today I cooked Spicy Mulligatawny: difficult to pronounce, but tasty to eat. I was looking for a stew, but was swept off my feet by the curry and apple in the ingredients.
As it turns out, spicy mulligatawny isn’t a good meal by itself. Not enough protein. Tonight Holly grilled up some chicken sausage to go with it. We had hot dog buns, but a tasty sourdough bread would be an excellent addition.
Ingredients:
Steps:
Calories: 242 (20% from fat); Fat: 5.4 grams; Protein: 16.6 g; Carbs: 33 g; Fiber: 3.3g; Chol: 31mg; Recipe adapted from Cooking Light.
I finally got a response from The Sun. They couldn’t use my story Saved. When they say they may take six months, they really mean it. I sent it out to them early last November. I sent it so long ago, they had to affix a little extra postage to get my SASE back to me. I thought that was mighty nice of them.
Twice now people have suggested I send them my story The Solution to All My Problems. After reading some of Poe Ballantine’s work, I believe they may be right. I’d love to have a story in The Sun.
I’m not a big fan of country music or novelty songs, but NPR had a piece on Hayes Carll earlier this month and his chorus to She Left Me for Jesus made me laugh out loud.
Give it a whirl:
Here’s that chorus again in case you missed it:
She left me for Jesus and that just ain’t fair
She says that he’s perfect, how could I compare
She says I should find him and I’ll know peace at last
If I ever find Jesus I’m kicin’ his ass
I love how ”finding Jesus” goes from an abstraction about salvation to an actual threat (not that Jesus is scared, mind you).
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I came to Augusten Burroughs work through Dry, a memoir about his struggle with alcoholism, which is somehow both heartfelt and funny. Then I read Running with Scissors, his quirky coming-of-age story. Wolf at the Table is completely different from the earlier works, exploring Mr. Burroughs’ relationship with his father, an emotionally distant alcoholic. It would be an understatement to say Mr. Burroughs finds his father lacking: His bitterness is so palpable, the book is hard to read.
I love memoirs that explore fatherhood. In the 50s and 60s, fathers were almost always depicted as good and wholesome. As I kid, I could see my old man didn’t add up. How could he? Those depictions had little to do with reality. Nothing bad about Dad was every explored. Now we get something like Wolf at the Table, but this father is so clearly and irredeemably bad, it’s almost like a throw back to thin view of fathers from the 50s and 60s (albeit the other side of the coin). Burroughs father is as bad as Father Knows Best is good. How’s the for coming full circle?
You have to feel bad for any adult lugging around so much resentment from childhood. One good thing about being a rebellious child: With my family, I always managed to keep the resentment ledgers pretty even. If you give as good as you get, you never have to feel bitter.
As it turns out, the best part of the new Indiana Jones movie for me was the anticipation and the nostalgia it evoked. I haven’t enjoyed the sequels nearly as much as I enjoyed Raiders of the Lost Ark. Harrison Ford does a fine job, but the script doesn’t hold together very well.
You can’t fault a franchise that’s a take off of pulp stories for having implausible action scenes, so I won’t. But all the character’s motivations seem muddled or just plain silly. I’m not going to list all my gripes, but let’s just say I wasn’t impressed.
Nevertheless, I still enjoy slapping my floppy rain hat on my head and pretending to be Indy with my kids. So there’s that.
This morning I kept leaping into the living room as my 10 year olds were getting ready for school. I was wearing my floppy rain hat, humming the first few notes of the theme song for Indiana Jones, and making a whip noise with my mouth. Whoopersh! Whoopersh!
They loved it.
Too bad they can’t make it the entire way through Raiders of the Lost Ark. We get to the opening scene where Indy finds the corpse impaled on the spike booby trap and they turn to quivering jelly.
“Turn it off, turn it off. Oh, my! Oh, no!”
That’s okay. One day they will be all grown up and when I leap into the room and make whipping noises they will just sigh and roll their eyes.
Some small success to report on the publishing front.
One of my stories has been selected as a finalist for an anthology about fathers, My Dad is My Hero (Adams Press, Spring 2009). My story is one of 53 selected, but only 50 will be published. I’ll find out in July or August if I made the cut. Keep your fingers crossed, people.
The story I submitted is an excerpt from a current post on the blog (the contract I signed allows me to continue to publish it here, even if it’s selected). And that post is actually an excerpt from a longer chapter in my memoir. It’s ironic that the the anthology is about heroic fathers: the full chapter from the memoir offers a somewhat different sensibility about Dad, or at least it juxtaposes a heroic Dad against a more needy Dad. Despite this irony, Dad still makes out pretty good in my memory (as he does in my book).
If you’re wondering (especially you people at home), my childhood memoir isn’t meant as an attack on Dad or anyone else. The more I write, the more I learn about the story, but from what I can tell right now it’s learning to appreciate your own talents and sensibilities, instead of trying to be someone you’re not.
If you want a memoir that’s an attack on fatherhood, read Augusten Burroughs’s Wolf at the Table. I’m only 100 pages in, but Mr. Burroughs is so bitter with his father, it’s hard for me to read.
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