Sunday, July 11, 2010
Bone Worship in Italian
The Italian translation of Bone Worship, Il Mio Matrimonio Combinato, debuts this month! To watch the trailer and read more about it, click here.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
A Journey in Review
Though I'm still hoping to squeeze in a few stops in the Northeast, yesterday's reading at Cherokee County Public Library in South Carolina marks the end of the six month Bone Worship book tour. I'm incredibly grateful to all the writers, friends, bookstore managers, and librarians who helped make it a success!
The excerpt below is from the last reading -- June 23, 2010 Gaffney, SC
Just eleven days ago, we climbed into a silver shell of a car and started across the country.
First over the dry land of Eastern Oregon, past stiff-legged pronghorn standing in irrigated fields of spinach, of lettuce, and then through pink canyons, the steep walls rising up around us like a pre-dug grave. We stopped once to watch the river, to let our dog wolf down dry weeds, to watch a coyote watch us, his eyes baleful as he ran with a mouse between his teeth up the side of a mountain, his face half in shadow.
We were coming back South, coming back home, you could say, though it had been so long we couldn’t remember what home meant, or if we would even recognize it when we got there. Who could say if home would recognize us, two bedraggled people and a dog, a pack of three, seven years changed.
We stopped at motels planted in deserts, lights humming in the darkness, Indian immigrants who had not slept in months running everything. Their elderly snow-haired fathers stood with hoses dangling from their fingers, keeping the grass alive so tourists’ dogs could pee on it. Their beautiful daughters shyly collected dirty sheets in the morning, long after everyone had disappeared down a vein of highway, of memory.
Almost immediately on our journey, the radio broke, and we were left with only our voices, raw and dry and salty. We asked each other questions, and those questions led us places. It was a long drive through the West.
We drove into the Rockies, past the flooded rivers of Wyoming, everything still green beyond the season. We drank milkshakes in Nebraska, in restaurants half underground, tornado contingency plans taped to the walls. A corner of Iowa, a hot afternoon through Illinois. Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina. And then, finally, like a surprise, the land leveled out. South Carolina. The orange clay visible like a sub-layer of skin.
I was born here. In this place. Almost immediately on my journey, the umbilical cord broke, and I was left with only questions. I tried to find my voice, but what came out was raw and dry and salty. I looked for stories, and those stories led me places, into and out of the South. A good story, you see, from birth to life, will take you far, and you will have to see and learn much to tell it.
A childhood spent outside, the heat puckering my scalp, fire ants, copperheads, mourning doves. Every morning waking to that call – bobwhite, bobwhite. Days digging mud holes, or “swimming pools,” as we called them, building ramps to climb rusty fences into cow pastures, the promise of some vast unknown world.
But the thing is, we were right. It was unknown. It’s still unknown.
Because no matter how many times I come home, it is new and strange to me. I will forever be shocked by the Amazonian tangle of woods. Thumb-sized toads wedged into the corner of the cool, brick stairs. I’ll always sit up in the middle of the night, surprised to hear birds singing.
I started this book seven years ago in the attic of my parents’ house, bare feet on an orange carpet, typing away on a long dead computer resting atop an old black table with a crack down the center. I never thought about anyone reading it. Instead I hoped it would lead me somewhere, deep into the heart of a mystery, into the promise of a grown-up’s vast unknown. I didn’t know what I’d do when I got there. Maybe I’d be looking over a cliff. I wrote down my questions, hoping they’d lead to answers.
Six months ago, Bone Worship came out in print. Almost immediately, I broke with who I was, and I began to travel the country. Portland, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago. Fan mail, hate mail, interviews, radio programs, people weeping, people laughing, strangers becoming friends. My hand around a pen, my hand in other hands. Eighteen stops later, my voice is raw and dry and salty. But I am telling a story, and now all of you are a part of it. Now, the story has circled around to where it started, right here, in this place of woods and birds, in this place of family and friends.
Andre Gide wrote, “In order to judge properly, one must get away somewhat from what one is judging, after having loved it. This is true of countries, of persons, and of oneself.”
For seven years, I’ve been away, from you, and from who I used to be.
Thank you for still recognizing me.
The excerpt below is from the last reading -- June 23, 2010 Gaffney, SC
Just eleven days ago, we climbed into a silver shell of a car and started across the country.
First over the dry land of Eastern Oregon, past stiff-legged pronghorn standing in irrigated fields of spinach, of lettuce, and then through pink canyons, the steep walls rising up around us like a pre-dug grave. We stopped once to watch the river, to let our dog wolf down dry weeds, to watch a coyote watch us, his eyes baleful as he ran with a mouse between his teeth up the side of a mountain, his face half in shadow.
We were coming back South, coming back home, you could say, though it had been so long we couldn’t remember what home meant, or if we would even recognize it when we got there. Who could say if home would recognize us, two bedraggled people and a dog, a pack of three, seven years changed.
We stopped at motels planted in deserts, lights humming in the darkness, Indian immigrants who had not slept in months running everything. Their elderly snow-haired fathers stood with hoses dangling from their fingers, keeping the grass alive so tourists’ dogs could pee on it. Their beautiful daughters shyly collected dirty sheets in the morning, long after everyone had disappeared down a vein of highway, of memory.
Almost immediately on our journey, the radio broke, and we were left with only our voices, raw and dry and salty. We asked each other questions, and those questions led us places. It was a long drive through the West.
We drove into the Rockies, past the flooded rivers of Wyoming, everything still green beyond the season. We drank milkshakes in Nebraska, in restaurants half underground, tornado contingency plans taped to the walls. A corner of Iowa, a hot afternoon through Illinois. Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina. And then, finally, like a surprise, the land leveled out. South Carolina. The orange clay visible like a sub-layer of skin.
I was born here. In this place. Almost immediately on my journey, the umbilical cord broke, and I was left with only questions. I tried to find my voice, but what came out was raw and dry and salty. I looked for stories, and those stories led me places, into and out of the South. A good story, you see, from birth to life, will take you far, and you will have to see and learn much to tell it.
A childhood spent outside, the heat puckering my scalp, fire ants, copperheads, mourning doves. Every morning waking to that call – bobwhite, bobwhite. Days digging mud holes, or “swimming pools,” as we called them, building ramps to climb rusty fences into cow pastures, the promise of some vast unknown world.
But the thing is, we were right. It was unknown. It’s still unknown.
Because no matter how many times I come home, it is new and strange to me. I will forever be shocked by the Amazonian tangle of woods. Thumb-sized toads wedged into the corner of the cool, brick stairs. I’ll always sit up in the middle of the night, surprised to hear birds singing.
I started this book seven years ago in the attic of my parents’ house, bare feet on an orange carpet, typing away on a long dead computer resting atop an old black table with a crack down the center. I never thought about anyone reading it. Instead I hoped it would lead me somewhere, deep into the heart of a mystery, into the promise of a grown-up’s vast unknown. I didn’t know what I’d do when I got there. Maybe I’d be looking over a cliff. I wrote down my questions, hoping they’d lead to answers.
Six months ago, Bone Worship came out in print. Almost immediately, I broke with who I was, and I began to travel the country. Portland, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago. Fan mail, hate mail, interviews, radio programs, people weeping, people laughing, strangers becoming friends. My hand around a pen, my hand in other hands. Eighteen stops later, my voice is raw and dry and salty. But I am telling a story, and now all of you are a part of it. Now, the story has circled around to where it started, right here, in this place of woods and birds, in this place of family and friends.
Andre Gide wrote, “In order to judge properly, one must get away somewhat from what one is judging, after having loved it. This is true of countries, of persons, and of oneself.”
For seven years, I’ve been away, from you, and from who I used to be.
Thank you for still recognizing me.
Friday, June 18, 2010
From Why There Are Words: Heat
On June 10th, I had the pleasure of participating in a "Heat" themed Why There Are Words reading with writers Cara Black, Prartho Sereno, Joe Quirk, Catherine Brady, and Todd Zuniga. This series, held at the beautiful Studio 333 in Sausalito and orchestrated by Peg Alford Pursell, is an amazing opportunity for established and emerging writers, not to mention those who love attending a great literary event. If you ever get the chance, you should check it out!
To see a clip of my (cooking themed) reading from Bone Worship, click here.
To see a clip of my (cooking themed) reading from Bone Worship, click here.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Bone Worship is a Finalist for "The Book Pick" Contest
I'm so excited to learn that my novel is a finalist in BookBundlz's "The Book Pick" contest! If you can, please visit the link below and vote for Bone Worship. In order to vote, you must register to become a "clubie," but it's free and there are no obligations. You can vote once a day each day until June 29th!
Click here.
Click here.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
A beautiful book about a man who loved a dog, and the dog who loved him back.
For weeks now, I’ve been carrying Walking With Zeke, by Chris Clarke, around with me. I’ve squeezed this book into my purse and taken it across the country by plane, its pages rifled through by security at LAX. It has endured my tears, my fingers pinching and dog-earing its pages in wonder, my constant, hungry scribbling in the margins. It has glared up at me from a desk in a hotel, daring me to finish it when I didn’t think I could endure its emotional punch. You should see this thing. When I bought it, it was crisp and white and beautiful. Now it looks like it has been tread upon by a monster truck. Twice.
Even now that I have read and digested this book, I find that I’m not quite finished with it. I find that it has digested a little of me in the process, scraped me down. It has left me without the words to tell you why you should read it, simply that you should, and must.
Please understand: this is not a book review. In a review, one is expected to be unbiased. To disclose a work’s shortcomings along with its highlights. So, okay. If you hate humans or relationships or animals or plant life, you should not read this book. If you hate feeling something in such a way that you can’t forget it, read another book instead. There, that fulfills that requirement.
Walking With Zeke is a story about a man who loved a dog, and the dog who loved him back. It is about love, but, as Clarke warns us, it is not hagiography. It is not sentimental. This is not the bland love of a movie dog that has eaten Jennifer Aniston’s necklace. If that’s what you’re looking for, shop someplace else. This is the fierce and abiding love of a dog that has used a rubber duck as a digestive aid, and the kind of man who could not bear to throw away the duck. It’s quit your job to be there, love. It’s love at the end of life, love. Face against the floor, love. “The problem with dogs,” Clarke writes, “is that they live long enough that one day you can no longer remember your life without them.” You know from a line so powerful and true exactly what kind of writer you’re dealing with.
Ultimately, Walking With Zeke is more about Chris Clarke than it is about his dog, Zeke. A man who can tell you everything about miner’s lettuce and cholla, who can walk you through the lifespan of a tree, Clarke comes off as the wise and fascinating friend everyone wishes they had. A guy who “listens to ravens and raves at the listless,” who prays to the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. He’s a less prickly Ed Abbey, a tougher Rick Bass, a Barry Lopez with humor. The kind of writer who observes, without a hint of pretension, that “a long life is a landscape of holes where things once grew.”
But at the heart of Clarke is Zeke. Zeke is an actual character in this story. Adventurous and occasionally misunderstood (no, he’s not part wolf), he’s the canine comic relief and the tragic figure combined, stubborn and smart and decent. “If I leak tears of grief, Zeke nudges my nose with his until I hold him. If my tears are of rage or frustration, he hides under my desk in the farthest room. He anchors our family. He lives to… shove us off the bed at night by increments, to help us eat our sandwiches. He is one damn fine dog.”
Walking With Zeke is a story of place as well, of how well we get on with our journey. It is fluid, but steered forward with a strong hand. Drawn from Clarke’s acclaimed web log Creek Running North (now Coyote Crossing at faultline.org), the book is a collection of journal entries and poetry, with settings ranging from suburban Pinole to the rough streets of Oakland, all moving toward the resolution of Clarke’s life with his dog.
The writing is startling, the images haunting and profound.
I could tell you how hard I cried reading this book, how I sobbed in front of flight attendants, waiters, and loved ones, but what purpose, really, would that serve? I could tell you that I sometimes think of Zeke even though I’ve never met him, sometimes see phantom Zekes in fields or on rocky outcroppings, but what do you care what goes on in my messy head? Yes, this book will devastate you, but it will also fill you with joy. Zeke’s joy. The spirit of a crazy run.
Perhaps the most glorious moment in Walking With Zeke is when Clarke entreats us to walk our dogs in that spirit, to appreciate all the little moments we have with the animals who live with us. To do what he no longer can with Zeke.
I never felt luckier to live with a dog than when I read his words.
“Through it all I have cherished the subtle love of an elderly dog, the gentle glances and the hours of staring, his eyes bound so tightly to my heart that he can wake me at four in the morning just by watching me from across the room. I would not trade these days for anything. His sweetness is solace.” - Chris Clarke, Walking With Zeke
Even now that I have read and digested this book, I find that I’m not quite finished with it. I find that it has digested a little of me in the process, scraped me down. It has left me without the words to tell you why you should read it, simply that you should, and must.
Please understand: this is not a book review. In a review, one is expected to be unbiased. To disclose a work’s shortcomings along with its highlights. So, okay. If you hate humans or relationships or animals or plant life, you should not read this book. If you hate feeling something in such a way that you can’t forget it, read another book instead. There, that fulfills that requirement.
Walking With Zeke is a story about a man who loved a dog, and the dog who loved him back. It is about love, but, as Clarke warns us, it is not hagiography. It is not sentimental. This is not the bland love of a movie dog that has eaten Jennifer Aniston’s necklace. If that’s what you’re looking for, shop someplace else. This is the fierce and abiding love of a dog that has used a rubber duck as a digestive aid, and the kind of man who could not bear to throw away the duck. It’s quit your job to be there, love. It’s love at the end of life, love. Face against the floor, love. “The problem with dogs,” Clarke writes, “is that they live long enough that one day you can no longer remember your life without them.” You know from a line so powerful and true exactly what kind of writer you’re dealing with.
Ultimately, Walking With Zeke is more about Chris Clarke than it is about his dog, Zeke. A man who can tell you everything about miner’s lettuce and cholla, who can walk you through the lifespan of a tree, Clarke comes off as the wise and fascinating friend everyone wishes they had. A guy who “listens to ravens and raves at the listless,” who prays to the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. He’s a less prickly Ed Abbey, a tougher Rick Bass, a Barry Lopez with humor. The kind of writer who observes, without a hint of pretension, that “a long life is a landscape of holes where things once grew.”
But at the heart of Clarke is Zeke. Zeke is an actual character in this story. Adventurous and occasionally misunderstood (no, he’s not part wolf), he’s the canine comic relief and the tragic figure combined, stubborn and smart and decent. “If I leak tears of grief, Zeke nudges my nose with his until I hold him. If my tears are of rage or frustration, he hides under my desk in the farthest room. He anchors our family. He lives to… shove us off the bed at night by increments, to help us eat our sandwiches. He is one damn fine dog.”
Walking With Zeke is a story of place as well, of how well we get on with our journey. It is fluid, but steered forward with a strong hand. Drawn from Clarke’s acclaimed web log Creek Running North (now Coyote Crossing at faultline.org), the book is a collection of journal entries and poetry, with settings ranging from suburban Pinole to the rough streets of Oakland, all moving toward the resolution of Clarke’s life with his dog.
The writing is startling, the images haunting and profound.
I could tell you how hard I cried reading this book, how I sobbed in front of flight attendants, waiters, and loved ones, but what purpose, really, would that serve? I could tell you that I sometimes think of Zeke even though I’ve never met him, sometimes see phantom Zekes in fields or on rocky outcroppings, but what do you care what goes on in my messy head? Yes, this book will devastate you, but it will also fill you with joy. Zeke’s joy. The spirit of a crazy run.
Perhaps the most glorious moment in Walking With Zeke is when Clarke entreats us to walk our dogs in that spirit, to appreciate all the little moments we have with the animals who live with us. To do what he no longer can with Zeke.
I never felt luckier to live with a dog than when I read his words.
“Through it all I have cherished the subtle love of an elderly dog, the gentle glances and the hours of staring, his eyes bound so tightly to my heart that he can wake me at four in the morning just by watching me from across the room. I would not trade these days for anything. His sweetness is solace.” - Chris Clarke, Walking With Zeke
Monday, May 24, 2010
My new essay on book titles in The Nervous Breakdown
Ever wonder about the title Bone Worship? Apparently you're so not alone. Check out my essay "No Virginia, It's Not About Porn" in The Nervous Breakdown. ;)
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Essay in The Millions, Elegy for a Stillborn Story
I have a new essay up on the wonderful literary arts/news site, The Millions. To read "Elegy for a Stillborn Story," click here.
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