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June progress
Good progress since school ended, especially on the anthology. I have a handle on it now and expect most of my work ahead will be responding to technical problems, which have a way of appearing without notice. I'm also back in the groove of the novel and making good progress on the new libretto. Even the textbook moves forward, albeit almost begrudgingly. A good start to summer. I deserve a break to see Durrenmatt. Onward.
    

What Classic Movie Are You?
As for me ...

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

  

Dandelions
Took the dog for his run in a nearby schoolyard. With school out, the lawns have been overrun with dandelions.

I love dandelions. I consider them a beautiful wild flower. My wife, however, considers them a weed. Consequently, in our yard dandelions cause an argument about what to do about them. Nothing! say I. Get rid of them! says she.

Dandelions are the official flower of military brats:

The Dandelion

She will blow and blow
But will never know
Where the little dandelion will go
Where the little dandelion will grow.
The wind takes it high
The wind takes it low
But still she will never know
Where the little dandelion will go
Where the little dandelion will grow.
By, Chelsea

    
6/28/2004 11:49:39 AM | 0 comments

Sunday, June 27, 2004  
The Return
Finally the sun and good weather returned, staying for the rest of the day. However, I got much less done today than I expected to. What I did get done was an aria in the new libretto that I really like, so the day was productive after all. Onward.   
6/27/2004 06:38:26 PM | 0 comments

 
HA! sayeth the gods
Well, a cloud bank seems to be crawling in, and the morning's blue sky rapidly is disappearing. That'll teach me. As the saying goes, Don't like the weather in Portland? Wait a minute. (Except this is only a partial truth, working only with regard to sunshine! Rain doesn't have a problem sticking around.)   
6/27/2004 08:33:21 AM | 0 comments

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald met Joyce, a writer he worshipped, on this day in 1928, the meeting arranged by Sylvia Beach. He then more or less made an ass of himself. You can read the complete story at Today In Literature.

The Great Gatsby, now considered one of the great novels ever written (#2 on the Modern Library's list of best 100 novels of the 20th century, with Joyce getting #1 and #3 spots), was a commercial and critical disappointment when it appeared. Not as great a bomb as Moby Dick, to be sure, but nothing like Fitzgerald had hoped. It's unfortunate how often writers have their "great book" ignored until after they pass away.    
6/27/2004 08:31:09 AM | 0 comments

 

Blue sky
Awoke to blue sky this morning! Could it be the fickle Oregon summer is back to tease us some more? At any rate, today is looking great so far. I should be able to finish a chapter on the textbook, working out on the deck. Later listen to jazz while puttering around at yard work. May the morning weather last the day.

As I get rights from writers, I get more excited about the anthology, which will include some damn good work. I still need to locate two important writers, without which the anthology would suffer. I believe both are in town, but I can't find their phone numbers or emails. Stories I can't get rights to I still can write about myself, using Fair Use law, so at the end of each section I plan to include a short "Notable Stories" area where I summarize and quote from stories I would hate to neglect entirely. I appear to be on track for finishing this up before school starts, which I really want to do. I worry a tad about scanning all the stuff, however -- how good the quality will be (hence how much grunt work will need to be done to clean up the copy). I soon will start on my introduction.

And today I may even do some new writing, on the novel, and back to the libretto to see if time away has given me new insight on my transition problem.

How the sun can improve my spirits! Alas, my wife tells me that if I move to Arizona or New Mexico, I would have to go alone. She prefers cooler weather and even likes gray skies.
    
6/27/2004 08:10:38 AM | 0 comments

Saturday, June 26, 2004  
The sun, the sun!
Ol' Sol appeared for a while today and presented a scene of considerably more optimism than the ending of Ibsen's Ghosts (where the sun also appears). I went out onto the deck and got a lot of rewriting done on the novel, getting up to where I'd left off. So now I can move forward. A good feeling. Tomorrow I need to get back up to speed with the textbook. Onward.   
6/26/2004 08:04:40 PM | 0 comments

 

Gray gloom
Summer came and went. Back to Oregon's gray monotony.

On a brighter note, the anthology moves forward. Half-a-dozen writers have given permission to reprint their stories so far. I'd like at least fifteen or twenty, so we're on our way. Hard to track some of them down, and quite are few are deceased, so we are trying to contact their families. Once I get a dozen writers whose work I can use, however, I should have a book, which means I'm already halfway there.

I've fallen behind on all other projects, however. Hope to make up some work on them while waiting for rights.

Taking a break next week to go down to Ashland and see a play. It will be good to get out of town. Onward.
    
6/26/2004 03:38:04 AM | 0 comments

Thursday, June 24, 2004  
More from The Devil's Dictionary
The wonderful thing about Bierce's masterwork is that one can browse in it with great reward. Hence:

LOVE, n.
A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.

LOGIC, n.
The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

LECTURER, n.
One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience.

LAWYER, n.
One skilled in circumvention of the law.

REALISM, n.
The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads.

REALITY, n.
The dream of a mad philosopher.

RELIGION, n.
A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

FIDDLE, n.
An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat.

FLAG, n.
A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships. It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one sees and vacant lots in London -- "Rubbish may be shot here."

FUTURE, n.
That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.   
6/24/2004 06:58:00 AM | 0 comments

 

Ambrose Bierce
Happy birthday to the author of The Devil's Dictionary. What an extraordinary book! I discovered it in my early 20s and will never forget the moment. Bierce's dark wit is unmatched. Here he is on man-and-woman:

HUSBAND: One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the plate.
BRIDE: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
MARRIAGE: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.

Check out the article on Bierce in Today In Literature and also The Ambrose Bierce Site. And read The Devil's Dictionary! (find it here).    

Bernard Malamud
Malamud published his comic novel about academia, A New Life, in 1961, after a decade of teaching at Oregon State University. Like Levin, his protagonist, Malamud had come from New York to a small college town in the Pacific Northwest. Malamud not only disguised O.S.U. but invented an entire state, Cascadia.

The time is the paranoid post-war (WWII) years:

The country was frightened silly of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers, Communist spies and Congressional committees, flying saucers and fellow travellers, their friends and associates, and those who asked them for a match or the time of day. Intellectuals, scientists, teachers, were investigated by numerous committees and if found to be good Americans were asked to sign loyalty oaths. Democracy was defended by cripples who crippled it.

Levin is running from his past:

When Levin tried to think across the continent to a New York autumn his rainy thoughts no longer let him. They stopped at the drenched mountainside forests of the Cascades. He had cut himself off, he had discovered, from longing for the East without regret. If Levin regretted anything it was not long ago having escaped the city. In Easchester he felt comparatively at peace with himself, more than for years. To stay at peace he let days go by without opening a newspaper or turning on a broadcast. He knew what the news was and preferred to forget it. The cold war blew on the world like an approaching glacier. The Korean War flamed hot, although less hopelessly for America. The country had become, in fear and self-accusation, a nation of spies and communists. Senator McCarthy held in his hairy fist everyman's name. And there were rumours of further frightening intercourse between scientists and atomic thugs. America was in the best sense of a bad term, un-American. Levin was content to be hidden amid forests and mountains in an unknown town in the Far West.

Here is Levin caught in his new climate, rain:

During the long winter vacation it rained continuously, the sky a low thick motionless rain-cloud, the warmish wet-cold season without dry corner. After day-long rain it rained all night, the dark, liquescent, dripping from trees. When he woke in the night to heft his life, he listened to the rain as natural history, the Pacific extending over the land. Huge sopping clouds floated over breakers threading the beaches and struck against mountainsides, rain pouring from an armada of smashed hulls, drenching the craggy crawling forests, drowning green hills black, soaking the grass-lit fields. In the dark Levin remembered the rain of his childhood, blown in wind against the faces of tenements, engulfing the leafless backyard tree in foaming bursts; but when it had ended - after a day, three, a week - it had ended and enter light, the worshipful sun. Here was no sense of being between rains; it was a climate, a condition, the water burbling, thick, thin, fine, ubiquitous, continuous, monotonous, formless.

Of course, Levin gets involved in a series of comic catastrophes, including sleeping with the wife of the colleague who hired him.

A New Life caused a local scandal when it was published, everyone in Corvallis (home of Oregon State Univ.) trying to identify the "models" for Malamud's various academic characters. This comic novel gets much of its humor from academia, of course, but also from the wonderful juxtaposition of Levi and wilderness. I recommend it.    
6/24/2004 06:08:05 AM | 0 comments

Wednesday, June 23, 2004  
Whew
Finished my first trip through the archives today and have reduced the material to about 100 stories to consider. Depending on their length, I figure I'll be using 40-60 of them to make a book that will come in at about 300 pages. We want to keep the price down to about $14.95. Have an "inflated" table of contents in draft. Will present material to the publisher on Friday.

Meanwhile, tonight I finished my favorite novel about academia, Bernard Malamud's A New Life, based on his teaching adventures at Oregon State University, which I haven't read in some years. I'll have more to say about it tomorrow. Tonight I want to catch an American Masters special on Hank Williams. Onward.   
6/23/2004 09:41:35 PM | 0 comments

Tuesday, June 22, 2004  

Dreary day
Was expecting another sunny near-90 day but it's been dreary and overcast all day, and my spirits have absorbed the weather. All the same, I did get a chapter on the textbook done, a dreary day deserving dreary work. On the brighter side, I got a call from an old friend from the sixties who is in town at a conference. We'll have dinner on Thursday. Onward.
    
6/22/2004 03:58:54 PM | 0 comments

 

Progress report
John has informed me that he is 43% done with the opera orchestrations. I learned he doesn't do this linearly from beginning to end but skips around, a bit here and a bit there. When I asked why, he said for variety.

Last night I went through my archive notes and easily found 93 stories suitable for the anthology, much more than I need, as I expected. No doubt I'll add another dozen in the last batch of stuff to look at. The next step will be difficult perhaps, an author search for rights. Joe, the publisher, has an intern to do this. Meanwhile I'll go back and read more carefully and start making editorial decisions.

Today I hope to get a lot done on the textbook and the novel. Back into the archives tomorrow, hoping to finish up the first step of the process. Today I might also write a bit on the new libretto ... trying to figure out the best way to do a transition.

I added a subtitle to this blog, the curtain line from my play The Half-Life Conspiracy. I love curtain lines but have only written a handful that have stayed with me. This is one. Another is from my one-act The Stiff: "What the people expect, they get. What they get, they deserve. Always."    
6/22/2004 07:52:02 AM | 0 comments

Monday, June 21, 2004  
Holt Uncensored
Pat Holt's column is "a candid look at books and the book industry" and is always lively. Check it out.

In the letters section of the current column is this (depressing) gem about the literacy of contemporary editors and agents:

I spoke to a number of agents and editors at a conference and was sad that one editor for a major publisher did not know the name Joseph Conrad. Of three black editors and agents looking for new writers of detective fiction, none had heard of Chester Himes. One had never heard of James Baldwin. And of a couple hundred attendees and a dozen agents and editors, only one knew of Lawrence Durrell. She was an elderly agent who still read.

The standard advice boiled down to opening your work with an earthshaking event, ending each chapter so it could be read within five minutes, with a serial-like hook, and using no words or sentences a standard fourth-grader would not stumble over. The agent who knew Durrell's work wondered aloud how Faulkner would be able to get published today.

Stephen Crane
Anniversary of the publication of The Red Badge of Courage. Don't miss the article in Today in Literature. The "authentic" manuscript of this book was only recently assembled, a desperate Crane having made compromises to satisfy his publisher. He was desperate because he'd had to self-publish the earlier Maggie, a girl of the streets. Hmm, so what else is new? Here is a link to Crane's long poem, War Is Kind (and other lines), which includes the stanza:

"Have you ever made a just man?"

"Oh, I have made three," answered God,

"But two of them are dead,

And the third --

Listen! Listen!

And you will hear the thud of his defeat."

    

Half full, half empty
Shared my excitement about the recent interest in the opera online with someone, expecting nothing more than a polite "That's great!" or something but heard instead, "Yeah, they're probably stealing it!"

We live in a zero-sum universe. There are as many who find the worst in a situation as those who find the best.     
6/20/2004 08:55:42 AM | 0 comments

 
Wishful thinking
In my archives over the last two days, there's been a surge of interest in the opera. All of the midi files of the piano score have been accessed, and the zipped score has been downloaded four times. One hopes, of course, this attention is by someone positioned to perform it.

This interest has spread throughout the archive. Typically my archives get about 350 hits a day. Friday had over 800 and yesterday over 900. The audio area especially, usually fairly ignored, was active.

You can't second-guess any of this but it's fun to try ha ha. Onward.   
6/20/2004 07:31:04 AM | 0 comments

Saturday, June 19, 2004  

The Plight of the Composer
I feel for John, the composer I'm writing for, who presently is job-hunting. Work is the curse of the artistic class. Looking back, I am amazed that I survived as a freelance writer for as long as I did (over a decade), especially given the considerable bar bill I had each month. Very stressful work because one always had to look ahead, pitching the future writing gigs. I suppose ideally artists need a part-time job with a full-time wage. Teaching is a good and traditional compromise in this direction, which is why you find so many artists in all fields at colleges and universities. In this country, we are married to "the star system," which means a few artists make it very well and the rest of us struggle financially. Social security for artists should start at twenty-one ha ha. Or is that called some politically incorrect -ism? At any rate, I wish John well is his search. Onward.
    
6/19/2004 10:44:11 AM | 0 comments

 
Screenwriting textbook
Have rewritten 9 of the 16 chapters, so I should be able to meet my August deadline unless some unforeseen problem comes up. I must admit, this actually is the least exciting, the least inspiring, of my various summer projects. It can be a struggle to keep interested in it. If I were starting from scratch, I'd be in real trouble. Fortunately, the book I am rewriting already is full of energy, so my lack of it doesn't infect the text. But I am much, much more enthused about the rewriting I'm doing on the first half of the novel, on drafting the new libretto, even about slipping on the surgical gloves to get into the archives. The textbook feels too much like sheer grunt work.   
6/19/2004 10:26:40 AM | 0 comments

 

John Cheever
Anniversary of his death was yesterday. His Collected Stories is one of the great books of American Literature. A master of the craft. I suppose he and Hemingway would be the two twentieth century American short story writers who most influenced other writers. I'm overdue for a rereading of his work.    
6/19/2004 10:25:32 AM | 0 comments

 

Editors & Writers
After working in the archives yesterday, had a chance to talk with Joe, my first editor, over coffee. He didn't realize how important he was at the very beginning of my writing career. What did I do? he wondered. One thing he did was scribble "keep trying" at the bottom of the standard rejection postcards he mailed me. So I did! He rejected half-a-dozen stories before he bought one. Then I quickly became a regular contributor to his Northwest Magazine. As I recall, he even bought most of the earlier rejected stories after I reworked them.

I later got to be on the other end of this editor-writer relationship. As editor of Sweet Reason: a journal of ideas, history and culture, I "discovered" and regularly published the philosophical essays of a teacher at a small coastal community college. Later, as managing editor of Oregon Business Magazine, I developed the first large series of stories on Oregon's then fledgling wine industry, able to find a writer qualified to do it, i.e. someone who actually knew something about wine (as I didn't sufficiently -- I often wrote the major features myself in our under-staffed office). Quite by accident, a woman sent in a story on spec, and in her cover letter I learned that she had worked in the California wine industry. She was a good writer, so I invited her in to talk and ended up giving her the assignment. She went on to become a nationally syndicated wine columnist -- and I gave her her first gig writing about wine.

What goes around, comes around. Onward.
    
6/19/2004 07:45:51 AM | 0 comments

Thursday, June 17, 2004  
BBQ weather!

Into the 90s today, my kind of weather. After a good morning in the archives, finding more treasures, I came home to find a wonderful letter from a writer whose work I admire. His letter was full of praise for my novel Love At Ground Zero, and what was especially gratifying was not that he liked the book but that he understood it, he responded positively to what I thought I was up to (as some readers have not). His letter was very cogent and perceptive.

Given the fine weather, I just had to barbecue tonight, and we ate out on the deck, ribs and corn on the cob and salad, then took the dog for a walk in the nearby park. Just a fine day! Onward.
    
6/17/2004 07:29:39 PM | 2 comments

Wednesday, June 16, 2004  

Archives

Getting into the archives early tomorrow, a bit after 8, because I likely must abandon them around noon. So I want to spend as much time as I can. I expect to be back on Friday. I really want to finish this leg of the project before mid-July, which will give me a shot at finishing up most of the work before classes start again in the fall.

Meanwhile I got a lot of writing done today, mostly on two of the three projects. Hit a snag on the third and had to backtrack to correct a few things (the libretto). A good day. Expect one in the archives tomorrow.
    
6/16/2004 08:57:34 PM | 0 comments

 
Routine

The rhythm of the summer is revealing itself. Again today, as yesterday, I'll spend some hours on the deck with pages from three projects to rewrite. I printed them up last night. Today I really must spend some time on yard work as well. Looks like I'm on for the archives tomorrow and again Friday, and I hope to make a lot of progress there. Supposed to hit 85 today, and I'm ready for it. Onward.    
6/16/2004 06:47:27 AM | 0 comments

Tuesday, June 15, 2004  
Productive day!
This is the way summer is supposed to be. The dog and I are out on the deck, Skitch sunning and yours truly writing here on the laptop, with a stack of pages from three projects to rewrite, my afternoon workload, and below me the fountain is splashing, not quite drowning out distant traffic noise, blue sky, lots of sun if not warm enough for me yet (90s later in the week, then it will be my kind of weather) ... a mellow, relaxed day in the writing life.

I've already rewritten three short chapters of the novel-in-progress this morning, and I have three more to do this afternoon. Also a chapter on the textbook. And another scene of the libretto. If I can get all this done on the deck this afternoon, it will have been a great writing day. Later I should start on the yard, too, mowing half today and half tomorrow, getting ready to spend most of Thurs and Fri in the archives. I'm anxious to get back into them now that I have an early handle on the structure.

Time to get to work.

P.S. Got it all done -- except the yard work. Onward.   
6/15/2004 05:25:43 PM | 0 comments

Monday, June 14, 2004  
Slow day
A slow, brooding kind of day, triggered by a change of schedule and my inability to use the archives today. But I did get some work done on Varmints in the morning and on the screenwriting textbook in the afternoon. Also did some chores and got some reading done. Certainly not a wasted day -- but my energy was directed at getting a lot done in the archives today. Now I can't return to them until Thursday (when it's supposed to be in the 90s). Onward.   
6/14/2004 07:35:51 PM | 0 comments

Sunday, June 13, 2004  
Eventide
Kent Haruf's sequel to Plainsong is quite good but didn't impress me as much as the original novel although maybe it would have if I had read it first. I was disappointed that some characters from the original disappeared even though new ones replaced them. I hope he stops now, however, and doesn't make it a trilogy. You can do too much of a good thing.   
6/13/2004 02:26:30 PM | 0 comments

 
A Rage for Opera
This slim book by Robert Lawrence is full of passionate opinions about opera and opera artists. He is most critical of opera audiences, from their easy "bravo!" to superior catcalls:

What to do? How to live inside opera and preserve one's love for it? A temporary solution, until after the intruders have been ousted: attend Wagner and Strauss "live" (they leave no chance for audience uproar during the musical flow). Enjoy everything else on records or tapes in the quiet of one's rooms.

E.A. Robinson
I keep fiddling with the order of sections in the anthology ... think I like Issues & Concerns sooner, maybe in third spot.

I'm reminded of a story told about the American poet E.A. Robinson. At a cocktail party, a woman asked him what a day in the life of a poet was like. He said, "Well, madam, this morning I was working on a line in a new poem. I inserted a comma. This afternoon I took it out."    

Another major artist gone

Ray Charles died today. I have three strong memories of the man:

1. From the late 50s, in Berkeley, hearing "What'd I Say" booming across fraternity row with great regularity.
2. In the Army, when his album with the Count Basie orchestra, "Genius + Soul = Jazz," first came out, which we played endlessly.
3. How frail and small he was when I saw him in concert last only a few years ago. What was astounding is how this image disappeared as soon as he sat down at the piano.

    

Dickens, depressed

On this day in 1870 Charles Dickens died at the age of fifty-eight. Family and friends report that Dickens was beset by increasing debility and depression throughout his last months. He kept working on "Edwin Drood," kept delivering his famous readings, and kept receiving tribute after tribute, but all was colored by a mixture of exhaustion, regret, and memory.

So begins today's profile in Today In Literature.

What is it about writers and artists that they can be so easily depressed despite clear emblems of success? For Dickens, part of it was aging and its accompanying deterioration of mental skills, I suppose. But younger writers show these symptoms as well. I can remember being depressed after a play opened, despite enthusiastic audiences and rave reviews. (And even more depressed after silent audiences and unfavorable reviews.) Perhaps depression comes from loss and completion, a part of oneself (the work) now gone to live its own life. Perhaps the writer, more than anyone else, sees all the failure in the work, how short the execution came compared to the vision that started the creative process. The mantra for so many writers indeed appears to be, "I can't get no satisfaction ... no no no no no!"

The Charles Dickens Information Page.
    
6/9/2004 03:55:16 PM | 0 comments

 
Sum-sum-summertime!

Making great progress on grading finals, should be able to turn in grades later today. At which point, summer is here!    
6/9/2004 10:45:12 AM | 0 comments

Tuesday, June 08, 2004  
Gerry Mulligan

Next to my computer is a CD player, and the disk that almost always is in it is one of many CDs I have by Gerry Mulligan. I've been a fan since the 50s, and he remains my favorite jazz musician, whom I hear almost daily. Check him out.

The Gerry Mulligan Home Page.

The Gerry Mulligan Collection at the Library of Congress.     
6/8/2004 10:15:55 AM | 0 comments

 
Light at the end of the tunnel
Have all my university and online scripts read. Pick up final exams this afternoon ... read them, turn in grades, and I'm done, on Thursday I think. Then my summer begins!   
6/8/2004 09:51:17 AM | 0 comments

Monday, June 07, 2004  
The Living Newspaper

The Living Newspaper plays were perhaps the most popular aspect of the Federal Theatre Project's dramatical works. Of these, one of the more popular plays was Power. The FTP provided a kind of theater not often seen on American stages, before or since. Federal Theatre Project material from the Library of Congress.    
6/7/2004 08:30:27 PM | 0 comments

 
Movie break

Only a few more scripts to read, which I can take care of tomorrow morning. Taking a movie break. Going through my video collection, I took out Cradle Will Rock, the Tim Robbins movie about the Federal Theatre Project during the 1930s and its controversial musical of the same title. Not sure if this movie made any money (here, it was here and gone in a week when it first came out) but I like it a lot.    
6/7/2004 05:22:53 PM | 0 comments

 
The stretch run
Last week of school. Should finish up student scripts today or tomorrow, collect finals tomorrow, grade them Wed. and Thurs., turn in grades late Thurs. ... and Friday perhaps start going through NW Magazine for the anthology.

Thinking of applying for a writers-in-the-school gig next year, largely out of curiosity to see where teenagers are at these days. I haven't worked with high school writers in a couple decades. One of my best teaching gigs when as a writer-in-residence at The Catlin Gabel School, a private school, but I also had a good gig at a public school in the 80s. I'd like to see what high school kids think about hyperdrama.   
6/7/2004 06:41:45 AM | 0 comments

Sunday, June 06, 2004  
The Death of O. Henry
Why am I not surprised? Read the story.   
6/6/2004 06:15:13 PM | 0 comments

 
Orchestrations
John has orchestrated 2 of the 18 scenes so far. He'll finish in 2005, I reckon. By then maybe I can write two new libretti for him, ha ha! Bix's life, from my first snooping through a bio, looks like the stuff of opera to me. Onward.   
6/6/2004 06:05:42 PM | 1 comments

 
You can't go home again
I had dinner with an old friend from my past, my drinking days, my Debauchery Period -- and the person got drunk and started babbling and I couldn't wait to get out of there. With drinkers, you join them or leave them. I left.   
6/6/2004 12:00:07 PM | 0 comments

Saturday, June 05, 2004  
P.S. on the Belmont
Even though Smarty Jones didn't win, the occasion demonstrated that athletes still can have good manners, something you don't often see in many professional sports in these days of egomaniacal millionaires. Instead of gloating, the winning jockey apologized for winning! "I was just doing my job," he said, aware that millions wanted Smarty Jones to win. Smarty Jones' trainer rushed to congratulate the winning trainer ("He's a class guy," the winning trainer said) and offered no whining excuses. What refreshing behavior after seasons of professional basketball and football, sports which have become overrun by jerks.   
6/5/2004 05:19:24 PM | 0 comments

 
A dinner gift
Having dinner with a friend tonight. Cruising with Sketch, I found a parking place in front of my local bookstore, swung into it and ten minutes later came out with a gift-wrapped copy of Plainsong. Exactly what good books are for, to give as gifts to special people.   
6/5/2004 05:01:54 PM | 0 comments

 
The vagaries of sport

My earlier premonition came to pass, and Smarty Jones couldn't hang on the full mile-and-a-half to win the Belmont. Still no recent Triple Crown winner.     
6/5/2004 04:56:26 PM | 0 comments

 
Plainsong

This novel by Kent Haruf is outstanding, the best novel I've read since Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamtress. It's the story of several characters in a small farming town in Colorado: a high school teacher with an unstable wife, and his two boys; a pregnant high school girl; and the two elderly farmers, brothers, who let the girl live with them. The story and characters are full of the real stuff of life, and the writing style is without over-statement or the usual commercial glitz. This is a first class book. Read it.    
6/5/2004 12:59:52 PM | 0 comments

Friday, June 04, 2004  
And the winner is ...
My short play Snoops is one of six winners in the BLUUBIRD Theater Company’s Playwrights’ Festival, “Seven Principles in Ten
Minutes or Less." Plays likely will premier together in Seattle next winter.   
6/4/2004 06:21:49 PM | 0 comments

 
Portland, a river cruise

A terrific lunch cruise for Harriet's birthday! She, no easy person to buy presents for, even loved what I got her: a DVD of the first season of Northern Exposure. Home briefly to regroup and off this evening to a movie.     
6/4/2004 06:10:03 PM | 0 comments

Thursday, June 03, 2004  
Summer cruise
Tomorrow is Harriet's birthday, and I'm taking her on a lunch cruise (dinner being sold out) with all the hoopla, balloons and cake, and after that we'll mess around in the city. She goes to Seattle on Saturday for a reunion with some girlfriends, the rains return, and I'll read scripts all day while waiting for Smarty Jones to run in the Belmont. For some reason, I have a bad feeling about this race even though on paper he's a shoo-in. I'd love to see him run away from the pack and become a super horse like Secretariat. Then I'm having dinner Saturday night with a friend at my favorite Portland restaurant, The Three Square Grill.

During break time, I think I'll print out what I have of Patriots so far to renew my familiarity with it and no doubt do some rewriting. I have a bit over 100 pages, maybe halfway there.

We're having terrific weather! In Oregon, you always enjoy it while you can.   
6/3/2004 03:30:39 PM | 1 comments

 
Flattery will get you anything
I'm terrible on the phone. When the phone rings, I usually ignore it because 90% of the time -- make that 99% -- it's for Harriet. If I answer it, and the party asks for Harriet, I usually tell them to call back and leave a voice message so I don't have to scribble a note that Harriet won't be able to decipher anyway.

Today I answered the phone for some reason. It was for Harriet. The person asked, Who is this? and I said simply, Charles, and was about to ask them to call back and leave a message when the person interrupted to say she was a great fan of mine! And she's from New York to boot! Well, the way to a playwright's heart is through his ego. We had a nice chat, ha ha. Then she called back to leave a message.   
6/3/2004 11:30:13 AM | 0 comments

 
Street Roots

Last night Harriet and I saw "Urban Transitions: Short Films for the City," produced by the university"s Sustainable Community Media Group. One of the films, "Street Roots," was by a current student of mine, Autumn Pardee, a documentary that goes behind the scenes of the local paper for the homeless.

Student films always should be applauded. Like student novels, they require so much work, and so much is learned doing this work, that quality may not be the primary concern. Of course, quality matters and students can do good, even great, work, and two of the three films shown last night had promise. One, a fictional story set in a world of near future technotyranny, provided a clear illustration why action is more effective than narration in telling a story: the overly-narrated piece came alive now and again when the narrator shut up and dramatic action moved the story forward. Another, despite its more interesting subject matter, was a clone of the "what I did last summer" travelogue and reminded me of home movies that never seem to end. There was a good piece here, about one-tenth as long. Vacations are always much more interesting to the people who were there.

The best film was by my student, Autumn Pardee. There is nothing that gives "Street Roots" away as being student produced. It is professionally produced, engagingly structured, and socially important. (So this is what Autumn has been doing all term.) It evokes many emotions, for me especially during a sequence when a homeless man recites a poem he has written, which cuts to visual images of the city against the sound track of a haunting version of "Autumn Leaves." Powerful stuff.

    
6/3/2004 10:10:33 AM | 0 comments

Wednesday, June 02, 2004  
Summer reading
Thinking I'd get a head start on my summer reading, I checked out three mysteries by a very well regarded genre writer. I quit each after ten pages or so. They felt antiseptic. When I asked myself, What does this story have to do with my life? and replied, Nothing, I quit.

However, I now am not quite fifty pages into a novel that thus far is absolutely brilliant: Plainsong by Kent Haruf. Looks like I've got a treat ahead of me to finish this one.   
6/2/2004 05:41:39 PM | 0 comments

 
Summer projects
I'll be turning in my grades a week from tomorrow, so I've been thinking about my summer projects. Here's what I have lined up:

• Book contracts
  
  • Screenwriting book, Aug. 31 deadline.
  • Northwest Magazine anthology, deadline not set but I certainly hope to have all the contributions selected before fall.
  
  
• My independent projects
  
  • Finish draft of Patriots, a novel.
  • Finish the new libretto based on Varmints.
  • Continue lecture series and reading on opera. Watch and listen to as many operas as I can.
    

Durrenmatt's The Visit

We bought our tickets for Durrenmatt's The Visit in Ashland. Durrenmatt is my favorite playwright, and I rate this second only to The Physicists for his best play. Durrenmatt also wrote the novel on which Sean Penn's brilliant movie The Pledge is based.

From an article by Peter Royston:

Durrenmatt called this story "A Tragic Comedy." More than any other of his plays, this story of an old lady who returns home to wreak an exact and merciless vengeance on her former lover intimately joins comedy and tragedy to support each other in nearly every scene.

The play really has three major characters: the old lady, Claire Zachanassian; her former lover and object of her ruthless justice, Alfred lll; and the people of the town of Gullen, who make up a kind of composite representation of society itself. Through these characters, Durrenmatt is able to give the audience a darkly comic, breathless, and in the end, unanswerable debate about the nature of justice, redemption and community.

Read entire article.

Durrenmatt was a major influence on my own work, especially in the quest to be both entertaining and deeply serious at the same time. I really look forward to this production.
    
6/2/2004 12:31:23 PM | 0 comments

 
Sunrise

A beautiful sunrise to what promises to be a good day. Will be able to do some lawn work this afternoon. Pick up term projects/scripts tomorrow, which will make the forecasted rainy weekend easier to take. Not long now.    
6/2/2004 05:45:23 AM | 0 comments

Tuesday, June 01, 2004  
Transit P.S.
Alas, the western U.S. cannot see this and the east only the end of it. Europe, anyone?   
6/1/2004 08:48:00 PM | 0 comments

 
Transit of Venus

On June 8, Venus passes in front of the sun from the Earth's perspective, a transit of Venus, for the first time in 122 years. No one living has seen this.

Read the story.

Watch an applet of the event.

Read about the last transit in 1882.

    
6/1/2004 07:20:52 AM | 1 comments