Smoke & Mirrors
It's alive... actually, it's been alive for a few weeks now, but my on-again/off-again relationship with Suicide Girls (yeah, there's at least a few big-ass metaphors in there) has made me remiss in posting it here. But one of my brain children—specifically, a chapter from my forthcoming (and long overdue) third novel—is being committed to celluloid's digital equivalent courtesy of the good folks at Six Finger Films.
The Kickstarter page has all of the info, plus a taste of what's in store. Check it out and if you're so inclined, spread the word.
Cheers,
Craig
It's alive... actually, it's been alive for a few weeks now, but my on-again/off-again relationship with Suicide Girls (yeah, there's at least a few big-ass metaphors in there) has made me remiss in posting it here. But one of my brain children—specifically, a chapter from my forthcoming (and long overdue) third novel—is being committed to celluloid's digital equivalent courtesy of the good folks at Six Finger Films.
The Kickstarter page has all of the info, plus a taste of what's in store. Check it out and if you're so inclined, spread the word.
Cheers,
Craig
Rare First Sedition
In a sort of backward approach to commemorating Banned Books Week, I'm reposting one of my favorite curve balls: a 'book review' I wrote for the Santa Barbara Independent, which originally appeared on June 24, 2004.
In anticipation of our forthcoming Independence Day, I took to spelunking the political science shelves for some appropriate reviewing material. Imagine my complete lack of surprise when confronted by a wall of inflammatory volumes from both the Left and the Right, written with crystal-clear hindsight and assailing the evils of the opposite end of the political spectrum, asserting the corruption of mass media by the other party, along with the occasional Green, Anarchist, or Libertarian author insisting that every other viewpoint has it wrong.
One of the most compelling books I did find was by far the most seditious. While not stating any party affiliation, the author pulls no punches in the opening pages by succinctly declaring the duties of a government, and the rights of the people should a government be derelict in its duty: "Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, [italics mine] and to institute a new Government." Later in the same paragraph, he states, "It is their Right, their Duty, to throw off such Government, [again, the italics are mine] and to provide new Guards for their future Security." In our post-9/11 America, this is a title that I'm absolutely certain would have me detained (at best) by airport security were I to quote from it aloud in conversation at a check-in gate.
In The Declaration of Independence (Cato Institute Edition, paperback, 60 pages, $4.95), author Thomas Jefferson departs from the current political debate with his assertion that a change to the existing political system is not enough; rather, it is the obligation of the governed to build an entirely new system once the old one fails in its duties to the people. Using simple, clear, and rational language, Jefferson enumerates the crimes of his government and its leader in order to quantify the aforementioned dereliction of duty. Jefferson states, "He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous of Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a Civilized Nation." And later, "A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People."
This is a bold premise, but what makes it especially compelling is that Jefferson does not come across like some lunatic demagogue. Quite the contrary, a close read reveals him to be idealistic almost to the point of naive. When he states, "all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" he makes it clear that a government does not grant any rights to its people, rather, the people erect government to protect the rights they are born with and under no circumstances can be denied, and his vision of unalienable rights is so vast that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are only among those rights.
Equally striking is Jefferson's notion that just as the government is accountable to its people, its people are accountable to those populations outside of their own society. "...decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." Read that again. Decent respect to the opinions of mankind. That runs absolutely contrary to our own current administration's dismissal of world opinion regarding our current foreign policy.
After a close read of the Declaration of Independence, I can't help but admire Jefferson for envisioning a place where meat-eating sport hunters, vegetarians, Burning Man participants, born-again Christians, homosexuals, and middle-class suburban families can coexist, fully acknowledging each others' God-given rights, united in their duty to create a government to protect those rights. With all of the finger-pointing, mass-media noise, and pre-election hysteria, Jefferson's road map for a republic is a breath of fresh air. It will be interesting to see if his ideas can be put into practice, and to see if such a place can truly exist.
Fight the Power.
-Craig
In a sort of backward approach to commemorating Banned Books Week, I'm reposting one of my favorite curve balls: a 'book review' I wrote for the Santa Barbara Independent, which originally appeared on June 24, 2004.
In anticipation of our forthcoming Independence Day, I took to spelunking the political science shelves for some appropriate reviewing material. Imagine my complete lack of surprise when confronted by a wall of inflammatory volumes from both the Left and the Right, written with crystal-clear hindsight and assailing the evils of the opposite end of the political spectrum, asserting the corruption of mass media by the other party, along with the occasional Green, Anarchist, or Libertarian author insisting that every other viewpoint has it wrong.
One of the most compelling books I did find was by far the most seditious. While not stating any party affiliation, the author pulls no punches in the opening pages by succinctly declaring the duties of a government, and the rights of the people should a government be derelict in its duty: "Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, [italics mine] and to institute a new Government." Later in the same paragraph, he states, "It is their Right, their Duty, to throw off such Government, [again, the italics are mine] and to provide new Guards for their future Security." In our post-9/11 America, this is a title that I'm absolutely certain would have me detained (at best) by airport security were I to quote from it aloud in conversation at a check-in gate.
In The Declaration of Independence (Cato Institute Edition, paperback, 60 pages, $4.95), author Thomas Jefferson departs from the current political debate with his assertion that a change to the existing political system is not enough; rather, it is the obligation of the governed to build an entirely new system once the old one fails in its duties to the people. Using simple, clear, and rational language, Jefferson enumerates the crimes of his government and its leader in order to quantify the aforementioned dereliction of duty. Jefferson states, "He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous of Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a Civilized Nation." And later, "A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People."
This is a bold premise, but what makes it especially compelling is that Jefferson does not come across like some lunatic demagogue. Quite the contrary, a close read reveals him to be idealistic almost to the point of naive. When he states, "all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" he makes it clear that a government does not grant any rights to its people, rather, the people erect government to protect the rights they are born with and under no circumstances can be denied, and his vision of unalienable rights is so vast that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are only among those rights.
Equally striking is Jefferson's notion that just as the government is accountable to its people, its people are accountable to those populations outside of their own society. "...decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." Read that again. Decent respect to the opinions of mankind. That runs absolutely contrary to our own current administration's dismissal of world opinion regarding our current foreign policy.
After a close read of the Declaration of Independence, I can't help but admire Jefferson for envisioning a place where meat-eating sport hunters, vegetarians, Burning Man participants, born-again Christians, homosexuals, and middle-class suburban families can coexist, fully acknowledging each others' God-given rights, united in their duty to create a government to protect those rights. With all of the finger-pointing, mass-media noise, and pre-election hysteria, Jefferson's road map for a republic is a breath of fresh air. It will be interesting to see if his ideas can be put into practice, and to see if such a place can truly exist.
Fight the Power.
-Craig
Craig's Review of "The Dark Knight"
Holy. Fuck.
-Craig
P.S. If you're wondering whether that's a good or bad "holy fuck," let's just say it's only bad if you're Jack Nicholson.
Holy. Fuck.
-Craig
P.S. If you're wondering whether that's a good or bad "holy fuck," let's just say it's only bad if you're Jack Nicholson.
[Insert Catchy Title Here*]
*still drawing a blank
If I am to believe the myriad spambots pooping their little bot larvae into my email, then I'm in serious need of a bigger, harder... watch. Perhaps I underestimate their intelligence and the spammers actually know I pawned my Breitling Colt to pay the bills while writing the Handbook, years ago. On the other hand, it's just as likely these target marketing geniuses strap their wrist watches elsewhere than their wrists. I'm inclined to believe the latter, based on the quality of their pitches:
(cont'd.)
*still drawing a blank
If I am to believe the myriad spambots pooping their little bot larvae into my email, then I'm in serious need of a bigger, harder... watch. Perhaps I underestimate their intelligence and the spammers actually know I pawned my Breitling Colt to pay the bills while writing the Handbook, years ago. On the other hand, it's just as likely these target marketing geniuses strap their wrist watches elsewhere than their wrists. I'm inclined to believe the latter, based on the quality of their pitches:
(cont'd.)
Deus Ex Noir
I suppose it should be ex noctum or noctis. Maybe atrum. I don't know.
So anyway, in the midst of a schedule packed tighter than a hash smuggler's colon, I stole an evening of brief leisure time the other night. A couple of friends and I drove to the rendezvous point for the secret premier of the latest Dark Knight Returns trailer. You read that correctly. We drove. To see a movie trailer. The three of us went to a park in Daly City, as instructed on the "Why So Serious?" web site (it keeps getting better, doesn't it?). There, we joined a tribe of nomadic dorks who actually do this sort of thing for fun, while the rest of you spend your free time updating your Match(dot)com profiles or peeing through your locker grates onto the freshman chess club champion trapped inside.
Roughly a hundred and twenty-five people total showed up, most of them presumably leaving their parents' basement voluntarily for the first time in weeks. It was a lovely, warm Spring evening, and most everyone wore army surplus black festooned with Batman regalia; I counted sixty or seventy hardcore fans actually sporting Joker-esque clown make-up, a dozen clown masks, six or seven black trenchcoats and in all, maybe eight women.
At the stroke of 5:30, the clues went live on the web site and a hundred and twenty-five cell phones, laptops and pda's switched on in unison during this perfectly beautiful afternoon in the park. It was like Woodstock, only smaller and more socially awkward. And with grown men who collect trading cards and "action figures." And without Janis Joplin channeling your worst heartache years before you were born and without Jimi Hendrix setting fire to the national anthem and without chicks.
We began to move. There were landmarks to find, things to count, numbers to ascertain and website codes to decipher. The Homo dorkus travels in large packs to protect its lunch money. These packs move slowly. Its members have spent years hanging by their jockstraps from flagpoles and being snapped in the balls with coiled gym towels. We disengaged from the pack. We solved the clues ourselves. We went looking for the park with the cool kids to see if they'd let us hang out with them. We ended up at the theater, unable to deny our roots.
Everyone's preview pass was a Joker playing card, of which no two were alike. A pretty cool souvenir- mine looks like a Mayan deity as rendered by Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. The trailer was cool. Vertiginous crane shots of Christian Bale swooping down from Gotham's skyscrapers; explosions and catch phrases; Heath Ledger's high-pitched snarl; explosions and catch phrases. The high point of the evening for me, however, was the final clue. The last set of double-digits came from the number of colorful handprints on a fence- part of a children's mural outside of a daycare center. Find the fence, count the handprints, crack the code. Simple.
I must, absolutely must, meet the person who orchestrated all of this before I die. Because anybody, and I mean anybody, who can get seventy-five guys to smear on psychotic clown make-up and then spend twenty minutes, en masse, lurking outside a nursery school... well, that person is my absolute hero. No question. That kind of irony could melt the polar caps.
Two weeks before that covert salute to John Wayne Gacy, I was privileged to be among the authors honored at this year's 2008 Library Laureates Dinner, an annual fund raiser held by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. Each author was asked to give a five-minute speech to the attendees and, given the amount of crime writers in present- as well as the large audience of generous donors to the San Francisco Public Library- most of us spoke about our reasons for working within the genre and the larger significance of the library in our writing lives. Speaking about the genre and the library was easy (I culled a chunk of my speech from a history of noir fiction I had posted online some time ago); cutting my thoughts down to five minutes was not. What follows is the full version of my speech to the donors:
I'm often asked about my attraction to certain morbid works of fiction and film. It's easy for me to dismiss most of those questions, as they zero in on a tiny subsample of my overall tastes, as even a cursory glance of my library will prove. I'm not a fan of violence for its own sake, and most of my favorite works are not very violent at all. But they are dark. Yeah, really, really dark. My attraction to such works belies my background: I was born in Texas and grew up in middle-class, suburban Southern California. I served six years in Catholic school. I was an altar boy and a boy scout. I played soccer and built model rockets. I read voraciously and I seldom got in trouble at school or with "the authorities." In all, I was given the circumstances and opportunities most parents can only hope for their children. Something never felt right to me, though.
My reading was purely escapist, science fiction and fantasy which, for the most part, embarrasses me now. I knew I wanted to write, and I wanted to write the kinds of books I enjoyed reading. I saw no point in stories that took place in the real world because I wasn't happy in the real world, however sunny and idyllic it might have looked, but I was too young to understand why, much less articulate. I had many reading epiphanies to come, some from my college classes, most on my own: Italo Calvino, Steve Erickson, T.C. Boyle, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett to name a few. But my first epiphanies came upon being paroled from Catholic school, when I headed straight for the forbidden fruit isle of my college bookstore. I picked up (for reasons I can't recall) Equus by Peter Schaffer and The Stranger by Albert Camus. The latter pointed me in a straight line to James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice; it was some time later I discovered Jim Thompson.
While I still don't consider myself in strict terms a crime writer, I can't deny that I've learned more from crime writers than any other; they get the most amount of milage from the simplest rules of writing. Nor can I deny that Cain and Thompson and the whole noir crew represented a huge awakening for me. I read science fiction to escape; I read noir to I learn what I was escaping from. Since then, my love of noir fiction- the classics and the neo-noir writers- has slowly crystallized over the years.
American morality was built on Puritan notions of God and the Devil; right and wrong have been black and white from the beginning. End of discussion. As America grew, a mythology emerged from our wild west that reflected these roots; the White Hat was always victorious over the Black Hat. Our cowboy mythology never considered stories where evil triumphed over good, much less conceived of stories where there was no good and there was no evil. The notion our world was built by the actions of men whom we chose to reward or punish for arbitrary reasons, with no thought of afterlife of eternal salvation or damnation well... that was too much for the Puritans' descendants who, by the 1950's, were enjoying a prosperity born of good triumphing over evil. The war was over, the White Hat was victorious (again); the Depression was long behind us and our optimism was at an all-time high. The middle class was growing and enjoying more leisure time than Americans had ever known. Horatio Alger would have been pleased.
But there was a secret buried beneath Ward and June Cleaver's lawn, and some people were cursed with knowing it whether they wanted to or not. In 1951, smack in the middle of Horatio Alger's dream, a humble, God-fearing gospel singer from Arkansas heard it whispered to him and wrote the words, "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die." The idea that maybe, just maybe, our right and wrong were all wrong, that we lived a blind, deaf and godless black universe, this idea was sprouting like scores of alien pods and taking its deepest and fiercest roots in dime store pulp fiction. Tales of criminals, cops and salacious bedroom activity that everyone thought of but no one spoke of. Printed on cheap paper and sold for a few cents, these penny dreadfuls were penned by a legion of hacks armed with Underwoods who had no idea what they were starting.
Hacks paid by the word didn't keep the heat on by honing their prose. They hacked out story after story; forget character development and plot arc. They made a living by steroid-pumping their prose with adjectives, adverbs, corny dialogue and deus ex machina endings.
A few writers set themselves apart with pulp stories which were, in fact, honed and stripped bare. The prose stood out because it was "hard boiled" to the essentials and proved perfect for mouthing the sentiments of tough, jaded cops who were cursed with knowing the secret: No amount of prosperity or prayer could erase that fact that we had segregated schools, diner seats and even drinking fountains; that women were regarded as second class citizens; that sometimes a man killed not out of greed, jealousy or rage, but simply because, as Johnny Cash knew, it seemed like a good idea at the time. The characters in these stories were far from saints. They were part of the problem, they embodied the ugly secret that Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver didn't want to hear. Wrecking balls are not pretty.
Without an honest, candid assessment of a problem, no solution will ever come to light. The American turmoil in the following decade was nothing less than an prolonged and painful solution to the dark secrets of the Horatio Alger years, the racial segregation, gender inequality and political corruption. But before Howl, before On the Road, before Martin Luther King and before Malcolm X, before any of it, America's dark secrets were given a voice in noir.
Jim Thompson is, in my estimation, the absolute high priest of noir. At his worst, he was a hack; at his best, he was a willing scribe serving at the pleasure of our secrets. In Pop. 1280, the corrupt sheriff pauses for a moment and says to the reader:
"I'd maybe been in that house a hundred times, that one and a hundred others like it. But this was the first time I'd seen what they really were. Not homes, not places for people to live in, not nothin'. Just pine-board walls locking in the emptiness. No pictures, no books- nothing to look at or think about. Just the emptiness that was soaking' in on me here.
And then suddenly it wasn't here, it was everywhere, every place like this one. And suddenly the emptiness was filled with sound and sight, with all the sad terrible things that the emptiness had brought the people to."
That's not a pleasant sentiment, and it's not one that's welcome in Horatio Alger's America. But some ideas are like that, they crack the rose-colored shell around our comfort zone, they remind us of the bigger world beyond our own, and that we share it with people who have ideas very different from ours and their own glass-enclosed comfort zones. Great ideas are like that, they're often dangerous:
The world is not flat.
We came from monkeys.
One God created everything.
There is no god.
Matter and energy are the same.
All men are created equal.
Slaves should be free.
Women should vote.
All expression should be free and protected.
The great heresies are the acid tests of history. Those societies which survive the upheaval of their home-grown dangerous ideas are the societies that leap forward, and this particular kind of history will never stop repeating itself.
I realize that I've made a large leap from pulp fiction to civil rights, from Jim Thompson to peace rallies of the sixties. I'll admit that yes, indeed, it's a very large leap, but I nonetheless believe it's a straight line. Consider that audacious connection between our great leaders and our lowbrow culture to be my own small contribution to this reserve of dangerous ideas.
That reserve is where we're seated right now. In the midst of our modern "marketplace of ideas," libraries remain the our first line of defense in preserving all ideas, regardless of who they serve or who they offend. Like all of us here, I believe that the protected expression of such ideas is my right, as inalienable as my own flesh and bone. But to stand here, in this institution which is dedicated to protecting these expressions at every cost, to be in the company of those gathered in support of that institution, that is not a right. It is a privilege and for it I am grateful.
-Craig Clevenger
18 April 2008
San Francisco, CA
I suppose it should be ex noctum or noctis. Maybe atrum. I don't know.
So anyway, in the midst of a schedule packed tighter than a hash smuggler's colon, I stole an evening of brief leisure time the other night. A couple of friends and I drove to the rendezvous point for the secret premier of the latest Dark Knight Returns trailer. You read that correctly. We drove. To see a movie trailer. The three of us went to a park in Daly City, as instructed on the "Why So Serious?" web site (it keeps getting better, doesn't it?). There, we joined a tribe of nomadic dorks who actually do this sort of thing for fun, while the rest of you spend your free time updating your Match(dot)com profiles or peeing through your locker grates onto the freshman chess club champion trapped inside.
Roughly a hundred and twenty-five people total showed up, most of them presumably leaving their parents' basement voluntarily for the first time in weeks. It was a lovely, warm Spring evening, and most everyone wore army surplus black festooned with Batman regalia; I counted sixty or seventy hardcore fans actually sporting Joker-esque clown make-up, a dozen clown masks, six or seven black trenchcoats and in all, maybe eight women.
At the stroke of 5:30, the clues went live on the web site and a hundred and twenty-five cell phones, laptops and pda's switched on in unison during this perfectly beautiful afternoon in the park. It was like Woodstock, only smaller and more socially awkward. And with grown men who collect trading cards and "action figures." And without Janis Joplin channeling your worst heartache years before you were born and without Jimi Hendrix setting fire to the national anthem and without chicks.
We began to move. There were landmarks to find, things to count, numbers to ascertain and website codes to decipher. The Homo dorkus travels in large packs to protect its lunch money. These packs move slowly. Its members have spent years hanging by their jockstraps from flagpoles and being snapped in the balls with coiled gym towels. We disengaged from the pack. We solved the clues ourselves. We went looking for the park with the cool kids to see if they'd let us hang out with them. We ended up at the theater, unable to deny our roots.
Everyone's preview pass was a Joker playing card, of which no two were alike. A pretty cool souvenir- mine looks like a Mayan deity as rendered by Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. The trailer was cool. Vertiginous crane shots of Christian Bale swooping down from Gotham's skyscrapers; explosions and catch phrases; Heath Ledger's high-pitched snarl; explosions and catch phrases. The high point of the evening for me, however, was the final clue. The last set of double-digits came from the number of colorful handprints on a fence- part of a children's mural outside of a daycare center. Find the fence, count the handprints, crack the code. Simple.
I must, absolutely must, meet the person who orchestrated all of this before I die. Because anybody, and I mean anybody, who can get seventy-five guys to smear on psychotic clown make-up and then spend twenty minutes, en masse, lurking outside a nursery school... well, that person is my absolute hero. No question. That kind of irony could melt the polar caps.
Two weeks before that covert salute to John Wayne Gacy, I was privileged to be among the authors honored at this year's 2008 Library Laureates Dinner, an annual fund raiser held by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. Each author was asked to give a five-minute speech to the attendees and, given the amount of crime writers in present- as well as the large audience of generous donors to the San Francisco Public Library- most of us spoke about our reasons for working within the genre and the larger significance of the library in our writing lives. Speaking about the genre and the library was easy (I culled a chunk of my speech from a history of noir fiction I had posted online some time ago); cutting my thoughts down to five minutes was not. What follows is the full version of my speech to the donors:
I'm often asked about my attraction to certain morbid works of fiction and film. It's easy for me to dismiss most of those questions, as they zero in on a tiny subsample of my overall tastes, as even a cursory glance of my library will prove. I'm not a fan of violence for its own sake, and most of my favorite works are not very violent at all. But they are dark. Yeah, really, really dark. My attraction to such works belies my background: I was born in Texas and grew up in middle-class, suburban Southern California. I served six years in Catholic school. I was an altar boy and a boy scout. I played soccer and built model rockets. I read voraciously and I seldom got in trouble at school or with "the authorities." In all, I was given the circumstances and opportunities most parents can only hope for their children. Something never felt right to me, though.
My reading was purely escapist, science fiction and fantasy which, for the most part, embarrasses me now. I knew I wanted to write, and I wanted to write the kinds of books I enjoyed reading. I saw no point in stories that took place in the real world because I wasn't happy in the real world, however sunny and idyllic it might have looked, but I was too young to understand why, much less articulate. I had many reading epiphanies to come, some from my college classes, most on my own: Italo Calvino, Steve Erickson, T.C. Boyle, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett to name a few. But my first epiphanies came upon being paroled from Catholic school, when I headed straight for the forbidden fruit isle of my college bookstore. I picked up (for reasons I can't recall) Equus by Peter Schaffer and The Stranger by Albert Camus. The latter pointed me in a straight line to James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice; it was some time later I discovered Jim Thompson.
While I still don't consider myself in strict terms a crime writer, I can't deny that I've learned more from crime writers than any other; they get the most amount of milage from the simplest rules of writing. Nor can I deny that Cain and Thompson and the whole noir crew represented a huge awakening for me. I read science fiction to escape; I read noir to I learn what I was escaping from. Since then, my love of noir fiction- the classics and the neo-noir writers- has slowly crystallized over the years.
American morality was built on Puritan notions of God and the Devil; right and wrong have been black and white from the beginning. End of discussion. As America grew, a mythology emerged from our wild west that reflected these roots; the White Hat was always victorious over the Black Hat. Our cowboy mythology never considered stories where evil triumphed over good, much less conceived of stories where there was no good and there was no evil. The notion our world was built by the actions of men whom we chose to reward or punish for arbitrary reasons, with no thought of afterlife of eternal salvation or damnation well... that was too much for the Puritans' descendants who, by the 1950's, were enjoying a prosperity born of good triumphing over evil. The war was over, the White Hat was victorious (again); the Depression was long behind us and our optimism was at an all-time high. The middle class was growing and enjoying more leisure time than Americans had ever known. Horatio Alger would have been pleased.
But there was a secret buried beneath Ward and June Cleaver's lawn, and some people were cursed with knowing it whether they wanted to or not. In 1951, smack in the middle of Horatio Alger's dream, a humble, God-fearing gospel singer from Arkansas heard it whispered to him and wrote the words, "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die." The idea that maybe, just maybe, our right and wrong were all wrong, that we lived a blind, deaf and godless black universe, this idea was sprouting like scores of alien pods and taking its deepest and fiercest roots in dime store pulp fiction. Tales of criminals, cops and salacious bedroom activity that everyone thought of but no one spoke of. Printed on cheap paper and sold for a few cents, these penny dreadfuls were penned by a legion of hacks armed with Underwoods who had no idea what they were starting.
Hacks paid by the word didn't keep the heat on by honing their prose. They hacked out story after story; forget character development and plot arc. They made a living by steroid-pumping their prose with adjectives, adverbs, corny dialogue and deus ex machina endings.
A few writers set themselves apart with pulp stories which were, in fact, honed and stripped bare. The prose stood out because it was "hard boiled" to the essentials and proved perfect for mouthing the sentiments of tough, jaded cops who were cursed with knowing the secret: No amount of prosperity or prayer could erase that fact that we had segregated schools, diner seats and even drinking fountains; that women were regarded as second class citizens; that sometimes a man killed not out of greed, jealousy or rage, but simply because, as Johnny Cash knew, it seemed like a good idea at the time. The characters in these stories were far from saints. They were part of the problem, they embodied the ugly secret that Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver didn't want to hear. Wrecking balls are not pretty.
Without an honest, candid assessment of a problem, no solution will ever come to light. The American turmoil in the following decade was nothing less than an prolonged and painful solution to the dark secrets of the Horatio Alger years, the racial segregation, gender inequality and political corruption. But before Howl, before On the Road, before Martin Luther King and before Malcolm X, before any of it, America's dark secrets were given a voice in noir.
Jim Thompson is, in my estimation, the absolute high priest of noir. At his worst, he was a hack; at his best, he was a willing scribe serving at the pleasure of our secrets. In Pop. 1280, the corrupt sheriff pauses for a moment and says to the reader:
"I'd maybe been in that house a hundred times, that one and a hundred others like it. But this was the first time I'd seen what they really were. Not homes, not places for people to live in, not nothin'. Just pine-board walls locking in the emptiness. No pictures, no books- nothing to look at or think about. Just the emptiness that was soaking' in on me here.
And then suddenly it wasn't here, it was everywhere, every place like this one. And suddenly the emptiness was filled with sound and sight, with all the sad terrible things that the emptiness had brought the people to."
That's not a pleasant sentiment, and it's not one that's welcome in Horatio Alger's America. But some ideas are like that, they crack the rose-colored shell around our comfort zone, they remind us of the bigger world beyond our own, and that we share it with people who have ideas very different from ours and their own glass-enclosed comfort zones. Great ideas are like that, they're often dangerous:
The world is not flat.
We came from monkeys.
One God created everything.
There is no god.
Matter and energy are the same.
All men are created equal.
Slaves should be free.
Women should vote.
All expression should be free and protected.
The great heresies are the acid tests of history. Those societies which survive the upheaval of their home-grown dangerous ideas are the societies that leap forward, and this particular kind of history will never stop repeating itself.
I realize that I've made a large leap from pulp fiction to civil rights, from Jim Thompson to peace rallies of the sixties. I'll admit that yes, indeed, it's a very large leap, but I nonetheless believe it's a straight line. Consider that audacious connection between our great leaders and our lowbrow culture to be my own small contribution to this reserve of dangerous ideas.
That reserve is where we're seated right now. In the midst of our modern "marketplace of ideas," libraries remain the our first line of defense in preserving all ideas, regardless of who they serve or who they offend. Like all of us here, I believe that the protected expression of such ideas is my right, as inalienable as my own flesh and bone. But to stand here, in this institution which is dedicated to protecting these expressions at every cost, to be in the company of those gathered in support of that institution, that is not a right. It is a privilege and for it I am grateful.
-Craig Clevenger
18 April 2008
San Francisco, CA
"What's the most you've ever lost in a coin toss?"
The above McCarthy quote has nothing to do with anything, other than that I'm stumped for a title for this quick update. From the Short Notice Files: Any San Francisco locals curious about Vincent Louis Carrella's Serpent Box, you're in luck. He's reading tonight at the Booksmith on Haight St. That's in just a couple of hours, I know. Leave work early. Or something.
I've been included among the gliterati at the 2008 Library Laureates Dinner, an annual fund raiser hosted by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. There have been some pretty heavyweight names on the list in the past, and this year I'll be in the good company of my local noir homies David Corbett, Sara Gran and Eddie Muller (the Czar of Noir).
Lastly, I just received an email that one of my favorite college writing instructors, Gerald Locklin, is retiring after over forty years of teaching. Locklin has quite possibly put more words on paper than Asimov and has more credentials than I could cite in one sitting. I always share one fond memory of Locklin's workshops: Class would begin, the two or three students whose stories were due took their turns on the chopping block. After each round of feedback from their classmates ("I loved your ending..." "I thought your main character needed more..."), Locklin would take the helm, speaking as fast as any cattle auctioneer: Okay... page one, first paragraph, you've got several dangling participles and a misplaced modifier in the last sentence. Second paragraph, check your verb conjugation. Second page, middle paragraph, you should use the subjunctive mood in your opening sentence. Bottom paragraph...
And so on. Creativity was no excuse for slacking on the basics. I've never forgotten that. Good luck with everything, Gerald Locklin.
That's all for now. Keep it between the ditches.
-Craig
The above McCarthy quote has nothing to do with anything, other than that I'm stumped for a title for this quick update. From the Short Notice Files: Any San Francisco locals curious about Vincent Louis Carrella's Serpent Box, you're in luck. He's reading tonight at the Booksmith on Haight St. That's in just a couple of hours, I know. Leave work early. Or something.
I've been included among the gliterati at the 2008 Library Laureates Dinner, an annual fund raiser hosted by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. There have been some pretty heavyweight names on the list in the past, and this year I'll be in the good company of my local noir homies David Corbett, Sara Gran and Eddie Muller (the Czar of Noir).
Lastly, I just received an email that one of my favorite college writing instructors, Gerald Locklin, is retiring after over forty years of teaching. Locklin has quite possibly put more words on paper than Asimov and has more credentials than I could cite in one sitting. I always share one fond memory of Locklin's workshops: Class would begin, the two or three students whose stories were due took their turns on the chopping block. After each round of feedback from their classmates ("I loved your ending..." "I thought your main character needed more..."), Locklin would take the helm, speaking as fast as any cattle auctioneer: Okay... page one, first paragraph, you've got several dangling participles and a misplaced modifier in the last sentence. Second paragraph, check your verb conjugation. Second page, middle paragraph, you should use the subjunctive mood in your opening sentence. Bottom paragraph...
And so on. Creativity was no excuse for slacking on the basics. I've never forgotten that. Good luck with everything, Gerald Locklin.
That's all for now. Keep it between the ditches.
-Craig
Serpent Box
My friend and I sling drinks in a post-1906 quake building, an historic ex-brewery within a Bermuda Triangle of upscale nightclubs. Places with no signs and big doormen manning the velvet ropes stretched out into panhandler territory. We're on the no-man's edge between San Francisco's Silicon Gulch and its self proclaimed advertising ghetto south of the Financial District. Friday afternoon, we have about an hour of serenety to peruse the newspaper for movie times or catch up with each other before the rush hits. I usually scroll through my voice mail and make a call or two, read a bit or fill a page of the Moleskine. The first regulars come through the door at the chime of six and that's our starter pistol; we won't stop moving until closing.
A couple of blokes take a seat by the taps. They're the first to arrive and the music's low, so I catch bits of their conversation (word to the wise: bartenders can hear you). They're talking books, one book in particular, a book by one of the blokes talking. Vincent Loius Carrella had just finished his first novel, Serpent Box, the story of Jacob Flint, a young faith healer growing up in a family of Pentecostal snake handlers in Leatherwood, Tennessee.
That was last summer. A couple of months ago, a galley shows up at my p.o. box. I read and am dumbstricken. I've made a number of attempts at doing book reviews before, and each one has died on the vine along with my every other effort to slap my byline on as much paper as I can. I've given up. I'm not a book critic and I work too slowly to produce anything other than short novels at a snail's pace. So, in lieu of an insightful dissection of Vincent's book, I'll simply repeat myself: I am dumbstricken. Serpent Box hit the shelves last month and I've been remiss in shouting it from the rooftops, for the reasons I've just stated. I've taken up in a shared office space across town where I hide during my non-bartending days. No phone, no internet. I'm still writing book number three and have shifted gears to working longhand. Things like this blog and all of my sundry tentacles on the internet get pushed aside as a result. Anyway, yeah, Vincent. Serpent Box. Faith healers and rattle snakes and some beautiful, beautiful musings on god and faith. Go forth and read.
I'm back on the Cult, once more. I'm teaching another six-week intensive so, if you've ever wanted to learn from a guy who takes longer and longer to write each book, refuses to use MSWord and uses a razor blade to edit hard copies, well, now's your chance.
That's all. I'll be gone for a bit. Then I'll be back. Etc.
Semper fi,
Craig
My friend and I sling drinks in a post-1906 quake building, an historic ex-brewery within a Bermuda Triangle of upscale nightclubs. Places with no signs and big doormen manning the velvet ropes stretched out into panhandler territory. We're on the no-man's edge between San Francisco's Silicon Gulch and its self proclaimed advertising ghetto south of the Financial District. Friday afternoon, we have about an hour of serenety to peruse the newspaper for movie times or catch up with each other before the rush hits. I usually scroll through my voice mail and make a call or two, read a bit or fill a page of the Moleskine. The first regulars come through the door at the chime of six and that's our starter pistol; we won't stop moving until closing.
A couple of blokes take a seat by the taps. They're the first to arrive and the music's low, so I catch bits of their conversation (word to the wise: bartenders can hear you). They're talking books, one book in particular, a book by one of the blokes talking. Vincent Loius Carrella had just finished his first novel, Serpent Box, the story of Jacob Flint, a young faith healer growing up in a family of Pentecostal snake handlers in Leatherwood, Tennessee.
That was last summer. A couple of months ago, a galley shows up at my p.o. box. I read and am dumbstricken. I've made a number of attempts at doing book reviews before, and each one has died on the vine along with my every other effort to slap my byline on as much paper as I can. I've given up. I'm not a book critic and I work too slowly to produce anything other than short novels at a snail's pace. So, in lieu of an insightful dissection of Vincent's book, I'll simply repeat myself: I am dumbstricken. Serpent Box hit the shelves last month and I've been remiss in shouting it from the rooftops, for the reasons I've just stated. I've taken up in a shared office space across town where I hide during my non-bartending days. No phone, no internet. I'm still writing book number three and have shifted gears to working longhand. Things like this blog and all of my sundry tentacles on the internet get pushed aside as a result. Anyway, yeah, Vincent. Serpent Box. Faith healers and rattle snakes and some beautiful, beautiful musings on god and faith. Go forth and read.
I'm back on the Cult, once more. I'm teaching another six-week intensive so, if you've ever wanted to learn from a guy who takes longer and longer to write each book, refuses to use MSWord and uses a razor blade to edit hard copies, well, now's your chance.
That's all. I'll be gone for a bit. Then I'll be back. Etc.
Semper fi,
Craig
The Job
The LitCrawl was a blast. Thanks to all who made it. That piece I read was a specimen taken from my work in progress, and I can't be certain it'll make the final cut, so I'm glad y'all had the chance to hear it. For those of you who missed the earlier short piece I had on this site a few weeks ago (The Numbers Game), the good news is that it's going to be part of the forthcoming anthology, San Francisco Noir 2, due out in the Fall of '08. In the interest of keeping the blood flowing through these virtual pages, I've enclosed a piece I wrote over the summer. The good folks at The Cult invited me to teach a six-week writing intensive (which I dragged out to eight), and at the end of the course, I felt compelled to say a few words of thanks to the students as well as round up a few stray ideas I had about the craft, which had not found an appropriate home in any of the preceeding lessons. I thought I'd share this particular sign-off with you here, and urge you to take a look at some of the workshops they're offering.</I>
In Closing, "Do the job."
27 June 2007
from Master's Program at Chuck Palahniuk's The Cult
First, I should chime to what so many have said but I've been saving, and that's a bigtime mondo thanks to Mark "VigPup." The other writers and I are guests here, but this forum is yours. You are the pulsing blood of this thing in ways beyond measure and to say, "I couldn't have done it without you" is only the beginning of the truth. You were born to do this. Thanks, very much.
Everyone else, first... I appreciate the many offers of support that came following my allusions of life taking a downturn. Forgive the melancholy. I'll spare you the specifics, less for personal reasons and more because they're boring and only pertinent to me. My life isn't harder than anybody else's. As I once told a friend of mine, I don't regret making the choices I made in order to become a writer, but I'm reminded of the consequences of those choices with greater and greater poignancy as I get older. There are some days when I feel less like a writer than other days, and sometimes those days come in very large blocks, when the repercussions of the literary life make their presence known in rapid succession.
If, for any reason, you're compelled to re-read the above paragraph, just replace it all with blah blah blah and it might make more sense.
As for offers of pints should I darken your particular zip code, I'll happily take everyone up on their respective company, but I'm buying.
If there's one point and one point only from these last two months that I feel compelled to reiterate, it's this:
The purest way to convey emotion in a story is to elicit that emotion from your reader.
Everything we've discussed, and everything else you've learned from other workshops and reading other writers, as well as everything you will continue to learn, should ultimately steer you toward that goal of craftsmanship, of painstakingly creating a character in a story which elicits an emotional reaction from your reader.
Are you angry? Does something perpetually piss you off and drive you to write? Good. Don't tell your reader how angry you are. Make your reader angry. Sad? In love? Heartbroken? Ecstatic? Don't tell this to your reader. They don't know you and won't give your life but a fraction of the thought they give their own. Instead, make your reader sad. Give them a character they can fall in love with (we've all been there). Break their hearts or make them laugh. That's far harder to do with a story, but it will ultimately distinguish you as a writer, as opposed to the screaming narcissistic "poet" at Cafe du Snob's Open Mike Night (you know, "poets," those coffee house clowns without a shade of understanding of rhyme, meter, structure and couldn't name ten great poets on a bet and think it all begins and ends with Bukowski) or the pretentious, self-righteous "literary" author who pens static, puffy stories of self-realization (because we all care...really) and mistakes obscure references and open-ended finishes for intelligence and nuance.
There are a few other scattered points on the craft that never found their way into any particular topic, either because they weren't pertinent or had somehow digressed into a rant (for you young'uns, rants become more common as you get older... they're outgrowths of "get off my lawn" or "turn that crap down"). Here's a few I thought worth including at the eleventh hour:
I got a PM asking me, "when do you know you're good?" The best I could come up with was, when you know that you're not good enough. When everybody around you is telling you that you're good, that you're great, but you know, with complete conviction, that you could be better. That's when you're good. The trick is, being good means never believing you've achieved it. Red Pen, Black Pen.
There are those cynical pinheads who will tell you that all the stories have been told, that there's no reason to bother trying to come up with anything new. Worse, there's that whole school of "there are only thirty-six plots" or variations on the number.
The only x-amount (finite number) of plots/all-stories-are-the-same ideology is bullshit. I believe there are a finite number of ideas to be explored in fiction, but those finite ideas are finite because of their potential for endless exploration. Some themes are universal, which is why we are drawn to them. To be universal does not mean to be the same. We all have had the experience of falling in love for the first time; each of our experiences will vary radically, with plenty of similarity but even greater differences. Each of us have a unique experience of falling in love, but the experience itself is universal.
Knowing the difference between what is the same and what is universal is how artists continue to be unique. Learning the difference.... that's the job.
Those who believe in the finite plot/it's-all-the-same bullshit are the same people who wonder why the likes of us read books more than once. Non-writers often ask me, "How can you read a book more than once? You already know how it's going to end, don't you?"
To which I respond, "How can you bother having sex more than once? You already know how it's going to end, don't you?"
We repeat the experience of a good story because it's just that, an experience, and any good experience is something we want to repeat. If you sit in front of the tube and watch some mindless reality crap for two hours, you are only different at the end of it in that you're two hours older with a few less neurons and dendrites to spare.
Walk to work, visit a friend, go drinking, fall in love, get your heart broken, change a flat tire in a rainstorm... these are experiences. As we age, our experiences accumulate and help shape us. The best fiction is something that we experience, and the power of the written word is that it can be a defining experience for us, just as much as any event that occurs in our real lives. Don't believe me? Ask someone who's been around for a while about the first time they read On the Road or saw Hitchcock's Psycho in its original theatrical run.
Stories are important. They make us human. We are hard wired for story telling, and stories are as responsible for our evolution as was fire and the invention of the wheel. Ancient cultures survived because of codes and beliefs conveyed via stories, tales that each generation passed on to the next, forming a collective memory that held a people together. Because the memories were preserved, newer generations could learn from the old and they could thus progress. Without storytelling, we'd all still be living in rocks and hunting with sticks, and not getting any better at it because we wouldn't be cave-painting our hunting stories for the others to learn from.
Anyone who says they think fiction is frivolous is at best a hypocrite and at worst a liar. Ever wonder why those people who refuse to read novels don't apply the same standard to the rest of their entertainment? Why do they listen to any music at all? Shouldn't they only listen to talk radio? Do they go to the movies or watch television? Do they watch nothing but documentaries? Somehow, I doubt it. Yet, for some reason, they regard fiction as frivolous. At the same time, they indulge in fiction day in and day out.
Every time we talk about our weekend- the camping trip, the sexual conquest, the ball game, anything- the facts are filtered through our own beautifully imperfect inner lenses. Anyone who believes otherwise, I invite to spend a day at their local courthouse. Observe a few trials and watch people on the witness stand and you'll see just how imperfect, how wholly inaccurate a person can be with "just the facts" under laboratory conditions. Between the facts and the filters is the truth, and truth is what the best fiction writers aim for. That's the job.
The privilege has been mine.
Semper fi,
-Craig
The LitCrawl was a blast. Thanks to all who made it. That piece I read was a specimen taken from my work in progress, and I can't be certain it'll make the final cut, so I'm glad y'all had the chance to hear it. For those of you who missed the earlier short piece I had on this site a few weeks ago (The Numbers Game), the good news is that it's going to be part of the forthcoming anthology, San Francisco Noir 2, due out in the Fall of '08. In the interest of keeping the blood flowing through these virtual pages, I've enclosed a piece I wrote over the summer. The good folks at The Cult invited me to teach a six-week writing intensive (which I dragged out to eight), and at the end of the course, I felt compelled to say a few words of thanks to the students as well as round up a few stray ideas I had about the craft, which had not found an appropriate home in any of the preceeding lessons. I thought I'd share this particular sign-off with you here, and urge you to take a look at some of the workshops they're offering.</I>
In Closing, "Do the job."
27 June 2007
from Master's Program at Chuck Palahniuk's The Cult
First, I should chime to what so many have said but I've been saving, and that's a bigtime mondo thanks to Mark "VigPup." The other writers and I are guests here, but this forum is yours. You are the pulsing blood of this thing in ways beyond measure and to say, "I couldn't have done it without you" is only the beginning of the truth. You were born to do this. Thanks, very much.
Everyone else, first... I appreciate the many offers of support that came following my allusions of life taking a downturn. Forgive the melancholy. I'll spare you the specifics, less for personal reasons and more because they're boring and only pertinent to me. My life isn't harder than anybody else's. As I once told a friend of mine, I don't regret making the choices I made in order to become a writer, but I'm reminded of the consequences of those choices with greater and greater poignancy as I get older. There are some days when I feel less like a writer than other days, and sometimes those days come in very large blocks, when the repercussions of the literary life make their presence known in rapid succession.
If, for any reason, you're compelled to re-read the above paragraph, just replace it all with blah blah blah and it might make more sense.
As for offers of pints should I darken your particular zip code, I'll happily take everyone up on their respective company, but I'm buying.
If there's one point and one point only from these last two months that I feel compelled to reiterate, it's this:
The purest way to convey emotion in a story is to elicit that emotion from your reader.
Everything we've discussed, and everything else you've learned from other workshops and reading other writers, as well as everything you will continue to learn, should ultimately steer you toward that goal of craftsmanship, of painstakingly creating a character in a story which elicits an emotional reaction from your reader.
Are you angry? Does something perpetually piss you off and drive you to write? Good. Don't tell your reader how angry you are. Make your reader angry. Sad? In love? Heartbroken? Ecstatic? Don't tell this to your reader. They don't know you and won't give your life but a fraction of the thought they give their own. Instead, make your reader sad. Give them a character they can fall in love with (we've all been there). Break their hearts or make them laugh. That's far harder to do with a story, but it will ultimately distinguish you as a writer, as opposed to the screaming narcissistic "poet" at Cafe du Snob's Open Mike Night (you know, "poets," those coffee house clowns without a shade of understanding of rhyme, meter, structure and couldn't name ten great poets on a bet and think it all begins and ends with Bukowski) or the pretentious, self-righteous "literary" author who pens static, puffy stories of self-realization (because we all care...really) and mistakes obscure references and open-ended finishes for intelligence and nuance.
There are a few other scattered points on the craft that never found their way into any particular topic, either because they weren't pertinent or had somehow digressed into a rant (for you young'uns, rants become more common as you get older... they're outgrowths of "get off my lawn" or "turn that crap down"). Here's a few I thought worth including at the eleventh hour:
I got a PM asking me, "when do you know you're good?" The best I could come up with was, when you know that you're not good enough. When everybody around you is telling you that you're good, that you're great, but you know, with complete conviction, that you could be better. That's when you're good. The trick is, being good means never believing you've achieved it. Red Pen, Black Pen.
There are those cynical pinheads who will tell you that all the stories have been told, that there's no reason to bother trying to come up with anything new. Worse, there's that whole school of "there are only thirty-six plots" or variations on the number.
The only x-amount (finite number) of plots/all-stories-are-the-same ideology is bullshit. I believe there are a finite number of ideas to be explored in fiction, but those finite ideas are finite because of their potential for endless exploration. Some themes are universal, which is why we are drawn to them. To be universal does not mean to be the same. We all have had the experience of falling in love for the first time; each of our experiences will vary radically, with plenty of similarity but even greater differences. Each of us have a unique experience of falling in love, but the experience itself is universal.
Knowing the difference between what is the same and what is universal is how artists continue to be unique. Learning the difference.... that's the job.
Those who believe in the finite plot/it's-all-the-same bullshit are the same people who wonder why the likes of us read books more than once. Non-writers often ask me, "How can you read a book more than once? You already know how it's going to end, don't you?"
To which I respond, "How can you bother having sex more than once? You already know how it's going to end, don't you?"
We repeat the experience of a good story because it's just that, an experience, and any good experience is something we want to repeat. If you sit in front of the tube and watch some mindless reality crap for two hours, you are only different at the end of it in that you're two hours older with a few less neurons and dendrites to spare.
Walk to work, visit a friend, go drinking, fall in love, get your heart broken, change a flat tire in a rainstorm... these are experiences. As we age, our experiences accumulate and help shape us. The best fiction is something that we experience, and the power of the written word is that it can be a defining experience for us, just as much as any event that occurs in our real lives. Don't believe me? Ask someone who's been around for a while about the first time they read On the Road or saw Hitchcock's Psycho in its original theatrical run.
Stories are important. They make us human. We are hard wired for story telling, and stories are as responsible for our evolution as was fire and the invention of the wheel. Ancient cultures survived because of codes and beliefs conveyed via stories, tales that each generation passed on to the next, forming a collective memory that held a people together. Because the memories were preserved, newer generations could learn from the old and they could thus progress. Without storytelling, we'd all still be living in rocks and hunting with sticks, and not getting any better at it because we wouldn't be cave-painting our hunting stories for the others to learn from.
Anyone who says they think fiction is frivolous is at best a hypocrite and at worst a liar. Ever wonder why those people who refuse to read novels don't apply the same standard to the rest of their entertainment? Why do they listen to any music at all? Shouldn't they only listen to talk radio? Do they go to the movies or watch television? Do they watch nothing but documentaries? Somehow, I doubt it. Yet, for some reason, they regard fiction as frivolous. At the same time, they indulge in fiction day in and day out.
Every time we talk about our weekend- the camping trip, the sexual conquest, the ball game, anything- the facts are filtered through our own beautifully imperfect inner lenses. Anyone who believes otherwise, I invite to spend a day at their local courthouse. Observe a few trials and watch people on the witness stand and you'll see just how imperfect, how wholly inaccurate a person can be with "just the facts" under laboratory conditions. Between the facts and the filters is the truth, and truth is what the best fiction writers aim for. That's the job.
The privilege has been mine.
Semper fi,
-Craig
LitQuake '07
They asked me if I'd read from the new book. It's a dog's light year from being finished but I said, sure. So, I'll be reading at the Make-Out Room with fellow MacAdam/Cage authors Angela Mi Young Hur, Susan Ito, Eric B. Martin, Janis Cooke Newman and Sheldon Siegel from 8:00-8:45 p.m as part of the Mission District LitCrawl, the finale of LitQuake:
Saturday, Oct. 13, 2007
8:00-8:45 p.m.
Make-Out Room
3225 22nd St.
San Francisco,CA
Free
21 and over
See you there.
-Craig
They asked me if I'd read from the new book. It's a dog's light year from being finished but I said, sure. So, I'll be reading at the Make-Out Room with fellow MacAdam/Cage authors Angela Mi Young Hur, Susan Ito, Eric B. Martin, Janis Cooke Newman and Sheldon Siegel from 8:00-8:45 p.m as part of the Mission District LitCrawl, the finale of LitQuake:
Saturday, Oct. 13, 2007
8:00-8:45 p.m.
Make-Out Room
3225 22nd St.
San Francisco,CA
Free
21 and over
See you there.
-Craig
MAY 2012
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MARCH 2012
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