Book Report

Just finished reading Chris Hedges' Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. It's a smaller book than its title would suggest. It also stirs up anger: I had to take breaks from reading (especially after the chapter exposing the porn industry). Not a page-turner, a mind-turner. Hedges is a journalist who's written from fiery centers in Gaza, Eastern Europe, and Central America.
I'm writing here because Empire of Illusion reveals what my 1968 people called "the system" and what other more current writers call "corporatocracy." We weren't sure what the system was; we felt it. A young reader said, of Riders, "When they talk about The System I think of The Matrix."
Hedges writes, "Power no longer lies with the citizens of the United States, who, with ratios of 100 to 1, pleaded with their representatives in Washington not to loot the national treasury to bail out Wall Street investment firms. Power lies with the corporations. These corporations, not we, pick who runs for president, Congress, judgships, and most state legislatures." This is a conclusion at the end of many pages of information. Does it still seem too general? I think so.
I'll keep the book for its bibliography, for its researched details on Halliberton, NAFTA, Andover, and many other works of "the ruling class" -- another term of my 1968 characters.

For Writers -- novelists, especially

Interactive!

What is the absolute best moment of writing a novel?

Is it, as many have said, the moment when it's finished and on its way to the publisher, the blissful experience -- not of writing, but of having written?

Or for you was it something else? Several different moments, perhaps?

Add to the list!

These are the tools necessary to begin writing: mine, at least. Pen, pencil, spiral bound notebook. Every book started here.

This is "Storm Over Denver" by Laura Carpenter, a good image of storms in general, I think, for artists and writers and other people who are just trying to get through.

Report on NY Bookstores

So far we've visited four:
1. Spoonbill & Sugartown
Wonderful name, and besides it's around the corner from Chad & Kara's apartment in Brooklyn, not far from the subway entrance. Small, with a large stock of used books. A lot of illustration and design books (picture book for adults? Great browsing!).
2. Idlewild Books
The idea is to specialize in travel. They're located near 5th Ave. on a second floor; the wood paneling smells wonderful as you climb the stairs. Lots of travel books, of course, and books from many countries, some in their original languages. I looked briefly at the section from Scotland (the Other country I know most about): two shelves, with new editions of Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Trainspotting, and a couple of histories, no poetry (Burns? Maybe), no other novels. Sparse.
3. McNally Jackson
in Soho, between Lafayette & Mulberry Streets. Big: approaching the size of a local Barnes & Noble, with two floors and a coffee & pastry section. Substantial fiction section, but I couldn't find anything by Sigrid Nunez, whom I get to meet at the Antioch Writers' Workshop in a month.Found and bought John the Revelator by Peter Murphy. With coffee, looking out a window, I saw two women: One (straw hat, stocky) was going through trash bags for aluminum cans. The other (stick-thin legs, hair colored white/black/blue/magenta) was doing a little slinky dance for someone who had a camera, presumably showing off the black suit she wore. I know who earns more, but I suspect the other is more useful to the neighborhood, in the long run.
4. Revolution Books
on West 26th, between 6th & 7th Aves. Here are my ideological friends: Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges (bought Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle). The store was recovering from the previous evening event: An Emergency Forum: Condemn the Israeli Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. The crowd was so large they had to put speakers outside so everyone could hear the panelists, including Hedges.
Also: here I met Clark Kissinger, a former SDS Leader and still working on The Revolution, I learned from the store's paper, which has the revolutionary rationale spelled out by Bob Avakian, owner of Revolution Books. More than I could take in.
Revolution Books was the most interesting store, and Kissinger (no relation to Henry) was a pleasure to talk with, and is the one most likely to read my book and stock more.

EACH OF THE FOUR BOOKSTORES ACCEPTED ONE COPY. So, New York friends and visitors, I urge you to go to one of the stores and ask for it. The other buyers were "busy," hesitant and a little grudging; authors apparently troop into bookstores all the time these days expecting their books to be snatched up with welcoming hands. I didn't think I expected that, but I left with the sense that the independent bookstores are struggling, maybe three steps away from people I also saw who were selling books from tables they'd put out on sidewalks.

One more thing: Up front in all four bookstores was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (and two more by Stieg Larsson) which is also paired with mine on Amazon. Clark Kissinger explained that publishers are paying bookstores for the space. WARNING: My book is not like Stieg Larsson's. None of my characters resembles a tormented, vengeful grown-up Pippi Longstocking or a methodical investigative journalist, and my book has no sadistic sex or torture.

Enough for now.

Report on the NY subways

The system works, in spite of the crowd. People flow down stairs and through turnstiles, rivers of people of all kinds -- such variety of people that they can't be classified, not by race, not by the languages they speak, not by clothing, not by age, though I keep trying, a foreigner's need to make sense of new experience perhaps. Disembodied announcements say what's coming, but noise from the human bodies muffles the loudspeaker's words. But the signs are clear; we figure out which train to take, wait till it stops, crowd in and hang on to bars if we can. Standing so close to strangers feels like intimacy; I get more interested in them than I want to be. A baby wants to climb out of her carriage and play, refuses to be amused by her plastic music-machine, so her parents are friendly to my effort to interact with her. She keeps all three of us busy for a few minutes, until a seat is vacated and she can climb on Mama's lap. A pregnant woman beautifully outfitted -- the gray stone in her ring perfectly matching the translucent gray in her tunic, her toenails silver, her black hair feathered and shiny -- moves to the corner of her seat, to get away from me or to rest her head as best she can; she looks miserable. The word "devastated" comes to mind. My sense of sympathy rises instinctively. I mustn't say anything, not even when we get off the subway and walk next to each other.
Next day: among the men are two who look to me like indigenous Central Americans (how do I know? Pictures in National Geographic, probably). Something about the large features, the sharp lines defining nose & mouth, the stockiness. One has the saddest face I've ever seen -- yes, sadder than the face of the elegant pregnant woman. It seems to me all the sadnesses I've ever heard about, especially those in Central America, are gathered in this young man. I know better than to make assumptions, much less say anything. But I manage to move my hand so he can grab the bar on his way out, and our eyes meet; there's a slight smile.