Lewis Warsh
Trip Street Press ($10)

by Gil Ott

Collage is uniquely suited to twentieth-century European and American culture. Its operation mimics the basic perceptual function of gestalt, yet its insistence on the independence of its parts renders wholeness elusive. Where this phenomenon may have been previously regarded as a simple trick, like an optical illusion, it became a means of challenging notions of high art and culture in the hands of Dada artists like Max Ernst and Tristan Tzara during the societal madness that was the First World War.

That subsequent decades have canonized the Dadaists and their work has not dimmed the appeal of collage. Most recently it has surfaced as an essential ingredient in postmodernism. Its appeal—evident in the popularity of writers like William Burroughs and Kathy Acker—parallels the difficulty of making sense of a highly diverse and multivalent world.

I admit it's a stretch to regard Lewis Warsh's excellent book of seven stories, Money Under the Table, from the perspective of collage technique. Warsh is a poet and publisher who has been active in New York since the '60s, and has had an enormous impact in defining the collective aesthetic that speaks for that time and place. Frank O'Hara and Paul Blackburn are more accurately his antecedents.

What puts me in mind of collage is the fragmented, paragraph-based construction in certain of these stories—"Crack," "Pickup on Tenth Street," and the brilliant "The Acting Lesson" in particular. It is not the technique of collage that is notable here, but the collage-like effect that these stories have on a reader. In Warsh's hands, narrative offers a thoroughly convincing surface which defies analysis. The extremities of alienation and free will, the making of one's way in a post-moral, urban world, are what drive the stories of Money Under the Table.

Unlike true collage, these stories are not made up of preexisting materials. But Warsh proves himself to be an excellent observer, and nothing seems invented. He takes concise fragments of the lives of those who inhabit his stories and carefully attaches them to a whole, his whole, a fabric.

The effect is dizzying. These inhabitants (I hesitate to call them characters because they are so present and real in their confusion) find meaning in the present fragment only, and project that meaning to cover their entire lives. They are troubled and too eager to understand, and so go off on self-destructive tangents, which ultimately verify their failures.

Consider this paragraph from "Crack:"

I felt like I was part of everyone I knew. I felt I was divided into parts and that I wasn't a person who could say "I did this" and really mean that it was "me." The "me" seemed like someone else, or everyone else, and not only that: not only did I have to keep the faces of everyone I knew suspended in my mind at all times, but I also had to keep track of the lights of the city, the cars, and even the music floating out at me from an open window. I felt I was a composite of all these things; the absence of any one thing was the source of my sadness, my regret. If you asked about "me" I would say: look at the light on the side of this building. Look at this tree.

It is people—the inhabitants—that these stories are about. I may not recognize myself in all of them, but I do recognize their uncertainty. The world is an overwhelming onslaught of influences against which they try to position and make sense of themselves. Adults, they seem not to have outgrown their own adolescence. They are unaware of their clumsiness in the world, being too wrapped up in a more interior conceit.

Take, for instance, the narrator of the title story. Sex for him is still a new thing ("I'd been a non-virgin for two years and could still name all the people I had slept with"), yet he is on the verge of discovering the possibility of erotic detachment. That discovery yields a mixture of pride and shame which sends his thoughts back to his first erotic encounters, his father's shady business dealings, and his older sister's estrangement during her own sexual awakening:

She had lost her virginity a few months before, or so I learned from reading her diary. She thought it was wrong for my father to take bribes. What difference did it make since we lived like paupers anyway?

Warsh's direct style, which allows for both detail and generalization, is an ideal vehicle for portraying this moral ambiguity. At all times the people in these stories either feel that they are in control, or they fake it. They believe in the existence of a larger picture, even when they contradict themselves or act in self-destructive ways. Their actions, conditioned by rationalization and denial, are wholly understandable.

Naturally, our sense of control, as readers, is intact. Like the moviegoer at a horror film, we wouldn't go down that dark hallway. Warsh's mastery of the present psychological moment emerges in the careful balancing of narrative clarity and moral ambiguity. Each story unfolds, piece by piece, to suggest an inevitable, seamless whole.

Rain Taxi Online Edition, Fall 1999 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 1999

Arno Schmidt
translated by John E. Woods
Green Integer ($12.95)

by Carolyn Kuebler

This, then, my credo : directed against all the literal=airy men and aged seekers of textual variants, bundles of stinkhorns in their crippled hands . . .

Weary of wandering wastelands of letters full of vacuous brainchildren and hidden in pretentious verbal fogs; disgusted with both aesthetic sweet-talkers and grammatical waterers of drink; I have resolved : to treat all who have ever written, whether out of love and hate, as alive and ever living ! - - -

Arno Schmidt, whose work is gradually being made available in English by the proficient and adventurous translator John E. Woods (also responsible for recent renditions of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain and Buddenbrooks) is one of German literature's best kept secrets. Like Joyce, who is the subject of the final piece in the book, Schmidt indulged in unorthodox punctuation, spellings, and grammatical experimentation; his work is also acerbic, somewhat misanthropic, maddening and entertaining—the result, most likely, of the cruel segment of German history he witnessed, and of his lively intelligence. All of the characteristics of his fiction are toned down somewhat in this collection of "radio dialogs"—and understandably so, as these were his concessions to entertainment, his way of making a living. The dialogs do, however, make use of his radiant passion for literature, as well as some of his odd, but effective, punctuation.

Radio Dialogs I, which is the first of three volumes of such plays, contains five of the many "Evening Programs" Schmidt wrote for Süddeutsche Rundfunk (South German Broadcast). It's hard to imagine this being anyone's "bread and butter work," much less to imagine a radio station airing such programs today, but this was the late 1950s/early '60s; there were far fewer TV celebrities to vie with. While the scripts of Radio Dialogs I are animated by characters identified merely as "A.," for example, "tends to lecture," or "1st questioner; firmly-scornful," what makes these discussions so lively is that the voices all seem to be those of the sometimes-cranky, often-irresistible Arno Schmidt himself. In these discussions, for which he wrote all the parts, Schmidt plays all of his devils and their advocates with equal ferocity. Despite their sketchy descriptions at the offset, all of the voices take on large personalities as they pontificate on, and pillory, or simply ramble playfully about Schmidt's favorite subjects: literature, literature, and literature.

In these five dialogs, Schmidt takes on 17th-century poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes, whom he admires for his "realism" and surfeit ("we have everything right here in Germany); Ludwig Tieck, one of the "Four Great Romantics"; Christoph Martin Wieland, whose name appears more than a couple times in his own fiction; and the prolific SF writer, or "Great Mystic," Karl May. He ventures across the channel for his pieces on the Brontës and James Joyce, and along the way comes up with some idiosyncratic definitions of realism, romanticism, and classicism. Telling tales of these authors' lives, arguing about the texts, and citing long passages from the authors' work, the dialogs destroy any tendencies toward idol-worship but still convey a deep respect and fascination.

The piece on the Brontë sisters comes as the greatest surprise in the collection. Schmidt's radio persona tells a good rendition of the sisters' childhood on the moors, and especially of their 1000-page creation of Angria & Gondal, but his fascination with "the Dove-Gray Sisters" becomes most obvious when he says, "What is left is for the final salvation of many a youthful genius who finds her- or himself in extremity. What is left is -- (with impressive emphasis) : the < Extended Mind Game > !" Clearly, an author's ability to actively engage his/her own mind, preferably in a vacuum of sorts, forms the basis of much of Schmidt's literary taste. When defending Karl May, often considered a second-rate kids' author, "A." brings up May's dreary childhood with a particular sense of awe, describing how, as a result of poor nutrition, May was actually blind for four years.

In his discussion of Finnegans Wake, the ultimate literary mind game, one character proposes the idea of a "readable German rendering" of this Irish novel, while the others offer both encouragement and guffaws. Apparently Schmidt himself endeavored some translations of Joyce's most difficult book, and this play seems closest to capturing Schmidt's own writerly dilemmas, as well as the dilemmas of Schmidt's translator. Skeptical "B." says, "the English original is totally out-of-the-question for the German reader ! - He can only hope that sooner or later, there will be a passably clear, humanely-paraphrased and richly commented Germanization that mediates for him some notion of what Joyce intended with FW." I imagine Woods cringing at these words, his own task in translating Schmidt's fiction being similar in its seeming impossibility. One voice describes Finnegans Wake as "well-equipped with sawtoothed prefixes, bedraggletailed with sly suffixes, croaking away pseudo-profoundly in err-earthly details"—not a bad description of some of Schmidt's fiction as well.

Woods makes his way through Joyce via Schmidt with grace and humor. The Radio Dialogs convey more than a "passably clear" vision into Schmidt's mind games, at the same time illuminating a pathway toward the even more dense and rewarding phrasings of his fiction.

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Rain Taxi Online Edition, Fall 1999 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 1999

Ed Wood
Four Walls Eight Windows ($9.95 each)

by Kelly Everding

Ed Wood has inspired an avid following—he even has a religion named after him, Woodism—and the reason may lie in his intense desire to weave fantastic tales. Four Walls Eight Windows has committed to reissuing the notorious director's pulp fiction, stories otherwise doomed to extinction or the dark closets of collectors. These reissues open up a whole new side of "the worst filmmaker of all time," a man intent on telling his story one way or another, despite his lack of taste or talent. But he did have talent, which is evident and enjoyable in these books that will appeal to the noir enthusiast and the retro wannabe alike.

Wood's titillating prose transports one back to a time when men wore hats and women's breasts torpedoed from their torsos. But there's a twist to Wood's noir sensibilities—or maybe a sashay. His hero isn't your average killer for hire and this story isn't your average tale of death and mayhem. Glen Marker is a man of many secrets: a cold-blooded killer, yet a man with a heart of gold. But what's his game? As he awaits the electric chair, Glen promises to weave a fantastic story that defies convention, that goes against the norm. As he says bitterly between drags on a cigarette, "Stock answers seem to be a format for all things in this world."

Glen doesn't play by the rules—not by the cop's rules, and not by society's either. He likes to wear women's clothing, but don't think this in any way interferes with his love life. Killer in Drag and Death of a Transvestite follow the harrowing life of Glen, a.k.a. Glenda Satin, as he/she escapes across country with the cops and the very thugs who hired him in pursuit. Wood's empathy with Glen/Glenda is not a secret: Wood wore women's clothing too, but he was all man. Glen/Glenda is a hero trapped in a conservative culture that rewards repression and punishes true feeling. Glen dressed up as Glenda is more himself, more empowered; as Glen, he has a more difficult time repressing Glenda's musical voice, her poise, her panache. He is, in short, more in drag as Glen than as Glenda.

Ed Wood may have published as many as seventy-five books in his lifetime—many of which he adapted into spectacularly unsuccessful films. But his drive and determination to entertain and to unlock the hidden sexuality, the duality, in every person rivals that of Reich or Freud. One needn't be a full-fledged Woodist to listen.

Click here to purchase Death of a Transvestite at your local independent bookstore

Rain Taxi Online Edition, Fall 1999 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 1999

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Beacon Press ($25)

by Jennie Chu

In this memoir of her treatment for depression following recovery from breast cancer, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick sets out to explore the poetics of therapy; in the process, the author, one of the founders of queer studies, examines her own sexuality—a topic she has heretofore been reticent about. Her chosen medium is a kind of "texture book" in which diary entries are interwoven with haiku, excerpts from her therapist's notes, and threads of dialogue between therapist and patient. Why this peculiar genre? "A texture book wouldn't need to have a first person at all, any more than weaving itself does," she explains. A Dialogue on Love, then, is meant as a complex fabric in which two different perspectives (that of Shannon, the therapist, and of Eve, the patient) become mingled in an interpersonal braid that twists and complicates the division between first person and second.

Despite the promise of its interpersonal scheme, there remains something unavoidably, self-centered about the whole book. Shannon's voice is always subservient to Sedgwick's needs; his "first person" is never really more than a therapeutic "second person" for Eve to talk to. But the book's self-centeredness has an even profounder basis. Simply to publish a memoir of one's own psychotherapy requires grandiosity of a certain kind—grandiosity closely linked to the sort of impulsive exhibitionism that drives much of confessional poetry. Sedgwick lets the reader in on some of her most private thoughts and experiences: her many bizarre, elaborate dreams ("Fascist takeover by the faculty committee organized to choose the Anglican martyr for the annual celebration"); her weird incestuous tendencies ("I am pathetically in love with my mother"); her longstanding obsession with masturbation ("from as far back into childhood as I can remember, I was somebody who, given the opportunity, would spend hours and hours a day in my bedroom masturbating"); her sex life with her husband Hal ("When I do it, it's vanilla sex, on a weekly basis, in the missionary position, in daylight, immediately after a shower"); even erotic daydreams involving her therapist ("fantasy about taking [his] socked foot and masturbating with it"). The result of so many disclosures is not exactly a tone of intimacy, nor is it altogether off-putting: if anything, the reader feels perplexed by the author's motivation—or is it compulsion?—to put affairs of so confidential a nature on such public display. The disclosures might be better understood if they served to elucidate Sedgwick's academic writing on sexuality, yet they have no discernible bearing on the politics of queer identity or the oppression of homosexuals. This absence of any meaningful connection between Sedgwick's work on gay studies and her own sexuality is never really examined in the book, and it only makes her erotic revelations all the more puzzling.

Sedgwick's style is as ostentatious as her confessionalism. She has a reckless tendency to mix abstractions with words that are almost cartoonish in their wacky sensuousness and puerile tone: "such wonder, such cheerful eagerness, such hilarious arias of uncertain agency, never feature in the S/M fantasies of my waking sexuality"; "Shannon's sunny, resilient, lightly slobbish ways are great in this kind of fine-honed high-hysterical crunch"; "there's some fun in being able to say all my meanest things to him, only slightly cloaked in the sad severity of free indirect discourse." The gaudy pageantry of Sedgwick's prose often diverts the reader's attention from the real issues at stake, much as it often diverts the reader's attention from the ideas in her scholarly work: it is difficult to get a sense of the true Eve Sedgwick. But the book hints at one point that Sedgwick's real voice has become distorted by a routine of psychological ventriloquism perfected over the years. "You articulate quite an elaborate inner space, full of all kinds of voices," she tells her therapist. "Not to say the voices don't come from anywhere, they do—but they don't come /directly/ from anywhere. There's a lot of time and echoey, experimental space for them to take on a life of their own." Here is a strangely apt description both of Sedgwick's idiom and of the artifice that has come to fill in for her self: elaborate, echoey, experimental, full of all kinds of voices that don't come /directly/ from anywhere but have weirdly taken on a life of their own.

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Gregory Benford
Avon Books ($20)

by Rudi Dornemann

Physicist/novelist Gregory Benford has written a nonfiction book that circles around the idea of "Deep Time"—that is, the future far beyond the planning horizon for most human activities. Benford's argument is that we should develop a habit of thinking in the very long term, of envisioning the distant effects of human endeavors.

He discusses four such Deep Time endeavors, either proposed or actual, in the course of the book. Two are projects with which Benford has been involved personally—the question of how to mark a proposed nuclear waste repository in the New Mexico desert with warnings that would still be understood 10,000 years from now, and the designing of a plaque to be attached to the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft. You might expect a science fiction writer like Benford to lead the reader through some interesting speculations on who the audience of these messages might turn out to be, and he does. But both projects eventually come down to questions of how to build messages that are their own Rosetta stones—able to teach their readers how to decipher them--and Benford develops these ideas provocatively.

The other two projects he describes don't fit as neatly under the book's subtitle, How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia, since they do not concern communicating specific messages. Still, the "Library of Life" and "Stewards of the Earth" proposals are imbued with a Deep Time perspective. The first concerns preserving biological information from animals, plants, even bacteria, that may soon be extinct. Ironically, here Benford proposes sending a message that will mean more to future eyes than it does to us, compiling a bank of living and frozen samples "to salvage biodiversity out of catastrophe." What we are unable to save in our time, he argues, we can at least preserve for the future to revive.

In Deep Time's final section, subtitled "The World as Message," the message becomes almost entirely metaphorical. Benford's subject is the conscious shaping the environment to sustain it (and humankind) into the future, and of all the projects he discusses, this is the one with the shortest timeline, offering results that could begin to be seen within a lifetime. He points out how, even in the prehistoric past, human activities have left their mark on the environment, and that very few places on earth have really been in an untouched "natural" state at any time in the last several thousand years. He proposes making carefully planned interventions in the natural world to reverse some of the unplanned side effects of past human activities. Benford backs up his arguments with intriguing facts and proposals that are surprisingly down-to-earth for all their potentially world-changing results—like dumping iron supplements into ocean water to stimulate algae growth which would then absorb some of the excess carbon dioxide in the air, or lightening the color of roads and roofs to absorb less heat in cities. As with the other projects outlined, this "Earth Stewardship" is the result of Benford's somewhat iconoclastic, perspective—a good start toward a Deep Time way of seeing the world and our place in it.

Rain Taxi Online Edition, Fall 1999 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 1999

Howard Mandel
Oxford University Press ($26)

by Jon Rodine

Future Jazz is actually an unfair title for a book like this. "Future" implies a kind of crystal-ball agenda, an aficionado's index to what's ahead, or maybe a look at who's working on the edge of the modern jazz universe. But a good deal of Howard Mandel's book isn't about the future at all, and many of the musicians he profiles either refuse to call themselves "jazz" players or else resist the definition by the very nature of their music (or both). This slightly skewed title seems to reflect a small identity crisis in an otherwise strong book.

Mandel is a veteran music journalist (and teacher) with great taste and integrity, who's covered jazz and related topics in respected formats from Downbeat and Wire magazine to the Village Voice and National Public Radio. His book is a culmination of fifteen-odd years worth of interviews and journalistic sketches, from the early and mid-'80s until the present, covering a wide array of music and musicians. There are big stars like Wynton Marsalis and George Benson; successful-but-not-household-name figures like Cassandra Wilson and David Murray; many other veteran practitioners of creative, improvised or avant-garde music in the U.S. (New York City in particular). There are klezmer musicians and club owners; orchestra conductors and blues players; opera composers and record producers; bandleaders and soloists like Henry Threadgill, John Zorn, Muhal Richard Abrams, Geri Allen, John Scofield, James Newton, and so on. Mandel has a clear affection for those on the fringes, players expanding the boundaries of sound and organized music, making brave and dedicated advances, and it makes sense that his love for jazz was nourished in the revolutionary atmosphere of the '60s and early '70s, the days of John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and Cecil Taylor; days when rock and funk and soul and "outside" jazz were happening all at once, changing minds and blurring definitions.

The book, then, seems to work best when it functions as an extension of those years of discovery, as a kind of Howard Mandel anthology. It's accepted that such a collection, being a record of individual passions, doesn't need to "make sense"; it calls for variety and a wide appetite. But Future Jazz is sectioned off categorically and given chapter headings that seem to strive for more than that; it seems to be trying to make a broader, more organized statement about jazz and the American "music scene," as fragmented and diverse as it is. In the process, he creates a confusing amalgam of the last fifteen years, with a sense of time and significance that seems a little askew. Statements and observations directly from the '80s are intertwined with those from the last two or three years, almost with a sense of concurrency. Groups that broke up years ago (like the Microscopic Septet) or projects like New York's 1980s "Black Rock Coalition," whose influence has definitely diminished with time, are discussed hand-in-hand with current accomplishments, or discussed alongside the more significant work and ideas of pioneers and veterans like guitarist John McLaughlin or pianist Hank Jones. The career of keyboardist Don Pullen is examined at length, with no mention of his early and tragic death from lymphoma within recent years. And the section on Cassandra Wilson, whose career in the '90s has surely earned this singer a significance and identity all her own, is sandwiched between two pieces discussing Steve Coleman and guitarist Vernon Reid, two of her compatriots from the early days, focusing chiefly on Blue Skies, her album from eleven years ago. And as eloquent and sharp as a twenty-two-year-old Wynton Marsalis was back in 1984 (and he was), is his commentary deep enough to deserve being used as a philosophical frame for the rest of the volume, for two decades of music?

Nonetheless, there are strengths in the book that aren't diminished by questions of purpose or chronology. Mandel is an acute listener who allows the musicians say what they need to say, without getting embroiled in the kind of artist/critic debate that some writers love. His own commentary reflects that kind of respect, and also has some compelling moments in unexpected places, like his brief take on the significance of one John Zorn saxophone solo in the midst of a Seder celebration at New York's Knitting Factory.

Mandel is, most importantly, a champion of experimentation and integrity, two qualities not naturally rewarded by the American music industry. Although Henry Threadgill talks to the author about the lack of a "shared repertoire" among musicians of his generation, Mandel's book—whether it is, in the end, more story or theory—is admirable for seeking out common threads of purpose within the indefinable world of "jazz" in America, thus reducing distances between players and their sometimes isolated pursuits. Whether the book is called Future Jazz or The Collected Howard Mandel may not matter in the end; his work, which reveals his vast respect and appreciation for the music, can contribute to the music world as much as the songs and sounds of the musicians themselves.

Rain Taxi Online Edition, Fall 1999 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 1999

Carolyn Kinder Carr
Smithsonian Institution ($30.95)

by Elizabeth Culbert

Stop for a moment to imagine the abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollack at work on a canvas. More than likely, that image in your head is based on a Hans Namuth photograph. Between July and October of 1950, Namuth made more than 500 photographs of Pollack loosely tossing paint from his brush onto a canvas spread over the studio floor. When several of these images appeared on the cover and pages of Life magazine, the painter was viewed by the masses in the act of creating. Namuth's portraits elevated Pollack to near-heroic stature. Beginning with these photographs, and in going on to capture images of artists, architects and writers through the late-1980s, Namuth drastically influenced the public's vision of the twentieth century's greatest American artists.

Hans Namuth: Portraits is a beautiful and thorough collection that not only represents the seminal Namuth portraits, but also reveals his breadth of subject. The book comprises a portfolio of images recording one of the great cultural periods in American history, including portraits of Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Lee Krasner, Jasper Johns, Joseph Albers, and Hans Hoffman. But the real pleasure is in finding some of Namuth's less familiar work; his portraits of Julia Child, Edward Albee, Jerome Robbins, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Louis I. Kahn are masterful and intimate. Extensively researched, the book provides a detailed account of Namuth's life in an informative chronology and a scholarly essay by Carolyn Kinder Carr of the National Portrait Gallery. It expands our understanding of his subjects and the connections he felt among artists working in various genres and media.

In the years following World War II, American art's sudden gain in national and international stature drew the attention of the general public and raised its interest in the artists' private lives. Hans Namuth's portraits coincided with this rise of the artist as celebrity; they fed the public's fascination and understanding. Many of Namuth's commissions and exhibitions were generated by the nature of his subject, and Carr addresses this undeniable link between fame of subject and fame of photographer. She notes that his interest in photographing artists and intellectuals seems to have little to do with commercial aspiration and more with personal identification with the community of artists, writers, and musicians he photographed. Since his early days in Europe, Namuth had sought out artists and intellectuals and he relied on his charm and ability to create a rapport with them.

After a brief stint in the Midwest, where he first settled after arriving in the U.S. in 1941, Namuth moved to New York. His work was scattered until a chance meeting with Jackson Pollack led to a group of images about the creative process. Namuth knew these were important to his development as a photographer and he positioned himself to "capture the contemporary masters at work." He pursued this for the rest of his life. The creativity of his subjects fueled his own creativity; his interest in the symbiotic relationship between an artist and his or her work became the basis of a similar symbiosis in his own work.

Namuth was uncomfortable with the idea that people might view him as carrying out a paid assignment when he in fact felt personally compelled by his subjects and believed that he and they were "on common ground." He depended on the development of personal relationships with his subjects. He commented: "I must confess that I personally consider many of the photographs of these men and women the fruits of great rapport. They bring good memories and offer a challenge too. It still fascinates me to go out there and meet new subjects, and try to persuade him of her to become entrapped —forever, I like to think—in my mystical little black box."

Stylistically, Namuth used a minimum of tricks to create succinct portraits that reveal the artist's personality. He mythologized and humanized his subjects simultaneously; they were creators, yet they were mortal and susceptible to vice and folly. His portrait of Elaine and Willem de Kooning was not so much about Willem's Woman painting tacked to the wall behind them, but about the relationship between the two artists. Elaine, sitting to the side of the canvas, is as distracted as Willem is confrontational. She later commented that she wanted to be in the photograph to prove that she "did not pose for these ferocious women," but when she saw the image, she "was taken aback to discover in Hans's photograph that [she] and the painted lady seemed like one flesh."

Namuth will be remembered as the great chronicler of the New York art scene of the '50s and '60s, but he was not a passive recorder. His passion for contact with creative personalities drove him to actively participate in this world, using his talents for establishing friendships and making pictures. He worked from a vantage point few could rival. Namuth's goal was to "create an iconic portrait that would speak to present and future generations." This collection of portraits demonstrates his consistent success.

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Headlands: The Marin Coast at the Golden Gate
Text by Paul Metcalf
University of New Mexico Press

by Lucia Berlin

I have looked at this book often since Paul Metcalf died to bring back the day I spent walking in the Marin Headlands with him. Paul had come out to the Arts center there for the book-signing party. He wrote that he was staying on for a few days, asked me to drive over from Oakland. We'd hike, talk, have lunch in Sausalito, and he'd give me a copy of the book.

I knew that he wasn't happy with Headlands, a collaboration published in August of 1989. Years later he said that it wasn't included in his collected works as it was "just a book of photographs." Before it came out he had written to me about being "indeed restrained." He said, "this was a subject of much discussion amongst us. For one thing I was writing on consignment, for another I was working in collaboration, for still another I was working with the prospect that a commercial press might publish us. All of these were new to me. And yet it's funny: before accepting the book the publisher sent it out to two readers, for opinions. One of them raved about it, said it was bold and marvelous; the other said the text was wild and formless, not at all scholarly, and the whole thing should be rejected . . . so my radical friends will find me conservative ('Jeez, has Metcalf sold out?') and the conservative reader will find me radical . . . through all the shoals of collaboration, editors, etc. I found a middle course."

I left Oakland on a rainy cold September day. Crossing the Golden Gate I saw that the Headlands was covered with heavy fog. I was sorry, as he had said we would explore the area. But the moment I drove out of the tunnel that leads into the wilderness the fog lifted—dazzling magic, like when movies turn from black and white to color. (In the book he refers to the tunnel as a "rite of passage.") The cities, the traffic, the rain, and the noise had all disappeared.

Perhaps my memory of this day is completely affected by that surreal sunlit beginning. I know there must have been a few people, later, near the bridge, or at the ranger's station, but for most of the day and certainly as I drove through the hills to the center, there was not a car, not a person to be seen. Anyone planning to come over must have been discouraged by the fog and rain.

Paul was staying at the center, which used to be Fort Cronkite's army barracks. Only one old car there, and not a soul anywhere, except for Paul, standing on a hill above the barracks with a wide grin and a wave. He wore boots and jeans, suspenders and a plaid flannel shirt. A gentle giant of a man, he walked ahead of me, gesturing with big swooping motions. I remember him large against the sky or the tawny hills or the ocean. I saw him as I always felt him and his work—larger than life—although sometimes that day, when he'd be hopping from stone to stone in a brook or scrabbling up a hill, he would seem like a lanky adolescent kid, guffawing at the bad jokes we called out to one another, many we had already told in letters. (Our correspondence wasn't very literary.)

As we walked he told me about where we were walking. This was magical too. The place came alive as he filled it in, came into focus and detail, like a photograph in developing fluid. That sweet hollow was the site of the first farm house, Silva's, a Portuguese who grew artichokes. Those eucalyptus were brought from Australia in 1850. The oaks were here 5,000 years ago, when the Miwok tribe lived here. Acorns were their main staple. He told me—sang to me?—the names of plants that grew here: Hog fennel, Baby blue-eyes, Zigadene, Milk maids, Hound's-tongue, ripgut brome. He told me how the land itself was formed: Basalt erupted near the Marquesas, floated east until it attached itself to the mainland. He listed the migrations that began with the Russians, the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the English. He could have talked about the Headlands for days. I wondered if he had stayed on because it was hard to leave a place he had come to know so well.

Inside a dark, damp bunker his actor's voice echoed against the walls, brought to life the soldiers crouching in them, watching for the enemy. The government had been trying to arm this spot ever since the Civil War, up until the last powerful Nike Missile was removed in 1974. It seems amazing that the land itself was not abused. The military, over the years, had so wanted their gun batteries and missile launchers to be secret that it is still possible to think that they were never there. They are built into the land and by now grass and wildflowers have grown over them. The Nike launch pad is a mysterious cement circle fringed with Scotch broom, a Nascar eye on the top of a hill. The few visible surfaces are covered in graffiti.

It was in Battery Townsley that we looked straight out to sea and sky, to the spot just beyond the bay. Paul told me that after Pearl Harbor the soldiers were on fifteen-minute alert, that for at least a year 150 men lived within the battery. It seemed a shame somehow that no-one ever attacked them after they went to all that trouble. So I was pleased when Paul told me that on December 24, 1941, nine Japanese submarines were right out there where we were looking, with orders to bombard San Francisco with everything they had. Only two hours before this was to have occurred, Admiral Osami countermanded the order.

With his eyes fixed on that very same blue-and-blue spot of sea and sky Paul said, "In 1597 Sir Francis Drake's ship stood off there, just past the Farellones. He waited fourteen days for the fog to lift. His chaplain wrote that the fog was 'vile, thicke and impenetrable.' It wasn't until 1775 that the Spaniard Juan Manuel de Ayala would sail his ship beneath the Headlands and into the bay."

Looking back, that rectangle of sky and sea reminds me of a computer screen. Certainly neither of us had a computer then, nor would we ever take to them later. But I see it now as a sort of tabula rasa where his writing was taking place. I knew then that I was hearing how he wrote.

Headlands is a beautiful book, especially the photographs of the land itself. The physical and military history is fascinating. It is written in a linear, conventional manner. The details of place, the vitality of each person described are what make it shimmer. It is unmistakably a text by Paul Metcalf. Every once in awhile, the page shoots out sparks, like falling stars, and I can hear his nasal New England drawl: "sooty shearwater, marbled godwit, sanderling, willet. Ruddy duck, scoter and coot."

Many more birds are to be seen there, although I remember only hawks and gulls. Circling turkey vultures. He said he figured we'd starve if we didn't head out soon for lunch.

Rain Taxi Online Edition, Fall 1999 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 1999

by Jeffrey Shotts

An unlikely figure rose to the mound to throw out the first pitch at the Saint Paul Saints baseball game on Friday, August 27, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Utah's Poet Laureate, David Lee, had not thrown a pitch in an official arena for thirty years, when he played semiprofessional baseball as the only white player to ever play for the Negro League Post Texas Blue Stars and pitched for the South Plains Texas League Hubbers. Since his baseball days, Lee has raised pigs, taught literature, and has written several books of poetry, including A Legacy of Shadows: Selected Poems and News from Down to the Cafe, both recently published by Copper Canyon Press.

Though a strange place to find poetry readers, Lee appeared at the Saints game and threw out the first pitch to promote his new books, which chronicle the lives of farmers and townspeople in a vernacular, rural dialect. Lee's plainspoken humor is winning him a wide audience, one that might have shied away from Wordsworth and Tennyson in the classroom. "I'm often quoted for saying, 'I write for people who think they don't like poetry.' While I may not have said that, I don't disagree with it," Lee said.

Lee has been making his way through the Midwest to promote his work in libraries and bookstores—traditional outlets for poetry—and at state fairs and now a minor league baseball game. With Copper Canyon Press, Mary Bisbee-Beek, publicist at Beeksbee Books in Saint Paul, has orchestrated Lee's tour. "My thinking in bringing Dave out to the Saints game was that his poems are about the people who attend these games," Bisbee-Beek said. "A lot of these people come from the farm and come from small towns. These are not necessarily people whose forebears were urban dwellers, even if they are right now. I think Dave's poems can speak to them."

Lee and Bisbee-Beek both acknowledged the difficulty in getting people to listen to poetry in venues like baseball games and state fairs. For Lee, this can be frustrating. "I have no clue how to prepare for an event like this, and the same goes for a state fair," he said as he indicated the waves of people bustling past the table where Bisbee-Beek hoped to sell books and Lee signed a few copies. "This genuinely terrifies me: the space is not enclosed, I can't see my audience, and they're not sitting, they're moving. But I'm always willing to give it a shot."

Such tactics to promote poetry to a wider, more general audience than it usually commands are rare, and sometimes meet with limited success. Few people buy books, and few people seriously listen. "It can be a disappointment," Bisbee-Beek admits. "But it's an experiment."

Lee believes that it's a worthy experiment, however, and that the kind of poetry he creates can meet a social and cultural need. "I think there is a need for an oral tradition, and a need right now to return to a narrative form in poetry, to get back to the idea of story for the sake of story, the story as art," Lee said. "That's where I'm aiming and betting my life, and I hope this is what people are looking for."

DAVID LEE'S ONLINE TRAVELOGUE

1st Phase: The Northwest

SEATTLE

Dawn 2 p.m. interview reading Seattle @ Y

(know I get nervous, get a head start)

Scenic over bay bird call great walk madrona/cedar Radio-Iowa Interview

late p.m. storm—lightning—2 struck in Seattle

One of my favorite places on earth to read is Open Books on 45th. Great book store that stocks only poetry. But it's small. So they moved the reading to the downtown library. Around 30 showed; recognized maybe 4 to 6 from the regular Open Books audience. They were a good audience—sold quite a few books. The key is, one down. The rest to go. We're launched!

BELLINGHAM

Spent a great half day with Gerald the pig, in his pen, filming a TV clip to be used the week of the fair. May be foreboding since I'm working a ton of state fairs later this month. Gerald was wonderful—a very gregarious, well-behaved pig who knew he was beautiful and was very proud of it.

Several friends from Utah showed up at the reading. Wow. Come 1000 miles to read before friends from Utah! They included Rob Van Wagoner who just published Dancing Naked—which may be the best first novel I've seen in five years.

Reading: Village Books - Rob/Brenda Miller

Great book store, terrific audience

Rob's boy Phoenix & Shae sign books--spell their names out loud. Shae spelled my name for me for his children's book, gave me a hug.

Rain all night gentle slept through night

first time in . . . months cloudy dawn, sprinkling smell of ocean, muted shore birds

Went to see Paul Hansen, the great Chinese scholar/translator. He has a weaned litter of Newfoundland puppies. They were in a room with the door shut. After a half hour and tea Paul said brace yourself, I need to turn them out. Nine puppies the size of three-month shoats. They ran halfway across the floor, then all stopped together and peed. There was enough urine from those pups to call in Charlton Heston and have him part the sea. Terrific, beautiful dogs. But when they grow up they're as big as Shetland ponies. I believe I'll pass on buying one. Especially after I heard the price tag: $1500. Wow.

Reading: Watermark. Patti, Norman, Vicki, Jules; Chris from Gray Spider came. My mother also came, didn't want to be introduced or acknowledged—but I did anyway. Fun to reverse the tables & watch her squirm.

Little old ladies had to leave before last poem. Third poem from the end, "can we stay and hear one more?" Then "we're late"; "oh just one more." Then left before the last poem apologizing, "We're sorry. We're sorry. But they'd lock us out of the rest home." As they opened the door one yelled, "don't ever get old." The other said, "that's right. When you're old they lock you out."

Misty dawn patches of blue

Hour on porch with Jan with tea, staring at water

(Satan: being stupidly good—Paradise Lost)

Vancouver radio station '40s/'50s oldies--I can hear Johsee, "God, Dad, what is that?" I'm as happy as I've ever been. A mudbound hog showed me nothing.

Drive to Pt. Keyston Ferry—

Print shop four hours work. Final logistics with Thatcher and Michael

PORT ANGELES

At the reading Alan Turner had me sign some books to his daughter Cassidy. Six years old already has a 400-copy, signed-book collection. One couple came to reading surly, stranded, had missed last ferry out, bought every book after. Their first reading ever. All-time bad day for them: reading flip-flopped their day. Joseph brought twins—after reading played ring-around-the-rosy including new verse to get up after falling down which I can no longer do.

Rainy, thick. Good day for driving. Hope it clears by afternoon for flight to Waldron. Stopped at press to pick up books. Check out.

Alan had left two Pete's Wicked Ale breakfast beers and a signed copy of The Hedge, The Ribbon by Carolyn Orlock.

WALDRON ISLAND

Met by Sam, Sally, Alicia, and Michael. To the Green's cabin—great meal with good friends.

Reading: 47 came (out of total island population of 90). Great audience, sold a lot of books. Story: during reading of "21 Gun Salute" looked to right and saw a woman signing to a deaf man. Stopped reading, explained presence/purpose of Leonard Askins in poem, asked if he'd be offended. He signed back, hell no, of course not. He laughed at poem.

Two high school girls came twirling in dressed as gypsies—just in case the reading needed livening up. They were gorgeous. Wish I'd figured out what they were doing quicker—I'd have read "Interlude" from My Town.

Fun reading—looked like a return to the '60s. Waldron Island is low, low key. No barbers, so a lot of shaggy hair. No laundromats so a lot of baggy clothes. Didn't smell anybody light a joint—that's about all that was lacking.

Evening: glass of wine by coal oil lamp

Irony: Brooding Heron books printed/produced on island with no electricity or public water system

Calls from Lopez Island wondering why they weren't included on tour.

Walked around island for four hours—great coffee and poetry talk at Alicia and Michael's cabin. Flew out at 2:30 with great sense of sadness at leaving. Four people on plane attended reading.

LA CONNER

Stayed with Mom and Jim—left at eight for Sea Tac/Portland—sad/happy, morose—then the flight from hell screaming baby with mother who thought it was cute, nonstop for forty minutes. Understand why the Pope kisses the ground when he deplanes.

Evening reading at Powell's

(Chris Faatz ill—didn't see)

Lunch at Jake's—Jan ordered escargot, which I told her cost too much so I ate about half a huge garlic: I breathed on a lamp post and it glowed, two muggers apologized when I turned and said "what?" in their face.

Read with Clemens Stark—low-key audience (but I was due). Weakest reading of the tour so far—dunno why. Mebbe not a good idea to read with two poets? Dunno.

2nd phase: The Midwest

CHICAGO

The man in seat ahead talked loudly on cell phone for twenty minutes until the attendant told him to stop. Asked "are you ready to rejoin us?" He immediately started telling his seatmate about his world travels. Lady next to me put a scarf over her face and a hat over the scarf, wrapped herself in two felt blankets and slept (mummy).

Reading: Two minutes before it was scheduled to begin, audience of three including me, Sean, and Adrian—my book distributors. Then librarian showed up to do an intro then three street people and a couple. During my next to last poem the person who had agreed to sell books arrived, then his wife about halfway through last poem.

Great dinner at Oh La La with Sean & Adrian. Great waitress, Jodi. Salvaged the day.

ILLINOIS STATE FAIR

Twilight Ballroom: 40x80 cement pad, four posts, metal roof. Half building for electronic modern agricultural display with bullhorn and free popcorn—hung sheet separated us. To East, 30 yards, rock and roll pavilion; to North, 30 yards, jazz/blues pavilion; to West tilt-a-whirl & children's roller coaster; to North, beer garden. Thank god for Ethan and ---- who brought Ken and Sam Davis. They were my audience.

Group of kids came, stood holding hands, one wide-eyed & in shock—I read a funny poem, she tried not to laugh, I winked. Asked her older sister, "What's he doing?" "He's reading." "Why he doing it out loud?" "Maybe he want to." "He a grown up man, he don't have to do that." "Maybe that's what he do." I read another funny poem, all except questioner laughed. She said, "I think we all better go right now." So they did.

First set scheduled for two hours; after one hour a woman came up, said, "We posta have this stage now, we got awards to pass out to some chirren." Please. Take all the time you need.

Second set, 3-5 p.m.—hot, windy, sweaty. But several stayed over an hour and listened. One man laughed until he bent over at "Lazy"—his wife grabbed his arm & pulled him up. "Come on, let's go. You're having too much fun. That's not good for you."

PEORIA

Died and went to heaven. One of most pleasant readings in my life. Mostly older people—one eight-year-old girl in front row laughed until the audience quit listening to me & laughed at/with her. Oh Maggie. Bless you.

MADISON

Great down day. Walked. Walked. Walked. Four hours.

Found out my reading starts tomorrow at seven. Same time kick-off will take place a half mile away. Green Bay/Denver. Oh my.

Monday. Rain. Rain. Rain. Walked an hour, got soaked. Tried to stay over an extra night at the hotel—they're booked solid, have been for three months. "When they kick off at 7 this place will be a ghost town. Everybody within 100 miles will be at that game."

Okay. Found a motel outside town. I think I'm the only person here who's not staying by the month. Most of the rooms have charcoal grills & outdoor furniture in front of them. Very friendly. I said, "Rain, rain," and a woman said, "Yep," and an old man said, "Looks like it."

4.8 miles from motel to Borders Books. Took 50 minutes to make the drive. Bumper to bumper Green Bay Packer fans. Four beers offered from windows. Happy people.

Huge, wonderful bookstore—size of Kmart, clean as an Amish kitchen. Four customers in store. Total. I drove back to the motel in ten minutes. Could have run every red light. Drove two blocks from Badger Stadium, heard a Green Bay touchdown fan reaction, felt like a minor tremor: 2.4 on the Richter. Go Packers. Why not?

Rain stopped, sky cleared. Saw the old man sitting in front of his room. Waved, called "more rain tonight?" He called, "Mebbe. Then mebbe not." I answered, "Yep." Brevity is the soul of wit.

EAU CLAIRE

Great drive—first time through Wisconsin, 50 places I wanted to pull off & explore.

Met Mildred Larson—ultra efficient, gracious, polite woman; immaculate setup. Three hour workshop with the best prepared high school students I've ever worked with: all of my anticipations (worries) early plowed under—a dream afternoon class.

Fish & chips in a fine pub (ironically no one ordered a beer—might as well have been Utah).

Reading went well. Hour long live interview with Peoria radio station. Evidently the reading there went well. Yea!

ST. PAUL

Arrive mid-afternoon—like being home. Great talk with Mary [Bisbee Beek]. They're upset over the press over the State Fair experience; Thatcher's thinking of coming to Lincoln. Called—told him not to worry: this is an experiment (or "learning experience," which always means/implies "oops").

Reading at Hungry Mind—[Jim] Heynen—many old friends. Great fun.

J. Otis Powell radio gig—surreal but terrific; played CD "Clean" then segue Quincy Troupe poem, then one of mine as response. "Man with the golden voice." Took on a tone of sadness: "seemed like a eulogy, an obituary." Then he told me, "that was my last show."

Meal at Thai buffet: last supper, the surreal compounded. No conversation for the first ten minutes. Just heavy eating. The guys on either side of me guarded their food with their arms like we were in prison. I wanted to remind them, "it's a buffet."

Anderson Center—Hungry Mind to the 10th power—like being with family, Judy, Gary, Lauren. The tour is a success! Three terrific readings in a row.

Newton's 3rd—pride goeth before a fall: St. Paul Saints game. Read @ 5:30-5:45; game starts at 7, gates don't open until 6—no audience. One person with tape recorder to do "an interview to be played during game broadcast"—after he conned Mary out of a copy of Selected Poems, tells me all he wants is me reading a 30-second poem.

First pitch; I biffed it—tried to show off & throw a curve ball, bounced it to the catcher—he was pissed, I was embarrassed. Thank God for Mary and Jeff who met me with a beer. Now this was a character-building experience and that's what humiliation actually means. Mary more upset than me, I think. If possible. Even asked me if I wanted to cancel the rest of the tour. That's a screw up.

Parting is sweet sorrow. It was hard to leave the Hotel de Beek. Mary had put a ton of time & energy into this tour. She gets no praise, all the blame when it falters. I feel like I'm leaving with my tail between my legs, and mostly because I blew the first pitch at the ballgame. So it goes. Chin up, Dave. Fuck baseball. There. It's better already.

MINNEOTA

Timely change of scenery—to Minneota Bill and Marcy, who don't care if I bounced the pitch. They laughed. "Laughter is also a form of prayer." Thank God for laughter. I'm glad they don't think forgiveness is a divide and should therefore be left to God. Thank God for fine whiskey. I feel whole again.

FARGO

Drove in a fine, heavy rain. First time in North Dakota—beautiful rolling landscape. A handsome country.

Zandbroz Variety—small, enthusiastic crowd, 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon reading. Rocky's mother comes—wow. After, to micro brewery with Greg Danz and Mark. Beer, nine pounds of peanuts and pretzels, and a gargantuan plate of boiled eggs baked in Italian sausage. Bill was $10. I thought it would be that apiece. Maybe I should move to Fargo.

Great tales of Tom McGrath. I'd forgotten this was his home town. Story of first writers conference here, he came and stood against the wall during readings. James Dickey, et al. Host didn't know him, asked how he liked it; said all the writers were second rate. "Who are you?" McGrath said, "I'm the sixth best writer alive in America today." Of course, of course.

Back to Minneota & a down day—went to see Leo Dangel. Great afternoon—he read poems aloud (first time I've heard) including a new poem—he signed it to Jan.

5 a.m. rising shiny, Willie Nelson time

Out on the road again. No need to go said Bill. You can stay here said Marcy. They'll sit you at a table and no one will say hi all day and you won't sell a single book and you'll waste the day. Well.

HURON, SOUTH DAKOTA

Three hour drive. Beautiful prairie. Terrific PBS station with brass morning music and a gorgeous sunrise. South Dakota State Fair. Billed as the Fair's Writer in Residence.

Arrived a half hour early, but it took an hour to find the building, go back to the car, get books, return and set up a booth. First glance appears Bill was right. Then: within a half hour several people stopped to look at books, a few talked, including four teenagers. I've already matched a month's social quota for Utah. Then a woman comes, says, "I've been looking for you. Which one of your books do you think I should buy?" 10:30 and already exceeded the day's expectations by 100 percent and I've got Cormac's new novel to help me through the rest of the day.

Ah that a man's reach extends his grasp, or what's heaven for?

She bought a copy of News.

Life is good. It just doesn't take much to keep some people going.

And then another. And another. And another.

SIOUX FALLS

Fine reading at Zandbroz Variety #2. Met Larry, a federal judge who comes to poetry readings and knows his poetry. Why does that strike me as odd? A completely intelligent, likeable guy.

Bill Holm came over with me and I dunno if the route we took was good or not, but I couldn't repeat it if my life depended on it. Great conversation all the way. Great scenery. Adrian Lewis came. I'm delighted. He'd been told I hated his work. Not true. I think his fiction is terrific and likewise most of his poetry. Being a reader for a press has its downside—especially if the editor quotes you out of context. Mebbe it's time to take your name off the reader list. Fine man. Great sense of humor. Wish I knew him even better.

Loooooooong drive back to Minneota. Got there around three a.m. Thank god Holm's a talker. Doubt I could have made it without him.

LINCOLN, NEBRASKA

Last gig of a long, long journey: Idaho—New Orleans—Illinois—Wisconsin—Minnesota—North Dakota—South Dakota—Nebraska. Thank god Jan was with me for most of it. But thank god she wasn't there for the state fairs . . . or oh lord the baseball game. That would have compounded the humiliation.

The last three weeks of this tour have taught me a fine lesson I shall eternally remember: celibacy is not all it's cracked up to be.

Sunday. The Nebraska State Fair. Two readings. Ugh. Thatcher sent some flyers from Copper Canyon Saturday. Kloefkorn and I took them around Lincoln to poetry hangouts and the Nebraska Bookstore, which is a shrine to Cornhusker football. I saw framed posters for $500 of football players and coaches. My favorite was a small girl on her knees holding a Nebraska cheerleader uniform before a crackling fireplace. The only thing missing was a picture of Jesus on the wall. I'll wager if BYU ever sees it they'll do one with a picture of a Mormon temple above the fireplace.

Another State Fair reading tomorrow.

Sunday. Gods. The reading went fine. Mostly thanks to Kloefkorn and Marge Sassier who showed up with a gift of her new book (Plug it, Lee: Bones of a Very Fine Hand), little knowing I would shamelessly con her into reading with me.

Kloefkorn was in heaven. He mounted the stage, both readings, to introduce me and began by introducing himself as the Nebraska State Hogcalling Champion, then gave an exhibition of his winning call. The room began to fill. Then he held up Thatcher's flyers and pronounced them quality bookmarks that normally sell for upwards of eight to several hundred dollars after they've become collector's items, and that free bookmarks would be available, but only at the conclusion of the reading.

First reading: standing room only, a crowd begets a crowd.

After the reading a woman came to the stage and stated she wanted to buy both books and a CD. Her husband grabbed her arm and said no. She asked why, he said, "I don't want to carry them all day." She said, "I'll take them to the car." He said, "Nope, it's too far." Then she said, "I'll carry them there." He said, "No, you'll ask me to and I'm not going to." Then she said "but I want them" and he said "then go to the bookstore tomorrow by yourself and get them. I didn't come to the fair to read, now let's go." So they did. Ah, love. Ah, State Fairs.

The second reading went like the first except at 5 p.m. the audience was smaller. Most were good friends from Nebraska. A fine way to end.

All in all it was a very long short summer. Between 5 June and 6 September I slept eleven nights in my own bed. But the book is launched. I got a god's ransom of publicity and exposure. I'm bone tired, sick of motels, loathe café food, and horny as a 9-tine pitchfork staring at a bale of straw. I'm ready to go home.

But then I remember: school started a week ago without me. I've been gone three months which means I've got precisely three months worth of work waiting for me. Ye gods and little fishes.

BACK TO UTAH

There's no rest for the wicked. But the righteous don't need any.
Done.
Go home now.
Home. We. We.
We all the way.
Home.

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Rain Taxi Online Edition, Fall 1999 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 1999