Leif Enger's "So Brave, Young, and Handsome"

I read Leif Enger's latest book over the last few days.

So Brave, Young, and Handsome is set in 1915, and it is very centrally about the closing of the frontier. It is like Lonesome Dove in that respect, although you might say Larry McMurtry's book chronicles the last breaths of the frontier whereas this book is focused more on its death rattle.

There was much to appreciate about the book. Some set pieces and scenes will stick with me for awhile. The characters--Siringo and Glendon especially--will stick. And the story is most definitely a good one.

But I wasn't swept up like I was with Peace Like A River. I'm not sure what the difference was exactly. In so many ways they are similar--the journey across a nostalgic American landscape, the firm hand of the law on the trail as well--but So Brave didn't have the same purpose and drive as his first book. In So Brave the main character was along for the ride so much the moments when he consciously chose his destiny were hard to distinguish.

The book also touched two of my "literary hot buttons." I am growing more and more weary of writers in books/movies/plays. Especially when the writer at the end of the story thinks, "Maybe I should write this down." I could make a HUGE list of these stories, but off the top of my head I can think of: So Brave Young and Handsome, Wonder Boys (the film), Avenue Q (kind of), Stones in his Pockets, Elf (although fortunately he doesn't start as an author).

It's a tired conceit. Becket, in So Brave could have just as easily been a failed singer/songwriter who finally finds himself and begins to sing or write songs again, and it would have been that much better.

And I was also annoyed by the regular end-of-chapter foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is great when the character suddenly gets a sense of dread that he's never going to see his home again. It's more frustrating when the character knows that something in advance and just hints at us. A la: "It seems strange, looking back, that I ever believed I would soon be home again." or "How could I know he was indeed to take flight, and very soon, and that it would be I, and not Redstart, who went with him?"

Ending chapters like this is annoying. It works a shade better with a third-person omniscient narrator--"Little did he know, that this simple, seemingly innocuous act, would result in his imminent death." (That's from Stranger Than Fiction if you didn't recognize it.)

But when you are in a first-person story, you don't like your narrator consciously holding out on you like this. I'm all for dramatic chapter endings (my mystery novel is full of them), but I felt like Becket or Enger was breaking a compact with the reader.

I did enjoy the book, and it was fun to see Northfield's Cannon river at the beginning. It also made me interested in picking up Peace Like A River again. And it makes me look forward to his next book, which I hope comes sooner than 6 years (the space between his first and second books).

While I'm at it ...

As it happens I also have a game update on the Tacoma Rainiers blog today. I went with a couple friends to see the Rainiers take on (and beat) the Colorado Sky Sox. It was my first baseball outing of the season and a good time at that.

Blog moderator Frinklin introduces my update and writes, "And if any other Rainier fans would like to file a guest wrap-up, just drop us a line!" If you're a Rainiers fan, here's your chance help keep people in the loop on what's going on. I know the next time I'm at a Rainiers game I'll keep my scorecard going so that I can send in updates.

Erik defends suburbia

As you likely know, I'm an urban dweller and a self-proclaimed champion of urban causes. But I do not believe that the suburbs are the root of all evil, either. I grew up in the Tacoma suburbs so they can't be all bad, right?

The Tacoma Sun offered me a chance to write a long article about something that doesn't get a lot of mention on the "blogosphere" or in print media, so I decided to defend the suburbs ... at least a little bit. I do believe that what happens in the suburbs has a lot to do with happens here in downtown Tacoma.

Thanks again to the Sun for the chance to write! Here's the article.

3 years later ...

Today is Parks Appreciation Day. That's a nice reminder for me of why I got back to blogging in April of 2005. That year Mary, my dad, and I visited every single MetroPark facility--from Northwest Trek to HQ to every ballfield in town. I blogged about a lot of them, although I never got to writing up all of them.

This may also be a good time to do what I do every April and look back over the last year of the blog. My posts were a little lighter this year, averaging just about one a day. I hope to at least continue that pace, or possibly even step it up a bit.

But I'm trying to do a lot more writing outside of this blog, too. This past year got me back into the creative writing habit a bit more. In the last year I wrote a short play, a very short film, and then a novel (which I'm still editing, but there's definitely progress).

I'm also going to try to focus more on writing short articles and "guest posts." I had a lot of fun writing for Andrew Fry's Living & Working in a Virtual World last month and I'd like to do more projects like that for web and for print. I'll be sure to link around to them when they show up. Actually, I should have a fairly long article coming out on a local online site Monday. Which one? ... Stay tuned!

Ebert off the air, but still writing

I really enjoyed this A.O. Scott article about Roger Ebert in the New York Times. In 2006, Ebert had to give up writing reviews after a difficult surgery and to this day still can't speak. He's had to step down from the show but he will be writing full time again, which is great for those of us who love great writing and reading his reviews.

AO Scott writes:

His criticism shows a nearly unequaled grasp of film history and technique, and formidable intellectual range, but he rarely seems to be showing off. He’s just trying to tell you what he thinks, and to provoke some thought on your part about how movies work and what they can do.

He is rarely a scold, and more frequently (perhaps too frequently) an enthusiast, and nearly always enlightening, in particular when he has brought calm good sense and moral conviction to overwrought debates about hot-button movies like Oliver Stone’s “JFK” and Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.”

I'm very glad he's back.

"Op Ed" over at Living & Working Virtually

Earlier this week I floated the idea of an "op-ed" style guest post to Andrew Fry, the blogger at "Living and Working in a Virtual World." The topic: When Bloggers Are Neighbors. Check it out.

I had a lot of fun writing it, and it was a cool opportunity to do something different with a post. I'm going to play around with some longer pieces of writing as opposed to the shorter bursts I usually post here.

The Coens and Chabon

This one is for ZestyEnterprise, a big Coen Brothers Fan (you can tell by the name of her blog) who was also not super wild about No Country.

But seeing that she and her SB were at the Michael Chabon lecture last month, I think she'll be excited to hear that the Coen Brothers will shoot an adaptation of The Yiddish Policeman's Union (which I reviewed here for Exit133) after they finish their current project.

I know I'm excited.

Another author visit - Alexander McCall Smith

Author Alexander McCall Smith is going to be in Tacoma on April 26, speaking at PLU as part of a Pierce County Reads program.

I just read his first book "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" in October, and after seeing Chabon at Pierce College, I'm excited to go to another author's visit. I got his second and third books as Christmas presents, so I'll probably try to read those before he gets here.

All that said, if Pierce County is going to get into the "everyone read the same book at the same time" program, maybe they should coordinate with Tacoma a bit. Tacoma's book this year is "The Things They Carried," a really wonderful book, and about the only Vietnam story that I really like.

So here's looking forward to a literary trip this spring.

Finito!

The rough draft of Sometimes I Despair, the book I started Nov 1, is finally done. It ended up shorter than I expected. It's about 300 words shy of 50,000. I rushed it at the end so I know that I'll be adding a few thousand more words in here and there. At the same time, there are probably
a few thousand that need to come out.

But the first draft is done.

Sweetness.

Happy Hour - Michael Chabon - Happy Hour

Michael Chabon is a pretty cool fella it turns out. His lecture at Pierce College was read, something that initially put me off but eventually engrossed me. It was almost a short story in and of itself, including a good ending quote--"We're the Washington Post. We print facts."

The sentence probably doesn't make much sense to you, but I discovered that on the same day he gave his lecture to us, he published an article in the Huffington Post that slams the Washington Post writer Richard Cohen for trying to smear Obama.

His Q&A was very good too--lots of good questions, lots of good answers. I myself asked him how he handles genre, since he works so much with "genre fiction" like mysteries and children's books. I was also really stupid and forgot to bring a book for him to sign and since I have them all, I didn't really want to buy another one and get it signed. So I settled for a handshake and went my merry way.

We did start the evening with a couple friends at the Pacific Grill Happy Hour, which has some very fine (and not spendy) things on it. Interesting things, too, like spicy roasted pumpkin seeds, blue cheese tater tots, and Kobe beef hot dog sliders.

After the lecture, which was also attended by ZestyEnterprise and her SB, the four of us couldn't figure out where to go and eventually ended up right back at Pacific Grill for their second Happy Hour, from 9 - 10. Same good stuff, same good prices, but ... you know, later.

It was a very full and very fun night out. Thanks to Pierce College for bringing such a cool writer!

Michael Chabon's in town next week

Not sure if I'm late to the ballgame with this, but the awesome author Michael Chabon (Yiddish Policeman's Union and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay) is at Pierce College January 15 (next Tuesday). Cost for the general public is $15.

How do you say, "I am so there" in Yiddish?

I reviewed The Yiddish Policeman's Union for Exit133 here.

Link to Pierce College Event Page

Quietish Week

Funny that the week before Christmas should suddenly get quiet for me. Last night, because of scheduling, the immediate Fam all gathered for dinner and a present exchange. There will still be a big family dinner at Christmas, but since we couldn't all be there, this was like Christmas coming a week early.

So now I look at my calendar and it's like ... umm, where's the holiday stress? It's going to be a pretty easy week. Mary and I will venture up to Seattle tomorrow night for a movie. And hopefully I'll hang out with some friends Thursday night. Friday night ... open. The weekend ... open. Christmas Eve ... open.

Crazy. Maybe I'll use some of this time to finish up the novel from last month (43,000 words and counting!)

Erik Update

So I haven't blogged since Tuesday (which is totally my bad, I'm sorry; I view every day without a blog post as a day I didn't do my job).

Since then I've been working on a few different projects. I have added another 5,000 words or so to my novel, and bumped that up to about 43,000, which is very exciting.

I've started and finished The Kite Runner, which was a good book that I would recommend. Looking forward to the movie.

I enjoyed a really great party at Suite133. The open house started at 5:00 and I left at 11:00 or so. It was a blast.

I also had the inspiration to write a sonnet about the Heidelberg Brewery for Exit133 on Friday. That was a great time, but took up most of Thursday night. I'm not sure I've actually written a sonnet before, so that felt good because it turned out none-too-shabby.

I might come off as a bit of a historic preservationist nut in it, which isn't true. It's just hard to get a complex development argument into 14 lines of rhymed iambic pentameter. I do like the Heidelberg and I would hate to see it go, especially because it has been a bad year for historic buildings (although the good news about the Luzon is pretty heartening). I don't really mind the Courtyard by Marriott although I know a lot do. But the impact it has on Tacoma is very high (thanks to my tourism days for better understanding how that works). What I don't like is another one that takes a cool old building with it.

If the new building created a cool new design concept, possibly with historic tax credits that might be available, I'd be all for it. (See why it didn't all fit in the poem?)

And this weekend I headed out to Ephrata, WA, in the middle of the state for a night with the extended family. I do find Eastern Washington to be very beautiful, but judging by how good it felt to be back ... well, this is a pretty good side of the mountains too. After the trip Mary and I had lunch in Seattle with our friend, Deborah, who was visiting the area from Utrecht in the Netherlands where she lives. So a good weekend!

I'll try to be better about blogging this week ...

Novel Writing - 82 Hours Left

So November is wrapping up, and I'm well below where I should be if I actually want to get to 50,000 words by the end of the month.

Tacoma Chickadee has been writing as well and is adding words much faster than I am, even though she was about as behind as I was yesterday. She's flying and I think she'll make it. Go Chickadee!

I just passed 35,000 words last night. With 82 hours left in November, I calculate that I would need to do 176 words an hour to make it the rest of the way. Or, if I put five hours toward it for the next 4 days I would only need to write 721 words per hour.

It doesn't seem likely that I'm going to make it. But that's cool. The last time I finished a novel was 2002. I actually used to finish one every 18 months, but I haven't done anything since college. So being 126 pages into a novel that I really like at this point feels pretty damn good. Especially since I know pretty well where it's going and get to just keep writing.

I just finished one of the most fun scenes in the second act and have a doosie of an interrogation planned. And Act III gets off with everything collapsing and falling apart before working up to the climactic scene.

Beautyman is an interesting enough character to write that I have considered having him star in another mystery novel. I'd actually gotten a good 40 pages into it a few years ago but couldn't make it work. It was trying to do too many things and wasn't succeeding at any of them. I'd worked with two different titles for that one: "Diamond Cut Diamond" or "The Marinara Murders."

I am starting to think that "Sometimes I Despair" is a little too high-brow for this book. I've thought of a couple other titles like "The Saint Killer," which I'm not a big fan of because it's too obvious. I'm also considering "The Blood of Saints" as a title, which comes from a short Biblical quotation I'm using on the serial killer's calling card. Other nominees have been "One Less Saint" and "No More Saints."

And I laughingly suggested over the weekend "The Saints Go Dying."

Perhaps you can tell by this point that the book is about an LA serial killer who's MO is to go around and kill saintly people. All the best people--the good, honorable, wonderful people--in LA are being killed and the rest of the population is being scared into not giving, not volunteering, not fighting for what's right. That is a backstory of the book, but it's one the Detective is certainly aware of as he tries to find and stop the killer.

Any titles on that list you really like? Would one grab you enough to make you pick up the book and check the back cover. At this point I almost like "The Saints Go Dying" just because it gives me one more word toward my final word count ... ;)

Just kidding.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you have a good one.

The Bellarmine mass and pumpkin pie social were both successes, and that's the only way to start out the long Thanksgiving weekend.

I just passed 30,000 words in my novel, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. And speaking of writing, I also got a chance to see "No Country For Old Men" before it opened at the Grand yesterday. My review is on the B Side at Exit133. It's a doosie of the movie.

Weekend Update

So the weekend was a good one. Friday night was low-key, with a nice dinner at Gateway to India followed by a lot of hanging out at home. Which is good because Saturday took it out of us. We worked most of the day finishing up some badly needed work to get our place ready for a small party we had Saturday night.

We took care of a few non-cleaning tasks as well, including the hanging of 5 Beautiful Angle posters that look awesome. For those who like Beautiful Angle as much as we do, we have up the "Factory" poster, "St. Patrick's Breastplate," and the classic "Save Me" on one wall, as well as the "T-Dome Flower" and "Never Enough Parking" poster on another wall.

We have other posters of theirs we'll eventually get around to framing as well, possibly rotating them out with our current selection. Those include the Blender, the Christmas Tree, the Art Chantry co-designed poster, and a few other favorites.

The party was a lot of fun, with friends from all over Tacoma as well as a couple who made the drive from Seattle. We brought in a box full of cupcakes from Hello, Cupcakes so we even had Tacoma desserts for guests.

By the time we got to today we were beat from all the cleaning and then the party itself and we missed the Philharmonic, which we'd both been looking forward to. But we did have a nice and quiet dinner out with my parents at Paddy Coynes (love the open face turkey sandwich!).

So it was a good weekend. I got some writing done as well. I'm at 26,581 words in my novel for National Write A Novel Month, which means I've only been averaging 1477 words a day--190 words less than I should be doing. If you figure that there are 250 - 300 words on a page, I'm at least 15 pages behind. But I'm starting Chapter 10 and I'm on page 93, which is pretty awesome. Even though I'm behind, I've never written so much so fast. It's quite exhilarating and I'm very excited to finish. I've had to upgrade paper clips to a large-scale clip to fit what I have so far.

Still going strong, though. I'll need a good push at Tuesday night's writing meeting and then I'll probably have to skip Black Friday in favor of catching up. But I'm cool with that.

Here Comes the Weekend

Do not despair! The weekend is here! Mary and I had tickets for a show in Seattle, but we couldn't stomach the trip after a long week so we rescheduled.

Quiet night tonight, hopefully; tomorrow we're sprucing up the place as a few friends will be coming over and it should be a little cleaner than it is. And Sunday we have tickets to the Philharmonic! Sweet.

And, of course, I'm still noveling. I'm more than a day behind, but still ... I've written 81 pages of a novel in 16 days, so I'm pretty cool with that.

The Book: Sometimes I Despair

So I passed the 20,000 word mark on my novel last night. Which unfortunately means I am still a full day behind, as I should be passing 23,300 tonight. It's likely not going to happen, but I'm keeping up the good work and just passed page 70. I backtracked a little bit, and am flushing out more of Chapter 6 & Chapter 7, and extending a key plot point until Chapter 8 (previously revealed in Chap. 6) because it was getting to be too much.

I also am liking my title more and more, so I think I'll post it here. The working title is "Sometimes I Despair." I wasn't sure how I felt about the title originally, but it's growing on me. Even though it's not narrated in the first person, it captures a feeling that Detective Beautyman is familiar with regularly when hunting the Babylon killer.

One of the reasons I didn't like it as a title at first is because it's part of a phrase from the Crash Test Dummies' "The Superman Song." Sometimes I despair the world will never see another man like him. (him being Superman). Well, there's no hero in this book that you would say that about, and since I pulled the title from it, I'm not 100% sure that it's what I want to use for this book. But it's a good working title for now.

I'll keep plugging away at it tonight. I got a lot of work done last night and I hope I can keep it up today.

11,000 words and Counting

Earlier I shared by first line, which wasn't great I thought. But I think I like my first paragraph better:

Detective Arthur Beautyman awoke with a start at the sound of his cell phone vibrating across his desk on the other side of the room. When pressed against the side of his leg in his slacks pocket, he could barely feel it. But now at three o’clock in the morning, the vibration was powerful enough to propel it six inches across his oak desk.

Why do I like the paragraph better than the sentence? Because I think there's a kernel of truth--or at least truthiness--in it, and I hope it's enough to propel a reader forward.

So I got ahead on my novel last night. By the end of the day I needed 10,000 words and I made it to 11,000. Sweetness. Unfortunately that means I still need another 667 today ... this novel in a month business is hard.

Last night was fun, though. There were 6 of us noveling at Suite133 as part of a weekly novel writing group for National Novel Writing Month. It was fun to have a bunch of writers around drinking coffee and plugging away at their keyboards. I felt like Tacoma might be starting its very own Bloombury Group.

Even though that is most definitely a joke, I do have the sense that Tacoma has some promising literary ambitions. Mark Lindquist and "The King of Methlehem," Brent Hartinger and "Geography Club" plus his newest novel "Dreamquest."

And a lot of cool people writing with NaNoWriMo that I know (Keep it up, Chickadee!).

So maybe someday there will be a Tacoma group like there was a Bloomsbury group. And we'll all meet at Doyle's at 11:00 am and start drinking and writing and drinking and writing. It'll be awesome.

Don't Bug Me, I'm Noveling

I don't know if "noveling" is really a word, but I'll use it here.

I'm noveling. One novel in one month as part of National Novel Writing Month. Well, 50,000 words, which would be a novel just shy of 200 pages, depending on how much dialog I have (if I stick true to form, I'll have a lot).

I'm more than 4,000 words in to it so far, which puts me on track to finish. It's a pulp mystery novel, but it's actually going pretty well. For the purposes of posterity, I'll share with you my first line:

"Detective Arthur Beautyman awoke with a start at the sound of his cell phone vibrating across his desk on the other side of the room."

I have a few problems with that sentence. Too many clauses linked together, not a lot of action. But I'm not going back to edit. Once I write, I just keep on trucking.

Wish me luck!