We are on a soup binge. Yesterday Iwas carrying a load of paperwork downstairs, using the big laundry basket to transport everything, and I missed the last step and landed on my ankle. Ouch! Apparently nothing broken, but a bad sprain, so I am hobbling around.
Soup seemed easy enough, with 5 ripe tomatoes staring at me from the kitchen window, and a big can of chicken broth, onion and garlic of course, last weeks still pretty fresh cilantro, corn tortillas in the freezer, and a seen-better-days jalapeno in the fridge. That's all you need. We added sour cream and Mexican cheese and more freshly fried tortillas to eat with the soup. Make a big batch and we have it again tonight, with a salad to use some more of those tomatoes--four more on the window sill and a half dozen in the garden.
When they ripen, they ripen. I'm thinking tomato bread salad for the weekend and some fresh tomato soup. It's the last of the bountiful harvest. It's a long, long time until July when the garden bursts forth again.
Apropos the garden: all the geraniums need to be brought in, and after the first frost, the annuals pulled up. Or do I just do cuttings? Always kind of sad to see the beautiful colors go. I've had such a riot of reds, purples, yellows, orange, pink and every lovely hue all summer.
All my life, summer has been my favorite season, and it still is.
I'm entering the Amazon novel contest--just about ready with the entry, and all the adjutant stuff. Always a lot of work even if you have the novel ready, but is a novel ever ready? One more pass has revealed just a few things that need fixing. I'm sending off World of Mirrors, which has come close to selling a couple times, so maybe it will do well in the contest, although it's not an Oprah kind of novel or a thriller kind of novel. I hope it's a good story that keeps the reader involved. Can we ever ask for more of our books?
Reading Madame Proust and Tell No One. Kind of a schizoid list, even I admit. Finished On the Road. The Mexico stuff was pretty good, but I got so friggin' tired of Dean Moriarty and his women and his disloyalty and his childishness. It's interesting how books affect you depending on your age at reading. Has anyone ever written about this? Good essay topic, but not for today.
Meanwhile, back to World of Mirrors and the manuscript tweaks.
Grapeshot
Showing posts with label On the Road. Show all posts
Showing posts with label On the Road. Show all posts
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
The Road Was Life But Not Friendship
Racing across the Great American Night doesn't sound so attractive anymore. I'm nearly finished reading of On the Road, for at least the third time, and except for a few lyrical descriptions, I'm very disappointed. The phrase "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" comes to mind. Maybe I have grown old. Maybe I have grown up. The book now makes me sad. The energy consumes itself. Dean Moriarty has become extremely tedious. I want to slap him silly. How did this happen? The old doper in New Orleans is the only character I find sympathetic, and maybe some of the people whose hospitality is taken advantage of.
I recall a professor literature expressing the critical view the Kerouac ruined the beautiful description of New Orleans and the delta with the remark that "Mary Lou went to the john." At the time, I thought, "so what?" It didn't really break the mood that much.
My dislike of the characters is a complete surprise to me. Sal Paradise, the narrator, is just barely all right, but Dean Moriarty is a world class jerk.
On the Road is, or course, the classic "buddy" road book, but I don't think Dean is capable of being a friend. I'm also re-reading Proust, and thinking about Bloch (superficial friend) and St. Loup (so far good friend). The awful Verdurins and their friends. The Guermantes and their friends. And I see superficial friendships abound. Maybe it is the way of the world. And old friends are often like family, with the long history and the squabbles and the backbiting.
My mother had so many good friends, and she valued friendship and I always noticed how she gave flowers, and garden produce, and kept in touch and went the extra mile. I do have a few good friends, and I treasure them. The "theme" if you will, of Festival Madness is friendship.
I don't think my writing group is all that keen on Festival Madness. The book they like best, Promiscuous Mode, beginning to look like another dud although it is the least technical and has all sorts of cool stuff like bass fishing, casinos, sex and well, yanno, good topics.
Tomorrow we are setting up a booth at a book fair, and that should be fun. I love books, even books that I don't love as much as formerly, like On the Road.
In a somewhat sad, philosophical mood,
Grapeshot
I recall a professor literature expressing the critical view the Kerouac ruined the beautiful description of New Orleans and the delta with the remark that "Mary Lou went to the john." At the time, I thought, "so what?" It didn't really break the mood that much.
My dislike of the characters is a complete surprise to me. Sal Paradise, the narrator, is just barely all right, but Dean Moriarty is a world class jerk.
On the Road is, or course, the classic "buddy" road book, but I don't think Dean is capable of being a friend. I'm also re-reading Proust, and thinking about Bloch (superficial friend) and St. Loup (so far good friend). The awful Verdurins and their friends. The Guermantes and their friends. And I see superficial friendships abound. Maybe it is the way of the world. And old friends are often like family, with the long history and the squabbles and the backbiting.
My mother had so many good friends, and she valued friendship and I always noticed how she gave flowers, and garden produce, and kept in touch and went the extra mile. I do have a few good friends, and I treasure them. The "theme" if you will, of Festival Madness is friendship.
I don't think my writing group is all that keen on Festival Madness. The book they like best, Promiscuous Mode, beginning to look like another dud although it is the least technical and has all sorts of cool stuff like bass fishing, casinos, sex and well, yanno, good topics.
Tomorrow we are setting up a booth at a book fair, and that should be fun. I love books, even books that I don't love as much as formerly, like On the Road.
In a somewhat sad, philosophical mood,
Grapeshot
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Jack Kerouac
The photo is of the On the Road reader at Olive That & More at 167 Market Street in Lowell about 2:00 p.m. today. 
On the 50th anniversary of On the Road, we drove up to Lowell today and had a lovely lunch at La Boniche, sat a spell in a little cafe and listened to a chapter of "On the Road" read aloud, then ventured (driving in Lowell is always a venture/adventure) to the Bottt Cotton Mills Museum to look at the famous Kerouac scroll. Nice exhibit with lots of Kerouac memorabilia and it was good to see several generations looking at everything. I bought a new copy of On the Road, mine having disappeared somewhere between college and now.
Jack was such a fine looking man, and Lowell was his town. Still is. Beautiful early September day. We do need rain, but the sky was cloudless, a deep fall-is-in-the-air blue.
Long, long ago there was a coffee house in Houston called the Outside, and when you joined (for a buck), they issued a membership card stating that for all time you were a member of "The Outside." There were poetry readings and the smell of weed in the air, and once a big carload of Beatniks arrived from Mexico City which livened the evening up considerably. There was a black drummer called King George who played oil drums, and sometimes I would see him in Galveston, still drumming. I thought a bit about being a member of the Outside, which of course I still am, as is anyone who ponied up a dollar. I have always thought alienation was a good thing. Otherwise, what century would you be living in?
Raise your wine or beer or whiskey glass to Jack tonight, and remember your first road trip.
Grapeshot
Jack was such a fine looking man, and Lowell was his town. Still is. Beautiful early September day. We do need rain, but the sky was cloudless, a deep fall-is-in-the-air blue.
Long, long ago there was a coffee house in Houston called the Outside, and when you joined (for a buck), they issued a membership card stating that for all time you were a member of "The Outside." There were poetry readings and the smell of weed in the air, and once a big carload of Beatniks arrived from Mexico City which livened the evening up considerably. There was a black drummer called King George who played oil drums, and sometimes I would see him in Galveston, still drumming. I thought a bit about being a member of the Outside, which of course I still am, as is anyone who ponied up a dollar. I have always thought alienation was a good thing. Otherwise, what century would you be living in?
Raise your wine or beer or whiskey glass to Jack tonight, and remember your first road trip.
Grapeshot
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
A Woman Walks Into a Bar
This evening I was in Kendall Square, where I worked for 12 years, my old stomping grounds as it were. Of course everything changes. The firehouse is now a boutique hotel. There are fancy bus stop shelters, and a new Au Bon Pain. But other things look like they always did, at after the subway stop and the hotel were completed and the holes in the ground were gone.
Legal Seafood is still there, but the fish counter is long departed, and even the restaurant has been totally remodeled. I didn't see the take-out window, but maybe it's there. Legal Seafood was the first place ever where I felt comfortable sitting at the bar as a woman alone. I worked upstairs in an office and it was the kind of job where you put in a lot of hours after working hours, so I would bop down to Legal, have a glass of wine and an appetizer at the bar, and go back to work.
In the old days, I had a small mussels au gratin. The cheese and the garlic and the buttered crumbs offset the wine to a wonderful degree. At one point they changed the recipe--and the butter and the cheese were greatly reduced and it never tasted right after that.
I switched to stuffed clams which were ultra-delicious and arrived on a bed of salt and then they disappeared from the menu, too. Like I was the appetizer kiss of death. Who knew?
The last item I settled on was the shrimp wontons, fried of course. Always delicous. They too disappeared for a short time but are back again with a small seaweed salad. Yum! Just right for a small repast with a glass of crisp white wine and one of the delicious hard rolls with melty butter. It can't get much better than that.
The couple next to me had some kind of fish cake concoction, seaweed salad and brown rice. It looked like health food, and they weren't drinking, either. Rather pasty looking pair. Well, what can you expect? Naturally they hadn't touched their butter.
If you think I make snap value judgements, you're right. I do.
The couple on the other side, yowza! She had bluefish with mashed potatoes and onion rings, the best of both worlds. He had lobster bisque and a humongous salad with frisee, pears, walnuts, blue cheese, pancetta, maybe. It looked so good. They were obviously not health food freaks, and they looked like more fun, too.
The event I went down for offered a small meal, it turned out. Wraps and water. I hate wraps! All that doughy tasteless mess. Yuck! Wraps and cheap greasy pizza should be barred from--well, from anyplace I have to eat.
The event was boring and I sneaked out early. Just in time to write my blog.
So the man will burn again on Saturday. The moon is so full and it would be wonderful to be on the playa tonight, listening to the techno beat and drinking and talking and making the scene. I've been reading a little Kerouac in prep. for the big anniversary on Wednesday. You are celebrating aren't you?
We're trekking to Lowell, MA to see the infamous scroll and to hear part of the reading of On the Road. Remember. The road is life.
When I lived in Houston and drove to Galveston on the Gulf-Tex Freeway, I felt one with the car, and the car was one with the road which was one with the earth which was one with the universe and there was this great interconnectedness, and then I would get to sleazy old Galveston and drive on the beach and eat flounder stuffed with shrimp and cruise by the bishop's palace and gape at the oleanders and the funky parts of town and before you left you always had to put a quarter in the little carwashes to get the salt off the car and sometimes the gulf was warm enough for swimming in March.
Grapeshot
Legal Seafood is still there, but the fish counter is long departed, and even the restaurant has been totally remodeled. I didn't see the take-out window, but maybe it's there. Legal Seafood was the first place ever where I felt comfortable sitting at the bar as a woman alone. I worked upstairs in an office and it was the kind of job where you put in a lot of hours after working hours, so I would bop down to Legal, have a glass of wine and an appetizer at the bar, and go back to work.
In the old days, I had a small mussels au gratin. The cheese and the garlic and the buttered crumbs offset the wine to a wonderful degree. At one point they changed the recipe--and the butter and the cheese were greatly reduced and it never tasted right after that.
I switched to stuffed clams which were ultra-delicious and arrived on a bed of salt and then they disappeared from the menu, too. Like I was the appetizer kiss of death. Who knew?
The last item I settled on was the shrimp wontons, fried of course. Always delicous. They too disappeared for a short time but are back again with a small seaweed salad. Yum! Just right for a small repast with a glass of crisp white wine and one of the delicious hard rolls with melty butter. It can't get much better than that.
The couple next to me had some kind of fish cake concoction, seaweed salad and brown rice. It looked like health food, and they weren't drinking, either. Rather pasty looking pair. Well, what can you expect? Naturally they hadn't touched their butter.
If you think I make snap value judgements, you're right. I do.
The couple on the other side, yowza! She had bluefish with mashed potatoes and onion rings, the best of both worlds. He had lobster bisque and a humongous salad with frisee, pears, walnuts, blue cheese, pancetta, maybe. It looked so good. They were obviously not health food freaks, and they looked like more fun, too.
The event I went down for offered a small meal, it turned out. Wraps and water. I hate wraps! All that doughy tasteless mess. Yuck! Wraps and cheap greasy pizza should be barred from--well, from anyplace I have to eat.
The event was boring and I sneaked out early. Just in time to write my blog.
So the man will burn again on Saturday. The moon is so full and it would be wonderful to be on the playa tonight, listening to the techno beat and drinking and talking and making the scene. I've been reading a little Kerouac in prep. for the big anniversary on Wednesday. You are celebrating aren't you?
We're trekking to Lowell, MA to see the infamous scroll and to hear part of the reading of On the Road. Remember. The road is life.
When I lived in Houston and drove to Galveston on the Gulf-Tex Freeway, I felt one with the car, and the car was one with the road which was one with the earth which was one with the universe and there was this great interconnectedness, and then I would get to sleazy old Galveston and drive on the beach and eat flounder stuffed with shrimp and cruise by the bishop's palace and gape at the oleanders and the funky parts of town and before you left you always had to put a quarter in the little carwashes to get the salt off the car and sometimes the gulf was warm enough for swimming in March.
Grapeshot
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Sunday, Kerouac, The Pawsox, Infowar and Burning Man
Trying to find a cheap Sunday activity. Options were to visit Kerouac's scroll in Lowell, go to the races at Suffolk downs or take in a Pawsox game in Pawtucket. We picked the latter, and spent $32.00 which wasn't bad. Big crowd with the nice Sunday weather and also a day game. I wore my 2004 World Series Championship shirt, old jeans, and a baseball cap. White sneakers. I mean, where else can one wear white sneakers? The home team won. We had never actually been in Pawtucket before. Sort of New England working class with lots of two-deckers. Reminded me of Lowell and Kerouac.
Next weekend we may visit the scroll, which is the first draft of On the Road. The Times gave it a good review. I can't find any of my Kerouac books. Probably gave them to a child in the throes of adolescence. I do feel the urge to re-read On the Road, esp. as S.O. and I have begun taking road trips again. Of course, we are not racing through the great American night like I used to do, but checking into motel rooms before dark. But the undercurrent of the road trip is there. The road is life.
Jim Melnick, who has been flying under my radar, had an interesting article in the Boston Globe today, about computers and terrorism. Cyberwar. This is a topic near and dear to my heart since my novel, The Shadow Warriors, (not to be confused with Clancy's book) deals deepy with this topic and I began writing it about 14 years ago, but the germ came 15 years ago. Lots of water under the damn. I felt like a voice crying in the wilderness, and there have always been a few of us, sounding the alarm.
Last but not least, The Style Section of the Sunday Times, has a review of Burning Book, which is, you guessed it, a book about Burning Man, a topic I've been blogging about off and on since I began blogging. My latest literary effort, which is in its next to last draft, has many scenes set at Burning Man, and not to boast, but (WTF, yes to boast) I really do take the reader to the Man. If this novel is like the last two, finding a publisher will be hell on wheels. I haven't made my usual mistakes, but that doesn't mean anything, does it? I noted in the Times today that reviewers were carping about novels being slow to get going, and I thought, cripes, at least somebody liked it enough to publish it, no matter how the beginning creaked and shuffled along like an old man with a walker. At least I drop a body on page one.
Let's see. Friday is cat blog day, so I won't mention the felines. Yesterday's eggplant salad tasted good, but it also looked spectacular. The purple of the eggplant (skin) along with yellow and orange peppers and red tomatoes and green mint and white cheese created a beautiful dish that you just wanted to stick your fork into.
At the ballpark, I had a hot dog and Crackerjacks, a glass of decent wine (times they are a changin') and bottled water from home, a no-no. I probably haven't had Crackerjacks for 20 years. Still tasted good, but could have used a few more peanuts.
Now I need to write to a few agents pushing Promiscuous Mode.
Grapeshot
Next weekend we may visit the scroll, which is the first draft of On the Road. The Times gave it a good review. I can't find any of my Kerouac books. Probably gave them to a child in the throes of adolescence. I do feel the urge to re-read On the Road, esp. as S.O. and I have begun taking road trips again. Of course, we are not racing through the great American night like I used to do, but checking into motel rooms before dark. But the undercurrent of the road trip is there. The road is life.
Jim Melnick, who has been flying under my radar, had an interesting article in the Boston Globe today, about computers and terrorism. Cyberwar. This is a topic near and dear to my heart since my novel, The Shadow Warriors, (not to be confused with Clancy's book) deals deepy with this topic and I began writing it about 14 years ago, but the germ came 15 years ago. Lots of water under the damn. I felt like a voice crying in the wilderness, and there have always been a few of us, sounding the alarm.
Last but not least, The Style Section of the Sunday Times, has a review of Burning Book, which is, you guessed it, a book about Burning Man, a topic I've been blogging about off and on since I began blogging. My latest literary effort, which is in its next to last draft, has many scenes set at Burning Man, and not to boast, but (WTF, yes to boast) I really do take the reader to the Man. If this novel is like the last two, finding a publisher will be hell on wheels. I haven't made my usual mistakes, but that doesn't mean anything, does it? I noted in the Times today that reviewers were carping about novels being slow to get going, and I thought, cripes, at least somebody liked it enough to publish it, no matter how the beginning creaked and shuffled along like an old man with a walker. At least I drop a body on page one.
Let's see. Friday is cat blog day, so I won't mention the felines. Yesterday's eggplant salad tasted good, but it also looked spectacular. The purple of the eggplant (skin) along with yellow and orange peppers and red tomatoes and green mint and white cheese created a beautiful dish that you just wanted to stick your fork into.
At the ballpark, I had a hot dog and Crackerjacks, a glass of decent wine (times they are a changin') and bottled water from home, a no-no. I probably haven't had Crackerjacks for 20 years. Still tasted good, but could have used a few more peanuts.
Now I need to write to a few agents pushing Promiscuous Mode.
Grapeshot
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