Glen Hirshberg's Blog
March 5, 2016
TMI?
Why would you want to read the following? I don't know that you do. But you might.
Why would I want to write it? It's more a have-to kind of thing:
There I was, on my hike, the one I take almost every day. I'd had my coffee a little closer than usual to hike-time, and so, feeling a need to jettison some of said coffee, I cut into the park near our house to find a bathroom.
There are two bathroom buildings in our park. I've always wondered why; it's not that big a park. I circled the first. I know there are Men's and Women's rest rooms in that structure, but I only saw the entrance to the Women's. And the need was...intensifying. So I cut to the back of the park, where I was certain there was a Men's.
There was. I entered, and in blissful, midday solitude, commenced relief operations. And I was maybe halfway through--mulling the next chapter of the new MOTHERLESS CHILDREN book, muttering happily to myself, the way I do--when the black drain plug at the bottom of the urinal humped up on its long, hairy tarantula legs and scuttled.
It went sideways first. Fortunately. Scrambled an impressive distance up the steel side of the urinal before sliding back down. By the time it turned and came my way, I was already stumbling from the enclosure, chanting the SoCal resident's tarantula catechism: they're not interested in us. They don't hurt us.
Except by surfacing in my brain, every time I go to pee, for the rest of my life...
Why would I want to write it? It's more a have-to kind of thing:
There I was, on my hike, the one I take almost every day. I'd had my coffee a little closer than usual to hike-time, and so, feeling a need to jettison some of said coffee, I cut into the park near our house to find a bathroom.
There are two bathroom buildings in our park. I've always wondered why; it's not that big a park. I circled the first. I know there are Men's and Women's rest rooms in that structure, but I only saw the entrance to the Women's. And the need was...intensifying. So I cut to the back of the park, where I was certain there was a Men's.
There was. I entered, and in blissful, midday solitude, commenced relief operations. And I was maybe halfway through--mulling the next chapter of the new MOTHERLESS CHILDREN book, muttering happily to myself, the way I do--when the black drain plug at the bottom of the urinal humped up on its long, hairy tarantula legs and scuttled.
It went sideways first. Fortunately. Scrambled an impressive distance up the steel side of the urinal before sliding back down. By the time it turned and came my way, I was already stumbling from the enclosure, chanting the SoCal resident's tarantula catechism: they're not interested in us. They don't hurt us.
Except by surfacing in my brain, every time I go to pee, for the rest of my life...
February 25, 2016
GOOD GIRLS Giveaway
Enter the giveaway to get a free copy of my new book GOOD GIRLS.
February 24, 2016
Now Out ... Good Girls!
If you come to the Book Launch at The Last Bookstore in LA this Friday, you'll get cake, and I'll be happy to sign your book.
If you can't make it, I hope you enjoy the book, and maybe reading this interview at SF Signal or listening to me chatting live with Thorne and Cross tomorrow night (6 PM Pacific time) will make you feel like you were there.
If you can't make it, I hope you enjoy the book, and maybe reading this interview at SF Signal or listening to me chatting live with Thorne and Cross tomorrow night (6 PM Pacific time) will make you feel like you were there.
February 16, 2016
Clarice Lispector
The Complete Stories by Clarice LispectorMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Writers on the back of her recently published, freshly translated COMPLETE STORIES--we're talking Elizabeth Bishop, Colm Toibin, Orhan Pamuk--compare her to Borges, Kafka, Flann O'Brien, Joyce.
As far as I'm concerned, you can keep most of those, and your Toibin and Bishop, too. Thrown in your Marquez and (please, please) your Bolano.
This is the magic, plain and simple. Mysterious and luminous as memory, but hurtful and hard, too, full of wisps and whispers and folktale and fallout, tossed-off bits of description that capture not just specific characters but whole categories of people you knew once or know still, but didn't realize were a type, and don't quite, even now, except you're suddenly sure they are. Strewn with places you've never been and remember, states of being you forgot you're still in, can't escape, will never even be sure whether you want to.
Real and magically real. Real-as-magically-real. Some of it's dreamy and hypnotic. Some frightening and angry. Most of it hurts, but sometimes sweetly. It's about so many things at the same time that it's impossible to pin down or summarize, except to say it's really, really, really, really good.
Did I mention I like her a whole lot?
View all my reviews
Santa Anas
This Santa Ana wind comes often here, and mostly I have no use for it. It blows in the heat, snaps trees back on their trunks and flings tipped-over trash all over the streets, ignites fires and triggers my wife's asthma.
But tonight's wind isn't warm at all, though it isn't chilly, either--perfect Glen temperature--and it isn't gusting, because it isn't stopping. It just pours through everything, less wind than ocean, and a while ago I went out to take the trash down and then couldn't help it: I launched myself like a little paper boat, and off I went down the blocks, up the hills into the onslaught, spinning like a helicopter seed, not fighting anymore, not resisting, not pointing anywhere, just this once, just for a while, just finally giving myself up and going where I'm sent.
But tonight's wind isn't warm at all, though it isn't chilly, either--perfect Glen temperature--and it isn't gusting, because it isn't stopping. It just pours through everything, less wind than ocean, and a while ago I went out to take the trash down and then couldn't help it: I launched myself like a little paper boat, and off I went down the blocks, up the hills into the onslaught, spinning like a helicopter seed, not fighting anymore, not resisting, not pointing anywhere, just this once, just for a while, just finally giving myself up and going where I'm sent.
RT Book Reviews named GOOD GIRLS a Top Pick
"Hirshberg’s Motherless Child was a finely observed, truly horrific take on vampires, and if anything, his story gets even more brutal in Good Girls. New, compelling characters are skillfully woven in. . . ." Read More -->
--review by Ian Mathers
December 20, 2015
The First Review of Good Girls
Ok, now that's a start. A Starred one.
Read the review HERE.
And...this person at Publisher's Weekly actually seems to have read the book I wrote. Or, I wrote the book I meant to. One of those things you let yourself hope when you're foolish enough to look up from the work long enough to let yourself hope things.
Anyway. Yay.
Read about Good Girls.
Read an excerpt from Good Girls.
Read the review HERE.
And...this person at Publisher's Weekly actually seems to have read the book I wrote. Or, I wrote the book I meant to. One of those things you let yourself hope when you're foolish enough to look up from the work long enough to let yourself hope things.
Anyway. Yay.
Read about Good Girls.
Read an excerpt from Good Girls.
November 7, 2015
What Scares Horror Writers
In her article for the Nerd Element "Everybody Scares Sometimes" Desiree Guzzetta talks with us scaryfolk (including the entire original Rolling Darkness Revue, Dennis Etchison, Peter Atkins, and me, plus my pals Kate Maruyama and Lisa Morton) about stories that scare us.
My choice is one of Ramsey Campbell's...Could have been many of Ramsey's...
My choice is one of Ramsey Campbell's...Could have been many of Ramsey's...
October 31, 2015
From the Dark
If it's a fun, neglected Halloween Eve creeper you're craving, allow me to recommend this one. A concept or three short of classic, but unlike almost every other horror film I saw this year, it remembers to be fun. Also scary. Simple, not stupid.
Beautifully shot and lit, and nicely acted. A couple breaks down in the wilds of Ireland, and confronts an ancient bog thing quelled only by light. That's it. But the characters are companionable, the Final Girl restrained and resourceful without being superhuman, and there are at least two images--the first quite touching as well as frightening--that crawl right up into the lower rungs of the pantheon. Especially that last, gorgeous paean to Nosferatu...
Beautifully shot and lit, and nicely acted. A couple breaks down in the wilds of Ireland, and confronts an ancient bog thing quelled only by light. That's it. But the characters are companionable, the Final Girl restrained and resourceful without being superhuman, and there are at least two images--the first quite touching as well as frightening--that crawl right up into the lower rungs of the pantheon. Especially that last, gorgeous paean to Nosferatu...
