Glen Hirshberg's Blog, page 11
July 6, 2014
Anticipating the Book Tour
Grinding through the hotel deal-finding, the friend's couch-coordinating, the cross-border car-renting, the daughter drifting past, asking when I'm leaving, saying, "I'll miss the Dad flappy earlobes" and exiting the room without explanation. The glamour of taking the book on the road.
While writing and venting anxiety about the next book.
Exchanging delightful, plan-filled e-mails with fellow travelers like Gemma Files and Jack M. Haringa and Ian Rogers and Michael Kelly, with whom I can't wait to work and chat and eat.
And pausing, every now and then, to marvel at the scattered but apparently actual, breathing, reading people-Brian Lillie, Smitty Smith, I'm thinking particularly of you today--who have gone so far out of their way to make it clear that they're happy I'm coming. To ensure that that happens.
Don't want to go--too good a home, too much writing to do. And also can't wait to set off.
While writing and venting anxiety about the next book.
Exchanging delightful, plan-filled e-mails with fellow travelers like Gemma Files and Jack M. Haringa and Ian Rogers and Michael Kelly, with whom I can't wait to work and chat and eat.
And pausing, every now and then, to marvel at the scattered but apparently actual, breathing, reading people-Brian Lillie, Smitty Smith, I'm thinking particularly of you today--who have gone so far out of their way to make it clear that they're happy I'm coming. To ensure that that happens.
Don't want to go--too good a home, too much writing to do. And also can't wait to set off.
Influences
From Sci-Fi Signal June 2 interview with Kristin Centorcelli
GH: I never set out to write “horror” or any other genre. I just love telling stories. But I do think there’s something about ghost stories and horror—the atmosphere, the essentially eerie and beautiful imagery, the primal and universal fears that encode so much human behavior and interaction, the way those fears trigger and heighten other primal and universal emotions—that seems to bring out some of the best writing I have in me. All those things, predictably enough, are also what I love about reading dark fiction. Although, honestly, I love reading any good fiction. Actually, any good anything.
KC: You’ve undoubtedly influenced more than a few authors with your work, but who has influenced you in your work?
GH: I still feel as though I’m being influenced by something new and marvelous every single minute. But at the core? Robert Louis Stevenson for the charm of his voice and the generosity of his spirit (and the pirates, and those foggy, monstrous streets); Kipling, for the sheer virtuosity and range of his storytelling; Shirley Jackson, for the sustained sense of menace and devastating psychological acuity; Ramsey Campbell, for the variety and majesty of his spellcasting; Val Lewton movies for their skewed realities, alluring shadows, surprising sweetness; Mark Rothko paintings for that impossible, untraceable light; Richard Skelton’s music, and K. Leimer’s, for their restless stillness (if that makes any sense at all), their wells of winking melancholy. P.G. Wodehouse, for the sheer pleasure of his wordplay.
Read the full interview here--->.
GH: I never set out to write “horror” or any other genre. I just love telling stories. But I do think there’s something about ghost stories and horror—the atmosphere, the essentially eerie and beautiful imagery, the primal and universal fears that encode so much human behavior and interaction, the way those fears trigger and heighten other primal and universal emotions—that seems to bring out some of the best writing I have in me. All those things, predictably enough, are also what I love about reading dark fiction. Although, honestly, I love reading any good fiction. Actually, any good anything.
KC: You’ve undoubtedly influenced more than a few authors with your work, but who has influenced you in your work?
GH: I still feel as though I’m being influenced by something new and marvelous every single minute. But at the core? Robert Louis Stevenson for the charm of his voice and the generosity of his spirit (and the pirates, and those foggy, monstrous streets); Kipling, for the sheer virtuosity and range of his storytelling; Shirley Jackson, for the sustained sense of menace and devastating psychological acuity; Ramsey Campbell, for the variety and majesty of his spellcasting; Val Lewton movies for their skewed realities, alluring shadows, surprising sweetness; Mark Rothko paintings for that impossible, untraceable light; Richard Skelton’s music, and K. Leimer’s, for their restless stillness (if that makes any sense at all), their wells of winking melancholy. P.G. Wodehouse, for the sheer pleasure of his wordplay.
Read the full interview here--->.
July 5, 2014
Vampires and Sex
See my guest blog at the
Vampire Book Club
on vampires and sex. Here's a snippet to get you started: "I understand the romantic allure, I guess: the dark stranger who has the power to doom as well as bless or fulfill his or her conquests (and possibly all three at the same time); the forbidden lover at the window, luring one out of prescribed and seemingly permanent patterns; the almost unconscious and overwhelming assertion of (or giving in to) power."
Before
I still so love being the first one up. Like a cat leaping to the just-opened window am I. 'Morning, mourning dove. Hello, summer fans, not-hot light, my sleeping people, all you words that aren't mine yet, might never be.
July 3, 2014
My heart sways
Theodore Roethke, in "The Dying Man", saying most of what I imagined I had to say. Meant to say. Only shorter, and rhyming:
"A man sees, as he dies,
Death's possibilities;
My heart sways with the world.
I am that final thing,
A man learning to sing."
"A man sees, as he dies,
Death's possibilities;
My heart sways with the world.
I am that final thing,
A man learning to sing."
July 1, 2014
Art is a Team Game
TRUE (Tuesday Round Up of Everything) post #3, 7/1/14
No matter what the stereotypes or even an individual artist's stated intentions, the act of making art for other people is a fundamentally optimistic one. It presupposes not only a faith (sometimes mistaken for narcissism--and sometimes accurately pegged as narcissism) that one has something worth articulating but also that other people want to hear it, can be reached, can be moved by whatever that thing is.
It's pretty much impossible to argue that art is a team game. But too many people forget that it is absolutely and unequivocally a cooperative one. You can go ahead and count awards and sales and compute rankings any way you like. In the end, though, if humanity as a whole gets better, and if people individually have richer, more satisfying, more stirred and engaged lives, then everyone wins. And if either of those things doesn't happen, everyone loses.
For that reason, more than any other at this point, I've been grateful that a lot of my best work seems to fall somewhere in the murkier corners of the big tent of horror. Because the horror community is full of people hellbent on making us a community. Peter Straub goes so far out of his way, so often, to support so many. Ramsey Campbell has been supportive way beyond what I would ever have asked of him. Lucius Shepard was like that. So is Liz Hand.
The latest person to fall--or, rise--into this category, for me, is Christopher Golden.
Nothing may come of anything we've been talking about, and that isn't the point of this post. The point is, because he likes my work, he has veered far off his own path to help me find mine. To see if our paths intersect. To make sure I know he hopes so.
Most of these TRUE posts are going to be about art, because art is so fun to chatter and argue about. A few are going to be about people. Because in cases like this, I can't think of anything truer.
No matter what the stereotypes or even an individual artist's stated intentions, the act of making art for other people is a fundamentally optimistic one. It presupposes not only a faith (sometimes mistaken for narcissism--and sometimes accurately pegged as narcissism) that one has something worth articulating but also that other people want to hear it, can be reached, can be moved by whatever that thing is.
It's pretty much impossible to argue that art is a team game. But too many people forget that it is absolutely and unequivocally a cooperative one. You can go ahead and count awards and sales and compute rankings any way you like. In the end, though, if humanity as a whole gets better, and if people individually have richer, more satisfying, more stirred and engaged lives, then everyone wins. And if either of those things doesn't happen, everyone loses.
For that reason, more than any other at this point, I've been grateful that a lot of my best work seems to fall somewhere in the murkier corners of the big tent of horror. Because the horror community is full of people hellbent on making us a community. Peter Straub goes so far out of his way, so often, to support so many. Ramsey Campbell has been supportive way beyond what I would ever have asked of him. Lucius Shepard was like that. So is Liz Hand.
The latest person to fall--or, rise--into this category, for me, is Christopher Golden.
Nothing may come of anything we've been talking about, and that isn't the point of this post. The point is, because he likes my work, he has veered far off his own path to help me find mine. To see if our paths intersect. To make sure I know he hopes so.
Most of these TRUE posts are going to be about art, because art is so fun to chatter and argue about. A few are going to be about people. Because in cases like this, I can't think of anything truer.
Journeying into Mary Rickert's Kingdom
TRUE (Tuesday Round Up of Everything) post Post #2:
Mary Rickert (M. Rickert)-- "Journey into the Kingdom"
I was hoping to get to Mary Rickert's new novel, The Memory Garden, before we have the chance to talk and work together at Readercon next week--just because I'm so sure it's going to be good--but work and life keep interfering. So I went back this weekend and caught up with this masterful mid-length story from 2006, which I hadn't previously read.
A lighthousekeeper's daughter and her widowed mother get visited, on their island--where the only thing that seems to grow is plants from the seed packet their husband/father had in his hand when he drowned--by the ghost of the husband/father. Who keeps melting into a puddle. And who one night brings a younger ghost-sailor as a guest. The ghosts are gentle, sweet, alive, full of stories. And they feed on breath. From the mouths of the living, or stolen from just-used coffee cups.
As in the reconfigured fairy tales of W.B.Yeats, and as in most of my favorite ghostly tales, everyone in this story tells a story (one character even declares--as though stealing the breath from MY mouth--"Don't you think we've gotten awful complacent in our society about story?"). The emotional landscape is wild and weird and full of shadows, even though the characters themselves are all somewhat detached either by grief or by no longer living (and "a remembered emotion is like a remembered taste, it's never really there"). The end is scarier than you expect, and also a sort of sweet, and as to what, exactly, happened, and whose story was closest to truth, and whether that ending is happy or sad, and for whom...
Great, great story. She's a major writer. Go read her.
Mary Rickert (M. Rickert)-- "Journey into the Kingdom"
I was hoping to get to Mary Rickert's new novel, The Memory Garden, before we have the chance to talk and work together at Readercon next week--just because I'm so sure it's going to be good--but work and life keep interfering. So I went back this weekend and caught up with this masterful mid-length story from 2006, which I hadn't previously read.
A lighthousekeeper's daughter and her widowed mother get visited, on their island--where the only thing that seems to grow is plants from the seed packet their husband/father had in his hand when he drowned--by the ghost of the husband/father. Who keeps melting into a puddle. And who one night brings a younger ghost-sailor as a guest. The ghosts are gentle, sweet, alive, full of stories. And they feed on breath. From the mouths of the living, or stolen from just-used coffee cups.
As in the reconfigured fairy tales of W.B.Yeats, and as in most of my favorite ghostly tales, everyone in this story tells a story (one character even declares--as though stealing the breath from MY mouth--"Don't you think we've gotten awful complacent in our society about story?"). The emotional landscape is wild and weird and full of shadows, even though the characters themselves are all somewhat detached either by grief or by no longer living (and "a remembered emotion is like a remembered taste, it's never really there"). The end is scarier than you expect, and also a sort of sweet, and as to what, exactly, happened, and whose story was closest to truth, and whether that ending is happy or sad, and for whom...
Great, great story. She's a major writer. Go read her.
A Record of Home
TRUE (Tuesday Round-up of Everything), week of 7/1, Post #1:
Neil Young-- "A Letter Home"
This isn't likely to be anyone's favorite Neil Young album. It's a little too much what Neil apparently intended it to be; a photo album full of family snapshots, Neil noodling around in his bedroom, figuring out (or remembering) songs he loved way back whenever, and also a sweet little letter to his mom. These aren't cover versions, not even remakes. They're just him playing them. Neil clearly loves these songs. I love a lot of them, too. But I won't be putting on Neil's versions of them much.
There's one element of this package that transcends it, though. A little gesture of glorious genius. Appropriately, in the circumstances, it seems almost a throwaway. An extra.
It's the credits. Or, not the credits themselves, but the slip of paper they're printed on, foxed and tanned and stained to replicate--so precisely that it literally stole breath from me--the paper sleeves that once housed the slabs of scratched vinyl on which I, like Neil, first heard most of these tracks.
The effect of that sleeve, at least on me, is more than just nostalgic. I took one look at it, and suddenly remembered not just those near-useless objects in general--stained and crumpled before I even pulled them out of their record jackets for the first time--but SPECIFIC sleeves. The speckles on my copy of Gordon Lightfoot's IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND. The rip down the center of my PHIL OCHS best-of.
There I was, suddenly, in my own childhood room. Humming the songs that have become MY letters-home songs. Understanding all over again how profoundly my relationship to art I love has intermixed with, transformed, become indistinguishable from my relationship to people.
It may indeed be better to burn out than to fade away, as NY once claimed on RUST NEVER SLEEPS (my copy of which had a paper sleeve with a giant coffee stain, like a birthmark, in the upper left back corner, even though I didn't drink coffee then).
But I think Neil's found another way entirely, which is to somehow keep taking in and giving out so much that you just keep burning.
Neil Young-- "A Letter Home"
This isn't likely to be anyone's favorite Neil Young album. It's a little too much what Neil apparently intended it to be; a photo album full of family snapshots, Neil noodling around in his bedroom, figuring out (or remembering) songs he loved way back whenever, and also a sweet little letter to his mom. These aren't cover versions, not even remakes. They're just him playing them. Neil clearly loves these songs. I love a lot of them, too. But I won't be putting on Neil's versions of them much.
There's one element of this package that transcends it, though. A little gesture of glorious genius. Appropriately, in the circumstances, it seems almost a throwaway. An extra.
It's the credits. Or, not the credits themselves, but the slip of paper they're printed on, foxed and tanned and stained to replicate--so precisely that it literally stole breath from me--the paper sleeves that once housed the slabs of scratched vinyl on which I, like Neil, first heard most of these tracks.
The effect of that sleeve, at least on me, is more than just nostalgic. I took one look at it, and suddenly remembered not just those near-useless objects in general--stained and crumpled before I even pulled them out of their record jackets for the first time--but SPECIFIC sleeves. The speckles on my copy of Gordon Lightfoot's IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND. The rip down the center of my PHIL OCHS best-of.
There I was, suddenly, in my own childhood room. Humming the songs that have become MY letters-home songs. Understanding all over again how profoundly my relationship to art I love has intermixed with, transformed, become indistinguishable from my relationship to people.
It may indeed be better to burn out than to fade away, as NY once claimed on RUST NEVER SLEEPS (my copy of which had a paper sleeve with a giant coffee stain, like a birthmark, in the upper left back corner, even though I didn't drink coffee then).
But I think Neil's found another way entirely, which is to somehow keep taking in and giving out so much that you just keep burning.
June 30, 2014
My Struggle Needs "Attention of a Different Kind"
I take zero pleasure in negative book reviews, of anyone's work (which doesn't mean I don't think there should BE negative book reviews; but there's nothing to celebrate in them). But few pieces of harsh criticism have filled me with so much...no, not joy, but relief, as William Deresciewicz's skewering of Karl Ove Knausgaard 's MY STRUGGLE in THE NATION. The supposed REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST for our age (only purposely stripped of any attempt at insight or poetry or meaning)? The 3600-page second-by-second accounting of the mundanity of one man's life, rendered as flatly as possible--that's its goal, that's the only struggle--that really seems likely to win its author (if that's even the right word--I suspect he'd say it isn't) the Nobel Prize?
Here's Deresiewicz: "His book is like a box of snapshots--no, a steamer trunk; a shipping container. Their very profusion makes each of them null. What's needed is attention of a different kind. One painting, not a thousand pictures. The patience to create the beauty than in turn creates significance."
Here's me: EMPEROR!! CLOTHES! NOT WEARING...
Here's Deresiewicz: "His book is like a box of snapshots--no, a steamer trunk; a shipping container. Their very profusion makes each of them null. What's needed is attention of a different kind. One painting, not a thousand pictures. The patience to create the beauty than in turn creates significance."
Here's me: EMPEROR!! CLOTHES! NOT WEARING...
Richard Skelton
At this point, having draped it over so many hundreds of my mornings, I'm not sure I can say whether Richard Skelton's skeletal, aching, oceanic music inspires my writing or just accompanies it. What I can say is that the space it creates, the world it evokes--a whistle in the grass, gray light on green water, faces in dark spaces in trees ("How to Like It"-Stephen Dobyns)--is the world in which I go wordpicking. And whatever walks there, walks beside me.
