I can understand why folks might be upset with Warren’s pick to handle the God talk at the inauguration, but as an atheist, I don’t have a God in this fight.  The way I figure it, if you don’t believe in God, why should it matter?  Who can properly address Santa?  Anyone?  No one?  I understand why the new president can’t possibly say he’s an atheist (if he is) because that would make him unelectable.  I’d rather have him in office than be 100% honest.  Change we can believe in has to have Him hanging around somewhere.  If you do believe in God—infallible, omniscient master of the universe—then you have to trust the Big Guy to do the right thing by gays and pro-choice advocates even if Rick is a little challenged on these issues.  And think about it.  No matter who Obama picks, everything the person has said from any pulpit ever will be rehearsed ad nauseam.  Anything to avoid the real issues on this planet.  Remember Rev. Wright?  So who would you rather have sliced and diced?  Warren or some lefty so desperate to believe he’ll say almost anything, which then Obama will have to explain.  This is like arguing over the Tooth Fairy when you’re trying to reconstruct someone’s jaw.  I’d prefer a wiccan priestess myself, but I’d be mighty disappointed in his political skills if Barack listened to me.

Happy birthday, Jane.  A nobody during her life whose books were little read, she’s easily the most widely read (and reread) novelist ever and one of the most skilled.  She would never have made it to the Best of the Year lists if they’d had such things in her day.  She’s in good company.  Melville did okay with his more adventurous tales, but Moby Dick was practically a career ender.  Faulkner’s books were out of print when he was awarded the Nobel.  One likes to think good literature endures, but I’m not so sure.  We got lucky is all.  Sarah, recently at a loss for something to read, picked up Pride and Prejudice once again and once again couldn’t put it down, occasionally reading choice bits to me for my enjoyment.  Thanks Jane.  I’m glad we remember you.

For the past few years I’ve been working with Dr. Terry Oggel of the VCU English Dept. on an assignment with his graduate bibliography class.  (A real tough one by all accounts).  I’ve deposited the entire paper and electronic trail of The Bright Spot with VCU’s Special Collections.  This includes several drafts, handwritten notes, emails, etc.  Each student is given a portion to examine in minute detail to determine an authoratative text.  They find interesting things every time.

An issue that always comes up is the author’s intention.  I meet with the students a couple of times, the first to answer any questions they might have, and the second to hear their conclusions and comment on them.  The second meeting for this class was last night.  One student was working on a section I had revised in my handwriting on the printed page after editor Juliet Ulman’s astute comments.  The student assumed my original intention somehow trumped these written changes and wanted to revert to the unrevised text.  I had to ask why my earlier intentions were more important than the later ones.  That is, having heard Juliet’s advice and finding it useful, I had changed what I originally wrote, making it (I hoped) clearer and more effective.

I think this glorification of the author’s “original intent” grows out of the mistaken notion that somehow the novel precedes composition in some platonic realm, that the author somehow has a “novel in his head” he struggles to get on paper.  People tell me this sometimes—”I have a novel in my head I intend to write someday.”  In my experience, novels evolve.  The “original” intention is usually a vague, frail thing.  It’s only by endlessly indulging in the process of writing and rewriting that a novel happens at all.  Sometimes that process is actually held back by some misplaced affection for the original intention.

I’ve been reading Gene Wolfe’s much-admired The Book of the New Sun and enjoying it a great deal.  I have been blessed with a terrible cold, which has afforded me extended reading time necessary for a book such as this.  I’ve heard of it for years, but never got around to it.  My science fiction reading lapsed when I was reading for my comps.  I was supposed to know everything about Literature, so they wouldn’t ask me anything about “escapist” science fiction.  I’d like to see my mentors go a few rounds with Wolfe for “escape.”

The book was a tough sell for me.  Even though I love medieval romance, I don’t love swords and resuscitated aristocratic societies in sf quite so much.  Like comedies about hit men, it’s a genre I generally avoid.  That it has been described as both “Spenserian” and “Catholic allegory” made it even more unattractive.  It’s clearly one novel chopped into four volumes that just stop more than end, usually an annoyance I wouldn’t quickly forgive.  But when Neil Gaiman, John Clute, Patrick O’Leary, and Michael Dirda all give the book hyperbolic praise, you gotta listen.  So far I’ve read the first two volumes, The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator.  What a weird and wonderful ride.  Don’t ask me what’s going on.  I’m not sure, but I don’t care.  I love that.

Reading what has proven to be an enduring classic of literary science fiction, I have to ask myself whether it would stand a snowball’s chance in hell if it hit an editor or agent’s desk today.  I can’t imagine.

Dallas friend Floyd Phelps sent me the following anecdote from the canyon we used to call the Generation Gap:

I was having trouble with my computer. So I called Richard, the 11-year-old across the street, whose bedroom looks like Mission Control and asked him to come over.
Richard clicked a couple of buttons and solved the problem. As he was walking away, I called after him, “So, what was wrong?�
He replied, ‘It was an ‘ID ten T’ error.â€�
I didn’t want to appear stupid, but asked, ‘An ‘ID ten T’ error? What’s that?  In case I need to fix it again.â€�
Richard grinned.  “Haven’t you ever heard of an ‘ID ten T’ error before?”
�No,� I replied.
â€�Write it down,â€� he said. “I think you’ll figure it out.â€�
So I wrote down:       “I D 1 0 T�
I used to like the little shit.

Boulder friend Tim Shropshire sent me the following cool link—The Astronomy Picture of the Day.  While you’re there, be sure to check out the archive.  Enjoy.

Obama came to Richmond yesterday, and Sarah and I made it inside the Coliseum with about 12,000 other folks to see him.  There were a few more thousand outside.  The acoustics suck, and we were way up high, but it was absolutely a thrill to see the next President of the United States.  The man’s electrifying.  The energy on the streets afterward was giddy.  I was reminded of when Lincoln came to the liberated city.  There was dancing in the streets then.  When Barack wins, there will be one joyful noise in this city, believe me.  I remember Ike, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush II, but I’ve never actually seen a president in person.  Here’s hoping I have now come November 4th.  Vote.  No excuses.  You have to vote this time.

• Greed is good.
• The market knows best.
• Government regulation is bad.
• Europe should be more like us.
• What’s good for Wall Street is good for America.

It’s beginning to sound like we’ve got some contenders for Republicans’ biggest whoppers to eclipse “Saddam has WMD’s” and “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie!”  We now know that “compassionate conservatism” means a helping hand to the rich.  Capitalism for profits; socialism for losses.  Gotta keep those fundamentals sound.

Adios, investment banks.  Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out! Watch the first step, might be a helluva ways down without a golden parachute.

Ever since the choice of Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate, I’ve been kind of bummed.  I figure if John McCain is in the White House, with everybody in DC packing a gun now, he’s bound to call the wrong person “friend” and Palin’s going to end up President.  I’ve been trying to figure out how this can possibly be a good thing for me or the country and coming up with nothing, when just yesterday I got a very nice fan letter from a young woman who was reading my books out of her local library—about the only place one can find my books these days.  They’re sure not down at the Barne$ & Noble.  Then it dawned on me how a Palin Presidency could be good for me.  She can ban my books!

As most people have heard by now, the famous former mayor of Wasilla asked her town’s librarian if she would be down with, you know, taking a few books off the shelf if the mayor didn’t like them.  No specific books were named.  Palin was just trying to establish the Censor-in-Chief principle involved—that the chief executive’s job is to keep bad books off the shelves.

That got me to thinking about my books this innocent young girl had just read:  a woman turning into a wolf and liking it, reincarnation and blasphemy, clones and virtual immortality, anarchist time travelers.  Shit.  We can’t have that stuff on the shelves, can we, Sarah?  You can’t waffle on your principles!  What’s good for Wasilla’s good for the world, right?  Look what censorship did for Joyce, Salinger, Miller, Burroughs, Vonnegut, Dan the man Brown, for chrissakes.  My career’s in a slump now.  I could use the notoriety.  The  book I’m writing now, Sarah?  Get this:  Lucifer is the hero.  He gets into the dreams of children.  C’mon, Sarah.  You need to get out ahead of this.  You’re for shooting wolves out of planes.  Surely you can shoot Wilderness off the shelves.  Let’s see what you got.  Bring it on.  Go ahead.  Make my day.  I want you to.

How can you help?  The two or three of you who read this blog?  Email Sarah Palin today.  Tell her, “You’ve got to ban this Danvers’ guys books now before he pollutes any more young minds!  And don’t forget Robert Sydney—more evil under another name!”  The way I figure it, some of my stuff might have to come back into print so that people can get copies for the book burnings.  Maybe a few audio books would be nice.  I remember when the Dixie Chicks were being worked over by the Country First crowd, the satisfying crunch those CDs made.  There’s that dreadful movie version of Wilderness… I might toss that on the blaze.  The important thing now is to get behind Sarah Palin, future Censor-in-Chief of America!  C’mon!  Burn baby burn!  Burn baby burn!  Everybody…

I heard this Tom Russell tune on NPR’s Weekend Edition on Sunday.  Check it out here.

Who’s Gonna Build Your Wall?

by Tom Russell

I‘ve got 800 miles of open border
Right outside my door.
There’s minute men in little pick up trucks
Who’ve declared their own damn war.
Now the government wants to build
A barrier like old Berlin 8 feet tall,
But if uncle Sam sends the illegals home,
Who’s gonna build the wall?

Refrain:
Who’s gonna build your wall boys?
Who’s gonna mow your lawn?
Who’s gonna cook your Mexican food
When your Mexican maid is gone?
Who’s gonna wax the floors tonight
Down at the local mall?
Who’s gonna wash your baby‘s face?
Who’s gonna build your wall?

Now I ain’t got no politics
So don’t lay that rap on me
Left wing, right wing, up wing, down wing—
I see strip malls from sea to shining sea.
It’s the fat cat white developer
Who’s created this whole damn squall.
It’s a pyramid scheme of dirty jobs,
And who’s gonna build your wall?

Refrain

We’ve got fundamentalist Muslims.
We’ve got fundamentalist Jews.
We’ve got fundamentalist Christians.
They‘ll blow the whole thing up for you.
But as I travel around this big old world,
There’s one thing that I most fear.
It’s a white man in a golf shirt
With a cell phone in his ear.

Refrain