Francis and Timmy

Story of mine published in online magazine Verbicide, go here to read:

 http://www.verbicidemagazine.com/2013/11/26/francis-and-timmy-doug-downie-fiction

To Steve Earle

Steve,
Been reading your book of short stories, Doghouse Roses. I like it. I like the grit and focus on the common people. I like that your main character is often a guitar player. I like the drinking and traveling and bad relationships, the hitchhiking and hard work. I like the view from the wrong side of the law. I like the down to earth expression.
But Steve...there's something that really disappoints me.
The thing is, is that you don't have the guts to write in first person, or at least the real kind of first person. I can't tell you how disappointing that is, but I can tell you that your writing would be much better if you did have those kind of guts, the kind of guts to do that. To really lay it down from the heart, rather than just appearing to do so.
There are a number of writers out there who have had such courage. You may know of some of them, and then again you may not. Townes may have done it in song, and Guy Clark certainly has, but here we're talking about prose.
It takes courage, and only a few have had it.
Too bad you're not one of them. It would have been nicer if you were.

Interview with Jack Dugan

Well let’s get started by asking, when did you first begin writing?

I began writing when I first saw a line of words upon a page that I had written.

I mean, when did you actually start writing?

I was writing then.

Most people think that writing means putting words into a structure.

Most people are wrong.

Who are you to say such things?

I’m nobody.

OK, we’re here to talk to you about your novel, Lint in My Navel, just published by Broken Petals Press.

Good for you. Wait, which we are you talking about? Is there someone else here?

Lint doesn’t really seem to be about much of anything. There’s no resolution, the conflict is not even clear, though it is filled with undirected conflict.

Which way do you direct your conflict? Do you think you’re in charge, or something?

All I’m saying is that it’s generally acknowledged that a good story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and develop characters. We need to know what the characters are thinking, feeling. The characters in Lint are not fully developed. They just do things and say things and then they move on.

The characters in life are not fully developed. A fully developed character is another euphemism for unbridled egotism. The writer regaling in himself, without ever admitting it. It’s a horrible arrogance of a knowledge that doesn’t exist. The people and stories in life are unresolved. That’s the point. Fiction is fiction, but fiction without truth is useless. No amount of ‘research’ can produce a true story.

Did you do no research for Lint?

I certainly did, but I didn’t know it at the time.

You feature dialogue quite strongly in your writing. The narrative is sparse.

People will talk, you know. I get tired of reading things where every piece of dialogue must be accompanied by a description of what the speaker is doing, or thinking, or feeling. Or long descriptive passages as we enter the mind of the character. Nobody enters anybody’s mind, ever, anywhere, on this planet. It’s pretension. But I guess that’s what they call ‘character development’. Or long monologues where the writer sticks his, or her, bloody little viewpoint into it, and craps all over us. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard anyone talk that way since I was in high school. It sucks, and it isn’t profound, it’s just self-indulgent. Most novels could be cut in half.

But isn’t that what this is, the narrative? On page 44 you write:

‘There may have been a point, a defining moment, when Duncan first crossed over from the believing side to the non-believing side. It seemed to him that there was such a time, but he couldn’t find it in his memory. He finally came to conclude that the reason for this was that it had happened at a very early age. He couldn’t remember his first pair of shoes, he couldn’t remember his first steps across a living room carpet, he couldn’t remember his first taste of blueberry pie, he couldn’t remember his first run across a leaf strewn lawn on an autumn afternoon, and he couldn’t remember the first time he saw that he was being fed a pack of lies, that the story was a shuck, that the greatest fiction was the fairytale people had concocted in order to live with themselves, the self-congratulatory and self-perpetuating advert for themselves that allowed them to avoid all confrontation with their actual place in nature.’

What did you mean by this?

Damned if I know. I was drunk. A little stoned too. I think it had something to do with hypocrisy. The hypocrisy is probably in using the third person.

Elsewhere you seem to use the literary device of….

Literary device? What is a literary device anyway? Is it like a strap-on? Something you use when you can’t get it up?

You don’t seem to set much store on formal study of literature.

A Master’s degree in creative writing is probably good for wiping your ass. Really, if you feel the need to take a creative writing course then you’re not a writer. Go wash the dishes or watch Oprah on tv.

Trouble is, is that people get too picayune. They need to forget what they were told by their masters and learn how to write again. They’ve lost all feeling. Someone once criticized me for repeating a word in the same sentence (in an off-the-cuff and vernacular blog entry by the way): ‘That all depends on what the meaning of is, is.’ I’ll get back to her now now.

Do you see any value in formal study?

Well, there is the time and opportunity to read, which one must do at some point.

What do you think the novel is about?

Which novel? The novel? Think of your life. Is it of less value than other lives? Novels have always been about supposedly ‘interesting’ or ‘important’ people, events, epochs, wars, upheavals, etc. Fuck that shit. There are stories everywhere and it’s wrong to lose them, if we tell them honestly, they turn out to be good stories. Honesty is important. It’s the real window into the world. I could care less about a writer blathering on about characters he couldn’t possibly know anything about. Of course anger is important too.

What’s the difference between poetry and prose?

Are you for real? There is no difference. It’s only so-called ‘poets’ that will make this distinction. It’s all writing. Poetry is prose and prose is poetry. Poems are nothing but snippets of prose that punch far above their weight. Anything else is pure phoniness. Any writing should serve its purpose. The fake formalism of most ‘poetry’ is enough to make any strong person puke.

Will you give any readings from Lint?

Lots of people say poetry was meant to be read. What a load of shit. If that was true then most poetry would never see the light of day. That’s what people who are afraid to stay home alone at night say. Poetry was meant to be read as if it was being spoken. No, I’ll only read for big bucks, or at least a piece of ass.

You seem to be getting a little tipsy.

Indeed. One more beer, then we’ll be OK.

Well, let’s wrap it up by asking, what’s next?

Besides a tune or two on the guitar I think we’ll call it quits for now. I have a story about childhood, but that will have to wait. Turning a life into art takes some time. Cheers to all the writers; remember, tomorrow we die.

One Dog Barking

Also in the recent issue of New Contrast. Check it out. It's very South African but hopefully there's a thread that might resonate with others.

One Dog Barking

It was a wild night in the old settler town that sat in a bowl on a hilltop, tipped on the edge of the future. There was singing and screaming and dogs barking and the howls of people whose gender or race or age could not be discerned. The arrogant accelerations of excessively loud engines ripped asphalt off the streets and the pop of what might have been guns punctured the night.

            It was a routine night for me.

            All day long some guy down at the petrol station had been singing, in a guttural and broken voice a song of only his imagination, while random hooters popped the air. He had stopped for a few hours and then begun again. Such endurance amazed me.

            By the time midnight came close there were voices everywhere. They could have been coming from the trees on Hill St. or the belfry up at St. George’s, or a gathering on Raglan Rd., or an event at Rhodes, or just any group of Saturday night people who were both near and far.

            People were partying in their way, as I was in mine.

            I sat there and I thought; ‘I will die, and no one will know my story.’

            And then I thought; ‘Life’s like that.’

            Friday had been an interesting day.

            It all started when I woke up and realized I’d forgotten to pull up the little green latch on the alarm clock. So I was late in getting going. I don’t have to punch a time clock, but it doesn’t look good.

            Of course, that’s part of the problem. The Episcopalian adherence to early to rise, early to bed, ran like a gash through the gut of the life I sought after. It was the dominant paradigm, and it was pathetic, but I confess I had it far better than in all those years of frozen dawns and bare fingers on fire, scraping ice from a broken windshield.

           Within minutes people started to draggle in to see me, as if they’d been hovering in the corridor waiting for my arrival. On any given day I could go for hours without a soul recognizing my existence, but sudden bursts of supplicants penetrated the brief period between lock click and log on.

            I didn’t begrudge any of them for those moments, for it was my job, and unlike the other side of my life this one was a social life. It allowed the other side of my life, and I was grateful for that.

           The stream carried students, staff, salespeople, colleagues, maintenance workers, and various more or less lost souls, some of them plain flotsam and some of them sparks, brilliance in the making. I felt lucky to be in their presence.

            None of them knew where I had come from, or where I was going.

            It was a day much like any other day. I had my day routine and my night routine. It was too damn bad one had to sleep somewhere in between.

            Not that I don’t waste time. I succumb to the enticements of the internet as much as any of my compatriots – for example. The intellectual life is fettered by trying to frame it in filigrees of mahogany or oak.

            So when Jimbo came in, shuffling around a bit, shy as a duiker caught in the lights, I was taken a bit by surprise.

            “I just wanted to thank you for all you’ve done for us this year. It was a good year. I got a lot out of it.”

            “I’m glad to hear it Jimbo. All I really wanted to do was to help you guys out a bit.”

            He thanked me again, and bowed backwards through the door as if he was a wraith.

            I looked out the window at the plane tree that stood out there and which had marked the seasons for me, now in full greenery, with a weaver pulling at a recalcitrant bit of phloem or xylem. Clouds were rolling in and I saw a bolt of lightening split the darkness above the township. I knew the temperature was dropping like a stone into a bottomless well, the typical late afternoon loss of summer or spring that happened in this place.

            And then the building shook; the walls and floors seemed to ripple, and the ripple rolled up my jeans, ran across my thighs, grabbed my gut, slid up my sides and pulled my ears, and finally skitched my scalp. What would make a building rumble so?

            I sat dazed for less than a minute….they were having training manoeuvres up at the Army base. It was not common, and it had never made the house of science shake before.  

            The reality of my leaving gripped me - a warm glove or a cold vise, I wasn’t sure.

           

            By two o’clock in the morning, the aural environment had become softer, and silence was no longer a foreign thing. It was lovely to hear very little at all, and it was so rare a thing that I simply sat and listened, and then listened some more, for quite some time.

            Finally there was only the sound of one dog barking.

            The night was not hopeless.

Who would have thunk it?

Title comes from a Greg Brown song, but only a very short while ago I would have scoffed at the idea of having a blog. After all, this is completely unfiltered writing, unfettered by any aspect of peer-review...I have a problem with that. But let me join the club, if for no other reason than to get a few more people exposed to my writing...the kind that I often devote a bit more thought to than I would to a blog. Who knows? I will post spontaneous things here as well as things from the near and maybe even far past. I have 4 books of fiction that are available at http://www.lulu.com/, soon to be on Amazon. I'm working on a new novel, and I wouldn't be too surprised if I decide to publish one or two collections of poetry before I bite the dust. I have so many of them that I may need the help of an editor for that little exercise, however. I've been published here and there; I guess if you google me out you'll find out a few juicy tidbits.
That's all for now, but remember, 4 books of economical and honest prose at http://www.lulu.com/. Search my name, or for the titles: Cat Came Back and Other Stories, Two Trains Running, God Awful Acres, and Stockboy.