CarrollBlog

CarrollBlog 3.13

2010-03-13T08:04:14Z

For those who have asked I've got two new short stories appearing this spring. The first, called ELIZABETH THUG, will be in the spring issue of CONJUNCTIONS magazine due out in May some time. The second, LET THE PAST BEGIN, is in the big new anthology Neil Gaiman's editing called STORIES. He's got some terrific authors lined up so the book should be a treat. It's due from William Morrow in June.

CarrollBlog 3.12

2010-03-12T07:49:37Z

Retriever
by Faith Shearin

My father, in middle age, falls in love with a dog.
He who kicked dogs in anger when I was a child,
who liked his comb always on the same shelf,
who drank martinis to make his mind quiet.

He who worked and worked—his shirts
wrapped in plastic, his heart ironed
like a collar. He who—like so many men—
loved his children but thought the money

he made for them was more important
than the rough tweed of his presence.
The love of my father's later years is
a Golden Retriever—more red

than yellow—a nervous dog who knows
his work clothes from his casual ones,
can read his creased face, who waits for
him at the front door—her paws crossed

like a child's arms. She doesn't berate him
for being late, doesn't need new shoes
or college. There is no pressure to raise her
right, which is why she chews the furniture,

pees on rugs, barks at strangers who
cross the lawn. She is his responsible soul
broken free. She is the children he couldn't
come home to made young again.

She is like my mother but never angry,
always devoted. He cooks for his dog—
my father who raised us in restaurants—
and takes her on business trips like

a wife. Sometimes, sitting beside her
in the hair-filled fan he drives to make
her more comfortable, my father's dog
turns her head to one side as if

thinking and, in this pose, more than
one of us has mistaken her for a person.
We would be jealous if she didn't make
him so happy—he who never took

more than one trip on his expensive
sailboat, whose Mercedes was wrecked
by a valet. My mother saw him behind
the counter of a now-fallen fast food

restaurant when she was nineteen.
They kissed beside a river where fish
no longer swim. My father who was
always serious has fallen in love with

a dog. What can I do but be happy for him?

CarrollBlog 3.10

2010-03-10T13:38:18Z

The wonderful writer Barry Hannah died last week of a heart attack. If you've not read his short stories, you're missing a great treat. He was loved by many, both as a writer and as a mensch. The good words about him are coming in from all over. One story is particularly telling, especially for those of you with artistic aspirations but who spend too much time procrastinating. In case you don't know, a 'galley' is what a publisher sends you to make final corrections in before your book is published. One of Hannah's writing students drank too much. Everyone knew about it but didn't say anything until Hannah met this student late one weekday night in a downtown bar. The student was drunk.Hannah went up to him and said, "You shouldn't be here; you should be at home editing your galley."
The student said "But I don't have a galley-- I haven't even finished writing my novel yet."
Hannah said, "There you go."
-------------------------------------
here's a link to one of Hannah's most famous stories, "Water Liars"

http://gardenandgun.com/waterliars
-------------------------------------
"Reading and writing train our people for logic, grace, and precision of thought, and begin a lifelong study of the exceptional in human existence. I think literature is the history of the soul. Writing should be a journey into worthy perception."

Barry Hannah

CarrollBlog 3.9

2010-03-09T21:24:16Z

Gate C22
By Ellen Bass

At gate C22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like he'd just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she'd been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it
again and again. We were all watching--
passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling
sunglasses. We couldn't look away. We could
taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,
as your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after--if she beat you or left you or
you're lonely now--you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you
as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,
all of us trying to slip into that woman's middle-aged body,
her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,
little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

CarrollBlog 3.8

2010-03-08T05:46:32Z

A small thing that makes me sad: years ago I bought a tattered postcard at the Vienna flea market for the equivalent of five cents. From the moment I saw it in an old shoebox, it was so captivating that it held me in its thrall a long time. Eventually during a move to a new apartment the postcard was lost and I never found it again. The photo on it was of beautiful young woman wearing a 1920's hairdo and clothes, sitting flanked on either side by two handsome men in wrinkled French Foreign Legion uniforms. Real BEAU GESTE or THE ENGLISH PATIENT stuff. The sepia photograph must have been taken in the 20's or 30's in a barren desert camp somewhere, judging from the background. I always wondered what the backstory of the picture could be. Was one of the men her husband or brother that she had journeyed from Paris or London to visit? Or were both men Legionnaires who had met and fallen in love with her out there in the middle of that desolate nowhere? Naturally the eventual resolution of their triangle had to be tragic or triumphant or... Perhaps she was a nurse who volunteered to work in that end of the world spot-- One of those impossibly brave and adventurous women like Beryl Markham, Lee Miller, Tina Modotti or Isak Dinesen. I loved that photograph. Often I played with the idea of writing a book around it.
----------------------
interesting concept for a book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V4QrekU1Wk&fmt=22

CarrollBlog 3.7

2010-03-07T09:32:11Z

One of life's small sad facts is there are people we no longer see who nevertheless gave us some of our best or most important experiences; but they don't know it and never will. That's because we didn't know it ourselves until much later, looking back. She thought about the summer in Greece almost thirty years before when they were together and flew from island to island on cheap rattle'y propeller planes whenever they felt like it. They stayed in ten dollar rooms with the toilet outside down the hall.They read wilted, water-stained books while sitting next to each other on the small balconies off the rooms. Or they sat silently together in complete peace while staring at the sea. No matter what kind of accomodations they rented, there always seemed to be a view of the sea. Every day they ate salads of tomatoes, olives, and thick chunks of chalk-white feta cheese drizzled in fresh olive oil for lunch. They rented a blue Vespa. They walked on black volcanic sand. He bought them baseball caps because the Greek sun was so intense. She was happy then and knew it. But her heart needed three decades more to understand just how happy she had been-- Hall of Fame-happy, once in a lifetime-happy. By the time she came to that realization he was many years gone. One of her final wishes was that she could tell him, thank him for those days together. And if life were magical, which it is not, to sit together again in one of those outdoor tavernas at sunset watching the harbor, the boats, the stars coming out above them, their dinner being prepared, but most especially him.

CarrollBlog 3.6

2010-03-06T06:12:41Z

If You Knew
by Ellen Bass

What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line's crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say Thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.

A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

CarrollBlog 3.5

2010-03-05T05:08:28Z

"People don't want things to make sense, although they always say they do. Know why? Because if things made sense we'd all be in trouble. You drive too fast down the street because it feels good or because you're in a hurry. Now if things made sense, a cop would stop you every single time and give you a ticket. Now what happens if a cop *does* stop you? You get angry and say that's not fair! Of course it's fair. It also makes sense. But if life made sense we'd either behave ourselves a hell of a lot better or we'd be walking around scared, waiting to be punished for all the bad things we do every day. We want life to make sense only when it's to our *advantage.* Otherwise, it's interesting not knowing what's coming next. Maybe you'll get heads, maybe tails. People do wrong things all the time and get away with them. Good people get their necks broken. Would you prefer it if only the good people got rewarded? How often are you good? How often do you deserve the good *you* get? Wouldn't you rather have an interesting life than a fair one?"

CarrollBlog 3.4

2010-03-04T05:17:59Z

“Sprezzatura. This is an archaic Italian word for being able to do your craft without a lot of visible effort. It’s a combination of elan and grace and class, sort of the opposite of loud grunts while you play tennis or a lot of whining and fuss when you help out a customer.
“Many people are unable to put their finger on it, but this is a magnetic trait for many of us. We want our lawyer, dentist and waiter to demonstrate sprezzatura, but of course, not particularly try to. This is one of the secrets of Danny Meyer’s top-rated restaurants in New York. It doesn’t have to be flashy, it doesn’t even have to be the very best there ever was, but sprezzatura is enough to get us to return. As long as this light-footedness is scarce, it will remain valuable.”

Seth Godin

CarrollBlog 3.3

2010-03-03T06:11:07Z

"Felice believed it is almost always something small or unexpected that ends a relationship. In general the hammer blow does not come from things like finding out your partner has been unfaithful or because they become unbearable behind closed doors. Those discoveries may knock you to your knees, but it is actually seeing the secret snapshot of your partner together with the other person, both of them looking so happy, so completely stoned on love or sex, that finishes it. Or the slight wicked smile on their face after they have been intentionally cruel to you. Or a long silence when many words are needed. The end of love, like God, is often in the details."

from the new book

CarrollBlog 3.2

2010-03-02T06:20:22Z

We spend our lives learning how to rationalize our imperfect behavior, but let me tell you something: It all boils down to the three sizes of guilt.
When it's small, we can slip it into our pocket and not think about it for the rest of the day. Didn't do your exercises? Or write that letter to your mother? Make the phone call? Fix the nice soup for the family you had planned? Screw it--the day was hard enough and you did enough.
Medium-sized guilt doesn't fit into the pocket and must be carried awkwardly in the hand like an iron barbell or when it's really bad, a squirming live animal. We know it's there every minute, yet still find ways to lessen or shift our discomfort. Having an affair and aren't so nice to your spouse because you're spending too much energy on this new love? Go buy the old love some obscenely expensive, thoughtful gift and what time you do spend together, be so passionate and concerned about them that you glow in the dark.
Large sized guilt either crushes or bends you so far to the ground that, either way, you're immobilized. No shifting *this* weight and no getting out from under it.

CarrollBlog 3.1

2010-03-01T05:25:42Z

A smart ass book collector-friend sent me an entry they'd noticed in a rare book catalog. The dealer was selling one of my early novels autographed and was charging an obscenely expensive price. Why? Because I’m dead. Part of the catalog description reads, "Carroll lived in Europe in the 1980's and wrote three novels. He returned to the US and died a few years later." I wonder what this dealer thinks when he sees or tries to explain how Carroll has published thirteen new books since he died? Maybe he believes it's another JC. Or it is the same Carroll, only the guy wrote so much while alive that there have been enough to keep releasing them years after the author was six feet under.

CarrollBlog 2.28

2010-02-28T07:15:30Z

The French novelist Marcel Proust believed people must know and understand themselves before they can know or understand others. He developed a list of subjective questions that he felt would help reveal to people their true selves and the inner personalities of those around them.

IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT YOURSELF, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER YOUR GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT?
WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO LIVE?
WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE FICTIONAL HERO?
WHO ARE YOUR REAL-LIFE HEROES?
WHAT IS THE QUALITY YOU MOST ADMIRE IN A MAN?
WHAT IS THE QUALITY YOU MOST ADMIRE IN A WOMAN?
WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST FEAR?
WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT STATE OF MIND?
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE OCCUPATION?(WAY OF SPENDING TIME)
WHAT HISTORICAL FIGURE DO YOU MOST IDENTIFY WITH?
WHICH LIVING PERSON DO YOU MOST ADMIRE?
WHAT IS YOUR MOST TREASURED POSSESSION?
WHEN AND WHERE WERE YOU HAPPIEST?
WHAT IS YOUR MOST OBVIOUS CHARACTERISTIC?
WHAT IS THE TRAIT YOU MOST DEPLORE (HATE) IN YOURSELF?
WHAT IS THE TRAIT YOU MOST DEPLORE IN OTHERS?
WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST EXTRAVAGANCE?
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE JOURNEY?
WHAT DO YOU MOST DISLIKE ABOUT YOUR APPEARANCE?
WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER THE MOST OVER-RATED VIRTUE?
ON WHAT OCCASION DO YOU LIE?
WHICH WORDS OR PHRASES DO YOU MOST OVER-USE?
WHAT IS IT YOU MOST DISLIKE?
WHAT DO YOU VALUE MOST IN YOUR FRIENDS?
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO DIE?
IF YOU WERE TO DIE AND COME BACK AS A PERSON OR AN ANIMAL, WHAT DO YOU THINK IT WOULD BE?
IF YOU COULD CHOOSE AN OBJECT TO COME BACK AS, WHAT WOULD YOU CHOOSE?
WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO (WORDS YOU LIVE BY OR THAT MEAN A LOT TO YOU)?
WHO HAS BEEN THE GREATEST INFLUENCE ON YOU?

CarrollBlog 2.27

2010-02-27T06:10:53Z

When I was seventeen, my father was invited to Japan to collaborate on a screenplay with the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. My mother and I accompanied him. It was a crazy, once in a lifetime trip. Kurosawa was considered a god in Japan for having made such classic films as THE SEVEN SAMURAI, THRONE OF BLOOD, RASHOMON, and others. Because he had specifically asked my father to co-write his first Western film, we were treated like mini-gods.

Kurosawa's son was my age and a member of one of the most famous rock groups in Japan at the time. A very good guy, he immediately adopted me and introduced me both to his friends and his life which was fast, glittery, and full of great looking women who smiled a lot but naturally didn't speak a word of English.
One night he said he was fixing me up on a blind date with the prettiest girl of all. I was to meet her at the Hotel New Otani at 10 pm for drinks and then we would see how things went. I asked if this girl spoke English and was told no. But don't worry because she's fun anyway. The implication was clear that we wouldn't need to talk after a certain point, etcetera. I was hesitant but what the hell-- I was seventeen and game for anything. So I put on my best and went to meet her at a hotel which was on the other side of town.
Tokyo is a huge city and to this day I remember how long the taxi ride was. I was nervous and eager and ready for anything. Still, the ride there seemed to take a very long time. When I arrived, only one very good looking girl was waiting in the lobby. Since I was the only blond, 6'4" person there, she came right over and said in halting English that she was the one. The reason we met there was a revolving bar/restaurant on top of the hotel, the only one of its kind in town. If you sat there long enough, you got to see all of Tokyo without moving from your chair.

I think our "date" lasted an hour. I don't remember. Of course it was a disaster and the girl made no sign whatsoever that she was interested in going beyond a drink or two. Silence, smiles, and then more deepening silence. Eventually it became too much and I signalled a waiter for the check. When it came I tried to keep the sang froid but it was hard because the bill was astronomical-- out the window, crazy expensive. Trying to be a 17 year old James Bond, I pretty much kept my cool and paid. Then I escorted the girl down to the lobby and gave her every last yen I had for her taxi ride home. She said thank you and left.
I was seventeen and very unhip to the ways of the world. Never once did it cross my mind that I could take a taxi back to my hotel, ask the driver to wait when we arrived, and get money from the desk to pay for the fare. I just thought "I'm broke so I I have to walk back." To this day I do not know how far it is from the Hotel New Otani to the Hotel Tokyo Prince but the walk took all night, and I am not exaggerating. I walked across that city for hours, having only one thing to guide me: behind my hotel was a huge television tower called, as I remember, the Tokyo Tower. Whenever I got lost, which was about every fifteen minutes, I would either look for the tower way off there in the distance, or I would ask someone. I would say "Tokyo Tower! Tokyo Tower!" in a desperate voice and then shrug exaggeratedly. When people understood what I was asking, they pointed in one direction or another and I was off again. This went on all night. Sometimes I got very very lost but was saved by small police booths throughout the city. Not much bigger than telephone booths, they seemed to be all over the place. In one of them I saw a man on the ground being beaten by two policemen. In another I saw three women, obviously prostitutes, huddled together and staring shamefacedly at the ground while being yelled at by a cop. These booths seemed to be hives of activity. Not only cops hung out there but loafers, voyeurs, and passersby if anything interesting was happening inside. Whenever I got really stuck, I would walk up to one and ask whoever was there "Tokyo Tower!" Some were amused, some suspicious, most people were as helpful as they could be to a tall American teenager who obviously spoke no Japanese.

The funniest part of the adventure happened in one of these booths. The first time I went in and asked for directions, a cop held up a hand for me to be quiet and lifted the telephone. He spoke into the receiver and then handed it to me. I took it and on the other end, a clearly Japanese man spoke a rapid fire English to me. So fast I barely could understand it. But we figured each other out finally and he explained in great detail where I was and how to find the way back to my hotel. But Tokyo is a myriad of little streets and tiny streets and alleys, dead ends, etcetera. So it was a very easy place to lose your way in, even with good instructions. Some time later and a few miles on, I ambled into another of these booths and did my routine. "Tokyo Tower! Tokyo Tower!" Shrug. Again a policeman held up his hand, picked up the phone, and by God suddenly I was talking to the same guy again in English, only this time he sounded more annoyed. Hadn't he told me where to go last time? Didn't I know how to follow instructions?
Around five in the morning when the sky was beginning to brighten, I was really really lost and dog tired and just beginning to doubt whether I would ever see my mother and father again. Luckily another police booth came into view and I dragged myself in. This time I didn't even say one word before the duty cop took one look at me, picked up the phone and dialled.
I took the proferred phone and said "Hello?" On the other end a familiar voice screamed 'WHAT, *YOU* AGAIN?!? YOU ARE THERE, STUPID. YOU HOME! LOOK UP, JUST LOOK UP! LOOK ALL AROUND. GOOD BYE!"
When I did look all around, I saw that the Tokyo Tower and my hotel were directly behind me, no more than a few blocks away.

CarrollBlog 2.26

2010-02-26T05:42:27Z

Everyone has their "that was the most embarrassing moment of my life" story. Here's a great one I heard recently:
A woman was teaching a literature course at an American university. It was a tough assignment because the majority of her students were planning on careers in math and science. The only reason why the majority of them had signed up for her course was to fulfill an academic requirement. She said they were very smart kids who simply weren't interested in reading or talking about fiction and poetry. She likened teaching them to pushing donkeys up hills. Although there was no animosity between her and the students, there was no love lost either.

One night she felt a terrible pain in her abdomen that grew worse and worse. Her husband rushed her to the university hospital where thorough tests were immediately ordered. One of them was of course a gynecological exam. Take off your clothes, put on this sheet, get on the table, put your legs up in the stirrups, wait for the doctor. In pain, but embarrassed as hell too because she was about to be examined by someone she didn't know, she had no choice but to do as she'd been told. In that humiliating, vulnerable position she waited for the doctor to come in. A few long minutes later he entered the room-- followed by his class of medical students. Today he was instructing them in the proper method of gynecological examination. Guess who made up most of the class?