Anis Shivani and Eric Miles Williamson Stir Some Shit

Posted on July 2, 2010 by Rusty

Boy howdy, would I like to read more of this kind of inter­view. Anis Shiv­ani rakes some good muck at Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Eric Miles Williamson is the author of five crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed books: East Bay Grease (Pic­a­dor, 1999),Two-Up (Texas Review Press, 2006), Oak­land, Jack Lon­don, and Me (Texas Review Press, 2007),Wel­come to Oak­land (Raw Dog Scream­ing Press, 2009), and the forth­com­ing 14 Fic­tion­al Posi­tions(Raw Dog Scream­ing Press, 2010). East Bay Grease, a PEN/Hemingway final­ist, intro­duced a rad­i­cal­ly fresh voice in Amer­i­can fic­tion, deal­ing with the ago­nies of poor peo­ple with­out any fail­ure of courage. Two-Up is a gut-wrench­ing book about the gory world of the gunite work­er (once Williamson's own pro­fes­sion). Oak­land, Jack Lon­don, and Me is unlike any oth­er recent book of criticism–it is a raw per­son­al response to how the recep­tion of Jack Lon­don (always under­es­ti­mat­ed by crit­ics) reveals more than we wish to know about our cul­tur­al blind spots. Williamson's best book to date is his nov­el, Wel­come to Oak­land, which picks up on T‑Bird Murphy's tra­vails in East Bay Grease, tak­ing us to his ear­ly youth in the ghet­toes and garbage dumps of Oak­land. If read­ers have rea­son to com­plain that Amer­i­can fic­tion is too gen­teel, and gen­er­al­ly only an aca­d­e­m­ic exer­cise to feed bour­geois desires, then they need look no far­ther than Williamson's fic­tion for a brac­ing corrective.

Shiv­ani: There are very few books about the real work­ing class in Amer­i­can fic­tion, and this has always seemed to be the case, with the rare excep­tion. Near­ly all fic­tion address­es the com­fort­able mid­dle class. Why is this so? Are there writ­ers address­ing themes of work and mon­ey at the low­er socioe­co­nom­ic lev­els that we aren't aware of? Is it a prob­lem with pub­lish­ers? Or is it a prob­lem with writers?

Williamson: I'd say there have always been books about the Amer­i­can work­ing class. What'sMoby Dick if not a great work­ing-class nov­el? A group of hard­work­ing sailors enslaved by their posi­tion in life, work­ing for the boss­man Ahab. It'd be easy to see Huck Finn as a work­ing-class nov­el as well, except Huck and Jim are even low­er on the social lad­der than work­ers, a white trash orphan and his run­away slave friend. Jack London's works sure­ly count as work­ing class, as do the works of Frank Nor­ris, Theodore Dreis­er, Upton Sin­clair, Sin­clair Lewis, Nel­son Algren.

To be sure most Amer­i­can fic­tion address­es the mid­dle class–and, for that mat­ter, most fic­tion of the West­ern world address­es the mid­dle class. After all, it's the mid­dle class that usu­al­ly reads and writes the books.

What's inter­est­ing is that these days, in the Unit­ed States, our work­ing-class fic­tion is increas­ing­ly writ­ten by minori­ties. As edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties open up and as minori­ties become eco­nom­i­cal­ly and edu­ca­tion­al­ly viable, they're telling their sto­ries. Their works, how­ev­er, are cast off into the cat­e­go­ry of "minor­i­ty" fic­tion. They're stuck on the Lit­er­ary Short Bus. Fine authors like Dagob­er­to Gilb, Mark Nes­bitt, even Toni Morrison–they're not called great writ­ers. They're labeled Minor­i­ty Writ­ers. The blue col­lar world is usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with white peo­ple, Irish­men and Ital­ians and Jews and so forth–peoples who were dis­crim­i­nat­ed against in the late 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies. But we're not build­ing rail­roads any­more, and if we ever do so again, it'll be His­pan­ics and Blacks doing the dirty work, and they'll be writ­ing the nov­els about their travails.

There are plen­ty of authors writ­ing what you call work­ing-class fic­tion. Lar­ry Fon­da­tion writes about the under­bel­ly of Los Ange­les. Dagob­er­to Gilb writes about work­ing class Mex­i­cans. Michael Gills's char­ac­ters are poor white trash from the Ozarks, as are Marc Watkins'. There's Glenn Blake, who writes about peo­ple who work in used car lots and the oil refiner­ies of East Texas. M. Glenn Taylor's books are set in the coal mine coun­try of West Vir­ginia. Paul Ruffin's char­ac­ters are just reg­u­lar work­ing-class people.

There's actu­al­ly been a resur­gence of work­ing class-authors in Amer­i­ca, result­ing from the cheap­ness of a uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion for peo­ple who went to col­lege before the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion. We got to col­lege for prac­ti­cal­ly noth­ing. This ain't so today. These poor kids have to shell out ten grand a year to go to a crap­py state school. They won't have the lux­u­ry of writ­ing books. They'll be too busy being cor­po­rate automa­tons, slav­ing away to pay back their stu­dent loans, America's ver­sion of inden­tured servi­tude. We'll be back to noth­ing but mid­dle-class fic­tion in no time. For now, though, we'll have anoth­er 20 years of real­ly good work by peo­ple who in the past wouldn't have been edu­cat­ed, and in the future won't be either. We're in the hey­day right now.

It isn't the fault of pub­lish­ers that our work­ing-class authors aren't on the Wal-Mart book­shelves. Pub­lish­ers are in busi­ness to make mon­ey, and work­ing-class books don't sell. Because work­ing-class peo­ple don't read. The sales of today, how­ev­er, don't mat­ter at all if the project is to cre­ate Art. Work­ing-class writ­ers are pub­lish­ing on small press­es, but his­to­ry won't care where a book was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished, and I ven­ture that when the crit­ics of the future look back at us, many of these writ­ers will find their place in the canon.

Many of the writ­ers here I'd not heard of or not heard enough of, so I blew some of my mid­dle-class pay­check at Ama­zon to cor­rect that. You should too, wher­ev­er you buy books.

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Tobacco Spitting and Tomahawk Throwing

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Rusty

Go to the Sum­mer Red­neck Games,  if that's your thing. I'd like to point out that a true Red­neck Games would have tobac­co spit­ting con­tests instead of water­mel­on seeds.

I feel like ram­bling and riff­ing, as some­times hap­pens when I'm not writ­ing well, so bear this post with good humor, if you will.

When I was a kid, my par­ents and broth­er belonged to a reen­act­ment group called the The Ameigh Val­ley Irreg­u­lars Black Pow­der Club–pre-1840s dress and sup­plies rec­om­mend­ed and some­times required.The club was loose­ly orga­nized under the aegis of the NMLRA. This was a good time, believe me. The club would meet every month or so and shoot at the range a cou­ple times a month, or maybe once a month, I can't remem­ber. When we first cleared a cou­ple fields to set up the fir­ing range, I was ten tears old or so, and my idea of fun includ­ed run­ning the hills with the owner's Ger­man Shep­herd, Fudgie, or swim­ming in the large pond called Packard's Pud­dle, or sim­ply lying on the ground and watch­ing the adults brush­hog every­thing. Then I'd bur­row into the grass and tree limbs pile before we burned it lat­er in the day. The mess made a great fort.

Maybe twice a year we'd have a shoot, where we'd com­pete against anoth­er gun club, maybe Land of the Senecas, or Whis­per­ing Pines, both still exist. These times pro­vid­ed the most oppor­tu­ni­ty for me. I wasn't old enough to com­pete and wouldn't have com­pet­ed had I been old enough, because I had a prob­lem: flinch­ing. It's one thing to shoot a cen­ter-fire or rim-fire rifle, where all the explod­ing is done in the bar­rel of the rifle. The three-stage igni­tion of a flint­lock muz­zle­loader is some­thing else again, because all that action is hap­pen­ing an inch in front of your face. You see the spark when the flint hits the frizzen, see the hiss and puff of the prim­ing pow­der going off, then the boom of the rifle as the spark enters the touch­hole set­ting off the charge. If you're not expe­ri­enced, you'll flinch at the first explo­sion of pow­der, close your eyes, and not hit any­thing. It's dif­fi­cult to get used to, and I nev­er did.

On the oth­er hand, things I could and did do includ­ed both tobac­co spit­ting and throw­ing tom­a­hawk and knife. The tobac­co-spit­ting came nat­u­ral­ly, as these were the late 70s days of Skoal and Copenhagen–"just a pinch between your cheek and gum"– at the very least, and if you were hard­core, like my grand­fa­ther and my broth­er, and ALL of his friends (who were mine as well) it was loose-leaf or plug tobac­co like Red Man, Beech Nut or Levi Gar­rett. Now, the idea of spit­ting is easy, as near­ly  every­one who chews tobac­co has to do it. Spit­ting the 20 feet or more required for com­pe­ti­tion takes some pow­er and finesse.  You could spit neat­ly between your teeth and look cool if you had the mouth to do it, but you wouldn't get dis­tance. Bet­ter by far to get up a good half-a-mouth­ful of loose leaf tobac­co and hack a plo­sive loogey. I watched a guy lose once because he spat the entire thing–tobacco, juice and all–when it's sup­posed to be, you know, just the juice you spit. I'm hap­py to report I quit the nasty stuff by about 13, part­ly because I was grow­ing out of my big brother's influ­ence (he also quit, though I don't remem­ber when). I won­der if I'll ever feel as cool, though, as when I walked into school with the fad­ed ring of the Skoal can marked on the back left pock­et of all my jeans. It was quite a sta­tus sym­bol once, though nev­er as impor­tant to me as the tom­a­hawk and knife.

The tar­get was made of logs nailed togeth­er in a rough tri­pod, the tar­get log being about a foot and half in diam­e­ter, and the tar­get itself a sim­ple play­ing card set side­ways. There was no required dis­tance from the tar­get. As long as your hawk or knife made a com­plete rev­o­lu­tion with every throw, you were fine. A sim­ple stick got you one point, if I remem­ber right, three points if you hit the card, and five if you cut it in half. I spent lit­er­al hours, even days, at this, every week­end, either at the club or in the barn at home. It became sim­ple physics to me after a while. I dis­cov­ered when I took  four  steps from the tar­get and turned around, I had my sweet spot, and could stick every time, same thing with 8 paces, 12, 16, and final­ly 20. This came in handy when impress­ing young Scouts dur­ing my sum­mers on staff at Camp Brule, but didn't pro­vide much for com­pe­ti­tion. I became bored, and just stopped throw­ing for a while.

My broth­er made things more inter­est­ing when he and his friends made their own  throw­ing stars, weld­ing togeth­er four mow­ing machine blades into a very heavy and lethal machine about the size of my adult hand. He got good enough with it to split the tom­a­hawk han­dle of the unfor­tu­nate some­one who threw first. More than a cou­ple times, that was me, who would then have to spend hours glass­ing down the neck of a new han­dle so it would fit the hawk and still bal­ance well.

In my late teens, my friend Ed and I got good enough to throw in tan­dem and cut a card, and do var­i­ous and sundry tricks too. Many of these were made pos­si­ble by my next-door neigh­bor, who pro­duced great throw­ing knives out of scrap met­al, quar­ter-inch-thick pieces of steel; about the size of my fore­arm, riv­et­ed with leather han­dles, as well as a notch cut on the blade for the bal­ance point. Dad had a big one but didn't throw it much, and mine was some­what small­er. In time, I inher­it­ed Dad's knife too, even­tu­al­ly, as the gun club ran its course of pop­u­lar­i­ty and fell apart, and he didn't need to throw it anymore.

I miss throw­ing, miss that sol­id sat­is­fac­tion of blade meet­ing wood, the rest­ful rhythms of the walk back and forth to pull the blade, the deep, near­ly fer­al sat­is­fac­tion of being so good at some­thing so use­less. I still have a tom­a­hawk, bought recent­ly from the same Dix­ie Gun Works I bought from twen­ty-five years ago, and in hon­or of hav­ing bought our house. Right now, the back­yard is filled with the beau­ti­ful flow­ers and a nice wood­en fence the house came with. It needs a tar­get. I'm going to find a log (not so easy to find in the city) and set up a range soon, and see how much my throwing's been affect­ed by my twice-bro­ken right elbow. Plus, I can't wait to hear what the neigh­bors say. 🙂

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The Mountain Whose Shadow We Lived In, fiction by Jack Boettcher

Posted on June 24, 2010 by Rusty

My kid trans­ferred through every school on our side of the moun­tain. Only six, but a fight­er. I didn’t teach him that. The prin­ci­pals ask, – “well, Mr. Doppler, where might Fred have learned to lash out?” Nature, I say. Too much vio­lence on this moun­tain – elec­tri­cal storms and rock­slides and pre­da­tion, balled insects wrig­gling in spider’s silk.

Car­o­line heard of a dif­fer­ent school in Bon­ham, some char­i­ty deal. My kid didn’t need anyone’s char­i­ty. But the author­i­ties said they would arrest Fred next time he fisticuffed on school prop­er­ty. They would put him in juve­nile. They’d rel­ish that record-break­ing youngest arrest in all of Tennessee.

Car­o­line pried open the teaket­tle and palmed the wad of bills. It’d shrunk­en. We vowed not to argue. Bad exam­ple for Fred. So we packed all we had into the truck and lum­bered up the hump on the one road that crossed that moun­tain, a steep and pit­ted trace no longer main­tained by the state. We ripped through bram­ble and green switch­es, shed­ding use­less heir­looms. From the dizzy­ing ridge­line, grav­i­ty showed us to Bonham.

Still whiplashed, we set­tled into life on the wrong side. Our neigh­bor walked a big cat – maybe a pan­ther – on a leash. It was a dog’s leash and we saw it strain into the cougar or panther’s puls­ing neck. This guy ran a small zoo in the woods behind his prop­er­ty and he looked mean, and we knew his kind of oper­a­tion: cramped wire cages, no con­cern for the nat­ur­al habi­tats. But he was friend­ly, too, mean-look­ing and friend­ly. Fred want­ed to pet the pan­ther so we waved and the zookeep­er waved back, hand trail­ing smoke into the blue, and Fred put his hand out too, trust­ing both stranger and beast.

One morn­ing Fred came home ear­ly from school, a note pinned to his shirt so he wouldn’t lose it. We knew this. The note would list what it didn’t mean when your kid got infest­ed with lice. It didn’t mean: a) your kid was (nec­es­sar­i­ly) dirty, b) you were (nec­es­sar­i­ly) bad par­ents. The note soothed: all who live around the moun­tain, it said — rich or poor, own­er or labor­er – could suf­fer the pecu­liar bio­geog­ra­phy of the region, its sum­mers per­fect for inva­sive forms of life.

I had ticks in my bed that sum­mer, and ivies creep­ing through the slits fer­al cats clawed in the screen. The note on Fred’s shirt also request­ed a meet­ing at the school. This was unusu­al, but the Bon­ham way I guess. In the mean­time, we dis­tract­ed Fred from the itch­ing. We asked him about school.

“We had to write our life sto­ry,” Fred said.

“What life sto­ry?” Car­o­line said, “He can bare­ly write and he’s been asleep for near­ly half of it.”

“His is a sto­ry of dreams,” I said.

“And then we had to write about our her­itage,” Fred said, “but I didn’t know what to write so I drew the sun.”

Car­o­line and I agreed that we should tell Fred the truth about his her­itage. How a strange par­a­site once divid­ed the peo­ples of the moun­tain. How the patri­archs of those days quar­an­tined the sick hosts on one side, kept the healthy half on the oth­er, and des­ig­nat­ed the sum­mit a sort of peace wall where the two camps could dump their trash, each inch­ing the heap toward the down­ward cam­ber of the other’s side. There were episodes of cross-moun­tain raid­ing, loot­ing, and intim­i­da­tion, we told Fred, our eyes widen­ing as we made raid­ing and pil­lag­ing ges­tures with our arms. We delight­ed in embell­ish­ing the sto­ry, but I no longer knew how much of it I believed, and I real­ized that I could no longer dis­cern my father’s embell­ish­ments from the rudi­ments of the old­er story.

I only knew my embell­ish­ments with any cer­tain­ty. I told Fred that since we were deal­ing with his­to­ry, he need­ed to know that the sto­ry might split and braid into sto­ries. Inevitably some­one would lie to him. This was when Car­o­line rolled her eyes, but I was get­ting excit­ed now. There were con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, I told Fred, which were accept­ed in cer­tain cir­cles on both sides of the moun­tain. One of them involved my employ­er, I told Fred, and I’d have to relate it in a whis­per for fear of spies. I asked if this excit­ed Fred. This excit­ed Fred terribly.

The the­o­ry spec­u­lat­ed that the bal­loon fac­to­ry in the val­ley kept  its own his­to­ri­an on staff, and that this bored man invent­ed the par­a­site – going so far as to forge research abstracts, micro­bi­o­log­i­cal data, and an illus­tra­tion of the mag­ni­fied worm.

Speak­ing in my nor­mal voice again, I told Fred that these the­o­ries were large­ly dis­cred­it­ed, because the bal­loon fac­to­ry has done so much for the com­mu­ni­ties on both sides of the mountain.

I’d told Fred some­one would lie to him, and now it was true. It’s hell, toil­ing to man­u­fac­ture the sym­bols of some­one else’s par­ty. For a pit­tance, too.

“Which side were we – did we have worms?” Fred asked.

“No one can agree about that, son, and our ances­tors left no writ­ten his­to­ry. They were too busy sur­viv­ing.” I pumped my fist to empha­size this point. “Sur­viv­ing,” I repeat­ed, “that’s our her­itage, Fred.”

I met with the prin­ci­pal. He was some kind of monk. “You don’t want us to kill the lice?” I said.

“This is a Jain school,” the monk said. “We believe that every liv­ing being has a soul. We also think it would be a good les­son in patience if you used our alter­na­tive method. For your son, I mean. Com­pas­sion­ate removal is painstak­ing but ulti­mate­ly quite free­ing, Mr. Doppler.”

“Thank you,” I said, “for that.”

I couldn’t com­plain much. The Jain­ism seemed to calm Fred. Night, and the frogs in the gut­ters throbbed close against the rent house, their song pinch­ing deep into the met­al. None of the beasts of the wood could tell we’d moved in yet. .

Fred asked why he had lice. I had to think of some­thing. “It is the waters we swim,” I said, “the moun­tain whose shad­ow we live in. Mt. Par­a­site, after all.”

We still weren’t con­nect­ed to the grid, so we lit the storm can­dles and cracked the win­dows. Car­o­line sat Fred in her lap and start­ing draw­ing the dead dog’s flea comb through his hair, drown­ing each louse in a glass of water with a blot of shim­mer­ing soap in it. Car­o­line was painstak­ing, her tongue peep­ing out in con­cen­tra­tion, her pupils sharp in the dark. “You’re not sup­posed to kill the lice,” I said. She looked beau­ti­ful killing the lice. She shrugged her bare shoul­ders and the zookeep­er passed before the open win­dow, pre­tend­ing not to spy on our infestation.

The par­a­sitic is espe­cial­ly taboo here – to call some­one worm is the slur of the cen­tu­ry. We all know that soon the bal­loon fac­to­ry will out­source and float across the sea, and we’ll be left with noth­ing but this old rock of gneiss. It changes too, but slow­ly. We’ll have a lit­tle mon­ey from the gov­ern­ment. We’ll have our cool moun­tain mid­sum­mer nights.

We have to live togeth­er and all that jive, even in moun­tain ranges whose his­to­ries are defined by iso­la­tion­ism, retreat– I try to teach my kid that, as is appar­ent­ly required of me. But already he sens­es the sub­tle vocal tim­bre of doubt in every plat­i­tude we hand him.

“I nev­er see any­one go back there – do you think it’s real­ly a zoo?” I asked Car­o­line, as she picked the nits from Fred’s scalp.

“No,” she said.

“Me nei­ther,” I said. “Won­der what he’s hiding.”

As the zookeep­er moved far­ther from the win­dow, we could see him rid­ing his big cat like a horse up the mountainside.

Jack Boettch­er is the author of the chap­book The Deviants (Grey­ing Ghost Press, 2009), and recent work appears or is forth­com­ing in Fence, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Puer­to del Sol, and oth­er jour­nals. He lives in Austin.

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Gasland

Posted on June 15, 2010 by Rusty

Those of you with HBO–look for it.

New con­tent com­ing soon, so hang tight.

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Mindy Beth Miller via Bent Country's Sheldon Compton

Posted on June 3, 2010 by Rusty

More young Appalachi­an writ­ers to watch out for: Mindy Beth Miller and Shel­don Comp­ton.

Before any­thing else, have a look at Mindy Beth Miller's writ­ing chops. Here's a cou­ple para­graphs to give you a taste:

"Back on Low Gap, the sun spit out its last blast of rays over the top of Sad­dle­back Moun­tain. A pud­dle of yel­low light gleamed on the hood of the parked car. Lau­rie trudged up the road, lis­ten­ing to her suit­case knock on the side of her leg. She stared straight up at the thick, green kudzu that tow­ered over her, the bulky forms of draped fig­ures ris­ing high in the air. The creek burst out of the holler and a lit­tle water­fall spewed out like a rain show­er some­where down over the hill. She could feel the cool breeze from it lick­ing her skin.

Up at the top of the hill, she looked over in the bot­tom, fol­low­ing the echo­ing taps of ham­mer strikes. She saw the sweat gleam­ing on Garner's naked back under the pole light's orange glow. He was build­ing her the view she'd always want­ed. She felt that famil­iar gnaw­ing at her heart and laid a warm hand on her chest. A short breath shud­dered inside of her like a bird try­ing to unfold its wings between her ribs. She focused on all that lay ahead of her, fix­ing her eyes hard like two round pieces of slick coal in the dim­ness and willed her body onward, step­ping toward his wav­ing hand." – excerpt from "The Cost of Liv­ing" Miller's first pub­lished story(published in the sum­mer 2009 issue of Appalachi­an Her­itage), and the win­ner of the 2008 Jean Ritchie Fel­low­ship in Appalachi­an Writing.

The Mex­i­can restau­rant where I sit with Mindy Beth Miller in her home­town of Haz­ard, Ken­tucky is buzzing with activ­i­ty. Miller, who has already gath­ered pub­li­ca­tions, awards and the eye of a New York lit­er­ary agent for her first nov­el all while still in her twen­ties is reserved, arms crossed in front of her on the table. Her eyes search the room, gath­er­ing details, tak­ing in her sur­round­ings. She is ready for our inter­view and, know­ing her as a delib­er­ate per­son as well as a delib­er­ate writer, I start only when she seems ready.

The main char­ac­ter of her nov­el-in-progress is Cat, a Ken­tucky coal min­er work­ing to make a life for her fam­i­ly in the best way she can. But her nov­el-in-progress and her process as a writer is where I decide to start. I now refer to this tech­nique as method writ­ing. I prob­a­bly did not coin that phrase, but it applies in spades when look­ing at Miller's approach.

SHELDON LEE COMPTON: Let's start with the big question…the book you're work­ing on. Tell me about it. I under­stand you're tak­ing on some pret­ty involved research to gath­er mate­r­i­al and that it's an exten­sion of your short sto­ry, "Moun­tain Born," which is fea­tured in the fall 2009 issue of The Louisville Review. More.

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Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone, the film

Posted on June 1, 2010 by Rusty

These notes may be late to the par­ty, but I just got this first review in my email via Google Alert. It's dif­fi­cult to believe this descrip­tion of the movie Winter's Bone, based on the nov­el by Daniel Woodrell, has any­thing to do with real­i­ty. Prairie Miller seems off­base. I have not seen the film yet, but her review seems to come with bag­gage as well as sim­ple mis­takes. See for your­self:

If then pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Oba­ma insti­gat­ed con­tro­ver­sy about red state rur­al life that he noto­ri­ous­ly char­ac­ter­ized as bit­ter prim­i­tives cling­ing to reli­gion and guns, then the drea­ry Ozarks out­ing Winter's Bone adds plen­ty of insult to injury. A near­ly anthro­po­log­i­cal con­temp­tu­ous take on the already broad­ly car­i­ca­tured and bare­ly com­pre­hend­ed so-called hill­bil­ly cul­ture, the film is set apart only by its melo­dra­mat­ic rather than satir­i­cal approach.

Seem­ing­ly set for release on the suc­cess­ful coat­tails of that oth­er like­wise Sun­dance award win­ner ven­ture in exploita­tive under­class tabloid cin­e­ma, Winter's Bone plays out like a seedy and no less cyn­i­cal white trash ver­sion of Pre­cious. Direct­ed and co-writ­ten by NYU schooled Debra Granik with a dis­tinct out­sider-look­ing-in per­spec­tive as if from anoth­er plan­et, the film plods along in a self-seri­ous seden­tary funk, with the char­ac­ters hav­ing lit­tle to say beyond what we've heard in SNL skits and sim­i­lar stereo­typ­i­cal fare, many times before.

Jen­nifer Lawrence as the sole mul­ti­di­men­sion­al char­ac­ter breath­ing life into this tedious back­woods trav­el­ogue, is Ree Dol­ly, a sev­en­teen year old hold­ing her dis­in­te­grat­ing fam­i­ly togeth­er. Dad is a coke­head felon fugi­tive who put their home up as col­lat­er­al for bail, and the author­i­ties are about to take the prop­er­ty over and evict them. So Ree des­per­ate­ly divides her time as sole care­giv­er for her younger sib­lings, and search­ing for her way­ward par­ent to stall the evic­tion, while a bare­ly seen or heard mom is pret­ty much a stay at home zom­bie. There's also an assort­ment of snarling, moron­ic red­neck rel­a­tives, sub­mis­sive women who would nev­er dream of talk­ing back to the men­folk, and unneigh­bor­ly varmints run­ning inter­fer­ence on Ree's quest, pro­vid­ing her with false leads when not sim­ply beat­ing her to a pulp.

I have read Winter's Bone sev­er­al times, and it's dif­fi­cult to believe the film­mak­ers would shod­di­fy the mate­r­i­al as bad­ly as she says. I also mis­trust her on basic issues. In ref­er­ence to "cook­ing coke?" If you cook coke, does it not turn into crack? Uh, maybe she means meth? Cer­tain­ly the nov­el doesn't men­tion crack or coke, only meth (I just checked). I looked around, though, and found anoth­er review by John DeFore that seems more bal­anced.

PARK CITY — Six years after win­ning an award here for "Down to the Bone," direc­tor Debra Granik returns to Sun­dance with her fol­low-up, "Winter's Bone," a grim sto­ry of per­sis­tence set deep in the Ozarks. Slow to get going and uningra­ti­at­ing, the film will be a hard sell at the box­of­fice, but its grit and the tenac­i­ty of its young hero­ine will res­onate with some viewers.

That hero­ine, a high-school­er named Ree Dol­ly (Jen­nifer Lawrence), faces a cri­sis much like that in "Frozen Riv­er": A man, in this case Ree's father, has van­ished owing debts that put her home in jeop­ardy. With two younger sib­lings and a bare­ly-sen­tient moth­er to care for, her only option is to scour the back­woods, search­ing for Dad among the not-dis­tant-enough rel­a­tives who (lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly) lit­ter the coun­ty, and whose crim­i­nal oper­a­tions like­ly have some­thing to do with his disappearance.

"Bone" doesn't sup­ply the same kind of role for Lawrence that Melis­sa Leo got in "Riv­er": Ree's options, stop or keep going, are less dra­mat­ic than Ray Eddy's even when con­tin­u­ing her search means talk­ing to volatile peo­ple with things to hide. For much of the film, as Ree feeds the fam­i­ly with hand-me-down gro­ceries and teach­es the kids to hunt squir­rel, Granik seems to believe it's impres­sive enough that she sim­ply con­tin­ues to sur​vive​.As the action picks up — with some crone-like fam­i­ly gate­keep­ers giv­ing Ree a beat­ing in hopes of scar­ing her off — the strong pres­ence of John Hawkes (as the van­ished man's drug-addict­ed broth­er) keeps the bleak set­ting from over­com­ing the movie and gives Lawrence a bit more to play against.

Even­tu­al­ly, even when she's being con­trolled by events instead of vice-ver­sa, Ree proves wor­thy to the chal­lenge around her. Whether she'll escape her grim sur­round­ings or sim­ply endure them isn't a ques­tion "Winter's Bone" intends to ask.

The film won best screen­play and best pic­ture at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val, too, which prob­a­bly does noth­ing for its via­bil­i­ty in the mar­ket­place, but implies that Prairie Miller might be in the minor­i­ty. I know I'll be see­ing it as soon as I can.

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Bradford County PA, You Are Being Misled

Posted on May 28, 2010 by Rusty

And here's why. This is from the Key­stone Edge site, a seem­ing­ly rep­utable out­fit cov­er­ing eco­nom­ic change and oth­er pro­grams in cer­tain area of MI and PA.

Some drillers, includ­ing Range Resources and Chesa­peake Ener­gy, are sim­ply reusing their water. By the end of last year, Range was recy­cling all of its "pro­duced" water, or the liq­uid that flows up in a well that's pro­duc­ing gas after the frac­tur­ing process. Chesa­peake recent­ly announced its Aqua Renew pro­gram, an ini­tia­tive to recy­cle all of the water the com­pa­ny uses in the Mar­cel­lus (). Already, that process is reusing 4.3 mil­lion gal­lons a month.

Seems like a good thing, reusing 4.3 mil­lion gal­lons of water, right? Until you find out, in Chesa­peake Energy's own presskit, that 4.3 mil­lion gal­lons is less than minis­cule. That amount won't even hydrofrack one well. See my cut below, empha­sis mine.

Water is also used in hydraulic frac­tur­ing, where a mix­ture of water and sand is inject­ed into the deep shale at a high pres­sure to cre­ate small cracks in the rock and allow gas to freely flow to the sur­face. Hydrauli­cal­ly frac­tur­ing a typ­i­cal Chesa­peake Mar­cel­lus hor­i­zon­tal deepshale gas well requires an aver­age of five and a half mil­lion gal­lons per well.
And, if you fol­low the mon­ey trail left by this seem­ing­ly innocu­ous arti­cle, this is what you find. Key­stone Edge is one of many sites owned by Issue Media Group, who received fund­ing for Key­stone Edge from The Team Penn­syl­va­nia Foun­da­tion,  a com­pa­ny with investors of many kinds. Among them, com­pa­nies like Alleghe­ny Ener­gy, Brad­ford Ener­gy Com­pa­ny Inc., Con­sol Ener­gy, First Ener­gy, etc., with some water-pro­cess­ing equip­ment sales and engi­neer­ing firms mixed in. No won­der the drilling seems so nec­es­sary and right and good.

By the way, Chesapeake's reusing 4.3 mil­lion gal­lons a month. Bul­ly for them. How many wells are in Brad­ford Coun­ty? 853, by the government's count, of which 201 are Chesa­peake wells (see here for details).Which makes, um, 1,105,500,000 gal­lons used to frack for Chesa­peake alone. And they talk of sav­ing 4.3 mil­lion as if it's any­thing more than the lit­tle old lady piss­ing in the sea.

Make no mis­take, most of the rest of that water is end­ing up in trout streams, wells, rivers, and unsight­ly open pits, wait­ing for recla­ma­tion. Read this arti­cle for a bit of the oth­er side.

By Han­nah Abelbeck

As the scale and pace of Mar­cel­lus gas well drilling picks up, peo­ple in rur­al Penn­syl­va­nia are learn­ing how to fight traf­fic jams, research deed his­to­ries, encounter the FBI, self-mon­i­tor streams and light their tap water on fire.

Inno­va­tions in drilling tech­nol­o­gy have fueled the rush to extract nat­ur­al gas from the Mar­cel­lus shale, a geo­log­i­cal for­ma­tion that under­lies 70 per­cent of Penn­syl­va­nia and por­tions of Cen­tre County.

The gas rush is on, and mon­ey is fuel­ing all of it. Com­pa­nies and lend­ing insti­tu­tions will­ing to invest the big mon­ey need­ed up front want a fast return, result­ing in quick­er and more intense drilling in rur­al areas des­per­ate to save their slug­gish economies. Res­i­dents are sign­ing leas­es, des­per­ate to sup­ple­ment sag­ging incomes. Work­ers, hun­gry for jobs, hope to sign up for long, dan­ger­ous work days, if they can get them. And the indus­try pro­motes the ben­e­fits and down­plays the costs of mas­sive spec­u­la­tion, while oppos­ing reg­u­la­tions that might shrink prof­it margins.

Mean­while, the envi­ron­ment, health, and finan­cial well-being of Penn­syl­va­nia res­i­dents is at risk like nev­er before.

I'm dis­gust­ed, so I'm going to quit writ­ing now. I'll be back, though.

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Whatever You Do To The Least Ghazal, by Dennis Mahagin

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Rusty

"When I coughed I saw fireflies…"

–Denis John­son

Hind­sight is 20. With twen­ty twen­ties, at Hap­py Hour, burning
pin holes in the eye­ball of a dol­lar bill > pyra­mid. In God, whatever.

Luck­i­ly, pimps, repo men and beat cops are not Machiavellian
;oth­er­wise we'd all be in a seri­ous frigging…world. Of whatever.

Those beatif­ic Puget Sound fer­ry boats! Mar­itime parade floats.
Mutant birth­day cakes of buoy­an­cy! Thou­sand points of Whatever.

Gur­gling, pssssssssst! Ahh­h­h­h­hh! goes the youth,
with curl­ing wisps of smoke. Foam, sure. Whatever.

Cajole, via picante and gua­camole. With four-buck Rita pitchers
salt­ing the rim of my ambiva­lence. Skoal. Chin Chin. Whatever.

Hard on a devi­at­ed sep­tum: Scents of eter­nal spring and impending
death com­min­gling like knot­holes and sap. For the rest of whatever.

The Mind / Body Dichoto­my? Appear­ing in a camisole bi-nightly
with dark lip­stick cor­ner of forty sec­ond avenue, and whatever.

From all you've sur­mised, to what you must real­ize, lies
the impos­si­ble ten thou­sand mile fault line, of whatever.

Yet harsh, harsh­er and harshest
still, the Trin­i­ty: Fur­ther; sun; wholly

…what­ev­er.

Den­nis Maha­gin is a writer from the Pacif­ic North­west. He also edits fic­tion and poet­ry for FRiGG Mag­a­zine. Some of his work can be found in lit­er­ary venues such as Exquis­ite Corpse, Sto­ry­glos­sia, Smoke­long Quar­ter­ly, Key­hole, 42opus, 3 A.M., Stir­ring, Thieves Jar­gon, and Under­ground Voic­es.

A print col­lec­tion ("Grand Mal") is com­ing from Rebel Satori Press.

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In Case You Thought Things Had Changed Lately

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Rusty

(from cit​i​zensvoice​.com)

BY ROBERT SWIFT (HARRISBURG BUREAU CHIEF)
Pub­lished: May 26, 2010

HARRISBURG — Increased crime and dam­aged roads are two neg­a­tive impacts of the Mar­cel­lus Shale nat­ur­al gas drilling boom, Ren­dell admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials said as the push for a state sev­er­ance tax heats up.

State Police Com­mis­sion­er Frank Pawlows­ki said state troop­ers are report­ing more arrests and inci­dents involv­ing drug use, assaults and ille­gal weapons in north­ern tier munic­i­pal­i­ties due to an influx of out­side gas indus­try workers.

Hun­dreds of miles of sec­ondary roads have been dam­aged or made impass­able because of heavy truck traf­fic tied to drilling activ­i­ties, Pen­nDOT Sec­re­tary Allen Biehler said.

The two offi­cials issued a joint state­ment Mon­day as state law­mak­ers debate levy­ing a sev­er­ance tax on nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion. The House Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee approved a rev­enue bill Mon­day that includes an 8 per­cent sev­er­ance tax. Rev­enues would be split on an 80⁄20 per­cent basis between the state Gen­er­al Fund and local munic­i­pal­i­ties. More.

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Charles Dodd White Interviewed

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Rusty

Here's a guy you ought to know more about, and not just because I say so. Here's what his site says.

Charles Dodd White was born in Atlanta, Geor­gia in 1976. He cur­rent­ly lives in Asheville, North Car­oli­na where he teach­es writ­ing and Lit­er­a­ture at South Col­lege. He has been a Marine, a fly­fish­ing guide and a news­pa­per jour­nal­ist. His short fic­tion has appeared or is forth­com­ing in Night Train, North Car­oli­na Lit­er­ary Review, Pequin, Verb­Sap, Word Riot and oth­ers. His nov­el Lambs of Men, a sto­ry of a Marine Corps vet­er­an of World War I in West­ern North Car­oli­na will be pub­lished by Casper­ian Books in Novem­ber 2010. He is cur­rent­ly at work on anoth­er nov­el and a col­lec­tion of short stories.

One of the rea­sons I like White and his work (see Night Train issue 9.1 for an advance look at his forth­com­ing nov­el) is that we mesh fair­ly tight­ly on aes­thet­ics. Read what he has to say in this inter­view with Dog Eat Crow World, which I could have writ­ten, pret­ty much, as rea­sons why I found­ed this blogazine.

I am inter­est­ed in a more rur­al set­ting because I eas­i­ly tire of the urbane clev­er­ness I see in so much con­tem­po­rary fic­tion. Sto­ries that do not deal with the heart of human pain and tri­umph bore and offend me. They're non­com­mi­tal, banal and cow­ard­ly. They're exact­ly the rea­son lit­er­a­ture has no direct bear­ing on the con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can cul­ture. Deal­ing with the nature of fate and death against the back­drop of the nat­ur­al world is always going to res­onate with read­ers. Arch tales of miss­ing per­co­laters will not.

The dis­cern­ing read­er can find more to read by fol­low­ing links to Pank, Nec­es­sary Fic­tion, and Word Riot. And don't for­get Lambs of Men, what­ev­er you do.

"Charles Dodd White's Lambs of Men is a beau­ti­ful­ly wrought, rig­or­ous work, its lan­guage forged in the fiery mind of a true artist. This is lit­er­a­ture of admirable pure­ness and integrity."

Robin Lip­pin­cott, author of In the Meantime


"Writ­ten in the tra­di­tion of Charles Fra­zier and Ron Rash, Lambs of Men is that most rare of books: a vio­lent­ly beau­ti­ful sto­ry that is, at heart, a work of prose poetry."

Mark Pow­ell, author of Prodi­gals and Blood Kin

"Charles Dodd White has writ­ten this rich nov­el of the moun­tains as though he's been sav­ing every word of it for a life­time. A book full of blood and beau­ty and bone, a sto­ry that car­ries the read­er through time, through lives, through dirt and fire. This book strikes the reader's heart so deeply that read­ers will be called back to it again and again. He has writ­ten this fam­i­ly and their cir­cum­stances with such ten­der care…A rare book where every sen­tence delights and star­tles. It's a small gem that com­mands the reader's full atten­tion and entire heart."

Crys­tal Wilkin­son, author of Black­ber­ries, Black­ber­ries and Water Street


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