Who stands in for the reader?

In a story or a drama, one of the characters needs to be a stand-in for the reader/listener, the representative of their interests.

JRMcF

Winning and Losing

Last night I dreamed that I was writing in this blog. I wrote: “Stories are always about winning and losing.” Dreams are not usually that immediately relevant and realistic, and they are not nearly as interesting to the listener as to the one who tells about his dreams, but this one is right on. I would add to the Dream Editor’s words this: what is most intriguing in a story is not just who wins and who loses, but how we win while losing.

JRMcF

Borrow the Book, Keep the Story

            I think I really just wanted to be a reader, but since that is not exactly a profession, I figured I needed to be a writer.

            Reading was a profession for my great-grandfather, John White McFarland. He lied about his age to join the federal navy in the civil war. He was on a boat on the Ohio River. I don’t think he was wounded, but got a disease. At any rate, he was disabled and they didn’t expect him to live, so he was granted a pension for life. He lived to be about 98, I think it was. So while he was technically a farmer, he was really a reader. He would walk from Oakland City to Princeton, or other places, to borrow books from individuals. There was a doctor in Princeton who had an extensive library. My great-grandfather would borrow a book, read it as he walked home, stay up all night reading by candle light, or perhaps they had kerosene lanterns then, and then read as he walked it back the next day. It was a point of honor with him that a borrowed book was returned the next day.

            I loved reading as a child. I also loved books, the actual bound volumes. I also loved comic books. Anything with a story, but seeing books, holding them, possessing them, all that was important to me. We didn’t have money for books, though, or much of anything else, so I learned that even though I could not possess the book, I could borrow the book and possess the story.

            One summer I was in a reading program at the branch library on Washington St in Indianapolis. It was just catty-corner down the alley to my school, Lucretia Mott PS # 3. Kids had to read a book and then tell the story to the librarians to prove they had read it. Usually it was pro-forma, just enough to prove you had done it. They always made me tell the whole story, though, even called the other librarians over to listen. I could tell they were pleased, because they smiled a lot, but I was also afraid they didn’t trust me. It never occurred to me that they thought the way I told the story was cute.

            I’m still trying to tell the story, well enough that they’ll call others over to listen, well enough that they’ll think I’m cute.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: I like to sit in coffee shops and fantasize about being a writer. Perhaps actually writing would add something to the fantasy.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write, once in a great while, Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

The Difference

"Good writers borrow. Great writers steal."

Hoping Marc Dies Soon

It is not a good sign if you are hoping by page 52 that the main character, the narrator yet, is killed soon, because he is so stupid and self-destructive that he does not deserve to live even one more page.

While reading Andrew Grant's RUN.

In Praise of Multi-Author Poetry Books

JUST WORDS: A review of GOOD POEMS, Selected & Introduced by Garrison Keillor [Penguin Books, 2002]

I have several books of poems scattered throughout the house in strategic places, and I read a poem from each of them each day.

I prefer books that contain poems from many different writers, rather than a single author, although one or another of the volumes of Billy Collins is always in my rotation, and usually another individual writer or two, Ferlinghetti or cummings or Frost.

Perhaps my preference for multi-author volumes is because the first book of poetry I ever had [and I can’t remember its provenance] was The Best Loved Poems of the American People, edited by Hazel Felleman. Each day I heard a different poetic voice, got a different slant on language and the world.

Reading the same poet each day can get you into a rhythm, and that is good. However, I still appreciate getting jarred out of my own ruts each day by having to hear a new rhythm, a different voice.

I think it was Halford Luccock who told of the man who loved macaroons. He hid them all over his house. He was forgetful, so he never remembered where he had hidden them. But every once in a while, as he rummaged through a drawer or opened a cabinet, he would be delighted by the appearance of a “macaroon unaware.” That is how I feel about a book of poetry by different authors.

So one book stays in the rotation. I finished GOOD POEMS, Selected & Introduced by Garrison Keillor this morning, “Fishing in the Keep of Silence,” by Linda Gregg, but it goes back onto the shelf, back into the rotation, back tomorrow morning to “Poem in Thanks” by Thomas Lux. I look forward to encountering Jane Kenyon and Wendell Berry and all the others as they suddenly appear, “macaroons unaware.”

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in early 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: You never have to reboot a yellow pad or a ballpoint pen.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

Review, THE BURNING ROOM, Michael Connelly

I have often said that of the Big “C”s of crime-mystery-adventure fiction, [Crais, Coburn, Child, Cornwall, et al] Michael Connelly is the best, or my favorite, or both. THE BURNING ROOM [Little, Brown, 2014] does not really change my mind. It is, however, a little disappointing.

It is the most recent in the series featuring Los Angeles detective Harry Bosch. [A TV series called just “Bosch” is in the works.] Connelly, a former crime reporter, also writes the Lincoln Lawyer series, featuring Mickey Hatcher, Bosch’s half-brother.

The Bosch novels have always been at least partially police procedurals, but this one is almost exclusively so. That’s the reason for my disappointment. In TV terms, it’s a documentary instead of a drama. I like to read about the ways crime is solved, and, being a former trench warrior in my profession, often hampered by witless administrators, I enjoy seeing police administrators made to look foolish as they try to control their rogue cops only to have the guys and gals in the trenches proven correct. Still, I’d like a little more action that does not sound like it’s just more procedure.

Certainly it has some action, and some drama, but I just don’t think it is as interesting as the earlier Bosch novels.

Having said all that, I shall be glad to read the next Bosch, or Hatcher, knowing it will be well written good story.

Maybe I should choose Child as my new favorite, though. No, Jack Reacher is running out of steam. The last Reacher novel, PERSONAL, was even more of a documentary than THE BURING ROOM. So maybe Crais? No, Elvis Cole and Abe Glitzky are getting predictable, too. I’ll stick with Connelly as my favorite of the Cs. But there are the As, like Kate Atkinson…

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: You can make your own decisions, but you can’t choose your own consequences.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write, once in a great while, Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml