You would think that unemployment would equal more time for writing. The last two months of my life are proof it does not. Granted, in June, I did get a sunburn that was so bad I got sick for a few days. And then our air-conditioning broke. And then I did a job interview that I thought I was going to get, and then they ghosted me after telling me I was probably going to start the following Monday. And then I dealt with that, and trying to get over the shame of crowdfunding and also doing a lot of job applications, which, by the way, I applied for around 30 or 40 and didn’t get a single call back until July.

But then I got a full time job for the first time in a year in July. And then I started work and got used to my new job, which is in a very different industry than I’m used to but I use the stuff I’ve learned from all my bad 20s jobs to do a good job. So far, so good. To date, nobody has pulled a boxcutter on me. 

My view is that my writing happens in the margins of staying alive. Part of the reason I can take a “I am Joe, the boss of my body” approach to writing is I’ve never expected to make any money off of it. I am freelancing now, and will continue to build up the portfolio, but I can’t complain much: I get to set the tone of what I want to do. I pitch what I want. I do better financially via writing than a lot of other writers, which isn’t saying much but is still appreciably better. But without financial backing aka a boring ass job. 

I didn’t mind freelancing to have some extra scratch during my special period, though I’m very much behind: as we write, I have edits going out for something really cool this Wednesday and I finally broke ground on the most burdensome essay of my life, and then after that there’s a piece that’s been hanging over me sort of like a sword of damn Damocles. But I’m alive. That’s the important thing. And it turns out if you don’t really write for a month, when you get back, you write a lot. 

On that note…

NEW WORK

I reviewed Robbie Williams’s ape movie Better Man over at Kittysneezes. People like this review even if they like the film because I sure as fuck didn’t. One person even said it had one of the best paragraphs in English they’ve ever read! Heady praise, I love a good paragraph.

SCENE/HERD/RED

• I always left some space in here to write about music if I see fit but to tell the truth, I haven’t listened to new music this year while I do research for something big. Another reason I haven’t listened to new music this year: I rediscovered Neil Young. You would think I’m the kind of guy who won’t shut up about Neil Young and the truth is, I hadn’t really actively listened to him that much again until SFUltra’s new series “Me Here to Do the Thinking” featuring Cameron Kunzelmann from Ranged Touch, Shelved By Genre, wherein they listen to every Neil Young album in chronological order. Because they started with the first ten years of his career, they’re listening to some of the greatest rock albums of all time (and whatever the fuck Crosby, Stills, and Nash had him doing).
  
  The real revelation was revisiting the Ditch Trilogy. While Time Fades Away has long been the crown jewel of my vinyl collection and On the Beach is probably my favorite Neil album, I’ve always struggled to get Tonight’s the Night. It’s an album that only makes sense once you’ve lost somebody in a way that was totally avoidable if only they had gotten the care they deserved. Unfortunately, as I got older, I became acquainted with that experience.

• I’m probably a little more equipped to speaking about Stand in the Fire, Warren Zevon’s live album, which I finally gave a real listen based on the recommendation of Mssrs. Sean McTiernan and Cameron Kunzelmann on that Neil Young podcast. I got into Zevon in middle school, which constitutes a good 30% of my personality.
  
  If you argued it was the best album he ever recorded, I wouldn’t disagree. Apparently he was sober recording this, which blows me away because it FEELS like a cocaine/alcohol record: every song is a little faster than the recorded and played with maximum strut. Above all, it shows why Warren Zevon was such a cult favorite. A lot of California rock sits in a smug zone of its own competence, a Cadillac in a pristine garage. Warren Zevon takes the car and drives it all over the road. Stand in the Fire sounds like they gave everyone a revolver and a pint of vodka at the door. Except for Zevon, supposedly. He was on his best bad behavior. Even the Bo Diddley cover kicks ass. 

• Shadow and Claw by Gene Wolfe: I had been building up to reading this for awhile. I’m a Wolfe admirer but there’s a caveat to that: I think people get lost in the sauce with him and obsessing over all the different puzzle box aspects of his fiction, which is one reason it took me so long. A big fantasy epic with a bunch of stuff to do word games about? Maybe not for me. Luckily, having finally read the first duology (in omnibus edition, including Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator), I’m pleased to say I was wrong and I’ve found it more resonant than I could ever expect. Of the two, I actually take the view Claw is the better novel. Shadow, of course, begins setting up the narrative by introducing us to Severian, the Torturer’s Guild, etc. What Claw does is begin creating resonances that begin in Shadow that I’m pretty sure continue throughout the rest of the I’d go as far to say the single best section of science fiction (or fantasy) is the opening to the book, as Severian begins falling into a dreamlike reverie after he executes an accused witch. Claw manages to be a thrilling fantasy epic while also acting as an instructional on how to read the tetralogy. My only critique of it: I think the story from the book that’s inserted that Severian reads to his cyborg buddy Jonas slows the pace. I’d let it slide but there’s a way better version of it later in the book when Severian gets roped into being in the play Dr. Talos’s theatre troupe puts on called “Eschatology and Genesis”. Now that I’ve criticized the Pringles man I expect one of the thousand podcasts that retweet you if you bring him up will set the wolves on me.

• Child of God by Cormac McCarthy: before he was writing about ambulating dusklight and arroyo burned into the earth, Cormac McCarthy was a Southern gothic writer. Child of God, his third novel, follows the displaced Lester Ballard, whose home is sold out from under him. Rather than the simplistic narrative of foreclosure making Lester bad, though, the novel instead of focuses on a real piece of work, who pretty much always had been a bad seed, yet also, “a child of God, much like yourself.” By the end of the novel, Lester has defiled corpses and killed multiple people. What does any of this mean? I couldn’t tell you. I have some qualms about recommending it to anyone, specifically because the way race is deployed in the novel left me with a lot of questions (and Lester does cross dress during some of the killings, though, interestingly, McCarthy mostly adds this as a note to say Lester is shit-crazy…not without its issues, but probably better than where he could have taken it) but if you can read around the possible problems or engage with them, well worth a read. There’s sections in here that are absolutely stunning. 

• Big Typebar issue! Let’s talk about it. Sign up for the free newsletter because there’s like three things to read here.

  • Jesse Raub’s discussion of streaming and its impact on music is something I’ve thought quite a bit about. In high school, I had an online OG named Skylar Woodman who got me into all my hip-hop interests by occasionally telling me stuff to torrent (or sending me YouTube links). He may have also been the person who got me to torrent a number of foundational psych albums as well, so we all owe a lot to Skylar here (including the fact I’m alive enough to write this). But then Spotify showed up at a time we were all less tech critical of what we were getting. I think a lot about the disconnection between my own musical interests and how much of it was buoyed along by streaming. I don’t have any answers to what he said, but I’m glad he talked about it.

  • Carrie-Edmund Laben’s essay on rats is wonderful. Writing about pets is difficult because it’s an easy way to garner sympathy: owning pets is a process of negotiating your eventual grief, something we’ve mostly likely all experienced. Laben touches on that aspect, but it’s also a celebration of owning the critters. This essay includes all the little things you wouldn’t know (like getting rats in parking lots) and genuinely interesting history (rats have been pets in both ancient China and Japan!).
    
    Because of who I am, I dated a woman who owned rats. They’re genuinely sweet and empathetic and intelligent little creatures, something Laben gets to come across in the essay. Frankly, that girlfriend could have learned some lessons.

  • Typebar’s journey into fiction writing has paid a lot of dividends. Continuing the line of wonderful work like Karlo Yeager-Rodriguez’s “Foreign Objects” is Tiernan Blanchard’s “Pink Plastic”. The story follows a small English family’s day to day after the mysterious son returns from boarding school. What’s off about this family, however, is their broken, deadened speech and their simplistic adherence to gender norms (which is cannily echoed by the prose in staccato sentences). Highest of recommendations.

See everybody mid August. I’m happy I’m back.

Best,

CS…