My Oogaboo Review

Eric Gjovaag said he was going to stop doing his quarterly Oz newsletter, The Oogaboo Review. I’d been wanting to do something like it for some time. (I still like the title I'd come up with, The Yellow Journal, the western country of the land of Oz being yellow-themed and the slightly unsavory connotations of “yellow journalism” being appealing to me.) Figuring I might as well save a going concern if I was going to do it anyway, I offered to take over The Oogaboo Review. Eric sent me the OR archives and treasury and subscription list.

I used up just about all the money on the first issue which I typeset and laid-out myself at the typography shop where I’d recently gotten work. (Have computers killed off typography?)

In a Feb ’85 diary entry I was making plans: “I copied an item from a magazine for my new ‘Oz in Strange Places’ [column] I intend to make a regular part of The Oogaboo Review.” You see Oz used as a metaphor (primarily MGM’s Oz) everywhere -- in political cartoons, in sitcom jokes, whatever – once you start looking you see Oz references all the time. I thought it’d be fun to gather up the strangest of these references for a regular column. One of the OR subscribers – Earl C. Abbe – was very helpful in this regard, stuffing envelopes with interesting clippings.

Sadly I only ever did two issues of The Oogaboo Review.

Eric had started a serial in OR, Queen Ann of Oz, the further adventures of Queen Ann of Oogaboo (since her first appearance in Baum’s Tik-Tok of Oz). I wrote a chapter and introduced a new character, Jody Buttons. All the people in Oogaboo have a last name that reflects the crop they grow. The Buttons family grows buttons in their orchard. Jody’s a tough little girl who wants to go out into the world and make a name for herself. She’s not going to be a “Buttons” all her life. When the serial died with OR Eric and coauthor Karyl Carlson finished the story; they kept a chunk of my chapter. I’ve seen the book but I don’t own a copy. I wonder if Jody chose a new name.

Eric Gjovaag maintains an Oz website that’s visited thousands of times a day. He’s also recently started a blog about life as a school teacher.

2010: Odyssey Two

from the diary: “February 5, 1985

“Went to Poetry Workshop in Santa Rosa at Rusty [Jorgensen] and Paula [Viale]’s new place. … Rusty and I got into a long critique of 2010.”

When I caught up with Arthur C. Clarke’s next two 2001 sequels, 2061: Odyssey Three and 3001: The Final Odyssey, it seemed like I’d read the first two books fairly recently. So. Twenty years past seemed fairly recently? If I’d realized that much time had gone by it would have made more sense that I didn’t remember much from 2010. Rusty and I were talking about the movie, as well as the book.

I remember my brother David saying the book 2001 explained a lot that was mysterious about the movie 2001. Maybe it did. I remember expecting more than I got. I found 2001 the movie beautiful, magestic, convincing, frustrating, and often dull. The end is pretentious but mysterious and I’m up for mysterious. The solution to the mystery can be a letdown. Not in real life. In real life solutions usually offer up a bunch more interesting questions. In the movies solutions are usually too simple, end up seeming not worth the build up.

I recall liking 2010 the book. I think what got Rusty and me going was my disappointment with the movie. I didn’t hate it. It was an adequate sci-fi movie. But after the grandeur of Kubrick the sequel was pale. There were instances I loved – the original spaceship rotating, end over end, above the swirling clouds of Jupiter, hearing Hal’s voice again. But I don’t remember the movie as big. The book wasn’t huge either but it had a bit more dimension. I was convinced the movie could have included a little more mysteriousness, a little more of the unknown.

Tracks in the Widest Orbit

from the diary: “February 4, 1985

“Highlight of the day: went to tonight’s RRWG (N)Erotic/Romantic Poetry. Fun. Read one of mine (which was applauded) and read a couple from J.H. Montrose’s Tracks in the Widest Orbit. Somebody came in and videotaped most of the evening.”

I believe Jim Montrose helped found the Russian River Writers’ Guild. I don’t remember having met him, but I probably did. The book, Tracks in the Widest Orbit, was published posthumously. It has a picture of Jim on the cover standing before a fighter jet in his military flight suit, smiling, helmet tucked under one arm. I liked the book. For a collection of a life’s work it seemed tiny … but I think he didn’t really get serious about poetry until late.

I probably read this one:

“Last Rites”

When a codger named Tim caught the flu,
his lady, Miss Sadie, did too.
They took to their bed
and stayed there till dead,
a very sad story it’s true.

Now, the quaint little couple were struck
in flagrante delicto, worse luck!
When the children came round,
they were finally found
saddled up for a last good-bye fuck.

Rigor mortis had seized them mid-lay
in a truly disgusting display;
she had such a lock
on his rusty old cock,
mortal hands couldn’t rip him away.

And their withered old corpses were dry
as the tear in the mortician’s eye;
their bones were so brittle
they broke in the middle
when he grabbed them and gave them a pry.

The solution he finally found
was bizarre, yet basically sound;
you don’t see too often
a double backed-coffin,
but it worked, and they’re safe underground.

-- J.H. Montrose

Ms. Tree

from the diary: “February 3, 1985

“Read six Ms Trees today.

“Slept way late. As usual. Visited the graveyard – on a predinner walk – only spent five minutes. Met two WWII casualties. One who might’ve died in WWI, tho [the marker] dint say so.”

The diary also mentions Mom giving me driving lessons. Those were unhappy affairs. We’d get really frustrated with each other. As I’ve said earlier she wouldn’t let me drive the car on my own until I could afford to pay the insurance, which, for a 19-year-old male, would have been hideously expensive even had I regular employment.

Ms Tree was a mystery (get it?) comic following the hard-boiled adventures of a female private investigator. One thing I remember about Ms Tree was the ongoing argument on the letters pages about homosexuality. (Tree was a tough bitch but totally straight.) Eventually writer Max Allan Collins had one of the minor characters come out and howls of protest were printed. I recall a few thank-yous as well. The comic was published by a small press so could get away with a little more “controversy” than the major publishers which still trembled before the innocence brigade and their threats against peddlers of supposed children’s lit like comics should they dare produce something somewhat adultish. Sadly the creeps seem to be in charge of the country right now. Ulysses is waiting to be banned again, right?

Leaves of Grass

From the diary: “January 25, 1985

“Been reading bits from Leaves of Grass. Really like it.”

I believe I was reading the deathbed edition. It’s unlikely my small town library had anything other than the most common edition. Besides, even if I had known Whitman produced earlier versions of Leaves of Grass, it would have seemed reasonable to me that the final one was the closest to perfected. While I enjoyed much of the book I also remember page after page of cataloging, where Whitman celebrated everything he could think of. These tended to drag.

On 2/12/85 I wrote, “Finished Leaves of Grass. Finally! I hardly ever really got into that book.”

I probably picked up Whitman both because he was supposed to be great and because he was supposed to be gay. By the deathbed edition, I understand, Whitman was feeling old and vulnerable so toned down the gayishness. Someday I’ll read Leaves again, but maybe for kicks I’ll start with the earliest edition.

Lust for Books

I’m not going to include my poems in DIR as a usual thing. And if this poem is ever published it will not be as is. I present it here merely for its sweet bookishness.

“Lust for Books”

I find when I am bound in by books
wealth surmounts the walls,
much money surrounds me as if I kneel in the vault of a national bank.
Just the sight of short paperbacks sets me shivering
and the thickest volume rests quietly in my lap like a snoozing cat.
I flip pages – a miser counting bills – eyes alight.
A greedy satisfaction comes from information.
I lust for paragraphs in periodicals, words in verse,
and I run my fingertips along the walls of books,
lick my lips and ponder which I’ll pick,
in which opened tome I’ll discover
the whispered words of another unseen lover.

-- GI 1/24/85

War and Remembrance

From the diary: “January 19, 1985

“Well, I actually finally finished The Lost Queen of Oz. I typed ‘The End’ this afternoon. Some year I’ll do a second draft, make it really good, but I’ll be doing other stuff meantime. Am just now starting War and Remembrance. Watched all 6 Thin Man movies on Channel 2 this week. The last of LQofOz has me kinda bummed.”

So it took me three and a half years to write The Lost Queen of Oz. Hm. I still haven’t done a second draft. I think about it now and then. I have made a couple attempts, but those didn’t get past the first chapter.

In the next few diary entries I mention War and Remembrance, Herman Wouk’s sequel to his Winds of War, I’m reading it, I’m reading it, then, “I spent so much time reading it I dint write. Good book. Sad. sigh.”

I remember being disappointed in War and Remembrance, but maybe I wouldn’t have said so at the time.

These days I’m always reading several books. Back then, if I remember right, I didn’t. Usually it was one book until I got all the way to the last page. Naturally there were exceptions and I certainly read other things – newspapers, comic books – but I felt I had to give my attention to the one book.

I remember fondly watching all the Thin Man movies night by night as though they were a mini-series. The quality gradually goes downhill until by the sixth movie the only reason you watch is the charm of Nick and Nora. It helps that the first two movies are quite good so the series has real heights from which to fall.

Pet Sematery

From the diary: “January 16, 1985 – Finished Pet Sematery.”

This wasn’t the last Stephen King book I read, but it was the one that made me think his editors no longer had any power over him. It had its creepy parts but most of it (and that was many many pages) was the unhappy mundane life of a father who loses his child. I didn’t find that fun. Vampires! (Salem’s Lot) Killer car! (Christine) Girl with super psychic powers! (Carrie) – All much more fun.

Mandate

Jan ’85 I bought my first gay porn mag, Mandate. I’d started the diary up again in my poetry notebook, writing brief one-paragraph diary entries between poems. In those paragraphs I kept pushing myself to buy a Blueboy. Blueboy? I liked the title.

Maybe the store didn’t have any Blueboy. Of Mandate I remember huge close-ups of penises. I still don’t find such things erotic. Frankly I think the penis looks absurd. Objectively there isn’t anything about the male body I find preferable to the female (except maybe the lack of breasts, which seem to me rather in the way). I also didn’t find the fiction erotic – the pumping and gasping and jerking, often in a public (or semi-public) place. I was taking home from the library drier sociological reading (which was hard enough for me to get to the check-out counter). I was on the look-out for what fit me.

Porn still makes me uncomfortable. Because it’s dirty? Yes, I suppose. I don’t want anybody to see me looking at it. They might think badly of me! Philosophically I have no problem with porn, but it’s always been the case that my emotions have been stronger than my reasoning mind. Intellectually I knew how ridiculous it was to think I’d die if I asked at the counter for a porn mag (or an employment application) but the part of me that knew better was in control. I almost said, “in firm control”, but firm isn’t the word -- hysterical, trembling, panic-stricken maybe.

What a struggle!

comics

I bought a lot of superhero comics. Some favorites: Avengers, Defenders, X-Men, New Teen Titans, Firestorm, Nova. As the 80s unfolded independent publishers started up, offering their books primarily to the direct market; there were enough comic book stores to support such non-superhero fare as Cerebus, Elfquest, Love and Rockets, and much else besides, including undergrounds like Gay Comics, Zap Comics, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. I bought more than I probably should have. But, as entertainment goes, comics were pretty cheap.

Winds of War

I watched the TV mini-series and liked it so decided to tackle Herman Wouk’s novel. Wouk was a Pulitzer Prize winner so he had to be literary, right? Here’s what I say about Winds of War January 2, 1985: “The only sex scene so far fades to the crashing waves, flowers, and a treatise on the vagaries of human, etc. Quite humorous and very prudish, not even the fainting, veiled purple stuff of modern romance novels. And precious little violence for a war novel, wouldn’t even know about the fighting if they didn’t keep mentioning it.” Curiously I added, “but I’m hooked and thrashing.”

By the way, I didn't really know anything about "modern romance novels," having never attempted to read any. I still can't say I've actually read one, not all the way through. But I have happened onto a sex scene or two browsing and those weren't so subtle as "fainting" and "veiled" suggests.

Seventeen

Shortly before I got the job at Books Inc I started sending my poems to Seventeen magazine. I read in a publishers-of-poetry listing that they published poems by poets under the age of 25 or 23 or 22 or something. I’d never read the magazine but I knew they’d published early Plath. After two or three submissions an editor started scrawling notes on the rejections, “Don’t be discouraged!” I remember I wrote back saying I couldn’t be discouraged!

HA!

Eventually they bought 4 poems from me ($15 apiece) and published two. Have I been paid for a poem since? I showed off the magazine to all my Books Inc coworkers. I really am a writer, see? The first poem was published just after my 20th birthday.

I had to sign a contract giving away all rights. This means if I ever want to republish one of those poems I’m supposed to ask Seventeen for permission. I didn’t like that, which was one of the reasons I stopped sending them poems. But I’d conquered Seventeen! Following in the footsteps of Sylvia Plath. My poems appeared on newsstands across the country. I even got a couple letters from readers.

Asimov’s New Guide to Science

from the diary: “December 30, 1984

“Bot Asimov’s New G. to Science at Books, Inc. today. Last day. Not on the new schedule. No more money. Damn. Oh the injustice of it all.”

Books Inc was my first and so far only bookstore job. Mom knew one of the clerks and this friend said Books Inc was hiring for the Christmas season, so got me an interview. I remember bragging that I already knew the layout of the store. After I was hired and the manager asked me to go get a book from a particular section I said, “Where’s that?” And she said, “I thought you knew the store’s layout.” To which I replied, sheepishly, “I knew all the areas I was interested in.”

They didn’t want me once the Christmas buying season was over. I took advantage of my employee discount to buy the Asimov book, thinking it one of those fat reference books that was really going to come in handy one imaginary future day that would turn out never to happen.

I didn’t dislike the bookstore but I was surprised to discover working there didn’t require one be bookish. For all the literary knowledge it required the inventory might as well have been widgets or shoes.

First Leaves

In April of ’84 I started a WANT LIST notebook. The first page consisted of things I wanted to own or see or do and included such wants as “my poetry in various magazines” and “a driver’s license” and “a new typewriter” and “an ongoing intimate relationship.”

For a month and a half I recorded my progress toward these goals.

On May 6th I wrote, “First Leaves accepted one of my poems. Yay! Now I know why they took so long. They took ‘Tea for Two.’”

First Leaves was the literary magazine of Santa Rosa Junior College. This was my first literary magazine publication. What a thrill. They accepted the poem knowing nothing about me, just because they thought it was good. I hopped about the room, I rolled on the floor. I kissed the cat.

Russian River Writers' Guild

As far as a social life goes I didn’t have much of one. Besides the rather distant Oz Club I did get to be around people at the Russian River Writers’ Guild reading series which ran for several years at a senior center in Sebastopol. It was in easy walking distance of my house and people would show up from around Sonoma County, mostly the west county, that is, west of Santa Rosa. Guerneville, Bodega Bay, Graton.

I would read at the open and had a few features. There were good poets and mediocre poets and crappy poets, like in every scene. Do I remember any names? Jayne McPherson, Joe Pahls, Marianne Ware, Ann Erickson … I have the RRWG anthology around somewhere. I’ll get to it in another post.

Paul Mariah

I graduated from high school in 1983. I was depressed, closeted, and felt trapped. Mom tried to help. She helped me get a parttime job here and there but the money didn’t last long. I was practically agoraphobic, only going out of the house to the library or bookstore or to wander the town. I remember drifting about the aisles of stores trying to pluck up the courage to ask for an employment application.

Zara connected me to a poet who was running a poetry workshop in Santa Rosa. I didn’t know anything about Paul Mariah. But I needed company and Paul seemed to enjoy my writing. Though he lived near the town of Sonoma, Paul led the workshop at the home of another older poet, Helen Luster. There were typically five or six poets each time. I didn’t have a car and Mom wasn’t going to teach me to drive until I could pay the insurance, so Mom always came to the workshops, too. If she hadn’t would Paul have told me he was gay and had founded a press to publish gay writers? I don’t know. It sure seems like a missed opportunity. I’m not wishing he’d published me (I don’t think he was still running ManRoot) so much as wishing … something.

Paul would start the evening by reading poems by a famous poet – though usually not one I’d heard of. At first the workshop was the standard bring-a-poem-to-critique format but I held out for writing exercises. Man, I gotta write!

nervous habit

So I’ve brought home boxes of stuff from my mother’s house, right? In some of the boxes are books I’ve mentioned on DIR. I flipped through The Many Colored Land and I thought, Maybe I didn’t actually read this. Then I looked at the paper edge opposite the binding. You can tell whether I’ve read a particular book by whether the pages are darkened. I fiddle with the pages as I read, which deposits oils from my skin, thus leaving a record of my progress, especially if my fingers have gotten inky from the text. I squinted at the book. Yes, there’s the smudge line. It’s about 2/5 of the way down the page. I must’ve read it.

I have the sequels. I could start over from the beginning. I could read the series all the way through.

Undecided

Undecided is the end-of-the-semester collection of writings from the Creative Writing Class I’d lobbied for, which was created in time for half my senior year, and which, I was told, didn’t last beyond that. Too bad. The class was taught by Amy Glazer Connolly, the drama teacher. (What she’s up to now.) She was a lousy teacher, I thought. I remember comforting one of the sweetest girls in the senior class when Amy made her cry. Amy didn’t think much of my acting when I was taking her drama classes – I remember she tried to talk me into cutting my hair for a one-act, using the example of Vanessa Redgrave who’d shaved her head for Playing for Time, a movie in which Redgrave's character performed music for the Nazis at one of the death camps.

Amy was a teacher who had pets, the student(s) who could do no wrong. Everybody else got short shrift.

When I heard who’d been signed to teach the Creative Writing Class I almost didn’t take it. Amy didn’t have many ideas for the class, was impatient with students, and would often ignore us and conduct drama business. I became a sort of assistant teacher. I remember one time a student went to Amy for help and Amy, busy with some drama thing, waved the student off with, “Go talk to Glenn.”

I’d become her pet. Having been on her shit list in drama class, being her pet, I discovered, was much easier but rather creepy. I was glad enough to become a sort of assistant teacher because I thought at least I cared about the topic and listened and tried.

Of my own work in Undecided -- a short story, a couple poems and prose poems – there is one I still like, “The Man in the Pinstriped Suit”. I’ll probably post it over at the LuvSet blog for revision.

Newsflash

I’m cleaning out my mother’s house. Everything that isn’t thrown away or given away has to come back here. (There are boxes I’m to ship to my brother in Seattle.)

I’m seeing again books I described in the high school diary. Newflash is one I didn’t mention. It’s the end-of-class anthology for the poetry workshop. The copy I’m looking at was Mom’s. She attended a couple class meetings and wrote a couple poems. Here’s one:


Arctic Nostalgia

Huskies howling, wailing,
Piercing the sharp, clear Arctic blue.
Ice floes smashing, crashing,
Roaring through the midnight freeze.
Northern lights dancing twirling
Flipping, twisting with the lightning speed.
Leaving the eye dazzled in awe.


-- Helen Ingersoll

talent

Are writers born or made? I don’t know. Are chess players? I think we have talents. Some of us are born with abilities that make us great at certain tasks. This doesn’t mean that the top of every profession is peopled with those born with the most talent.

To write one has to achieve literacy. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that there are excellent storytellers who have not mastered literacy (even when given the opportunity) – could dyslexia be considered a negative talent? Once one can speckle a paper with a language comprehensible to others one can write. Can one write a story? a poem? a screenplay? Is it a story, poem or screenplay that works for other people? Then, do you have the stamina (or luck) it takes to get that written thing in front of all the eyes necessary to get it published, distributed, reviewed, sold, passed from hand to hand? There are lots of steps between the writing and the making a living off the writing. I write poetry. There isn’t money in it. Thus my steps don’t lead to the writing paying my bills. (A lot of poets earn their way teaching.) Still, it’s not unreasonable to think I could get a little more published, distributed, reviewed, sold (even!), etc. What I seem to have a negative talent for is marketing. I kind of laugh to myself about it. The key is doing it. Like writing. You don’t get a book if you hang back afraid of the page.

Yesterday I talked about my high school classmate Diana Hennessy. She planned to be writer. And she certainly has the talent for it. She hasn’t applied herself to the writing. Thus she hasn’t produced a manuscript and without a manuscript there’s no way to get to the book. I think she could write a book – novel, short stories, even poems. Every so often I get a card from her that says she’s thinking about writing again. She’s run a few marathons. Those are harder on the knees.

Diana Hennessy

During my senior year Diana Hennessy and I arranged an independent study class in which she and I worked on a novel. We alternated sections, which meant we each had to wait for the other to finish a part before getting to work again. How many pages did we make? More than a hundred, as I recall. I wonder how the manuscript would read today? Eventually I’m going to come across it as I clean out these boxes of papers. We didn’t have a plot or plan. We just made it up as we went along. I don’t think there were any fantasy elements in it, other than the fantasy that a poor writer could get his own apartment in New York City.

Though Diana and I had worked on the school newspaper since we were freshmen and both of us planned to be writers we had a fairly prickly relationship until the after school poetry workshop with Maureen and Zara. Then I know I really came to appreciate her writing and began to enjoy her company. We probably bonded most, however, in Consumer Ed, where we were part of the laughingest table in class. We’d failed the challenge test that would have let us skip the class. I remember staring at the test’s problems and forgeting how to divide. Anyway, it was okay. If I hadn’t ended up in Consumer Ed I might’ve had to take some AP class or something. I don’t mind having escaped that fate.

Trot of Oz

My diary writing stumbled to a stop. I wrote only once more that summer, tried to cram everything into that entry, got tired, but promised I’d finish the next day. The next day didn’t come for two years.

In that last 1982 diary entry I mention Trot of Oz, which was an Oz book Eric Shanower and I had decided to write together. I was to produce the first chapter, Eric would write the second, and so on to twelve chapters.

It took a few years, but we did finish Trot. Eric even published it in his OzStory magazine.

If you want to read my first chapter, it’s online.

When we finished the book I thought it turned out pretty good. Later I soured on it, convinced it needed a major overhaul before I could allow anyone to see it. Eventually Eric prevailed upon me to reread the thing and I decided, yeah, it was fun and I didn’t need to be so fussy. In fact I’m up for another one. Eric suggested Polychrome in Oz (Polychrome is the Rainbow’s daughter, or one of them anyway, and appeared a few times in Baum’s Oz books).

Having just done a web search I see a Nate Barlow has produced a book (unpublished?) called Polychrome in Oz. I don’t know anything about it.

Well. Titles aren’t that hard to come by. What say you, Eric?

Oziana 1982

I wrote two more Oz stories, “The Piglets’ Revenge, or How Eureka Became Pink” and “The Vultures and the China Milk Maid”. I managed to type them up in time for the summer’s Winkie Convention. David even produced illustrations for them. To my delight and surprise (nobody’d told me it was going to be published) that year’s Oz Club annual Oziana included “The Cowardly Lion and the Courage Pills”, the story I’d taken to Winkies in ’81.

The “Courage Pills” story. Any good? Um. Probably not. Last I read it I remember being disappointed. According to my diary Eric Shanower, friend and critic, allowed, “It was all right.”

Eureka, by the way, is a kitten Dorothy brought to Oz in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. Presumably the cat (always referred to as Eureka the Pink Kitten) came to live in Oz permanently with the rest of the family a couple books later. Eureka was described as white in Dorothy and the Wizard, although at one point the characters are visiting an underground world where the light producing “sun” gives off rainbow-like light and Dorothy notices that the light makes Eureka look pink. No suggestion is made at the time of this effecting a permanent change in Eureka’s color. I liked the idea of writing stories that would explain apparent discrepancies in the Oz books. In Dorothy and the Wizard Eureka is put on trial for eating one of the Wizard’s mouse-sized piglets. She is not guilty, though she admits attempting the kill. In escaping the piglet becomes trapped in a vase so can’t speak up about its continuing to be alive. Since Eureka came to live in Oz likely unrepentent about her desire to make a meal of one of these tiny piglets I thought the piglets had to have figured out a way to put her off the hunt. They tricked her into a pool of pink dye! Thus Scarlet Letter’d Eureka decided to leave the piglets alone in the future. That, anyway, was what I wrote.

With the other story I decided to revisit one of Baum’s tiny Ozian countries. Lots of these odd little places are introduced and then are never again mentioned. The China Milk Maid lived in the China Country mentioned in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In the China Country all the inhabitants are living porcelain dolls. Somehow the Milk Maid gets tangled up with a couple hungry vultures and, as Kent would say, “hilarity ensues.”

“Words, words, words.”

From the diary: “June 9, 1982

“My shoulder aches. I get too tense when I play video games. [I was mildly addicted to Ms Pac-Man.] Dad arrived today. …

“We went to Cattleman’s tonight as per tradition – we’ve gone every time Dad (almost every time) comes down [from Alaska to California] for a visit. He’s [here] for David’s graduation.

“Mum and Dad danced to the music of the same organ player who’s been here ever’ time.”

The title for today’s post is something Dad said to me while I was scribbling away in the diary. I agreed, “So true.” Then reconsidered, “Who asked you anyway?”

The man who played the organ at Cattleman’s, a restaurant just north of Petaluma, cut a couple records and Dad bought them. Honky tonk, ragtime. Jolly enough. Today I was in Sebastopol again cleaning out the basement of my mother’s house. Yes, there were the records by the Cattleman’s organ player. Maybe if they were on CD I’d have brought them home. But they weren’t. So I added them to the trash can that was filling with old jigsaw puzzles, a broken chair, and video game magazines.

The next day (June 10) I wrote, “Dad bought me a book, got a book for himself and we got some ice cream. … Dad’s talkin’ about philosophy.”

The California Poets-in-the-Schools Statewide Anthology

from the diary: “June 6, 1982

“I went to read poetry at Copperfield’s Trading Post mezzanine [in Sebastopol]. Four other students from Analy [High School] signed up to read but only Christina [Kalvin] appeared. [Poet-teacher] Zara [Altair] was inspired to arrange the reading when she met Christina at Coddingtown [a mall in Santa Rosa] and Christina said, ‘I’ve written that much since poetry class!’

“The reading was fun. Christina and I read a few of our poems and some girls from Bodega Bay and Harmony [school] and some other school which I don’t remember. At first the girls were very shy about reading and would speak softly or quickly, but once they got warmed up they started reading other students’ poetry from their anthologies. … [Poet-teacher] Maureen [Hurley] got up and read some miscellaneous poems from our anthologies, which just happened to be Diana [Hennessy]’s and mine. Coincidence. Maureen started out by reading my poem, ‘Dear Aunt Jane,’ and said, rather off-hand, ‘This poem was chosen for the statewide anthology.’”

First I’d heard about it.

And, uh yeah, I drew big ecstatic faces and yippees and stuff in the diary.

Yearbook

I bought the high school year book every year. It seemed like an important document. I decided I needed to have it. For the future!

Last weekend I brought the yearbooks home from my mother’s house. God, they’re heavy. I guess I could flip through and google a few names. Otherwise, what the hell am I doing with these ugly things?

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase

From the diary: “May 31, 1982

“I’ve been reading The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken.”

I’ve read Wolves at least twice. It’s set in an alternative England of the 19th Century. Aiken went on to publish several books set in this imaginary England, though not always involving the same characters. I tried to keep up. But I haven’t read an Aiken since The Stolen Lake or maybe Dido and Pa. I wonder if I remember enough of the setting to try the new one out this year?

The story so far

We’re almost through my extant high school diary. I didn’t write in it during my senior year. I was doing other writing. Besides, when I would reread the diary I’d not find it interesting. It began to seem merely a chore.

I’ve been awfully thorough in my review of the reading life, recording blog entries for every book mentioned in the diary, even for books I barely remember or books that didn’t interest me. Does this make for good reading, dear reader?

Alongside reading I’ve started to talk about my writing life – my lobbying for a Creative Writing class, my agonies over English class essays, stories and poems I attempted, and the afterschool Poetry class that opened the gates of poetry, allowing me to step outside. Although I feel like the same person, it’s sometimes been hard to reinhabit an earlier version of Glenn. What did I not know then that I take for granted now? My writing isn’t the same. Not radically different. But different. And I’m the other side of lots of life experience that I could only imagine (poorly) back then. Some travelling, some loving, a different perspective on the parents.

As far as reading itself is concerned, despite doing it a lot, I wasn’t so adventurous in my choices. I read a lot of comic books – though I also bought many comics I didn’t actually sit and read, often just flipping through watching the action. I read the Oz books and had a definite preference for other children’s fantasies over stories set in the mundane world. I didn’t like the world I lived in much. If I had a choice between staying in it for the space of a book or going somewhere far away and full of transformations … it was an easy choice. I did read an occasional nonfantasy novel, and even more occasionally a book of nonfiction.

Though there wasn’t much of a library in our house, we spent hours at the public library. There were worthwhile books on our shelves I never got around to reading, preferring the armload I’d bring home bearing due dates. (This is still too often true.)

The Phantom Tollbooth

From the diary: “May 26, 1982"

Of one of my classes I said, “I had absolutely nothing to do. BORING, DULL, TEDIOUS, MONOTONOUS, HUMDRUM, YAWN-INSPIRING, STUPIFYING, UNINTERESTING, DREARY, TIRESOME. Reminds me a bit of dear Milo’s experience in The Phantom Tollbooth.”

Trilogies and other series

I like series. If I’ve enjoyed a book (or movie or comic) I’m happy to know there’s a sequel and look to get my paws on it. I’ve made the investment in the characters and a sequel feels like a return on the investment.

Bad sequels are bad returns. And if I’ve read the first book of a series and I don’t like it I do feel some relief at not having to go any further. All those pages, all that commitment of time and concentration, that I don’t have to feel pressure to get with.

When the book is part of a yet-to-be-completed story, I’ve learned (big surprise) that, if there is a long interval between what I last read and the new installment, I forget. Who are these people? What are they doing?

L. Frank Baum, when writing his Oz books, seemed himself to forget what he’d said in earlier Oz books. In one book the Magic Belt can easily be commanded to do all sorts of amazing things. In another you can only use the Magic Belt on alternate Thursdays while standing on your head and whispering a goofy rhyme (or something). In one book Oz has no money. In another kids are buying lemonade with green pennies.

I didn’t start the Harry Potter books until the third had been published. Now when I read a new one I have to work my little brain to remember whether a particular character is one who’s appeared before or not. How many Weasleys are there again?

It’s easier on my creaky memory to read a series all at once (or with brief breaks) than to wait a year or more between episodes.

The Many Colored Land

From the diary: “May 25, 1982

“Merit Book Center is closing forever. I probably made my last purchase at Merit, The Many Colored Land, a science fiction book. 20% off. I’m really sort of sad about it. There goes the best selection of magazines and paperbacks in Sebastopol. The economy and their absentee landlord raising the rent … combined to close the shop which has been open for nine years. We’ve been going to Merit almost every week ever since we moved to Sebastopol. I wish they could stay open.”

I bought a sympathy card and gave it to the woman behind the counter. I’d always been a bit afraid of her, especially since a few years earlier I’d special-ordered an Oz book from Merit and before it arrived found the same book in the other local bookstore (and for 45 cents less, the newest printing having seen a price increase – when the book cost $1.50, an additional 45 cents was a hefty increase). Naturally the woman at Merit was miffed. I remember crying while my mother talked to her.

When the woman behind the counter opened the sympathy card she laughed. She called over the man who worked there, too. And he got a good chuckle. I was, of course, all embarassed and everything.

The Many Colored Land is a science fiction novel by Julian May. It’s the first of a trilogy. I later bought the second book, The Nonborn King, but I don’t think I ever got the third. The book columnist for Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine was ga-ga over Julian May. That guy read a lot of books. He oughta know what’s good. I wasn’t so thrilled with Land. What sticks with me most vividly was a herd animal that migrated great distances across the planet’s single continent, plagued the entire way by a vexing parasitic fly.

These days I won’t start a trilogy until all three books have been published, just in case I like the first one and want to finish the darn story.

Update: In comments D says, "Funny, that bit about the parasitic fly - I thought that was in the Helliconia Trilogy." If this is true (and I do remember working my way through the Helliconia books) then I remember nothing about The Many Colored Land. This would be why I later started the booklog. A few notes really do help one's recall. A mere title isn't enough mnemonic.

The Night I Got in Trouble for Writing in Creative Writing Class

In the night Creative Writing Class we did do some in-class writing, something I much prefer to three hours (that’s how long a night class was) of critiquing. However, there is one night that lives in infamy. The night I got in trouble for writing in Creative Writing! Here’s my irked entry from May 23, 1982: “Gerry Payne scolded me in class while everyone was very quiet mulling over a poem that had just been read. I was writing away with my little pencil a poem inspired by what [had] been read, and Gerrye saw fit to batter me over the ego. … She should change the name to Creative Criticism.”

How rude of me to write! When I could have been sitting on my hands. I had no idea what to say about the poem. So I was working out on paper things the poem suggested to me. I was writing a poem “inspired by” the poem the class was supposed to be focusing its collective intelligence upon. Even in the workshops I took at Cal there were long dead zones in workshop classes. Such deadness drives me batty. When I’m bored and tired I squirm and fidget. Frankly, Payne was lucky I wasn’t banging my head on my desk. Over the years I’ve gotten better at dredging up something to say, even when it’s nonsense, even when it’s just to keep myself from going batshit crazy and running around the room whacking everybody with a rolled up poem. But I also learned that whatever you say, it really doesn’t matter much to the writer.

The Grapes of Wrath

From the diary: “May 12, 1982

“I’m reading The Grapes of Wrath for which I have to not only finish (I’m 1/5 thru) by tomorrow, but I have to write a summary of it, and do the 1st draft of my Steinbeck term paper.”

I was not a fast reader. I’m still not a fast reader. I’ve discovered I can skim academic prose when I have to. And, yes, you do seem to get more out of dry jargon-thick academic prose when you’re skimming than when you’re reading word by word. I like the sound of the storyteller in my head so reading is a sort of listening for me. When school deadlines loom the storyteller voice can’t chatter away fast enough. Steinbeck wrote lots of way shorter books than The Grapes of Wrath. I wonder if I could have gotten away with Of Mice and Men or Cannery Row? I nicknamed the book, The Rapes of Grath. I remember the book fondly, if not the term paper.

The Short Reign of Pippin IV

From the diary: “April 20, 1982

“[Mrs Lennox] came up to me today just before [American Lit] class started and asked me if I had had any help in writing my summary of The Short Reign of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck. I didn’t know why anybody would ask me something like that. At first I thought maybe she meant I was supposed to. Apparently she thought the summary was too good for me to have done it by myself without help. I was about to tell her I had written it after I returned the book to the library but I stopped myself after I realized that would sound bad. I did say that I wrote it in a hurry. (It was one of those knock-it-off-the-night-before type summaries.) She didn’t believe me. Something that good must’ve had quite a bit of work put into it. I stopped arguing with her.”

Considering my angst over the Crucible paper I was stunned to get an “A” for the Pippin summary. The Pippin summary was of less weight when it came to adding up the final grade, naturally. But why the discrepancy? I partly explained it to myself, “Apparently Mrs Lennox hadn’t read the book so she couldn’t judge it from [her own] experience.”

I was reading Steinbeck for the author paper we had to write. Pippin is an amusing little book. The character Pippin is chosen to be the figurehead king of France but he’s too idealistic to sit on a throne and say nothing.

The Scarlet Letter

From the diary: “April 18, 1982

“We’re reading The Scarlet Letter in American Lit. Hard stuff to get into. We have to do a lot of analyzing too. Apparently Hawthorne loved symbolism.”

I didn’t actually dislike The Scarlet Letter. I recall enjoying some of it. But there’s something about reading a book you know you’re going to be beaten about the head with that makes the reading rather heavy and unpleasant. Literature, it seems to me, ought not to be taught as a puzzle. Figure out the puzzle and you’ve got the book! Nonsense. It’s a story. Enjoy the story.

Speaking of puzzles, I’m continuing to work my way through Emily Dickinson’s complete poems. Seems to me that girl was a puzzle-maker. I find her uncommonly frustrating. Part of it, I think, is that I don’t get much pleasure out of her language or rhythms so find myself rereading to try to figure out what she means. This is a dangerous thing. If all you get out of a poem is what it means you’ll just be disappointed. Poems aren’t great guidebooks to living. It’s not like they’re banged together by championship livers.

The Acrobat is Nervous; What if they want her to sing

From the diary: “April 4, 1982

“I bought a couple magazines at Merit [a bookstore] and a poetry book, (California Poets-in-the-Schools for Marin Country [anthology]) The Acrobat is Nervous; What if they want her to sing. I wrote a poem about the circus from that.”

I love the title. Once in awhile it will ring through my head even now. I don’t remember the poetry, but I think I reread the book when I started my copy-out-poems project six years later. I have notebooks filled with poems I’ve hand copied from published sources. I started doing that because I wasn’t able to answer the who-are-your-favorite-poets question. But we are looking at a time when all of poetry was new to me. It was intimidating. Already I knew I didn’t get and didn’t like a lot of stuff that was called poetry. I was hesitant to buy a book of poems for fear of finding pages and pages of the sort of thing I couldn’t stand in textbooks.

Having done the after school poetry class -- it was part of the California Poets-in-the-Schools program -- I was especially curious to see what gatherings of poems from other students looked like. The Acrobat is Nervous was nice looking, art on the cover, perfect bound paperback. Like I say, I don’t remember the poetry, but I do remember admiring the package and I don’t remember disliking the poetry. Sometimes I remember dislikes better than likes. The better to avoid future bad experiences, I suppose.

Garfield Weighs In

From the diary: “March 10, 1982

“I went to the Big Santa Rosa Plaza last Saturday and got the newest Garfield book, Garfield Weighs In at one of the two bookstores there.”

Santa Rosa had just built a huge mall. They had a Waldenbooks and a B. Dalton’s. Mall bookstores. The whole huge mall thing was novel. Food courts. High ceilings. Escalators. Trees that never felt a breeze.

Garfield is probably as good a representative of mall culture as any – fat, repetitive, arrogant, a little insulting, and addictive.

Journalism

From the diary: “February 23, 1982

“Mr Reade [Analy High School’s biology teacher] has gone to Nevada to manage a brothel. It was on the front page of the [SF] Chronicle and Press Democrat. Mallary [Magill] called Nevada and got an interview with him. They visited for awhile.”

I thought I might become a journalist. I tried it out on the high school paper and there really wasn’t much about it that I liked. I wanted to be a writer. But I had to figure out what that meant. There are different kinds of writers. Journalists, technical writers, novelists, poets, scriptwriters, playwrights, diarists. Because you can put words on paper doesn’t mean you can (or can stand to) be any or all kinds of writer.

A news article has a particular structure – you’re supposed to cram into the first paragraph as many of the vitals of the story as you can. The who/what/when/where stuff. The reader can stop reading after a couple paragraphs and have everything important. News editors will trim an article for space starting at the bottom.

Feature articles are a bit different. An interview is a feature article. A profile of a community leader. Columns on the opinion page. A movie review. These are essays, not news. Opinions and arguments, not facts.

In a news article you don’t tell the story in chronological order. You say, a person was shot to death, not a person got up this morning thinking he was going to have a tomorrow and walked down to the corner store and got into an argument with a man who shot him to death. You start with the bullet, then fill in the details.

I liked Mr Reade. I’ve always been fairly libertarian. Whatever one wants to do one ought to be able to do, so long as nobody gets hurt. Of course, when it comes to sex, that’s not the way society likes it. The general cast seems to be, we don’t care what you do so long as we get to make you feel shameful for doing it.

Let’s skip ahead about a month. Reade’s decision was blowing up. He’d taken a sabbatical, I learned, and he hadn’t told anyone where he was off to. He certainly hadn’t told the school administration he was going to Nevada to manage the Chicken Ranch. My diary entry for March 30, 1982 records my brush with punditry: “[Yesterday] I stayed after [school] a little while to work on the Analyan [the school newspaper]. [On my way home] I spotted a station wagon at the entrance to Analy [campus] in front of which stood a man holding a camera[. He was] pointing it at a student who was gesticulating ... I continued to approach and saw the ‘TV-50’ written on the station wagon door. The girl being interviewed was talking about Mr Reade … I stood there for a minute and when that interview was over I asked if they had talked to Mallary Magill who had interviewed [Reade for the school paper]. The lady holding the microphone ignored my query and instead asked me if I’d had Mr Reade in class. I said yes, last year. The man with the camera turned it on me and the lady started asking me questions. I had the subject clear in my mind so I launched forth on why I thought they shouldn’t dismiss Mr Reade.”

I had somewhere to go that night but my brother watched the news and told me I had the longest quote. I remember the woman interviewing me had more make-up on her face than I’d ever seen. Sparkles in a layer of white. She got me to say “whore” on TV. A piece of advice for interviews: Never repeat anything the interviewer asks unless it’s something you plan to say. She asked me something like, was your teacher training young girls to be whores? And I insisted, It’s not like Mr Reade was teaching anybody to be a whore. “Whore” is not a word that trips off my tongue. But only my voice was included in the broadcast.

Mallary is one of those people I haven’t seen or heard about since high school but I’d love to know what she’s been up to.

Reade update: Seems Russ Reade stayed on at the Chicken Ranch. According to the Pahrump Valley Times he and his co-owner decided to sell last year. “One of the world's most recognized brothels, the Chicken Ranch, goes on the market for $6.95 million. The primary owners, Ken Green and Russ Reade, said they were ready to venture into other aspects of business.”

Why I’m Not an English Major

From the diary: “February 23, 1982

“I feel like talking to someone, but everyone’s gone to bed so I think I’ll talk to myself. I slaved over an essay for American Lit. I worked hours on that damn thing for Mrs Lennox. I handed it in proudly. I was positive I would get at least a “B” if not a “B+” and who knows – if I was lucky I could’ve gotten an “A-“. It was that good. When I handed that paper in I handed Mrs Lennox a carefully guarded piece of myself. I had poured at least three hours of my soul into that essay. I didn’t happen to like it too much. I couldn’t care less about John and Elizabeth Proctor [of The Crucible]. I hate analyzing and dissecting stories. It ruins my enjoyment of the story. Sometimes I enjoy a good discussion of a story. What am I leading up to? Well, when I … handed in [the first version of] that essay I hadn’t spent many hours thinking about what I was writing. I wasn’t the least bit excited about what I was writing. When I got my paper back I wasn’t too surprised to see a “C+” on my paper. But I was determined to raise that grade. I took all of Mrs Lennox’s comments and incorporated them and I improved on the characters’ sketches and spent hours trying to think of how they related to each other. Maybe it didn’t show how much time I put in it – but I had.

“When she attacked my paper with her infamous red pen she gouged me and wrote in my blood. I have been feeling depressed ever since 2nd period. I wanted to cry as I sat there and looked at my second “C+”. She had written “B-“, but had crossed it out and put in the “C+”.

“What’s so tragic about a crummy “C+”? What’s so damn tragic about that? Why should I feel so down? Why do I feel sick and useless? The whole world is whirling about me and I’m just bumping around with nothing to hold onto.

“I’m going to Berkeley and the Model U.N. conference in two days. With Mrs Lennox.

“I feel so nothing … I know limbo just opened up and swallowed me and now I’m wallowing in it and it is nothing. My throat’s dry.”

C+, huh?

I resisted taking literature classes in college because in my experience you’d be asked to read a decent book then forced to batter out of it any pleasure in it you’d thought you’d gotten. There’s a Billy Collins poem that captures this pedagogy.

During my years at university nearly everyone I talked to assumed I was an English major. I suppose that was natural enough considering how focused I was on poetry or how much I would read. But if there’s anybody to blame for my fear and loathing of the essay it’d have to be my high school English teachers. I gradually came to recognize Mrs Lennox was a nice person, especially once I was no longer her student. And, curiously perhaps, I did just fine in all the literature classes I took at SRJC or Cal, including the Brazilian lit class that was taught in Portuguese. I will even allow that I enjoyed these classes and found at times that my appreciation of literature was deepened rather than destroyed.

Creative Writing Night Class

From the diary: “February 10, 1982

“The 2nd Creative Writing Class day. Today (or should I say tonight) wasn’t very stimulating. [The teacher] got me relaxed and tranquil with her soft voice. Calm and tranquil does very little toward making me write. I have to get excited.”

Like the sign class I’d taken the previous spring this creative writing class was a Santa Rosa Junior College extension class. The writing class was taught by Gerrye Payne. Gerrye was the mother of one of my classmates and as I recall daughter Andree also took the class. As did my mother.

It was my first experience with a workshop class. Most writing was done outside class then brought in, photocopied and assembled in a pack, a copy of which was given to each class member, the pieces were then read aloud and much of the class was taken up with discussion and criticism. This is a common structure for creative writing workshops. I went on to take courses like this at Cal with Robert Hass and Lyn Hejinian. I was bored in Gerrye’s class. I was bored in Hass’s class. Why did I take them? Because I get lonely! Creative writing classes give me some community. And, since I’m doing the poetry anyway, it’s nice to get school credit.

The Crucible

From the diary: “February 1, 1982

“In American Lit I forgot my copy of The Crucible. Anyone who didn’t have one today was supposed to sit quietly and listen. I didn’t. I sat quietly and wrote [a story] for Tales of the Blue & Yellow Sun."

This would be Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. We were reading it aloud. I’ve always enjoyed reading plays aloud. The Crucible is one of those stories where people do cruel things to other people thinking they are doing good. A few days ago Kent was telling me about a new book on the German Death Camps of World War II. It seems the German officials had decided the best thing for the German nation was to move the Jews somewhere else. But then those nasty Allies hemmed ‘em and there was nothing for it but to put the Jews in camps. But then the confined Jews got all diseased and unhappy and it was just more humane to kill ‘em. The Final Solution was chosen because the previously tried solutions hadn’t soluted.

The Crucible isn’t about the Holocaust. It’s about that crazy period in American history when people started accusing others of being witches. Nobody got burned at the stake in America. All convicted witches were hung. The play gave me the creeps, naturally. I was pretty clear on being a despised minority and I know that’s what the whole “marriage debate” is about. Isolating and rejecting a minority so the majority can feel better for not being isolated & rejected. Fortunately we seem to be in a lull between genocides and lynchings. In this country, at least.

Tales of the blue and yellow sun

From the diary: “January 27, 1982

“I bought an anything book. Beautifully bound. I’m writing Tales of the blue and yellow sun within it.”

I’ve been digging up old poetry notebooks and going through them for poems to challenge myself with. I post poems on my LoveSettlement blog that I see something in (I don’t post the ones I hate), but I push myself to choose a poem I really don’t see a way to fix. Then I try things to make it acceptable. The Tales of the blue and yellow sun notebook is one I’ve been mining lately. The Tales were supposed to be linked poems & stories about a fantasy land. I would write them, and if I thought they were good I would carefully recopy them into the notebook. I filled 33 pages before I crapped out on tales. When I returned to the notebook two years later I gave the book a second title, Work Journal, Part Two.

Rather than honor the notebook by only allowing into it the bestest writing I could writ I was going to honor my writing by having it happen in a nice book. Easily lost loose notebook paper or scratch paper wasn't quite the honoring it needed. And revising and crossing things out was going to happen there in the book, too. Flipping through the notebook now I don’t see much revision. Well. I guess that's my current assignment, eh?

In other possibly interesting old news: this was the month Sebastopol got cut off by a big storm. “[On] Main Street water sometimes four feet deep was flowing. Water was flowing into Zerbino’s [a restaurant] and the Dutch Boy paint store.” My brother had to move back upstairs as two or three inches of water filled the basement and the sump pump died. School was canceled for a day. “We are now living in a national disaster area,” I said.

“What’s a nice single girl doing with a double bed?”

From the diary: “December 31, 1981

“Christmas is over. … [In books] I got: The Book of Terns, Garfield Bigger Than Life, Cathy: “What’s a nice single girl doing with a double bed?” and Cosmos by Carl Sagan.”

We’d enjoyed Carl Sagan’s Cosmos TV series – except I remember thinking Sagan looked out of place on that molded-plastic super future set. I liked the idea of getting the book and reading a bit more in depth.

But once I got the book I couldn’t help thinking, haven’t I already covered this? I flipped through it several times looking at the pictures. I still have the book. I still haven’t read it.

I recall being disappointed in The Book of Terns. (Hey, sometimes we mean you-shouldn’t-have.) It was cute, a collection of cartoon terns representing various puns.

The two comic strip collections, the Cathy and the Garfield, were a hankering for the age of the graphic novel, I think. The term hadn’t been invented yet, had it? Wasn’t “graphic novel” coined to market Will Eisner’s Contract with God? Or not … Anyway, the book-length comic story, with the exception of Tintin, just wasn’t something you’d see. I remember wishing for a little development in the life of Cathy. Does she always have to pine after Irving? The only development in Garfield was the gradual adjustment of the way Jim Davis drew him. These days I find Garfield dull. If the writing ever was clever (and surely it was! I had some taste back in ’81!) it’s long since worked out its vein. Comic strip collections were the closest thing to a comic in book form.

Used to be the only way you’d be able to catch up on old adventures of comic book characters was to hunt up the backissues in comic stores. I’m happy to see many comics are now collected into books. Probably cuts into the market for backissues. But hunting up backissues was often expensive and there were times you just couldn’t find the one you wanted most.

Doonesbury’s Greatest Hits

From the diary: “December 8, 1981

“Sunday I bought Doonesbury’s Greatest Hits for David from Copperfield’s. I wrapped it and now it’s sitting under the tree all by its lonesome.”

Of course I read it, too. Eventually. I wasn’t the politics junkie I’ve become. I remember the Doonesbury collections as rather dry and not visually interesting, especially considering the comics medium. The rhythms of a strip aren’t suited to long stints of reading. Because they have to allow for a reader jumping in at any time (or missing a day) they’re repetitive and wordy, the pacing slow. Gary Trudeau’s humor is often dry, too. I’ll have to admit even sophisticated teen Glenn hadn’t a preference for dry humor. Though his history teacher, who actually put more than one student to sleep with droning lectures, did have a dry sense of humor that rewarded attention. I remember there were like two or three of us who would laugh at his little jokes.

The Oogaboo Review

From the diary: “December 1, 1981

“Last Wednesday was the last day of poetry. Sigh. No more poetry class. Boo hoo. Diana H. made a pretty card which we all signed and presented to Maureen and Zara. They were very happy with it. Diana and I got the idea to make the card during Journalism, but we should have made two, one for each of them. Oh, well. I circulated a paper … for everyone to write how much they loved the poetry class … I gave it to [Principal] Barrett[‘s secretary].” I was hoping this would help make the case for a Creative Writing Class during the regular class day.

“I got a letter from Eric Gjovaag containing all four of last year’s Oogaboo Reviews. ‘The historic first year.’ Yeah, sure. The Oogaboo Reviews are in trade for The Lost Queen of Oz.”

There was a flurry of tiny press Oz publishing with Eric Gjovaag doing the quarterly Oogaboo Review out of Seattle, David Maxine doing a Munchkin-themed quarterly (I don’t recall the name) out of Minneapolis, there was one out of Texas, I believe, The Quadling Quarterly? The newsletters covered the doings of subregions of the club and included book reviews and stories and quizzes and other puzzles. Oz people seem to love quizzes. I was up to episode 6 of The Lost Queen of Oz serial.

There is no roof in a pineapple

From the diary: “November 23, 1981

“Rats! This is the last week of poetry [class] … Yesterday, Sunday, at Copperfield’s Books we had a poetry reading. Several of us from Analy and kids from other schools and grades got up and read our poetry. It was fun but I was nervous.

“[Poet-teacher] Zara [Altair] handed out copies of There is no roof in a pineapple. She had put together last Wednesday’s poetry into a book because she thought that day was such a success.”

I’d missed a class meeting or two because I’d had teeth extracted – the two lower wisdom teeth, two upper bicuspids – at the command of my new orthodontist. Soon, I was in for the real pain. Metal bands tightening in my mouth, drawing the teeth to where they didn’t wish to go. After slagging SEE sign I have to say it did here come in handy (so to speak) as when I was coming out of the anaesthesia at the oral surgeon’s my mother kept asking me questions, like How-do-you-feel and Can-you-walk and so forth. My mouth wasn’t going to be doing anything. So I signed to her. And sign classes were fresh enough in her mind she understood my fingerspelling. Yay! Later she forgot everything.

So, anyway, I was thrilled to be back and really sorry (for once!) to have missed school. The class exercise that resulted in There is no roof in a pineapple consisted of one pineapple rested on a stool in front of the teacher’s desk. Zara & Maureen read us example poems – Wallace Stevens’ “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” … My poem had a giant pineapple on a tropical island to whom a boy had been assigned as servant. The giant pineapple gives the boy a message to another giant fruit on another island. “Tell him,” says the pineapple, “I have a headache.”

The class busted up. Yeah, I knew it was a sex joke. But when I put the words down I was thinking about my migraines. If a creature that is all head, all giant head, has a headache – what a headache! Incidentally, OK, I was allowing for the sex joke.

I thought that little chapbook anthology (saddle sewn with a yellow thread!) was the bee’s knees. The book flopped open right to my poem, which was in the middle. A place of honor, I was told.

Meanwhile in my regular classes I was getting all As – except Advanced Composition, where I was getting a C-.

Links

While I like Comic Book Galaxy I’ve decided to remove it from the Viewing and Reviewing links and replace it with a booklog, I Eat Books. I’m looking to have a batch of links to sites that talk about books (or music or movies or whatever) in the context of the reader’s life. OK, rhubarb is susan doesn’t really do that but where else does somebody write about individual poems? I just think that’s cool. I Eat Books is written by a woman who signs herself “L”; her other blog is snappy and fun and more frequently updated. But IEB is built around the books. Only one book at a time is featured on the home page and there’s no easy way to tell how deep the archives are, but L has sorted the books into genres: humor, mystery, horror, awful, etc. How much personal context is there? Not a lot. But, as in her review of Vanity Fair, enough to give you a hint of where she is: “Seeing so many trailers for the upcoming movie adaptation (starring Reese Witherspoon) reminded me of this classic, which is one of my favorites. My current copy is a tattered paperback that I've begun holding together with a very large rubber band.” L usually ends her reviews with a recommended dining accompaniment. For Vanity Fair she suggests, “A box of marzipan would be the ideal dessert on which to nibble while reading about the characters of Vanity Fair; it is very sweet with very little substance -- and can often leave a slightly unpleasant aftertaste on the tongue.”

A blog I’m watching is the bookslut blog. I discovered it when it appeared among my “referring web pages”. As the bookslutters seem to have mentioned Dare I Read? nowhere on their site I don’t know how they came to be a referring link, but I like bookslut anyway. (Odd sites seem to show up in the "referring web pages" list, sites that seem never to have thought of anything remotely like Dare I Read? Dunno.)

If you know of a blog you think is sorta what I’m looking for, do let me know.

The People’s Almanac #3

From the diary: “November 9, 1981

“Sunday I went downtown and got The People’s Almanac #3 with the $10 in Birthday money Mom gave me.”

I remember an adult Oz club friend came to visit earlier that fall. He pressed me about going to college. I so loathed school that choosing to go to college looked like voluntarily signing up to extend a prison sentence. My mother, trying to make peace, noted my reading, a self-education course as good, perhaps, as what I was getting in public school. I had both The People’s Almanac and The People’s Almanac #2 and would dip into them and read tidbits about historical figures and such. One of the authors of the Almanacs, David Wallechinsky, was also responsible for a bit of an 80s craze, The Book of Lists, which hit the best seller list and spawned many sequels and imitations and probably helped usher in the triumph of trivia, exemplified by the board game Trivial Pursuit.

I don’t know how to describe The People’s Almanac except to say it was almost a reference work. But it was more a collection of fun and quirky stuff than an education in a book. Each of the books was fat and I couldn’t quite sit reading them page by page. Rather, they seemed to reward best as boxes of snacks.

Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?

From the diary: “November 3, 1981

“I got applauded for a poem in poetry class yesterday. That was the first time anyone was ever applauded in poetry class. I don’t know why, but I guess I don’t see all that fantastic stuff in my poetry. But I love writing it.”

I hadn’t yet read a book of contemporary poetry. I was writing in response to the poems presented to us in class and what I already knew from textbooks and poems I’d happened upon here and there. Maureen and Zara used Kenneth Koch’s books in their teaching.

A few years ago Koch gave a reading in San Francisco. Afterward there was opportunity for questions from the audience and I asked the poet if he had any current thoughts about teaching poetry, to kids in particular. He looked wearied by the question. “No,” he said. “I think I’ve talked about that enough.”

I should have just said, “Thanks for Rose, Where Did You Get that Red? and Wishes, Lies, and Dreams. I’m glad they were there for me.”

My Own Voice

When I was keeping my diary in high school I titled each day’s entry. “My Own Voice” was the title of the entry for October 21, 1981. I remember one of the poet-teachers in the after school poetry class said to me something like, “You’ve found your own voice.” I don’t remember having heard the phrase before. Although I don’t include the precise context in the entry I do describe a class exercise. Maureen Hurley offered up two of her own poems and we created variations of them. At the end of the class Maureen said to me, “You deserve applause.” Worth noting in the diary!

I recall I’d written a one-act play, “The Wish is the Way”. I’d given it to my drama teacher, Mrs Connolly. She did not read it. Naturally since she didn’t read it she did not give me her thoughts on it, no criticism, no praise. I wonder, if I’d received the sort of encouragement and dynamic example in playwriting that I did in poetry if I’d be a playwright rather than (or as well as) a poet.

Who Stole the Wizard of Oz

From the diary: “October 18, 1981

“Saturday [a group of us went to] the Junior State [conference at Stanford].

“The Stanford Bookstore is a nice place. There’s a new Bill Peet book out about an Elephant in the Circus. There is also a book called Who Stole the Wizard of Oz, a children’s mystery … about someone stealing a copy of The Wizard of Oz from the library. Interesting curio.”

I didn’t buy anything.

As a kid my favorite Bill Peet book was Wump World, Peet’s version of The Lorax. I dug that the invading despoilers came in spaceships that were quite obviously caricatures of Richard Nixon. Well, maybe I didn’t get that when I first read the book. But I bet my mom did.

This was the Junior State conference that sticks out in my mind for two reasons: (1) I was called on to come up on stage in a try-out debate and froze up there, my mind a blank, my body shaking, until I asked to be allowed to return to my seat – worst stagefright I’ve ever had; and (2) Mrs Ranch-Apple left the headlights on and the car battery died. Here’s the rest of the story as I described it in the diary: “We found someone with jumper cables and after a few tries they got our motor running. They had two cars (one which had a living battery and one dead). They asked us to try to revive their dead one. [Yes, with the car they’d just jumped to life! What were they thinking!] As soon as he hooked on the jumper cables our car died again. It wouldn’t be restarted. Mrs R-A had to call a tow truck.”

Poetry Workshop

From the diary: “October 7, 1981

“Today after school, 2:15-3:15, the Poetry Workshop was in Rm 106. I attended and enjoyed it immensely. … The instructors handed out two photos to each person and we were supposed to write … I wrote 3 poems.”

Maureen Hurley and Zara Altair were the poet-teachers. They were part of the California Poets-in-the-Schools Program. I remember being dubious. Poetry? How dull. Dull! There’s a certain kind of topic that oppresses like cathedral tunes. I hadn’t read poetry since oh the verse utterances of the Patchwork Girl? Not that I hadn’t written a few poems. I already knew that every line didn’t have to rhyme. A teacher had introduced me to the mystifying poetry of Richard Brautigan (years later to become a favorite!). Yet … I’m supposed to stay after school? Mrs Ford, the advanced comp teacher who was giving me hell that semester, offered extra credit, and I was pushing for a Creative Writing Class so I had to demonstrate to the administration that I wouldn’t scorn what was offered.

This class changed my life.

It changed my life.

Really.

What I’m Reading Now

Let’s take a break from high school twenty years ago. It’s been awhile since I posted a list of what I’m reading now and the last time I did that I posted it over on my LoveSettlement blog. This is what I’ve got going:

Poems for the Millennium, vol 1: From Fin-de-Siecle to Negritude an anthology edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris

Red Mars a science fiction novel by Kim Stanley Robinson

Pulling Taffy a collection of short (autobiographical?) fiction by Matt Bernstein Sycamore

The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-1913

Finder: Sin-Eater, vol 2 a graphic novel by Carla Speed McNeil

Akiko, vol 4: The Story Tree a graphic novel by Mark Crilley

The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry edited by Paul Auster

There are probably a couple other books that I’m in the middle of. But I haven’t picked them up in awhile so they are not in the pile. Oh yeah. There’s the one I’m reading during my lunch breaks at work: A History of the Devil by Gerald Messadie

Reading several books at once means (unless you’re a much faster reader than I) it takes rather a long time to finish one. Unless it’s a shorty like the Akiko book which I probably could have gotten through in one sitting – except I started reading it late last night and needed shut eye more than I needed to finish.

I’m enjoying the Kafka diary. I have to say I’m enjoying it more than any of his completed fiction. Some of the diary is fiction, drafts of stories. I like both the poetry anthologies but they are fat so I expect to be at them for some time.

Creative Writing Class

From the diary: “September 30, 1981

“At the end of FOODS [class] I got a call slip to go to the principal’s office at the beginning of 2nd period. So I sauntered over there to find out what was going on. At Mr Barret’s office I met several other people: Dylan Bennet, Heidi Langeburg, Shelen Oliver (she’s in my FOODS class), Patricia Michaels (in my Journalism class), Andy Posner, Joe Chavez, and those are all the names I remember. There were four Seniors, two Juniors, two Sophomores, and two Freshman. Why? That’s what I was asking myself.

“’You have been chosen by Pat Talamantes ([Analy Student Body] Prez) to be the Student Advisory Council to the principal,’ said [Principal] Barret. Shockeroo.

“I don’t know why I was picked, but I’m glad I was. Mr Barret went around the semi-circle and asked everyone if he/she had any complaints, suggestions, comments. Dylan wanted better facilities for the soccer players. Heidi wanted smaller classes. I can’t remember what anybody else wanted.

“At first I decided not to say anything. After all, what did I have to say. I want a Creative Writing Class. So did I say it? I sure did. Dylan warmed up to the subject faster than ice cream on black top [I should’ve stopped there] in Kansas at 103 degrees in the shade. Mr Barret mentioned the ‘Poets in Residence’ after school program that will start soon. The discussions lasted all period. We will meet every two weeks.”

No, there’s no book mentioned in this post.

The Joy of Signing

From the diary: “September 20, 1981

“I rewrote the crummy essay from Mrs Ford. My first essay got a D-. She entered all the first essays as pre-test scores. I hope I get better than a ‘D’ on this disgusting rewrite.”

A few days later I write, “I finally got a ‘C+’ on an essay. Best yet.”

So we start 11th grade. This was the year I came close to failing English? I’d remembered it as Freshman year.

“September 26, 1981

“I found The Joy of Signing at the ‘brary and Mom checked it out.”

I had my own library card, certainly. Maybe Mom was trying to brush up her sign after the summer. It is very difficult to teach oneself Sign from a book.

Childhood’s End

from the diary: “September 2, 1981

“I didn’t do much [yesterday and the day before] except collect, sit around and do nothing, watch TV, do the paper route, or read Childhood’s End.”

Collect? Oh yeah. Collect subscription money from the people on my paper route.

Curiously I remember seeing my brother reading Childhood’s End more than I remember reading it myself. The title is both ominous and ordinary. I wanted always to be “a child at heart”, yet I was anxious to be done with being a child so I could have some autonomy. Childhood’s end? That’s not puberty?

Childhood’s End, the novel by Arthur C. Clarke, has a bunch of aliens show up in big ships. Time for humankind to evolve. The next generation of children (or the current one – I forget) is going to move up to the next level. All you poor adults are just going to have to watch as your kids take off for the stars. Were the aliens there to help out the process or to watch?

The Wizard of Oz

From the diary: “August 28, 1981

“Today we have the Singers’ Circle here. Bill and Adrian brought along Travis (age 3) and he played with toys in the bucket that David and I used to play with. I got out the younger children’s adaptaton of The Wizard of Oz that I have. [Travis] was interested, so I read it to him (sorta paraphrased actually). He wanted me to read another story so I got out the adaptation of Ozma of Oz.”

These were versions of the Baum books simplified and given elaborate illustrations by Dick Martin. These particular copies had been sitting, probably for years, in a local bookstore. Not until I joined the club did I learn that Dick Martin was the illustrator of Merry-go-round in Oz, had been a club member himself (until he died), and those kiddie versions of the Oz books that I’d seen sitting unwanted in the bookstore were going for bucks at the Oz auction.

I remember trying to talk the bookstore owner into giving me a price break for shopwear.

The Singers’ Circle was an informal folksinging get-together Mom was a big part of for years.

Training You to Train Your Cat

From the diary: “August 16, 1981

“[Saturday] I rode to town on my bike and bought two cat books from the Sebastopol Book Shop [a used bookstore]. My original intention had been to go down and buy a sign language book from Copperfield’s Books [a new bookstore]. Unfortunately the books cost twice as much as I thought they did. So I bought Training You to Train Your Cat and The Cat Catalog.”

My fascination with Sign Language endures. Spring of ’81 my mother and I had taken a night course. It was a junior college class taught in a classroom of my high school. It disappointed me. I’d expected more than a manual code for English. I didn’t really get clear on the distinction between what that class taught – SEE sign (Signing Exact English) – and ASL (American Sign Language). My mother was taking the class because she was an elementary school teacher and did a lot of subbing in special ed classes. I wanted to sign because I wanted to learn lots of languages. The multiplicity of human languages holds me in thrall. And what could be more different and special than a language enacted on the hands? Sadly SEE sign isn’t special. It was a manual language invented to make teaching English to the deaf less difficult. You perform English in the air. Most ridiculous to me were adding “ed” and “ing” to signs. “I am going now” is I (hold the “I” letter form to chest) + AM (hold the “A” letter form at chin) + GO (hold two “G” letter forms together and tip them forward) + ING (the letter form for “J” backwards) + NOW (corresponds to the ASL). This sort of slow slow talk is just dull. The only useful thing I took from the class was training in the manual alphabet. Not until I started taking ASL classes at Santa Rosa Junior College did I learn how different and how beautiful and amazing American Sign Language is. It’s not just a language coded on the hands but a language built in space.

As to cats. I loved my cat. I liked the idea of getting him to do stuff. But, yeah, I knew he was no youngster so I never really tried the book’s techniques on him. I thought maybe we’d have a new cat soonish. Yes, another book I bought in hopes the book itself would help conjure the conditions for the thing I wanted. I’ve proved bad at teaching myself solely from books.

A.P.E.

It’s a lovely Saturday here in Berkeley. Nice in SF, too. K & I took BART over to SF this morning for the Alternative Press Expo. I wanted to get there by noon when the exhibition center opened because the first panel was queer cartoonists which included Leanne Franson (whose semi-autobiographical Liliane I discovered in mini-comics form), Robert Triptow (who took over editing Gay Comix in the early 80s), David Kelly (whose Steven’s Comics is a cute slice of 70s childhood) and Paige Braddock (whose Jane’s World began life as a syndicated comic strip). Justin Hall, whose work I didn’t know until today, moderated the panel and, once she got warmed up, Leanne Franson hogged the microphone with sweet if repetitive babble about trying to make ends meet as a cartoonist and children’s book illustrator. Hall is balding and hunky, a bit of Willem Defoe around the eyes. I ended up buying something or other by most of the panelists when I happened upon their booths.

Tim Fish had a booth for his Cavalcade of Boys, which I praised last year on my LoveSettlement blog. He’s as cute as his drawings, slim and sharp-featured. I’m not sure I caught up on all the issues I’ve missed since Comic Relief hasn’t been getting them but I’m glad to see Fish is collecting the comics in trade paperback form. Even if it means I end up buying them twice.

After hours of poking around table after table after table of small press comics and dolls and posters and videos, but mostly comics, K & I settled down on the floor next to the Hungry Tiger booth and chatted with David Maxine and Eric Shanower. Sounds like they don’t have time for sticking around after the expo (I asked ‘em to dinner), will be driving back to San Diego right after everything closes up tomorrow evening. Too bad. And just so you don’t think I’ve given up Oz entirely (but for all you know I’m dressed as Dorothy right now, eh?) I bought the Shanower-illustrated Wicked Witch of Oz, which has been available for ten years but which I just never got around to buying. Or felt too poor to buy. Or, let’s face, just couldn’t stand the thought of reading. Oz? Haven’t I read enough Oz books!

The Making of the Wizard of Oz

From the diary: “August 13, 1981

“On the [flight] home [from Milwaukee] I read one of the books Rose gave me and worked some crosswords with Mom.”

Rose Smith was one of my mother’s friends. Rose and her husband Galen lived in Wisconsin and Mom stayed with them while Dad and I did the Oshkosh airshow. I don’t remember what books Rose gave me.

“When I got home I found what I hoped I would find! Three letters were waiting for me from Oz people I had sent episode ones to. YAY!!” [This was Episode One of the serial Oz novel I was writing.]

“August 14, 1981

“Mom went to a place to have her (actually the car’s) muffler fixed, etc. … David and I stayed at the library. I checked out The Making of the Wizard of Oz.”

Whenever anyone would learn I was an Oz fan they’d assume I was gaga over the MGM movie. At my most Oz focused I barely thought of the MGM Wizard except as that annoying Hollywoodization of my favorite book. Oz was a real place. It was not a dream. The Oz books were chronicles of what had happened there, not illustrations of pat morals like, “There’s no place like home!”

But there were many in the Oz club who had joined the club because of the movie and there would be programs at the conventions that addressed aspects of the movie so gradually I came around to a reconsideration. The making of the MGM movie really is a good story. Did you know Buddy Ebsen was the first Tin Man and only lost the part because the powdered make-up that made him look tin caused an allergic reaction and he had to be hospitalized?

The Nightwalker

From the diary: “August 5, 1981

“[My father’s friend] Ray commented today, ‘I could easily OD on planes here.’”

I certainly did. I remember tramping around the broad airfields in the sun and crowds, circling plane after plane after plane. The Oshkosh air show is still going strong.

“I’ve run out of things to do,” I lament in the diary. “I bought a cap, contributed to a B-29 called Fifi, bought and read Firestarter by Stephen King, bought a Jiffyseat (fold-up chair), Dad gave me $100, I watched airplanes, named airplanes (‘That’s Button Bright, Hungry Tiger, Patchwork Girl.’), bought The Nightwalker (book), watched Dad play handball twice (and lose twice) … looked at airplanes, ate bad (and good) food, saw the movie Stripes with Bill Murray tonight, suffered through Dad’s snores, enjoyed myself, got bored, read, walked, went to the Fly Market (but didn’t buy anything), argued with Dave [Ray’s son], rode in a car, got mildly sick twice, heard country singers at the convention, got cold, shied away from Dave’s smoking cigarettes, heard from Dad that Ray had decided to lose weight when he discovered that he could barely get through the tour of the B-17s, found out that Ray had been stationed in Santa Rosa [the next town over from Sebastopol where my mother, brother and I lived], wrote on my serial, watched hucksters, wondered about what Oshkosh was like the rest of the year, went to the YMCA, spent almost all of the $100, washed clothes, walked, saw ultralights take off, watched the air shows, discovered that a $15 Jiffyseat is worth every penny, discovered that Jumbo Dogs start tasting pretty bad after awhile …”

Stephen King. I’d read several of his books. I bought The Nightwalker because there was a King blurb on the cover. As I recall there was a sex scene in which the werewolf, though in human form at the time, smears his lady’s menstrual blood across his face and body. At 15 I wasn’t all that clear on what menstrual blood was.

After The Nightwalker I noticed how frequently Stephen King was blurbing. He couldn’t say no?

The Milwaukee library

from the diary: “August 1, 1981

“[Yesterday] I walked into the library and looked up ‘Amusement Parks’ and ‘Baum, L. Frank’, but didn’t find anything new.”

I’ve been remembering the Oshkosh trip as just me and Dad. I’d forgotten Mom came with me. We flew to Milwaukee and spent a day together, visited the museum, ate lunch outside on the lawn. After lunch I stepped into the library to do a little research.

I remember the thick yeast smell that weighted the air. Brewery town.

Dad met us that afternoon at the motel. Took us to dinner. “We ate at the Pfister. Very swanky-danky. I was a little uncomfortable walking in there in old cords and Mom’s home-made jacket and such. After we met the courteous waitresses and waiters and by the time the band started playing I felt much more at ease. Mom and Dad danced … I wrote an episode of The Lost Queen of Oz.”

The next day Dad took me to Marriott’s Great American in Gurnee, Illinois. “It’s a bit different than the park in Santa Clara. It’s bigger and has more rides. I rode my first wooden roller coaster … twice.”

“At 8:00 we left the park. On the freeway the radiator blew and we walked to … the Fantasy Inn [where] Dad called a cab … Dad is going to try to make Rent-a-Heap pay for cab fare since their heap stranded us.”

The Lost Queen of Oz

From the diary: “July 22, 1981

On the way home from the Winkie convention I started reading American Fairy Tales, one of Baum’s non-Oz fantasies. I’d bought it at the auction. It was a curious object. As the book was out of print someone had taken a first edition and photocopied it then fastened the sheets into a notebook-like binding. All the writing was there so it did give me the opportunity to read the book but it was not an attractive thing.

“I’ve been trying to finish reading Ojo in Oz since Monday (today is Wednesday), but I just can’t seem to find the time.

“Monday I thought of writing a serial with The Lost Queen of Oz. … On Tuesday I finished and typed episode one: Dorothy’s Birthday.

“The way I’m working it is: I photocopied the typed copy today and am sending the first episode to several people I met at the Oz convention and saying in a letter that if they want to continue receiving the serial to write and tell me.”

It was a clever way to force myself to write a complete Oz novel. If I hadn’t had people expecting another episode I probably would have quit partway through. I even sold subscriptions. There were periods when I just couldn’t push myself to write. One hiatus lasted nine months. But The Lost Queen of Oz did get finished. I don’t know if anyone else kept their copy. But mine is in a box or a drawer. I haven’t burnt it.

Button Bright of Oz

From the diary: “July 18, 1981

“After the auction [Oz club secretary] Fred Meyer handed out the prizes.” Besides prizes for best costume and best art “he gave out the prizes for the story contest. Both Eric [Shanower] and I got prizes. I guess Fred didn’t want to choose between us.” The prize was a choice of Harry E. Mongold’s self-published Oz books, Button Bright of Oz or The Saw Horse of Oz. I grabbed Button Bright. But I don’t think I ever read it. I remember attempting. But I don’t remember being able to get all the way to the last page.

Eric Shanower

From the diary: “July 17, 1981

“The opening reception started a little earlier than the 6:00pm for which it was scheduled. People meandered around and talked.” A woman dressed as “Cayke the Cookie Cook” handed out cookies.

This was my second Winkie Convention. The convention was held at the Wawona Hotel in Yosemite. My mother came along, as she did for the next several years.

“Erik Shanower came late … [Don’t know why I spelled the name with a “k”.] Mom treated him to some vegetables because it was too late for him to find a place in the dining room. He wrote a story too. [The story I brought was called, “The Cowardly Lion and the Courage Pills” and had illustrations by my brother.] His is called ‘King Hank’. I started reading it tonight, but didn’t finish. It was pretty good. It was about Hank the Mule and Bettsy Bobbin taking a shortcut to the Emerald City from Glinda’s Palace. Hank encounters strange little creatures who hail him as king. Bettsy gets captured by two fat would-be Oz conquerers.” Both being hailed as king by the inhabitants of a strange little country and thwarting bumbling bad guys who are trying to conquer Oz are familiar plots from the Oz series. The story I’d brought also included nefarious invaders bent on conquest. “He plans to win the story contest with it. We’ll see. He also plans to win the Oz quiz. We’ll see about that, too.”

A piddly little five years later Eric was publishing his Oz stories professionally.

Links

I found the Taze Files via one of the blog directories. After reading a few entries I told its author that I was adding his blog to my “viewing and reviewing” links. I posted this as a comment, “I'm not so much looking for book reviews as I'm looking for people talking about their reading (or movie watching or music listening) on a personal basis, not just whether the book is good but more where it fits in the context of the reader's life. I decided to add Taze Files to my links when I read the earlier entry about Sweet Valley High. Sure, some evaluation of the book's quality but I liked the personal musing.”

If any of my readers here knows of a blog that does that do let me know. I want to check it out.

Musing on methods himself Merwyn says, “Dare I Read? is an original concept where the author focuses more on the story surrounding his book than the book itself. Summaries and critical reviews can be found just about anywhere for any published book. I'll just use Glenn's technique when the occasion calls for it.”

I have found another blog via a link at comic book galaxy that’s what I’m looking for: Daily Burn

Daily Burn focuses on superheroes, primarily comic books, with a special affection for The Hulk. I’ve been through my obsessive phases and I totally grok Mick’s musing on being a completist. “When I first started reading comics, The Incredible Hulk was all I bothered buying, UNLESS he showed up in another title. I stopped reading comics in my late teens, and when I started up again in my early twenties, I became obsessed with getting my hands on every Hulk appearance possible, no matter how unimportant it seemed to the wider story of the Green-sometimes-Gray Golitah.” Says Mick, “in a lot of cases he showed up for one or two panels.” Now that’s being a completist!

Then there’s the post where Mick reviews the evidence for a sexual relationship between two of the teen Avengers, seems it's been quite the controversy on the internet comics boards. “Hulkling and Lightning Lad compliment each other on their fighting ability. … Wow. Now that’s gay.” If “heroes” aren’t using each other as punching bags what could they be but gay?

Another blog I’ve skimmed a bit and am thinking of adding to my links: Derek Martinez

The Oz Scrapbook

from the diary: “July 3, 1981

“Becky and I listened to some music, looked at The Oz Scrapbook (much more because I wanted to than she did), and finally found our way into my bedroom where we played Black Box and Obstruction. She couldn't get the hang of Black Box, but she almost beat me at Obstruction.”

The Oz Scrapbook gave me my first look at the covers of many of the out of print Oz books. That by itself was pretty exciting for someone who for years had only had reference to a mysterious list of titles printed in one of the paperback Baum books. I used to fantasize about those titles, even woke from dreams in which I found a cache of never-before-seen Oz books (actually, this still happens). I remember making my own lists of Oz titles, though I only had the vaguest ideas of what might happen in these imaginary books. I ran onto the list just before I moved out of my mother’s house and it included ungainly titles like The Shaggy Man of Oz in Ix. (Ix is another of Baum’s fairlylands.)

I found The Oz Scrapbook at the library. Finding it was almost as exciting as finding one of the Oz books, for it was my first window into L. Frank Baum’s life. He was a showman! He’d traveled the country performing in plays he’d written. He pitched The Wizard of Oz to Broadway producers and the musical extravaganza that resulted was the biggest thing on Broadway up to that time. (And the MGM movie was slavishly faithful to the original in comparison.) When movie cameras were invented Baum used his Oz fortune to found a studio and direct his own movies (and lost everything, but then he lost everything two or three times). Scrapbook also offered up information about the Oz illustrators W.W. Denslow and John R. Neill and later authors Ruth Plumly Thompson and Jack Snow and Rachel Cosgrove. That book seemed HUGE.

Besides, Scrapbook is a handsome book. It was designed by Dick Martin who illustrated the last book of the 40 and included much from the collection of longtime Oz club member David L. Greene.

Black Box was a puzzle game, sort of a cross between Battleship and Mastermind. Each player would hide his balls on the board’s grid and the other player would try to find the balls by firing imaginary rays across the board. It took too much work to figure out how to play, really. Obstruction (it seems to have other names, as well) is much simpler. You’ve got to get your pieces from home to the goal and there are all these little obstructions that you can move into our opponent’s way. You can come back from what looks like a hopeless situation. That’s what makes the game fun to play.