I just finished William Gay’s Twilight, a novel which would make a damn good movie, though there’s no way film could convey the power of the man’s language. He writes some downright incredible sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books. Twilight is for any fan of Southern Gothic, crime fiction, or serious literature. One of the other things I admire most about Gay is that he wrote for years without finding a publisher, but he didn’t give up (I realize a lot of people are already familiar with his story, but it’s still damn inspiring). He didn’t give up, and there’s a lesson in that for all of us. His first novel was published in 1999, and now he’s in his sixties. If you get a chance, buy all his books.
I’m now just starting Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan. I’m only a a few pages into it, but I already have a feeling I’m going to love it because it’s about the kind of menial work that’s hardly ever written about. In this case, it’s punching a clock at a Red Lobster, one that is shutting down four days before Xmas.
It’s turned cold here in southern Ohio again, and the presidential candidates keep making their promises bigger and bigger. By the end of spring, there won’t be a damn problem under the sun that they can’t fix if we just side with them. Oh, boy.
