So I'm blogging right now instead of reading Bound by Recognition by Patchen Markell or working up ideas for the eight page position paper on identity and recognition that's due this Wednesday night. I'm blogging on the assumption that doing something good for me that I enjoy will make me better and sharper later when I'm doing those other, less pleasurable things.
A lot has happened over the last week or so.
#1 -- Suzanne and I both lost the name-that-photo contest over at www.thepioneerwoman.com. I thought one of us would at least get an honorable mention but no. She's a clever writer, a terrific photographer, and not a bad Ethel Merman impressionist but this last week Ree was no friend of ours. Ah well.
#2 -- I watched Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life and Written On The Wind both in a 24 hour period. That is a lot, and I mean a lot of old Hollywood melodrama, folks. Crying, screaming, music swelling like it's been stung by irradiated bees -- wow. It was a little much. But my presentation for class that night went okay so that's good.
#3 -- We went to a cider mill in Franklin Village on Saturday. It was crowded and had really insufficient parking. The doughnuts were pretty good and the cider was tasty but, in true Dennis Brown fashion, I felt like there were too many damn people.
#4 -- The Escort started freaking out. Last night on my way to Ann Arbor, the check engine light started flashing at me and the car had diminished power. The last time this happened, I changed the spark plug wires for 20 bucks and it ran like a dream. But that was only a couple of months ago so it's probably not that again. This means I have to take the car to that most dreaded of all places in Brown family -- the mechanic's garage. I have issues here. Maybe I'll write about them later.
#5 -- My friend Darlene Young finished her first draft of a YA novel. She makes all the usual apologies -- it's just a first draft, it's kind of short, it's not the great novel I want to write, etc. But the fact remains that she started and completed a novel and I got nothin' but respect for that. Just writing something, just finishing a draft is more than half the battle, I think.
I recently finished a Mormon novel that won all kinds of awards and recognition when it came out. I read it while I was on the retreat in Port Huron and, when I finished it, I thought, "meh." It was just no big deal. It was serviceable and not bad by any means but it in no way deserved the awards that it got except for one thing -- there's nothing better out there. I honestly think that in the LDS literary world some stuff gets published and praised for no reason other than someone had the fortitude to finish an entire manuscript. So many would-be LDS writers are too busy with meetings, family, food storage, repentance, etc. to actually get anything done. It takes someone with real drive to finish the job. (Spoken as a man who has 80 pages of a novel sitting on his computer. Said pages have been there since 2005)
Just based on her blog alone and the one or two short stories I've read of hers, Darlene's prose is much more lovely and readable than anything in this "important" LDS novel I finished. So the fact that she's finished something AND she can write well spells good things for her publishing career.
#6 -- It is Fall, baby. The trees in our neighborhood are like Roman candles and it is a sight to behold.
It is now after 11. My students are working away at some letters the Executive Director (Bev, she of the unfortunately applied lipstick) asked them to write in support of a grant she's going after. I have yesterday's tortellini with Suzanne's excellent homemade sauce waiting in the fridge and I have a paper about recognition to write. I am off. (Only to return shortly to upload other photos and random doodads.)
1 comment:
Thanks for the nice words! And I'm dying to know which prize-winning example of Mormon medocrity you just finished.
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