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Air in the Paragraph Line Issue 03
Air in the Paragraph Line
A Newsletter about Jon Konrath's writing and life.
Issue 3- May 1996
Why I'm bummed:
I missed the fucking earthquake! After living in the midwest for my
entire life, I finally move to a city that has an occasional tremor,
and every time I look at the crack in the wall left from the last
minor quake, I wonder when the next one will hit. So I was in San
Jose for a week, and when I got back on Thursday, I found all of my
spices on top of the stove knocked over, and a big stack of paperbacks
toppled on the floor. I thought maybe I knocked the stuff over during
my manic last-second packing earlier in the week, and forgot about it
until everyone I knew from Indiana called me asking if I was okay. It
turns out I missed it by just a few hours, I was in the airport in San
Jose when it happened. Fuck! Who would've thought that being near
San Francisco would keep you safe from an earthquake?
So I'm late this month in publishing a newsletter, and I'll probably
be even later in actually scraping the change together to mail out the
copies. But a lot of stuff's happened and I had a lot of fun being
down in California (more about that later). So, sorry if you've been
waiting at the mailbox impatiently since May 1 looking for more mail
from Seattle. I'm guessing that few of you fall in this category
anyway.
Good news: the first draft of Rumored to Exist was finished March 17
(well, technically March 18) in a fit of caffeine and prose
recycling. I'm currently editing it, trying to get things smooth and
readable before people take a look at the whole project. It clocked
in at about 60,000 words and I'm about halfway through a preliminary
pass to make sure it flows smoothly. It's not going to need much
rewriting or juggling, so I'm aiming to have a strong second draft by
the end of May.
I've been occasionally editing my first book, Summer Rain, in my spare
time. I have the strong feeling I'll be editing it for years, but I'm
trying to get a decent version done someday. I'm contemplating
printing 50 or 100 copies, just to give out to friends and maybe sell
a few at shows or something. I got a reasonable quote, and I might do
this later in the summer, if I ever get time to finish the editing.
Almost everything else has been slow, because I spent so much time
finishing Rumored. There aren't any new magazine or journal deals to
announce, because I've been writing instead of submitting and talking
to people. But Extent should be published by the time you read this,
so send $4 to Extent c/o John LaCroix, 38 Calumet Street #3, Boston,
MA 02120 or email extent@tiac.net. And if you don't have a copy of
the newest Metal Curse, send $3 to Ray Miller, POB 302, Elkhart, IN
46515-0302 or email cursed@interserv.com.
There's a free conference at WWU in Bellingham, WA on May 17th that
will be pretty cool. It's called "The reality behind fantasy: the
working world of the fiction writer". It includes F.M. Bugsby, Don
McQuinn, Bruce Taylor, Louise Marley, me, Roby James, and R. Garcia Y
Robertson. It's May 17, Friday, from 2pm to 7pm at the Fairhaven
Auditorium and you can call 360-650-4489 for more info. It should be
cool, so even if you have to call in sick and hitchhike, do it.
So this month's email is lame, and my journals are mostly scribblings
about how close I was to finishing the book. I have a lot of books to
review, but no albums - I haven't had a chance to buy a new CD in a
long time. I'm going to fill you in on the latest happenings by
banging out a few quick stories. Let's get started...
Scraping the Bucket:
A Taste of March's outgoing mail
i had a dream about you las night. we were sitting on this ancient
couch in some house amd we were watching some show and courtney love
was on it and we were talking about heroin addiction. thats all i
renember.
so here';s what i made for dinner: scrambled eggs, beanie weenies,
and cornbread. it isnt as bad as it sounds actually. im trying to
get rid of my eggs before they turn into biological warfare
weapons. umm i was gonna tell you some aesop-like advice to help you
with the guy situation, but if i knew the answer i would apply it to
my own fucked-out depressing life.
hey nice tan! glad to hear you had fun on the islands etc even if you
didnt stow me away in your luggage or something. i could really
really use a vacation and we aint talkin jersey city either. maybe i
can get down to vegas some weekend and blow a paycheck on blackjack
and overpriced drinks. who knows.
so.. things have been far too busy here. someone quit, and i got a
promotion by force. no, no more money or fame or glory, i just have
to do way more work and i can no longer slag half of it on this other
guy. so i actually have to do stuff during the day now. my ruse has
failed me.
havent dyed any eggs, but i got some of those malted milk eggs. they
were on sale at the safeway and i am somewhat of an impulse shopper. i
have a large collection of people magazines and national enquirers
that i have bought over the years at the checkout.
sorry your sister has gone insane or batty or just a bit deranged. my
mother is currently making me think alzenheimers can kick in before
the 50's. she is getting remarried this summer and making my life a
living hell over the arrangements. im thinking of changing my phone
number and not telling her.
i gotta go throw out this crap before my entire apartment smells like
a chinese bilogical warfare piece. ill write more later...
i was reading some tattooo magazines and thinking i should get about
800 tattoos so i look like henry rollins. dont you have tattooos? do
they hurt?? i have only had BarqToos from the rootbeer packages. they
didnt hurt.
if i had the magical power to look at people and make them do anything
in the world, no matter how immoral, i think i would be happy. okay
that's asking too much maybe two rounds with a hooker in a motel 6
will work for now
anyway...nothing up here. panicky about money, panicky about my
career future here, etc etc etc. the usual evening decompression is
running much later than when i start writing, which is bad. ive been
trying to figure out an investing scam that would let me stop working
within the next decade. nothing special, i think that if i can churn
up my amount of capital in the bank and squeeze down my monthly
budget, i can eventually get the two to meet and be able to live off
the interest. this isnt an immediate plan, but i did the numbers and
i think i could do it in 10 years with some work. who knows, i might
just blow it all on star wars toys.
i also found out there is a styx tour. what's up with that? i
thought those guys were all dead or something. oh well. now we'll
have to endure another year of that mr roboto song on the radio again.
umm abs of steel? does that work? do you have abs of steel? can you
put a photo of them on the web? do they have a head of steel video? i
want to get that one. of course i dont have a tv or a vcr, i guess i
could just read the box and look at the pictures.
i have been spending all week/weekend hiding from this woman. she
wants me to go to some easter party with her parents. i had to lie
and tell her i had other plans and then concoct this giant story about
how this guy at work was having an easter party and it was his little
boy's first birthday so we had to dress up and make eggs and blah blah
blah. i hate lying, but when you tell the truth and say no 50 times
in a row and it doesn't work, life requires drastic measures.
im back at home and i baked a pizza so it is like 400 degrees in
here. i am also very very bored considering going out to do something
cool or destructive or random or, um, i dunno easteresque. ive been
reading tattoo magazines all day, i got them free in the mail to
review a few years ago and i never did. but i read them constantly
because it sure beats reading the same issue of redbook over and over
and over. one of the reasons i hate the psychiatrist is that when i
wait 10 years in the waiting room, i have to read time magazines that
are so old they have articles about the civil war in them. plus i hate
my shrink because he is a dork. hes a dork and i am paying him $160 a
half hour so he can write me prescriptions. is life abnormal or is it
just mine??
there is an ad on for laser-vana and laser-NIN and Ministry. they
have these midnight shows at the planetarium where they do all this
laser stuff and play loud music and stuff. i guess they did the whole
pink floyd thing and all the floydies came in at 12 smoked out of
their gourds and dropping reds and acid and then they play the wall
and dark side of the moon and do all this laser shit. so now they are
doing it with nirvana for all of the heroin junkies. and now NIN and
ministry. kooky.
im gonna go find something to do. maybe i will go to the bookstore
and hang out near the health and wellness section and hit on all of
the women reading self help books who are on the rebound from fucked
up relationships or something. heh.
anyway nothing else here. spending the weekend alone, and wallowing
through a depressive phase. went to the u district on fri night,
shopping at the cd stores and wandering through the streets for
hours. its a lot like kirkwood but on a chicago scale - instead of
one discount den type store there are 20. the thing that stuck the
most - ate in burger king, and two tables away were these two sorority
girls. one talked about a girl in her house who was about 5'2, very
girlish who always wore a ponytail. even at formals, whatever, she
always had her hair pulled back in a ponytail, with one of those
things around it. so she went to student teach, she was an ed major,
and when she got to the high school, all of the little 15 and 16 year
old boys thought that she was a new girl at the school and started
hitting on her. so she then quickly lost the ponytail. its a dumb
story, but for some reason it stuck in my head.
when I first started consulting at IUSB, i used to have dreams where
my girlfriend would claim I was half-mumbling WP5.1 and Dbase 3 help
to people. no nabakov though.
it was incredibly beautiful here today. hot outside, 70's, with
all-out sunshine and a very gentle breeze. i went up to u of w and
wandered a bit. made me really homesick for IU. for all the times i
really wanted to blow up various buildings on that campus, it really
was beautiful. so the wandering and the people lying in the open
fields and frizbees and dogs and rollerblades and everything else was
something i just havent seen in so long it was just incredibly
nostalgic.
and being on a foreign, new college campus like that always holds some
sort of unique quality to me, all of the architecture and landscaping
and the mixture of 4 parts scholastic endeavor and 1 part total free
laziness just feels so much better than the city's even specturm of
business, noise and crime. i dont like flat-out nature, because it is
either exploited into parks or it is just boring, but i like the mix
of nature and academics and everything present on a campus.
so i wandered, taking photos, sitting down and writing for about an
hour. saw a troop of about 2 dozen buddhist monks - crimson robes,
bare feet, shaved heads - even the women, all chinese, smiling and
angeling wandering in the beautiful weather. also saw an area about
as big as the arboretum at IU which is surrounded by various
buildings, but the entire area is smooth red brick with some funky
statues in it. it looked almost abnormal, like something out of the
martian chronicles. but it was just this all-out skatefest, scores of
people with boards and skates, jumping off all kinds of stairs and
benches.
of course the whole thing makes me miss school and starts the whole
dialogue about if i should be working or in school or what. lots of
questions and problems on both sides of the issue so i wont go into
it. but i really want to save every penny so i can at least spend
some time outside of the 40 hour a week death cycle.
i managed to find a disc which contains a bunch of old essays i wrote
back in 1989, one of my early starts on a book. lots of historically
interesting writing, including an essay i wrote the night my
grandmother died. the writing isnt incredible but it is striking
stuff.
They are playing a live concert with that band Bush on 1077. They
should get a corporate sponsorship from a major beer company and
change their name to Busch. Or they should get some indie band named
Shaved to open for them.
Oh well. THe new issue of Details showed up today. It is the annual
sex issue, and it has Pamela Anderson-Lee on the cover, so that should
keep my mind off things. No, I don't watch Baywatch, but I'm hoping
that the supermodel-dorky guy phenomenon will someday come to my
aid. I mean, you've got Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, Rik Ocasek
and Paula whats her face, David Copperfield and Claudia Schiffer,
Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee.... I think I should be able to just
call up Jenny McCarthy and say "Okay, pack up your stuff - you're
moving in."
I haven't been back to B-ton since I left, but I remember the feeling
from when I took a year off and lived up north. I'd come down every
few weeks and visit people. For me, it always felt very cool and
reminiscent when I was there, but then very depressing when I had to
leave and drive back up to Elkfart to live with the old people and go
to IUSB again.
im hungry and bored and cold and just woke up from a nap so my hair is
all funked out on one side of my head. how are you? what color is
the hair today? any plans of mass destruction this weekend? wanna go
to a party tomorrow with me? there will be LIQUOR! hehe
no luck with the love life, unless you count bad luck. that woman i
went out with is occasionally annoying me, calling me up and asking me
out. i am trying to stay clear of her because i think she has a
fairly damaging personality. also i think spending any amount of time
with her would completely destroy my writing career. so i havent been
answering the phone.
i want to open a bar that would be COOL but bars almost always lose
money and scrape by and then vanish. but i would have a bar with a
tattoo artist and piercing person on staff, and it would be a country
shitkicker bar on thursday and tuesday but then it would be a
punk-alterno bar on saturday friday, and it would be a drag/gay thing
on wed. so that way the country western people would go on tues and
think it was cool and then go on wed and see all these really tall
chicks with big hands and kinda flat chests and 5-oclock shadows
etc. also it would have a mechanical bull so on the fri and sat nights
you would have all these sid vicious types riding on the bull. and it
would have an up and a down stairs, and the up would be all
rave-techno-dance stuff and the bottom would have indutrial-metal-punk
stuff. and there would be a cafe to the side. and the upstairs would
be called heaven, and the downstairs would be called hell, and the
cafe would be purgatory. thats my idea. now i just need abotu 100
grand to do it. oh they would have computers too.
i did have a dream about henry rollins. he called me on the phone and
we were talking and when i said i worked at spry, he asked me if i
knew john (name changed), this guy who works there. i instantly
wondered what the fuck was up, since jim is this very effeminite guy
and i wondered if rollins was secretly courting this guy. i
dunno. its funny cause this john guy - his office looks like a 40 year
old housewife decorated it. it has plants and pictures and everything
and looks like my mom's kitchen or something. compared to most of us,
who have a collection of about 10000 coke cans, a mountain of CDs, a
pile of dead bodies, drug paraphanelia, and a blacklight, it is quite
diverse.
whats up? wanna go to a party tonight? you hafta get up to seattle
by 9. we can get you some zima before we go there. i will let you
sleep at my house and i promise not to do anything to you until the
amnesia drugs kick in. hmph you are probably working and stuff oh
well.
yes i have seen the tonya harding photos. i have the penthouse. dont
hold it against me, i bought it as a conversation piece for the
house. and boy did people converse about it. mostly about how they
wanted to vomit. i thought th was cute in a sort of white trash way,
but not after seeing that whole thing. ick ick ick ick. luckily the
centerfold in that issue was pretty hot and it partially defrayed the
complete waste of five bucks.
i am really sad right now i sent a letter to my last ex and it will
probably be the last time i talk to her ever. nothing bad, it is just
that she is graduating and then moving away and getting married and
blah blah and she will probably never contact me and i wont have a way
to contact her. i really really hate losing contact with people
forever like that, esp when they are like one of the top ten most
pivotal people in the history of my entire life. i have not been
depressed like this for a long time i guess because i have not been in
any dating situations or anything. i just keep thinking about how we
started dating which was three years ago now and that seems like so
long ago and the next thing i know it will be thirty years ago and its
so damn sad sometimes. i dont know.
i am in my office listening to bjork and ferreting away time until 5
rolls around. you know how it is. at least i have a pair of scissors
and a ruler to play with. i figured that if my penis was a font, it
would be about 40-some picas long. dont ask how i measured myself
with a typographer's ruler, but it took a lot of persistence. color
density photos dont around me as much as photos of swedish bikini
bondage dyke whatevers.
i think i broke my chair, rocking in it and stuff. i need to buy a
new chair but i was kinda going to save up and buy a real nice
computer desk with a chair that matched. i might have to go buy an
interim chair. oh well, i dont have any chairs around here anyway. of
course that is a good excuse for me if i ever lure someone up here- "I
dont have any chairs, we need to sit on the bed".
was reading about the masons tonight. some guys at work are babbling
about the sam hulick-like thing about not paying taxes if you dont use
zipcodes and do a bunch of other crap. maybe its the person who is
babbling about it that annoys me and not the scheme i dont know.
i got a letter from a friend of mine who is starting a church where
the main sacraments are motorcycles oral sex and hallucinogenics. i
think i might join.
Father Bob:
Got your latest spiritual guide to the world in the mail. are you
forming a religion based on motorcycles, oral sex and hallucination?
if so i think there are at least a couple believers in the house
tonight.
im on one of those microsoft keyboards, the fucked up divided in two
things. ive been having some pain in the wrists so i am
switching. since i dont touch type, it is awkward and weird, but not
as bad as i thought it'd be. i know most of my bad typing takes place
at home with the shitty keyboard shitty desk and shitty chair. i
really need a new and decent desk for home, and my chair is one of
those wood ones from the old place - the other 3 are probably already
firewood.
I completed the first draft of book #2, _Rumored to Exist_ tonight. It
weighs in at about 60,000 words and took about 18 weeks to write,
minus probably 3-4 weeks of screwing around, vacation, and other
distraction. Compare that to book #1 which took about 11 months of
work to hit the 100,000 word mark....
Anyway, I need to get caught up on sleep and then take a read through
it before anyone else can sneak a peek. There will be a celebration
party on the 6th floor of Sterling Plaza tomorrow at 4, with food and
drink, so stop by.
-Jon
P.S. The celebration tomorrow is actually for the corporate billing
product, but I'm taking over their party.
it is friday night and i am sitting at home no parties no angie the
catholic schoolgirl not even an inflatable woman or latex fake
vagina. what a drag. also i think i am getting carpal tunnel or
tendonitis. i am having wrist pain but it is the left wrist so it
cant be from that.
hey mc! i went to courtney cobains house today! the one where kurt
died and stuff. i did not go in i drove past it twice. 171 lake
washington ave. it has a bunch bunch of bushes and trees you can
barely see it but from one side you can see the litlre recreation room
attic thing where kurt shot him self. and there is this giant gate
that has all of these giant NO TRESPASSING signs all over it. i did
not see courtney or that bass player that i like. or the kid.
i gotta go clean my kitchen. hamburger helper and death are
everywhere.
i have a compulsive urge to buy a commodore 64 or some other ancient
computer and bring it to the office and set it up on my desk. i used
to have a c-64 and unless good old mom started throwing shit out, i
think i still have some games for it somewhere. it would totally rule
to play Tapper and Lunar Lander and all of that shit again. sorry
turned into a 14 year old for a second there. my life when i was 14
years old consisted of model airplanes, the commodore 64, and jerking
off. i have since eliminated two of those from my life, i will leave
it an exercise to the reader to figure out which 2.
I wanted to stay in school indefinitely, but it didn't work out for me
- low GPA, crappy general studies degree making grad school impossible
to get into, hard to finance second bachelor's etc. I keep telling
myself that someday I'll quit the corporate job thing and go back, but
who knows. I have this fear that when I can afford it, all of those
cute, gullible little freshman chicks will be young enough to be my
children. So who knows...
did you order the rubber paint yet? is it for internal use? do you
have to be careful when you paint around your naughty bits? what
happens if you paint yourself up and then you are in a car in a
parking lot in the summer with the windows rolled up? will you
explode? well find out before you buy any.
i just saw that film with nick nolte and john malkovitch. i forget
the name - it wasnt that good except you saw jennifer connely nekkid
in it... i got a ticket though, I parked on a street that was permit
only, so I lost $23 there. sigh...
I AM JESUS CHRIST PLEASE PACK UP ALL YOUR BELONGINGS AND SELL THEM AND
GET 11 OF YOUR FRIENDS AND FOLLOW ME THROUGH THE DESERT AND
STUFF. WHEN ITS ALL OVER WE'LL HAVE A BIG LAST SUPPER AND THEN YOU GET
TO WATCH THEM NAIL ME TO A CROSS. PLEASE RELPLY ASAP BYE BYE
JENNIPOSTLE ME
weird you mentioned fires - i heard that the rental office and laundry
in colonial crest burned down recently. i have fond memories of those
washing machines... sigh. also weird, i heard the cascades IGA closed
recently. when i lived at colonial crest and didnt have a car and
couldnt wait for my roommate to go shopping, i used to buy my food
there. the day before i moved, i went there and it reminded me so
much of when I lived there. But now it's gone and all those washing
machines are gone. and morgensterns is closed now, and garcia's is
gone, and the NY bagel and deli... i am glad i dont live there because
i would be el depresso over all those things being gone now.
let me know what i should do about my facial hair. i haven't shaved
in a few days and my current options are: a) grow a beard and look
like someone from the 80's b) grow the mandatory seattle goatee and
long sideburns c) grown muttonchops d) grow a fu-manchu mustache with
the sidebars that go to my chin e) grow a hitler mustache f) shave
every square inch of my body and paint on the latex
The Trip:
or: What I did on my work-vacation
When they landed the plane in San Jose, I saw that it was the
type of airport where they wheeled a huge set of stairs next to the
plane and had you walk across the tarmac, instead of clamping a huge
Habitrail-like tunnel against the hull and into the terminal. Bathed
in the nine-o'clock air of Northern California, the temperature change
and vibrancy of the atmosphere reminded me of the first time I spent 2
days in a car and emerged in the palm trees and swimming pools of
Tampa, Florida. This is California, I thought, dragging my backpack
and leather jacket to the baggage claim of the small airport.
At the hotel, things felt more alone and decayed. Marketers
and in-crowd people I worked with also arrived on the same flight, but
quickly dissipated to bars, restaurants, and industry
parties. Uninvited, and without a roommate for the first part of my
stay, I was alone until the show started the next morning.
This was my first visit to California, ever. A few weeks
before, someone asked me to compete in the Internet Bowl at the spring
Internet World. The October before, I participated in the
Jeporady-like game show in Boston. Flying out the weekend before, I
did some serious drinking with some of my Spry friends, met up with
some friends who lived in Boston, and hit some bars and clubs on
Halloween night. I also caught bronchitis, but the first trip to
Boston proved enjoyable enough to make me say yes to the second round
in San Jose.
I had no friends in San Jose. The guys in the band Pax Mortis
lived about an hour away, but with no car, a visit to the Chris Crites
household seemed infeasible. And I had a few friend-of-friends in the
San Francisco area, but that too was 40 minutes away. And since the
last round of layoffs at Spry, there were few engineers going. I had
no idea what was in San Jose, since I did no prior research on the
area. After arriving at our run-down hotel, things looked pretty
bleak.
I checked into the room, changed out of my Spry jersey and
into an Adversary shirt, and started flipping channels in an effort to
break the silence. TV seems so alien of a concept after spending
years not owning one, and gleaning entertainment from paper books and
Usenet. The idea of having to sit through commercials without being
able to skip them pissed me off, as well as the 8-channel hotel cable
system. I suddenly regretted not bringing a walkman or any other music
source with me. Just reading and writing felt too alone without a
background of some sort.
Within an hour, I decided to see how much of San Jose I could
experience on foot from the hotel. Our wonderful lodging was near the
airport, an area which I later found was near pretty much nothing. I
loved walking in the night without a jacket, and I strolled down 1st
ave with no real goals in mind. Compared to the Seattle weather of
50s and 60s with occasional rain, the warm and fairly dry climate felt
like the nicest, most tranquil summer days I met while back in
Bloomington. I'm not the kind of person who praises extremely cold or
hot weather, so the May temperature felt perfect to me.
The nighttime stroll revealed a few facts about this part of
San Jose. One, it had a lot of bail bond places. I must've seen at
least 7 or 8 of them in the first three blocks of my walk. Two, gas
really was almost two bucks a gallon. Three, even though I thought I
was near stuff, I really wasn't. I saw a "Campus" liquor store and a
"Campus" cleaners, but I didn't really see any college campuses
nearby. Once I almost thought I was approaching one, but it was
really a San Jose correctional facility. I really need to study maps
before I go on these trips.
Overall, the walk gave the loneliness a chance to really
hit. I was without music, without direction, without friends and in an
area thousands of miles away from anything recognizable. I get enough
depression when I'm in Seattle and realize I can no longer go to CD
Exchange or Garcia's or Dagwood's or the IMU. At least in Washington,
I've found some formidable replacements for my old favorites. In San
Jose, I didn't even know which direction was North until my third day
in town.
Plus there was an additional amount of depression because I
didn't even have friends in the company who could shuttle me off to do
cool things during the trip. When I was in Boston, we had a whole
crew of engineering people who united and went to meals, bars, shops,
and parties together. But the marketers were a completely separate
clique, one in which I didn't fit. The deal gave me the whole one man
army feel, which didn't add to the small amount of gloom I was feeling
over my personal situation before the trip. Still stuck in the "why
can't I find a woman" trap, I brought more baggage than just a
suitcase and backpack with me. It all added up, and by the time I got
ten blocks into the city, I just wished I had my car, a bunch of loud
music, and someplace to go for solace.
But I didn't. So I wandered back to the hotel, bought a Coke
for a dollar, and set the alarm for a far too early hour so I could
get to the show on time.
I had dreams of waking up to the alarm and not being able to
shut it off. I think the fear of missing the alarm scared me enough
that I never fully got to sleep, and must've looked at my watch every
hour. When the alarm did finally go off at 6, I was ready for another
full night of sleep. But I showered, dressed, skipped breakfast, and
left for the convention center.
San Jose's got a pretty cool rail system. It's a bunch of trolley
cars, they look like a light version of a subway car, but they've got
the little trolley bell and electric wire scraper on the roof. It
runs on the semi-honor system, where you buy a ticket and there's a 1
in something chance that they'll check everyone for passes. I bought
tickets every time, like a dunce. Oh well, the company paid for
them.
I won't go into the trade show too much, because I barely left
the booth and didn't get a feel for the whole thing. Basically, we
just had a big TV where someone went through a presentation and gave
out t-shirts, and then there were about 20 stations with computers,
where a bunch of us stood around and answered dumb questions. We were
right across from AOL and some other smaller company, and I spent most
of my time people-watching everyone who walked the aisles. Many
incredible women strolled past, but it's hard to pick up on someone
when you're wearing a dorky looking uniform-type jersey.
So the Internet Bowl was right after the show that
night. There were three teams: us, AOL and Prodigy. We were to solve
these web surfing questions while answering trivia questions about the
Internet. Both AOL and Prodigy had giant cheering sections; I think
only 3 or 4 people showed up from Compuserve. I felt like an idiot
when I answered 6 questions in a row and got no applause, but then AOL
would get one answer and the crowd would be roaring. After I tried to
keep up, AOL pulled ahead and won. At least we got second place, and
I got a trophy for the office. It's my second Internet Bowl trophy,
and even though both don't have my name and just say "Runner Up", I
cherish them. I was never in any sports or competitive clubs in
school, so they are the only trophies I have. It's better than
nothing.
My roommate showed up as I was eating from room service and
watching the film Brewster's Millions on TBS. He wanted to go out and
do something. His girlfriend was also there, and I ate and watched
the film as they went back and forth over what they should do for the
evening. Finally, at almost midnight, we took his rental car and
drove through San Jose, looking for groceries. We ended up at a shady
mini-mart and got enough Coke, donuts, chips and juice for the next
few days.
The next day, I only had to work in the morning. My roommate
mentioned going to San Fran that night, after he ate dinner with some
old friends. But his plans were vague, and he isn't exactly known for
his punctuality, so I tentatively planned on finding my own way to the
bay after lunch.
The show continued. Everyone talked about how they missed the
Internet Bowl, which disgusted me. Most of them had elaborate dinner
plans, or met with people from other companies at hospitality
suites. I felt an incredible tension at the show, being physically
surrounded by people who worked with me, but emotionally being
completely alone. And as the show filled and people swarmed in all
directions to get free disks and free shirts and free bags and free
info, I felt even more disassociated from reality. It reminded me of
when I used to work in commission sales, in the height of my untreated
depression. I'd be screaming within, torn apart over this complete
anguish and pain, but I'd be smiling and trying to sell a set of lawn
furniture to some putz. Not having to see people on a daily basis
made it all seem new again.
So I took off right after lunch, and took the light rail to
the hotel. As I pondered what to do for the rest of the day, I looked
up and saw something that sparked an entire new battle plan in my
head: there was an el-cheapo car rental place right in the hotel
building! I'd never rented a car before. But I was now 25, I had a
license, I had an amex gold card, and I had the day off. Would $30 or
$40 impact my budget that much a month from now?
Within 20 minutes, I had changed from the jersey and into a
t-shirt and jeans, and was in a '96 Toyota Corolla, headed north on
highway 101. The sleek, dark blue four-door flew down the sunny and
energetic highway, and I began my journey to San Francisco.
From years of horror stories, I'd expected the California
highways to either be full of gun-wielding maniacs driving 100, or
dozens of miles of cars at a dead stop, perpetually log-jammed. I
immediately found neither to be the case. Most of the drivers seemed
very "professional", and although the pace of the cars was over 70
mph, everyone seemed very well-behaved and decent mannered. Driving
on 465 in Indianapolis was MUCH more horrific than driving in
California.
And as I realized that I was driving in California, I got an
incredible rush of energy and excitement. I thought I'd be walking or
taking busses for the entire week, but instead I was behind the wheel,
seeing all of the glass and steel towers of every computer giant on
either side of the road, listening to the radio on 11, and heading to
a city I only read about in books. The subtle differences in highway
signs, the city exits for Palo Alto and Menlo Park and Mountain View
were all things I'd heard about or seen for years. It was like being
in a TV show, actually driving by the homes of places like Netscape
and Apple.
I had to run the air conditioning in the car, the air was
pretty stuffy in the car and running with the window opened deafened
me. I didn't want to burn away all of the gas, especially since I had
to refill the tank when the trip was over and gas was in the two buck
a gallon range. The little Toyota seemed pretty economical though, it
behaved a lot like my new Escort (except it didn't suck). I didn't
have a tape player, but then I didn't have any tapes with me on the
trip, either. After running through channels with the seek, I found
the area oversaturated with hip FM programming. During a run through
the band, I stopped on a station playing Obituary. They went right
into Sepultura and then some Deicide. Definitely my kind of place.
With no direction, and only a rent-a-car map, I knew little
about where I'd be going. I kept on 101, hauling ass and finding more
cool radio stations. Within about 40 minutes, I hit South San Fran, a
large urban sprawl that looked like a sterile version of Tacoma. I
unfolded the map and decided to just cut through town on 101 and see
what interested me.
Approaching San Francisco is strange - you don't see a line of
skyscrapers from five miles back and slowly close in on them. As I
jumped into the city, I couldn't see any large urban landmarks -
they're all tucked away in the hillside, near the bay. But the city
felt welcoming, much more than the small-time feel of San Jose. The
place reminded me of Chicago in a lot of ways - the traffic, the
people, the sidewalks, the mix of stores. But I couldn't compare it
to any city I'd seen before. Things felt... newer than most major
cities I've visited, and there wasn't as much of the urban degradation
either. It almost reminded me of parts of Canada, cities like
Kitchner up in Ontario, but hundreds of times bigger. Regardless, I
had fun looking in the stores and driving with the taxis and busses
through the streets.
I saw signs pointing to the Golden Gate bridge, and decided
that's where I wanted to be. I didn't know you had to drive through
the entire city to get to the bridge, but after finding this out while
reading my map at a stoplight, I decided the journey would be a good
way to get a quick primer on the city. So I headed north, following
the signs and chopping toward the bridge.
The road started twisting and crawling upward, the flats and
storefronts on either side following the slope with awkward platforms
and crooked foundations. Suddenly, the water appeared to my right,
the San Francisco Bay opening behind the highway. And as I looked to
the horizon, I saw an awe-inspiring stretch of rust-colored steel in
the distance, more commonly known as the Golden Gate Bridge.
Driving even faster on the highway, my path twisted as the
large monster drew closer. Everyone sees the Golden Gate constantly
on TV, in movies, on commercials, and everywhere else in society. But
actually driving on the damn thing just thunderstruck me. Those
seemingly tiny cables on either side of the road were actually made
from pieces of pipe much bigger than my car, and the two vertical
supports jutted in the air much higher than any rollercoaster I've
ever rode. As I drove on the highway across the bridge, I snapped a
dozen photos and stared in awe at the giant supports and beams, trying
to keep the car on the road.
At the other side of the bridge, I stopped at a lookout
park-type thing, a parking lot overlooking a cliff with some coin-on
telescopes and state-placed informational placards talking about some
settlers who died a few hundred years ago or something. The area was
overrun by tourists, entire families with camcorders, posing at the
ledge and carefully reading the plaques. Whatever. I ran to the area
by the coin-op telescopes and scanned the horizon.
Here's what I could see from left to right, across the bay:
Berkeley, Oakland, the Bay Bridge, Alcatraz, North Beach, downtown,
and the Golden Gate. All of these individually cool sights were all
within 90 degrees of each other, the best panoramic view of diverse
items I've ever seen in my life. I mean, from the top of Hunter
Mountain in New York, I had cool mountains and scenery for 360
degrees, but it was all the same type of stuff. So I dropped a
quarter in the viewer and checked out the deal. Alcatraz was my first
target. It looked pretty ominous, but also pretty nondescript. I
wouldn't have time or money for the tour, so this was my tribute to
the Rock. I also tried to look over to Berkeley but couldn't see
much. But the downtown area, the skyscrapers and bustle of smaller
buildings looked pretty decent. And I took a look at some of the
details of the bridge, like the service buildings below, encrusted in
barbed wire. I wonder where they shuttled over the prisoners to
Alcatraz?
After my time ran out, I shot a few more photos, grabbed my
backpack, and headed to the bridge. There's pedestrian walkways on
either side, and I was set on walking to the middle of the bridge. I
didn't realize this was going to be a miles-long walk, but with my
backpack on my shoulder, I kept at it.
The traffic was loud and wind overpowered me as I crept across
the deck of the bridge. I kept looking up at the massive cables and
catwalks to the top of the superstructure. I always thought of a
bridge as a big piece of road hung over a gap in the surface, but the
close-up view really made me realize that the thing was a massive
engineering project, employing hundreds of people for year-round
operation. Pretty serious stuff.
The only people I saw on the bridge were cyclists and
power-walking types, and I couldn't hear anything with the wind and
cars. I finally got to the center of the bridge, and quickly scrawled
an entry in my journal after snapping the last of my film. There were
crisis center phones on the bridge, something I heard were installed
as the tally of bridge jumpers approached 1000. I leaned over the
edge and looked down, just to check stuff out. It would've been damn
easy for a person to kill themselves over the edge, or to BASE jump,
for that matter. As I was leaning over, looking at the water, a large
tanker slowly steamed under the bridge. I got a good look at the
giant football field-sized boat, and got a better perspective of my
relative altitude. Time to stop leaning, I thought, as I grabbed my
bag and headed back to the car.
After the bridge, I crossed back into town and
wandered. Starvation kicked through my system; I hadn't eaten anything
since dinner the night before, and it was now after 5:00. I wanted to
find Chinatown, and eat at a cool, beatific Chinese restaurant with
authentic and cheap food. So I followed the signs, and kept an eye
open for oriental storefronts. The north side of the city dissolved
into taller buildings, denser structures, and a heavy concrete and
steel atmosphere, sprinkled with decorative trees, businessmen in
suits, joggers, tourists, and the everyday walk of life on the
sidewalks and in the buildings. It was hard for me to remember that
it was a Wednesday, and that I should be at work, or driving home from
the office in Seattle's post-five traffic. Being in another state,
another part of the world felt like hookey, like the time there was a
bomb evacuation in the school and instead of going back inside after
the all-clear, I drove to Chicago. It didn't really kick in that it
wasn't just a Saturday until then.
After another hour of driving in circles, I found
Chinatown. Seattle and Chicago both have international districts, but
in both they just look like a part of the city with some oriental
shops. In San Fran's Chinatown, it looked almost exactly like some
part of Hong Kong. Narrow roads crept through city blocks with dozens
and hundreds of shoehorned-in shops. And not just restaurants and
groceries - travel agents, doctors, electronics shops, furniture
stores, lawyers, every imaginable retail outlet was tightly compressed
in the urban area. Large, colorful banners in Mandarin hung from
windows, and every sign visible, even the city street signs, were in
two languages. It looked like I somehow drove into another continent.
The idea of finding a parking spot and a friendly, cheap
restaurant seemed even more remote, so I wandered aimlessly. I don't
know exactly where I went, but it was someplace near North Beach, off
of Market. Eventually, I saw a Cybercafe with plenty of street
parking, so I ditched the car and went for some long-awaited
nutrient.
The place was called Icon, and featured a bar, restaurant, and
computers. The walls were covered with circuit boards, legos, broken
toys, and other miscellaneous plastic, all painted various colors of
gold and bronze. It looked like some sort of Mayan or Egyptian
temple, but you could discern various Star Wars playsets within the
designs. The place was empty, so I quickly got a spot and logged onto
my mail. The waiter showed up; the place had some strange Buddhist
connection and the waiters were all these shaved bald American guys in
their 20s, with bright, baggy, flowery outfits, beads and sandals. I
ordered a burger, but they had a pretty abnormal menu. It seemed like
they got a chef from a Denny's, a chef from an Indian restaurant, and
a chef from an Irish restaurant and just had all three of them cook
their entire array of food. Definitely a place you could eat at all
week without boredom. I checked my mail, sent a quick line to a few
people, and then wrote in my journal before the food got there. After
eating a decent burger and getting about 4 rounds of refills on the
Coke, I settled my bill and hit the road again. My next target was
City Lights books. I looked up their address in the phone book and
asked the Bhudda-waiter where the place was. He gave me vague
directions, so I headed in that direction. I always wanted to check
out City Lights with a ton of money, to buy all of the Beat Lit I
couldn't find elsewhere. Also, I just wanted to see what it was like,
see the place where Ginsberg read and Kerouac hung out and the whole
deal. After venturing up Columbus, I quickly saw the pie-shaped
store, and realized I must've passed it 3 or 4 times already in my
random wanderings. Great.
Next came the parking. I couldn't find a place within 5 miles
where I could park without paying $5 an hour, so I circled through all
of North Beach, partly looking for a spot, partly checking the
sights. I hit some massive hills on one side street, stuff that made
the 28% grade by my apartment in Seattle look puny. The Toyota felt
more like a King's Island rollercoaster or something, jerking and
tilting through the slopes.
After almost an hour of circling, I finally just parked in
Chinatown, about 5 or 6 blocks away from the store. By then, it was
almost 9, and the sun was quickly setting. The lights and decorations
of Chinatown glowed around me, every shop ablaze with ornate and
beautiful decorations. It felt like walking in a Bruce Lee film,
although walking alone made me feel like it was the part in the film
where 20 ninjas jump out and beat the fuck out of someone. But I
continued, looking in the store windows at the interesting and bizarre
trinkets. One of the stores showed a plaque with a photo that said
George Bush had tea there in 1980-something. Maybe they could invite
Al Gore in for tea to get it more current. I heard that he was in San
Jose the day before, maybe they just didn't get the film developed
yet.
I finally got to City Lights, and walked in to see copies of
Howl and a sign saying the Beat Lit was upstairs. I crawled through
the store and headed up the creaky steps, to find a book collection
which probably contained as many or less volumes than my home
library. I didn't check the poetry section, as I'm not a big poetry
collector, but the Beat selection offered less volumes than were
available at a standard Barnes and Noble. What a bummer. I went back
downstairs and looked for Bukowski in the fiction section (he wasn't
in the Beats - at least they got that right). They only had the City
Lights volumes of his there, nothing from Black Sparrow or any
rarities. They did have a large rack of zines, and I found the newest
Cometbus there. No copy of Sure - A Charles Bukowski Newsletter was
among the xeroxed small-press offerings. I rang out and asked the
clerk about the Buk stuff and he had no idea what the fuck I was
talking about. Sigh... The place was okay, but I think Seattle has
just as many good book resources, or maybe more. I'll keep my book
money in King county and save a few bucks on travel from now on.
The alley next to the store was called Jack Kerouac Ave.,
which was pretty hip. There was a bar next door with a bunch of
Kerouac pictures and memorabilia on the front, so I thought maybe it
would be a cool place to go in, get a Coke, read Cometbus and maybe
meet some new age beats or writers or something. I went in, and the
place was a total meat market, people dressed in hundreds of dollars
of clothes and perfectly manicured, drinking $20 well drinks and doing
the Ken and Barbie thing. With my wrinkled shirt, messed up hair, old
jeans, and random looks, I didn't exactly mesh. After a quick Coke
and a use of the facilities, I made like Sal Paradise and was once
again on the road.
Actually, it took me a while to find the car. Like a dumbass,
I didn't make a note of where I parked, and I had to reverse-engineer
my way back. Once I saw the George Bush picture, I knew I was
close. I had memorized that my car was in front of a Dim Sung
restaurant, which didn't help much. Also, I didn't entirely remember
what the car looked like. But within a few minutes, I was trying to
find 101 and head south again.
Driving back at night was a lot of fun. I locked into a very
hip radio station and blasted some great songs, listening to some cool
alternative stuff. It wasn't 107.7, but it was close. On the way
south, I swung into Palo Alto and followed the signs to the Stanford
campus. I hit the place late, and it looked like they roll the
streets up at 9 down there, but I did see a lot of palm trees and some
of the campus. For the rest of the way back in, I had some call-in
sex program going, and laughed my ass off, listening to their special
guest, David Bowie's ex-wife. When I got back to the hotel, I walked
into this giant argument between my roommate and his girlfriend. I
won't get into it, but let's just say there are times I'm glad that I
don't date anyone. I spent some time at Denny's listening to her side
of the story, then tried to read while they fought for a while, then
he tried to explain his entire side of the deal to me, after she left.
It's difficult for me to say either one was right or wrong, and my
only real concern was getting some sleep before check-out and my last
day of the show.
A few hours later, I scoured the room for everything of mine
while my roommate slept, and hurriedly turned in my key and checked my
luggage at the front desk. I'd be flying out right after the show, so
my bags would sit at the hotel until that evening. I returned the
car, and as I drove it to the office, I heard about 3 minutes of the
Howard Stern show with Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. Fuck, I really
wanted to hear Howard give Pam the treatment. I never get to hear
Stern unless I'm out of town, but I think the guy's a pretty perverse
and twisted individual, which gives him high marks in my book.
The show's last day went slower than ever, and half of our
people either weren't there or left early. Within the final hour,
only 4 or 5 of us were left, and the kind of people who come to the
last hour of a trade show are usually asking the stupidest
questions. But we fended them off, and at 4, I was back to the light
rail for the trip home.
I got my luggage, and checked my flight itinerary. It was
about 4:30, and most people were flying out at 6. My ticket was for
8:48. I didn't have a room anymore, and wanted to share a shuttle
with the rest of the people, which would mean a long wait in the San
Jose airport.
This wasn't really horrible to me. When I was in Boston, I
had a two hour gap between the show and the plane, and there was
almost no way to get from the convention center to the airport because
of rush hour. I almost took a water taxi, but I was pretty sick and
was absolutely certain I would catch pneumonia. I finally got a
shuttle bus to the airport, but the entire thing kept my heart racing
at 200bpm with nervousness and trauma. A 3 hour wait would let me
decompress from the show, change my clothes in the bathroom, and just
enjoy the lack of worry. After the shuttle, I checked in my
shit, slowly ate a meal at the airport Burger King, then went for the
quietest part of the concourse and crashed. I cracked open my new
copy of Cometbus and slowly read it from start to finish. The zine
was one long story about Aaron's trip to Europe, how he flew over with
a beat up 10 speed and almost no money, and wandered through
countries, meeting bizarre people and traveling with no cash. The
reading meshed well with my situation, as I sat in this airport with a
backpack full of writing and a leather jacket.
After reading his zine, and a bit of On the Road, and
scribbling in my journal, I went upstairs to the observation deck. The
small, open-air platform overlooked the short runways and tarmac,
where ground crews dragged around luggage carts and wheeled staircases
against the aluminum beasts. It felt relaxing to see the California
hills for one last time, to bask in the warm air and have a sense of
closure instead of rushing from gate to plane in a mad frenzy.
The end of the Cometbus zine talked about this, about how
Aaron felt excited and relieved at the end of his trip, how returning
would be a new beginning. I felt the same way, I thought about
unpacking, bringing my Internet Bowl trophy to work, doing some
editing on the book, sleeping in my own bed, using my own shower. It
all felt refreshing, in some dopey way. But it always feels good to
be back.
The Book Pit:
A quick summary of the books I tore through in April
Joseph Heller - Catch 22
This is the third time I've read this book, and I'm still wondering
how the fuck Heller wrote such a twisted, humorous and incredibly
flowing work and kept it so detailed and exact throughout. The
story's this: Yossarian is a bombadier in World War II, but he is
afraid of dying and wants to go home. But the blind and stupid
military buerocracy won't let him. When he is in the hospital for
being crazy, he finds that the doctor has to ground and send home
anyone who is crazy who asks to be grounded. But any sane man would
want to be grounded, the insane are the ones who WANT to fly the
missions, and won't ask to be sent home. And that's catch-22. The
book is filled with hilarious situations and had me laughing to tears
from cover to cover. The time structure is incredible and non-linear;
he refers to things that haven't happened yet and moves all over the
place. It's a bit complicated the first time through, but stick with
it, even if you get lost. Once again, I wonder if Heller planned such
a complex structure, or if he chopped and rearranged a linear
novel. In either case, an incredible book worthy of a read (or three).
Tim O'Brien - If I Die in a Combat Zone
This is the first book by O'Brien about his experience in the Vietnam
war, and probably the truest to the actual events happening to him
during his tour of duty. The book starts with his draft orders and
ends with his flight back home from Southeast Asia, covering the
details of a year in the jungles, firefights, and bases of
Vietnam. The prose isn't as developed or flowing as his later work,
and the time structure is much simpler and more concise than it is in
the incredibly nonlinear In the Lake of the Woods or The Things They
Carried. It makes for a quick and easy read, but also subtracts from
the content. I liked the stories and his depiction of the horrors of
war brought across the strong antiwar message. Overall, the book is a
decent read, and essential if you liked newer O'Brien books. But if
you're a first-timer to his work, definitely pick up The Things They
Carried first.
Hubert Selby, Jr. - Song of the Silent Snow
I'd only heard of Selby through Henry Rollins (who did a spoken word
tour with him about 10 years ago and also features all of Selby's
stuff in the 2.13.61 mailorder catalog), but decided to give him a
spin based on the association. Song is a collection of short stories
about different people, places, events in the dismal and grimy reality
of New York City. But to tie it together, every story has a guy named
Harry, although each one is different than that last. Selby molds
perfectly encapsulated environments, rich with not only detail but
emotion about the beat and trodden atmosphere of the hustling
metropolis life. You follow the plight of a bum who lives in the
Bowery, who cherishes his third-hand coat like a wife or loved one,
and almost gets killed protecting it. And the story of a man who
falls in love with a woman he sees every day at the train stop, but
can never approach. My favorite is a story about a boy going through
puberty, experiencing the depression and confusion that life will be
jobs and dating and work instead of teasing girls, playing ball and
spending summers with friends. Selby packs a great rollercoaster
within each story, completely hooking you within a few paragraphs and
keeping you there. This continues the great work Henry Miller did
with the urban setting, and is highly reccomended to anyone who likes
that style of work.
Bowles/Chourki - Jean Genet in Tangier
Mohamed Choukri, a writer from Tangiers, penned this short journal
about his friendship with the French poet Jean Genet. It was later
translated by Paul Bowles, and William S. Burroughs slapped a foreward
on it, giving the 80 page digest a smattering of flavor from these
four writers who each spent time in the Moroccan city. It's always
hard to judge a translation and if the style is that of the original
author or the interpreter, but it seems as if Bowles did a good job
presenting this concise, flowing diary-style piece. We learn about
the Genet that spent his youth in French prison, and his older years
writing and living in retreat in Tangiers. Choukri and Genet exchange
books and ideas about authors, while discussing the differences in
culture around the world and the turmoil and corruption in some. It
was good to get a second check on the Burroughs view of Tangiers, but
it seems that both Genet and Choukri feel the same way about the
culture, which was so repressed that corruption abounded and opened
opportunities for those living on the edge. The book's pretty short,
but makes me want to go out and learn more about Genet and
Bowles. Definitely a required read if you're into either author.
Cometbus zine
I've heard about Cometbus for years, but never picked up a copy until
last month. Call me a poseur, but I did buy it in the famous City
Lights books if that counts for anything. I don't know if all issues
of Cometbus are like this, but #36 is an incredible 80-some page essay
about Aaron's trip to Europe. With meticulously handwritten prose, he
tells the reader about how someone gave him a ticket, and how he left
for Amsterdam with a junk bike, a backpack filled with supplies, and
about $140. The tales got more insane and hilarious from that point,
and the writing conveys the loneliness of the situation. I read this
thing while sitting in the San Jose airport, waiting alone three hours
for my plane, and loved the travel theme. Great writing overall, one
of the best zines I've ever seen.
Gerald Locklin - Charles Bukowski: A Sure Bet
This book just came out on Water Row Press, and after waiting a few
weeks after my order, I finally got one of the signed and numbered
copies. This is a collection of essays and poems by Locklin, a
long-time friend of Bukowski since the sixties. Although it's a
pretty thin volume, the pages flow with incredible and memorable
information essential to any Buk afficionado. The story about the
preimere of Barfly was pretty good, but I was most moved by Locklin's
poem about Buk's death and the story about his funeral. The pages per
dollar ratio is pretty bad with this book, but it's a decent addition
to any Bukowski collection.
Jack Kerouac - On the Road
Every time I re-read this book, I find some new detail I completely
missed or forgot. If you haven't read the book yet, it's about Sal
Paradise, a hipster in the late 1940's who meets up with the original
rebel without a cause, Dean Moriarty. They take trips across the
country, getting their kicks in NYC, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans, LA
and San Fran, and even Mexico city. It's more than just the bennies,
tea, '32 Fords, port, women, and wild bop - it's a story of the
emerging youth culture of the 50s, of two inseperable friends, and
about the nobility of living with no food or money and hitching across
the country. I re-read the book while in San Jose and San Fran, and I
saw the streets, neighborhoods, beauty and loneliness of the West
coast, which added a new depth to the novel. If you haven't read this
book yet, DO IT - it is one of the most essential works of the 20th
century and is the father and grandfather of every youth culture
(i.e. hippy, punk, GenX) book in the world. And if you already have a
worn and weathered copy on the shelves at home, bring it with you the
next time you take a roadtrip or vacation. It definitely adds a whole
new edge when you're the one on the road.
William S. Burroughs - Interzone
After reading Genet's stories of Tangiers, I had to go to the master
and hear a few more twisted tales of heroin, Moroccan boys and junk
sickness. Interzone is a good collection of WSB's writings from the
era when Naked Lunch was being mentally authored and prepared for its
eventual release to the paper domain. In the first section, entitled
"Stories", there are tales of a junkie on Christmas, Burroughs cutting
off his pinky to impress a lover, and a long, never-published magazine
article about the International Zone in Tangiers. The stories are
complete, structured and an example of the basic, straightforward
writing style of an earlier, contemporary voice of Burroughs. In the
seconnd book, "Lee's Journals", the voice starts to wander and grow in
the world of the strange and bizarre. A slight SciFi tilt mixed with
a mind of junk and perversion sculpts the sick but pallatable pieces
like Spare Ass Annie, a story about a colony of deformed freaks with
bodies mutated like bugs and monsters. By "Word", the third episode,
Burroughs is full-tilt into his true voice, launching through a random
and nearly psychadelic journey that foreshadows the style which is
found in Naked Lunch and later novels. The book is entertaining, and
I loved reading the stories of abroad, about the relaxed but anxious
times in Morocco. But it also serves as a good overview of the path
Burroughs took to find his voice. Overall, Interzone is an intense
and brisk read, something that many beat fans will enjoy.
And so on...
Sorry once again for the delay in this production. And sorry for the
small fonts used! I'm trying to keep this below an ounce so my
postage bill doesn't go through the roof.
How I do this stuff: I save my monthly mail, which I read using the vm
package in emacs, and then edit it and all of the other parts, also in
emacs. After everything's written and edited, it goes to FrameMaker
4 on a nasty Windows NT machine.
Send all praise, comments, information, pictures, mail, death threats,
unabomer theories, trades, free stuff, food, UFO pieces, sisters'
phone numbers, unused prescriptions, and Pez dispensers to:
Jon Konrath
600 7th Ave #520
Seattle, WA 98104-1933
(206) 343-5604 (home)
jkonrath@speakeasy.org
http://www.speakeasy.org/~jkonrath
Air in the Paragraph line is published monthly, within a few days of
the beginning of the month. Issues are a buck or postage or trade or
whatever. Back issues are available for a SASE or a buck. Issues are
free to prisoners and anyone who sends me abnormal stuff in the
mail. Trades are welcome. Books, music, or zines for review are
welcome but I can't promise I'll get to all of them. I do review all
cars, pornography, and food which is sent to me. Sorry, no ads. I
support the environment: this was printed with 100% recycled ideas and
thoughts.
Thanks to: Ray Miller, Tom Sample, Larry Falli, and the Coca-Cola
Company. No thanks to Evergreen Ford in Issaquah.
Copyright (C) 1996 Jon Konrath. All rights reserved.
