So there we are in Château Marmont's Suite 69.
"Ten years ago I stayed here," Jarmusch says. "I was promoting Dead Man, and I had a smaller suite downstairs. Iggy Pop, who I've known for a long time, was also staying here. And Joe Strummer was in L.A. We were all just hanging out in my room, and Iggy was complaining about how he had the room below the one that had all the balconies. He was saying, 'Yeah, they didn't even give me the better room, you know? I think Slash is staying there.' He was sort of in a snarly mood, and we were laughing at him, saying, 'Well, you know, Iggy. Slash's records make more money than yours.' Then Joe Strummer said to me, 'Just think, Jim. Your film's black and white. If you make the next one in color, you'll move up a floor!' "
Dead Beat warns you , stay away from colour, better view, lousy picture
"So Dead Beat can I leave yet?" (See Richard Ford and Dead Beat Mix It Up)
"What's the rush?"
"It's hunting season."
"Just wait a mo. Characters."
"Aren't we all?"
"No Richard, I'm thinking about how few characters you seem to work with, now don't get me wrong, Dead Beat approves, the fewer the better."
"You're right..."
"I am? Here that folks, Richard Ford said I am right."
"...that is how I seem to work - but it's not something I'm doing in any kind of self aware way. It may be that I feel most comfortable with those reduced character loads because then I can concentrate in the way that I'm most inclined, on the interior lives versus the surface lives of people."
"That's where it's at."
"Don't interrupt, D.B....When people like Tom Wolfe come along and say that nobody's writing about big social themes and nobody's Balzac anymore, nobody's writing big sprawling novels of societal concerns, ebbs and flows, I always think to myself, Gee, that would be really boring to write, wouldn't it? There's somebody out in the world that thinks it would be great, but I'm just not that kind of guy.
What two people do in a room together seems to me to be the beginning of everything - everything familial, everything societal, everything political. Not that I'm trying to radiate out what I do with two people in a room together to the level of larger macropolitical significance, but I do think that's where things start."
"Okay Bud, off to your hunting thing."
"See you Dead Beat."
"Tally Ho!"
Now were you listening?
Put two people in a room together and see what they do...the interior lives versus the surface lives.
Dead Beat swears by it, and Richard Ford told me I was right.
Dead Beat is convinced of the necessity of form but has no beef with Richard Ford (See Writing on the Edge of Dangerous Things). Ford is simply saying that we do not begin by imposing form. A form will emerge organically to contain the story being written. Nevertheless as writers we cannot ignore the emerging form if we wish to control it and write that great story. When form is out of control it is extrememly difficult for anything to emerge except confusion. That is what I think Ford was talking about with the 'death of the short story' as well as the fact that experimenting too much with form can leave the form more 'interesting' than the story itself. Ultimately the form should be 'invisible' - the reader does not focus on it - all ears and eyes are on the story - oh yes feelings too.But Dead Beat really likes what he has to say about so many stories being written and published(!) and defended and promoted which are actually only semi-good.Watch out for this folks - do not settle for less.
The form as Ford tells us 'inspires invention and discovery. "Eternal passion revealed in that heart where, before, all seemed known and discovered."
And remember, Ford's own form is as conventional as they come.
As I said (See Writers Apply Within), Dick, back to the basics.
"Come on back Cavan Boy (see Victimless Crime ), teach me more."
"Well Beat, to me, it's a relief to observe how many disparate pieces of writing can be persuasively called short stories, how formally underdefined the short story still is in the minds and hands of writers. And even if the most excellent of recent stories do not represent formal variety as gaily as they might have 20 or so years ago, when John Cheever and Ann Beattie and John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates and Ray Carver were publishing toe to toe with Ron Sukenick and Donald Barthelme, Barry Hannah and George Chambers - the days of the ''anti-story'' and the early Fiction Collective and Fiction magazine and when, I guess, the short story was dead and didn't know it - my rules are the same as then: liberal to a fault, and submissive to any consciousness of form that inspires invention and discovery. What we want from stories is to have eternal passion revealed in that heart where, before, all seemed known and discovered. But to write that way, you're always going to be out there on your own - out, as Browning wrote, on the dangerous edge of things."
"On the edge, Dick."
"On the edge."
Richard Ford (he of the Cavan born Grandmother - see Dead Beat is Homesick and Goofing Off ) and thus an old cairde of Dead Beat's got on his case recently.
"You've been teaching form, asking what makes a short story a short story and all. Isn't it time to give it a break?"
"Dick, I was only trying to get back to basics. I've been all over the shop recently."
"True enough Dead Beat. All the same, I want you to think about this. Over the years, people have been gracious enough to point out that I've written some unexcellent stories myself, and if that's true I hope to God I never write another one. But I know it's all right if I can't, and others sometimes don't. No one should care - least of all me - if a hundred writing programs graduate a thousand people every year, all of whom can write a semicompetent but rarely interesting version of what they mean to be a short story, or if oldsters write them by the carload, or if in California story writing is thought of as a branch of psychotherapy or crisis intervention.
That's fine. We're not talking about global warming or toxic waste here. It's a victimless crime if the ''less gifted'' thrive and have fun. Art's that way - free. And you couldn't stop people anyway, just as you can't stop scores of magazines, large and small, famous and obscure, from publishing all that not-so-good writing, then turning their editors loose upon the world to sit on panels and brag about how good it all is.
You won't get any hand wringing or defenses of the form out of me. The form's most persuasive defender - insofar as it needs any - is simply good work. And that's sufficient encouragement to those of us who write stories, and a pleasure to the remaining few who don't write them but merely like to read."
"Don't go away Cavan Boy, Dead Beat needs you."
Dead Beat is hard hitting believer in discipline in writing - be at your desk on time, no excuses, no pen pushing, get on with the job at hand. No such thing as Wrtier's Block, don't depend on The Muse. Clock in, clock out.
Anyway he asked Ms Dilliard for her thoughts on the subject.
"I have been looking into schedules. How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends us from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order--willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern." ---Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
So Sharon writes me with her black bic (See The Victims - Sharon Olds), "So glad you read my poem, call me sometime."
So D.B. picks himself up off the ground and gets on the blower at once.
"Is that you Sharon?"
"Is that you D.B.?"
"I got your letter."
"I got your call."
"Thing is, Shar, do you mind if I call you Shar?"
"Shar's good."
"Well the thing is Shar I've been wondering."
"Shoot."
"You are, at this point, a prominent and well-published poet. Was there, however, a time when you were dealing with rejections and the frustration of being obscure? If so, what was that time like for you? And, what are your frustrations now, if any, when it comes to the matter of publishing poetry and reaching readers?"
"D.B. you sound like you are reading this off a page, and off a poorly lit one for that matter. But let me give you my answer: Knowing one has found a reader is a wonderful feeling, a gift of energy. So much of it is dumb luck. And one is always, I think, daily, aware of the aspects of one’s work regarded by various others as flaws--and one may well agree they’re flaws! But each of us is so limited, so specific, of course none of us will appeal to very many different kinds of readers. It’s an astonishing good fortune to find a reader, don’t you think? It feels like a miracle."
D.B. could only concur - even one would do.
"One last thing Shar, Can you offer any suggestions to aspiring writers?"
"You're still reading that page D.B."
"Come on Shar, spill your secrets."
"Take your vitamins!"
While awaiting your comments (see See Writers Apply Within) I thought a word to the wise from Sharon Olds would be adviseable.
The Victims
When Mother divorced you, we were glad. She took it and
took it in silence, all those years and then
kicked you out, suddenly, and her
kids loved it. Then you were fired, and we
grinned inside, the way people grinned when
Nixon's helicopter lifted off the South
Lawn for the last time. We were tickled
to think of your office taken away,
your secretaries taken away,
your lunches with three double bourbons,
your pencils, your reams of paper. Would they take your
suits back, too, those dark
carcasses hung in your closet, and the black
noses of your shoes with their large pores?
She had taught us to take it, to hate you and take it
until we pricked with her for your
annihilation, Father. Now I
pass the bums in doorways, the white
slugs of their bodies gleaming through slits in their
suits of compressed silt, the stained
flippers of their hands, the underwater
fire of their eyes, ships gone down with the
lanterns lit, and I wonder who took it and
took it from them in silence until they had
given it all away and had nothing
left but this.
Straight to basics here:
What is the difference between a poem and a short story?
What is the difference between a short story and a novel?
What is the difference beween fiction and non-fiction?
Dead Beat is going to leave this with you a wee while. He would really love if you would ponder and use the comment section to offer your thoughts.
