Desire in an Age of There Being Nothing Left to Want

Ha ha ha. You know that’s how you’re about to get sucked into some terrible academic treatise. If there’s a “in an age of” in there. Project X is with the Head of Project X. I still want to have a “real” book published. I guess I want the whole nation to have a chance to hate me. I don’t know. But look at this—

Just as her new novel, “Doc,” was being released in 2011, she got word that her publisher was not interested in any more books from her. She had been with Random House since 1996 and published five novels with the New York house. During that time, she had won an Arthur C. Clarke Award and an American Library Association Readers Choice Award. Entertainment Weekly had chosen “The Sparrow” as one of the 10 best books of year.

and

Stunned and confused, she remained quiet about Random House’s decision because she had to begin her book tour for “Doc,” a western about John Henry Holliday and Wyatt Earp. Ironically, given her publisher’s termination of their relationship, the novel received very positive reviews and was chosen as one of The Washington Post’s top five novels of 2011.

And, yes, I know, it’s borrowing trouble, at least somewhat, to worry about this shit. But I feel like the thing I aspire to is vanishing as I aspire to it. And I don’t know how to adjust my wants so that I want something more plausible, more actually possible.

I don’t know why feeling like I do good work isn’t enough, but it isn’t. I want people I don’t know to think I do good work. I want to read stories to strangers.

And yet, I’ve done that.

So, I don’t know what my problem is.

When we were younger, half a lifetime ago, I taught The Butcher to drive. We went out in my car after I got off work and took off through the country. We were right on the western edge of Illinois then, so it was common to be driving flat and straight for what seemed like eternity and then, without warning, you’d curl down into a landscape defined by the whims of a river–bluffs and crooked roads and trees–and then, just as quickly, back up and out into that eternal flatness again.

When we were down among the river’s things, it sometimes felt like we were just missing something that would blow our minds–that just around the next bend, just over the next hill, something beyond what we could imagine for ourselves was waiting. And we never did come across it. Not once on any of those drives. It was just us and the longing for something we couldn’t articulate, something no one else had or knew of. Something that would say this drive, this day, this life was worth it.

That’s how I feel about writing sometimes, like I hope I’m doing something that will take the Butcher and me someplace we didn’t even know we wanted to go. When I’m feeling incredibly reckless, I hope our other brother will be there to meet us.

But other times, I feel like I’m chasing ghosts. Nothing left to be caught.

Rachel’s Cat

There is nothing greater today than this video.

Thoughts

–Wow, Seth MacFarlane sucked last night.

–It made me sick to my stomach to see poor Christopher Plummer not only being linked to a movie he hated, but being linked via Nazi joke to a movie he hated.

–Adele was amazing

–Yesterday was a day of dog barf. I gave her Pepto to settle her stomach and this morning discovered a pile of vomit in my room with the Pepto tablet right in the middle. Which means either that her digestive tract is not working or she barfed it up yesterday shortly after I gave it to her and I just managed not to notice all day.

–What makes me feel old is when I read a book and two people are supposed to be attracted to each other even though one is a broody uncommunicative weirdo. I would LOVE to read a book about two broody uncommunicative weirdos falling in love. Or a book in which the broody uncommunicative weirdo starts opening up and thus the heroine begins to love him, instead of where the heroine begins to love him and thus he begins to open up. But I’m sure I found books like that wonderful when I was younger. All that “only I understand him!” junk.

–I have completed my major overhaul of Project X. It may insinuate that Ridley Wills II is a werewolf at the end. But I didn’t name him. I can’t decide if I will or not. But I’m proud of it.

–And I feel anxious about it. Like, okay, I’m writing at a level I’m proud of. But nothing is happening. Which isn’t true, but it’s so slow. Things are happening so slow. And what if I die?

–Ugh, see? This is why I need books about broody weirdos that aren’t just Beauty and the Beast retellings. I need stories in which the broody weirdo comes to realize that, even if she dies, it will be okay.