Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. --Flannery O'Connor,
There are times in people's lives when a significant event occurs and they're not aware of it--the last time you pick up a son before he's too heavy, the final kiss of a marriage gone bad, the view of a beloved landscape you'll never see again. Weeks later, I realized those were Dad's last words to me.
I don't miss my father, but without his shackles to strain against, the world is terrifying and vast. I have lost a kind of purpose, a reason to prove myself.
MY FATHER was a brilliant man, a true iconoclast, fiercely self-reliant, a dark genius, cruel, selfish, and eternally optimistic. Early in his sales career, a boss called him an "independent son of a bitch," which Dad took as the highest compliment he'd ever received. He wanted me to be the same way. Dad had no hobbies, no distractive activities. He didn't do household chores, wash the car,"
See there," he said. "The ants are drawing up and closing their doors. A book ain't the only thing there is to read. We best get going if we're going to."
Still writing tales?" he said. I told him yes and he nodded once, returning his attention to the snake. Very few of the boys I grew up with had finished high school, but they accepted that I was a writer. I was merely doing what other men did--following in my father's footsteps. Sonny was a plumber. The son of a local drunk was the town drunk in two towns. Sons of soldiers joined the army. That I had become a writer was perfectly normal."
The desktop held a patina of hieroglyphs representing years of student boredom--names and initials gouged into the wood, blackened by grime and pencil, shellacked over, then cobwebbed again with another generation's imprint.
Most grandiose gestures are suspect--the couple who renew their vows just before divorce or the politician who publicly swears he's clean, then enters rehab. Building
If you've used adverbs, look at them carefully. Adverbs are the weakest words; verbs are the strongest. Many, many times I've found that I have the wrong verb so I'm attempting to cheat and modify the wrong verb by using an adverb.
At the time I wasn't even sure what she meant--what does anyone do? We mark time until we die. She was still waiting for an answer. My roommate filled the silence. "He's a writer," he said. "Oh," she said. "What does he write about?" "His dick." She gave me a sharp look and said, "That sounds like pornography." "No," my roommate said. "If he writes about other people's dicks, it's porn. But if it's his own, it's art."
My car contained guns, bundles of cash I'd found hidden about the house, and boxes of vintage pornography. If I got pulled over and searched, I'd probably go to jail. If I had a wreck, money and porn would litter the interstate, mixed with my funeral suit, my grandfather's rifle, a shotgun, three hundred rounds of ammunition, the remnants of my father's ashes, and whatever was left of me.
Reading wasn't an attempt to educate myself. It was my chief escape from a world that, although gorgeous in landscape and rich with mountain culture, didn't provide what I needed--the promise of adventure, a life beyond the perimeter of hills. I often fantasized that I'd been adopted and had mysterious powers such as flying or teleportation. Books offered the promise of a world in which misfits like me could flourish. Within the pages of a ..
Vaughn nodded. Lije steaded himself and looked into the woods. "Never could abide no roof." "Ours ain't the best," Vaughn said. "Leaks come spring." Lije pointed at Venus faint above the distant ridge. "only roof-hole I ever did crave." "Evening star ain't a hole." "Then how's that light get through?"
I'd forced myself to interact with so much pornography, I no longer regarded my wife in a sexual manner. Each time I tried, my mind filled with images of fetish porn. I could admire her dress, legs and hips, but the response was aesthetic and intellectual, as if studying art I couldn't afford.
He demanded to know what I could learn from him, since my subject matter of Kentucky was unfathomably different from his--wealthy people on the East Coast. I became angry. Here was one more older man presenting himself as an obstacle.