I just picked up The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski and have just finished the first twenty pages, aka “The Hook.” As a writer I always marvel at reading a sharp hook, like a little leaguer might stare in amazement, mouth agape, as Ken Griffey Jr. hits a grand slam into the second deck. If you aren’t familiar with The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, it was the “hot” book of the summer of 2008, an Oprah selection and a NY Times bestseller. I don’t know yet what it is about though the story as described in the sleeve reminds me a bit of the timeless story of Hamlet with some multi-generational dog breeding thrown in. Everyone loves dogs, and just about everyone I know loves brooding and indecisive Danish princes. Imagine our hero walking the dog . . .
To scoop or not to scoop. That is the question.
Oh yeah, back to the hook. Edgar’s hook amazed me. The first few paragraphs seemed vaguely familiar. Had I read it before? Yes, of course I had and you may have also, though we are most intimate with only the first sentence. It is in fact another take on the famous purple prose hook “It was a dark and stormy night” by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The scene as described is essentially identical, though one is set in the alleys of London while the other the dark and stormy streets of Pusan, South Korea.
Here they are side-by-side.
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. Through one of the obscurest quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the police, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was wending his solitary way. He stopped twice or thrice at different shops and houses of a description correspondent with the appearance of the quartier in which they were situated, and tended inquiry for some article or another which did not seem easily to be met with.”
Paul Clifford
By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
“After dark the rain began to fall again, but he had already made up his mind to go and anyway it had been raining for weeks. He waved off the rickshaw coolies clustered near the dock and walked all the way from the naval base, following the scant directions he’d been given, through the crowds in the Kweng Li market square, past the vendors selling roosters in crude rattan crates and pigs’ heads and poisonous-looking fish lying blue and gutted and gaping on racks, past gray octopi in glass jars, past old women hawking kimchee and bulgoki, until he crossed the Tong Gang on the Bridge of Woes, the last landmark he knew.”
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
By David Wroblewski
I admit to being a superstitious writer in that I never start a story with a reference to weather. It is trite and “going through the motions” in my opinion. That was part of the reason I decided to call this writing blog “Dark and Stormy” because I refuse to have my own writing commence with a reference to either sun, wind, snow, sleet or rain. Now, I suppose if a character is in fact a weatherman or woman, I’ll lighten up and toss some weather references into that sharp end of the hook, but generally I’m attached to the rule like a moist tongue on a frozen flagpole.
Do I consider Wroblewski’s writing purple prose? Perhaps not the Bulwer-Lytton variety, but the hook is definitely violet-tinged. Does this mean the rest of the “hot” novel’s 500 pages will leave me cold? The forecast is unclear. I don’t know if I should dig out my galoshes or my flip-flops.
She wonders why her nation’s men don’t look at her,
Mere laughing and don’t consider her,
It is because they are legends here,
For their large size in a cold land,
They see no need to pick that which can be picked at home,
So she sleeps on midsummer’s eve,
Seven flowers under her pillow,
Snapped three centimeters up from the earth,
By the neighboring girl in concrete block 209,
Given to her to put under her pillow,
Pillow of pickled herring,
Because she grasps her pillow too tight,
In hands that are washed over and over,
Dreaming upon a pillow of pickled herring with seven flowers underneath,
Will bring her a husband,
Who watches her feet,
And knows when to hit the sabar and when not to,
And is always a good man for swaggering down to the beach,
To pick a fine fish to be stewed in the manner of Dakar,
For something less than a kronor,
Peanuts replaces cream,
Atlantic where there once was the Baltic,
And a table dressed in indigo
I’ve been playing around with a service called Scribd. Through them I’ve published a short collection of bursts from way back in time. Feel free to download yourself.
A syringe of lidocaine before it starts to get better.
A rightful stimulus to render an appropriate response.
The aftermath is a planned better.
The hour just before dawn
it may not seem like it will get better.
Far from it but
It does.
Homes in foreclosure will often lead to
something better
but the good is years away
and unavailable now to thrust stormed minds
and racing hearts into happiness
Some times reduce you to ash
before you had planned on becoming it and then,
like the debut drop falling on your head from a
leaking roof
the better comes,
unannounced,
and this was after
you were ash for only a lucky short while.
It is good when that drop falls.
But you still get all that came before that.
The White House Medical Unit, the US government office responsible for the medical needs of White House staff and visitors, is preparing for all possible outcomes of this November general election. That includes a McCain presidency. The unit is poised to revamp its facilities in case the Republican ticket prevails.
“We’re a top-tier facility as one would expect considering that we are charged with monitoring and maintaining the chief executive’s health,” said Dr. William Haas, Colonel, United States Air Force. “But we have to stay one step ahead and be prepared for every contingency.”
Staying one step ahead includes a modernized crash cart equipped to handle such conditions as stroke and cardiac arrest. Across from the elevator whisking the president between his living quarters and the oval office, a new room is being prepped for a cutting-edge, multi-million dollar CT-MRI-PET scanner.
“It’s the top of the line and will not only help us diagnose disease before it becomes a problem but will assist in real-time emergency procedures such as endovascular treatment of stroke and coronary blockage. Such treatment needs to be conducted within the golden hour,” Haas explained.
The golden hour is a term in emergency medicine used to describe the short window physicians have to treat neurological events such as stroke before severe or permanent brain damage occurs. For cardiac events, there is more time to stabilize patients such as the president, though it is more likely the doctors and medical technicians of the medical unit will move the patient quickly to Bethesda Naval Medical Center.
“There has been some talk of installing a high-speed patient conveyance system using a mag-lev track that runs between the unit operating room and the Marine One medivac landing zone on the South Lawn, but we’re still waiting to see what happens in November and if there will be any room in the budget for that,” said Haas.
Dr. Haas also added that several other improvements to the facilities are being considered including a special broadband link between the unit and other essential offices in case it became necessary to exercise the 25th Amendment. Also under consideration are coded locks on the pharmaceutical cabinets, especially for cabinets storing powerful pain medications.
“Again, we are trying to think of every possible scenario,” he said. “I’m confident we can become practically a world-class trauma and rehabilitation center within three months if we are called to be that.”
The old reservoirs were deep
so there is no sleep
and no time to conspire in the temple
So much depends
upon
a shovel in the hand
of a child
glazed with rain
water
culture
and
dragon boats with no life jackets aboard
just buoyant ideas
Keep the line taut and the fuel tank topped off
You shouldn’t wear glasses because they make you
unworthy to your sister’s
eye
and foreign words are discouraged
because the rice doesn’t know them
and won’t grow
at their whispering
It’s our water culture
and his great leap forward
from a ramp built on the skulls of your brothers
lower your eyes so that he sees you don’t weep
For that old reservoir is deep
And no time to sleep
And no time to make plans in the temple
I’m driving down a steep road in San Francisco. The road ahead of me appears to descend precipitously to the edge of the bay. Parking is packed and the road is narrow. I slow to a stop at a stop sign right in front of a dive shop. I’ve got nowhere to go so I look inside. In static stances are mannequins in wet suits and buoyancy control vests. The mannequins are all wearing huge afros atop their fake heads.
Driving forward will only serve to put me in the bay now. I’m at the end of the road. What I need to do is a three point turn, but there are cars on each side of the road and space is very tight. There are so many cars but not a soul to be seen walking around. I look out upon the bay to see several dive flags and bubbles floating to the surface of the darkened water. Throwing it in reverse does not seem an option to me.
Interpretation:
Common anxiety dream brought on by the climax of the electoral primary season.
The psychopaths watch as Ferris Bueller hands his son a map of the New York subway system
Ferris says it’s all there kid
There’s a day game Ferris adds
The son looks up at the balding father and asks
What am I supposed to do Dad
You do freedom son, freedom says Ferris
Why couldn’t we do this on a school day the kid says
And then the subway doors slide closed between them
and one of the commuting psychopaths straightens up in his seat
remembering that his workout videos say to always keep his
core tight
It was with great sadness I learned of the Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin’s death in a freakish encounter with a sting ray on the Great Barrier Reef. Although I had seen the man less and less over the years, I still recall with fondness scrambling by his side over sand dunes in search of scorpions, poking sticks under rocks to agitate rattlesnakes, and scuba diving in the South China Sea (in his khaki-every-zoologist/safari guide uniform he always wore) to swim with sea turtles. Being the consummate showman he was, he played footsie with the rider of the pale water buffalo-camel-ostrich-whatever, always understanding the value of an ounce of peril mixed with a pint of knowledge.
I fear for men like the Crocodile Hunter and Timothy Treadwell, the Grizzly Man. They make a career telling a cold, unresponsive camera lens to be careful of fangs, and teeth, and claws and spitting venom. Take one . . . let’s do it again . . . take two . . . no, that doesn’t sound right . . . take three . . . okay, with a little editing we’ll clean it up Steve . . . Tim . . . Bucky . . .
That’s right . . . Bucky. Bucky Mularcky, the Shark Wrestler. He’s actually the guy who started it all, the original. He was the man upon whom Peter Benchley based the character of Quint in his famous novel and film about lurking death in the depths, Jaws. He may be more myth than man now. I only heard one story of the Shark Wrestler, told to be by the man who everybody thinks Quint is actually based on.
“Quint’s not me,” he said. “It’s him. Buck Mularcky, a retired jockey with one arthritic knee who made a second career out of taking rich, fat Boston blue bloods out on a good ol’ shark hunt. Instead Buck dived in and wrestled with them. Made those wall street types piss right there on deck with his antics.”
Buck Mularcky bit off more than he could chew on that last charter when two great whites bit him in half like he was a bloody chum ball. He had grown too comfortable with danger, fallen in love with the hero, The Shark Wrestler, he had become in the eyes of those city cats. He was Narcissus, only he had the whole Atlantic gray to look down into and see his beauty smiling back at him with several rows of sharpened teeth.
Okay, Bucky didn’t have a camera. Both the Croc Hunter and the Grizzly Man did. I wonder if they saw their own reflections in the camera lens?
Who’s next for the death of scale-shell-fur-claw? I met a man who raises redworms, Eisenia fetida. He dived into a vat three feet high of worms when I stopped by his warehouse on business I will not discuss here. He had an audience of one. Think if he had a whole nation? I was more than a bit shocked at his behavior, but later I learned that worm husbandry was a second career for him. He had been a competitive skier and had lived in the French Alps the last twenty-five years. It all came together. Hunt McLish is an adrenaline junky that, if I am to call myself human, I must save from his own foolishness.
You see there’s a reason to fear. There’s a purpose to not forgetting the fear. We are here today because our ancestors feared that which could kill them. They didn’t go walking up to bears, wrestling sharks or jumping on top of mature crocodiles. Respect and fear of that which has the potential to kill is a survival trait passed down through thousands of generations. To try to turn off that fear, disregard it, embrace that which can kill and thus turn off the wisdom of the species, the generations, is mortal folly, though yes indeed, damn good entertainment!
