Kanlaon

Sole Fruit of Self’s Loins is arriving momentarily!

Self told him about this exhibit she’s been wanting to see:  “Steppe Warriors,” 12 ink-and-watercolor paintings by a young Mongolian artist named Zaya. It’s in Shooting Gallery at 839 Larkin, San Francisco, through this Saturday.

At the Asian Art Museum, there’s a show called “Out of Character:  Decoding Chinese Calligraphy.”  That one ends Jan. 13.

In the meantime, self has been busying herself with her literary journals.  She’s succeeded in getting the Pile of Stuff down to about half what it was, two months ago.  HOO-RAY!

In New Letters, Vol. 78, No. 2, there is a fascinating interview with the late Harry Crews.  In fact, it’s sort of a shock to realize the author is dead (He died March 2012, aged 76), because in the interview (conducted in 1989, when Crews was 47), he is so furiously alive.  Here’s an excerpt:

Interviewer:  Do you associate with other writers much?

Crews:  Not much.  I go to certain places –  conferences, universities and the like –  for no other reason than there are writers there whom I know and admire, and I like to spend a few days with them.  But to my mind, hanging out with five or six other writers all the time can be a shitty experience.  The reason being that writers have such enormous egos that they are hard to deal with on a day-to-day basis.  For that reason I’ve never understood how good-publishing writers are married to each other.  I don’t see how they make it, and by and large they don’t.

Interviewer:  Do you think it is possible for a writer to live a normal life, complete with wife and family, and still write meaningful fiction?

Crews:  Yes, I think it’s possible.  I have to think it is possible because people such as Cheever have done it.  Updike did it until he finally got divorced, but only after a long marriage and when the kids were up and grown.  I think it’s possible, but highly unlikely.  Of course, it’s highly unlikely that anybody’s going to stay married; but I think the nervous energy and preoccupation with what you are doing is such in writing that you have very little time to give to anyone else.  Inevitably, women become –  I’m speaking here of women, though if I were a woman writer I suppose it would be true of a man –  women become jealous of a typewriter.  All the hours and distracted moments that you give to the typewriter can’t be given to her.  A writer needs time, and when he needs it, it doesn’t matter if the kids are sick or you’re supposed to have dinner with her mother.  Fuck it!  You ain’t going!  That doesn’t sit well with wives.

Interviewer:  You said in A Childhood that you knew from an early age that you wanted to be a writer above all else.  Now that you are 47 and recognized as one of America’s best writers, has it all been worth it?  Has it been what you thought it would be?

Crews:  It’s never what you thought it would be because before you’ve published a novel, you think it is going to change your life and change it significantly.  That it’s going to lead to some sort of salvation.  That it’s going to make you happy.  It doesn’t do that.  Looking back over the shambles of my personal  life, I can’t say it’s all been worth it.  I have paid a lot.  Everything I’ve owned or loved.  I looked around one day, and I had made it; but I hadn’t brought anything or anybody to me.  There’s a question I can’t answer.  I don’t suppose any man could.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.