brianrayfiction.com Blog

Saturday morning. The sky opens and leaves streets in NC gushing with water. I head onto the highway for McIntyre Books for an 11 am reading. When I reach my exit, Google Maps says “Take a left at 64-West.” I look at my directions. I look at the road. Going left at I-64 means I would drive onto I-64 East. Why doesn’t Google just tell me to go I-64 East. Oh, why do they always do this?

So I do what any natural person would do. I assume that my gut is right and go the wrong way, driving for about 20 minutes. This means I lose 40 minutes at least in the end.

I arrive at the book store in the midst of a flood. They say, “It’s okay, Brian.” For the first time in my life I want them to say, “Nobody came to your reading anyway, so you didn’t let anyone down.” But I did.

Good news is we’re rescheduled for 0ct 9. Now, a few days later I give a reading in Greenvillle full of dinner tables. It’s great. I read with Joni Tenvis, who read a little bit about everything – including a job at a cemetery. Definitely grimmer than working at a steel mill. Among some familiar faces in the audience and surprises were John Jeter and George Singleton.

Now I’m wrapping up my first day of the fall semester. Almost. Still have a three-hour seminar to sit through. At least I get Mon, Wed, Fri off so to speak. It will help now that the book tour is kicking into high gear. I’ve got something every weekend from now through mid October. If anyone’s interested in buying a book so that I’ll be sure to afford the oil changes and tune-ups ahead, you’re welcome to do so. Otherwise, I’m fully prepared to walk up to strangers on the street with my novel and say, “Hey there, sir. How are you? Good, good. Can I ask you a question?” Or, no. Perhaps I should sit on the curb and shout, “Good afternoon, how are ya’ll? Do you have a couple of minutes? You see, I’m an emerging author whose aunt is in the hospital with amnesia…”

All this said in jest. Like all panhandlers, I have 50k in the bank. Seriously, dude.

Finally, the new Pynchon novel is either in my gym bag or my apartment. I’m so thrilled. The last Pynchon book I read the whole way through was Mason & Dixon. I’ve made it about 1/2 through GR. I think Pynchon might be the only author whom you can claim as an influence while having read less than .5 of his works. Anyway, this one’s only about 300 pages! This is a great new direction for him. I was expecting Inherent Vice would fall around, oh, say, a gagillion billion pages.

Other updates: Hub City has secured funds for the second first novel prize. Now this promises to be confusing. “Hub City is pleased to announce the second first novel prize.” Wait. The first second novel prize? I like the sound of that much better, must say.

Wrapping up another major revision of my new top secret novel. Book touring. Watching weird movies (Eraserhead, anyone?) What a summer. The latest cult film, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, has got me thinking a lot about constraints, audience expectations, and creativity. No easy answers here, but I was stunned to find out how badly that film flopped in the US despite considerable success abroad. And, about fifteen years later, not even JK Rowling could convince Warner Bros to give the cult auteur a chance at the Harry Potter franchise. Of course, having swum the depths of Tim Burton’s career, the fact that big movie companies give creative directors a hard time doesn’t come as a surprise.

I’m of the mind Brazil’s US flop had nothing to do with Gilliam and everything to do with terrible decisions aimed at mainstreaming the film. They cut out the best parts, glued on a cheesy happy ending, trashed the original symphonic score, and then to top things off they tossed in a bunch or “rock music” to “attract teenagers.” It so happens that Warner Bros. tried to do the same thing with Burton’s Batman back in ‘89, foisting the hipster god Prince onto Burton who miraculously managed to ditch most of the corny 80s music for Elfman’s now-unforgettable motion picture score. (Ever wonder why there were two soundtracks to that film? Now you know.) Really, people. Imagine watching this film with “Purple Rain” playing in the back ground. It’s like eating a peanut butter and shrimp sandwich. Both good but the idea of them combined triggers your gag reflex.

What’s this got to do with writing? Way ahead of you. I’ve given a lot of thought to the love-hate relationship between creativity and marketability. When and where they meet, how they fall in love, and what do their kids look like? On one side of the spectrum we have terrible works like LA Candy. On the other we have DeLillo’s The Names (my favorite novel but not a big seller). And then we have miracle writers like Pynchon, Marquez, Rowling, Gaiman, and others who do more than straddle two worlds. Writers like these folks take the biggest risks. They break the most rules, in some ways. And they wind up legends in their own time. And now for me to reference my own novel and compare myself to the pantheon. (What’s that, you say? Stick my foot in my mouth? No problem.) My own first novel, Through the Pale Door, takes significant risks that seem to be paying off when it comes to sales.

What has this got to do with Southern Lit and reality? Way ahead of you. Over the past few months I’ve heard many writers, editors, readers, and agents say the word “reality,” speaking to me or about me or about Southern Lit. I’ve heard the old adage that asserts the “it really happened that way” argument holds no water for creative writers. I beg to disagree. Yes. Credulity can be strained. Stories need a degree of verisimilitude. But the “it really happened that way” case means, to me, that writers, et al need to open their minds to what constitutes reality. For example: a friend recently told me the story of how a distant relative was obliged to attend a friend’s funeral with a knife in his back pocket and a bodyguard in tow because he feared some attendees would try to settle an old score. I recently heard a somewhat famous (and true) story of a town in Tennessee that spent an entire day trying to inflict capital punishment on an elephant for killing its owner – they finally had to hang the thing with a construction crane. Many writers, et al would tell me that none of these events could make a decent story. But they certainly could. If you can tell it over a table, you can write it down. It’s a matter of how confident your voice is. (Marquez has said the same thing, but I guess nobody remembers.)

All right. Taste is subjective, but mine’s less so. I promise. The End. Been writing for 12 hours a day the past two or three days. Now it’s time to rejoin the world.