Current Novel

Each year I try to write at least one novel, which can take a few months. I spend the rest of the time revising or working on something smaller. I've done this since the summer I was 19. These novels haven't always been very good, but they usually contain some worthy material that I still dwell on years later (mentally speaking). Below is the first chapter of Horseshit, the book I'm revising now. Originally it was called High School Slave Narrative and then Like, Truancy. The original title felt too much like a description and not enough like a title. My initial concept, inspired by Hester Blum's narratives course at Penn State, which I took my first semester there (Fall 2004), was to write a slave or colonial narrative as if it were a John Hughes movie. I knew I wanted to write something like John Hughes, as a kind of challenge, and these ideas seemed to gel pretty quickly. I loved reading the narratives because they were like reality TV in the 19th and 18th Centuries. The authors work so hard to convince you of the validity of their stories, when they could just try to write the truth. I say this with massive respect to the slaves, of course. I don't feel capable of judging their writing, but they do make appeals to the reader regardless. The colonists are another story. I felt, also, that in high school we interpret events as being far more serious than they are. Teenagers always feel persecuted and disrespected, like slaves. Yet their pain is real, even if they don't have the experience to accurately contextualize its severity.

This brief chapter, really a prose poem meant to imitate Van Dyke Parks, was meant to be a short thematic introduction. All of the allusions relate to Maine. Originally the story was set in the fictional town of Walsingham, Maine, named after the spy. When I changed the location to Horseshit, Pennsylvania this chapter had to go. I tried writing a version relating to Pennsylvania, but it didn't come out too well. I could never quite get this chapter perfect, either, but I still enjoy it. This is the third draft, from July 23, 2007. I wanted a thematic introduction because it made the book feel like a long musical piece and also because this novel is made up of chapters focusing on various characters, some in first person and some in third person. There is a plot if you back away enough from the novel, but theme is something I had to really push in this case because the chapters do not have an obvious consecutive progression. With that in mind, this still sort of works.

“Ancient History”; or “Ancient History (in the Anglozoic)”

I was main, main I was. Ages ago my blood ran. Chesuncook, Kennebeck, Aroostook, Eagle Lake. Canada, special breast, Atlantic flood, some for all, and natural.

Once I was. I was myself. Now I’m Maine, Maine I am. Patron my style, succor my plate, longitude and latitude coordinate.

Long light, peaceful duress. Awakening eyes, ships in crest. All land is imperceptible without survey. Ribcages implanted in new soils continuously. Folks languished, laundered, learned, and lumbered. They laughed at their mistakes: the fires they couldn’t start, the spears that broke too easily, the slipstream of the fish. Always the cycle of the moon. They laughed when white faces spotted the trees, clubbed and dragged these fields up steeply hills—t-shaped, simple houses, sour faces of church and understanding. The common-pane windows.

Ages in the grass—I was at rest. Cozying wigwams around the fire wearing my birch bark sleeves, Abenakis hunting amid the Sycamore and Sagamores; amid the tidal waves of talking priests. Assimilation with Canadian pines; wilting wallflower, historical plume; brushing shoulders with the twig and needle. Colonists’ colorful clothes unfolding like white pinecone and tassel.

Maine coons and black-capped chickadees, the registers alive at Genuardis. These great outdoors. Moose cautioning kids across the street, whistles, white gloves, reflective hunting sashes. Honeybees in wintergreen, singing “The State Song of Maine” under wild blueberries.

And here Walsingham, that long lost face. Powdered dream, tricorn wreath; fishing the state in slate sharp sea. Almond redd, tucked-landlocked tow, mile stretch lines where you roe. Kids pacing steadily to and from school while parents look after the post office, the convenience store, the battery plant. Do not underestimate the power of minimum wage to transform a town. We live life parent-to-child. We believe in inalienable futures. Together we say,

Oh, Pine Tree State
Your woods, fields and hills
Your lakes, streams and rockbound coast
Will ever fill our hearts with thrills
And tho’ we seek far and wide
Our search will be in vain
To find a fairer spot on earth
Than Maine! Maine! Maine!