Essay

Doug Hawley Week in Saragun Springs

Introduction

I want to thank Doug Hawley for accepting the open invitation to Saragun Springs. I would go to a lengthy introduction, but through his words, I feel, Doug does a great job introducing himself. There is a fine line between being a wise curmudgeon and a pain in the ass, and I find that Doug keeps (mostly) on the correct side of that divide. Of course you would not be reading this if I thought otherwise. We welcome you to his world beginning today and on through Friday.

Leila

Mr. Writer

Fran Leibowitz wrote an honest book in 1981 which told it as it is. Homosexuals are well over represented in the arts, not that there is anything wrong with that. They earned it with talent. That isn’t the point I want to make, but it does illustrate her honesty. Another thing she said (I may be paraphrasing, it’s been a long time) is that there is only one “ize” and that is fertilize. That’s a little overboard, but I hate to see “weaponize”. Does it mean “use as a weapon”, then say so. There are a couple of worse ones: “incentivize’ and “medicalize”. It is to ralph.

It really hurts when I see some variation on “Baseball is where (could be when) there are nine players on a field”, particularly by someone who is supposed to be a writer, or even literate. Ask anyone “Is baseball a location or a time?” Even many politicians know the right answer.

A couple of words are being changed for no good reason. Past tense of cast has been cast, but now I’m seeing casted. Google backs the old man on that one. “mike” has been the short form of microphone for years, now “mic”. Because the object is pronounced mike-ro-phone, I object. The pro audio industry backs me up according to Google.

As a certified fogey, I object to the verbing of nouns, and the nouning of verbs. I may be given a task, but I will never be tasked with. No one may approach me with a “big ask”. I might be amenable to a request. I could go on, but I’m sure you’ve seen enough.

A rogue’s gallery of clichés (being introduced by a cliché) which have become intolerable:

“Walk it back” for lied or mistaken

“Optics” for appearance

“Receipts” for proof or evidence

“At the end of the day” I welcome Morpheus, I don’t come to a conclusion

When I was an actuary, one of my jobs was to write insurance policies. The job was mostly assembling boiler plate, but our government overlords were concerned about readability for the poorly educated. In order to pass that hurdle one had to get a high Flesch score. Despite the name, it wasn’t the least bit sexy. Short sentences got high scores, sentences with clauses got low scores. Something like “Then” “he” “left” would get a winning number. I don’t know if Flesch affected books, but I think it is the reason newspapers started to break up sentences into choppy parts to prove readability. In order to reach the lowest level we get writing that keeps stopping at the wrong place. Clauses are evil; starting a sentence with a conjunction is divine according to the rule makers. I still believe that a period is a red light, not a green light, and will write for an educated reader.

Some people, perhaps someone from Literally Stories may disagree, but I hold out for “issue” meaning something debatable, not a sore back or a grammar error Using “issue” for mistake, error, or problem looks like weak tea to me. Call it what it is: Broken arm, not an arm issue.

As the president of the Society To Preserve Affect And Effect, I’d like to destroy the ubiquity of “impact”. An asteroid hits the earth, sure that’s an impact. I get sick from the flu, that’s the effect of a virus. Someone steals my license plate that affects me. “Impactful” is the evil child of impact.

“Community” and “actually” are two words which are frequently unnecessary, and in the case of “community” misleading. I live in Lake Grove which is a community. Scientists, Polish people, the disabled, and so many more that are labeled community show no characteristics of “community”. “Scientist” is a profession, “Polish” is a national group, and the “disabled” share a status. There is no difference between “scientists” and “scientific community” that I know. Community has become a pointless writing twitch and actually has been redundant for a long time, but still used. Compare “He went to school” and “Actually he went to school”. They say the same thing.

Periodically I see the advice: “Develop a brand.” I believe brands are for cereals and live stock. A writer with a brand is predictable and not that creative. It may sell books, but it stifles creativity.

Brevity is good. I don’t know if Stephen King included that in his book on writing, but if he did he’s not following his advice. I like to write with the economy of Hemingway. No metaphors, similes, or description of the furniture unless relevant.

As an uneducated writer, I ignore these two writing rules. Eschew adverbs, and show, don’t tell. It may happen, but I doubt that a reader who comes to “she drank thirstily from the faucet” concludes that he is reading a poorly written story, even if a lit professor objects. “Show don’t tell” works in graphic novels, but many people still read the Bible with all of its “tell not show”, and telling is an efficient way to provide information.

I know I’m fighting a losing battle, but it allows me to keep my curmudgeon badge.

.

Epokha by Dale Williams Barrigar

(“Boo in broken chair by pile of books”-provided by DWB)

In the mid-1860s Feodor Dostoevsky published his prophetic, hilarious, tragic novella Notes from the Underground, or Letters from the Underworld, in his own magazine, Epokha, or Epoch, which he edited with his brother, Mikhail.

Epokha was a short-lived, monthly literary magazine which fell apart after less than two years due to the death of Mikhail, plus more of Feodor’s endless financial problems, never helped by his occasional crazed, maniacal gambling binges.

But Dostoevsky’s self-published novella has never fallen apart. This work takes its place on the vast stage of nineteenth century Western literature as one of the most profound, influential, lasting and memorable works created in that century of upheaval, horror, and beauty which produced so many grand, great and good works.

Dostoevsky had been converted from a skeptical, stoical agnostic into a believer by his time in the Siberian prison camps. He was sent there, after a mock execution which turned him into a full-blown epileptic for life, for reading and disseminating revolutionary literature. Not for planning to instigate a revolution, only for reading and passing on material which criticized the czar and the oppressive ways of Russian life.

Only one book was allowed in the prison camps. Dostoevsky was already extremely familiar with the Bible, just as all Russians of his place and time were. But in Siberia, when it became his only reading material, he went deeper, much deeper than he’d ever gone before.

It was the life and teachings of Jesus and his apostles as presented in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament which converted Dostoevsky into a believer.

He read the life and stories of Jesus in the same way he’d read secular literature before he was sent to Siberia, which is to say as creative writing, in other words as ART.

Jesus said, Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the middle.

My poem “The Halloween Crow” is very much a take-off on Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground, since my poem is a kind of letter from the underworld from a narrator who has a lot in common with Dostoevsky’s underground man.

This poem contains the phrase “light of the body,” another quotation from Jesus.

The light of the body, in my poem, is the small flame of the seer, the truth-sayer, and the silent poet and while there are very few of us in the modern world, there are also many among us on another level.

Harold Bloom called it the “saving remnant.” Bloom wrote, “Even among Jews, that small, isolated race, Jesus himself seeks only a saving remnant.” Bloom, himself a Jewish genius, and not a believer in the divinity of Jesus, said that Jesus was the greatest genius who ever lived, smarter than all the other geniuses who ever lived put together.

Wallace Stevens wrote, “How high that highest candle lights the dark.”

This poem is based on a real incident and a real bird in a real place at a real time. The words, with no wordiness, are an effort to capture this experience.

Edgar Allan Poe, who also published most of his own work in magazines he himself edited, was one of Dostoevsky’s favorite writers. Poe’s mad monologists influenced Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, who in turn influenced Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, among other masterpieces, like Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” and The Stranger of Camus, Howl by Ginsberg and much of Nietzsche.

On his way to Siberia, Dostoevsky wrote in a letter to someone: “This is my last message to you. In sorrow, seek happiness.”

The HALLOWEEN Crow!

He sat high across the way from

me in my midwestern town.

He was perched on the old

pinnacle of the opposite, gloomy,

semi-urban apartment building

outside Chicago.

But only for a moment.

I saw him land there, sitting.

Then he swung, out toward me,

like he flew right to me from

across the street, Houdini in

black feathers toward my second-story

apartment window where I sat

in my broken chair, my Siberian Husky

Bucephalus beside me

dreaming of Mary.

I was in my chair, but flying.

I WAS IN MY CHAIR BUT

FLYING ONLY FOR A MOMENT

then with good old Mr. Edgar Poe Crow.

Check out the Halloween Bird, bro!

And we were flying together, both he

and I being so high together, flying

in that imaginary moment to where

the sky broke open (which happens

when you die).

And the shot thought was thought

like a thought shot through me:

the Christ-like

light of the body is seen as demonic

by these moneyed sinners.

He was flying right toward me

and for me.

Before he disappeared.

While waving goodbye, goodbye!

d.w.b.

D. Williams Barrigar lives in the rough-edged, blue-collar midwestern suburbs and sometimes the woods. His connection to the underground remains strong and proud. He assiduously avoids the affluent suburbs and all other locations whose well-manicured parks and lawns are almost invariably posted with uptight signs which declare: “No Dogs Allowed.” The underground allows, and celebrates, dogs. You get looked down upon a lot; but it’s also much easier to avoid surveillance, enough to maintain your sanity most of the time – in the underground.