Author: WPM

South FL

Reading Tom Gold Weathers, Jr.

Most likely, Tom would not believe it: my recent reading binge of his indie-published books.

I’ve read them now, but for a while I had yet to finish a journey through several of his paperbacks. Some I read were were small storybooks or collections of verse (those items he called “poem things”). There were also essay-like ruminations, and engaging articles observing people around him. I read all of these and for good measure re-visited a favored older book or two.

Many of us called him “Stob” back in the 1970s because he once worked part-time staking out house foundations, literally hammering stobs into the ground. He compared it to structuring written pieces.

Tom Weathers has an author persona that straddles the line between a Southern gentleman writer of intelligence and refinement and a Waffle House good ole boy scribbler. He can pull the mix off. His writing is congenial and well-constructed, wide in its readability appeal.

Tom’s published ventures are in sum his crónicas. His reports of life as he sees it, come from vantage points often located in Shelby, NC or Gastonia, NC. Most accounts are humble and honest, almost none are showy. He also produced a wealth of travelog writing and photos based on his roadtrips throughout America and Canada in his pal Conservative Bob’s BMW Roadster.

With Weathers in general, here are a few things you get: inside accounts of close family events, astute profiles of friends and work peers, clever cosmic realizations, tales of his uphill veneration and loss of certain women very dear to him, the odd twists of fate and Vonnegut-like moments of karass, or as we called it, intertwingle, where lives magically cross other lives. e.g., Who among us but Tom would have someone like a tanned post-pubescent George Hamilton drift in and out of his personal history chapters?

I stumble over the riffs about physics and engineering that are beyond my grasp. It’s in Tom’s DNA. Once when we traveled together on an Amtrak to NYC, he talked about the theory of relativity as our train ran next to another train going in the opposite direction.

He is an admirer of Faulkner as well as Castaneda and Hemingway. His writing is often understated, and he withholds content that could be considered “unseemly.” Part of doing so is brought by the caution of being un viejo wary of being too brash.

Tom’s writing has always put me in the spirit to write a little bit myself. After all, he was my editor and supervisor in my first writing job out of college. His stuff has always influenced the way I write.

I’d tell him that. It’s praise. In previous times, hearing it would please him. But for now he’s conspicuous in his absence. O Lost, and by the wind grieved…Stob.

Tom Wolfe’s novel “Back to Blood”

wolfe author

I’ll give the author credit for opening the action with two issues that inflame the senses and test the sanity of every South Floridian: dealing with ethnic differences and finding a damn place to park.

Within its folds of fat, the book does contain some good writing and entertaining scenes, if only (ojalá que) Wolfe weren’t so repetitious, tedious and hell-bent on the obvious. Narrative takes a backseat to excess, and his snarky novelistic tune about Miami becomes a highly exaggerated and unlistenable rap.

If Wolfe or an editor had taken a scalpel to the manuscript and cut the hyperbole and tirades down to reasonable size, we might have been reading something special.

As is, I can’t get through it all. Not even close.

Tom Wolfe was certainly a fine writer, someone who dove in and lived what he wrote about. We owe a debt to him for his pioneering and producing some landmark works in Literary Journalism and American fiction with attitude. Like “Right Stuff” and “Bonfire of the Vanities.”

God knows what sort of real or imaginary head trip Wolfe was on during his research days and writing time in South Florida. Maybe “Return to Blood” was a statement to those other Florida biggie writers, saying, “Hey I can write crazier shit than you can.”

“The Secret History” by Donna Tartt

(review from 2014 with small add in 2024)

This is Tartt’s Vermont winter garden where characters are carefully developed and tended. In the early chapters the chaos of college grows like grass in the distance, not in the forefront (later that chaos will manifest like tall gnarly weeds).

Narrator Richard Papen chooses to escape from the crowd and joins a small elite group of rogue Classical Studies students, five of them, who are home-schooled (in a way) and students of the erudite and mysterious Professor Julian. Julian’s advice is to not waste bookstore money on “Goodbye, Columbus.” When the faculty reviews Professor Julian by survey, student Henry says words to the effect, “How can they grade a deity?”

Are they outcasts or intellectual saints? Classic scholars or pretenders? Cold-blooded killers or repentant bunglers?

It’s a mix, from the obnoxious Bunny to the placid and caring Henry to the wholesome twins, and so forth. Richard himself seems the one most like a fish out of water.

The plot unfolds slowly, as Tartt takes us on excursions into the countryside and into bleak halls of hardwood floors, tables laden with whisky, unpatched roofs that allow snow, and grandiose old houses gone bohemian. The mental excursions are ours via Richard. Trepidation, doubt, mistrust, admiration, and in the case of the girl in the group an unfulfilled adoration. Some screwy happenings take place. A conspiracy is likely, and Richard is riding the fence in a dangerous position. While the story unravels artfully, Tartt (who was in college when she wrote this) makes a few missteps with contrived plot events, just a couple that seem too coincidental and mechanical. Hard to find flaw, however.

Some chapters – like the one in which Richard spends semester break alone – are densely atmospheric and make for compelling reading. Things slow down as Tartt describes each person in the group’s psychologically detailed experiences with the bad side of Bunny Corcoran. Bunny is one of the worst villains I’ve read. Then, toward the end of Part 1 and into Part 2, the story accelerates again and pulls us back in. There is little relenting (other than maybe an overly long stay at the Corcorans before the funeral) all the way to the end.

A terrific book, a novelist’s extravaganza of technique and talent, in story movement and especially in characterization. I appreciated this even more the second time around.

Miami Novel / Climate Change

“Things are getting rough out there; High water everywhere…” -Bob Dylan

The colorful characters from the novel Oceanaire return. Property Manager Leon goes on vacation to Texas and drops out of sight, abandoning Lease Manager Gloria and her residents to make do for themselves. On Halloween, atmospheric conditions bring a freak northeaster and a wall of water. Meanwhile, Leon is still on the highway far from Miami, trying to sort out his life. Everyone’s fate lies in the balance.

Now available at Amazon and other online retailers in paperback or Kindle.

Short Stories: “Parts Department”

Paperback is for sale on Amazon and other online book retailers.

Nine short fiction pieces – a mix of dark humor with a dash of surrealism. Souls adrift, the blues, and the underlying quest for home and happiness.

NOTES ABOUT THE 9 STORIES … from the author William P. Moore

1– Bayberry is a wayward character long-held in a dusty trunk, a figment on faded typing paper. In this short piece, he’s cut to size and freed to the public page, along with abstract images to describe Key West.

2 – Written in appreciation of Hemingway’s “After the Storm.” Contains an idea of layering, and humans living in husks or shells like a Russian doll. The item sought after is a squabbled-over domestic treasure as opposed to a sunken ocean liner.

3– “Advanced Level of Play” could have been more about Masked Man but the road led to video games and to Stan Birchard, a reclusive resident from Oceanaire,who crosses over from that novel (as do a few others in later stories).

4 – “Along the Fall Line” is based on a vision of a pretty young woman on rollerblades, like once skated the streets and walkways in South Beach. Having the story take place in Columbia, SC was the biggest leap. The theme of “fall from grace” fit the local river geography and is resonant to the storyline.

5 – “Orange Bowl Days” is an attempt is to make memorable characters in captured moments…odd moments, like Ulyanna in the bathtub studying a pharmacology book.

6 – The next two stories are tied via Teri and her mother Anna and crazy father John. As gloomy as they are, maybe some will see humor. The niece character Shannon is a reimagined representation of a girl I knew when a teenager in Sandbridge, VA who lived in her aunt’s house that summer.

7 – Is mercifully short. A shot, so to speak, at Southern Grotesque. Soso is an imaginary town. A real-life drive to Aiken on a decaying country highway with ruined scenery evoked an atmosphere of mediocrity and nihilism.

8 – “Blue Chile” takes place in an fantasized version of that country. It is a morality play of sorts, involving faith, situational ethics, religion, and even a bit of sibling rivalry. The Beto character from Oceanaire, and Eligio Carnación, make appearances here. Narrated by Beto’s sister.

9 – The last piece is a New Orleans vignette. This story also has character intersections (Eddie Lapham, for one) and pre-dates a modified version of this scene eventually used in a future novel.

These sort of ties and intersections between characters matter to me in my writer’s imaginary world, but I don’t expect readers to realize and compute the connections; at best they raise curiosity.

“Desolation Angels” – Kerouac

I read it in the 1970s and decided earlier this summer to go back and revisit. Mellowed in most all my habits by now, I took my time and relished the clarity and beauty in Kerouac’s prose. This time I better recognized his visions, and appreciated his sharp reporter’s eye for life on the streets among the poor and artistic and the beat – and the pretenders too, in America and in Algiers or Mexico or Paris. His views are amazingly prophetic, inserted unobtrusively, on social and environmental conditions as well as cultural strata and public attitudes.

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This book is more meditative and patiently presented than “On the Road,” where constant acceleration urges the narrative forward. “Desolation Angels” is less screenplay-like and more a spiritual testimony. It’s by far my favorite of all his books.

Kerouac details his life journey in the year 1957. A hundred pages in, I had to remind myself that it is not a work of fiction but autobiographical, or what some today call “autofiction.” A full list of the corresponding real-life names of the characters is commonly available in roster form on any article that thoroughly examines the book. Yet, it’s a small matter where it belongs on an academic chart of genres and sub-genres. The writing is so entertaining and soulful, and the imagery and themes so rich and resonant that the book crosses over into the land of literary fiction and certainly merits being there.

Kerouac based the structure and Parts on changes in location, starting with his solitude working a summer in a national park fire tower, and concluding with his return to be with Memére at her simple haven in Florida. In between, he meets up and shares adventures with a vast cast of fellow poets and writers, the Beats.

He has gone from lonely, spartan living in the mountain tower to sleeping bags under the stars to shared apartment crowds to the womb at Mom’s house. We think his account ends in Florida, but it doesn’t. Kerouac is too restless. The book reaches its finale with his rapid exodus back to Mexico City only to find his friend Gaines has died. He travels to New York where he and his striving writer-poet friends gather and consider their new status as known, published authors. As with many a hero’s journey, the story leaves the suggestion that the quest is often more rewarding than the realization of obtainment.

Novella “Pedro Páramo” – A Little Book Report about a Gigantic Book

Its sparseness and preoccupation with power and death and doomed love is in the best Spanish literature tradition and brings to mind Garcia Lorca. Beyond that, the story’s drift into the surreal (or anything-can-happen world of magic realism) precedes and sets the table for the later extravagances of Borges and Marquez.

In his younger days as a rising writer in a circle of other rising writers, Gabriel Garcia Marquez reportedly took this book to the woodshed and studied it for a solid year. That alone is testimony to the brilliance of Juan Rulfo.

The first person POV narrator, name of Juan Presidio, is sent off on a journey by his dying mother to the town of Calmay to find his runaway father (Pedro Páramo) and to pass along her bitter reprimands. Juan encounters a mule-driver along the way, and they travel together toward the town. In these opening pages to the book, the mule-driver provides some background and chilling forebodings about the town.

The tension of narrator Juan Preciado’s trip into a land that God forgot is heightened by the details. We begin to feel uneasy when Juan takes to his initial lodging, a frightening room with no windows or furniture and a dirt floor in a house operated by a spirit, or maybe she’s just a zombie witch. The narrative has its share of ghouls, fools, hucksters, and angels.

Calmay is by most accounts a hell hole filled with death and doom and ghosts. Juan is already entangled in a purgatory of sorts. Much later in the book, Juan emerges from his dark existence into the town plaza where he meets his fate. Again there is dirt, and he swallows it. It’s dirt of the final grave variety, perhaps merciful.

In contrast to the claustrophobia and doom of Calmay, Pedro Páramo has a spread of open ranch lands outside town in the hills of Media Luna. Most of the latter part of the book centers on Páramo, an influential and tyrannical big-shot in these parts. Various locals provide accounts on his shady dealings, his extortion and land-grab, and the deaths of his son, his wife, and ultimately Páramo himself. Pedro is very much in love with his wife, and stricken because he doesn’t deserve her.

Points of view and passages of time shift often in this book. It’s a short read and unusual attention is required. Things can be up to interpretation. Readers will be helped by reading the Afterword notes by the translator. His description of varied usages of quotation marks – some foreign to us English readers, like learning about the European use of << >> for example, helps explain some dialog that seems misplaced.

[ The story is mercurial. Updates & additions are likely to this post. ]

Historical Object Found

A framed front page from a program, unearthed in a storage box.

HALFTIME ON “MAGIC MOUNTAIN,” AND THE BARTHELME BOYS “DOUBLE DOWN” AT THE CASINOS

At the midpoint of the Thomas Mann novel The Magic Mountain, the story is pivoting. Protagonist Hans Castorp purposefully extends his stay at the health sanatorium-resort. He no longer entertains the idea of leaving. He is addicted to its regularity. Things seem in order, buttoned up, the German way. He doesn’t admit to feeling detained, or see his doctor’s decree to rest longer in any way diabolical. Others see the light and depart, after the winter thaw and with the advent of Spring. Meanwhile, the bodies of those who die are dispatched to the valley via a long bobsled track.

To this reader any mundane changes or developments seem huge after the first 350 pages of daily minutiae, routine, lots of meals, and multiple character discoveries.

Hans’ conversant and entertaining friend, the humanist Settembrini is moving back to the flatlands. He will miss his stewardship. Worse, Hans’ love interest Clavdia Chauchat has also left, if only for an indeterminate period of time. It’s a cliff-hanger and we expect and hope for her to return – they were just getting warmed up. Hans is left with a copy of her chest x-ray, a bizarre token of his carnal desire.

His steadfast cousin Joachim remains, but he seems to be going into a shell of depression. We can only imagine what may be coming next. I sense a totalitarian aroma brewing in the air, with less happy times at the campground, or an atmosphere diametrically opposed to the first half when life at a supposed clinic seemed more like Club Med for TB patients.

The first half can get exhausting. Blame it on Hans, who went to the mountain just to visit. He’s not really sick, but is definitely foolish and openly presumptuous. His explanations of the slightest matter are tedious and overly abundant. He wants to be feverish. He likes it there. A victim of his own making, he falls into traps. He studies anatomy so he can understand flesh. Things happen. Often funny things or embarrassing moments. Long, high-falootin’ academic conversations happen. Trifling and gossipy conversations happen as well. Eerie and kinky things happen with the authoritarian doctor and his lady patients, stuff kept secret in the basement, in contrast to the luxurious meals and behavior games taking place openly in the dining room, three meals a day. The tone of the narrative rides a thin line between comedy and horror.

The reader is drawn into the world. A voyeur. Unsure of witnessing an allegory.

The second half will be worth another investment of heavy reading time. We are poised to re-enter the scene at Berghof. How many months have we been stuck together at the mountain lodge? It seems like forever, and in a way it has been. It is slow but clear writing with little white space; thorough but not as complex as Proust. So it is with relief that halftime arrived.

THE BREAK

It hasn’t been long at all. I used the break to enjoy the focused and concise memoir by writers Frederick and Steven Barthelme about their family life and gambling addiction. The read can be done in a single sitting. I am slower and tend to study writing of any style, so it took me three or four days.

The paperback showed up in the mail in what appeared to be “POD wrap,” a cellophane envelope over what looked and smelled like a freshly minted product.

It is highly readable, uncluttered, and without editing glitch. If I have any beef, it’s that the result of their legal troubles could have been mentioned again. Near book’s end I had forgotten that dismissal of charges was a detail stated earlier in the prolog and wondered about it, upset to be left hanging without a resolution.

The guys deliver their story in an infrequently used POV, a sort of”Third Person Double.” Rick and Steve, as they refer to themselves, unite in a single voice. As we learn how close they are, and how they end up in the same jeopardy, the “we” pronoun becomes more natural and barely noticeable. It’s like a writing sleight of hand. And come to think of it, a play on the book title itself, Double Down.

The content is confessional. Blunt. Very family-centric. The Barthelme parents are depicted in detail: the mother is adorable, liberal, and nurturing; the father is hard-nosed, pragmatic and severe. He is a noted architect with a constantly roving mind, searching for answers far beyond household matters, and the kids suffer for the impersonal nature of it. The story includes a no holds barred look at life growing up with them, life taking care of them in their last days, and ultimately life without them. Their strong presence is reduced to boxes of family memorabilia stashed in an every-day storage unit that seems more a columbarium, a site for reverential browsing. We are left to wonder if indeed the parents are the underlying reason for the boys’ reckless venture into gambling. But can we blame them when the family inheritance is put at risk?

The excursions to the Mississippi coastline and its pre-corporate casinos of the time (80s and 90s) are vivid. On arrival we see the older casino days with slot coins in the till, flashing lights and noise, pit bosses, and cigarette smoke. Characters everywhere. Folks who love blackjack and slots will eat up the actual gambling scenes. And there are things to be learned along the way: the lingo, tips, tricks, protocols…and repeated warnings that the player always loses in the end.

It’s a surprise to read that author Mary Robison (her novel Subtraction is a masterpiece) often tagged along on the casino binge trips. In “Double Down” she is described as tall, good-looking, and in a black jumpsuit appearing very thin, “like scaffolding.” Who can forget such an image?

The arraignment and city jail scenes are terrifying (and highly relatable during this present time in our history when Trump and his crew are being arraigned, though with gloved hands and royal motorcades). As the Barthelme brothers stood in the lower jail waiting to be booked, they silently observed the folly and abuses of an over-stretched system. In this chapter, the memoir read like an engrossing police procedural novel.

The deepest and saddest parts of the narrative are the sons’ depictions of their parents, the father especially. There is love, loss, guilt, blame, fear and loathing. They let us see through the windows.

Is their gambling spree and subsequent arrest something they can pin on genes or the way dad raised them? It’s left as an open question. For me, I draw no judgments. While fiction has the liberty to go anywhere, memoirs have a borderline. The guys pushed close to it. I stepped back, having been behind their family curtain for the full two hundred pages; I choose to stay respectful of what is, after all, a private matter.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

Or, “George Saunders study course of exemplary Russian short stories.” In paperback.

The title comes from Chekhov’s “Gooseberries” when the character Ivan does exactly that: he takes a long dip. There is a metaphor at work here, involving happiness, venturing, immersion. But enough of that right now.

Derived from his creative writing class at Syracuse University, the book is a thorough examination of the form. As the reader reads each story, Saunders offers literary analysis and specific remarks on the author’s technique.

Saunders’ analysis preaches efficiency and relevance. He reminds us that every line and every detail counts. His perspective on story beginnings (“juggler pins are thrown in the air, and later must be accounted for”) and forward movement (“a series of calls and responses”) gets the reader involved and engaged in the early pages.

The first two model stories are presented in segments followed by Saunders’s discussion, and the rest are presented in full at the beginning of each chapter, with Saunders’ color commentary and “afterthoughts” presented in subsequent pages. All the included stories are terrific. This will renew your enthusiasm to read Chekhov, Tolstoy, or Gogol.

The overall effect is like taking the course itself. The reader is a student studying without papers to turn in or a classroom of writers to kibbitz with. In the appendices there are three exercises which are largely mental calisthenics more than short story drills. I found Saunders’ format similar to a University of Iowa short story course (which I took via Distance Learning) that featured the same basic setup of example story plus analysis. The difference in that course is, the stories under the microscope were by James Joyce — and students had to write and submit three original short stories.

I’ve been in the fiction-writing ballpark since the 1970s and believe it’s never too late to learn or get refreshed. I devoured the course during one of my getaway-from-the-draft breaks when I often venture into some sort of accelerated, self-inflicted writer’s boot camp or rehab. Largely however, I believe the book is aimed at new writers eager to learn the form, grind through their MFA program, get in the submissions game and have their short fiction recognized.

Recommend highly!