Author: Jnana Hodson

In downsizing to a remote fishing village in Downeast Maine, this eclectic writer feels everything's coming together.

More than volcanic ash spewed out from my days in the Pacific Northwest

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Stephen King has advised novelists to have only one Big Idea in a book, but I came across that way too late to put it into practice. (Maybe if I ever tackle another novel?)

As I hunkered down in my self-imposed sabbatical in Baltimore – or was it self-incarceration or even cloistered? I did little else – my attention eventually turned to a more recent span of my life than the Kenzie novels covered. It was time to consider my nearly ten years of marriage and its breakup. If only I really knew how to star in it.

I thought that this next book would be about the most heavenly time and place imaginable, but as I typed and would eventually see, the real story was about a deeply troubled marriage, with me holding the debris after it blew up and a whirlwind romance afterward left me in a fog where I was.

So courtship, marriage, and relationship per se were one big subject. (Idea, in King’s expression, feels too refined.)

The other was the Pacific Northwest as seen from the other side of the Cascade mountains in Washington state, a land that is essentially desert rather than rainy gray Seattle.

One was something many people had some familiarity with, but the other was what I found more enticing as a writer. Besides, I had written many landscape poems I could draw from. Swami’s insight from her first visit to India, that the reason Hinduism had so many gods was a reflection of the ways each locale had a distinct vibe. The Yakima Valley and the Cascades were unlike anything I had experienced in the eastern half of the U.S. Especially the vast spaces you never see in a movie or read about in a book. And there I was with my new bride.

My inner drive was to better understand – and remember – the events leading up to what I thought was near perfection, my Promised Land. Except that it all blew up after four heady years, and we retreated eastward in haste. Now, six years later, I was trying to make sense of everything, and writing is my primary tool of thought.

One big hurdle was that I still had too many unresolved issues to provide clarity on the relationship struggles. I couldn’t see that the darling I thought every reader would find fascinating was, in a wider view, dislikable.

The plot – and the manuscript – kept growing by the proverbial pound.

Baltimore for me was so many lonely nights broken periodically by sex that wasn’t with my beloved. The whirlwind who came after the marriage. The one others have called my one true love. If only she had been true.

~*~

I really should go back to my journals to get a clearer sense of what I was going through both as I drafted it and also during its revisions. I suspect the reality would be painful, even embarrassing, and as I write this, those volumes are wrapped in plastic under the house renovation. Maybe that’s for the better.

What was I even originally calling the manuscript?

What coalesced for me was the many dimensions of the word “promise,” including the wedding vow, potential, and what I saw as our Promised Land. And then I had the flash of ending the book on a shocking note.

Well, so had much of my life.

I suspect that I spent far more effort than I’ve thought on the novel that now stands as Nearly Canaan.

Somehow, I even had a round with a real literary agent, who ultimately passed on the project.

During later revisions in New Hampshire, the big blob of material I had in hand turned into three parallel volumes – Promise, Peel (as in apple), and St. Helens in the Mix. And I was wondering about my subsequent engagement and the young woman I thought was a perfect subject for later. (I now see how banal that would have been.)

Would the project have been any easier if I had all the facts rather than empty denials and evasions? What if I had steered this more into the fantasy realm, perhaps having the earth magically speak directly to Jaya? Or broken it into a sequence of short books, each with a sharper focus?

A very bruised journalist, alas, was still at the helm, one still engaged in a difficult, painful exile and trying to report on the facts before me.

~*~

I’m trying to recall books and authors I was reading at the time, especially ones that might have nurtured this project. What comes to mind are Ann Tyler (I can smell the back entry of some homes in her Roland Park section of Baltimore); the Random House Vintage Contemporaries series edited by Gary Fisketjon and writers like Jay McInerney (Ransom more than Bright Lights, Big City) and Tama Janowitz; beyond that, Larry McMurtry, Tom Robbins, and Joan Didion; as well as Calvin Trillin’s U.S. Journal letters from here or there in the New Yorker. I also had John Nichols (Milagro Beanfield Wars), Ken Kesey (Sometimes a Great Notion), Edward Abbey, and Ecotopia.

~*~

Promise came out as an ebook at Smashwords but went nowhere. Rather than pay for covers for two companion volumes, I released them as PDF freebies at my Thistle Finch imprint, only to find nobody was downloading anything that big. Ditto for the full-length poetry collections. There would be a major refocusing of the offerings.

When rulers turn to war

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… absolute monarchs will often make wars when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for purposes and objects merely personal, such as, a thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts; ambitions or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families, or partisans. These … often lead him to engage in wars not sanctioned by justice, or the voice and interests of his people.  

John Jay in Federalist No. 4

My outdated travel wishes

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A season in Kyoto, Barcelona, or back in the Pacific Northwest.

Extended genealogical research in England, Ireland, and Alsace.

The Peruvian Andes.

Alaska or Iceland.

Ascending Mount Rainier or Adams.

Weekends of concerts, museums, and theater in Boston.

A week at the Metropolitan Opera.

Visiting friends in Baltimore, New York, and the Pacific Northwest.

Canoeing or kayaking in northern Maine.

On the other hand, I’d still love to experience the Orthodox icons in the churches of Macedonia.

And even some time on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick,

Recalling some favorite magazines

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As an editor and a writer, I’ve long been inspired by a stream of classy, glossy magazines with outstanding illustrations and design supporting sharply edited, masterful writing.

In this category, I’m skipping over purely literary periodicals, even the ones with deep pockets, as well as newsweeklies and many other kinds of magazines.

The ones I’ve admired, as I’m seeing now, all reflected a single editor’s voice and vision, not that I remember all of their names now. Maybe that’s for another Tendril.

For now, here’s what I mean.

  1. The New Yorker. The writing and editing, of course. I was captivated way back in high school – the staff of the Hilltopper even gave me a year’s subscription when we graduated – and still a delight in my retirement, maybe even more, in its current direction. Still, there’s no way to keep up. I should mention, in passing, its assiduous fact checkers, a vexation for many famed writers.
  2. Fortune, back when it was big and classy. Big? The pages were large, like 10 or 11 inches by 12 or 13 inches deep — often on high quality paper, and each issue was fat and thoughtful. Artists were commissioned to create portfolios, with authors to match. It definitely reflected wealth and luxury, unlike other business publications, which often felt pinched. And then the U.S. Postal Service began charging extra for oversize mailings, leading many magazines to shrink their formats. Titles like Life, Look, and Vogue lost their impact, and photographers, especially, took a hit.
  3. New York. Originating as the Sunday magazine of the New York Herald Tribune, this one took off on its own in 1968 after the newspaper’s demise. Brash and definitely connected to everyday life on Manhattan streets, it was an avatar of New Journalism and Push Pin graphics. Still has that cutting edge.
  4. Esquire. By the late ‘60s this former cheesecake vehicle had evolved into a champion of New Journalism and high-impact graphics. Some of the covers remain classic. More recently, Vanity Fair continued in that vein until its solid content evaporated in a demographic desert.
  5. Evergreen Review. Another of the late ‘60s blossoms, this one had a West Coast perspective, openly leftist leanings, and literary ambitions, including Beat poets. Its cartoon serial “Phoebe Zeitgeist” became an underground cult item of a scandalous sort.
  6. Playboy. As a matter of candor, consider its now-classic interviews, plus the fiction, and, yes, the cartoons, a nearly extinct venue these days. The photography was often masterful, no matter the content. The editor in this case did go on to become a pathetic caricature of himself, reflecting the vapid “philosophy” he was espousing.
  7. GEO. This hip German-based alternative to the National Geographic debuted in 1976, distinctive for its green-bordered covers, trend-catching photography, and progressive topics and awareness. The English editions blossomed and then trickled from sight. Much of it, like the international hippie roots it reflected, looks dated today.
  8. New England Monthly. Published from 1984 to 1990, it was an epitome of ambitious, sophisticated, city- and region-based magazines that flourished during the decade. It ran into an identity problem when big advertisers wanted a Greater Boston focus, while important regional issues spilled over into western Massachusetts and Cape Cod as well as Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, where subscribers existed. The final edition featured a devasting account of the high-level executive arrogance regarding the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire led to its corporate bankruptcy, rather than the commonly blamed regulations and enraged environmental protests. After revenue shortfalls shuttered the magazine, some of its writers went on to stardom.
  9. Elle. This upstart to established fashion bastions Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar was actually founded in 1945 in Paris as a newspaper supplement but came to prominence with a monthly American edition in 1969. Propelled by Gilles Bensimon’s inspired, fresh, even exciting photography and sharp page layouts that delivered in tight spaces, there was no mistaking this entry from its rivals. Another upstart, Sassy, a feminist teen platform aimed at well-healed Seventeen, lacked gloss and polish but sizzled on editor Jane Pratt’s brilliant assignments from 1988 to 1996, when it finally succumbed to a longstanding boycott by an evangelical women’s organization. As a former lifestyles editor, I found Pratt to be most refreshing.
  10. Harper’s. These days, it rules the roost for me. Its monthly index of seeming random statistics and trends, toward the beginning of each issue, even provided inspiration for these weekly Tendrils.

Do we dare feel relief yet?

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Looking ahead to the November national presidential elections, I had been in deep despair. Joe Biden, a decent man who has managed a respectable administration in the face of Republican obstruction and corruption, was obviously falling short in his campaign to gain a second term. No matter what the data presented in contrast to what he inherited, cosmic forces seemed to be aligned against everything holy.

Right-wing so-called Christians couldn’t realize which side they were really on, Satan’s or the Holy One’s.Yes, it was that dark. Who can stop the tide? From what I saw, the coming Kristallnacht repeatedly broke my sleep. Jews weren’t the only ones who the Orange Man’s zombie legions would be coming after. Just as many non-Jews were gassed in the Nazi concentration camps, millions of them. Remember that.

And then, against all odds, President Biden yielded to the hard labor of reason by Nancy Pelosi. Both of them, I would say, are true patriots in that struggle. The good of the nation and the world come first.

Suddenly, what an incredible and unexpected turnabout! With her Cinderella outbreak, Kamala Harris has been striking all the right notes and moves. The crowds reflect the sense of rescue. The interviews and policy positions can come later.

The unanticipated choice of Tim Walz, from my perspective, was absolutely brilliant. While I had thought Joshua Shapiro was the obvious pick for vice president, Walz suddenly throws the entire center of the continent into play, not just the two progressive coasts. It’s like Tim Lasso has suddenly entered the race.

Better yet, both Kamala and Tim have freed the Democrats from their deadly tone of lecturing the electorate. They’re willing to humorously and boldly tweak their opponents in ways that deflect the earlier nasty blasts from the other side. They boogey, they smile, they’ve comfortable in their own skins, unlike their GOP rivals. So far, it’s been deadly effective. Maybe because their new comedic shots at their foes reflect fact.

The race is no longer about policy, other than the Project 2025. It’s about character and integrity. Period.

My, how things have changed. No wonder the Democrats and others are suddenly charged. Could the bullies finally be on the run?

As a conservative editorial writer once reminded me, he saw too many dead causes rise up again. I hope that warning holds for the center and left, too.

Complacency can be deadly.

So that’s what I see from where I am as so much boils up.

Acid test novelist: Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

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When I first encountered his writing during the fall of 1968 at the recommendation of a friend who was attending a college elsewhere in Indiana, Vonnegut was a breath of fresh air. I loved the sassiness, hipness, and dark humor of books. They had none of the pretentiousness of serious literature but were seriously satirical.

Besides, he was writing about the heartland of the neglected Midwest, at least at one point in each book. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater nails the milieu and remains my favorite.

Overall, though, I feel an overarching nihilism negates a redemptive mission for his work. As for the gimmicks? Let’s just say this former favorite has shrunk in my estimation over the years.